STUDENT NOTES FOR CH. 21
HIS122
The American Promise
A History of the United States
CHAPTER 21
Progressivism from the Grass Roots to
the White House,
1890-1916
• Hull House– Who started them?
– What was their purpose?
-The Social Purity Movement—to end “social evil”
Ministers also played an active role in the social purity
movement; attacked vices such as prostitution, political
corruption, and alcoholism; linked prostitution to poverty
and called for higher wages for women workers.
The Women’s Trade Union League—Day-to-day contact with
neighbors made settlement house workers particularly sympathetic
to labor unions; brought together women workers and middle-class
“allies”. WTUL.
”The Triangle Fire”
In 1901- McKinley
-New President… differences?
“Trust Busting”—Roosevelt devoted his energy to strengthening the power of
the federal government and reining in big business; believed that the most
vital question facing the country was “whether or not the government has the
power to control the trusts; went after some of the nation’s largest
corporations, including Northern Securities Company, which held a monopoly
on railroad traffic in the Northwest
In 1904, the Supreme Court called for the dissolution of Northern Securities;
put Wall Street on notice that the president was willing to use the power of
the government to control business; Roosevelt went on to use the Sherman
Act against forty-three trusts; punished the “bad trusts,” which broke the law,
and left the “good” ones alone; exerted the moral and political authority of
the executive.
T. Roosevelt
The Election of 1904 and the
Square Deal
• Roosevelt’s actions marked a dramatic
departure from the presidential
passivity that had marked his
predecessors; announced all he had
tried to do was give labor and capital a
square deal; phrase “Square Deal”
became Roosevelt’s slogan in the 1904
election campaign; he won with the
largest popular majority—57.9
percent—of any candidate that had
been polled up to that time.
• Roosevelt the Reformer
• 1. Mandate for Reform—Roosevelt’s stunning
victory gave him a mandate for reform; but
he needed political savvy to guide his reform
measures through a conservative Congress.
• 2. The Hepburn Act—Roosevelt started with
railroad reform; passage of the Hepburn Act
in 1906; the act gave the ICC power to set
rates subject to court review and marked the
high point of Roosevelt’s presidency.
• 3. Economic Panic in 1907—In the fall of
1907, economic panic struck and business
interests blamed the president
Foreign Policy and Executive
Power
• His activism became known as “the big
stick”. Roosevelt’s activism extended to
his foreign policy, where he worked to
maintain the nation’s newly won place
among world leaders; he was convinced
of Congress’s ineptitude in foreign
affairs; relied on executive power to
affect a vigorous foreign policy;
sometimes stretched the powers of the
presidency beyond the legal limits.
• 1. Roosevelt retired from office in 1909 and went on a
safari to Africa. The Republican, William Howard Taft
became President. Taft was a Lawyer with No Feel for
Politics—Taft had no experience in elected office, and
no nerve for controversy; Once in office, he proved a
perfect tool in the hands of Republicans who yearned
for a return to the days of a less active executive.
• 2. Taft neither fought for changes nor vetoed any
measure.
• 3. Alienating Roosevelt—Taft undid some of Roosevelt’s
work to preserve hydroelectric power sites when he
learned they had been improperly designed as ranger
stations; alienated Roosevelt; by late summer 1910,
after returning from abroad, Roosevelt had taken sides
with the progressives; he was beginning to sound more
and more like a candidate.
•
1. The Republican Primaries—In February 1912, Roosevelt challenged
Taft for the Republican nomination; but for all his popularity, he had
lost control of the party machine, and Taft refused to step aside; Taft
won nomination on the first ballot. Roosevelt’s supporters called
robbery and seven weeks later put together a Progressive Party to
nominate Roosevelt.
•
2. After Roosevelt accepted the nomination, what happened?
•
3. Real contest for the presidency was between Roosevelt and Wilson
and the two political philosophies that summed up their campaign
slogans; Roosevelt’s New Nationalism expressed his belief in federal
planning and regulation; Wilson’s New Freedom, based on the
Democratic principles of limited government and states’ rights,
promised to use antitrust legislation to get rid of big corporations and
give small businesses and farmers better opportunities. What ended
up happening and why?
•
Wilson’s Reforms: Tariff, Banking, and the Trusts
•
1. The Federal Reserve Act—Panic of 1907 testified to the
failure of the banking system; Wilson was concerned about
J. P. Morgan and Company’s control of 341 directorships in
112 corporations and control of more than $22 billion in
assets; the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the most
significant domestic legislation of Wilson’s presidency;
established a national banking system privately controlled
but regulated and supervised by a Federal Reserve Board
appointed by the president; gave the nation its first
efficient banking and currency system, provided for a
greater degree of government control over banking, and
made currency more elastic and credit adequate for the
needs of business and agriculture.
•
2. A Mission Fulfilled?—By the fall of 1914, Wilson had
exhausted the stock of ideas that made up the New
Freedom; alarmed progressives by declaring the movement
had fulfilled its mission
In 1916: Wilson began strongly supporting reform in the months
leading up to the election of 1916; appointed progressive Louis Brandeis
to the Supreme Court, threw his support behind legislation to obtain
rural credits for farmers, supported workers’ compensation and the
Keating-Owen child-labor law (outlawed the regular employment of
children younger than 16), and encouraged Congress to establish an
eight-hour day on the railroads; reform, along with his pledge to keep
the country out of World War I, helped him win reelection in 1916.
•
Woman Suffrage—The day before Wilson’s inauguration in March 1913,
more than five thousand demonstrators marched in Washington to
demand the vote for women; march served as a reminder that the recent
political gains were not spread equally in the population;
•
Alice Paul launched an effort to lobby for a federal amendment to give
women the vote; in 1916, she founded the militant National Woman’s
Party (NWP), which became the radical voice of the suffrage movement;
advocated direct action such as mass marches and civil disobedience.
•
Racism in the South and West—Women were not the only group left out in
progressive reform; in the West and South, progressivism was tainted
with racism; Hiram Johnson, governor of California, caved in to near
unanimous pressure and signed the Alien Land Law, which barred
Japanese immigrants from purchasing land in the state.
•
The Atlanta Compromise—In the South, progressives preached that black
voters shouldn’t vote and that this was “reform”. There was a rise of the
Jim Crow Laws to segregate public facilities; in the face of this growing
repression, Booker T. Washington, the preeminent black leader of the day,
urged caution and restraint; introduced the “Atlanta Compromise,” an
accommodationist policy that appealed to whites-It was a speech that
urged African Americans to put aside issues of political and social equality
The Limits of Progressive Reform
Constitutional Racism—The Supreme Court upheld the legality of racial
segregation; when Woodrow Wilson came to power, he brought with him
southern attitudes toward race and racial segregation; instituted segregation in
the federal workforce and approved segregated facilities in the nation’s capital,
insisting that segregation was “in the interest of the Negro.”
The Rise of W. E. B. Du Bois and the NAACP—Washington’s strategy of
gradualism and accommodation was called into question after a major race riot
in Atlanta left 250 African Americans dead; W.E.B. Du Bois was Washington’s
foremost critic; urged blacks to fight for civil rights and racial justice; in 1905,
founded the Niagara Movement calling for universal male suffrage, civil rights,
and a black intellectual elite; in 1909, the Niagara movement helped found the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a
coalition of blacks and whites that sought legal and political rights for African
Americans through the courts.