Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal

1. 1902 COAL STRIKE

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt brought the mine workers and the mine operators to the White House to settle their differences. He then had them submit their differences to an arbitration committee, a third unbiased expert party that was made to come up with a compromise. The committee created by Roosevelt settled the dispute.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
none

2. TRUSTS

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt, who believed that not all trusts were harmful, merely focused on filing law suits directly under the Sherman Anti-trust Act. He broke up a number of trusts and won many of the 44 cases he brought to the Supreme Court.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
The Sherman Anti-trust Act, but nothing that Roosevelt passed during his term.

3. UNREGULATED BIG BUSINESS

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
The main business that Roosevelt worked on regulating was the railroad industry. He passed legislation that gave more power to the Interstate Commerce Commission and worked to halt bribery and other forms of corruption in the railroad industry.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
  Elkins Act- 1903, and Hepburn Act-1906

4. DANGEROUS FOODS AND MEDICINES

 a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt created a committee after reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to inspect the meatpacking industry. The committee released a detailed report about the incredibly insanitary conditions and practices and industry. Roosevelt also listened to Dr. Harvey Washington’s criticism of the drug industry’s wild claims and contaminated products. He passed legislation to give cleanliness requirements to the meatpacking industry as well as establishing inspections. The biggest part of the legislation for drug safety was that it called for honest labeling, which allowed consumers to really see what they were buying.

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
Meat Inspection Act- 1906 and Pure Food and Drug Act- 1906


5. SHRINKING WILDERNESS AND NATURAL RESOURCES

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
As Americans expanded west, they left a trail of destruction and waste in their path, hurting the environment. Teddy Roosevelt, a conservationist, set aside millions and millions of acres for forest reserves, water-power sites, and for the USGS to search for natural resources, as well as many national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. He also appointed an expert conservationist, Gifford Pinchot, as the head of the U.S. Forest Service. As part of his solution he passed legislation that used money the government gained from the sale of lands in the west went towards irrigating the west. 

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
National Reclamation Act- 1902

6. RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

a. What steps did Roosevelt take to solve the problem? 
Roosevelt overall did not do much to solve racial problems. However, he did appoint some African-Americans to government jobs throughout the country, much to the chagrin of his party members. He also invited Booker T. Washington, a well-respected man in black and some white communities, to the white house as a symbolic gesture. 

b. Which legislation helped solve the problem?
none

Explain the importance of each of the following:

7. Square Deal:                 
The square deal was the Progressive idea behind many of Roosevelt’s reforms. He believed if workers and Americans were getting cheated, he would give them  a square deal, through reform.

8. The Jungle:
The Jungle  was a novel that revealed many of the horrifying practices of the meat packing industry. This book led to an uproar that eventually resulted in the Meat Inspection Act and safer foods for Americans.                            

9. Upton Sinclair:           
Upton Sinclair was the author of The Jungle and was seen as a big muckraker in the early 1900s. However, his intentions in writing about the meatpacking industry were to be reveal the exploitation of the workers, but his vivid descriptions ended up inspiring Progressives into reform.

10. NAACP: 
The NAACP’s goal was simply equality for all races. The existence of this organization showed that the Progressive Movement’s true goals were only concerning middle class white Americans.

11. Meat Inspection Act:                          
The Meat Inspection Act created specific cleanliness requirements and created the process of federal meat inspection. This act brought cleaner and higher quality meat to Americans.

12. Pure Food & Drug Act: 
The Pure Food and Drug Act called for the halting of the selling of contaminated foods and drugs and, most importantly, for truth and labeling. This allowed Americans to know what they were really buying.

13. Significance of the 1902 Coal Miners’ Strike: 
During the 1902 Coal Miners’ Strike, Teddy Roosevelt set several very important precedents. He brought the federal government into a strike that threatened the welfare of the public. This had not been previously done, but after 1902 it was expected.

The Jungle - Exposing the Meatpacking Industry

1. In your opinion, which specific details in this excerpt most convincingly highlight problems in the meatpacking industry in the early 1900s? Why? Use specific passages and quote. Analyze at least five details. 

A.    The loose regulation of the meatpacking industry is highlighted in this document. When Sinclair mentions the government inspector inspecting the meat he says that, “while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched.” This implies the loose regulation of the industry, as the inspector doesn’t care enough to stop talking and inspect the dozen pigs that have passed him.

B.    When a pig was old and their skin became droopy the meatpackers would cut it off and have it “cooked and chopped fine and labeled ‘head cheese!’”. This is an example of the meatpacking industry maximizing profits by selling unsanitary products, just one of many.

C.    When talking about the making of sausage, Sinclair notices that “they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage,” they being the workers whose hands got dirty from making the sausage. There were no other areas near their place of work where they could wash their hands, no other source of water. This shows an example of the problem of unsanitary working conditions.

D.    A ham’s gone bad in the pickling process? Not a problem for the meatpackers! They’ll just sell it at free lunch counters, or as Number Three Grade meat! Or use the “ingenious invention which will “extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron.” This, for the meatpackers, was enough to turn this Number Three Grade, spoiled meat, into Number One Grade fresh.

E.    The sausage-making process was incredibly unsanitary at the turn of the century. They would put whatever meat they had in the sausage, including “moldy white sausage” rejected from Europe, meat that had been “ tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs”. They would also use the meat of rats that had been crawling all over the meat, as well as the rat-dung covered meat.

2. What is the overall tone of the story?

The overall tone of the story is revealing and accusative. The author was clearly out to make all the problems of the meatpacking industry public. He wanted it to be known that the industry was incredibly unsafe and that they were deceiving millions of Americans into eating spoiled meat by packaging it differently. I believe he also wanted to point out the weakness of the regulation, through the lax government inspector described at Durham’s.

3. Based on your reading of this excerpt, why do you think Sinclair titled his novel The Jungle?

Sinclair probably titled this novel The Jungle for a few reasons. For one, the jungle is known as a very dirty place, and while you’re there you probably don’t want to eat anything you find lying around, and the meatpacking industry was essentially forcing the public to eat whatever was in their factory. This title could also reference the “forest of freezing hogs” that Sinclair calls the chilling room as, implying that the meatpacking industry is as loose and wild as the jungle.