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 1900-1920

• 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 1900-1917

• 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

Tariff and the Banking System

• 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

Regulating Business; Aiding Workers and Families

• Federal Trade Commission law and the Clayton Anti-trust 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