The Progressive
Era
Chapter 22
What is a “Muckraker”?** 22A—2
During the late 1890's and early years of
the 1900's, newspapers, magazines and
books began scathing attacks on the abuses
of the new order (child labor, urban
political machines, corrupt government,
industrial labor abuses and poor working
conditions, etc.). In 1906, Theodore
Roosevelt (right) applied the term
“muckraker” to those who exposed the
pungent scandals and misconduct of the
period. Muckraking flourished from 1903
to 1909.
A Changing
Society 22A
Progressivism was a movement
at the turn of the 20th century
to reform American society.
• Movement arose in the 1890s**
• It endured through the First World
War**
Why did Society
need to be
reformed?**22A—1
•
•
•
The rapid industrialization of America
resulted in rapid, unchecked urban
growth. 22D—2
Industrialization and assembly line
production had generated unprecedented
problems
America had abused its natural resources
and by 1900 had cut down most of its
forests.
Continued. . .
•
•
•
•
Urban cities were slum ridden and full of
poverty, disease and crime
Urban, state, national and local governments
were corrupt and ineffective
Big Business controlled most of the wealth and,
subsequently, the government. Government
policy was business policy. 22F—1
Mal-distribution of Wealth: By 1900, some
estimates suggest that 1% of the population had
control of 90% of the wealth.
Industrialization
and assembly
line production
had:
•
•
•
produced a new class of workers whose wages
were low and who suffered from poor living
conditions (new poor working class)
undermined the importance of craftsmanship
and replaced pride in workmanship with the
repetitious tedium, monotony, and danger of
assembly line production and routine
taken control of the pace of work away from the
workers
Big Business
•
•
•
Merger-mania between 1898-1903 created a
business oligarchy that left control of many
sectors of the economy in the hands of just a few
large corporations
Interlocking directorates concentrated control in
the hands of just a few individuals
Subsequently, there arose a debate about what
the government could and/or should do to
protect individual opportunity and preserve fair
prices
Who Were the
Progressives?**
22A—1
• Mostly urban WASPs.
• They were well educated, successful, but not
mega-rich.
• They were the new urban middle class.
Progressives believed in progress—that human nature was
perfectible.** Progress holds that by improving one's
material well being, one's intellectual and moral wellbeing will increase also. 22A—1
Conservatism
Progressives were conservative in
that they wanted to fix the system
not abolish it via some socialist
revolution. In other words, they
wished to save capitalism from
itself and return America to an
egalitarian democracy
The Loss of
Democracy
End of Individualism: Urban, industrial society created a
situation where the individual was subject to forces he
or she could not control. The new working, urban
classes could not exercise individual choice, but had to
survive in the system as the system dictated.
Loss of Equality:
The new order created a small class of rich and powerful
and large classes of poor and disenfranchised people.
Big Business exercised such power and monopoly that
Laissez Faire ceased to function.
Machines controlled politics so the individual vote was not
worth much.
Progressivism
and the
restoration of
Democracy:
22B—1
• The Jeffersonian notion of "the less government the
better" had been rendered obsolete by the new order.
• Progressives saw governmental intervention in society
and the regulation of business as a means of restoring
democratic institutions.
• Society had produced social evils and social sins; it was
society's job (i.e. the government's) to correct them.
Forerunners of
Reform
• The Labor Union Movement
• Critics of the Industrial Order, such as
Edward Bellamy
• Populism - Progressives adopted a good bit
of the Populist platform.
• Social Gospel 22—3A.
• ICC Act of 1887 and Sherman anti-Trust
Act of 1890
• Settlement houses
The Muckrakers—the
Journalistic Voice of
the Progressive
Movement 22A—2
Magazines, such as
McClure’s,
Collier’s and
Cosmopolitan ran
scathing attacks
on government
and business.
Writers like Lincoln
Steffens, 1866-1936 (right)
assailed the unholy union of
corrupt politics and
business** in their works of
the early 20th century.
