The Progressive Movement / The Age of Reform Unit

Test #1

Progressives

• Mainly people who were urban (living in the city) middle class men and women

• Doctors, journalists, educators, clergy

• Famous Progressives: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson

KEY Progressive Figures

• Theodore Roosevelt - President; Championed his “Square Deal” domestic policies

• Woodrow Wilson - “New Freedom” agenda included priorities such as lowering tariffs, implementing a federal income tax, and creating the Federal Reserve System

• William Howard Taft - Roosevelt’s successor was also known as a “trust-buster” having taken on more trusts than Roosevelt during his single term; supported the 16th Amendment, which enabled Congress to establish an income tax

• Robert M. La Follette - Wisconsin governor and senator; leading figure in Midwestern progressivisim

• William Jennings Bryan - Ran for president; prominent voice for populist and progressive causes, including tariff reform, trust regulation, and the direct election of senators

Roots of Progressivism (economic, political, and social)

• Civil Service Reform

• Regulation of Big Business

• Urban Poor (living and working conditions)

• Status Revolution (lower, middle, and upper class)

Progressive Goals (economic, social, and political)

• Better life in America

• Fought to reform the government at all levels

• Progressivism focused on unsafe working conditions and living conditions

• Wanted a more democratic government

• Progressivism was an urban movement

Causes the Progressives Fought for

• Changes in work place: wages, hours, conditions, safety

• End child labor

• Public Health and Personal morality

• Prohibit monopolies (the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service)

Limits of Progressivism

• Blacks and Indians largelyh ignroed

• Racism is still prevalent

• W. E. B. DuBois

• NAACP 1909 (DuBois and Jane Addams)

• National Urban League (NUL)

Improvements (slowly)

• NYC’s Triangle Shirtwaist Company (1911)

  • large garment factory in New York City that produced women's blouses, known as shirtwaists

• Sweat shops, improved work (fire codes, etc.)

• Laws passed but ignored by owners

Immigration

• Americans felt deep discomfort about immigration despite being immigrants themselves

• Southern and Eastern Europe

  • 18-24 million…15% of the U.S. population

  • Catholic or Jewish, poor, unmatched wave today

• African-America start the Great Migration

  • 2 million move up; transition from being rural to urban dwellers

    • Need services and improved conditions

Muckrakers

• Muckraking writers and novelists

• Wanted to expose corrupt political, corporate, and economic practices, and racial injusticees

• The Jungle (1906) (about an immigrant coming to the U.S.) by Upton Sinclair

• Newspaper muckraker Ida Tarbell vs. John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co.

• Lincoln Steffens, Thomas Nast, vs. NYC Boss Tweed

• Frank Norris vs. misuse of power by Rail Road

• Jack Londons vs. abuses of capitalism

• Ray vs. Baker vs. Discrimination against African Americans

KEY Muckraker Figures

• Ida Tarbell - Exposed the unfair business practices of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company

• Upton Sinclair - Wrote The Jungle, revealing the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking industry

• Jacob Riis - Used photography and journalism in How the Other Half Lives to document the squalid living conditions in NYC’s tenements

• Lincoln Steffens - Wrote The Shame of the Cities, which exposed political corruption in various U.S. cities

From Countryside to the City

• Factories spread rapidly across the nation

• American workforce migrated to the city

• 1860-1920: 17% to over 50% of Americans lived in Urban Areas

• Innovations followed…

  • 1879: Thomas Edison - Electricity

  • 1876: Alexander Graham Bell - The Telephone

  • Indoor plumbing, improved sewage

Labor Unions

• Group of workers unite in order to promote and protect their mutual interests and causes

  • Battled for better conditions for all workers

  • Closed Shops vs Open Shops

    • Have to have skills for the job vs no experience needed

  • American Federation of Labor (AFL)

  • Samuel Gompers

  • 1914: 2 million strong

  • Excluded unskilled workers (Immigrants, blacks)

  • Industrial workers of the World

  • Bill Haywood

  • Used strikes, boycotts, industrial sabatoge

Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

• Federal government regulates railroads, rates, etc.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)

• Any restraint of trade or interstate commerce is illegal

Sweatshop

• Workers report horrible working conditions (sub-minimum wages, no benefits, non-payment of wages, forced overtime)

  • Factories that have child labor and barely pay the children

1938

FIRST MINIMUM WAGE - 25 CENTS

Women

• Waned to take a greater role

• Attending universities

• Reform work provided them an outlet to apply their knowledge to causes

• Their college education became an outlet to springboard into various reform causes such as temperance (prohibition) and women’s suggrage

• Jane Addams: Suffragette, Hull House

The Evils of Alchohol

• Prohibition Movement

• Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU)

• Women = powerful force for temperance, moral purity, rights of women

• A#18 passed in 1919, in effect until 1933 (A#21)

Immigrations of Assimilation

• Northern Europe (1840-1860) results of 1848

  • Potato Famines 1845-1855

  • Ireland, Germany, UK, largest wave of about 1.9 million

• Southern Europe (1880-1920) Jobs, new start

  • Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece

• South-East Asia (1950-1995) political unrest, upheaval

  • Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Thailand (the Vietnam Era / Korean War, etc.)

• Hispanic (1900, 1960-2007) Jobs, $$$

  • Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Central America

• Next wave of the Future: Africa (2000-?)

  • Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, West Coast, Southern Africa