Urban America and the Progressive Era

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, people, legislation, and concepts of Urban America and the Progressive Era (1900–1917).

Henry Street Settlement

A pioneering settlement house on Manhattan's Lower East Side founded in 1895 by Lillian Wald and Mary Brewster, which established a visiting nurse service, disease prevention classes, and social reform programs.

Lillian Wald

A nurse who co-founded the Henry Street Settlement, advocated for public school nurses and child labor laws, opposed American involvement in World War I, and hosted the 1909 conference that led to the NAACP.

Jane Addams

A progressive reformer and Rockford College graduate who founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889 to alleviate urban poverty and provide an outlet for the faculties of educated women.

Social Darwinism

The application of Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution to society, asserting that the fittest and wealthiest survive while the poor perish, and that government intervention cannot alter this natural process.

Social Gospel Movement

A late nineteenth-century Protestant reform movement that rejected original sin as the cause of human suffering and emphasized the duty of Christians to purge society of poverty, economic greed, and inequality.

Florence Kelley

A Hull House and Henry Street reformer who authored Hull House Maps and Papers, served as general secretary of the National Consumers' League, and led campaigns against sweatshops and child labor.

Progressive Era

A period in the United States roughly between 1900 and 1917 marked by diverse political, social, and economic reform movements that challenged traditional relationships and attitudes.

Honest Graft

The practice described by Tammany Hall politician George Washington Plunkitt of using insider knowledge of planned public improvements to make personal investment profits.

City Commission Plan

A structural urban reform first adopted in Galveston, Texas, in 1900 that replaced the traditional mayor-council setup with an elected board of commissioners, each directing a municipal department.

City Manager Plan

An urban governance system where an elected city council hires an appointed, nonpartisan professional administrator to direct day-to-day community operations.

The Wisconsin Idea

A reform approach pioneered by Governor Robert M. La Follette that utilized academic research and university scholars to draft regulatory bills and serve the public interest.

Initiative

A direct democracy procedure that allows citizens to introduce a subject for legislation through a petition signed by a specified number of voters.

Referendum

The process of submitting a proposed or enacted law to a direct popular vote for approval or rejection by the electorate.

Recall

The procedure enabling voters to remove an elected government official from office before the expiration of their term through a popular vote initiated by petition.

Muckraking

Investigative journalism aimed at exposing economic corruption, social injustice, and political abuses, named by Theodore Roosevelt for raking the muck of American society.

Jacob Riis

A Danish immigrant journalist and photographer whose 1890 book How the Other Half Lives shocked the public with vivid flash photography and descriptions of New York City tenement conditions.

Lincoln Steffens

A muckraking journalist whose 1902 McClure's series The Shame of the Cities detailed systematic corruption and alliances between municipal bosses and utility businessmen.

Ida Tarbell

A muckraker whose 1904 investigative series and book, History of the Standard Oil Company, documented the ruthless methods John D. Rockefeller used to eliminate commercial competitors.

Upton Sinclair

A socialist writer whose 1906 novel The Jungle exposed the hazardous exploitation of meatpackers and filthy sanitation standards in Chicago's stockyards.

Sociological Jurisprudence

A legal concept asserting that judicial decisions and constitutional interpretations should incorporate changing social conditions and empirical facts rather than relying solely on abstract legal precedent.

Brandeis Brief

A pioneering legal brief submitted by Louis Brandeis in Muller v. Oregon (1908) that supported constitutional arguments using extensive sociological, medical, and economic data rather than traditional legal case citations.

Muller v. Oregon (1908)

A Supreme Court decision upholding a state statute that limited working hours for women on the grounds that a woman's physical structure and maternal duties made her welfare a matter of public concern.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

A large female reform organization that campaigned to ban the production and sale of liquor while also advocating for prison reform, child nurseries, and woman suffrage.

Anti-Saloon League

A single-issue interest group founded in 1893 that used local-option campaigns and business backing to shut down saloons, linking drinking culture to political machines.

Mann Act (1910)

Federal legislation enacted during anti-prostitution crusades that made it a crime to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes.