Steffens’ collected
writings—serialized in
McClure‘s—later appeared
in a single volume, The
Shame of the Cities, 1904.**
A caricature of the corruption of string-pulling big city
politics—Lincoln Steffens—used by McClure’s to expose
corruption in the big cities
Ida
Tarbell,
18571944
Tarbell wrote
a long series
of articles
exposing the
sins of
Standard Oil
in McClure’s.
Upton Sinclair**
Sinclair (1878-1968—left)
wrote The Jungle (1906, right)
about working in meat
packinghouses. It was the
single most significant work of
the muckrakers. It led to
legislation that regulated the
food and drug industry (meat
inspection bills and the Second
Food and Drug Act). The
severity of the regulation
involved the government in
private industry as it had not
been before.
Big Business 2F—
1
• Worked in collusion with the government to
regulate industry. Why?
• American industry was anything but
orderly; chaos reigned. Why? The cause
was excessive competition
• Excessive competition kept prices too low
for adequate profitability
• Poor quality goods were the result of
excessive competition in many cases
Examples
• The Meat Packing
Industry—Small packing
houses were giving the
industry a bad name,
especially in Europe.
Large packers had always
had better quality and
pushed for regulation
• Railroads had attempted
to bring an end to rate
wars through their own
voluntary efforts, but to
no avail. Large railroads
looked to government (the
ICC) to impose order and
set profitable rates, ending
costly freight rate wars
and excessive competition
Business Successes
of the Early-20th
Century
Henry Ford (1863-1947) and the American Auto Industry
• large-scale
business
• mass production
• assembly line
production
process**
Ford (left) made the accurate
prediction, “I am going to
democratize the automobile. When
I am through everybody will be
able to afford one.”
Through producing a large
number of automobiles, he
was able to drive down the
price of each car (Model A—
1903 upper left and Model
T—1913 upper right)
Ford founded
Ford Motor
Company in 1903
•
•
•
•
Ford’s production process created a
“nonstop flow from raw materials to
finished product
By 1914, Ford’s workers could assemble a
car in 93 minutes
Ford’s generous wage policy
Ford’s Americanization program
Ford’s Generous
Wage Policy
•
•
•
To ameliorate worker unrest and promote
loyalty to the company, Ford doubled the
wage of the common laborer (from $2.50
to $5 a day on January 14, 1914)
He reduced the work day from 9 to 8
hours
He established a personnel department to
place workers in appropriate jobs
Continued. . .
•
•
•
•
•
Results of Ford’s innovative approach
Absenteeism and turnover declined
Output increased
Other companies copied Ford’s program
As a consequence, Ford went to a $6 day
(January 2, 1919)
Ford’s
Americanization
Program
• To diminish the separateness of
immigrant workers, Ford
established English classes for his
foreign-born employees
• He emphasized assimilation into
the Melting Pot of America
Federal Aid Roads
Act of 1916
The proliferation of automobiles led to its
passage—under its provisions each state:
•
•
•
•
•
had to establish a highway department to plan
routes
oversee construction of those routes
maintain state roads
received 50% of their construction cost from the
federal government
The Act produced a national network of roads
Frederick Winslow
Taylor and Scientific
Management** RQ17
“Folkways of the workplace—
workers passing job-related
knowledge to each other,
performing their tasks with little
supervision, setting their own
pace, and in effect running the
shop—began to give way to
‘scientific’ labor management.”
Frederick Winslow Taylor ( 18561915, right) was the chief
exponent of this new approach
toward the production process.
“Taylorism” in
Action
• Management must take responsibility for
job-related knowledge and classify it into
rules, laws, and formulae
• Management must control the workplace
“through enforced standardization of
methods, enforced adoption of the best
implements and working conditions, and
enforced cooperation”
• Efficiency and productivity were top
priority
Taylor’s Four
Principles of Scientific
Management—The
Principles of Scientific
Management, 1911
• Centralized planning of factory and its
output
• Systematic analysis of each job
• Detailed instruction and supervision of each
worker
• Incentive wage scale to encourage workers
to follow instructions
Women in the
Workplace**. . .
and Elsewhere
22E
•
•
Women at Work
Women in Politics 22E
Agitation for the vote is stirring on both sides of the Atlantic.
