The Rise of Progressivism
The Progressive Impulse
the middle class feels those above are abusing the system and those below
are becoming a Socialist threat – must have government become an “agency
of human welfare”
Varieties of Progressivism
 Progressives varied on how to intervene and reform
 popular idea of “antimonopoly” (fear of concentrated power,
limit + disperse wealth, power)
 Social cohesion- welfare of single person dependent
on welfare of society
 Faith in knowledge, principles of natural + social
sciences, modernized government
Muckrakers
 Muckrakers were crusading journalists who exposed
social, economic, political injustices and corruption
 At first targeted trusts (particularly RR barons)
 Ida Tarbell’s study on Standard Oil.
 Later, attention toward government + political machines
 writings of Lincoln Steffens helped arouse sentiment for
urban reforms
The Social Gospel
 Muckrakers moralistic tone prompted outrage at social +
economic injustice, led to rise of Protestant Social Gospel fusion of religion w/ reform
 Salvation Army was Christian social welfare organization;
 ministers left parish to serve in troubled cities
 Father John Ryan wrote of expanding scope of Catholic social welfare
groups
 Religion w/ reform gave Progressivism moral component +
commitment to redeem lives of even least favored citizens
The Settlement House Movement
 Progressives believed environment influenced individual
development.
 To help distressed required improving their conditions
 People believed crowded immigrant neighbors created
distress
 Creation of settlement houses a response.
 College educated women often involved in settlement house
movement
 Movement helped spawn profession of social work
Jane Addams
 was a pioneer American settlement social worker,
 public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's
suffrage and world peace.
 Addams was one of the most prominent reformers of the Progressive
Era.
 She helped turn America to issues of concern to mothers, such as the
needs of children, local public health, and world peace.
 She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their
communities and making them better places to live, they needed to be
able to vote to do so effectively.
 Addams became a role model for middle-class women who
volunteered to uplift their communities.
 In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social
work profession in the United States.
Hull House
 Most famous was Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago
 Sought to help immigrant families adapt to language +
culture
 Belief that middle-class had responsibility to share
values w/ immigrants
The Allure of Expertise
 Progressivism values application of scientific methods,
knowledge, expertise- well-designed bureaucracy
needed.
 Some proposed civilization where science could solve
social + economic problems
 advocated in A Theory of The Leisure Class (1899) by
Thorstein Veblen
Rise of Social Sciences
 Rise of social sciences- scientific methods used to
study society + its institutions.
The Professions
 Late 19th century more people engaged in administrative +
professional tasks (managers, scientists, teachers). This
new middle class valued education, individual
accomplishments.
 As demand for professionals increased so did their desire
for reform to create organized professions
 Doctors saw creation of professional American Medical
Association1901
 strict standards for admissions, goverment passed laws requiring
licensing; also rise of rigorous, scientific training and research
 Similar movements in other professions- lawyers formed bar
associations w/ central examining boards businessmen
formed Chamber of Commerce
Women and the Professions
 Some women encountered obstacles in entering
professions, but many from women’s colleges did enter
“appropriate professions”
 settlement houses and social work, teaching, nursing (all
had vague “domestic”/“helping” image)
Women and Reform
Role of Women and Women in Reform Causes
The “New” Woman”
 “New woman” is a product of social and
economic changes
 wage earning activity had moved out of
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house and into factory or office.
children enrolled in school at earlier ages.
technology (running water, electricity)
made housework less of a burden.
declining family size
“Boston marriages”- women living w/
women
Flappers
Main Idea:
 Women have more time to do other things
A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents, which appeared in the December 6, 1922, issue of
Outlook Magazine, the writer and self-defined flapper Elllen Welles Page makes a
plea to the older generation by describing not only how her outward appearance
defines her flapperdom, but also the challenges that come with committing to a flapper
lifestyle.
“If one judge by appearances, I suppose I am a flapper. I am within
the age limit. I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood. (And, oh,
what a comfort it is!), I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and
bright-colored sweaters, and scarfs, and waists with Peter Pan
collars, and low-heeled “finale hopper” shoes. I adore to dance. I
spend a large amount of time in automobiles. I attend hops, and
proms, and ball-games, and crew races, and other affairs at men’s
colleges. But none the less some of the most thoroughbred
superflappers might blush to claim sistership or even remote
relationship with such as I. I don’t use rouge, or lipstick, or pluck my
eyebrows. I don’t smoke (I’ve tried it, and don’t like it), or drink, or tell
“peppy stories.” I don’t pet.
