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
 1901-1917
 Progressives:
 Christian mission
 Remove social evils
 Concern about growing power of
wealthy and trusts
 Feared immigrant poor
 Progressive reformers
 Protestant church leaders
 African-Americans
 Union leaders
 Feminists
 Largest group: middle-class

Disturbed what might happen to
American Democracy if issues were
left unchecked
 Famous




Teddy Roosevelt
Robert Lafollette
W.J.B.
Woodrow Wilson
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
 What to fix?
 Business
 Workers/urban poor
 Structure of government
 Immigration
 Urban morality
 Social disorder
Intellectuals
 Thorstein Velben
 Conspicuous consumption 1899



Flaunting wealth/superiority
Criticized wealth lifestyle, wasteful
Workers and engineers better to lead society
than robber barrons
 William James
 Pragmatism 1907

Pratical and rational approach
 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


Schools should create human/ cooperative
society
Schools should be machines for social change
 Oliver Wendell
 The Common Law 1881
 Law must change as society changes
Novelists, Journalists, and Artists
 Novelists
 Frank Morris

The Octopus 1901

Tyrannical power of railroad companies
 Theodore Dreiser
 The Financier, The Titan 1912

Portrayed ruthlessness of an industrialist
 Lincoln Steffans
 The Shame of Cities 1904
 Journalists
 McClures, Colliers
 Lincoln Steffans/ Jacob Riis

Muckrakers

Initially a bad Reputation from T.R.
 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




his administration
Lowered railroad rates
Raised railroad taxes
Improved education
“laboratory of democracy”

 State Reforms
 Secret Ballots

 Samuel M. “Golden Rule” Jones
(Toledo, Ohio)



Social Gospel follower
Profit-sharing in factory
Playgrounds, free kindergarten,
lodging for homeless
1903 Direct Primary





Copied Australia
1910 all states used
Initiatives
Referendums
Recall
New procedures = weakened party
loyalty and voter decline
Political Reforms
 Secret ballot
 Direct primaries
 Before candidate was
nominated by party bosses
 Direct election of senators
 Before elected by state
legislatures

Dominated by corporate
America
 1913= 17th amendment
 All U.S. Senators elected by
popular vote
 Initiative
 Method by which voters
could consider a bill
 Referendum
 Method that allowed
citizens to vote on proposed
laws printed to their ballots
 Recall
 Could remove a corrupt
politician by majority vote
Regulating business, protecting workers
 Corporate consolidation
continued into 1900s
 United States Steel Company 1901
(J.P. Morgan)
 International Harvester
Company
 General Motors Company 1908
 Difficulties
 Entire family worked

 Long hours/ hazards
 Efficiency
 Frederick Taylor

 Worker’s benefit
 Annual real wages increase

Purchasing power
1.6 million children
Scientific Management
 Laws/reforms
 Triangle shirtwaist fire
 Florence Kelley

Conditions in factories
 Alice Hamilton

Industrial hygiene
Making Cities More Livable
 Human warehouses
 Lacked:




Adequate parks
Municipal services
Public Health resources
Recreational facilities
 Reforms
 City Planning

Daniel Burnham


Chicago, D.C., Cleveland, San Fran.
Enriched quality of life
 NY Tenement reforms 1911
 Regulation of milk and food
handlers
 Improved sewage and water
systems
 Vaccinations = IMR drops
 Public utilities taken out of the
hands of political bosses
Moral Control in the Cities
 Progressive = self-righteous
 Lower-class amusements immoral
 Amusement parks
 Nickelodeons


Charlie Chaplin, Mae West
“nickel madness”
 Tin Pan Alley
 Ragtime

“St. Louis Blues”
 Natives vs. Immigrants
 Temperance targeted:



 Importance of taverns to immigrant
communities
 Drug-use Campaigns
 Opium, Cocaine widely used

 Attempts at reform
 Anti-Saloon League


1895, Protestant Clergy
Focused on actual ban of alcohol instead of
just “taking the pledge”
 Women’s Christian Temperance
Movement (WCTM)



Targeted prostitution
“social evil”= STDs, “White slave” hysteria
1910 Mann Act

Illegal to transport women over state lines
for immoral purposes

Jack Johnson 1913
Irish
Germans
Italians

Cocaine in Coca-Cola
Cough Medicine
 1912 treaty banning Opium trade
 1914 Narcotics Act
Carrie
“Hatchet”
Nation
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

1896, 1913, 1915
 Eugenics
 Used immigration restriction as a means of
to keep “American stock” from becoming
inferior

Controlled reproduction
 Madison Grant

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

Barred Japanese from buying land
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


Church
Urban black community
Black Organization
 African-Americans basically ignored by
Presidents
 William Monroe Trotter
 1902, Criticizes Booker T. Washington,
too slow
 Ida Wells-Barnett
 Anti-lynching campaign
 W.E.B. Du Bois
 Attacked “Tuskegee Machine”

Believe blacks needs social and political
rights to get economic independence
 The Souls of Black Folk 1903
 Demanded full racial equality
 Niagara Movement 1905
 Universal male suffrage
 Civil rights
 NAACP 1909
 Founded on Lincoln’s birthday
 By 1920= 100,000 members
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

