Chapter 23: "Making the World-Over": The Progressive Era

• Progressive Era: (1890-1920) a period of social activism and political reform

• Progressives

• Attacked corruption and inefficiency in government and used government to regulate businesses

• All sorts of people

• People who improved the government

• Often biased

• A lot of Christians

Elements of reform

• Political Progressivism

• Progressives crusaded against the abuses of urban political bosses and corporate barons

• Greater democracy

• Honest and efficient government

• Greater effective regulations of businesses

• Social justice for working people

• Had conservative matters too

• Source of Progressivism

• Conflict between employers and employees

• The Depression

• Populism

• Mugwumps

• Socialist doctrines

• Main stream reform

• Honest-Government ideal:

• An element of progressivism by the Mugwumps (people who advocated for a merit system)

• Efforts to address festering Urban problems

The Social Gospel

• Social Gospel

• Church reformers taught this due to fear

• (1875) Washington Gladden invited strikers at a shoe factory to his church

• Working people and their employers

• Written by Gladden after strikers refused to attend his church due to the factory owners and managers who attended

• “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”

• Rejected social Darwinism

• New era of American religion

Early Efforts at Urban Reform

• Settlement houses

• Bring together prosperous men and women with the working poor

• Organized support for local and state laws to help the people

• Hull House

• Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr

• Chicago (1889)

• Jane Addams

• Hull House

• Enrolled kids to clubs and kindergarten

• Infant nursery

• Sponsored health clinics, lectures, music and art studios, employment bureau, men’s club, training in skills (book binding etc), gymnasiums, and a savings bank

• Most venerate woman in America

• Federal Children’s Bureau: Lillian Wald (1912)

• Women

• Settlement house = paid job for women

• Employed women ↑

• 1880 = 2.6 million → 1890 = 4 million → 1900 = 5.1 million → 1910 = 7.8 million

• Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• Women to vote because of 18th amendment

• Founded NWSA

• NWSA vs AWSA

• National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) → promoted women’s suffrage, saw voting as a feminist cause to be promoted

• American Woman Suffrage Association → single-mindedly focused on the suffrage as the first and basic reform

• National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

• NWSA and AWSA unite after 3 yers of rivalry

• Stanton as President for 2 years followed by Anthony

• Spread of Women’s suffrage

• Work carried on by Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt

• Voting rights won a Washington State referendum in 1910

• California, Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon

• (1913) Illinois joins in presidential and municipal elections

• New York (1917) → lead states east of the Mississippi to adopt universal suffrage

• Muckraker

• Investigative journalists who reported on the much of city and work conditions

• Gave journalism a new social purpose beyond siding with a political party

• Sam McClure

• McClure Magazine

• Rampant corruption in politics and corporations

• Everyone breaking the law

• A muckraker

Features of Progressivism

• Expansion of Democracy

• Democratize government

• More political participation

• Election of candidates

• Initiative → if a designated number is met for petitions it can be considered

• Referendum → when electoral colleges can vote the petition up or down

• Recall → people can shoes who goes up and down

• 17th amendment

• Taylorism

• The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) by Frederick W. Taylor

• Reduce waste and increase productivity

• Efficiency in the government

• Reorganization of agencies to eliminate redundancy

• Establish clear lines

• A board composed of elected administrative heads of city (Galveston, Texas) departments

• City managers (Staunton, Virginia) plan

• “Wisconsin Idea”

• Governor Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin

• Efficient and more scientific government

• Social Justice movement

• Middle class women

• Temperance, Child Labor, and working hours 

• Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

• Largest women’s group in the nation with 300k members

• Frances Willard

• Social problems due to alcoholism

• 8 hours work day, child labor, nutrition, federal inspection of food, schooling, and consistent marriage/divorce laws

• National Child Labor Committee: (1904) prohibit employment of young children and limit hours for older kids

• Lewis W. Hine

• Photographer

• Documented child labor conditions and advocated for change

• Florence Kelley

• Head of the National Consumers’ league

• Regulate hours of work for women

• Many states also outlaw night work and dangerous occupations

• Often nullified

• Lochner v New York: court voided a 10 hours work day

• Muller v Oregon: 10 hours work day for women

• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

• (25 March 1911) fire outbreak

• 850 dead

• Escape routes limited

• Catalyst for reform

• Prohibition

• Ban of alcohol

• Prohibition Party

• Anti-Saloon League: pioneered the strategy of single-issue pressure group

• 18th Amendment: prohibition

• Left out: 

• → Blacks ←

• Unfair bias and segregation

Roosevelt’s Progressivism

• Square Deal

• (1902)

