US history: industry, immigration, and the Progressive Era (grade 11)

Between about 1880 and 1920, millions of immigrants came from Southern and Eastern Europe. Jobs in growing industries pulled them. Poverty and persecution at home pushed them. Most settled in cities to work in factories. Ellis Island opened in 1892 to process new arrivals.

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from entering the US and barred Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens. It was the first major federal law to bar immigrants by nationality.

Factory workers faced long hours, low pay, and danger. One worker asking alone for a raise could simply be fired and replaced. A labor union lets workers bargain as a group. If all of them strike, or refuse to work, the owner can't easily replace everyone, so the owner has a reason to bargain. Strikers usually lost their pay, so strikes were hard.

In 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. Locked doors and poor exits trapped workers, and 146 died. Public outrage spread, and New York passed new laws on fire safety and factory conditions.

The Progressive Era ran roughly from the 1890s to about 1920. Journalists called muckrakers exposed corruption and unsafe conditions. Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle showed filthy meatpacking plants. That same year, Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. It made trusts and combinations that block fair competition illegal.

Progressives also changed the Constitution. The 16th Amendment (1913) allowed a federal income tax. The 17th (1913) let voters elect senators directly. The 19th (1920) gave women the right to vote.