KT’s (ch. 21) p. 566-577
Belief in Progress:
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Progressivism is an optimistic belief and that it is the idea of “progress”.
Society was capable of change and improvement & the continued growth and advancement was
the nation’s destiny.
Progressives believed that the change and growth could not occur recklessly (like the 19th
century).
Social Darwinism, his “natural laws”, and laisez faire weren’t sufficient enough anymore to
create order & stability.
Direct, purposeful human intervention in social economic affairs was essential to an ordered
society.
“Antimonopoly”:
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Many progressives didn’t agree on the form of intervention but the spirit of “antimonopoly” =
fear of concentrated power and urge to limit and disperse authority and wealth.
The fear of concentrated power appealed to only workers and farmers and some middle-class
Americans.
^ That helped empower the gov’t to regulate or break up trusts at state & national gov’t level.
Faith in Knowledge:
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An impulse of Progressivism was deep faith in knowledge in the possibilities of applying to
society the principles of natural & social sciences.
Some people believed that those principles were a route to organization & efficiency.
Many reformers believed that social order was a result of intelligent social organization &
rational procedures for guiding social and economic life.
Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens:
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Ida Tarbell uncovered the notable corruption behind Standard Oil trust, which was published in
magazines and a 2 volume book in 1904.
Lincoln Steffens was the most influential muckraker who was a reporter for McClure’s magazine.
His portraits of “machine gov’t” and “boss rule”, exposing “boodlers” in Cincinnati, Chicago,
Philadelphia, and N.Y. and his tone of moral outrage helped arouse the sentiment for urban
reform.
Father John Ryan:
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He took the Pope’s warning very carefully and closely from the 1893 publication of Pope Leo XIII
“Rerum Novarum” (New Things).
For many years Father John Ryan worked to expand the scope of Catholic social welfare
organizations.
Jane Addams and Hull House:
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A response to the overcrowded immigrant neighborhoods = Hull House which opened in 1889 in
Chicago because of the efforts of Jane Addams.
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The Hull House became a model for more than 400 similar institutions for the nation.
The Hull house was staffed by members in the educated middle class who helped immigrant
families adapt to the language and customs of America.
It established the belief that middle-class Americans had a responsibility to share their values to
immigrants and teach them middle-class lifestyles.
Rise of Social Services:
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Social science: the use of scientific techniques in the study of society and its institutions.
It produced a generation of bureaucratic reformers concerned with the structure of
organizations and committed to building new political and economic institutions capable of
managing a modern society.
Also helped create a movement toward organization among the expanding new group of
middle-class professionals.
American Medical Association:
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In the 1890s trained doctors began forming their own local associations and societies.
1901 ^ they reorganized the American Medical Association into a national professional society
and by 1920 2/3 of all American doctors were members.
It called for strict, scientific standards for admission to the practice of medicine, with doctors
themselves serving as protectors of the standards.
^ States and local gov’t quickly passed laws requiring the licensing of all physicians and granting
licenses only to those practitioners approved by the profession.
National Association of Manufacturers:
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Businessmen supported the creation of schools of business administration and created their
own national organizations = National Association of Manufacturers in 1895 & U.S. Chamber of
Commerce in 1912.
Female – Dominated Professions:
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Late 1800s 2/3 of all grammar school teachers were women and 90% of all professional women
were teachers.
For educated black women, teaching was often the only professional opportunity they could
hope to find.
Existence of segregated black schools in the South = substantial market for A.A. teachers.
Nursing also became another (women) profession and by 20th century it was adopting
professional standards.
Librarians were another job women overtook as well.
Key Role of Women in Reform Causes:
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Female activism in the progressive era represented both an expansion of women’s separate
sphere and a confirmation of it.
Socioeconomic Origins of the New Woman:
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Women were spending less time on the household chores with new advances of running water,
electricity, and household appliances.
^ = women were looking for activities outside the house.
Middle-class white women in the late 1800s had fewer children than their mothers and
grandmothers.
^ And also lived longer and now women spent fewer years with young children in the home and
lived more years after their children had grown.
There were a lot of women who lived outside traditional families and some educated women
shunned marriage.
Single women were some of the most prominent female reformers of the time.
“Boston Marriages”:
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When women lived women for long-term relationship some of them secretly romantic = Boston
marriages.
GFWC:
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1892, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs to coordinate the activities of local
organizations and there were more than 100,000 members in almost 500 clubs.
The Federation was a large network of associations that was an outlet for women to share their
intellectual energies.
8 yrs. later there 160,000 members and by 1917 over 1 million.
By the early 20th the club became more concerned with contributing to social betterment than
cultural activities (b/c club members were form wealthy families.
A Public Space for Women:
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The club movement allowed women to define a space for themselves in the public world w/o
openly challenging the existing, male-dominated order.
It also gave women access to female community in which they were able to act and express
themselves in ways usually impossible in male-dominated institutions.
Women’s Trade Union League:
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Founded in 1903 by female union members and upper-class reformers and they were
committed to persuading women to join unions.
WTUL members held public meetings on behalf of female workers and rose $ to support strikes
and marched on picket lines.
They also bailed striking women out of jail.
Radical Challenge of Women’s Suffrage:
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Critics thought that suffrage was a very radical demand while the suffrage supporters said it was
their “natural rights”.
There were a lot of antisuffrage organizations with memberships and antisuffrage new papers,
rallies, petitions to legislatures.
NAWSA:
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National American Woman Suffrage Association was under the leadership of Anna Howard Shaw
(Boston social worker) and Carrie Chapman Catt (journalist from Iowa).
Membership grew from 13,000 in 1893 to over 2 million in 1917.
Conservative Arguments for Suffrage:
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If blacks, immigrants, and other “base” groups had access to the franchise then it was not only a
matter of justice but of common sense to allow educated, “well-born” women to vote.
The addition of women to suffrage could support immigration restriction and racial
disfranchisement.
Nineteenth Amendment:
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1920 suffragists won ratification of the 19th amendment which guaranteed politic rights to
women throughout the nation.
Equal Rights Amendment:
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Alice Paul, head of militant National Woman’s Party thought that there should be a
constitutional amendment that would provide a clear, legal protection for their rights and
prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.
Many prominent suffrage women leaders didn’t agree with Alice Paul and thought that would
take away the 19th amendment which they fought so hard to get.