1) You are an industrial worker sometime between 1880 and 1905.

Describe
your life. Be sure to mention both your work and your home life. What do
you do for a living? Where (and how) do you live? What are your hopes and
aspirations for yourself and your family? What reasons would you have for
joining a union? Which union or labor organization of this period most
appeals to you, and why? Would you join that union?
If I were an industrial worker sometime between 1880 and 1905, I would be a
young, single woman, living in a densely populated urban area. I would work
in a large, dimly-lit sweatshop where I would peddle a sewing machine for
twelve hours a day, scraping together enough money to go to the
amusement park or dance hall in my free time, and occasionally buy nice
clothes or hair pins, in an effort to, some day, get married. But to achive my
goals, I would have to work long, dark, and monotonous days in the
sweatshop. To be able to get to my job at the factory more easily, I would
have to live closer to the city itself and not as much on the edge as those of
the middle class. Inside the city, it would be more dirty, smelly, dank, and
crowded, though hopefully I would not be one of the poorest of the poor, who
were forced to live near the factories where they worked.
As far as my hopes and aspirations go, I would hope for a husbanda
husband would mean a more security for myself, because he would be
bringing in moneymore money than I could earn as a woman. I would want
my husband and I to scrape together enough money to buy a house, so as I
could stop working in a sweatshop and do something closer to home instead,
such as taking in lodgers and tenants. I would probably also hope that my
husband and I would make enough money so that any children we had would
not have to work as child laborers. I know that in this sort of life, I would not
have any big dreams or goals, but rather the hope for at lifestyle where my
family and I could live in a house and our children would not have to be out
on the streets selling newspapers or any more dangerous jobs.
Overall, I might balk at the ideas of unions in general, since many chose to
ignore women workers, but one union I would consider joining would be the
Knights of Labor, because I would agree with and support much of what they
proposed, from campaigning to organize workers no matter their sex,
nationality, race or skills to advocating to stop child labor and to get higher
pay for women workers. The Knights of Labor would have also been one of
the few unions I would have taken the risk in joining a union for, though I
would have probably stayed on the fence for a while as to whether or not join
a unionthere was, after all, a risk in joining a union, but while I was young
and single, I would have probably felt the risk was worth it, for the benefits if
it managed to do anything to change the conditions I worked under,
something that would have been well worth the risk.
2) Compare and contrast the Populist and Progressive Movements. How did

the Populists see the nation and American society. How did they hope to
change it? What was their vision for the future? How did the Progressives see
the nation and American society, how did they hope to change it, and what
was their vision for the future? Which group had a more radical vision for the
future? Which group was more successful in achieving its agenda? Be sure to
cover the events that sparked each movement, the motivations of its
participants, its leaders, their proposed reforms, and each movement's
successes and failures.
The Populists and Progressives were as similar as they were different. Both
movements had some of the same basic interests at heartimproving the
conditions of the working class, ending child labor, criticizing industrial
society as a whole. They started on more localized levels and worked their
way into alliances and organizations that stretched nationwide under one
banner, be it Populist or Progressive. But the movements came from two
different groups and tried to implement changes in two different times, and
the kind of backing they had from the average American, as well as the sort
of political influences they had, were the most marked differences between
the Populists and Progressives.
The Populists were born from the Farmers Alliance, an organized alliance of
farmers that had evolved from a growing number of farmers protesting and
organizing as a result of falling farm prices. The Populists called for action,
revolution, land reform; they were convinced that the banking systems of the
time were advantageous only to the wealth and wanted a cheaper form of
currency. The Peoples Party demanded economic democracy and came up
with a variety of reforms that they thought would benefit farmerssuch as a
subtreasury for Southern farmers, free silver and greenbacks, and reclaiming
lands granted to railroads. The Populists desired an end to contract labor and
wanted to increase the nations money supply, and also were among those
who spoke out against the way the homeless wanderers of the 1893. Like the
Progressives, they also promoted changes that would aid the working class,
such as an eight hour workday, but unlike the Progressives, they lacked
popular support and a singular, strong leader in politicsthere was no
Roosevelt for the Populists, which is probably one of the reasons the
movement died an early death as a result of the election of 1896.
The Progressives, unlike the Populists, were not farmers, nor did they want to
revolutionize America; they wanted to reform it without changing its basic
institutions, and the Progressives sought to unite across classes, though it
especially allied itself with the working class. The Progressives, however, like
the Populists, began on the grassroots level and worked its way up through
local and national politics. Like the Populists, the Progressives went after the
problems of urban industrialism and called for better conditions amongst the
working class, though they, formed mostly of working class citizens,

expanded more on these calls for reform. Here, however, is where

Progressivism really begins to splinter from its similarities with the Peoples
Party. The Progressives were more active in helping and allying themselves
with other classes with programs like settlement houses, and Progressivism
employed both religious and scientific ideas, professing a new Christian
social gospel and emphasizing experimentation and reform Darwinism. They
were active and had a desire for the government to be more active, too,
specifically in business. Also, unlike the Populists, the Progressives wanted to
put the experts in charge, and they managed to gain more popularity as a
whole, likely, in large part, to Progressive Theodore Roosevelt, who
implemented a variety of Progressive ideas during his time as President.
Both the Populists and Progressives saw flaws in how America was run, both
economically and in the government. They wanted to help the farmers and
the working class, make money more available and abolish child labor. They
faced challenges on their road to reformmultiple strikes, like the Cripple
Creek Miners Strike, fueled the fires of the Populists, and incidents like the
Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire served as an example of the need to reform
for the Progressives. Both were met with successes and failures;
Progressivism stalled during the Taft administration and was lukewarm during
Wilsons, and by the 1920s much of its successes had been turned around
again, while the Peoples Party was short-lived but had an impact on the
domestic political agendas for the next decade, enlarging the role of the
federal government in the economy. The Populists were, by far, the more
radical of the twoexemplified by their call for revolution, not reformwhile
the Progressives, with their popular president at the helm, were more
immediately successful. The Populists were often splinteredWestern
Populists, Midwestern, Southernwhile the Progressives purposely strode the
unite across classes. Both parties had their similar desires of reform and
improvement, while both were decidedly different in their demographics and
results. In the end, however, both Populists and Progressives, from the
lifestyle of the average farmer to the amount of power the president wielded,
had a profound impact on shaping the government, economy, and lifestyle of
America.