The Pittsburgh Survey was a pioneering sociological study of the city of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, USA funded by the Russell Sage Foundation

Russell Sage Foundation

The Russell Sage Foundation is the principal American foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. Founded in 1907 and headquartered in New York City, the foundation is a research center, a funding source for studies by scholars at other institutions, and a key member of the...

 of New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. It is widely considered a landmark of the Progressive Era

Progressive Era

The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...

 reform movement.

The Survey is one of the earliest and most thorough descriptions of urban conditions in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Some seventy investigators, including Elizabeth Beardsley Butler

Elizabeth Beardsley Butler

Elizabeth Beardsley Butler was a pioneering social investigator of the Progressive Era. She is best known for her contributions to The Pittsburgh Survey, a landmark study of social conditions in an American city....

, Margaret Byington, John R. Commons

John R. Commons

John Rogers Commons was an American institutional economist and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.-Biography:Born in Hollansburg, Ohio, John R. Commons had a religious upbringing which led him to be an advocate for social justice early in life...

, Edward T. Devine, Crystal Eastman

Crystal Eastman

Crystal Catherine Eastman was a lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She is best remembered as a leader in the fight for women's right to vote, as a co-editor of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator, and as a co-founder of the Women's International League...

, John A. Fitch

John A. Fitch

John Andrews Fitch was an American writer, teacher, and pioneering social investigator of the Progressive Era. He is best known for his contributions to The Pittsburgh Survey, a landmark study of social conditions in a U.S. city....

, documenatary photographer Lewis Hine

Lewis Hine

Lewis Wickes Hine was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States.-Early life:...

, and artist Joseph Stella

Joseph Stella

Joseph Stella was an Italian-born, American Futurist painter best known for his depictions of industrial America. He is associated with the American Precisionism movement of the 1910s-1940s....

, began work in 1907. The research was first published in magazines, including Collier's, in 1908 & 1909, then was expanded into a series of six books (4 monographs and 2 collections of essays) published from 1909 to 1914.

In the early twentieth century Pittsburgh was America's prototypical industrial city. Immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 poured in seeking jobs and escape from poverty. Large corporations such as U.S. Steel

U.S. Steel

The United States Steel Corporation , more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in the United States, Canada, and Central Europe. The company is the world's tenth largest steel producer ranked by sales...

 dominated local governments. Life for most Pittsburgh citizens was famously smokey and hardscrabble. Progressives and urban reformers viewed with alarm working-class and immigrant life, corporate industrialism, and the effects of industrialization on the urban environment.

Survey director Paul Kellogg aimed to connect the reformist purpose with the latest methods of scientific inquiry. He hoped the results would alert the public about the social and environmental ills raging in industrial America and favorably influence policymaking, both corporate and government, in Pittsburgh and throughout the nation.

Volumes of the Pittsburgh Survey

• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4 and at Google Books
• Volume 5
• Volume 6