Chapter 21
The Progressive Era
1900-1917
Introduction
• This chapter covers:
• Economic and social changes
• Problems caused by industrialization and urbanization
• How the Progressive reform movement emerged to
wrestle with these problems/changes
• An example:
• The unsafe and unsanitary conditions in which millions
of workers labored produced tragedies
• Such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in which 141
sweatshop employees died
• After the Fire, aroused Progressives convinced New
York State to enact many labor protective laws
Introduction
1.) How did intellectuals and writers prepare the way
for Progressive reform?
2.) What conditions in the cities and states bothered
Progressives, and what did they hope to do about
them?
3.) How did Progressive reform reach national politics,
and which leaders and issues were involved?
4.) What impact did Progressive reform have on the
lives of women, immigrants, the urban poor, and
African-Americans?
5.) Did progressivism alter people’s views on the
proper role of govt. in America’s society and economy
Progressives and Their Ideas
• The Many Faces of Progressivism
• Progressive reformers included much of the
new urban middle class
• Mostly white, native-born Protestants
• Middle-class women (often college educated)
• Working through settlement houses and private
organizations (National Consumers’ League)
• Urban, immigrant political machines and
workers began to demand improved labor
conditions
The Many Faces of Progressivism
• The Progressives were strongest in the cities
• Attracted support from middle-class professionals and
intellectuals
• Most Progressives accepted the capitalist system
• They merely wanted to reform the worst abuses that had
developed under it
• There was never one unified movement, but many different
groups of reformers
• Some preached regulation of big businesses
• Others concentrated on passing laws to protect workers
• Others thought the way to cure social ills was to curtail
immigration
• Progressives generally attempted to be “scientific” in their
approach
• Backed their demands for change with scholarly studies of
deplorable conditions to be remedied
Intellectuals Offer New Social Views
• Many intellectuals criticized unrestrained, brutal
capitalist competition
• They called for an activist govt. that would
regulate business practices and protect the
economically vulnerable
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•
•
•
Thorstein Veblen (economist)
Herbert Croly (journalist)
William James (pragmatic philosopher)
Jane Addams (settlement-house leader)
Intellectuals Offer New Social Views
• New educational and legal ideas paved the way
for the Progressive movement
• John Dewey
• Preached that schools must foster in students respect for the
values of democracy and cooperation
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Supreme Court Justice
• Attacked conservative judges for being guided entirely by legal
precedent
• He insisted that the “law must evolve as society changes”
Dewey and Holmes
Novelists, Journalists,
and Artists Spotlight Social Problems
• Muckraking journalists and novelists
played an important role in stimulating the
Progressive movement by exposing to
middle-class Americans political
corruption and corporate wrongdoing
Novelists, Journalists, and Artists Spotlight Social
Problems
• Lincoln Steffens
• Wrote about urban
political machines and
bosses
• Ida Tarbell
• Cutthroat competitive
practices of Standard
Oil Company
Novelists, Journalists,
and Artists Spotlight Social Problems
• Magazines such as McClure’s and Collier’s specialized in
muckraking articles
• Novelists Frank Norris in The Octopus and Theodore
Dreiser in The Financier also told tales of business abuses
and political corruption
• “Ashcan School” artists and photographers such as Lewis
Hine depicted the harsh world of the immigrants, factory
workers and child laborers
State and Local Progressivism
• Reforming the Political Process
• The earliest signs of the Progressive movement
appeared in cities where municipal reformers battled
corrupt political machines
• These cities elected activist mayors dedicated to change
• Hazen Pingree of Detroit
• Samuel Jones of Toledo
• Reform mayors generally:
• brought honesty to municipal govt.
• Provided city dwellers with improved municipal services and
facilities
• Forced transportation and utility companies to lower rates
and pay their fair share of taxes
• Other municipal reformers experimented with
commission and city-manager forms of govt.
Reforming the Political Process
• The reform efforts soon moved up to state govt.
• Progressives attempted to democratize politics
by establishing:
•
•
•
•
•
secret balloting
direct primary
initiative
referendum
recall
• In practice these measures fell short of
producing the democratic results that the
Progressives had hoped
Regulating Business, Protecting
Workers
• After 1900, the growth of huge business corporation sped up
• Example: in 1901 J.P. Morgan consolidated hundreds of independent
steel makers to form the U.S. Steel Company which controlled 80%
of production in the nation
• This trend alarmed many Americans
• The real wages of industrial laborers rose after 1900
• They were still so inadequate that in many families the mothers and
children had to work to make ends meet
• In 1910 at least 1.6 million youngsters between 10-16 years old worked
full-time
• Industrial laborers spent on average 9 1/2 hours a day in mills
and shops
• Often in hazardous conditions (both in health and safety)
• Employers tried to get even more work out of their employees
• Frederick W. Taylor and other efficiency expert
Regulating Business, Protecting
Workers
• Under Progressive
influence, state govt’s.