It would be after World War I—first in England and then in
the United States—that legislators gave women the franchise.
22E
Women at Work
•
•
•
•
In 1900, 20% of all adult women—5
million—worked
About a third of married women
worked, e.g., in teaching, clerical jobs,
& the garment industry
Most working women worked at lowpaying jobs outside of the professional
occupations (e.g., medicine, law)
Criticisms of women in the work force
Endangered sanctity of the home (e.g., giving them the
financial means to abstain from marriage and/or
divorce; taking them out of the nurturing role of fulltime mother)
Threatened reproductive function
AfricanAmericans in
the Early-20th
Century
Financial disadvantages of being Black
•
•
•
•
•
The African-American male or female alone could rarely
earn enough to support his/her family
African-Americans were generally paid less than their
white counterparts
Neither did they receive equal educational facilities
They were often the “last hired and the first fired”
Those who stilled lived in rural areas (about 80% of
America’s Blacks) were largely in a condition of peonage
The Niagara
Movement** and
W. E. B. DuBois
RQ20 & 22D3
African-American
sociologist W. E. B DuBois
convened a gathering on the
Canadian side of Niagara
Falls to form a plan for
obtaining better treatment
In 1903, DuBois published
The Souls of Black Folk,
calling for justice and
equality
Du Bois vs. Booker
T. Washington
(below left)
In contrast to Washington’s
“Atlanta Compromise”
(Chapter 19), DuBois
rejected a gradualist
approach to securing equal
political and civil rights,
social equality, and economic
opportunities. He urged his
fellow-African-Americans to
take steps to accelerate the
pace of equal rights through
effective protest activities.
Race Riots and
Racial Unrest
• Race riots broke out in Atlanta,
Georgia (1906) and Springfield,
Illinois (1908)
• Whites—not Blacks—initiated these
riots by invading Black
neighborhoods to burn, loot, and kill
Foundation of the National
Association for the
Advancement of
Colored People
(NAACP)**
In 1909, William E. Walling
called for a conference that
ultimately organized the NAACP.
This organization—created the
following year—“swiftly became
the most important civil rights
organization in the country.”**
22D—3
Key Civil Rights
Supreme Court
Rulings in the Early20th Century
• Guinn v. United States, 1915—The
“grandfather clause” that prevented
African-Americans from voting in
Oklahoma is overturned**
• Buchanan v. Worley, 1917—A Louisville,
Kentucky law allowing residential
segregation is ruled illegal**
The Labor
Movement 22C
Socialist currents in early-20th century America aimed at
redistribution of wealth with a more equitable balance flowing
into the hands of the working class. Those who shared these
sentiments took differing approaches to achieving their end.**
• Eugene V. Debs was a
radical and leader of the
Socialist Party of America
(founded in 1900).**
Debs ran for president in
1900 and 1904. He
differed from the
progressives in that he
was for radical socialism
and extolled the class
conflict theme. RQ18 &
22C
Victor Berger of
Milwaukee linked
Progressivism and
Socialism.
• He differed with Debs - He
believed companies should
be compensated whenever a
municipality or government
took them over
• He was for public ownership
of cities - "Sewer Socialism"
• He was elected to Congress
in 1910 and Socialists swept
to power in Milwaukee
The American
Federation of Labor,
led by Samuel Gompers
22C**
• The AFL grew during the period
• Its moderate tone fit right in with
Progressivism
• Some 500,000 members in 1900 grew to 1.5
million members in 1910
• The AFL was America’s largest labor
organization
• It limited its membership to skilled
workers
AFL Goals**
•
•
•
•
better wages
improved working
conditions
limits to entry into
crafts
protection of worker
prerogatives
"Wobblies" or IWW (Industrial
Workers of the World)—
1905-1920s 22C**
•
•
•
•
•
Founded in 1905 in Chicago
Welcomed members
regardless of gender or race
Sought to organize unskilled
foreign-born laborers
Hope to unite all American
labor to promote labor
interests
Believed that by initiating a
series of local strikes,
capitalist retaliation would
ultimately prompt a general
strike thus bringing down
the entire American
economic system
Called for radical labor
reform almost,
Communist revolution.
