The Progressives
Out to save the world!
The Progressive Era marks the end of the
Gilded Age with its graft and
corruption.
Usually considered to be from roughly
1890 to World War I
• The desire to use the government
as an agency of human welfare—
the concept of the federal welfare
state
Antecedents of Progressivism:
• Movement owed a great deal to
Populism
• Social Critics and Writers
The Muckrakers
were the
investigative
journalists of their
day. Exposing evil
became a
flourishing
business.
Important Muckrakers wrote for
magazines that were newly popular.
Some of these
articles were later
made into books,
such as Lincoln
Steffens’ Shame of
the Cities
Jacob Riis
published a book
of his photographs
called How the
Other Half Lives in
which he depicted
lives of poverty.
photos by Jacob Riis
Four features of Progressivism
Democratic
• Direct primaries
• Initiative, referendum, and recall
• Income Taxes (XVI Amendment 1913)
• Direct election of US Senators (XVII Amendment
1913)
Government efficiency
• City Manager
• Staunton, Virginia (1908)
• National Association of City Managers
Regulation
• Increased tendency to direct some business
activities through federal regulations
Social Justice
• Settlement House movement
• The National Child Labor Committee (1904)
• By 1914, 35 state legislatures had passed laws
prohibiting children under age fourteen from
working
• Liquor Prohibition—”manufacture, sale, or
transportation of intoxicating liquors . . .
prohibited.” (XVIII Amendment 1919)
• Theodore Roosevelt (R)
• Became President after
William McKinley
assassinated (1901)
• Roosevelt wished to
avoid socialism and a
return to laissez faire
• Used the “carrot and the
stick” approach
• Northern Securities Company v. United
States (1904)
• Bureau of Corporations within the
Department of Commerce and Labor
to collect statistics and investigate the
activities of corporations.
• John Mitchell (1870-1913)
• United Mine Workers’ Union
The Progressive Era
•
•
•
•
Everybody got something:
10% pay increase
Nine-hour workday
Operators not required to recognize the
United Mine Workers’ Union
• Roosevelt the“Trust Buster”
• Northern Securities Company
The Progressive Era
• Hepburn Railroad Regulation Act (1906)
• As Roosevelt’s Administration progressed,
he favored:
• Income tax
• Inheritance tax
• Greater regulation of Business
• Industrial Safety Regulations
• The Presidential Election
of 1908
• William Jennings Bryan
(D) (1860-1924)
• William Howard Taft (R)
(1857-1930)
The Progressive Era
• Taft called Congress into session to lower
tariff rates.
• Payne-Aldrich Tariff-raised some tariffs
instead of lowering them. Taft makes the
progressives MAD!
• The Election of 1912
• Theodore Roosevelt
• New Nationalism
• Woodrow Wilson (D) (18561924)
• New Freedom
• Meat Inspection Act (1906)
• Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
• In 1905, by the authority of the Forest Reserve
Act (1891), 172 million acres placed under
Federal protection
Upton Sinclair was
a socialist, who
wanted to
improve the plight
of the working
class in America.
In 1906 Sinclair’s novel The Jungle drew outrage against
the Chicago meatpacking industry for its arrogant
disregard of basic health standards. This led to
government regulation of food and drugs.
What about now,
however???
Surely the food is
better now,
because we have
made a law!!!!!!
Like the chocolate
– how about
the chocolate?
Chocolate may
contain no more
than 60 insect
fragments per 100
grams (about a
pound).
Peanut butter! Surely not
the peanut butter!!!!!
Peanut butter can have 50 insect
fragments per 100 grams (as much as 620
in the 40-ounce jar of super chunk) or one
rodent hair per 100 grams.
Tomato juice is good, or, I
couldhave had a V-8, I like
that.
100 grams (about 16 ounces) of
tomato juice can contain two
Drosophila maggots, five eggs
and one maggot, OR, ten eggs
and no maggot at all.
Well, then, we can just
drink orange juice!
250 milliliters (about a
cup) of orange juice is
allowed to contain ten
fruit fly eggs, but only
two maggots.