progressivism the progressive era was a time period that addressed many of the social, political,...

Progressivism

The Progressive Era was a time period that addressed many of the social, political, and economic problems that industrialization created.

They wanted the government to be an agency of human welfare.

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Who were the Progressives?

Progressives were journalists, intellectuals, and political reformers whose reform efforts were aimed at returning control of the people, restoring economic opportunities, and correcting injustices in American life.

Mostly middle class men and women.

Progressive Publicity

Progressives relied on newspapers and magazines to give publicity to their cause.

Muckrakers were those journalists and American writers in the early 20th century, who exposed corruption and scandals in business and politics.

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Issues that Progressives focused on…

Alcohol Consumption Prohibition Helping urban poor/housing reformImproving working conditions-

unsafe, unsanitary conditions Reforming Government- corrupt,

political machines and corrupt voting practices.

Women’s SuffrageAfrican American Civil Rights

Anti-Lynching campaigns

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ReformReform ReformersReformers

Settlement house movement

Community centersProvided social

education, child care, language classes, entertainment, etc.

Jacob Riis 1890 How the Other Half Lives – This book deeply influenced a future New York City police commissioner (and President of the U.S.) named Theodore Roosevelt

Women progressives like Jane Addams in Chicago Lillian Wald in New York

Social gospel – a brand of progressivism based on Christian teachings

Problem: Poor housing and living conditions for the urban poor - slums

Reform: Housing Reform

1. Housing Reforms: Tenement Act of 1901Forced landlords to install lighting in

public hallwaysForced landlords to provide at least one

toilet for every two families. Outhouses were banned from NY slums. These reforms led to decreased death rates

and safer housing situations.

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Issue: Women’s RightsA History of the Women’s

Movement in America

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Women suffrageState laws allowing

women suffrage19th Amendment

1920 grants women the right to vote

Feminists SuffragettesNational American

Woman Suffrage Association

National Association of Colored Women

National Women’s Party

Problem: Women couldn’t vote

Iron Jawed Angels Bad Romance

Issue: Government Corruption

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City council model of city government

City commissioner model

Lincoln Steffens 1902 articles in McClure’s “The Shame of the Cities”

Problem: Corrupt alliance between big business and municipal (city) government

Government Reform13

City Government Reforms Council-manager model and City Commission

Model (were more efficient and less corrupt)State Government Reforms

Robert La Follette- called for limits on campaign spending, created commissions to regulate railroads and utilities and to oversee taxation.

Election Reforms- Progressives wanted to reform elections to make them fairer.

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More Power to Voters

Direct PrimaryVoters select party candidate

InitiativeVoters put bill on ballot

ReferendumVoters approve/reject a law

passed by legislature

RecallRemove elected official before

term is up

ELECTION REFORMS LED TO….

ReformReform

Secret ballot (Australian ballot)

Problem: Vote buying


Routed the railroad and lumber interests

Regulated public utilities

Public utilities commissions

Governor Robert LaFollette in Wisconsin 1901

Other states, such as California (Hiram

Johnson, 1910) New York ( Charles

Evans Hughes)

Problem: Corruption in state government


17th Amendment – direct election of U.S. senators by the people – not the state legislatures 1913

David G. Phillips, 1906, Cosmopolitan “The Treason of the Senate”

Problem: U.S. senators representing railroads and trusts instead of the people.

Issue: Discrimination, Segregation and Lack of Civil Rights for African

Americans

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Anti-lynching lawsBlacks leave

SouthLegal changesEconomic equality

Ray Stannard Baker, 1908 Following the Color Line

Ida B. Well-BarnettNational Association

for the Advancement of Colored People

W.E.B. Du BoisBooker T.

Washington

Problem: Subjugation of America’s 9 million blacksJim Crow laws (segregation), lynchings,

Plessy v. Ferguson

Problem: Jim Crow Laws

After the end of Reconstruction, African Americans in the South lost their hard-won political rights.

Jim Crow Laws (segregation) became a fact of life in the South.

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Booker T. WashingtonBooker T. Washington W.E.B. Du BoisW.E.B. Du Bois

SouthernerEconomic equality

first.Learn a trade – a

way to make a living.

Tuskegee InstituteAvoid confrontation

NorthernerCivic equalityGet a college

educationNAACPSue for rights in

courts

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Reform: Civil Rights Groups23

Fighting prejudice in society: The multiracial NAACP was formed by

activists to fight for the rights of African Americans. Members included Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois,

and Jane Addams. National Association of Colored Women

(NACW) campaigned against Jim Crow laws, poverty, segregation, and lynching, and encouraged equal rights for blacks. Members: Ida Wells-Barnett and Harriet Tubman.

Problem: Lynching

Strange Fruit

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Lynching

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Anti-Lynching Campaigns

With the rise of the KKK, and other racist groups after the Civil War, African American lynching soared after Reconstruction.

African Americans began to protest lynching as another form of slavery.

Members: Ida Wells-Barnett

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Consumer Safety and Health

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Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906

Dr. Harvey Wiley, chief chemist for Department of Agriculture ‘Poison Squad” experiments on himself.

President Theodore Roosevelt

Problem: Patent medicines (most spiked with alcohol) and the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and

pharmaceuticals (medicines)


Meat Inspection Act of 1906

(More American soldiers died from eating canned meat in Spanish-American War than from battle)

Filth, disease, and putrefaction in Chicago’s damp, ill-ventilated slaughterhouses

Poisoned rats, rope ends, splinters, other debris as potted ham

Upton Sinclair 1906 The Jungle “aimed for the nation’s heart but hit it in the stomach”

President RooseveltClip from The

Jungle

Problem: Unsafe meat products


Dry laws passed by some states to control, restrict, or abolish alcohol

By 1914 (outbreak of WWI) one-half of the population lived in dry territory

18th Amendment made the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol illegal in the United States (Prohibition)

Women’s Christian Temperance Union founded by Frances Willard

Anti-Saloon League – Carrie Nation

Problem: Demon RumAlcohol (connected with prostitution, drunken voters,

political corruption, violence against women and children, etc.)

