Progressives
1900-1917
Not Revolutionaries, but reformers
Goals:
1. Limit power of big business
2. Improve democratic process for average citizen
3. Increase social justice
Attitudes and Motives US Society
Shift From:
1. Homogenous to a more heterogeneous society
 Impact of immigration
2. Movement from a rural to an urban
3. Agrarian to an industrial society
Societal concerns:
1. Polarization of wealth
2. Rising power of big business
3. Violence between labor and capital
4. Dominance of corrupt political machines
 Lack of or limited political power/influence of individual citizens
5. Minority concerns of racist south and Jim Crow laws
 No Political gains since Reconstruction – going backwards
6. City conditions
Who were the Progressives
 Protestant church leaders
 African American Leaders
 Union leaders
 Women’s Rights activists
Why they were effective
1. Leadership – TR, Taft, Robert La Follete, WJ Bryan, and Woodrow Wilson
2. Multiple groups
3. New way of thinking
 Shift from Transcendental to Pragmatic
1. Challenged Laissez Faire
2. Challenged Rugged individualism
Muckrakers – Newspaper, magazine writers and authors
 Investigative reporting
 Origins Henry Lloyd – attacks Standard Oil in Atlantic Monthly
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o Writes Wealth against Commonwealth – exposes greed and
corruption in oil
Magazines McClures, Cosmopolitan, and Colliers
Writers Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell
Books Jacob Riis How the other half lives, Steffens Shame of the nation
Effects:
1. Exposed conditions – political economic, and social
2. Brought calls for reform and government intervention
End of Muckrakers
1. Difficult to continue outdoing each other in exposes, one upmanship
2. Big business is now aware of their public image
3. Editors faced pressure from big business to back off
City and state reform
1. Voter participation
 Secret ballot – shift from party issued ballots to state issued ballots
 Direct primaries – Wisconsin Plan – State citizens choose party
candidates
 Direct election of senators 17th Amendment
 Initiative – citizens “initiate” legislation
 Referendum – citizens vote directly on legilation
 Recall – petitions to remove an elected official
 Social welfare – Settlement Houses – Jane Addams and Florence Kelly
- Helped provide for needs of the immigrants
- Lobbied for better schools, juvenile courts, liberalized divorce laws,
safety regulations
- Rehab of criminals – parole and probation, limits on death penalty,
and creation of juvenile justice system
City reform
1. Controlling Public utilities – cities begin to control water, public transport,
electric
2. Creation of commissions and city managers
 Police commissioners, fire commissioner elected by the citizens
 City managers hire by elected official
State reforms
1. Prohibition and temperance – clean up morals > clean up politics
2. Effective and well organized – 18th Amendment
National Reform
Theodore Roosevelt TR – Square Deal
1. President sets legislation agenda
2. Coal miners strike 1902 – forces owner and workers to settle or nationalize
mines
3. Trust Busting
 Good v. Bad trusts
o Good - efficient and low prices
o Bad – harmed public good – Northern Securities
4. Strengthen ICC
 Elkins Act – Authority to stop rebates
 Hepburn Act – ICC could set “Jest and reasonable” rates
5. Consumer protection
 Upton Sinclair – The Jungle – exposed conditions in the meat packing
industry
 Pure Food and Drug Act 1906 – Food products are labeled
 Meat Inspections Act – Meat packing industry must meet minimum
sanitation levels
6. Conservation
 Forest Reserve Act – 150 million acres set aside – could not be sold
 Newlands reclamation Act - $$ from Western lands used for irrigation
projects in West
 National Conservation Commission – Gifford Pinchot commissioner
Taft – 1909-1913
1. Continues Trust Busting
2. Establishes Bureau of Mines
3. Added lands to the National Forest Reserve
4. Mann – Elkins Act – ICC power to suspend RR rates
 Oversaw telephone and telegraph rates
5. 1913 16th Amendment Income tax – Populist goal
Republican in fighting
 Progressive wing of Republican Party angry at Taft for:
1. Support of Payne-Aldrich Tariff raising tariff rates
2. Taft fires Pinchot – Controversy over Alaskan Public lands
o Secretary of Interior Ballinger wants to open the lands for sale and
development – Taft side with Ballinger
3. Support of Conservative Republicans in the 1910 midterms
Result: Republican Party splits in 2
Socialists: Eugene V. Debs – More radical than Progressives
1. Public ownership of public utilities and major industries
2. Socialist successes – 8 hour work day, pensions, some utilities ownership
Election of 1912
TR v. Wilson v. Taft v. Debs
TR – Bull Moose Party – Progressive party
New Nationalism
1. More government regulation of business and unions
2. Women’s suffrage
3. More social welfare programs
Wilson – Democrat – New Freedom
1. Limits on big business and big government
2. Support small business
Wilson wins – 41% of popular vote
TR 27%
Taft 23%
Debs 6% 900,000 popular votes
Wilson only 2nd Democrat since Civil War
Personality: Idealistic, Intellectual, Righteous, and Inflexible
Inauguration – promises to attack the Triple wall of privilege: Tariffs, trust, and
banking
1. Lower Tariffs offset with income tax
2. Federal reserve Act 1914 – Federal Reserve Board and 12 district banks
 Regulate and standardize money supply
Wilson and business
1. Clayton Anti Trust Act – Strengthened Sherman to break trusts: Unions are
NOT trusts
2. Federal Trade Commission – Power to investigate and act on unfair trade
practices, exceptions: Banks and transportation
3. Federal Farm Loan Act – Low cost loans for farmers
4. Child Labor Act 1916 – Prohibited products in interstate trade produced by
children younger than 14 Struck down in Hammer v. Dagenhart 1918
Blacks in Progressive era: Plessy v. Ferguson 1896
Wilson Executive Order: Provides segregation in Post Office and all Federal
buildings
Progressives do nothing for black rights
1. Share general prejudice of time
2. Consider other reforms more important than anti-lynching laws
Back Leaders
Booker T Washington – Tuskegee Institute
 Atlanta Exposition – Stress economic and industrial education
 Believed it was best to secure economic base
W.E.B. Dubois – Wrote Souls of Black Folks
 Critical of Washington
 Demanded political and social rights as a prerequisite for economic
independence
Urban migration
End of 19th Century: 9 of 10 blacks lived in South
 Migration – 1910-1930
o Deteriorating race relations
o Boll weevil – poor cotton production
o Econ opportunities in the North not in South
Civil Right organizations
 Niagara Movement – Creation on NAACP
o Goal is to increase educational opportunities
o End segregation
o By 1920 – 100,000 members
 National urban league “Opportunity not Alms”
o Self reliance and economic advancement
Women and Progressive are
 Wilson opposed to women’s suffrage
 Carrie Chapmen Catt NAWSA
 Aimed effort at the state level
 Change tactics to advocate for national amendment
 Alice Paul NW Party
 Immediate demand for women’s suffrage
 19th Amendment
 Catt organizes the League of Women Voters 1920
Progressive summary:
Causes: Raped growth of cities and business
Effects:
Political
1. Primaries
2. Split Republican Party
3. 17th Amendment Direct Election of Senators
4. 19th Amendment Women’s voting
Social:
1. Laws for workers protection
2. Settlement Houses
3. Birth Control
4. Birth of the Civil Right movement
5. 18th Amendment – Prohibition
Economic:
1. Environmental conservation
2. Business regulation
3. Lower tariffs
4. Reformed Banking system
5. Federal Reserve
6. Income tax 16th Amendment
1913 – 1919 4 Constitutional Amendments added