Lesson 2.03 Improving Conditions of the Working Class

Child laborers were often hired to work alongside adult workers during the Progressive Era. Many times these children were given dangerous jobs that required the manipulation of small parts or spaces, often resulting in injury. American photographer, Lewis Hines, captured the plight of these small workers in the fields, factories, and mines in which they worked. For this assignment:

1. Review a small, but poignant collection of Hines' photographs at the following link: Child Labor in America.


2. Choose 6 of the images that you feel best represent the conditions child laborers faced.


3. Copy and paste the pictures into a document.


4. Provide a 2 sentence caption for each picture explaining why you selected the picture how it represents the conditions children typically faced.


5. Submit your completed document to 2.03 Child Laborers Dropbox.

Part One:
Read the following excerpts from muckraker writing:

Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

John Spargo's The Bitter Cry of the Children (Note: The author is describing work done mostly by young children at the coal breaker, which is the area outside the mine where coal was sorted and graded.)

Part Two:
After reading the stories, create a Wordcloud to visually display the horrors revealed in the accounts. A Wordle takes a text or collection of words and creates a wordcloud. The cloud gives emphasis to the words that appear more often in a text.

To create a Wordcloud:
1) Go to Wordcloud generator.
2) Chose File.
3) Choose Paste/Type text.
4) Copy and paste text from each of the three excepts into the wordcloud space. Include information from each source that you feel is important.
5) Click Apply.
6) Save the PDF to a location on your computer and remember where you saved it. 7) Submit it to the 2.03 Muckraking WordCloud Dropbox.

Part Three:
Complete 2.03 Reading and Wordcloud Analysis. Sumbit your completed work to 2.03 Reading and Wordcloud Analysis Dropbox.

Add three slides to your Unit 2 Progressive Era PowerPoint presentation. Remember that your PowerPoint will have a total of 16 slides. Information for the slides may be found within the lesson and from outside research. You are required to include at leat two outside resources. When you include information from outside sources be sure to include the correct citation information. A Works Cited slide will be your last slide. All information on the slides should be written in your own words and phrases.

For detailed information on ACCESS course citations, go to: MLA Citations

The presentation also needs to include at least 7 photos or pictures. These photos may be placed as you deem appropriate. All photos should be correctly cited with the web address where the photo was located.

Create the following slides to correspond to Lesson 2.03:

Slide 8- Working Conditions- reflect on the working conditions present in the typical Progressive Era factory and discuss the hours and low wages experienced by workers. Also mention the types of people that worked in the factories.
Slide 9- Living Conditions of the Urban Poor- reflect on the typical living conditions of the urban poor in America.
Slide 10- Reform Efforts - describe some of the reform efforts that tried to improve working and living conditions.