Progressive Era

Muckrakers

Muckrakers

• Journalists who exposed poor conditions

• Upton Sinclair (book “The Jungle” on meatpacking)

• Ida Tarbell (standard oil)

• Ida B. Wells (lynchings)

• Jacob Riss (candid photos of poverty)

• Sam Hopkins Adams (drugs)

Settlement Homes

• Florence Kelly + Jane Adams

• Hull House

  • nursery, kindergarten, social events held

Booker T Washington's Plans

• Vocational Training, Gradualism, Economic Self-Sufficiency

• He thought that black people should achieve equality through getting economic equality

• OK with separate but equal if it meant could be seen as full equal in long-run

WEB DuBois

• Talented tenth: one in every ten black people will end up being a prominent figure in society

• NAACP: organization he started to help black people get rights

• He believed black people should continue to fight for their legal rights

Ida B. Wells

Fought against racism and southern lynchings

Marcus Garvey

Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

Urban League

• goal is to help end racial segregation and discrimination in the United States, especially toward African Americans

• help economically and socially disadvantaged groups to share equally in every aspect of American life

• It provides direct service in the areas of employment, housing, education, social welfare, health, family planning, mental retardation, law and consumer affairs, youth and student affairs, labor affairs, veteran's affairs, and community and minority business development.

Suffrage in Western States

• Women in the west were the first to have voting rights

• Jeannette Rankin: Advocate for women’s voting rights

WCTU - Women’s Christian Temperance Union

• Frances Willard turned it into a very influential group

• Platform was expensed into labor laws, prison reform, and suffrage, along with temperance 

• Completely led the temperance movement

 Carrie Chapman Catt

Women’s rights suffragist

Alice Paul

• American suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist,

• main leader and strategist of the 1910's campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment

• Picketed White House

Lacy Burns

friend of alice paul who went to jail for picketing

Robert Lafollette

Progressivist governor that implemented tax reform and primary elections

Recall, Referendum, Initiative

• Recall - only at the state level; if people decide a government official is not doing their job they go get initiative signatures and hold a recall election

• Referendum - Kicking laws back to the people to see what they want

• Initiative - If you can get enough signatures on an initiative you can get laws passed

Secret Ballot

change from everyone being able to see who you voted for to it being a private process

Direct primaries

voters can indicate their preference for their party’s candidate

17th Amendment

Direct election of senators

City manager

people that is professionally skilled help to run the city

Commissioner System

someone gets elected to be the advisor of a city and tells politician what x group thinks about certain things

Scientific Management

A theory of management that helps synthesize workflow and to improve efficiency and labor productivity

Carrie Nation

• fought for temperance

• brought axe and demolished saloons

• jailed all the time but kept axing

Anti-Saloon League

• Supported Protestant evangelical churches

• Lobbied all levels of government to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages

Temperance movement motivations

• Alcohol abuse was rampant because liquor was cheap

• Thought it was the root of all problems

• Religion

18th Amendment

outlawed the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors

Interstate Commerce Commission

• ICC was created during the Gilded Age

• There had been a lot of anti-railroad sentiment because of how much power railroads had over every industry and person

• ICC banned personal discrimination and required shipping rates to be fair

• However, it did not have adequate enforcement powers so it didn’t do much

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

• An early attempt to control unfair business practices 

• Not much legislation behind it

• No one is personally being held responsible for trust busting and many corporations get around it by using a board of directors

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

• Enforced Sherman antitrust act by making sure companies behaved themselves and there was more competition

• Wilson added further legislation to weaken antitrust laws

  • Wanted to prevent anti competitive practices (monopolies)

Federal Trade Commission

• Independent agency of the federal government charges with preventing unfair and deceptive trading practices

• Enforces Clayton antitrust act 

• Monitors the compliance of corporations with trade laws 

Hepburn Act

• Makes ICC more powerful

• Now it actually has the ability to make change

Meat Inspection Act

Meat plants need to be overseen and federally inspected

Pure Food and Drug Act

Laid a foundation for the nation’s first consumer protection agency, the food and drug administration (FDA)

Federal Reserve System

• Controls the amount of physical and theoretical money in circulation

• Clears checks and controls interest rates

• Brings back Bank of the US but you can’t publicly bank there

Triangle Shirtwaist incident

• Fire where many women working there get killed

• Lack of safety precautions 

• New workplace standards started to grow in NY, setting a standard for the rest of the country

Coal Strike

• Coal workers go on strike

• Doesn’t become a problem until winter when people need coal 

• Roosevelt makes both sides come and talk to each other and make a deal fair to both sides 

Union Efforts

• Labor unions fought for shorter hours, safer conditions, more pay

• They would often go on strike until they got what they wanted

• The government started to legitimize laborers right to unionize

Child Labor

• The American economy demanded cheap labor, which they could get from children

• President taft passes federal regulation to pass safety codes for minors and children

  • Creates the Childrens’ Bureau against child labor

Public Schools

• Universal, uniform education was emphasized

• Efforts were focused in cities because of population density

Government Regulation

• Because of the issues from the Gilded Age, the government was forced to step in and create legislation to protect the people

• The main goals of government regulation were to further social and political reform, curb political corruption caused by political machines, and limit the political influence of large corporations.

Nativism

• Americans better than everyone else

• basically hate for immigrants

Chinese exclusion act

banned Chinese immigration to US 

Voting literacy tests

 in order to vote you had to pass a literacy test (inherently racist because white people generally had better access to education)

Exclusion Zones

used in America to prevent racial and ethnic minorities from moving to middle and upper class areas

Immigration relationship with Temperance

• Temperance reformers often said immigrants drinking habits were immoral and un-American

• Immigration also led to the growth of cities, which temperance reformers claimed to be the main promoter of alcohol and therefore, problems.

Preservationist Movement

• We should save all of nature and not touch it at all

• John Muir

Conservationist Movement

• We should use nature in the ways that best benefit the most people

• Gifford Pinchot

• National efforts

  • Creation of natural parks 

  • Established national forest system

National Association of Colored Women

• fought for equal rights + suffrage

• very few organizations biracial

Jane Adams

• suffragest

• ‘national tour’

• hull house

• first women to give nomination speech (for TR)

• petitioned against sweatshops

TD + Trust busting

• first president to go after trusts

• reform minded republicans

• decided which trusts were good and bad

Taft + Trust busting

• breaking up all trusts

• doubled amount of trusts busted by roosevelt

• went after steel

election of 1912

• Roosevelt

  • “bull mouse party” (progressive party)

  • nationalism program - emphasized regulation of monopolies

• Wilson - winner

  • democratic nominee

  • New freedom agenda - gives incentives to smaller business to increase competitive edge

country life movement

• headed by Liberty Bailey

• sought to support farmers

• educational reforms

• nature study movement - go look at nature

Passenger Pigions

• actively hunted —> extinction

• women took charge

  • Audubon Society organized against bird fashion

  • mostly upper/middle class women

  • Lacey Act -banned shipment of illegal killed species across state lines

Understanding Clause

protects whites from literacy test if they can understand a passage spoken to them

Grandfather Clause

if your grandfather could vote then you can too! (so all whites)