CHAPTER 23: The Progressive Era

Define settlement homes and the role of Jane Addams.

• Community centers established in poor urban areas to provide social service and support immigrant families.

• The most influential was the Hull House, started by Jane Addams.

Describe the types of people drawn to the progressive movements.

1. Reach easterners

2. WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants)

3. Social Reformers & Activists

4. Muckrakers

5. Civil Rights Activists

Define the role of the muckrakers, their similarities to progressives, and their differences.

Role

• Exposed politicians and corporations for their wrongdoings.

Similarities

• Both are interested in solving social problems.

• Both believed change could be made with reform.

Differences

• Muckrakers were only investigative journalists, while the Progressive movement featured a much wide scope of people.

List the characteristics of muckrakers and progressives.

Muckrakers were investigative journalists who exposed systemic corruption and corporate abuse; Progressives were middle-class reformers who enacted laws to fix them.

Describe the areas targeted by both muckrakers and progressives, examining their successes and failures.

• Both focused on political instability, worker exploitation, and unregulated business

• Successes: Sparked major reforms, including the break-up of Standard Oil, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the 17th Amendment, and initial child labor laws.

• Failures: Largely ignored racial injustice and Jim Crow laws, suffered from public outrage fatigue by WWI, and sometimes backed coercive policies like eugenics.

Describe the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and its effects on government policy.

Factory fire that resulted in the death of ~150 immigrant workers. Forced the government to implement loads of labor, fire safety, and building code policies.

Define reform Darwinism and the social gospel and their role in the Progressive era.

• Reform Darwinism: An application of Darwinism to human society to theorize that government cooperation drive society rather than ‘survival of the fittest’

• Social Gospel: A Christian movement that focuses on charity, love, and justice to fix society rather than focusing on individual souls.

• The both provided the core motivational and intellectual fuel for the Progressive Era.

Connect Teddy Roosevelt’s biography to the development of his personality and ideas.

His sickness as a youth gave him much to overcome, giving him an ironclad willpower.

Describe the laws and actions Teddy Roosevelt accomplished that were progressive.

1. Regulated labor & railroads

2. Trust-Busting

3. Consumer protection laws

4. Conservation

Describe the laws and actions Teddy Roosevelt accomplished that could be considered conservative.

• Wanted to grow military and navy

• Used reform to preserve Capitalism

• Used federal intervention during the Coal Strike of 1902 & more

Explain how America acquired the Panama Canal.

The US government supported Panama’s succession from Colombia, and in turn built the Panama Canal, owning it for 95 years

Define the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, and where Roosevelt employed it.

It claimed that the United States had the right to intervene in Central America, meant to scare European powers into staying away from the Western Hemisphere.

Define Roosevelt’s “square deal” and where he used it

Roosevelt’s internal domestic program meant to keep all Americans equal.

The three C’s:

1. Corporation Control

2. Consumer Protection

3. Conservation of Natural Resources

Explain the importance of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

The Jungle exposed the exploitation of low-class workers and brought a barrage of food inspection laws.

Explain why Teddy Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination in 1912.

Incumbent president Taft was far more conservative than Roosevelt, causing Teddy to attack someone within his own party which was frowned upon. Teddy ended up created the Bull Moose party.

Explain the successes of the Progressive Party even though it lost the 1912 election.

1. It achieved serious success as a third party.

2. Permanently implemented reform policies into the American government.

Define the differences between Taft’s “dollar diplomacy”, Roosevelt’s “big stick” diplomacy, and Wilson’s “moral diplomacy“

Taft used economics, Roosevelt used military power, and Wilson used ethical principles and democracy.

Explain the ways Woodrow Wilson continued Roosevelt’s policies and the areas in which differed.

Similarities

1. Wilson continued to regulate big businesses

2. Both expanded the power of the presidency

Differences

1. Wilson focused more narrowly on financial and market reforms

2. Had different approaches to trusts

3. “New Nationalism vs. “New Freedom”

Explain why many Americans feared the IWW.

Because of their anti-capitalist & anti-WW1 policies, as well as their use of militant tactics.

Trace the shift in African-American strategy from Booker T. Washington to W.E.B DuBois.

A transition from acceptance of African-Americans economic position to a demand of immediate civil rights.