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THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

America Seeks Reforms in the Early 20th Century

Vocabulary

  • Social Gospel Movement
  • Temperance Movement
  • Muckrakers
  • Ida Tarbell
  • Settlement House
  • National Woman Suffrage Movement
  • Susan B. Anthony
  • Elizabeth Cady Staton

Problems of the Gilded Age

The Progressive Movement
1890 - 1920

The Progressive Movement was at its greatest influence from 1900 to the start of World War I.

Progressives borrowed ideas from the Populists but they were different in many ways.

Progressives were mainly middle-class city people, instead of the Populist farmers and factory workers.

Writers, lawyers, ministers, college professors, and even Presidents became the Progressive leaders.

Origins of Progressivism

  • As America entered the 20th century, middle class reformers at the municipal, state, and national levels addressed the problems of the Gilded Age, including:
  • Reform Tradition
  • Populism
  • Problem with Industrial society
  • Influenced of the Middle class
  • Social Gospel Movement
  • New form of Journalism
  • Rising consumer consciences
  • Socialism, Anarchism AND Communism

Four Goals Progressives

Protect social welfare

Promote moral development

Secure economic reform

Foster efficiency

The Muckrakers

  • As the cities continued to expand the newspapers and magazines began to reach a larger audience.
  • Investigative reporters, writers, and social scientists exposed the industrial and governmental corruption.
  • These writers became known as Muckrakers, they raked up all the muck or the dirt of American life in both business and government.

Muckrakers and Their Influences

  • Government passed the
  • “Meat Inspection Act” law that set standards of cleanliness and required federal inspection of meat plants.
  • “Pure Food & Drug Act” law that required foods to be pure and accurately labeled.

Upton Sinclair

He exposed dangerous working conditions and unsanitary practices in meat packing industry in his book The Jungle.

Problem – the horrible living conditions of the poor in the cities.

Led to New York City passing building codes to promote safety and health.

Muckrakers and Their Influences

Jacob Riis

He exposed the poverty, living conditions, and disease of the urban poor in his book “How the Other Half Lives” .

Muckrakers and Their Influences

Problem – governments had become corrupt with political machines.

Boss Tweed and other corrupt government officials went to jail for corruption.

Boss Tweed ran NYC’s most powerful political machine

Thomas Nast

Political Cartoonist who exposed the corruption of NYC’s Tammany Hall led by Boss Tweed.

Muckrakers and Their Influences

Problem – trusts and monopolies had an unfair advantage among businesses.

Government passed Sherman Anti-Trust Act outlawing monopolies.

Ida Tarbell

Exposed Standard Oil’s ruthless business tactics of forcing others out of business and thereby creating a monopoly.

Muckrakers and Their Influences

Problem – city and state leaders were often corrupt, took bribes or broke the law.

Lincoln Steffens

Writer who exposed corruption in city and state governments in his book,

“The Shame of the Cities”.

Muckrakers and Their Influences

Problem – railroads were charging farmers more than their crops were often worth to ship them to market.

Frank Norris

Pointed out the stranglehold the railroads had on California farmers in his book “The Octopus” .

Jane Addams
Urban and Immigrant Poor

  • Settlement Houses: located in working class areas, offered help for new immigrants
  • Hull House, Chicago established; devoted to helping urban poor

Ida B. Wells

  • Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist and suffragist, was another influential female muckraker. She had been born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862, and in the 1890s became involved in anti-lynching activism. In 1892, she published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, which detailed the systematic disenfranchisement of Southern blacks and even some poor whites. Wells was very influential in the early movement for civil rights, and was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909.

Protect Social Welfare

  • Industrialization in the late 19th century was largely unregulated. Employers felt little responsibility toward their workers.
  • As a result, settlement houses and churches served the community and organizations like the YMCA and the Salvation Army took on service roles.

Salvation Army Shelter

Promote Moral Development

  • Some reformers felt that the answer to society’s problems was personal behavior. They proposed such reforms as prohibition.
  • Groups wishing to ban alcohol included the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Women Lead Reform

  • Many of the leading Progressive reformers were women. Middle and upper class women entered the public sphere after graduating from the new women’s colleges.

Colleges like Vassar and Smith allowed women to excel

Women Reformers

  • Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women's rights advocate who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement
  • Elizabeth Cady Staton was an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement.

Women in the Work Force

  • Opportunities for women increased especially in the cities. By 1900, one out of five women worked.
  • The garment industry was popular as were office work, retail, and education.

Three-Part Strategy for
Winning Suffrage

  • Suffragettes tried three approaches to winning the vote:

Convincing state legislatures to adopt the vote.

Pursuing court cases to test 14th Amendment.

Pushing for national Constitutional amendment.

Efforts To Limit Hours

  • The Supreme Court and the states enacted or strengthened laws reducing women’s hours of work.
  • Progressives also succeeded in winning worker’s compensation to aid families of injured workers.

