Norton Media Library
Chapter 18
Give Me Liberty!
An American History
Second Edition
Volume 2
by
Eric Foner
I.
Introduction
A. Progressive era
Surge in production, consumption, urban growth
2. Persistence of social problems
1.
a)
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
Progressivism
B.
Broad-based elements
2. Loosely-defined meanings
3. Varied and contradictory character
1.
C. New notions of American freedom
II. Urban age
Early-twentieth-century economic explosion
A.
“Golden age” for agriculture
Growth in number and size of cities
Start contrasts of opulence and poverty
1.
2.
3.
Popular attention to dynamism and ills of the city
B.
Painters and photographers
Muckrakers
1.
2.
a)
b)
c)
Lewis Hine’s photography
Lincoln Steffen’s The Shame of the Cities
Ida Tarbell’s History of the Standard Oil Company
Novelists
3.
a)
b)
Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
II. Urban age (cont’d)
C. Immigrants and Immigration
Height of “new immigration” from southern and eastern
Europe
2. Immigration from agrarian to industrial centers as a global
process
1.
a)
b)
c)
Volume and flows (see chart 18.1, page 645)
Causes
Circumstances of immigrants
Ellis Island
4. Influx of Asian and Mexican immigrants in West
5. Immigrant presence in industrial cities
3.
II. Urban age (cont’d)
C. Immigrants and Immigration
6. Aspirations of new immigrants
a)
b)
c)
Social and legal equality, freedom on conscience, economic
opportunity, escape from poverty
Means to acquire land back home
Material property as central to “freedom”
7. Circumstances of new immigrants
Close-knit “ethnic” neighborhoods
1) Social institutions
2) Preservation of native languages
3) Churches
b) Low pay, harsh working conditions
a)
II. Urban age (cont’d)
D. The new mass-consumption society
Outlets for consumer goods
1.
a)
b)
c)
Department stores
Neighborhood chain stores
Retail mail order houses
Expanding range and availability of consumer goods
3. Leisure activities
2.
a)
b)
c)
d)
Amusement parks
Dance halls
Theaters; vaudeville
Movies; “nickelodeons”
II. Urban age (cont’d)
E. Women in urban public life
Employment
1.
a)
b)
Racial and ethnic stratification
Working woman as symbol of female emancipation; Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s Women and Economics
Leisure, entertainment
2.
F. “Fordism”
Background on Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company
Production innovations
1.
2.
a)
b)
c)
Standardized output
Lower prices
Assembly line
II. Urban age (cont’d)
F. “Fordism”
3. Strategies to attract and discipline labor
a) Five-dollar day
b) Anti-union espionage
4. Linking of mass production and mass consumption = “Fordism”
G. Impact of mass-consumption ideal
Recasting “American way of life,” “freedom”
2. Challenges to material inequalities
1.
Labor unionism
b) Critique of corporate monopoly
c) Doctrine of “a living wage”
1) Father John A. Ryan
2) Moral standards of economics
a)
III. Changing ideas of freedom
A. Varieties of Progressivism
Industrial labor and the meanings of freedom
B.
Frederick W. Taylor’s “scientific management”
1.
Principles of
b) Mixed response to
1) Favorable: as way to enhance efficiency
2) Unfavorable: as threat to worker independence
a)
2.
New talk of “industrial freedom,” “industrial democracy”
III. Changing ideas of freedom (cont’d)
C. Socialist party
High watermark of American socialism
1.
a)
b)
c)
d)
Membership
Elected officials
Newspapers: Appeal to Reason
Eugene V. Debs (see quotes, pages 651-652)
Program
2.
a)
b)
c)
Public ownership of railroads and factories
Democratic control of economy
Free college education
III. Changing ideas of freedom
(cont’d)
C. Socialist party
3. Breadth of following
a)
b)
c)
Urban immigrant communities
Western farming and mining regions
Native-born intelligentsia
4. Rising presence of socialism throughout Atlantic World
D.Labor movement
American Federation of Labor (President Samuel Gompers)
1.
Surge of growth
b) Boundaries of membership
1) Skilled industrial and craft laborers
2) White, male, and native-born
a)
III. Changing ideas of freedom
(cont’d)
D.Labor movement
1.
American Federation of Labor
c. Moderate ideology; ties with business Progressives
1)
2)
3)
National Civic Federation
Collective bargaining for “responsible” unions
Alternative strain of rigid employer anti-unionism
2. Industrial Workers of the World (1905)
a) Inclusion of workers from all stations and backgrounds
b) Trade union militancy
c) Advocate of workers’ revolution
d) William “Big Bill” Haywood
e) Support and guidance for mass, multiethnic strikes
III. Changing ideas of freedom
(cont’d)
D.Labor movement
3. High points of broad-based labor struggle
a)
b)
c)
d)
Lawrence “Bread and Roses” textile strike; march of strikers’ children
New Orleans dock workers strike
Paterson silk workers strike; Paterson pageant
Colorado Fuel and Iron miners strike; Ludlow Massacre
4. Suppression of labor radicalism and emergence of “civil
liberties” issue
a)
Emergence of Clarence Darrow
III. Changing views of freedom
(cont’d)
E. Shadings of feminism
Appearance of term “feminism”
2. “Lyrical Left”
1.
a)
b)
New cultural “bohemia”
Radical reassessments of politics, the arts, sexuality
Rise of personal freedom
3.
a)
b)
c)
Freudian psychology
Free sexual expression and choice
Pockets of open gay culture
Birth control movement
4.
a)
b)
Emma Goldman
Margaret Sanger
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
A. Global scope of Progressive impulse
Common strains arising from industrial and urban growth
2. International networks of social reformers
3. Influence of European “social legislation” on American
reformers: pensions, minimum wage unemployment
insurance, workplace safety
1.