But then—there are many degrees of flapper. There is the semiflapper; the flapper; the superflapper. Each of these three main
general divisions has its degrees of variation. I might possibly be
placed somewhere in the middle of the first class.”
She concludes..
“I want to beg all you parents, and grandparents, and
friends, and teachers, and preachers—you who constitute
the “older generation”—to overlook our shortcomings, at
least for the present, and to appreciate our virtues. I
wonder if it ever occurred to any of you that it required
brains to become and remain a successful flapper?
Indeed it does! It requires an enormous amount of
cleverness and energy to keep going at the proper pace.
It requires self- knowledge and self-analysis. We must
know our capabilities and limitations. We must be
constantly on the alert. Attainment of flapperhood is a big
and serious undertaking!”
From the 1922 “Eulogy on the Flapper,” one of the most well-known
flappers, Zelda Fitzgerald, paints this picture:
“The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed
her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of
audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted
because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit
because she had a good figure, she covered her face with
powder and paint because she didn’t need it and she refused
to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She was
conscious that the things she did were the things she had
always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking
the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart.
She had mostly masculine friends, but youth does not need
friends—it needs only crowds.”
The Clubwomen
 Late 19th/early 20th century rise of women’s clubs
 Network of associations that lead many reform
movements
GFWC
• General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)
• at first cultural, later focused on social betterment
Public Space for Women
• Clubs represented effort to extend women’s influence
out of traditional role in home and create a public space
for women.
• Worked to lobby legislatures for regulation of children +
women work conditions, food inspection, temperance.
Women’s Trade Union League
• Women’s Trade Union League rallied women to join
unions, aid female labor.
Woman’s Suffrage
Challenge of Women’s Suffrage
• Women’s suffrage movement at first advanced thru
arguments that women deserved same “natural rights”
as men,
• opponents said society needed distinct female “sphere”
• Suffragettes
NAWSA
• Early 20th century suffragists more organized
• Anna Shaw + Carrie Chapman Catt formed National
American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
• Began to make “safer” arguments for suffrage in that
voting would not ruin distinct sphere but allow women
to bring special virtues to society’s problems and
contribute to politics.
• Some claimed could soothe male aggression (WWI)
19th Amendment
 1910 Washington extended suffrage to women, more
hesitant in East b/c of associations w/ ethnic conflict
(Catholics) over temperance movement
 1920 Nineteenth Amendment ratified guaranteeing
female political rights;
 Women's Suffrage Map
Equal Rights Amendment
• others (including Alice Paul’s Woman’s Party) wanted
to fight on for an Equal Rights Amendment to prohibit
all discrimination based on sex
Assault on the Parties
Reforming Government
Election Reform
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Direct Primary
 People choose candidates, not party conventions
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Referendum
 Allows legislatures to allow people to vote whether or not they like a law
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Initiative
 Allows people to propose and pass a law directly
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Recall
 Allows people to vote out an official in the middle of his term
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17th Amendment
 1913 allow direct election of Senators
 used to be appointed by State Legislatures
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Australian (secret) ballot
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Women’s Suffrage
 Support was largest in the western states
Early Attacks
 Late 19th century populism and rise of Independent
Republicans had attempted to break party lock on
power- resulted in secret ballot.
Attacking Party Rule
 Argued party rule could be dealt w/ by
increasing power of people + ability to express
will at polls, also put more power in
nonpartisan, nonelected officials
Municipal Reform
 Many progressives believed party rule most powerful in
cities.
Middle-class Progressives
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Muckrakers mobilized urban middle-class
progressives against city bosses, special interests
who benefited from machine organizations,
immigrant laborers.
New Forms of Governance
 Commission Plan- replaced mayor and council
replaced w/ nonpartisan commission.
 First used in Galveston, TX in 1900, others followed
 City-Manager Plan- elected officials hired outside
expert to run government
 Attempt remain above corruption of politics
 Successful reformer Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson
from conventional political structure controlled by
progressives
 fought special interests
Statehouse Progressivism
 Failure of some attacks on city boss rule led reformers to turn to state
government for change
 progressives looked to circumvent incompetent state legislatures
 Initiative allowed reformers to submit legislation directly to voters in general
election
 Referendum put actions of legislature directly to the people for approval
 Direct primary allowed people instead of bosses to choose candidates
 Recall gave voters right to remove elected official thru special election
 Famous state-level reformer was Gov Robert LaFollette in Wisconsin
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regulated RRs, utilities, workplace, graduated taxes on inherited wealth
Parties and Interest Groups
 Reform did not destroy parties but led to decline in
their influence
 seen by decreasing voter turnout.
