The Progressive Movement Takes
Shape
What is Progressivism?
Political response to the problems of
Industrialization and its social by-products:
• immigration
• urban growth
• concentration of corporate power
• widening of class divisions
Progressivism’s strength was in
the cities
Who were the progressives?
• Middle class
• Protestant
• Successful Urban
dwellers
Umbrella label - Social
Gospel, Suffrage,
Temperance,
Settlement, Good
Government, Civil
Rights
Types of Progressive Reform
Wanted to reform the system to preserve it
• Humanitarian - legislation to protect
worker
• Morality - Purity Crusaders - Nativists
• Economic - Break-up trusts and
monopolies
• Political – provide good and efficient
government
Pressure for Reform
• Pressure to reform came from private
interest groups
• Women’s Christian Temperance Union
• NAACP
• National American Women‘s Suffrage
Association
Emphasis on the scientific
approach to social problems
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Social Research
Expert Opinion
Statistical Data
Human emotion propelled the
movement
Progressive Goals
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End “White slavery”
Prohibition
Immigration restriction
“Americanization” of immigrants
Regulation of utilities
Women’s suffrage
Goals
• End child labor
• Destruction of urban political
machines
• Efficiency
• Political Reform
End to “White Slavery”
Prohibition
Prohibition
• Saloons  vice
• Drinking  family tragedy
• Voting in saloons  graft and
corruption  boss and political
machines
Immigration Restriction
Anti-Trust
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Break up monopolies
Sherman Anti-Trust
Clayton Anti-Trust
Standard Oil Trust
Railroad Trust
T. Roosevelt – “TrustBuster”
• Taft – the true trust
buster
Municipal Reform
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Provide better services to the city populations
Break up machines
Government regulation of utilities
Bath-houses, kindergartens, playgrounds,
improved sanitation, lodging houses for
tramps, lower transit fares, equitable taxes
• Hazen Pingree (Mayor of Detroit), Samuel
“Golden Rule” Jones (Mayor of Toledo)
Settlement movement
• Reform movement
• Live in poor neighborhoods to
witness effects of poverty first
hand
• Jane Addams and Helen Gates
Starr founded Hull House in
Chicago
Jane Addams
– Hull House
- First
American
Woman to win
the Nobel
Peace Prize
Settlement Movement
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Taught classes
Medical clinics
Day care and camps
Legal advice
Investigated community
conditions
• Helped immigrants
• Jane Addams
• Lillian Wald
Hull House services
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Cultural events
Classes
Child care center
Clubs
Summer camps
Playgrounds
Employment and
legal aid
• Healthcare clinics
Florence Kelley
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Quaker
Socialist
Trained at Hull House
Illinois’ first state
factory inspector
• National Consumers’
League
• Fought child labor and
sweat shop conditions
End to Child Labor
Women’s Suffrage
• Alice Paul and Carrie
Chapman Catt
• Sought constitutional
amendment
• 19th Amendment
achieved
Destruction of Political Machines
Muckrakers
Novelists and journalists who exposed wrong doing
• Ida Tarbell - Standard Oil Trust
• Lincoln Steffens - The Shame of the Cities St. Louis
• Upton Sinclair - The Jungle - Chicago’s
meat-packing industry
State reforms - intended to
democratize the process
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Secret ballot
Direct primary - Wisconsin (1903)
Initiative and Referendum
Recall
Seventeenth Amendment - direct election
of Senators by the people - not the state
legislatures
Reforming Society and Cities
• By 1907 - 30 states had abolished child
labor
• 1903 - Muller v. Oregon - women laundry
workers limited to a 10 hour day
• 1911 - New York State Factory
Investigating Committee - 56 worker
protection laws
• 1914 - 25 states passed laws making
employers liable for job related injuries
The Wisconsin Idea
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Laboratory for progressive reform
Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette
direct primary
commission to regulate railroads
increased corporate taxes
passed a law limiting campaign spending
legislative reference library to inform
lawmakers
Theodore Roosevelt –
1st Progressive President
• Trust Buster
• Square Deal
• Settled 1902 Coal
Strike
• Conservationist
• Consumer protection
– Pure Food and Drug
Act
– Meat Inspection Act
TR as President
• Saw the presidency as a “bully pulpit” –
platform from which to bring change
• “square deal” – government should
afford honesty and fairness in gov’t and
business
• Opposed socialists
• Condemned wealthy who opposed change
and abused their power
Anthracite Coal Strike - 1902
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United Mine Workers
Mine owners refused arbitration
TR threatened to seize the mines
Workers received wage increase and
shorter hours – no union recognition
• TR – became a friend to labor and
expanded presidential power
Anthracite Miners – Scranton, PA 1902
Curbing the “Bad” Trusts
• 1902 – applied the Sherman Anti –
Trust Act against Northern
Securities Company (JP Morgan)
• Power of the federal government to
regulate business combinations
• “good trusts” and “bad trusts”
• 40 antitrust suits  Trustbuster
Corralling the Corporations
• Elkins Act – 1903 – fines for railroad
rebates
• Hepburn Act – 1906
– expanded Interstate Commerce Commission
– Free passes on RR restricted
– If shippers complained – ICC could nullify
rates
Conservationist
• TR increased national reserves of forests,
coal lands and waterpower sites
• Secured passage of of Newlands Act
(1902) to finance irrigation project – SW
• Encouraged conservation efforts of the
Forest Service – appt. Gifford Pinchot
• Propelled conservation into national
significance
Conservation and Preservation
• Gifford Pinchot –
– Conservation
– scientific timber management
– Chief Forester - U.S. Forest Service
• John Muir
– Preservation – preserve wildness of western
landscape
– Founder of Sierra Club
Hetch – Hetchy Before
Hetch – Hetchy Today
Goals of Conservationism?
• Use natural resources wisely
• Multiple – use resource management
– Recreation
– Sustained yield logging
– Watershed protection
– Summer stock grazing
Consumer Protection
• Pure Food and Drug Act 1906
• Meat Inspection Act 1906
• Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle
TR hands
his policies
to Taft as
he leaves
the
presidency.
Wm. Howard Taft
2nd Progressive President
• Failed at tariff reform
• Split the Republican
Party over
conservation
• Busted trusts
• Reserved acreage
• Angered TR
Woodrow Wilson
Last Progressive President
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Assault on tariff, banks, and trusts
Underwood Tariff reduced rates
16th Amendment – income tax
Federal Reserve System
– 12 regional district banks
– Issue paper currency
• Clayton Anti-Trust Act
– Gompers – “Magna Carta of Labor”
• Federal Trade Commission
• Highly moralistic
Progressive Amendments
• 16th Amendment – Income Tax
• 17th Amendment – Direct election of
Senators
• 18th Amendment – Prohibition
• 19th Amendment – Women’s suffrage
What is the heritage of the
progressive movement?
• Belief that government has responsibility to act in
public’s welfare
• Marked transition from laissez-faire to
government regulation of the economy
• Demonstrated ability of our democratic
institutions to meet problems arising from
urbanization and industrialization
• President should provide strong and effective
national leadership