Shared premises
B.
Commitment to activist government
2. View of freedom as a positive concept
1.
a)
b)
3.
John Dewey (see quote, page 662)
Randolph Bourne (see quote, page 662-663)
Trans-Atlantic scope of Progressive impulse
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
(cont’d)
C. Progressivism in municipal and state politics
Agendas
1.
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Curbing of political machines
Regulation of public utilities, railroads, and other business interests
Taxation of property and corporate wealth
Improvement and enhancement of public space
Humanizing of working and living conditions
Significant municipal and state Progressives
2.
a)
b)
Mayors Hazen Pingree (Detroit) and Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones
(Toledo)
Governors Hiram Johnson (California) and Robert M. La Follettee
(Wisconsin)
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
(cont’d)
D.Progressive democracy
Expansion and empowerment of electorate
1.
a)
b)
c)
d)
Popular election of U.S. senators (17th Amendment), judges
Primary elections
Initiatives, referendums, recalls
Women’s Suffrage
Contraction and curtailment of electorate
2.
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Disenfranchisement of southern blacks
Spread of appointed city commissions or managers
Narrowing of voting rights for the poor
Preference for government by experts
Walter Lippmann’s Drift and Mastery
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
(cont’d)
E. Women reformers
Challenge to political exclusion
2. Crusades to uplift condition of immigrant poor, women, and
child laborers
1.
a)
b)
c)
Settlement house movement
Government measures to alleviate problems of housing, labor, health
Racist aspect
Leading figures
3.
a)
b)
c)
Jane Addams (Hull House)
Julie Lathrop (Children’s Bureau)
Florence Kelley (National Consumers’ League)
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
(cont’d)
F. Revival of suffrage movement
Scattered progress at state and local levels
2. Gathering focus on constitutional amendment
1.
G.Ambiguities of “maternalist” reform
Drive to improve conditions of working women while
reconfirming their dependent status
1.
a)
b)
2.
Mothers’ pensions
Maximum working hours for women (Muller v. Oregon; Brandeis brief)
Stamping of gender inequalities into foundation for welfare
state and its further implications
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
(cont’d)
H.Native American Progressivism
Profile of Indian reformers
1.
a)
b)
c)
Shared aims
2.
a)
b)
Highlight plight of Native Americans
Promote justice for Native Americans
Differing aims
3.
a)
b)
c)
4.
Intellectuals
Pan-Indian
Society of American Indians
Endorsement of federal Indian polity
Full citizenship rights
Self-determination
Carlos Montezuma
V. Progressive presidents
Progressivism and the rise of the national state
A.
“Jeffersonian ends” by “Hamiltonian means”
1.
Theodore Roosevelt (Square Deal)
B.
Succession to presidency; reelection in 1904
Limits on corporate power
1.
2.
a)
b)
Mediation between labor and capital: 1902 coal strike arbitration
Regulation of business
3.
4.
a)
b)
c)
5.
“Good trusts” : U.S. Steel & Standard Oil
“Bad trusts”: Northern Securities case (J. P. Morgan)
Hepburn Act
Pure Food and Drug Act
Meat Inspection Act
Mixed reaction from business
V. Progressive presidents (cont’d)
B. Theodore Roosevelt
6. Conservation movement
a) Late-nineteenth-century antecedents
1) Early national parks
2) John Muir’s Sierra Club
b) Wildlife preserves and national parks
c) Gifford Pinchot: balance between development and conservation
d) Water as a key point of contention
V. Progressive presidents (cont’d)
C. William Howard Taft (see quote, page 673)
Anointment as successor by Roosevelt; electoral victory over
Bryan
2. Partial continuation of Progressive agenda
1.
Antitrust initiatives
1) Standard Oil case
2) American Tobacco case
3) Upholding of “good trust”/”bad trust” distinction by Supreme Court
b) Support for graduated income tax (Sixteenth Amendment)
a)
Conservative drift
3.
a)
b)
Payne-Aldrich Tariff
Pinchot-Ballinger affair
V. Progressive presidents (cont’d)
D. Election of 1912
1. Woodrow Wilson (Democrat; “New Freedom”)
Antitrust, unionization, small business (“curse of bigness”)
2.
Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive; “New Nationalism”)
a)
Blueprint for welfare state
b)
Taxation of personal/corporate wealth, industrial regulation
c)
Women’s suffrage, child labor laws, “living wage,” medicare, etc.
a)
William Howard Taft (Republican; conservative wing)
4. Eugene V. Debs (Socialist)
3.
Wilson victory
5.
E. Wilson’s first-term program
1. Underwood tariff
Labor
2.
a)
Clayton Act, Keating-Owen Act, Adamson Act
V. Progressive presidents (cont’d)
E. Wilson’s first-term program
3. Farmers: Warehouse Act
4. Supervision of economy
a)
b)
Federal Reserve System
Federal Trade Commission