Studying the Progressive
Era Through the Election
of 1912
The Election that shaped
the course of the 20th
Century
The Progressive Issues – Immigration &
Urbanization
• Southern & Eastern Europe
– Italy, Russia, & Austria-Hungary
•
•
•
•
•
•
1901 – 1914  13 Million
Ellis Island / Angel Island
Asian & Mexican Immigrants
1910 – 40% of NY’s population foreign-born
Quest for Jobs  “freedom & prosperity”
Urban inequality  5th Avenue vs. tenements
Mulberry Street Bend, 1889
5-Cent Lodgings
Men’s Lodgings
Women’s Lodgings
Immigrant Family Lodgings
Dumbbell Tenement Plan
Tenement House Act of 1879, NYC
Italian Rag-Picker
Another Struggling Immigrant Family
The Other Side of the City – 5th Avenue
The Other Side of the City – Early Luxury
Apartments
The Other Side of the City – The Dakota (1st Luxury Apt. Complex in
Manhattan)
• The Other Side of the City –
William Vanderbilt’s 5th
Avenue Mansion
The Other Side of the City – 5th Avenue Mansions
The Other Side of the City – Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Mansion
The Other Side of the City – Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Mansion
The Other Side of the City – Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Mansion
The Other Side of the City – Charles Schwab’s Mansion
The Other Side of the City – Charles Schwab’s Mansion
The Other Side of the City – Carnegie’s Mansion
The Other Side  New Jersey’s Lambert Castle
Urban Growth: 1870 1900
Vanderbilt Chateau – 5th Ave. &
52nd
Urban Conditions
• Cramped living spaces / overcrowding
– 2 Million in Manhattan; 500k in lower
east side
• Tenements:
– No electricity
– No indoor toilets
• Horse Manure:
– 400,000 Horses
– 24 pounds of manure per horse per day
Urban Political Corruption
• Legislative lobbying
• Political Machines / Tweed Ring
(Tammany Hall):
– Private welfare system
– Patronage
– Kickbacks
• NYC Courthouse construction - $11 Million
vs. $3 Million
– “Robin Hood” vs. Corrupt Thief
Thomas Nast
Healthcare Issues
• Unclean meatpacking processes
• Sales of rotten meat
• Opium, Cocaine, & alcohol in children’s
medications.
• No labeling
• No inspection
Muckrakers
• Journalists who expose the
corruption of society, government,
and business.
• Upton Sinclair - The Jungle
• Lincoln Steffens – The Shame of the
Cities
• Ida Tarbell – History of Standard Oil
• Theodore Dreiser – Sister Carrie
•
Steffens – Shame of the Cities
But there is hope, not alone despair, in the commercialism of our politics. If our
political leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants, they will supply
any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand
for good government. The bosses have us split up into parties. To him parties
are nothing but means to his corrupt ends. He “bolts” his party, but we must
not; the bribe-giver changes his party, from one election to another, from one
county to another, from one city to another, but the honest voter must not.
Why? Because if the honest voter cared no more for his party than the
politician and the grafter, then the honest vote would govern, and that would be
bad—for graft. It is idiotic, this devotion to a machine that is used to take our
sovereignty from us. If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote
not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the
nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation. If we would
vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would
throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out
the other party that is in—then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a
demand for good government and he would supply it. That process would take a
generation or more to complete, for the politicians now really do not know what
good government is. But it has taken as long to develop bad government, and the
politicians know what that is. If it would not “go,” they would offer something
else, and, if the demand were steady, they, being so commercial, would “deliver
the goods.”
Tarbell – History of Standard
Oil Co.
• (about John D. Rockefeller)And he calls his great
organization a benefaction, and points to his churchgoing and charities as proof of his righteousness.
This is supreme wrong-doing cloaked by religion.
There is but one name for it -- hypocrisy.
• Rockefeller and his associates did not build the
Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street
banks. They fought their way to control by rebate
and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and
price cutting, by ruthless ... efficiency of
organization.
Dreiser - Sister Carrie
•
“The pieces of leather came from the girl at the machine to her
right, and were passed on to the girl at her left. Carrie saw at once
that an average speed was necessary or the work would pile up on
her and all those below would be delayed. She had no time to look
about, and bent anxiously to her task. The girls at her left and
right realized her predicament and feelings, and, in a way, tried to
aid her, as much as they dared, by working slower.”