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Working Conditions

Major Events of the Early Labor Movement

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Workplace Reform

Because labor unions were campaigning for the rights of adult workers, Progressive reformers took up the cause of working women and children.

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Muller v. Oregon 1908 – Supreme Court agreed to special laws calling for protection of women and children in the workplace

Florence Kelley, Illinois’s first chief factory inspector led the

National Consumer’s League which pushed for laws safeguarding women and children in workplace

John Spargo 1906 The Bitter Cry of the Children

Problem: Unsafe, unsanitary working conditions for women and

children

Work Place Reformer: Florence Kelley

Leader in area of work reform: Founded the

National Child Labor Committee

Prohibit child labor Regulate sweatshops Limit hours of work

for women Only successful in

some states.

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Work Place Reform: The Supreme Court and Labor Law

1905- Lochner vs. New York: SC sided with business owners, and refused to uphold a law limiting bakers to 10-hour workdays.

1908: Muller v. Oregon: SC sided with workers and upheld a law establishing a 10-hour workdays for women workers.

1917: Bunting v. Oregon: SC extended the the protection of a 10-hour workday to men working in mills and factories.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire in 1911

146 workers died in an unsafe factory when a fire broke out.

The doors were locked and many women jumped to their deaths.

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Work place reform: New Labor Unions

•ILGWU- International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union

•Won shorter work weeks, higher wages

•IWW- Industrial Workers of the World “Wobblies”

•Used strikes, boycotts, and industrial sabotage

•Won higher wages, but only for a short period of time.


1917 Supreme Court upheld a ten hour work day law for factory workers

1917 30 states had workers compensation laws providing insurance for workers hurt in the workplace.

Workingmen’s Compensation Act 1916, granting assistance to federal employees during disability.

Adamson Act of 1916 established an eight-hour work day for all employees with extra pay for overtime.

Labor unionsPresidents

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson

Problem: Working conditions – low wages, long hours, dangerous conditions

Progressive Presidents

Previous presidents were weak…1. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson come to the floor with a plan. 2. They have ideas and they are articulate.


Threatened to take over the mines if owners would not negotiate an end to the strike – first time government sided with labor instead of business.

Created Department of Commerce and Labor (1903 – split into 2 separate agencies in 1913)

President Theodore Roosevelt

Problem: Coal mines strike, Dangerous working conditions, low pay and shorter

work day


Sherman Anti-Trust Act 1890

Clayton Anti-Trust Act Bureau of Corporations

used for trust-busting Northern Securities

decision by Supreme Court upholds Roosevelt’s antitrust suit.

1905 Supreme Court declares beef trust illegal and thus ended the sugar, fertilizer, harvesters, and other key product trusts as well.

President Theodore Roosevelt There were good trusts and bad

trusts Bigness was not necessarily

badness Understood the political benefits of

trust-busting Real purpose for trust-busting was

to prove that government, not private business, ruled the country.

President William Taft was the real ‘trust-buster” as he brought 90 lawsuits against trusts in his four years in office to Roosevelt’s 44 in 7 and ½ years.

President Taft signed the Payne-Aldrich Bill and infuriated progressives.

President Woodrow Wilson

Problem: Monopolies and trustsUnfair business practices

Limited competitionHigh prices to consumers


Interstate Commerce Commission 1887 first attempt to control railroads was strengthened with the

Elkins Act 1903 outlawed rebates and imposed fines on both railroads and shippers

Hepburn Act 1906 severely restricted free passes

FarmersPopulistsPresident

Theodore Roosevelt

Problem: Railroad trusts


Desert Land Act 1877 (irrigation plan)

Forest Reserve Act 1891 (creation of national parks and other reserves)

Carey Act 1894 (irrigation and settlement)

Newlands Act of 1902 Roosevelt Dam on

Arizona’s Salt River 1911 Boys Scouts of American

founded. Bureau of Mines

established to control mineral resources

Gifford Pinchot Sierra Club founded in

1892 Boys Scouts of America President Roosevelt –

conservation and reclamation of land and resources may have been Roosevelt’s most enduring tangible achievement.

Jack London Call of the Wild 1903

John Muir President Taft

Problem: Waste of natural resources

Pollution

Roosevelt’s Square Deal

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Woodrow Wilson

Opposite of TR – contrasting personalitiesWell born (not as wealthy) father is a preacher1885 wants to go into politics but can not swing it

financially, so he goes into academia (write, think, and discuss politics) publishes Constitutional Government in 1885 – advocates British principles – Anglo- Saxon race is the seed bed of Democracy. Wants congress to be more like parliament

Like TR believes in an international role for the US

The Election of 1912 - Results

Wilson’s New Freedom

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Fiscal (monetary) reforms like

Aldrich-Vreeland Act 1908

Federal Reserve Board created 1913 to oversee and manage the nation’s money supply

President Roosevelt.


Problem: Panic of 1907 – economic recession


16th Amendment created a graduated (more you made, higher percentage you paid) income tax

Passed under Taft, took effect under Wilson

Problem: Tax reform

Tax Rates today…53


Federal Farm Loan Act 1916

Warehouse Act of 1916


long demanded by populists and farmers

National Grange (Farmers’ organization)

Problem: Farmers demanding low interest rates

Progressive Reforms55

progressivism the progressive era was a time period that addressed many of the social, political,...

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