National Board of Censorship (NBC)

A voluntary review body founded in 1909 by movie theater producers and the People's Institute to inspect motion pictures and sanitize commercial film output.

Uprising of the 20,000

A 1909 walkout by thousands of female garment workers in New York City demanding union recognition, higher wages, and safer shop conditions, backed by the Women's Trade Union League.

Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire

A 1911 blaze in a New York City sweatshop that killed 146 trapped workers, mainly young immigrant women, spurring the creation of the New York State Factory Investigation Commission.

Ludlow Massacre

An April 20, 1914 confrontation in which the Colorado National Guard and private guards attacked a striking miners' tent colony, resulting in 14 deaths, including 11 children.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

A radical labor organization founded in Chicago in 1905, popularly known as the Wobblies, that organized unskilled laborers into 'One Big Union' and advocated the overthrow of the wage system.

William D. 'Big Bill' Haywood

A Western Federation of Miners leader and charismatic organizer who served as the prominent spokesman for the Industrial Workers of the World.

The Masses

A radical monthly magazine founded in 1911 by Max Eastman in Greenwich Village that served as a central voice for modern art, socialism, and bohemian culture.

National Consumers' League (NCL)

A women's reform organization founded in 1898 that used a 'white label' program to certify products manufactured under safe, fair conditions and campaigned for maximum-hour laws.

Margaret Sanger

A nurse and public health advocate who coined the term 'birth control' in 1913, challenged anti-obscenity mailing statutes, and founded early reproductive health clinics.

Booker T. Washington

The African American founder of the Tuskegee Institute who delivered the 1895 Atlanta Exposition Address, urging Black citizens to prioritize vocational training and economic self-reliance over immediate political agitation.

W. E. B. Du Bois

A Harvard-educated sociologist who authored The Souls of Black Folk (1903), rejected racial accommodation, demanded equal voting and educational rights, and edited The Crisis for the NAACP.

Niagara Movement

An African American organization founded in 1905 by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter that demanded an end to legal segregation, voter disenfranchisement, and civil inequality.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

An interracial organization founded in 1909 at the National Negro Conference to challenge legal discrimination and restore civil and political rights to African Americans.

Hepburn Act (1906)

A federal law passed under Theodore Roosevelt that granted the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to set maximum railroad shipping rates and examine company financial records.

Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)

Federal legislation that established the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test and regulate medicines before market release and to protect consumers from adulterated goods.

Meat Inspection Act (1906)

A regulatory law passed following public outrage over The Jungle that empowered the Department of Agriculture to inspect meatpacking plants and certify meat products.

Gifford Pinchot

The first head of the U.S. Forest Service, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, who advocated a utilitarian conservation philosophy balancing commercial development with forest preservation.

John Muir

A preservationist writer and first president of the Sierra Club who argued for the inherent spiritual value of wilderness and led the unsuccessful fight against damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902)

Federal legislation creating the Reclamation Bureau to finance public dam and canal irrigation projects in the arid regions of the American West.

New Nationalism

Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 platform advocating a strong federal executive to supervise large corporate monopolies, enforce social justice, and protect public welfare.

New Freedom

Woodrow Wilson's 1912 presidential campaign platform that championed states' rights, limited federal government, lower tariffs, and restoring small-business market competition.

Underwood-Simmons Act of 1913

A tariff reduction law enacted under Woodrow Wilson that lowered import duties on raw materials and instituted the first graduated federal income tax under the Sixteenth Amendment.

Federal Reserve Act (1913)

A financial reform law that created twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks under a central governing board to regulate bank reserves, credit availability, and the national money supply.

Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914

Antitrust legislation replacing the Sherman Act that prohibited federal court injunctions against strikers and declared that labor unions were not illegal combinations in restraint of trade.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

A federal administrative agency established in 1914 to provide regulatory oversight of corporate business activity and curb unfair competition practices.

Keating-Owen Act (1916)

Federal legislation backed by Woodrow Wilson that barred goods manufactured by children under age fourteen from entering interstate commerce.