Progressive Era

Origins of Progressivism

Issues of the gilded age

  • Consumers

  • Overcrowding

  • Pollution

  • In the response to the gilded age

Social Gospel

  • The idea that churches could alleviate probems of poevety

  • Encouraged church help these problems

    • Salvation Army

    • YMCA

  • Walter Rauchenbusch

Populism

  • Direct income tax and called for a lot of reforms

  • Farmers alluances

  • Issues of currency reform

    • Concern there wasn’t enough currenyc in circulation

    • Desire to expand supply for people to consume

    • Greenback Labor party

      • Expand paper money

    • Change of currency to put more silver in supply

  • Farmers always in debt

    • As currency expands, inflation increases and the value of debts decreases

    • increase for silver → less debt →higher purchasing power

  • Value is what we apply to it

A ‘Middle Class’ Movement

  • More jobs

  • Frustrations of the higher up people and put them in competition

  • When someone monopolizes, it makes thinhs worse for them since balue goes down

  • Lower class strikes

    • Known for being very radical and violent

Three progressive goals

Social Welfare

  • Workers Rights

    • Not in support of organized labor

      • Linked to violence

    • Support to end child labor at the stae level

  • Aiding immigrants

    • Help immigrants assimilate and reintegrate into society

    • Help immigrants with getting them into American cities

    • Jane Addams

      • Kept track of all the stats to make them more successful

  • Faith Bases services

    • YMCA

    • Salvation army

    • Food and drug acts

    • Meat packing acts

    • Protect consumers

Promote Moral Development

  • Origins of antebellum reform movements

    • Prohibition movements

      • Carey Nation

      • Drinking linked with domestic violence

      • Came to fruition with the 18th amendment but it was only really at the state level

Government and Economic reform

  • Muckrakers and Big business

    • Ida Tarbell: The history of standard oil

    • Jacob Riis: how the other half lives

      • Discussed Urban poverty and show high living how poor people live

    • Lincol Steffens: The shame of our cities

      • Corruption in City Governments

    • Upton Sinclair: The jungle

      • Generate support for the working class

      • Had a different effect of people focusing on the meat aspect instead of working on the poverty part

      • ‘Aimed for heart, hit in stomach’

  • Local Government Reforms

    • Galveston Hurricane of 1900

      • Killed 8000-12000 people

    • City leaders were not prepared

    • City manager system created in reaction due to incompetent leaders

      • Professionals who control and lead the city to make it actually run

  • Political Machines and election reform

    • The rich would send people to ports and help immigrants in exchange for them to vote for them

      • Sway the immigrants

    • Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall - Line pockets by giving work to specific people

      • Use elected positions to give jobs to their supporters - Patronage

      • Gave out contracts to do so - Graft

    • Election reforms - Expand democracy to end corruption

      • Initiative, referendum, and recall

        • Any citizen can submit a bill for consideration

        • It is voted on by the people and not by the legislature

        • Elections to actually remove people for being corrupt or inept

      • Secret Ballots

        • machines couldn’t monitor and enforce who votes for who

      • Direct primaries

        • Appeal directly tot he people

      • Direct election of senators

        • 17th amendment

        • Reform to allow senators to be chosen by the people

  • Regulating Big Business

    • Farmers at the mercy of railroads companies and grains silos

    • Granger laws

      • Regulate railways at the state level

    • 16th Amendment - interstate commerce act

    • make everything more fair and railroads are the first to be regulated by the government

    • Trusts

      • Good and bad

      • If they benefit the people or not

      • Horizontal integration

    • Sherman Anti-trusst

      • best at regulating labor unions

      • not good at regulating business

Other reformers

NAACP

  • no reformers that could help out with civil rights

    • no champions of civil rights

NAWSA

  • Womens suffrage

  • 19th amendment

Limits of Progressivism

Failed to make gains for Black Americans

  • Plessy v Fergesson

  • Jim crow laws

  • Rise of the KKK

Progressive Presidents

Roosevelts square deal - Top down view

  • Corporations

    • Elkins and Hepburn acts

    • Trust busting

    • Anthracite coal site - strike of coal miners

      • Government sides with the workers for the first time

  • Consumers

    • meat inspection act

    • Pure food and drug act

  • Conservation

    • Reclamation Act

    • Setting aside land for national parks and monuments

Taft

  • Broke up more trusts than Roosevelt

  • ALLEGEDLY got stuck in a bathtub

Wilson

  • New Freedom - Challenge the triple wall of privilege

    • Tariffs - Help industries at the cost of the consumers

      • Underwood Tariff

      • Benefits of consumers

    • Trusts

      • Clayton Anti-trust act

        • Easier to enforce and accepted labor unions

    • Treasury

      • Federal reserve system

      • Now 12 regional banks allows currency to be more evenly spread out instead of one eastern banking system

End of Progressivism

  • WW1