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Who were the Progressives?


Progressives were journalists, intellectuals, and political reformers whose reform efforts were aimed at returning control of the people, restoring economic opportunities, and correcting injustices in
American life.
Mostly middle class men and women.

 Progressives relied on newspapers and magazines to give publicity to their cause.
 Muckrakers were those journalists and
American writers in the early 20th century, who exposed corruption and scandals in business and politics.
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Alcohol Consumption Prohibition
Helping urban poor/housing reform
Improving working conditionsunsafe, unsanitary conditions
Reforming Governmentcorrupt, political machines and corrupt voting practices.
Women’s Suffrage
African American Civil Rights

Anti-Lynching campaigns
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Problem: Poor housing and living conditions for the urban poor - slums
Reform

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
Settlement house movement
Community centers
Provided social education, child care, language classes, entertainment, etc.
Reformers

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
Jacob Riis 1890 How the
Other Half Lives – This book deeply influenced a future
New York City police commissioner (and President of the U.S.) named Theodore
Roosevelt
Women progressives like Jane
Addams in Chicago Lillian
Wald in New York
Social gospel – a brand of progressivism based on
Christian teachings

1.
Housing Reforms:

Tenement Act of 1901

Forced landlords to install lighting in public hallways

Forced landlords to provide at least one toilet for every two families.

Outhouses were banned from NY slums.

These reforms led to decreased death rates and safer housing situations.
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Problem: Women couldn’t vote
Reform

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
Women suffrage
State laws allowing women suffrage
19 th Amendment 1920 grants women the right to vote
Reformers
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Feminists
Suffragettes
National American
Woman Suffrage
Association
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National Association of
Colored Women
National Women’s Party


Iron Jawed Angels

Bad Romance

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Problem: Corrupt alliance between big business and municipal (city) government
Reform


City council model of city government
City commissioner model
Reformers
 Lincoln Steffens 1902 articles in McClure’s
“The Shame of the
Cities”

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City Government Reforms

Council-manager model and City Commission
Model (were more efficient and less corrupt)
State Government Reforms

Robert La Follettecalled for limits on campaign spending, created commissions to regulate railroads and utilities and to oversee taxation.
Election Reforms- Progressives wanted to reform elections to make them fairer.

ELECTION REFORMS LED TO….
More Power to Voters
Direct Primary
Voters select party candidate
Initiative
Voters put bill on ballot
Referendum
Voters approve/reject a law passed by legislature
Recall
Remove elected official before

Reform
 Secret ballot
(Australian ballot)

Reform

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Routed the railroad and lumber interests
Regulated public utilities
Public utilities commissions
Reformers
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Governor Robert
LaFollette in
Wisconsin 1901
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Other states, such as
California (Hiram
Johnson, 1910)
New York ( Charles
Evans Hughes)

Problem: U.S. senators representing railroads and trusts instead of the people.
Reform
 17 th Amendment – direct election of
U.S. senators by the people – not the state legislatures
1913
Reformers
 David G. Phillips,
1906, Cosmopolitan
“The Treason of the
Senate”

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Reform
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Problem: Subjugation of America’s 9 million blacks
Jim Crow laws (segregation), lynchings,
Plessy v. Ferguson
Anti-lynching laws
Blacks leave South
Legal changes
Economic equality
Reformers
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Ray Stannard Baker,
1908 Following the
Color Line
Ida B. Well-Barnett
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
W.E.B. Du Bois
Booker T.
Washington

Problem: Jim Crow
Laws


After the end of
Reconstruction,
African
Americans in the
South lost their hard-won political rights.
Jim Crow Laws
(segregation) became a fact of life in the South.
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Booker T. Washington
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Southerner
Economic equality first.
Learn a trade – a way to make a living.
Tuskegee Institute
Avoid confrontation
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W.E.B. Du Bois
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
Northerner
Civic equality
Get a college education
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NAACP
Sue for rights in courts

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 Fighting prejudice in society:

The multiracial NAACP was formed by activists to fight for the rights of African Americans.

Members included Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, and
Jane Addams.

National Association of Colored Women (NACW) campaigned against Jim Crow laws, poverty, segregation, and lynching, and encouraged equal rights for blacks .

Members: Ida Wells-Barnett and Harriet Tubman.

Strange Fruit
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With the rise of the KKK, and other racist groups after the Civil War, African American lynching soared after Reconstruction.
African Americans began to protest lynching as another form of slavery.
Members: Ida Wells-Barnett

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Problem: Patent medicines (most spiked with alcohol) and the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals (medicines)
Reform
 Pure Food and Drug
Act of 1906
Reformers


Dr. Harvey Wiley, chief chemist for
Department of
Agriculture ‘Poison
Squad” experiments on himself.
President Theodore
Roosevelt

Reform

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Meat Inspection Act of 1906
(More American soldiers died from eating canned meat in Spanish-American
War than from battle)
Filth, disease, and putrefaction in Chicago’s damp, ill-ventilated slaughterhouses
Poisoned rats, rope ends, splinters, other debris as potted ham
Reformers


Upton Sinclair 1906
The Jungle “aimed for the nation’s heart but hit it in the stomach”
President Roosevelt
 Clip from The
Jungle

Problem: Demon Rum
Alcohol (connected with prostitution, drunken voters, political corruption, violence against women and children, etc.)
Reform
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Dry laws passed by some states to control, restrict, or abolish alcohol
By 1914 (outbreak of
WWI) one-half of the population lived in dry territory
18 th Amendment made the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol illegal in the
United States
(Prohibition)
Reformers
 Women’s Christian
Temperance Union founded by Frances
Willard
 Anti-Saloon League
– Carrie Nation