•
“The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather—
Social & Moral Reform
•
•
•
•
•
WCTU
– @ 1st  Prohibition
– Transforms into program of economic & political reform
Louis Brandeis
– Muller v. Oregon  Labor protection for “weaker” women;
Positive & Negative
– Economic entitlement  income, protection, compensation
Jane Addams  Hull House (Chicago)
– Immigrant poor
– Urban problems
Suffrage
– NAWSA (Susan B. Anthony / Carrie Chapman Catt
Vs. Child & Female labor exploitation
– Florence Kelley
State & Local Reform
• Governors  Robert La Follette (Wisconsin)
– Vs. RR & Lumber Lobbyists’ corruption
– “Wisconsin Idea” – Primaries vs. political bosses, taxing
corporate wealth, state reg. of RR & utilities
• Mayors  Hazen Pingree (Detroit)
– Battles big business (lower utility rates)
– 8-hour work days
– Paid vacations
• Governors  Hiram Johnson (San Francisco)
– Child labor laws
– Limits women’s work hours
– Public Utilities Act (RR Regulation)
Progressive Presidents
• Energetic gov’t. needed
• Poverty, economic insecurity, & lack
of industrial freedom
• Goal  social conditions of freedom
• “Jeffersonian” ends with
“Hamiltonian” mean
• Government intervention
Progressive Presidents – Roosevelt
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1901 - McKinley’s assassinated
TR  42; youngest ever @ time
Elected 1904
“Strenuous Life” & “manly adventure”
President as “steward of public welfare”
New Nationalism  Big gov’t. for big business
Square Deal
– Confront consolidation
– Good vs. Bad Corps (Northern Securities Case)
– Prosecutions under Sherman Anti-Trust Act
• President as broker in labor disputes
– 1902 Coal Strike
• Pure Food & Drug Act / Meat Inspection Act
• Conservation  National Parks
Progressive Presidents - Taft
• TR’s handpicked successor
• 1908; Defeats Bryan
• “The scope of a modern gov’t. . . . Has been
widened far beyond the principles laid down
by the old ‘laissez-faire’ school of political
writers.”
• Aggressive anti-trust  Standard Oil
– “Rule of Reason”  Big Business only bad if
competition stifled
• 16th Amendment – Graduated income tax
• Drifts toward Conservative Reps w/ PayneAldrich Tariff  Reformers want greater
reduction.
Conservation
Issue:
The
BallingerPinchot
Controversy
Split in the Republican Party
• Taft’s growing
conservatism
• Ballinger returns TR’s
wildlife lands to public
• Pinchot vs. Ballinger’s
business connections
• Taft fires Pinchot,
alienating Progressives
• TR heads new Prog. Wing
– Bull Moose Party
The Progressive
Party &
Former President
Theodore
Roosevelt
People should rise
above their sectarian
interests to promote the general good.
Progressive Party Platform
Women’s suffrage.
Graduated income tax.
Inheritance tax for the rich.
Lower tariffs.
Limits on campaign spending.
Currency reform.
Minimum wage laws.
Social insurance.
Abolition of child labor.
Workmen’s compensation.
N
e
w
N
a
t
i
o
n
a
l
i
s
m
The
“Bull Moose”
Party:
The Latest
Arrival
at the
Political Zoo
The Republican
Party
&
President
William H. Taft
Republican Party Platform
High import tariffs.
Put limitations on female and child labor.
Workman’s Compensation Laws.
Against:
Initiative (Petition by registered voters to force a vote
on a statute)
Referendum (Vote by the entire electorate on a
proposal)
Recall (Removing elected official through direct vote)
Against “bad” trusts.
Creation of a Federal Trade Commission.
Stay on the gold standard.
Conservation of natural resources because they are finite.
Keep
the
Whistle
Blowing
Taft was
determined to
defeat TR and preserve the conservative
heart of the Republican Party.
Come, Mr.
President. You
Can’t Have
the Stage ALL of
the Time!
The GOP
After
the
Circus
TR  The Republican
Party must stand for
the rights of
humanity, or else it must stand for special
privilege.
The
AntiThird-Term
Principle
The Socialist Party
& Eugene V. Debs
The issue is Socialism versus
Capitalism. I am for
Socialism because I am for
humanity.
