Chapter 21
What is Progressivism?
 New feeling that liberalism of founding fathers never
counted on massive growth of private wealth in Gilded
Age.
 Laissez-Faire government exacerbated inequalities of
class, race, and gender
 Progressives:
 Christian mission
 Remove social evils
 Concern about growing power of wealthy and trusts
 Feared immigrant poor
Progressivism
 Strength lay in cities
 Progressives:
 Journalists
 Academics
 Social theorists
 Urban dwellers
 Importance of Science:
 All problems could be solved
through careful study and organized effort
Intellectuals
 Thorstein Velben
 Conspicuous consumption 1899
 William James
 Pragmatism 1907
 Herbert Croly
 Promise of American Life 1909
 Activist government
 Jane Addams
 Democracy and Social Ethics 1902
 Twenty Years at the Hull House
1910
 John Dewey
 Schools engine of change
 Democracy and Education 1916
 Oliver Wendell
 The Common Law 1881
 Law must change as society
changes
Novelists, Journalists, and Artists
 Novelists
 Frank Morris

The Octopus 1901
 Theodore Dreiser
 The Financier, The Titan 1912
 Lincoln Steffans
 The Shame of Cities 1904
 Journalists
 McClures, Colliers
 Lincoln Steffans

muckrackers
 exposes
 Artists
 Aschan School NY

Photographed harshness of Slums
 Lewis Hine (1911-1916)
Political Reformers
 Early Efforts 1880s, 1890s
 NYC: protestant clergy vs.
Tammany Hall
 Mayor Hazen Pingree



Lowered transit faire
Fairer tax structure
Services for the poor
 Mayors
 Thomas Johnson (Cleveland, Ohio)



Copied Pingree with streetcar fares
Fought for fairer taxation
Municipal owned public facilities
 Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette
(Wisconsin)
 Brought scientist and academics to
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Social Gospel follower
Profit-sharing in factory
Playgrounds, free kindergarten,
lodging for homeless
1903 Direct Primary
 State Reforms
 Secret Ballots

 Samuel M. “Golden Rule” Jones
(Toledo, Ohio)
his administration
Lowered railroad rates
Raised railroad taxes
Improved education
“laboratory of democracy”
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Copied Australia
1910 all states used
Initiatives
Referendums
Recall
New procedures = weakened party
loyalty and voter decline
Regulating business, protecting workers
 Corporate consolidation
continued into 1900s
 United States Steel Company 1901
(J.P. Morgan)
 International Harvester
Company
 General Motors Company 1908
 Worker’s benefit
 Annual real wages increase

Purchasing power
 Difficulties
 Entire family worked

1.6 million children
 Long hours/ hazards
 Efficiency
 Frederick Taylor

Scientific Management
 Laws/reforms
 Triangle shirtwaist fire
 Florence Kelley

Conditions in factories
 Alice Hamilton

Industrial hygiene
Making Cities More Livable
 Human warehouses
 Lacked:
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Adequate parks
Municipal services
Public Health resources
Recreational facilities
 Reforms
 City Planning

Daniel Burnham
 NY Tenement reforms 1911
 Regulation of milk and food
handlers
 Improved sewage and water
systems
 vaccinations
Moral Control in the Cities
 Lower-class amusements
immoral
 Natives vs. Immigrants
 Temperance targeted:
 Amusement parks

 Nickelodeons
 Charlie Chaplin
 “nickel madness”
 Tin Pan Alley
 Ragtime
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 Attempts at reform
 Anti-Saloon League

1895, Protestant Clergy
 Women’s Christian Temperance
Movement (WCTM)



Targeted prostitution
“social evil”
1910 Mann Act

Irish
Germans
Italians
 Importance of taverns to
immigrant communities
 Drug-use Campaigns
 Opium, Cocaine widely used


Cocaine in Coca-Cola
Cough Medicine
 1912 treaty banning Opium trade
 1914 Narcotics Act
Immigration Restriction
 Use of science
 1911 study, Edward A Ross


Proved immigrants degeneracy
Low browed, big faced, low mentality
 Henry Cabot Lodge
 Literacy Tests, vetoed
 Eugenics
 Controlled reproduction
 Madison Grant
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Denounced southern Europeans, Jews,
and Africans
Bogus data
Racial segregation, forced sterilization
 1927 Buck v. Bell
 Upheld laws to sterilize criminals, sex
offenders, mental deficient
 Laws
 Alien Land Law 1913- CA
Racism and Progressivism
 Racism peaking in the south
 Politically
 Democrats push
disenfranchisement as
“reform”
 Tensions in the North
 Migration to north 1890-1910
 Only slightly better conditions
 Birth of a Nation 1915
 Hostility
 Atlanta Riots 1906
 Response:

