The Progressive Era

The American Drive for Reform

• Progressive era is a response to rapid industrialization

  • poverty, exploitation of labor, city slums, political machines

    • lots of corruption and immorality

• Period of great reform movements began in early 1900s → focused on social, economic and eventually political reform (city, state and federal levels)

• This ideology grew from preceding groups such as Grangers and Populist Party

Reasons for Progressive Reform

• Two specific events led to Progressive Movement

  1. Agarian Depression, early 1890s

  2. Financial and Industrial Depression, 1893

• Low prices drove many farmers to the People’s Party of 1892

• Poor working conditions and city issues

Who Were the Progressives?

• Progressive = a person working for a change

• Influenced by Populists

• Progressives were also educated professionals

  • doctors

  • lawyers

  • social workers

  • clergy

• Progressive movement demonstrated rising power and influence of America’s middle class

Muckrakers

• Muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of political and economic corruption and social hardships caused by power of big business in a rapidly industrializing United States

  • journalists, wrtiers and photographers

Muckrakers Reveal Need for Reform…

• Upton Sinclair - investigated meat packing industry in Chicago

• Discovered very unsafe and unsanitary working conditions

  • meat picked up off of floor and packed

  • rats in building

  • smell of bad meat

• Upton exposed this in his novel “The Jungle”

• Roosevelt got the “FDA” passed in response to this scandal

• Although the book meant to show how immigrants were treated poorly, it showed the terrible sanitary conditions of the meat packing industry

Muckrakers Take on Other Social Concerns

• Jacob Riis wanted to show the conditions of NYC slums by taking photographs

  • small crowded houses

  • no places for kids to play

  • people in streets with nowhere to go

• Theodore Roosevelt came to help after seeing those photographs

Attack the Monopolies

• Ida Tarbell wrote for McClure’s magazine

  • muckraker who took on Rockefeller’s oil company

• Tarbell documented aggressive techniques Rockefeller would use to stay on top

  • eliminated competition, created monopoly

• Rockefeller made secret deals with RR companies, etc.

Public Welfare and Welfare of Children

• Early concern for living conditions on 19th century factory workers led Jane Addams to purchase a settlement house in Chicago, IL

• Provided immigrants with

  • teaching English

  • summer camps/clubs for children

  • daycare for children

  • playground for children

• Addams sought justice for immigrants, blacks, labor reform and women’s suffrage

• Campaigned against sweatshops and corrupt politicians

• Worked as a garbage inspector to clean filthy streets

• Championed factory inspecitons and workman’s compensation

Prohibition

• Temperance Movement began in 1820s

  • movement spread under influence of churches

  • by 1833 → 6,000 local societies in several U.S. states

• First international temperance organization was Order of Good Templars (1851, Utica NY)

  • gradually spread all over world

  • 1909 → world prohibition conference in London resulted in foundation of an International Prohibition Confederation

• U.S. organization that became international was the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

  • 1874, Cleveland OH

  • WCTU employed educational, social and political means in promoting legislation

  • during 1880s, organization spread to other lands

• Carry Nation - leading player in outlawing alcohol

  • would march into bars and destroy them with an ax

  • jailed many times, survived multiple physical assults

• Frances Willard - leader of WCTU

  • strong advocate for prohibition

  • believed prohibition would solve problems of poverty and disease, improve family life and dynamic and boost the economy

• Temperance crusade led to national prohibition with the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment (1919)

Women’s Suffrage Movement

• Started in early 1800s during movement against slavery

• Key names: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• 1869 → Territory of Wyoming granted women right to vote, but an Amendment in the Constitution was prefered

• By 1890, several groups merged to form National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

  • abandoned state-by-state approach of getting right to vote

• As time went on, more and more women were gaining the right to vote in certain states

• 1920 → Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote nationwide

Fight for Birth Control

• Margaret Sanger → nurse who worked in NYC

  • founded birth control movement (1912)

• She witnessed relationships between poverty and uncontrolled fertility, and deaths of mothers from illegal abortions

• Feminist and believed women had right to avoid pregnancies

• Her legal appeals promoted federal courts to grant physicans the right to give advice about birth control methods

