The Progressive Era:
Make Your Own DBQ

The Progressives organized in response to the horrors of late 19th Century urban life and sought to alleviate urban blight and economic disadvantage as well as curb political corruption. Listed below are key people, documents and legislation in this effort. Your job, as a class, is to create a DBQ about this time period. The final product will have 8 documents (or excerpts thereof). Also listed below are essay key terms to help you determine the focus of your question. Finally there are instructions to guide you in writing this essay, which you will do in class before vacation.

Relevant Documents
17th Amendment
Henry Demarest Lloyd - Wealth Against Commonwealth
Lincoln Steffens - The Shame of the Cities
Ida Tarbell - History of Standard Oil Company, excerpts from 19 installments in McClure's Magazine
Jacob Riis - How the Other Half Lives: The Problem of the Children, The Working Girls of New York
Carrie Chapman Catt - Do You Know?
Alice Paul - Alice Paul Talks
Jane Addams - "A Modern Lear"
Frances Willard
Gifford Pinchot
Teddy Roosevelt (trust busting) - The New Nationalism
Elkins Act
Hepburn Act
Upton Sinclair - The Jungle, (excerpts)
Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
Meat Inspection Act (1906)
Eugene Debs - call to join Socialist Party
Underwood Tariff
Federal Reserve Act (1914)
Clayton Anti-Trust Act

Essay Key Terms
ASSESS THE VALIDITY OF - evaluate or determine how sound or supportable the statement is. When writing the essay you should evaluate information and use that information to reach supportable conclusions. This discussion should be more than a description of the circumstances surrounding the issue.

TO WHAT EXTENT - how much did the topic or issue change; how much did it remain the same?

ANALYZE - Determine the component parts; examine their nature and relationship; evaluate evidence and come to a conclusion

ASSESS / EVALUATE
Judge the value or character of something; appraise; evaluate the positive and negative aspects; give an opinion regarding the value of; discuss the advantages and disadvantages of.

COMPARE/CONSTRAST
Examine for the purpose of noting similarities and dissimilarities or points of difference.

DESCRIBE
Give an account of; tell about; give a word picture of.

DISCUSS
Talk over; write about; consider or examine by argument or from various points of view; debate; present the different sides.

EXPLAIN
Make plain or clear; make clear the causes or reasons for; make known in detail; tell the meaning of.

Tips for writing a DBQ:
Before reading the documents - briefly list the main events of the time period addressed before you read the documents in order to generate "outside information" that you will weave into your essay. Essays that lack this required outside information do not generally receive very high scores. Also, draft a thesis statement - you can always go back and revise it - in order to stay organized and have a meaningful framework in which to fit the documents.

Reading the documents - make notes (mental or actual) about the topic and source of each document. Consider how each fits with your background knowledge.