CS 14: I can…evaluate the success of
progressive reforms in addressing
problems associated with industrial
capitalism, urbanization & political
corruption.
1
Progressive Reform Movement:
What?
•Identify and Solve problems associated with
the Industrial Revolution (1890s-1920s)
Why?
• Social, Political, and Economic disparity.
How?
1. Get Public attention
2. Use the government to fix those problems
Who?
2
•Middle to upper-middle class
•Urban/city dwellers
•High educated
•Lots were women
Who got them started:
Muckrakers
Journalists that investigated and exposed
problems
•
•
•
•
3
Ida Tarbell
Upton Sinclair
Lincoln Steffen’s
Jacob Riis
“Why can’t we apply scientific methods to solving societal problems?”
Progressives – Attacked Problems in 4 Areas.
Workplace & Cities
Environment
Political Reforms
Social Reforms
In Three different Locations:
National Reforms
State Reforms
Local Reforms
4
And it became a reform movement:
Workplace and Cities
Problems
Reforms/Reformers
1. Slum Life
 Tenement House Act = bathroom +
courtyard
2. Workplace
 Hull House = Immigrant education
and shelter. Provided education, job
training, day care, medical care to poor
immigrants
 National Child Labor Committee=
limited work hours for children
 Workers compensation
5
And it became a reform movement:
Consumer Protection
Problems
1. Unsafe Products
2. Monopolies
Reforms/Reformers
 Meat-Inspection Act
 Pure Food & Drug Act
 Sherman Anti-Trust Act – attempted
to limit the growth of monopolies.
 This is the Start of weakening our
Laissez-faire economy
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And it became a reform movement:
Environment
Problems
Reforms/Reformers
1. Landscape
 Sierra Club—worked on
preservation = the
protection of wilderness
 US. Forest Service,
National Wildlife Refuge
System, National Park
System—
 Conservation = limited
use of resources in urban
development
2. Natural Resources
3. Pollution
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And it became a reform movement:
Political Reforms
Political Problems
1. Corrupt Government
a. Political
Machines and
Bosses
b. Local/State
c. Federal
Reforms/Reformers
 Civil Service Reform &
Pendleton Act = limit
patronage and guidelines
for hiring gov’t workers
 Recall= process to
remove elected official
 Initiative = giving
citizens power to propose
laws
 Referendum – giving
citizens power to vote on
proposed laws
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And it became a reform movement:
Social Reforms
Social Problems
Reforms/Reformers
Social Class
 NAACP- fought to end
racial discrimination
through the courts &
protect voting rights
African Americans
Women
Families (see next slide also)
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 NAWSA + 19th
Amendment (women
suffrage)
And it became a reform movement:
Other Family Reforms
Social Problems
Drinking
Reforms/Reformers
WCTU - Women’s
Christian Temperance
Union
•18th Amendment Prohibited making/selling
alcohol (Prohibition)
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Carry Nation
Temperance supporter Carry Nation
speaks out against alcohol holding a Bible
and a hatchet. Nation was famous for
taking a hatchet to bar fixtures and stock
Political Reforms
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Failure of the Progressive Movement
White, middle class reform
Women, blacks, and farmers
Divided Leadership
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
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“Bosses of the Senate” What does it mean?
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The Jungle, Upton Sinclair:
It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the
department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute
flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a
ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to
what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from
Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white
- it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers,
and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that
had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers
had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There
would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky
roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It
was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his
hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of
rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned
bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would
go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat
would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not
trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one - there were things that went
into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.
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