Lobbied legislation, state level



Argued broadening democracy would
empower women, enabling them to take better
care of their family
Media blitz, fundraisers
1917 NY Victory
 Civil Disobedience
 Alice Paul


Radical, thought C.C.C. was to passive
Picketed President Wilson



Formed National Women’s Part in 1916
Focused on support of congress, amendment
19th amendment
Woman’s “New Sphere”
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
 Women and Economics 1898
 Roots of female subordination
 Advocated economic independence
 Herland 1915

Three young males living in a utopia run
by women
 Margaret Sanger
 Coined term “birth control”
 Social movement for social change

1916- first clinic
 Also Mary Ware Dennett
 Wrote The Sex Side of Life

Supported birth control
 Wasn’t legalized until 1965
Worker’s Organization
 Labor Unions expand 20%
 1908 Danbury Hatters Case
 Forbade unions for organizing boycotts
 International Ladies’ Garment Worker’s
Union
 Success strikes 1909, 1911
 Women of all classes participated

Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire
 Industrial Workers of the World,
Chicago 1905
 Wobblies

Early socialist movement



Led by William “Big Bill” Haywood
Called for radical change of capitalism
Targeted most exploited workers
 Less mass strikes of gold miners
 1912 bitter Textile mill strike
 Reputation for violence
 Faced criticism from public and government
Socialism
 Socialist Party of America
 Hybrid of Karl Marx theories
 Political party 1901

Before “Socialist Labor Party”
1897
 Eugene V. Debs
 Ran in 5 Presidential Elections
 Championed end of Capitalism
and public ownership of
railroads, utilities, oil, and steel
Theodore Roosevelt 1901-1908
 “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
 Enforced Sherman Anti-Trust 1890
 Distinguished between “bad” and “good”
trusts

Good = efficient, low prices for consumer
 1902 United Mine Worker’s Union Strike
 1902 State of the Union

“Trustbusting”

Suit against Northern Securities (Rockefeller’s
railroad monopoly)


Supreme Court sides with Teddy!
1903 Elkins Act

Strengthened ICC
 Created Department of Labor and Commerce
 Hepburn Act of 1906

Empowered Interstate Commerce Commission

Could fix rates for railroad
Teddy’s “Square Deal”
 Favored neither business nor labor
but wanted a square deal for both
 Coal Miner’s Strike 1902
 Tried to mediate
 domestic program formed upon
 Threatened to take over mine’s with
three basic ideas: conservation of
natural resources, control of
corporations, and consumer
protection.
 These three demands are often
referred to as the "three C's“
 it aimed at helping middle class
citizens and involved bad trusts
while at the same time protecting
business from the most extreme
demands of organized labor.
troops
 Settled on 10% wage raise and 9 hour
work day reduction
 Helped win Teddy election in 1904
T.R. Reforms
 Consumer Protection
 Pure Food and Drug Act 1906

The Jungle 1906- Upton Sinclair
 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
 Forrest Reserve Act
 150 million acres of national
reserve
William Howard Taft
 Handpicked by T.R.

T.R.’s Secretary of War


Wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice
Presidency marked by progressive stalemate,
bitter break with T.R., and a schism in the
Republican Party

Sided with Conservatives
 T.R.’s Legacy

Mann-Elkins Act 1910

Gave power to ICC


To suspend new railroad rates and oversee telephone,
telegraph, and cable companies
More trustbusting than T.R.

Took on U.S. Steel
 Insurgents

Sen. La Follette


Payne-Aldrich Tariff


Issue over the tariff

Taft had promised to lower the tarrif
Raised the tariff
Ballinger-Pinchot Affair

Angered T.R.
The Greatest Presidential Election
 Republicans
 Taft
 Conservative
 Democrats
 Woodrow Wilson

NJ governor, President of Princeton
 New Freedom

Small government, small business, free
competition

Limited of government power
 Progressives
 Roosevelt, “Bull Moose Party”
 New Nationalism



Federal planning and regulation
More social welfare
Increases in power of government



Lasting legacy….. New Deal
Tariff regulation, Women’s suffrage
Regulation of businesses and unions
 Socialist
 Eugene V. Debs
Woodrow Wilson
 Owed victory to democratic machine,
turned his back
 Banking and Currency Reform 1913
 Panic of 1907
 Federal Reserve Act 1913
 Democratic congress ready to do his

bidding
 Believed President should actively

lead Congress
 Tariff
 Campaign pledge
 Spoke directly to Congress

Appeal to people for support of
legislation
 Underwood-Simmons Tariff


Reduced rates by average of 15%,
included income tax
Lowered tariff for 1st time in 50 years
Proposed to Congress a national
banking system with 12 regional
Federal reserve banks


Most imp. Legislation
Though gold standard was too
“inflexible”


Today we purchase goods and services
using Federal Reserve Notes (dollar
bills)
Banks too influenced by Wall Street and
not concerned with the public good
The “Fed”

Regulates our economy today
Wilson Reforms
 Federal Trade Commission Act 1914
 Watchdog agency
 Took action against unfair trade practices
 Clayton Anti-Trust Act 1914
 Improved Sherman act
 Magna Carta of labor


Spelled out illegal practices
Exempted labor unions from being prosecutred
 1916 Reforms
 Keating-Owen Act

Barred Child labor

Supreme Court found unconstitutional

1918 Hammer v. Dagenhart
 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
Progressives loses steam