started to impose
regulation on railroads,
mines, and other
business corporation
• The pioneer was WI
under Governor Robert
LaFollette
Regulating Business, Protecting Workers
• Between 1901 and 1906 LaFollette convinced
the legislature to:
• create a state railroad commission
• increase corporate taxes
• limit business contributions to political campaigns
• He and the legislature also introduced political
reforms such as the direct primary
• “Wisconsin Idea”
Regulating Business, Protecting Workers
• Other states passed important labor laws as well:
• Maximum # of hours per workday for female
employees
• Oregon’s 10-hour law
• Factory safety codes
• Such as the one enacted in NY after the Triangle Shirtwaist
fire
• Workers’ compensation acts
• Bans on child labor
Making Cities More Livable
• Cities grew rapidly between 1900 and 1920 as rural Americans
and millions of immigrants moved into them
• Overwhelmed and often corrupt municipal govts. failed to
provide the newcomers with adequate services and public
facilities
• Progressive reformers began to beautify cities with:
• more parks and playgrounds
• Broad boulevards
• Impressive municipal buildings
• State legislatures passed housing coded to upgrade living
conditions in tenements and slum neighborhoods
Making Cities More Livable
• Cities and states improved:
• Garbage collection
• Street cleaning
• Water and sewer systems
• And required higher standards:
• of cleanliness
• Of quality form sellers of food and milk
• These Progressive reforms significantly decreased
infant mortality and tuberculosis deaths
• There were also attempts to reduce air pollution
• Business fought these vigorously
• The continued reliance on coal as the chief energy source left cities
smoky and sooty
Progressivism and Social Control
• Moral Control in the Cities
• Some reformers tried to guard morality by
inducing cities to censor movies and outlaw
prostitution
• A wave of hysteria over prostitution led to the
passage of the federal Mann Act (1910) and
the close of red-light districts
Battling Alcohol and Drugs
• Prohibition became the biggest moral crusade of
the Progressive Era
• Anti-Saloon League, Women’s Christian
Temperance Union, various church groups
• Many localities enacted bans on liquor sales
• The national prohibition movement grew
stronger
Battling Alcohol and Drugs
• Progressives also campaigned against the thenwidespread use of such addictive drugs as
morphine, heroin, and cocaine
• Their efforts led to the passage of the federal
Narcotics Act in 1914
• Outlawed the distribution of heroin, morphine, and
cocaine except by doctors’ prescriptions
Immigration Restriction and Eugenics
• Between 1900-1917, 17 million immigrants entered the U.S.A.
• Mostly from southern and eastern Europe
• Many native-born Americans became fearful
• They often believed that immigrants caused poverty and
immorality
• Immigration Restriction League
• 1894
• Founded by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other prominent
Bostonians
Immigration Restriction and
Eugenics
• Eugenicists claimed that humans and society
could be improved by controlled breeding
• Some states passed laws allowing forced
sterilization of criminals, mentally deficient
persons, and sex offenders
• Pseudo-scientific racism was spewed by some
so-called progressive writers
• Madison Grant--The Passing of the Great Race (1916)
Racism and Progressivism
• In 1900 the majority of the 10 million AfricanAmericans were still in the rural South
• Most as sharecroppers
• Many began to migrate to cities and to the North
• Escape poverty, disenfranchisement, Jim Crow laws,
and violence
• In the North they encountered de factor segregation
and discrimination
• Under these difficult circumstances, African-Americans
developed their own communities and culture
• Racism in American society reached a peak during
the Progressive Era
• Many progressives either ignored racial
discrimination or were themselves racists
Racism and Progressivism
• Southern Progressives combined advocacy of
economic and political reform with vicious
attacks on African-Americans
• James K. Vardaman and Ben Tillman
• The 2 Progressive-reformer presidents of the era
compiled sorry records on racial justice
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Woodrow Wilson
Racism and Progressivism
• Roosevelt ordered the unwarranted dishonorable
discharge of an entire regiment of African-American
soldiers in the Brownsville, Texas, incident