“The Working Class Candidates”
Eugene V. Debs
for President
Emil Seigel
for Vice-President
Growth of the Socialist Vote
Year
Socialist
Party
Socialist
Labor Party
Total
1888
2,068
2,068
1890
13,704
13,704
1892
21,512
21,512
1894
30,020
30,020
1896
36,275
36,274
1898
82,204
82,204
1900
96,931
33,405
130,336
1902
223,494
53,763
277,257
1904
408,230
33,546
441,776
1906
331,043
20,265
351,308
1908
424,488
14,021
438,509
1910
607,674
34,115
641,789
1912
901,873
Socialist Party Platform
Government ownership of railroads
and utilities.
Guaranteed income tax.
No tariffs.
8-hour work day.
Better housing.
Government inspection of
factories.
Women’s suffrage.
The Democratic Party &
Governor Woodrow Wilson (NJ)
Could he rescue
the Democratic
Party from
“Bryanism”??
N
e
w
F
r
e
e
d
o
m
Democratic Party Platform
Groundwork for modern democratic
welfare state
Government control of the monopolies
 trusts in general were bad
 eliminate them!!
Tariff reduction.
vs. Big Gov’t.
Direct election of Senators.
Create a Department of Labor.
Strengthen the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Did NOT openly support women’s suffrage
The Reform
Governor
of NJ:
It Takes
Time
to Remove
the Grime
Which
Way
to
Jump?
Up
Against
the
Hurdles
As Big As a Balloon
Tariff Reform
The Unanswerable Argument for Suffrage
Never Again!
“I don't think we ought to take as
radical a step as that without being
certain that when we do it it will
meet the approval of all those or
substantially all of those in whose
interest the franchise is extended
because if it does not meet their
views and they don't avail
themselves of the opportunity to
exercise the influence which that
would give them, then we should be
in a bad way because we might lose
a substantial proportion of the
votes of those that would be for
better things. Therefore I am
willing to wait until there shall be a
substantial, not unanimous but a
substantial, call from that sex
before the suffrage is extended.”
Taft Abandons Support for Women’s Suffrage
TR
&
Women’s
Suffrage:
The Militant Recruit
“The Progressive Party,
believing that no people
can justly claim to be a
true democracy which
denies political rights on
account of sex, pledges
itself to the task of
securing equal suffrage
to men and women alike.”
Woman Suffrage Before 1920
Songs of the Sunny South
Segregation
• 1896 – Plessy v. Ferguson
• Invalidated Civil Rights Act of 1875 that outlawed
racial segregation in public places.
• LA RR upheld in wanting to maintain separate rail
cars for blacks and whites.
• Ct.’s decision in favor of the RR institutionalizes the
doctrine of “separate but equal.”
• Separate but equal laws become “Jim Crow laws,”
ALWAYS leading to INFERIORITY.
• Ex  In 1900 the South DID NOT HAVE a public
high school for blacks.
• Southern social code develops to restrict & suppress
blacks
• Segregation was an oddity that depended on the
community.
Lynching
& the
Race
Issue
Trying to Catch the Colored Vote
Politicians reluctant to support anti-lynching
legislation for fear of alienating the “Solid
South.”
An Actual 1912 Ballot
Election Results
By 1912, 100,000 fewer people had voted for
Wilson than had voted for Bryan in 1908.
The 1912 election marked the apogee of the
Socialist movement in America.
GOP Divided by Bull Moose
Equals Democratic Victory!
The
GOP:
An
Extinct
Animal?
Wilson’s Presidential Policies
• Progressive despite party’s history (laissez faire /
states’ rights)
• Restore competition to rescue democracy.
• Different than TR’s “big gov’t. for big business”
• Collaboration w/ Congress  Office & SOU
• Underwood Tariff – Reduced import duties
• Need Income  Graduated income tax on richest 5%
• New Freedom:
– Anti-Trust
– Protecting unionization
– Encourage small business
Wilson’s Presidential Policies
• Clayton Act (1914) – Unions exempt
from anti-trust laws / bars injunctions
• Keating-Owen Act (1916) – Outlaws
child labor
• Adamson Act – 8-hour workday on RR’s.
• Federal Trade Commission – unfair
business practices.
• Federal Reserve System – Regional
banks w/ central board
– Issue currency & aid failing banks
– Reaction to Panic of 1907  JP Morgan
Progressive Imperialism
Progressivism and War