Strong social institutions
Black Organization
 William Monroe Trotter
 1902, Criticizes Booker T.
Washington, too slow
 Ida Wells-Barnett
 Anti-lynching campaign
 W.E.B. Du Bois
 Attacked “Tuskegee Machine”
 The Souls of Black Folk 1903

Demanded full racial equality
 Niagara Movement 1905
 Universal male suffrage
 Civil rights
 NAACP 1909
Woman Suffrage Movement
 1910
 4 western states allow women
to vote
 Grass-Roots Campaign
 California triumph 1911
 National Movement
 Susan B. Anthony
 Carrie Chapman Catt
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
Lobbied legislation
Media blitz, fundraisers
1917 NY Victory
 Civil Disobedience
 Alice Paul
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
Too passive
Picketed President Wilson
Woman’s “New Sphere”
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
 Women and Economics 1898
 Roots of female subordination
 Advocated economic
independence
 Herland 1915
 Margaret Sanger
 Coined term “birth control”
 Social movement for social
change
 Also Mary Ware Dennett
Worker’s Organization
 Labor Unions expand 20%
 1908 Danbury Hatters Case
 Forbade unions for organizing
boycotts
 Ladies’ Garment Worker’s
Union
 Success strikes 1909, 1911
 Women of all classes
participated
 Industrial Workers of the
World, Chicago 1905
 Wobblies
 Less mass strikes of gold
miners
 1912 bitter Textile mill strike
 Reputation for violence
Socialism
 Socialist Party of America
 Hybrid of Karl Marx
theories
 Eugene V. Debs
 Ran in 5 Presidential
Elections
 Championed end of
Capitalism and public
ownership of railroads,
utilities, etc.
Theodore Roosevelt
 “Now that damned Cowboy is
President” – Mark Hanna
 Progressive Reformer
 White house a bully “pulpit” for
reforms
 Worked to shift power from wall
street to Washington
 Trustbuster
 1902 United Mine Worker’s
Union Strike
 1902 State of the Union



“Trustbusting”
Suit against Northern Securities
1903 Elkins Act
 Created Department of Labor
and Commerce
 Hepburn Act of 1906

Empowered Interstate Commerce
Commission
T.R. Reforms
 Pure Food and Drug Act 1906
 The Jungle 1906
 Meat Inspection Act 1906
 Environmentalism
 Boy Scouts 1910, Girl Scouts
1912
 National Reclamation Act
1902


Money from public lands for
water management in arid
regions
16 million acres of national
forest
 National Park Service Act 1906
 Gilford Pinchot
 Planned development
 US Forrest Service
William Howard Taft
 Handpicked by T.R.
 Presidency marked by
progressive stalemate, bitter
break with T.R., and a schism
in the Republican Party
 T.R.’s Legacy
 Mann-Elkins Act 1910
 More trustbusting than T.R.
 Insurgents
 Sen. La Follette
 Issue over the tariff
 Payne-Aldrich Tariff
 Ballinger-Pinchot Affair
 T.R.’s Return
 Sides with Insurgents
The Greatest Presidential Election
 Republicans
 Taft
 conservative
 Democrats
 Woodrow Wilson
 New Freedom

Small government, small business,
free competition
 Progressives
 Roosevelt, “Bull Moose Party”
 New Nationalism



Federal planning and regulation
Increases in power of government
Tariff regulation, Women’s suffrage
 Socialist
 Eugene V. Debs
Woodrow Wilson
 Owed victory to democratic
machine, turned his back
 Democratic congress ready to
do his bidding
 Tariff
 Spoke directly to Congress
 Underwood-Simmons Tariff
 Reduced rates by average of 15%,
included income tax
 Banking and Currency Reform
1913
 Panic of 1907
 Federal Reserve Act 1913
 12 regional Federal reserve banks
 Most imp. Legislation
 The “Fed”
Wilson Reforms
 Federal Trade Commission Act
1914
 Watchdog agency
 Clayton Anti-Trust Act 1914
 Improved Sherman act
 Magna Carta of labor
 1916 Reforms
 Keating-Owen Act

Barred Child labor
 Adamson Act
 8 hr workday
 Worker’s Compensation Act
 Federal Farm Act
 Use land or crops to get low-interest
federal loans
 Federal Warehouse Act
 Federal Highway Act
Constitutional Amendments
 16th Amendment
 Income tax authority 1913
 Max of 7%
 17th Amendment
 Direct election of US
Senators by voters rather
than state legislatures


Populist influence
Wisconsin
 18th Amendment
 Prohibition
 19th Amendment
 Women’s right to vote
Progressive loses steam