Progressive Era Essay Example
AP US History Document Based Question
Directions: The following question requires you to construct an essay that integrates your interpretation of Documents A-J and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. In the essay you should strive to support your assertions both by citing key pieces of evidence from the documents and by drawing on your knowledge of the period.
Evaluate the effectiveness of Progressive Era reformers and the federal government in bringing about reform at the national level. In your answer be sure to analyze the successes and limitations of these efforts in the period 1900-1920.
Document A
Document B
Source: The Neill-Reynolds Report, June 4, 1906.
Meat scraps were also found being shoveled into receptacles from dirty floors where they were left to lie until again shoveled into barrels or into machines for chopping. These floors, it must be noted, were in most cases damp and soggy, in dark, ill-ventilated rooms, and the employees in utter ignorance of cleanliness or danger to health, expectorated at will upon them. In a word, we saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room to room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering dirt, splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculosis and other diseased workers.
Document C
Source: Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 1909.
Knowing as educators do that thousands of the city youth will enter factory life at an early age as early as the state law will permit; instructed as the modem teacher is as to youth's requirements for normal mental and muscular development, it is hard to understand the apathy in regard to youth's inevitable experience in modem industry. Are the educators, like the rest of us, so caught in admiration of the astonishing achievements of modem industry that they forget the children themselves?
Document D
Source: Speech by
Directions: The following question requires you to construct an essay that integrates your interpretation of Documents A-J and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. In the essay you should strive to support your assertions both by citing key pieces of evidence from the documents and by drawing on your knowledge of the period.
Evaluate the effectiveness of Progressive Era reformers and the federal government in bringing about reform at the national level. In your answer be sure to analyze the successes and limitations of these efforts in the period 1900-1920.
Document A
Document B
Source: The Neill-Reynolds Report, June 4, 1906.
Meat scraps were also found being shoveled into receptacles from dirty floors where they were left to lie until again shoveled into barrels or into machines for chopping. These floors, it must be noted, were in most cases damp and soggy, in dark, ill-ventilated rooms, and the employees in utter ignorance of cleanliness or danger to health, expectorated at will upon them. In a word, we saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room to room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering dirt, splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculosis and other diseased workers.
Document C
Source: Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 1909.
Knowing as educators do that thousands of the city youth will enter factory life at an early age as early as the state law will permit; instructed as the modem teacher is as to youth's requirements for normal mental and muscular development, it is hard to understand the apathy in regard to youth's inevitable experience in modem industry. Are the educators, like the rest of us, so caught in admiration of the astonishing achievements of modem industry that they forget the children themselves?
Document D
Source: Speech by