• American Birth Control League (1921) founded by Sanger later became Planned Parenthood (1942)

Progressivism & Government Action

• Since Progressives were urban, middle-class people, it’s not surprising that reform first began at local government level

• Progressives wanted to elect reformist mayors

• Tried to improve appearance of cities

Reform of State Governments

• Because of Progressives, states instituted many new policies

  1. Secret Ballot - prevents people from knowing who others voted for

  2. Initiative - a system that allows voters to petition the legislature to consider a proposed law

  3. Referendum - voters decide whether a given bill or Constitutional amendment shall be passed

  4. Recall - method used to force elected officials from office

  5. Direct Primary - allows voters instead of party leaders to select candidates to run for office

• 1913 → Progressive movement led to Seventeenth Amendment, which provided for direct election of U.S. Senators

Governor Robert LaFollette, WI

• His state passed laws that regulated railroads, lobbying and banking, started civil service reforms, shifted tax burden to the wealthy and to corporations, and required workers comp

• Persuaded legislature to tax railroads on the basis of their property and regulate them by commission

• Wisconsin’s leadership in these areas gave LaFollette his reputation as a pioneering progressive

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)

• Most progressive of all presidents

• Used power of presidency to directly influence social and economic problems

• Recognized need for consumer protection, influencing the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and the Meat Inspection Act (1906)

• Strengthened idea that it’s the government’s right to regulate business

• The Interstate Commerce Commission (1887) regulated railroad shipping rights. In 1906, the Hepburn Act greatly enlarged the ICC’s jurisdiction and forbade railroads to increase rates without its approval

• Trust Busting

  • Roosevelt began to use government to eliminate large monopolies

  • pursed this policy of “trust-busting” against 43 major corporations during the next seven years

  • Northern Securities Company was prosecuted by the government under the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1902, and prosecution of beef trusts were also upheld by the Supreme Court

    • these decisions gave government board regulatory authority

Roosevelt Looks at Labor Conditions

• Anthracite Coal Strike

  • 1902 → Easton, PA coal mine owners refused to negotiate with workers

• Roosevelt threatened to send in troops to take over mines if an agreement couldn’t be made

• First time a president had publicly intervened on a labor dispute

Conservation

• Before T.R., government’s policy was to put lands in private hands

• Roosevelt boldest actions came in area of natural resources

  • Congress created the Forest Service (1905) to manage govnt. owned forest reserves and appointed a fellow conservationist to head the agency

    • Roosevelt shifted this policy and kept some lands under federal government protection

    • set aside almost five times as much land as all of his predecessors combined

Progressivism Under Taft (1909-1913)

• During Taft’s presidency, Justice Department brought twice as many suits against big business as it had under Roosevelt

• Mann-Elkins Act (1910) → U.S. federal law that strengthened authority of Intestate Commerce Commission over railroad rates

• 1913 → Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, authorized Congress to impose an income tax

Woodrow Wilson & New Freedom

• WIlson pleged to restore opportunity for individual action and to employ power of government in behalf of social justice for all

  • called for tariff reduction, banking regulations, antitrust legislation, beneficial farmer-labor enactments, and highway construciton using state grants-in-aid

• Financial Reforms:

  • Underwood Tariff Act (1913) - lowered tariffs for first time since Civil War (40% to 26%)

    • also provided for a graduated income tax- taxed larger incomes at a higher rate

  • Created the Federal Reserve System (1913) - created to encourage the long-term objectives of price stability and maximum sustainable employment

  • Federal Trade Commission Act (1914) - prevents unfair competition; created a commission to investigate practives such as false advertising and mislabeling

  • Clayton Antitrust Act (1914) - strengthned government’s power to control business practices that threatned competition

    • Sherman Act only delcared monopoly illegal, Clayton Act defined certain businesses practices that were illegal

Additional Reforms

1. Adamson Act (1916) - 8 hour work day for interstate railroad workers

2. Federal Farm Loan Act (1916) - made low-interest loans avaliable to farmers

3. Nineteenth Amendment (1920) - gave women the right to vote

   • Progressive Era ended with U.S. entered WWI

     • American priorities shifted to war