Vocabulary

  • Political machines
  • Secret Ballot
  • Initiative
  • Referendum
  • Direct Primary
  • 17th Amendment

Cleaning Up Local Government

  • Efforts at reforming local government stemmed from the desire to make government more efficient and responsive to citizens.
  • Some believe it also was meant to limit immigrants’ influence on local governments.

Election Reform

  • Citizens fought for and secured such measures as secret ballots, referendums, and recalls. Citizens could petition and get initiatives on the ballot.
  • In 1899, Minnesota passed the first statewide primary system.

Direct Election Of Senators

  • Before 1913, each state’s legislature had chosen U.S. senators. To force senators to be more responsive to the public, Progressives pushed for the popular election of senators.
  • As a result, Congress passed the 17th Amendment in 1913.

Check for Understanding

Secure Economic Reform

  • The Panic of 1893 prompted some Americans to question the capitalist economic system.
  • As a result, some workers embraced socialism. Eugene Debs organized the American Socialist Party in 1901.

Debs encouraged workers to reject American capitalism

Fostering Efficiency

  • Many Progressive leaders put their faith in scientific principles to make society better.
  • In industry, Frederick Taylor began using time and motion studies to improve factory efficiency. Taylorism became an industry fad as factories sought to complete each task quickly.

Regulating Big Business

  • Under the progressive Republican leadership of Robert La Follette, Wisconsin led the way in regulating big business and implementing the Wisconsin Idea – a partnership between government and the experts at the University of Wisconsin.

Robert La Follette

Protecting Working Children

  • As the number of child workers rose, reformers worked to end child labor.
  • Children were more prone to accidents caused by fatigue.
  • Nearly every state limited or banned child labor by 1918

Check for Understanding

The Progressive Presidents

Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal

  • When President William McKinley was assassinated six months into his second term, Theodore Roosevelt became the nation’s 26th president

McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in Buffalo in September of 1901

The Modern President

  • When Roosevelt was thrust into the presidency in 1901, he became the youngest president ever at age 42.
  • He quickly established himself as a modern president who could influence the media and shape legislation.

1902 Coal Strike

  • In 1902, 140,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania went on strike for increased wages, a 9-hour work day, and the right to unionize. Mine owners refused to bargain.
  • Roosevelt called in both sides and settled the dispute. Thereafter, when a strike threatened public welfare, the federal government was expected to step in and help.

Trust-Busting

  • By 1900, trusts – legal bodies created to hold stock in many companies – controlled 80% of U.S. industries.
  • Roosevelt filed 44 antitrust suits under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

“The Jungle” Leads to
Food Regulation

  • After reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Roosevelt pushed for passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.
  • The act mandated cleaner conditions for meatpacking plants.

Pure Food and Drug Act

  • In response to unsubstantiated claims and unwholesome products, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The Act halted the sale of contaminated foods and medicines and called for truth in labeling.

Check for Understanding

Roosevelt and the Environment

  • Before Roosevelt’s presidency, the federal government paid very little attention to the nation’s natural resources. Roosevelt made conservation a primary concern of his administration.

Film clip of Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt’s Environmental Accomplishments

  • Roosevelt set aside 148 million acres of forest reserves, 1.5 million acres of water-power sites, 50 wildlife sanctuaries, and several national parks.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Progressivism under President Taft

  • Republican William Howard Taft easily defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 presidential election.
  • Among his accomplishments, Taft “busted” 90 trusts during his four years in office – more than Theodore Roosevelt during his eight years in office.

Taft, right, was Roosevelt’s War Secretary

Taft Loses Power

  • Taft was not popular with the American public or reform-minded Republicans. He called the Presidency, the “lonesomest” job in the world.” By 1910, Democrats had regained control of the House of Representatives.

1912 Election

  • Republicans split in 1912 between Taft and Roosevelt (who returned after a safari to Africa).
  • Convention delegates nominated Taft and discontented Republicans formed a third party, the Progressive Party (nicknamed the Bull Moose Party), and nominated Roosevelt.
  • The Democrats put forward a reform-minded New Jersey governor, Woodrow Wilson.

Check for Understanding

Wilson’s New Freedom

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

  • In 1914 Congress enacted the Clayton Anti-Trust Act that strengthened the Sherman Act.
  • It had an anti-trust provision that prevented companies from acquiring stock from another company and supported workers’ unions.

Federal Trade Commission Formed

  • The FTC was formed in 1914 to serve as a “watchdog” agency to end unfair business practices. The FTC protects consumers from business fraud.

Federal Income Tax Arrives

  • Wilson worked hard to lower tariffs, however, the lost revenue had to be made up and was when the 16th Amendment instituted a graduated federal income tax.

Progressives in Florida

  • Governor William Sherman Jennings reclaim land from the railroad baron.
  • May Mann Jennings support towards nature conservation led to the creation of the Everglades national park in 1947.
  • Gov. Napoleon Bonaparte Broward advocated for farmers and small business.
  • The progressive Era in Florida is refer as the “Broward Era”