• Wilson praised the racist movie Birth of a Nation and
condoned the introduction of racial segregation in all
federal govt. agencies and departments
• Some white progressives decried racial injustice and
helped found the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
• Lillian Wald and Mary White
African-Americans, Women, and Workers
Organize
• African-American Leaders
Organize Against Racism
• Booker T. Washington
• America’s best-know black
leader between 1890-1915
• Advised blacks to concentrate
on economic advancement
through vocational education
• Accept the South’s Jim Crow and
disenfranchisement laws
African-American Leaders Organize
Against Racism
• Northern African-Americans intellectuals
and professionals urged African-Americans
to fight for economic, political, and
educational equality
• William Monroe Trotter
• Ida Wells-Barnett
• W.E.B. DuBois
African-American Leaders Organize
Against Racism
• Niagara Movement
• 1905
• DuBois and other African-American critics of
Washington formed
• In 1909, DuBois and other members of the
Niagara Movement joined with white
Progressives in organizing the NAACP
• Rejected Booker T. Washington’s accommodations
advice
• Began the long fight for racial justice
Revival of the Woman-Suffrage Movement
• A new group of feminists
emerged to revitalize the
women’s movement
• Carrie Chapman Catt
• Became president of the National
American Woman Suffrage
Association in 1900
• Catt led her members in lobbying,
distributing literature, and
demonstrating
• They convinced several states to
grant women the vote
Revival of the Woman-Suffrage Movement
• Alice Paul
• National Woman’s Party
• Bring direct pressure on
the federal govt. for
passage of a
constitutional
amendment
enfranchising women
Enlarging “Woman’s Sphere”
• Feminists challenged the assumption that the
only proper roles for women were those of wife,
mother, and homemaker
• Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, Margaret Sanger
• Led the Progressives drives to:
• abolish child labor
• Protect the health of workers and consumers
• Establish birth-control clinics
Workers Organize: Socialism Advances
• To improve their working environment, workers
kept trying to unionize
• Their right to strike was frequently curtailed by
conservative court decisions
• Employers often hired recent immigrants as
scabs when employees went on strike
Workers Organize: Socialism
Advances
• American Federal of Labor (AFL) grew primarily
in the skilled trades
• Most factory workers were unorganized early on
• 2 unions attempted to help semiskilled and
unskilled workers:
• International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union
• Led successful strikes in the needle trades
• Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
• The IWW singed up western miners, lumberjacks, and migratory
farm workers
• IWW won a major strike in 1912 in the textile mills of MA
• Govt. repression of the IWW during WWI caused the decline of the
organization
Workers Organize: Socialism Advances
• The Socialist Party of
America was gaining
followers
• Hoped to end capitalism
through the ballot box
rather than revolution
• Eugene Debs
• Ran for president in 1912
and received 900,000 votes
National Progressivism--Phase I:
Roosevelt and Taft, 1901-1913
• Roosevelt’s Path to the White
House
• Became President in 1901 after
McKinley was assassinated
• Became the first Progressive
president
• A believer in strong executive
leadership, Roosevelt enlarged the
powers of the presidency
• Turned the office into both an
effective forum and the center of
legislative initiative
Labor Disputes, Trustbusting, and
Railroad Regulation
• Unlike earlier presidents who used troops
to break strikes, Roosevelt like to use
arbitration
• Example: coal miners’ strike of 1902
• Management and the United Mine Workers
used arbitration by a commission Roosevelt
appointed
• The commission granted the miners
increased pay and reduced hours
Labor Disputes, Trustbusting, and
Railroad Regulation
• Roosevelt did not want to attack big business
• He preached that corporate giants must obey
the law and serve the public interest
• He prosecuted firms that he believed violated
the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
• Northern Securities Company
• Despite his trustbusting, he stayed on good
terms with big business
Labor Disputes, Trustbusting, and
Railroad Regulation (cont.)
• 1904 election, Roosevelt easily won over
conservative Democratic opponent, Alton B.
