conditions and improving situation late 19th/early 20th century

The Progressive Era

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Shirtwaists

Factory Work

Horror

Press Accounts

Anger

Union Response

Progressivism

• Influential reform movement – mid 1890s-end of WWI

• Many impulses – both liberal and conservative; Republican and Democrat

• Desired to soften the harsh impact of industrialization, urbanization and immigration

• Began in the cities among the middle classes

• First nationwide reform movement

General Middle Class Unease

• America now a world power with an empire

• Most productive industrial nation

• Dramatic economic and demographic changes

• Social Problems

Specific Developments

• Depression of the 1890s

• Emergence of both Populist and Socialist parties

• Numerous strikes and the rise of some small, but violent, unions

• Arrogance of large corporations

• The assassination of President McKinley by an anarchist

Reforms

• Relied on the new social sciences

• Moralistic and optimistic

• Need to reform society and institutions for “social efficiency”

• But no single motive behind reforms

Social Gospel

• Humanitarian reformers

• A means to translate faith into action

• “ministers of reform” and “reforms of the heart”

• Social justice impulses

Jane Addams and Hull House

Self-Interest

• Middle class feared possible class warfare or the rise of socialism

• Believed that reform to institutions and society needed

• Worried about widening gap between the few “haves” and the many “have-nots”

• Also feared the rising immigrant tide as a “menace” to democracy

Sense of Vulnerability

• Individuals no longer exercised control over their own

destinies

• The powerful corporation, “vested interests,”

“malefactors of great wealth” held the people hostage

• Reforms needed to protect/extend individual rights in the

modern industrial era

Muckrackers

• Articulated the general fears

• Gave focus to anxieties

• Laid bare the “shameful facts”

• Raised public awareness of specific issues upon which to focus reform

Women’s Activism

• General Federation of Women’s Clubs – united white middle class women’s clubs in 1890

• National Association of Colored Women – organized black middle class women’s clubs in 1896

• Issues: suffrage, libraries, schools, parks, hospitals, sanitation, juvenile courts, public health, pure foods and drugs, etc.

Types of Reform

• Four broad categories – To make the government more efficient, honest and

responsive to the popular will

– More stringent regulation of business to protect consumers, workers and small businesses

– Efforts to improve the quality of life in the cities

– Use of the coercive power of government to impose middle class standards on personal behavior and morality

Moral “Reforms”

• Prohibition, anti-gambling, close dance halls

• Mandatory sterilization of sex offenders, certain criminals and mentally deficient persons

• “Americanizing” immigrants

Grass-Roots

• Progressive movement began locally with ending corruption and increasing social services

• State level most crucial – Elected U.S. Senators

– State legislators could enact wide variety of laws

• Federal – – Began in the House, more slowly in the Senate

– Received a boost with Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit”

Roosevelt: Trust Busting

• Invoked the existing Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) as the basis of a suit against the Northern Securities Company

• Government won – first time the court ordered the dissolution of a corporation

• More than 40 suits initiated against monopolies

• Bureau of Corporations – 1903

• Finally realize the difference between bad and good big businesses

Labor Disputes

• Used executive authority to mediate labor dispute

• 50,000 coal miners’ strike in Pennsylvania in 1902 – owners refused to negotiate with strikers

• TR forced negotiations resulting in an increase in pay, decrease in hours but with no union recognition

• Government would now be a third party in major labor disputes

TR after 1904 Election

• Railroad regulation

• Public health issues

• Hepburn Act (1906) – substantially increased the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission

• Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)

• Meat Inspection Act (1906)

• Overhauled executive branch for more efficiency

Conservation

• Added 150 million acres

to government reserves

• Scientific management

and use of national

resources – first national

conservation policy

Expanded Role of the Presidency

• TR made reform respectable

• Used White House as a “bully pulpit”

• Established central role of the federal government in the implementation of progressive reforms

• Redefined the modern presidency

William Howard Taft

• TR’s hand-picked successor – wins 1908 election

• Wanted to place the “circle of law” around changes wrought by TR

• Caught in the cross fire between two Republican factions – the progressive wing (Insurgents) and the conservative wing (Old Guard)

• Bad blood develops between Insurgents and Taft over a tariff bill

Taft’s Important Reforms

• Children’s Bureau

• Mann Act of 1910

• Taft initiated more antitrust suits

and withdrew more public lands

than did TR

1912 Election

• Roosevelt-Taft feud and Republican factionalism leads to three way election

• Woodrow Wilson – Democratic Party

• William Howard Taft – Republican Party

• Teddy Roosevelt – Bull Moose Party

• Eugene Debs – Socialist Party

Roosevelt’s New Nationalism

• Business – big does not necessarily mean bad

• Vigorous regulation of big business

• Social justice measures

– Abolition of child labor

– Suffrage and minimum wage for women

• System of social insurance

• Health and safety standards for labor

Wilson’s New Freedom

• Commitment to limited government

• Small businesses

• Free competition

• Big business is bad – break them up

• Tariff reduction

Wilson’s Economic Reforms

• Underwood-Simmons Act (1913) – imposed a graduated income tax as authorized by the newly ratified 16th

Amendment

• Federal Reserve Act (1913) – banking reform – creates the system of federal reserve banks and the Federal Reserve Board

• Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)

• Creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Other Reforms

• Federal Farm Loan Act

• Warehouse Act

• Federal Highways Act

• Child labor laws

• Workers’ compensation for federal employees

• 8 hour days

Progressive Constitutional Amendments

• 16th – Income Tax

• 17th – Direct Election of U.S. Senators

• 18th – Prohibition

• 19th – Women’s Suffrage

TR and Race

A Mixed History

• TR thought in the stereotypical racial

terms of his day – but he made

gestures of goodwill to most groups

• Invited Booker T. Washington to dinner

at the White House

• Appointed several qualified blacks to

minor federal posts – including Dr.

William D. Crum to head the

Charleston, SC customs house in 1905

Brownsville Riot

• However, TR could be quite insensitive

• 1906 – members of a black army unit stationed in Brownsville, TX faced discrimination

• One hot August night one white man was killed and several wounded

• TR ordered all 167 members of three companies dishonorably discharged – after the midterm elections

The Progressive Era and Race

• Progressive era coincided with the years of greatest segregation in the South

• Progressives seldom included blacks in their reform schemes

• However, the black middle class with some white supporters do make some attempts for social justice

Two Paths

• Booker T. Washington’s

Atlanta Compromise –

accommodation and vocational

uplift

• WEB DuBois’s Talented Tenth

– political struggle to achieve

full suffrage and equal rights

led by a cultured black

vanguard

Birth of the NAACP

• 1905 – Du Bois forms the Niagara Movement for

cultural and economic equality

• 1909 – movement transforms into the NAACP –

Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, white settlement workers

like Jane Addams are founding members

• From the beginning and organization of both

black and white

Women’s Suffrage

• Susan B. Anthony – most prominent member of the suffrage movement in the late 19th – early 20th century

• Grass roots movement led by Carrie Chapman Catt – worked state-by- state for suffrage and on the federal level for a constitutional amendment

• Militant movement led by Alice Paul – more radical protests, hunger strikes, arrests

Success – 19th Amendment (1920)