The Wobblies appealed to
migrant workers, or
hobos. The movement was
pronounced in the West
because of the large
number of public works.
It was an unsettled region
and had a displaced
mentality. “Big Bill”
Haywood (left) was one of
the founders of the IWW
Increasing Wealth
and the Birth of
Modern Leisure
Activities
•
•
•
•
Improving financial circumstances
New Popular Distractions
Baseball
Football
The alarming number of
fatalities and serious injuries in
college football—1905 saw 18
deaths and 150 badly inured—
moved President Theodore
Roosevelt (left) to call a White
House conference to address the
matter of violence in college
sports. Out of this gathering was
formed the Intercollegiate
Athletic Association. In 1910, it
became the National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA).**
Other
Fanny
Brice
Entertainments
&
Distractions
Funny Girl / Funny Lady
•
•
Motion pictures
became a popular and
inexpensive recreation
Vaudeville brought a
“Duke’s mixture” of
entertainment to
audiences in big cities
Florenz
Ziegfeld, the
founder of
the Follies
The Phonograph
Invention of the
phonograph brought
ready-made music
into every home that
could afford this new
machine
The Victrola (right) enabled
Americans to play recorded music
whenever they wished to hear it.
Most of the early recordings were
of vaudeville skits or orchestras.
Music with syncopated,
faster rhythms
became popular
Contributions of immigrants
Russian immigrant Irving Berlin
(left) composed the ever-popular
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”—a
piece that touched off a dance
craze the crossed the entire
nation. Meanwhile, a host of new
and lively dance steps gained
acceptance among Americans who
took to the dance floors of hotels
and nightclubs.
Beginnings of
Jazz
Starting in New Orleans, performers like Buddy
Bolden, “Jelly Roll” Morton (left), and Louis
Armstrong (below) initiated an improvisational
style of music that—by the time it arrived in
Chicago—came to be known as Jazz. Rather
than emphasizing structure and predetermined
composition, it focused on feeling and mood.
Popular Fiction
Kate Douglas Wiggins—Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Wiggins’ Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm stories
captivated early-20th century
readers. A later generation
would delight again in these
tales when brought to live on
the silver screen by adorable
child-actress Shirley Temple
(right).
Lucy M.
Montgomery—
Anne of Green
Gables
Montgomery’s book
became the subject of a
television series, as well as
a PBS animated television
cartoon.
Megan Follows
(right) played
Anne.
Edward L.
Stratemeyer—Tom
Swift, Rover Boys,
and Bobbsey Twins
series of books
Stratemeyer hired a
staff of writers who
were prolific in their
production of not
only the Tom Swift
literature but other
very popular stories
for young readers as
well. The Bobbsey
Twins and the Rover
Boys books were
both among these
publications.
Burt Standish (under
nom de plume
Gilbert Patten)—
Frank Merrill
stories
Standish created the
ideal young man,
Frank Merrill—a
wholesome college
athlete who was frank
and merry in nature—
well in body and mind.
The Progressive
Age
“The ferment of progressivism in city, state, and nation
reshaped the country. In a burst of reform, people built
playgrounds, restructured taxes, regulated business, won
the vote for women, shortened working hours, altered
political systems, opened kindergartens, and improved
factory safety. They tried to fulfill the national promise
of dignity and liberty. . . . People in many walks of life
were experiencing a similar sense of excitement and
discover. Racism, repression, and labor conflict were
present, to be sure, but there was also talk of hope,
progress, and change. . . . People believed for a time that
they could make a difference, and in trying to do so, they
became part of the progressive generation.”
Progressivism and the Great Ascent
The spirit of Progressivism suggested
that humanity was on a long and
upward ascension to increasingly
enlightened and beneficent behavior.**
To the right, a modern-day gladiator,
armed with the spirit of “political
independence” and “facts,” puts
political corruption and machine
politicians to flight.