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Problem: Unsafe, unsanitary working conditions for women and children
Reform
 Muller v. Oregon
1908 – Supreme
Court agreed to special laws calling for protection of women and children in the workplace
Reformers

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
Florence Kelley,
Illinois’s first chief factory inspector led the
National Consumer’s
League which pushed for laws safeguarding women and children in workplace
John Spargo 1906 The
Bitter Cry of the
Children

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
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
Founded the National
Child Labor
Committee
Prohibit child labor
Regulate sweatshops
Limit hours of work for women

Only successful in some states.
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Work Place Reform:
The Supreme Court and Labor Law

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
1905Lochner vs. New York: SC sided with business owners , and refused to uphold a law limiting bakers to 10-hour workdays.
1908: Muller v. Oregon : SC sided with workers and upheld a law establishing a
10-hour workdays for women workers.
1917: Bunting v. Oregon: SC extended the the protection of a 10-hour workday to men working in mills and factories.
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The Triangle Shirtwaist
Company Fire in 1911
 146 workers died in an unsafe factory when a fire broke out.

The doors were locked and many women jumped to their deaths.
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•ILGWU- International Ladies’
Garment Workers Union
•Won shorter work weeks, higher wages
•IWW- Industrial Workers of the
World “Wobblies ”
•Used strikes, boycotts, and industrial sabotage
•Won higher wages, but only for a short period of time.
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roblem: Working conditions – low wages, long hours, dangerous conditions
Reform

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1917 Supreme Court upheld a ten hour work day law for factory workers
1917 30 states had workers compensation laws providing insurance for workers hurt in the workplace.
Workingmen’s Compensation
Act 1916, granting assistance to federal employees during disability.
Adamson Act of 1916 established an eight-hour work day for all employees with extra pay for overtime.
Reformers
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Labor unions
Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson

 Previous presidents were weak…
1. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson come to the floor with a plan.
2. They have ideas and they are articulate.

Problem: Coal mines strike,
Dangerous working conditions, low pay and shorter work day
Reform


Threatened to take over the mines if owners would not negotiate an end to the strike – first time government sided with labor instead of business.
Created Department of
Commerce and Labor
(1903 – split into 2 separate agencies in
1913)
Reformers
 President Theodore
Roosevelt

Problem: Monopolies and trusts
Unfair business practices
Limited competition
High prices to consumers
Reform
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Sherman Anti-Trust Act
1890
Clayton Anti-Trust Act
Bureau of Corporations used for trust-busting
Northern Securities decision by Supreme Court upholds
Roosevelt’s antitrust suit.
1905 Supreme Court declares beef trust illegal and thus ended the sugar, fertilizer, harvesters, and other key product trusts as well.
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Reformers
President Theodore Roosevelt
There were good trusts and bad trusts
Bigness was not necessarily badness
Understood the political benefits of trust-busting
Real purpose for trust-busting was to prove that government, not private business, ruled the country.
President William Taft was the real
‘trust-buster” as he brought 90 lawsuits against trusts in his four years in office to Roosevelt’s 44 in 7 and ½ years.
President Taft signed the Payne-
Aldrich Bill and infuriated progressives.
President Woodrow Wilson

Problem: Railroad trusts
Reform



Interstate Commerce
Commission 1887 first attempt to control railroads was strengthened with the
Elkins
Act 1903 outlawed rebates and imposed fines on both railroads and shippers
Hepburn Act 1906 severely restricted free passes
Reformers

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Farmers
Populists
President Theodore
Roosevelt

Problem: Waste of natural resources
Pollution
Reform

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Desert Land Act 1877
(irrigation plan)
Forest Reserve Act 1891
(creation of national parks and other reserves)
Carey Act 1894 (irrigation and settlement)
Newlands Act of 1902
Roosevelt Dam on Arizona’s
Salt River 1911
Boys Scouts of American founded.
Bureau of Mines established to control mineral resources
Reformers
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Gifford Pinchot
Sierra Club founded in 1892
Boys Scouts of America
President Roosevelt – conservation and reclamation of land and resources may have been
Roosevelt’s most enduring tangible achievement.
Jack London Call of the
Wild 1903
John Muir
President Taft

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Woodrow Wilson

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
Opposite of TR – contrasting personalities
Well born (not as wealthy) father is a preacher
1885 wants to go into politics but can not swing it financially, so he goes into academia (write, think, and discuss politics) publishes Constitutional
Government in 1885 – advocates British principles –
Anglo- Saxon race is the seed bed of Democracy.
Wants congress to be more like parliament
 Like TR believes in an international role for the US

The Election of 1912 - Results

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Problem: Panic of 1907 – economic recession
Reform



Fiscal (monetary) reforms like
Aldrich-Vreeland
Act 1908
Federal Reserve
Board created 1913 to oversee and manage the nation’s money supply
Reformers
 President
Roosevelt.
 President Woodrow
Wilson

Reform
 16 th Amendment created a graduated
(more you made, higher percentage you paid) income tax
Reformers
 Passed under Taft, took effect under
Wilson

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Problem: Farmers demanding low interest rates
Reform


Federal Farm Loan
Act 1916
Warehouse Act of
1916
Reformers
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
President Woodrow
Wilson long demanded by populists and farmers
National Grange
(Farmers’ organization)

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