Chapter 21
The Progressive Era
1900-1917
Introduction
• How did intellectuals and writers prepare the way for
progressive reform?
• What conditions in the cities and states bothered
progressives and what did they do about them?
• How did progressive reform reach national politics and
which leaders and issues were involved?
• What impact did progressive reform have on the lives of
women, immigrants, the urban poor and African
Americans?
• Did Progressivism alter people’s views on the proper role
of government in America’s society and economy?
The Many Faces of Progressivism
• Progressives included much of the new urban
middle class- mostly white native born
Protestants
• Middle class women, often college educated,
working through the settlement houses and
private organizations such as the National
Consumers League played an important role.
• Urban immigrant political machines and workers
began to demand improved labor conditions
• Unlike the Populist movement, the progressives
were in the urban areas and drew the support of
the middle class
The Many Faces of Progressivism
cont.
• There was never any one unified
movement
• Some wanted regulation of business,
some wanted laws to protect workers,
some wanted to cure social ills.
Intellectuals Offer New Social
Views
• Thorstein Veblen, Herbert Croly, William
James and Jane Addams called for
government to regulate unfair business
practices and protect poor workers.
• John Dewey wanted schools to teach
democracy and cooperation
• Oliver Wendell Holmes wanted judges to
allow the law to evolve as society changes
Novelists, Journalists and Artists
Spotlight Social problems
• Muckrakers tried to expose to middle class Americans
political corruption and corporate wrongdoing
• Lincoln Steffens wrote about political machines and party
bosses
• Ida Tarbell wrote about the abuses of Standard Oil in
McClures and Collier’s magazines
• Frank Norris and Theidore Dreiser wrote about business
abuses and political corruption
• Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis took pictures of the Urban
Poor
• Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle about the meatpacking
industry
Reforming the Political Process
• Hazen Pingree of Detroit, Samuel Jones of
Toledo were examples of progressive
mayors who brought about change in their
communities
• Commission and city-manager forms of
government were experiments of reform
governments
• Secret ballot, direct primary, initiative,
referendum and recall
Regulating Business, Protecting
Workers
• 1901b JP Morgan consolidates several steel companies
into US Steel- controlled 80% of the steel in America
• 1910 1.6 million youngsters 10-15 worked full time
• Average 9 ½ hours per day
• No health and safety regulations
• Governor Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin convinced the
legislature to create a state railroad commission,
increase corporate taxes and limited business
contributions to political campaigns. This became known
as the : Wisconsin Idea”
• States passed maximum work hours for women and
factory safety codes. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
• Worker’s compensation and ban on child labor
Making Cities More Livable
• Cities continue to grow between 19001920
• Progressives called for parks,
playgrounds, housing codes, garbage
collection, street cleaning, water and
sewer systems, reduction of air pollution
and regulation of food and milk standards
Moral Control and the Cities
• Reformers moved to censor movies and
prostitution
• Mann Act 1910 closed the red-light
districts in many cities
Battling Alcohol and Drugs
• Prohibition was the biggest moral crusade
of the Progressive Era
• Ant-Saloon league
• Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’
• Carrie Nation
• Laws passed regulating Morphine, Heroin
and Cocaine
Immigration Restriction and
Eugenics
• 17,000,000 immigrants mainly from southern and
eastern Europe poured into the country between 19001917
• Nativists believed that immigrants caused poverty and
immorality
• Henry Cabot Lodge formed the Immigration Restriction
League
• 1917 Congress passes law restricting illiterate
immigrants from entering the country
• Eugenicists claimed to control society by controlled
breeding.
• Laws were passed allowing forced sterilization of
criminals and sex offenders
Racism and Progressivism
• 1900-10 Million African Americans still lived in the South,
most as sharecroppers
• Great Migration- escape of Jim Crow, poverty,
disenfranchisement and violence
• African Americans encountered de-facto segregation and
discrimination in the North
• African Americans developed their own communities,
culture and music- beginnings of the Harlem
Renaissance
• Southern Progressives such as James K. Vardaman and
Ben Tillman fought for economic and political reform for
poor whites
• Lillian Wald and Mary Whitte Ovington decried racial
injustice and helped found the NAACP
African-American Leaders
Organize Against Racism
• Booker T. Washington advised blacks to concentrate on
economic advancement- “Everybody’s money is green”
• Washington advocated vocational training
• William Monroe Trotter, W.E.B. Dubois and Ida Wells
Barnett urged blacks to fight for economic, political and
educational equality
• 1905 W.E.B. Dubois and others formed the Niagara
Movement
• 1909 Dubois and others in the Niagara Movement joined
with White Progressives to form the NAACP and rejected
Booker T. Washington’s advice
Revival of the Woman-Suffrage
Movement
• 1900- Carrie Chapman Catt led the National
American Woman Suffrage Association in
lobbying, demonstrating and distributing
literature
• They convinced several states to allow women
to vote
• Alice Paul organized the Woman’s Party to bring
direct pressure to the Federal Government
• They picketed the White House and went on a
hunger strike
Enlarging Woman’s Sphere
• Feminists challenged the traditional role of
women.
• Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton and
Margaret Sanger led the progressive
drives to abolish child labor, protect the
health of workers and consumers,
establish day care centers and birth
control clinics
Workers Organize; Socialism
Advances
• Employers often hired immigrants as scabs to replace
striking workers
• AFL craft unions grew but most factory workers were
unorganized
• International Ladies’ Garment Workers and Industrial
Workers of the World (western miners, lumberjacks and
migratory farm workers) led several successful strikes
• Government restrictions of labor unions during WWI
eventually caused the IWW to decline
• Socialist Party of America sought to end capitalism in
America through the ballot box instead of by revolution
and Eugene Debs received 900,000 votes in 1912 for
the Presidency
Roosevelt’s Path to the White
House
• Theodore Roosevelt enters the White
House after William McKinley is
assassinated in 1901
• Roosevelt was a progressive that turned
the Presidency into a bully pulpit and a
center of legislative initiative
Labor Disputes, Trustbusting,
Railroad Regulation
• Roosevelt induced the management and United
Coal Mine Workers to sit for arbitration during
the 1912 coal strike. The commission granted
workers higher wages and shorter hours
• Northern Securities vs. US
• Defeated Democratic Candidate Alton B. Parker
in 1904 election
• 1906 strengthened corporate regulation through
the Hepburn Act which extended the Interstate
Commerce Act
Consumer Protection and Racial
Issues
• Upton Sinclair- The Jungle
• Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass The Pure Food and Drug
Act
• Brownsville, Texas incident- The Brownsville Affair, or
the Brownsville Raid, was a racial incident that arose out of
tensions between black soldiers and white citizens in Brownsville
Texas, in 1906. When a white bartender was killed and a police
officer wounded by gunshot, townspeople accused the members of
the 25th Infantry, a unit of Buffalo Soldiers stationed at nearby Fort
Brown. Although commanders said the soldiers had been in the
barracks all night, evidence was planted against them.
• As a result of a US Army Inspector General's investigation,
President Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167
soldiers of the 25th Infantry, costing them pensions and preventing
them from serving in civil service jobs. A renewed investigation in
the early 1970s exonerated the discharged black troops. The
government pardoned them and restored their records to show
honorable discharges but did not provide retroactive compensation.
Environmentalism Progressive
Style
• 1890’s land use was a political issue
• Roosevelt’s Forest Service chief was Gifford
Pinchot
• Roosevelt signed the Newlands Act in 1902
which set aside 200,000,000 acres of forests
and mineral rich lands for government managed
use rather than for sale to business. Roosevelt
signed the Antiquities Act and set aside land for
National parks
Taft in the White House
• William Howard Taft won the Republican nomination and
the election of 1908 over William Jennings Bryan
• Taft prosecuted mote trusts than Roosevelt but lacked
Roosevelt’s flair for publicity and political skill
• Taft sided with the conservative side of the Republican
party over the progressives
• Taft signed the Payne-Aldrich tariff, fired Gifford Pinchot
and supported Joseph Cannon for Speaker of the House
• Theodore Roosevelt returned from a world tour in 1910
and immediately started trying the restore the
progressive wing of the Republican party
The Four-Way Election of 1912
• Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Republican nomination
and lost.
• Roosevelt’s backers formed the Progressive party that
became known as the “Bull Moose” Party
• Democrats chose Woodrow Wilson
• Socialists ran Eugene Debs
• Wilson’s New Freedom rejected big government in
Washington in favor of small competing business
enterprises.
• Roosevelt and Taft spilt the Republican vote turning the
White House and Congress over to the Democrats
• Wilson convinced Congress to pass the 1913
Underwood-Simmons Tariff which reduced
import taxes by 15%
• 1913 Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into
law- banking is private with federal regulation
• Federal Reserve is empowered to expand the
nation’s money supply by using Federal Reserve
notes under the supervision of the Federal
Reserve Board
Tariff and the Banking
System
Regulating Business; Aiding
Workers and Families
• Federal Trade Commission law and the Clayton Antitrust Act were empowered to uncover unfair business
practices and strengthen the Sherman Anti-trust Act
• The Clayton Anti-trust Act also exempted union strikes,
boycotts and picketing from prosecution under anti-trust
laws
• Keating-Owen Child Labor law and Adamson Act limited
child labor and cut the working day to 8 hours for railroad
workers
• Workingmen’s Compensation Act- Federal Employees
• Wilson also signed into law legislation for low interest
loans for farmers
Progressivism and the Constitution
• Supreme Court- Louis Brandeis (Jewish)
• 16th Amendment- Federal Income Tax)
• 17th Amendment- Direct Election of
Senators
• 18th Amendment- Prohibition
• 19th Amendment- Women’s suffrage
1916 Wilson Edges Hughes
• Election of 1916
– Wilson- “He kept us out of war”
– Charles Evans Hughes- reunited Republicans