Chapter 21: The Progressive Movement 1890 - 1920 (OpenStax US History)

Introduction

Women’s suffrage was the defining topic of the Progressive Era. Women were starting to work outside the home, gain an education, and become more independent. Well-educated, middle-class women were typically able to have stronger family health. At the turn of the century, there was a strong push for women to be able to vote for three decades, and suffrage groups advocated for this legislation.

21.1 The Origins of the Progressive Spirit in America

  • Lots of different reformists from different backgrounds pushed for different movement

The Muckrackers

  • Muckrackers, as compared to yellow journalists, exposed problems in American society and urged the public to identify solutions such as poor working and living conditions of the working class   * President Theodore Roosevelt was considered progressive, but was unhappy with the “forced agenda” from these journalists, coining the degrating term, muckracker, from “The Pilgrims Progress”, a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan
  • Journalists also sought to expose social problems. In his book, “How the Other Life Lives”, Jacob Riis used photojournalism to capture the dangerous living conditions of New York City working class
  • Ida Tarbell, a well known female muckracker wrote a series of articles of the dangers of Rockerfeller’s powerful monopoly, Standard Oil
  • Tarbell’s articles followed Henry Demarst Lloyds book, “Wealth Against Commonwealth”, published in 1894, researching the exploitative practices of Standard Oil
  • Books and journalism gave attention to issues such as child labor, anti-trust, and health & safety

The Features of Progressiveism

  • Similar principals united Progessives
  • Most strove for a perfection of democracy, which required the expansion of suffrage to worthy citizens and the restrictions of political participation for those considered “unfit” on account of health, education, or race
  • Before Roosevelt became president, Progressivism was work done by the people, for the people

21.3: New Voices for Women and African Americans

  • Progressives advocated for the rights of women and African Americans   * African Americans could not agree on how to face discrimination, disenfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence in the South
  • The women’s rights movement was focused on the right to vote

Leaders Emerge in the Women’s Movement

  • Jane Addams and Florence Kelly were vital in the Progressive settlement house movement, female leaders dominated WCTU and the Anti-Saloon lounge
  • The key goal of the Progressive era was the right to vote
  • They had first formed their demand in Seneca Falls, New York, much more after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment
  • Women such as Mary Ann Shodd Cary, Florence Woodhall, and others argued that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law, and therefore protected women
  • Cary, the first black woman to attend law school, and the second to graduate, argued this in front of the House Judiciary Committee:

  “The strength and glory of a free nation, is not so much in the size and equipment of its armies, as in the loyal hearts and willing hands of its men and women…Taxed and governed in other respects without their consent. [Women] respectfully demand the principals of the founders of the government may not be discarded in their case”

  • Susan B. Anthony registered to vote under the principle of the 14th Amendment, but she was arrested and tried without being allowed to testify
  • On July 4, 1876, suffragists delivered the “Declaration of Rights of Women in the United States”. When refused, Anthony began reading it outside of Independence Hall
  • Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming had allowed women to vote in 1900, but this was because women were not attached to the nineteenth-century ideology of “separate spheres”
  • In 1890, NAWSA organized several hundred state and local chapters to urge the passing of women's right to vote
  • Alice Paul created the “Congressional Union for Woman’s Suffrage” AKA, the Silent Sentinels when the NAWSA did not agree with her plans   * Many women were arrested and put in jail, where they staged a hunger strike     * Guards force-fed Paul to keep her alive
  • When women started working as Army Nurses in WWI and heard of the mistreatment of Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson started advocating for women’s right to vote out of embarrassment
  • Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919, allowing women to vote, with the help of Catt (leader of NAWSA) and Paul

Leaders Emerge in the Early Civil Rights Movement

  • Violence against African American people permeated the South, as well as violence against Mexican American people in the West
  • White middle-class reformers were appalled by the violence, but still believed in the racial characteristic superiority of Anglo-Saxons overall
  • Southern reformers saw segregation as a solution to violence   * Many educated people followed the works of eugenicists who believed all human behavior was sets of inheritable traits for “racial fitness”
  • Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington was an influential leader in the Progressive era in 1881, he was the first principal at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, teaching African American people practical skills such as cooking, farming, and housekeeping
  • Washington wanted to focus on the improvement of the Black community
  • Washington spoke at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, in 1865, and proposed the Atlanta Compromise, calling upon African American people to uplift their prosperity rather than concern themselves with political and civil rights   * Carnegie and Rockefeller fueled his endeavors
  • Many disagreed with Washington and felt the immediate agitation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were necessary
  • W.E.B. Du Bois became weary of Washington’s accommodation of White racism and only focused on self-improvement and created what was called the “talented truth”
  • Du Bois and others drafted the “Declaration of Principals” which called for the immediate political, economic, and social equality for African American people including suffrage, compulsory education, and the elimination of convict lease, prisons, and peonal farms
  • The movement was the start of the NAACP

\