PROGRESSIVISM
Chapter 21
I. Progressivism and Protestant Spirit
II. Muckrakers, Magazines, and Realism
III. Settlement Houses and Women’s Activism
IV. Socialism and Progressivism
V. Municipal Reform
VI. State Reform
VII.Civil Rights
VIII.National Reform
IX. William McKinley
X. Theodore Roosevelt
XI. William Howard Taft
XII.Woodrow Wilson
I. Progressivism and Protestant Spirit
Expectations on Middle Class
Protestants
Missionaries, Ministers
Social conditions after industrial revolution
Christians = duty to reform
Major goals: racial and social justice, women’s rights
Minor goals: Prohibition / Temperance, City / State / Natl Reform
II. Muckrakers, Magazines, and Realism
Muckraker – coined by Theodore Roosevelt
Jacob Riis – reporter/ journalist / author; How the Other Half Lives
Ida Tarbell – John Rockefeller
Lincoln Steffens – local governments
Ida Wells Barnett – journalist, publicized lynchings
Upton Sinclair – author, The Jungle
Robert LaFollette – Governor, Wisconsin, set-up panels and
commissions
Samuel Hopkins Adams – journalist, exposed drug industry
Magazines
After Civil War – numbers of magazines and newspapers increased, as did
numbers of readers.
1870-1910: 570+ to over 2600
McClure’s, Atlantic Monthly, Ladies Home Journal
From readership less than 3 million to over 24 million.
Magazines appealed to the public by publishing sensational stories
exposing the ills of American society.
Realism satisfied unease
Realism was characterized by skepticism and detachment
portraying American life as it “truly was.”
-Private power overwhelming public authority
In the 90s and today this would be called / what
would this issue today be considered?
III. Settlement Houses and Women’s Activism
Why women?
What women?
-Intended for and to help – mainly immigrant / urban / poor
-Provided social services for neighborhoods and involved people in political process
HULL HOUSE – 1st American settlement house
Established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, Chicago 1889.
CULTURAL CONSERVATISM
-Aided poor, yet questioned motivation
-Opposed machine politics, yet saw benefits from
-Respected cultural diversity yet supported Americanization
-Disapproved of entertainment
-Disapproved of lifestyles
-Many female reformers, while seeking reform, were culturally conservative
about sexuality and alcohol consumption
IV. Socialism and Progressivism
First – definition of terms
Capitalism:
Who owns a grocery store
Who owns the electric company
Socialism
Who owns a grocery store
Who owns the electric company
Communism
Who owns a grocery store
Who owns the electric company
Socialist party founded in US – 1901
By 1912 – 115,000 members
Influence upon Progressives and Progressive Party and to lesser degree upon
Democrats.
The alternative to capitalism.
Eugene Debs – candidate 1912 for president. Attracted nearly 1 million votes.
1200 elected officials, none ever as president during Progressive Era
1905 – Socialist magazine published Sinclair’s The Jungle
IWW – Industrial Workers of the World
Socialist heyday was 1905 – 1912
V. Municipal Reform
Depression 1893 – 1897
- led social reformers to lose faith in unregulated capitalism
Cooperative Commonwealth
- efficient, recognized labor unions, min wage (city), 8 hr work day,
paid vacation, city ownership of utilities and transportation, abolition of
child labor.
- Structural Changes
- trained experts, distrust of universal manhood suffrage
- which means exclude immigrants and working-classes
- includes well born, educated – gave power to middle/upper
classes
- includes literary tests
- Consequences?
VI. State Reform
Reform began in cities and spread to state
Reason for reforms:
Political
-Direct primary
-Eliminate legislatures from selecting Senators (17th Amendment 1912)
-Recall of elected officials
-Contributions to campaigns
Economic and Social
-Taxes on corporations
-8 hr work day
-Workers comp
-Child labor laws
VII. Civil Rights
-Desire for greater equality – not quite equal but more
-Double Edged Sword – yes to much but no to even more
-Legal statutes hindered social progress; legal obstacles to obtaining and
securing constitutionally guaranteed rights
-WEB DuBois: NAACP
-Booker T Washington – 10%
VIII. National Reform
Capitalism
Corruption
Social ills
and TR
IX. William McKinley, 25th president
Born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843
briefly attended Allegheny College
Taught in a country school when the Civil War broke out.
Enlisted as a private in the Union Army
He studied law, opened an office in Canton, Ohio
Married daughter of local banker.
At age 34, McKinley won a seat in Congress.
- was generally on the side of the public and against private interests.
14 years in House, became the leading Republican tariff expert, giving his name to the measure
enacted in 1890. The next year he was elected Governor of Ohio, serving two terms.
1896 – Republican candidate for president (relied upon White House staff of 10)
-Enacted highest tariff in history
-Foreign policy not domestic – Spanish American War, China
1900 – Republican candidate for president, re-elected
-Assassinated September 1901, NY – Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo
X. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president 1901 - 1909
Born in New York City in 1858.
1865 – watched Lincoln’s funeral from an upstairs window
Throughout his life he struggled with poor health and as a result, became an
advocate of the strenuous life.
1876 – 1880: Harvard
1880-1882: Enters Columbia Law School in October 1880; discontinued study
of law in 1882
November 8, 1881: Elected to New York State Assembly from New York City.
Serves three one-year terms, 1882, 1883 and 1884.
1882 - Publishes first book, The Naval War of 1812. Published more four more
books by 1889, and another five by 1900.
1882 – Joins National Guard as a 2nd Lieutenant
In 1884 his first wife, Alice Lee Roosevelt, and his mother died on the same
day. Roosevelt spent much of the next two years on his ranch in the Badlands of
Dakota Territory.
He remarried in 1886 - Edith Carow.
