the progressive era

Immigration

• The increase of industrial jobs encouraged large numbers of European immigrants to settle in cities in the Northeast
• Chinese settled mainly in the West, working on railroads until immgration was halted for 10 years.
• American nativism along with prejudice and violence began to rise in the United States.
• Nativism is treating a person differently simply because of what their native status means (they will be treated differently simply because they werent born here)

Urbanization

• As the population of cities grew, urban areas offered jobs and entertainment, but crime & disease became serious problems.
• New industrial technology such as skyscrapers, elevators, and trolley cars, helped cities expand.
• Political machines, such as Tammany Hall, with their corrupt practices, emerged.
• A distinct class system developed where lifestyles of the wealthy were in stark contrast to the middle and working classes.

Social Darwinism & Social Reform

• Social Darwinism, the idea of the survival of the fittest, emerged.
• Change in views of the government.
• Hayes and Cleveland became important social reformers.
• Reformers developed new ideas to help urban poor with the government taking more of a role in helping those in need.
• Congress imposed multiple reforms and tariffs and political parties split.
• Saloons, sports, amusement parks, vaudeville, and ragtime are important parts of popular culture.
• New forms of realist and naturalist art and literature evolve.

Politics of the Guilded Age

• Industrialization and new technology increased farm production and made shipping farm products easier.
• To increase political power farmers founded the Grange, the Alliance, and the Populist Party, when huge surpluses drove down food prices.
• To end patronage and limit terms, civil service reform was promoted.

The Rise of Segregation

• African Americans’ rights were lost when states added polling taxes, or required literacy tests, and passed Jim Crow laws.
• Plessy v. Ferguson upheld segregation laws.
• Education and civil rights became the primary goals of African American leaders.

Who were the progressives?

• Reacting against laissez - faire economics & focus on open market
• Belief that industrialization & urbanization created many problems.
• Belonged to both major political parties.
• Urban, educated, middle class Americans.
• Government should help fix society problems - but government needed to be fixed first.
• Science & technology could help.

The Muckrakers

• First people to express progressive ideas were journalists who investigated and reported on social conditions & political dishonesty.
• President Theodore Roosevelt called these people “muckrakers”
  • Muckraker - a journalist who uncovers abuses and corruption in society
• Ida Tarbell & Charles Edward Russell: Unfair actions of large corporations
• Lincoln Steffens - Vote stealing & political activities
• Jacob Riis - photographs & descriptions of the poverty, disease and crime in New York City

Making Government more efficient

• Increasing government efficiency without wasting time, energy or resources.

  Frederick W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) described the way a company could be more efficient

• City leaders would have supporters or friends run city departments that they did not no much about.

• Solution 1: Commission Plan

  • Divided city government into several departments under a commissioner

• Solution 2: Council Manager

  • System Employed a city manager who was hired by the city council

Democratic reforms

• Governor Robert M. La Follette made Wisconsin a “laboratory of democracy”
• Direct primary - everyone in the political party could vote for the candidate they wanted to nominate
• Initiative - the right of citizens to place a measure or issue before the voeter or the legislature for approval
• Referendum - the practice of letting voters accept or reject measures proposed by the legislature
• Recall - the right that enables voters to remove unsatisfactory elected officials from office.

Rights for Women

• Suffrage - The Right to Vote
• Seneca Falls, New York 1848
  • But still woman did not have the right to vote decades later
• State by state basis starting in the west
• Prohibition Movement - the movement to ban alcohol

Progressives v. Big Business

• Child Labor
  • Traditionally worked on farms
  • John Spargo’s The Bitter Cry of the Children
• Health & Safety Codes
  • Factories, coal mines & railroads were all very dangerous
  • Workers & families were not compensated for getting hurt/death
  • Varying Supreme Court Cases
  • Lochner v. New York (1905)
  • Muller v. Oregon (1908)
  • Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
  • Zoning Laws

Roosevelt as President

• President at age 42 (youngest person to take office at that time)
• International affairs → Social Darwinist
• Domestically → Committed progressive
• Believed that government should balance the needs of competing groups in U.S. society
• Square Deal = Reform Programs

Conservation

• Roosevelt was an outdoors enthusiast
• Thought America’s land was being used up to quickly
• 1902: Newland Reclamation Act
• Appointed conservationist Gifford Pinchot to the United States Forest Service. This would end up helping to form the EPA.
  • Regulations to control lumbering on federal lands
  • Five new national parks and fifty one wildlife reservations

Roosevelt Takes on Trusts

• Thought that trusts & other large business organizations were efficient.
• Trusts are monopolies
• Thought some monopolies hurt the public due to abuse of power.
• First target: J.P Morgan’s railroad holding company, Northern Securities
  • Company planned to exchange stock to merge different railroad systems to create a monopoly on railroad traffic.

Northern Securities & Commerce Clause

• Farmers & businesses were afraid of shipping prices
• Roosevelt ordered the attorney general to sue Northern Securities
  • AG used the Sherman Antitrust Act to charge Northern Securities with restraint of trade
• Supreme Court ruled that Morgan’s firm had not followed the Sherman Antitrust Act & Roosevelt was praised as a “trustbuster” & his population with the public grew.

The Coal Strike of 1902

• Roosevelt tried to settle conflicts among various groups in order to run the country smoothly.
• Helped resolve a coal strike between mine owners and nearly 150,000 members of the United Mine Workers
  • Workers: better pay, fewer hours, union recognition
  • Strike → coal shortage throughout the countries
• Roosevelt had the groups move towards arbitration.
• Roosevelt threatened the army if the owners did not accept

Regulating Big Business

• Roosevelt: Generally favored anti trust to maintain large American trusts (efficient & global appeal)
  • Example: U.S. Steel
• Progressive Roosevelt valued efficiency & United States had to be a world power both militarily and economically.
• Disliked the possibility for corruption and harm to the public good. Compromise → Federal agency to investigate corporations and publicize the findings.
• Best way to prevent big business from abusing its power and government was to keep the public informed
• 1903: Department of Commerce & Labor U.S. Steel investigation
  • Roosevelt worked to deescalate the situation.
  • Allowed regulation.
• 1906: Hepburn Act → Gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to set railroad prices.
• 1905: Consumer Protection became a national issue
  • Samuel Hopkins Adams → Patent medicine business
  • Food: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair & Dr. W. H. Wiley
• Meat Inspection Act & Pure Food and Drug Act = Food and Drug Administration

Roosevelt’s Legacy

• Expanded the power of the federal government
• Americans looked to the federal government to solve the nation’s economic and social problems.
• Supported his secretary of war: William Howard Taft

Taft Angered Progressives

• Tariffs = Controversial Issues
  • Higher Tariffs → Less Competition
  • Conservatives
  • Lower Tariffs → More Competition
• Progressives Taft signed a law: Payne Aldrich Tariff
• 1909: Replaced Roosevelt’s James R. Garfield with Richard A. Ballinger
  • Goes against conservation. Ballinger opened nearly a million acres of public lands to private development.
  • Fired Gifford Pinchot for investigating the deal
• Many Democratic victories in the midterm due to people being upset with Taft

Taft Achievements

• Continued antitrust cases
• 1912: established the Children’s Bureau, an agency which investigated and made public the problems of child labor
• 1910: Bureau of Mines (favors conservation)
• Taft did not continue Roosevelt’s idea of cooperation and regulation with big business
• Roosevelt will run in a new party “Bull Moose Party” against Taft “Rebpulican” in the next election.

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