 “Interest groups” emerged from professional
organizations or labor to advance own demands
directly to government, not thru party
Sources of Progressive Reform
Labor, The Machine, and Reform
 Samuel Gompers’s American Federation of Labor
mostly uninvolved in reform at time
 but local unions played role in passing some state
reform laws
 Parties tried to preserve interest by adapting
 some bosses allowed their machines to be vehicle of
social reform
 e.g. Charles Murphy of Tammany Hall supported
legislation for working conditions, child labor
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
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Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 1911 in NY killed many
women workers b/c bosses had locked emergency
exits.
Commission delivered report calling for reform in
labor conditions
reform lead in legislature by Tammany Dems.
Imposed regulation on factory owners and
mechanisms for enforcement
Western Progressives
 In Western states reformers targeted federal
government b/c powerful as it never had been in East
 power over lands and resources, subsidies for RRs and
water projects, issues transcended state borders.
 Weaker local + state governments led to weaker
Western polit. parties
 governments passed progressive reforms more quickly
African Americans and Reform
 African Americans faced large legal, social, economic,
political obstacles in challenging their oppressed status
and seeking reform
 many embraced Booker T Washington’s message of selfimprovement over long-term social change
 Tuskegee Institute
W.E.B. Dubois
 1900s new Niagara Movement led by WEB Du Bois
(author of 1903 The Souls of Black Folk) called for
immediate civil rights, professional education
NAACP
 1909 joined w/ supportive white progressives to form
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP)
 used federal lawsuits in pursuit of equal rights.
 In Guinn v. United States (1915) Supreme Court ruled
grandfather clause illegal
 Buchanan v. Worley (1917) Court outlawed some
segregation—NAACP established itself as leading black
organization
Crusades for Social Order and Reform
Temperance Crusade
 Many progressives saw elimination of alcohol as way to
restore societal order
 women saw alcohol as source of problems for families,
employers saw it as roadblock to efficiency, political
reformers saw saloon as Machine institution
WCTU
 1873 temperance supporters formed Women’s
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) led by Frances
Willard,
 together w/ Anti-Saloon League called for abolition of
saloons and prohibition of manufacture and sale of
alcohol
Eighteenth Amendment
 Opposition by immigrant and working-class voters;
 regardless, national effort and start of WWI moral fervor
led to 1920 Eighteenth Amendment
 prohibition
Immigration Restriction
 Reformers saw growing immigrant population as source of social problems
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some wanted to help assimilation, others to limit flow of new immigrants
 Early century pressure to slow immigration, heightened by growth of eugenics
movement
 arguing human inequalities hereditary and immigration (especially of non-Anglo E.
Eurs and Asians) resulting in growth of unfit peoples
 Publicist Madison Grant’s 1916 The Passing of the Great Race tied together
eugenics + Nativism
 Congress’s Dillingham Report said new immigrants less able to assimilate
than earlier groups, restrictions should be based on nationality
 Others supported restrictions as means to solve urban overcrowding,
unemployment, strained social services, and unrest
Challenging the Capitalist Order
The Dream of Socialism
 Radical opposition to capitalist system strongest
between 1900-1914
 Some moderates favored nationalizing only major
industries, use electoral politics; radicals including
union
 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) under William
Haywood wanted abolition of “wage slave” system,
 favored use of general strike, supported unskilled workers
(strong force in West)
Eugene Debs
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Socialist Party under Eugene V. Debs grew during
progressive era. Socialists wanted to change
structure of economy, but disagreement as to
extent and tactics
Socialism’s Demise
 1917 strike by IWW led to federal
government crackdown on union b/c
needed materials in mobilization for war
 IWW never fully recovered
 Socialist Party refusal to support war +
growing antiradicalism led to decline of
socialism as powerful political force in
America
Decentralization and Regulation
 Most progressives also saw major problem in great
corporate centralization + consolidation,
 instead of nationalizing industries wanted federal
govt to create balance between need for big
business and need for competition
 Lawyer Louis Brandeis argued about “curse of
bigness”, saw it as threat to efficiency and
freedom, limited individual control of own destiny
“Good Trusts” and “Bad Trusts”
 Others believed combinations sometimes
helped efficiency, therefore government
should distinguish between “good” and “bad”
trusts to protect against abuses by “bad”
concentrations.
 Supported by “nationalist” Herbert Croly in
1909 The Promise of American Life
 Movement growing for industry cooperation
and self-regulation; others wanted active
government role in regulation and planning
economy