Progressive Era
Review
Main Areas of Problem or Reform
• Labor reforms: Child labor laws, labor union
court cases, workplace safety
• Business reforms: trust-busting, increase in
professional organizations, regulation of
railroads, foods, medicines, and utilities.
• Social reforms: temperance movement,
housing reform, women’s rights, racial issues,
immigration
• Government reforms: direct election of
senators, income tax, Federal Reserve Act
Labor Reforms: Child Labor Laws
• From 1880 through the early 20th century,
child labor increased
• By 1930 it had begun to decline
• Florence Kelley was a leader of this reform
Labor Reforms: Labor Unions
• AFL was mainly formed around skilled trades
and was founded by Samuel Gompers.
• The IWW, or Wobblies, were formed in
opposition to the AFL, included radicals and
socialists, and called for a revolution that
would abolish the wage system and social
class structure. Eugene V. Debs was among the
founders; he eventually was the Socialist
Presidential candidate and received over
900,000 votes.
Labor Reform:
Workplace Safety & Efficiency
• Very few employers accepted responsibility
for accidents in their workplaces
• “Taylorism” was the effort to make all jobs
more efficient and faster; it also rewarded the
fastest workers
Business Reforms: Trust-busting
• Roosevelt created the Department of
Commerce and Labor to oversee businesses
and monitor labor relations
• He brought 44 suits against big trusts during
his Presidency
• He did not favor the term “trust-busting,” and
wanted corporations regulated, not destroyed
Business Reforms: Professional
Organizations
• Number of different organizations increased
during this time
• Membership in these organizations also
increased
• Organizations provided a sense of professional
identity for white-collar professionals
• (White collar = business/office professionals
Blue collar = laborers, working class)
Business Reform: Regulation
• Regulation almost always means “by
government” and “of corporations.”
• Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle led to the
passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act
and the Meat Inspection Act.
Social Reform: Temperance
• Changed from “take the pledge” not to drink
to banning the sale of alcohol (prohibition)
Social Reform: Housing
• Jacob Riis’ book shed light on the dangerous
conditions in tenements and led to legislation
• Tenements that were poorly lit and
unventilated were outlawed
Social Issues:
Women’s Rights and Attitudes
• Women began to think of working outside the
home as rewarding
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman promoted workplace
equality for women and state run day-care
• Margaret Sanger worked for legal and safe
birth control
• Mary Ware Dennett advocated sex education
• Before 1920 only states west of the Mississippi
River had woman suffrage.
Social Reforms: Immigration
• Was the greatest source of urban population
growth from 1900-1920
• During that same period, most immigrants
were from southern and eastern Europe,
followed by Japanese immigrants and then
Chinese
• Many progressives were in favor of restricting
immigration because of their opinion that
immigrants were unintelligent.
Social Reform: Racial Issues
• Jim Crow laws were created to impose
segregation in public places
• Two conflicting philosophies:
--Booker T. Washington, who said to
accommodate segregation while proving
worth to society. Born into slavery, died 1915.
Wrote Up From Slavery.
--W.E.B. Du Bois believed segregation was
intolerable and was an intellectual force
against it. He wrote “The Souls of Black Folk”
and died in 1963.
Social Reforms: Racial Issues
• Many African Americans moved from the
South to the North
• Some states changed laws and constitutions
to avoid letting blacks vote
• African Americans suffered mob attacks in
both the north and the south.
Government Reform
• Direct Election of Senators—kept state
political machines from controlling the Senate
• Federal Income Tax—instituted due to decline
in tariff rates and revenue
• Federal Reserve Act--provided for a
decentralized system that was under both
public and private control
Important people of Progressive Era
• Jacob Riis who showed the plight of immigrant
poor in How the Other Half Lives
• John Dewey, educator and philosopher, who
believed schools should become the method
of reforming society
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court
Justice, who believed that the law should
evolve as society changes
Progressivism
• This reform movement wanted to preserve
capitalism but wanted to reform the problems
that unrestrained capitalism caused.
• It saw government as the only way to restrain
business and protect society’s vulnerable.
• It used journalists, academics and social theory to
publicize problems and find solutions to them.
• It became a political movement led my middle
class people to combat the issues brought on
during the Gilded Age—urban and consumer
problems particularly.
• Leaders rejected Social Darwinism because they
believed that competition didn’t improve society.