ch 20 notes -4th period 1/9

Obession with physical and racial fitness

• 1890s-time of heightened enthusium for competitive sports, physical fitness, outdoor recreation
  
• college football went big
• women began to engage in sports and dressed accordingly
• enthusium was part in reaction of the wealthy concern to demonstrate racial fitness
• immigrant neightborhoods was poor
• racial strereotype
  
• opposition to immigration labor force

Immigration

• B/t 1880 and 1914- most European immigrants that came from Eastern and Southern Europe were considered NEW-Italians, Russians, Polish Jews, Hungarians, Slavs, Greeks, Turks, and others.
• OLD immigrants - came from Great Britain, Scandanavia
• Racially more fit b/c they were stocked with the original settlers
  
• Catholic, Greek orthodoxm and Jews- rural peasents unused to the cities and come from countries with limited democratic government
• most came from economic hardships
• most came intending to find work, save, and return to the homeland
• 1880-Number of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, and French Canadian immigration increased
• The US refused to admit Chinese immigrants after 1882- Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese males after 1907- the Gentlemen's Agreement
• Most immigrants were European
  
• B/t 1900-1910- immigrants made up to 70% of the workforce ; taking the hardest jobs- least desirable jobs, building railroads, mining coal, making steel, packing meat at slaughterhouses
• Upton Sinclair- a Muckracker who wrote the Jungle- exposing the safety hazards of the slaughterhouses

Working conditions were difficult

• few states restricted child labor
  
• 25% of boy and 10% of girls b/t the ages of 10 and 15 ere employed
• injuries were common
  
• The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York killed 146 workers - mostly young women who were trapped on the upper floors that were locked from the outside and the fire escape wasn't functioning
  

After taking notes, we watched a video about the fire. It explained the events that happened before, during and after the fire. We find out that the workers who were killed had tried to make the working conditions safer but they were ignored by the owners, who were aquitted because they did not break any laws. As a result, many reformers and city officals spent four years researching the working conditons of factories in New York. Later, children under the age of 14 were illegal to work in factories at all and the number of hours per week was limited.