Document-based Question
The Progressive Era
Focus Question:
Assess the accomplishments of the Progressive Movement in the period between 1890-1920. In
your answer be sure to consider the economic, social, and political goals of the reformers. To
what extent were the Progressives really progressive?
Use the documents and your knowledge of the period 1890-1920 in constructing your response.
1. Document
Progressive Party Platform, 1912
In particular, the party declares for direct primaries for the nomination of State and National offices, for
nation wide preferential primaries for candidates for the presidency; for the direct election of United
States Senators by the people; and we urge on the states...the initiative, referendum, and recall.... The
Progressive party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies equal
political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women
alike. We pledge our party to legislation that will compel strict limitation of all campaign
contributions and expenditures, and detailed publicity of both before as well as after primaries and
election.... The Progressive party demands such restriction of the power of the courts all leave to the
people the ultimate authority to determine fundamental questions of social welfare and public policy....
We believe that the issuance of injunctions in cases arising out of labor disputes should be prohibited
when such injunctions would not apply when no labor disputes existed.... We pledge ourselves to
work...for: Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational
diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry;
The fixing of minimum safety and health standards.... The prohibition of child labor; Minimum
wage standards for working women, to provide a "living wage" in all industrial occupations; The
general prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of eight hour day for women and
young persons; One day's rest in seven for all wage workers; The eight hour day in continuous
twenty-four-hour industries; The abolition of the convict contract-labor system.... Standards of
compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade disease which will transfer the burden
of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community....
Establishing...schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural
education and demonstration in rural schools; The establishment of industrial research laboratories to
put the methods and discoveries of science at the service of American producers; We favor the
organization of the workers, men and women, as means protecting their interests and of promoting their
progress.... We believe that the remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers and other natural
resources still in State or National control (exception agricultural lands) are more likely to be wisely
conserved and utilized for the general welfare if held in the public hands.
2. Document
Progressive Era Amendments
16th (1913)
17th (1913)
18th (1919)
19th (1920)
Granted Congress the power to tax income.
Provided for the direct election of U.S. Senators.
Prohibited making, selling, or transporting alcohol.
Provided women suffrage (voting).
3. Document
Progressive Era Federal Legislation
Newlands Reclamation Act
(1902)
Elkins Act
(1903)
Pure Food and Drug Act
(1906/1911)
Meat Inspection Act
(1906)
Hepburn Act
(1906)
Federal Reserve Act
(1913)
Clayton Antitrust Act
(1914)
Federal Trade Act
(1914)
Encouraged conservation by allowing the building
of dams and irrigations systems using money from
the sale of public lands.
Outlawed the use of rebates by railroad officials or
shippers.
Required that companies accurately label the
ingredients contained in processed food items.
In direct response to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle,
this law required that meat-processing plants be
inspected to ensure the use of good meat and healthminded procedures.
Strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission,
allowing it to set maximum railroad rates.
Created 12 district Federal Reserve Banks, each able
to issue new currency and loan member banks funds
at the prime interest rate, as established by the
Federal Reserve Board.
Strengthened the Sherman Antitrust Act by
outlawing the creation of a monopoly through any
means, and stated that unions were not subject to
antitrust legislation.
Established the Federal Trade Commission, charged
with investigating unfair business practices
including monopolistic activity and inaccurate
product labeling.
4. Document
Gentleman's Agreement-1908-Between US and Japan
In order that the best results might follow an enforcement of the regulations, an understanding was
reached with Japan that the existing policy of discouraging emigration of its subjects of the laboring
classes to continental United States should be continued, and should, by co-operation with the
governments, be made as effective as possible. This understanding contemplates that the Japanese
government shall issue passports to continental United States only to such of its subjects as are nonlaborers or are laborers who, in coming to the continent, seek to resume a formerly acquired domicile, to
join a parent, wife, or children residing there, or to assume active control of an already possessed interest
in a farming enterprise in this country, so that the three classes of laborers entitled to receive passports
have come to be designated "former residents " "parents, wives, or children of residents " and "settled
agriculturists."
With respect to Hawaii, the Japanese government of its own volition stated that, experimentally at least,
the issuance of passports to members of the laboring classes proceeding thence would be limited to
"former residents" and "parents, wives, or children of residents." The said government has also been
exercising a careful supervision over the subject of emigration of its laboring class to foreign contiguous
territory.
5. Document
6. Document
Ida B. Wells on Lynching
OUR country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of
uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating
deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an "unwritten law" that justifies them in
putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity
to make defense, and without right of appeal.
The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro
vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have
ceased. But men, women, and children were the victims of murder by individuals and murder by mobs,
just as they had been when killed at the demands of the "unwritten law" to prevent "negro domination."
Negroes were killed for disputing over terms of contracts with their employers. If a few barns were
burned some colored man was killed to stop it. If a colored man resented the imposition of a white man
and the two came to blows, the colored man had to die, either at the hands of the white man then and
there or later at the hands of a mob that speedily gathered.
In fact, for all kinds of offenses--and, for no offenses--from murders to misdemeanors, men and women
are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the
wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same. A new name was given to the killings and a
new excuse was invented for so doing. Again the aid of the "unwritten law" is invoked, and again it
comes to the rescue. During the last ten years a new statute has been added to the "unwritten law." This
statute proclaims that for certain crimes or alleged crimes no negro shall be allowed a trial; that no white
woman shall be compelled to charge an assault under oath or to submit any such charge to the
investigation of a court of law. The result is that many men have been put to death whose innocence was
afterward established; and to-day, under this reign of the "unwritten law," no colored man, no matter
what his reputation, is safe from lynching if a white woman, no matter what her standing or motive,
cares to charge him with insult or assault.
7. Document
From Theodore Roosevelt's Seventh Annual Message to Congress
Dec. 3, 1907
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which
underlies almost every other problem of our national life. . ..As a nation we not only enjoy a wonderful
measure of present prosperity but if this prosperity is used aright it is an earnest of future success such as
no other nation will have. The reward of foresight for this nation is great and easily foretold. But there
must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural
resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in
undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to
them amplified and developed.
8. Document
Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court Decision 1896
Justice [Henry Billings] Brown delivered the opinion of the Court:
This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana,
passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races...
The constitutionality of this act is attacked upon the ground that it conflicts both with the Thirteenth
Amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits
certain restrictive legislation on the part of the States...
The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before
the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon
color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races
upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places
where they are liable to he brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to
the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state
legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with
the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid
exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race
have been longest and most earnestly enforced...
Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical
differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present
situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly
or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot
put them upon the same plane. The judgment of the court below is therefore, Affirmed.
9. Document
April 11, 1913-Woodrow Wilson signs into law a bill that establishes segregation in all federal facilities.