• More rigorous enforcement of existing antitrust laws and stricter controls on big businesses

• Roosevelt avoided wholesale trust busting

• Northern Securities Company

• A giant conglomerate of interconnected railroads

• Roosevelt ordered the U.S. attorney general to break it apart in 1902

• (1904) Supreme court ordered the railroad combination to be dissolved

• Roosevelt and the coal mine strike

• (12 May) 150,000 members of the United Mine Workers (UMW) walked off the job in Pennsylvania and West Virginia

• (October 1902) shutdown caused coal priced to group and people need it

• Strikers wanted 9 hours work days and 20% raise, but got 9 hours work day and 10% raise

• Elkins Act: made it illegal for railroads to take, as well as give, secret rebates on freight charges to their favorite customers

Roosevelt’s Second Term

• Hepburn Act

• (1906)

• Gave the ICC the power to set max freight rates for the railroad industry

• Upton Sinclair

• The Jungle (1906)

• Promoting socialism through exposing the horrors of a filthy Chicago meat packing company

• Meat Inspection Act: required federal inspection of meats destined for interstate commerce and empowered officials in the Agricultural Department to impose sanitation standards

• Pure Food and Drug Act: restrictions on the makers of prepared foods and patent medicines and forbade the creating/shipping of bad foods

• Conservation

• Roosevelt was energetic about environmental conservation

• 1st president to challenge a long-standing myth of inexhaustible natural resources

• Regulations for hunting/hunters

• Yellowstone National Park: 2 million acres, 1872, at the junction of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana

• Gifford Pinchot

• Nation’s first professional forester

• U.S. Division of Forestry

• Economic growth and environmentalist

• Conservation sought to promote the “greatest good”

• Said that Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation was the most significant achievement

From Roosevelt to Taft

• William H. Taft

• Secretary of war

• Ratified his choice in 1908

• Born in Cincinnati (1857)

• Yale grad

• Ohio Supreme Cout and U.S. solicitor general

• Governor-general of the Philippines

• Both President and Cheif Justice of the Supreme Court

• Preferred lower tariffs

• Less skillful

• Ballinger-Pichot Controversy

• Made Taft to look like he’s abandoning Roosevelt’s conservation policies

• Pinchot vs Richard A. Ballinger (Seattle)

• Ballinger opened the doors to land saved for conservation

• Pinchot fired for reporting Ballinger’s actions

• New-Nationalism

• Resembled the populist progressivism of Bryan

• Federal regulation of huge corporations

• Progressive income tax

• Child labor laws

• “Square Deal”

• Campaign finance reform

• Mann-Elkins Act

• Empowered the ICC to initiate in changes in railroad freight and extend regulatory powers to telephone and telegraph companies

• Commerce court to expedite appeals of ICC ruling

• Sixteenth Amendment

• Federal income taxes

• 17th amendment → popular election of senators

• Bull Moose Party: Roosevelt's third party

• Woodrow Wilson

• Democratic leader

• New Jersey governor

• Nominee for 1912

• President of Princeton University

• Born in Staunton, Virginia – University of Virginia

• John Hopkins University in Baltimore

• Reform candidate

Woodrow Wilson’s Progressivism

• Election of 1912

• 4 candidates

• Wilson

• Taft

• Debs

• Roosevelt

• Wilson won

• New Freedom: federal government should restore competition in the economy

• Effects of the Election

• High watermark for progressivism, Democratic power

• Brought southerners back in the loop with national and international affairs

• Altered the Republican party

• Wilson’s advisors: “Colonel” Edward M. House of Texas → most influential

• Underwood-Simmons Tariff

• 1st-time tariff was lowered since the Civil War

• Tariff ↓ income taxes ↑  

• Federal Reserve Act of 1913: new banking system with regional and central banks

• Federal Trade Commission

• Cornerstone of the anti-trust program

• Defined unfair trade

• Wilson’s relational Blacks

• Little plight against Blacks

• White’s only

• November 1914 a group of Black delegation visited Wilson

• Alice Paul

• Quaker social worker head of NAWSA

• Encouraged women to stay firm

• Arrested

• Militant Suffragist movement

• Civil disobedience

• Tying themselves to poles and buildings

• Carrie Chapman Catt

• Voting

• Lies in voting

• 19th Amendment: women vote

• Margaret Sanger

• Nurse and midwife

• American Birth Control League (Planned Parenthood)

• Louis D. Brandeis

• Social justice champ

• First Jew member in court

• Farmers: federal farm loan bank and federal farm loan act → offered longer loan times

• Labor reforms

• Federal child labor law

• 8 hours workday for railroad workers

Chapter 24