1889 – 1895 – US Civil Service Commissioner in Washington
1895 – Police Commissioner of New York
1897 – Appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by William McKinley
May 1898 – TR resigns to become Lt Colonel in 1st US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment
(Rough Riders)
May – September 1898 – Las Guasimas, Battle San Juan Hill (Heights)
1898 –Governor of NY
Dealt with taxation, the Erie Canal, commerce, labor, the National Guard,
roads, civil service, state forests and the economy.
1900 – elected Vice president. McKinley/Roosevelt ticket: 7,219,530 votes to 6,358,071
for Democrats William Jennings Bryan and Adlai E. Stevenson.
September 14, 1901 – Roosevelt, youngest president.
TR believed government should be the great arbiter of the conflicting economic forces in
the Nation, especially between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice to each and
dispensing favors to none.
Roosevelt was a "trust buster" in 1902 by forcing the dissolution of a great railroad
combination in the Northwest (Northern Securities Company). Other antitrust suits under
the Sherman Act followed.
Roosevelt steered the United States more actively into world politics. He liked to quote a
favorite proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick. . . .
Aware of the strategic need for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific, Roosevelt
ensured the construction of the Panama Canal (finished in 1914). His corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine prevented the establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean and
arrogated the sole right of intervention in Latin America to the United States.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize (1906) for mediating the Russo-Japanese War, reached a
Gentleman's Agreement on immigration with Japan, and sent the Great White Fleet on a
goodwill tour of the world.
Some of Theodore Roosevelt's most effective achievements were in conservation. He
added enormously to the national forests in the West, reserved lands for public use, and
fostered great irrigation projects.
New Nationalism
Square Deal – 2nd administration promise
Bully pulpit
Elkins Act – 1903, gave Interstate Commerce Commission power to prevent RR from
offering preferred rates to customers
Hepburn Act – 1906, ICC responsible for setting freight rates
Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act – 1906
After his 2nd term he volunteered to not run again, holding to two terms.
Hand selected William Howard Taft to run in his place.
Unable to stay out of political fray.
Tried for Republican nomination in 1912, rebuffed. Accepted nomination of the
Progressive Party (Bull Moose). Ran against Taft and Wilson. Lost.
1914 – went on expedition on River of Doubt in Brazil. He was bitten by something
and was in poor health, died from embolism in 1919 (perhaps as result).
XI. William Howard Taft, 27th president. 1909 - 1913
Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge
He was graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law.
He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence
and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his "plate the right
side up when offices were falling."
Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He
aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court.
President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator.
Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy, built roads and schools, and
gave the people at least some participation in government.
President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should
be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.
Alienated many Republicans who left the party due to his support for high tariffs and failed
trade programs. His administration also initiated 80 antitrust suits and the initial discourse
over a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was
established. A cautious, conservative leader who loved constitutional law.
President Harding appointed him to the Supreme Court where he served until 1930 (death)
XII. Woodrow Wilson, 28th president 1913 - 1921
Born December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia
Profoundly influenced by his minister father (Presbyterian) and his mother (daughter
of a minister).
He attended Davidson College North Carolina, for a year before entering Princeton
University in 1875.
After graduation from Princeton in 1879 (then the College of New Jersey) and the
University of Virginia Law School (finished 1882), Wilson earned his doctorate at
Johns Hopkins University (1886) and entered upon an academic career.
In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.
He began his career teaching history and political science at Bryn Mawr College in
1885 and moved to Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1888.
1887- he went to Princeton, where he quickly became the most popular and
highest-paid faculty member.
In 1902 he was the unanimous choice to become president of Princeton.
1912 – Democratic nomination for the presidency
The first thing Wilson did was lower tariff rates which freed American consumers from
artificially protected monopolies.
Wilson’s second act was to pass the act creating the Federal Reserve System (perhaps single
most important law passed).
A third victory came with the Clayton Antitrust Act, which strengthened existing laws
against anticompetitive business actions and gave labor unions relief from court
injunctions.
By 1913, Wilson had a growing number of supporters who backed him. His popularity was
high and it seemed he could do no wrong by the public.
Other New Freedom legislation passed during Wilson's first term included an act improving
working conditions for American sailors; the Warehouse Act, which helped farmers obtain
loans; a bill providing greater self-government for the Philippines; and a bill prohibiting
child labor. Wilson sought (under New Freedom) temporary power to dismantle trusts.
Foreign affairs vexed Wilson from his first days in the White House.
Mexico – both revolution and Pancho Villa
By 1917 – Issues with Germany and World War I
Progressives and Reformers:
Jane Addams
Robert LaFollette
Upton Sinclair
Ellen Gates Star
Florence Kelly
Alice Hamilton
Julia Lathrop
Dorthea Dix
Elizabeth Katy Stanton
Jacob Riis
Ida Tarbell
Lincoln Steffens
Ida Wells Barnett
Samuel Hopkins Adams
Woodrow Wilson
Theodore Roosevelt
John Muir
William Taft
Albert Beveridge
Eugene Debs
Hiriam Johnson
John Dewey
After Wilson’s and Roosevelt’s tenures in office, the federal
government possessed greater powers and authority
(industry/business regulations), the federal banking system was
established, the role of the president was redefined and
strengthened (TR), and a new commitment was demonstrated to
conservation efforts.
Saloons – not only a place to go to lose money, leading to rise in
domestic violence, find a friend, the bars also cashed checks,
provided loans (typically if used for alcohol or friends, but also to
help guys out of trouble with wives). Bars/Saloons also provided
traditional ethnic drink and food, an inexpensive and decent place
for lunch. Also places to discuss politics.
Political involvement: 1896 – 1920. Up or down?