Parker
• Hepburn Act
• 1906
• Strengthened corporate regulation
• Gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the
power to set maximum railroad rates and examine
railroads’ financial records
Consumer Protection
• Responding to public concern generated by
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Roosevelt persuaded
Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act
(1906) and the Meat Inspection Act (1906)
• Pure Food and Drug Act
• Meat Inspection Act
Environmentalism Progressive Style
• Roosevelt made his most enduring reforms in
conservation
• Years of exploitation for private gain had
damaged and depleted America’s natural
environment
• By the 1890’s, land use had become a political
issue
• Putting business interests, preservationists, and
conservationists against each other
Environmentalism Progressive Style
• Entrepreneurs wanted to continue unrestricted
development for private enrichment
• Preservationists wished to save large wilderness
tracts for their beauty and spiritual worth
• John Muir and the Sierra Club
• Conservation movement sought govt. scientific
management to make the public domain best
serve the resource needs of the nation now and
in the future
• Gifford Pinchot (Roosevelt’s Forest Service chief)
Environmentalism Progressive Style
• Roosevelt used the presidency to popularize
both conservation and preservation
• Newlands Act of 1902
• Important in the economic development of the West
• Set aside about 200 million acres of forest and
mineral-rich lands for government-managed use
rather than sale to business
• Antiquities Act (1906)
• National historical landmarks
• Established national parks
Environmentalism Progressive Style
• In 1916, during Wilson’s administration,
Congress established the National Park Service
to protect and run the national historic sites,
monuments, and parks
Taft in the White House, 1909-1913
• William Howard Taft was
Roosevelt’s secretary of war
• Won 1908 election over William
Jennings Bryan
• Pledged to continue Roosevelt’s
Square Deal
• Taft prosecuted more trusts than
Roosevelt had
• Taft, though, lacked Roosevelt’s
activism, flair for publicity, and
political skills
Taft in the White House, 1909-1913
• In the fight shaping up between the progressive
and conservative wings of the Republican party,
Taft sided with the conservatives
• Taft alienated progressive Republicans by:
• Signing the Payne-Aldrich bill
• Raised tariffs
• Fired conservationist Gifford Pinchot
• Progressive Republicans joined with Roosevelt in
denouncing the conservatives and campaigned
for revived Progressive reform
The Four-Way Election of 1912
• In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt challenged Taft for
the Republican nomination
• The convention chose Taft
• Roosevelt’s backers walked out and founded the
rival Progressive Party and nominated Roosevelt
• The Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson
• Socialists nominated Eugene Debs
The Four-Way Election of 1912
• “New Nationalism”
• Roosevelt’s platform
• Accept big business as inevitable
• But build a powerful activist federal govt. to regulate
the corporate giants
• New Freedom
• Wilson’s platform
• Rejected big govt. in Washington
• Called for a return to an economy composed of small,
competing enterprise
• Wilson won the White House
• Democrats also won Congress
National Progressivism--Phase II: Woodrow
Wilson, 1913-1917
• Introduction
• Woodrow Wilson had been
a political science
professor and president of
Princeton University
• Then he became Governor
of NJ
• Skilled and flexible
politician
• But sometimes was
intolerant and selfrighteous
Introduction
• Despite Wilson’s stated preference for small
business and limited govt. in the 1912 election,
as president he led the effort to “use govt. to
address the problems of the new corporate
order.”
Tariff and Banking Reform
• Wilson convinced Congress to pass the 1913
Underwood-Simmons Tariff
• Reduced import duties by roughly 15%
• Federal Reserve Act
• 1913
• Kept banking a private enterprise but imposed public
regulation over it
• 12 regional Federal Reserve banks
• Empowered to expand the nation’s credit and money supply
• Could issue Federal Reserve notes
• Under the supervision of the Federal Reserve Board
• Appointed by the president
Regulating Business; Aiding
Workers and Farmers
• Federal Trade Commission
• 1914
• Federal regulatory agency
• Power to uncover unfair
methods of business
competition
• Then issue cease and desist
orders against perpetrators
Regulating Business; Aiding
Workers and Farmers
• Clayton Anti-Trust Act
• 1914
• Supplemented the vague and general
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
• Defined and listed specific illegal practices
• Wilson endorsed the clause in the
Clayton Act exempting union strikes,
boycotts, and picketing from prosecution
under the antitrust laws
Regulating Business; Aiding
Workers and Farmers
• He also signed the following into law:
• Keating-Owen Act
• 1916
• Child labor law with interstate commerce
• Later declared unconstitutional
• Adamson Act
• 1916
• 8-hour day for railroad workers
• Workmen’s Compensation Act
• For federal employees
• Legislation to help farmers obtain loans at lower
interest rates
Progressivism and the Constitution
• Wilson nominated to the Supreme
Court Progressive Jewish attorney
Louis Brandeis
• Conservatives and anti-Semites
objected
• Wilson persuaded the Senate to
confirm Brandeis
Progressivism and the Constitution
• The Progressive Era saw 4 amendments added to
the U.S. Constitution:
• 16th (1913)
• Authorized a federal income tax
• 17th (1913)
• Popular or direct election of senators
• 18th (1919)
• Prohibition
• 19th (1920)
• Women suffrage
Conclusion
• Some Progressive reforms did less good than
their backers had hoped
• Progressivism had some repressive and
intolerant elements
• The movement as a whole left a legacy of govt.
intervention to:
• regulate destructive corporate practices
• protect the economically vulnerable
• improved social problems arising from industrialization
• It was a precedent on which the New Deal would
later build