Progressive Era
• Trying to fix the abuses of the Gilded Age and
the industrialization of America
• Mainly a middle class, urban movement
• Grass roots, bottom up, reform movement
• 1900-1917, Teddy Roosevelt becomes
President to the end of WWI
New World View
• Poverty and other such issues are caused by
the environment and not the individual, (refute
Social Darwinism) therefore government
needs to step in and fix the situation
• Watch the Story of Us video in your Video
Folder
“The Shirtwaist Kings”
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris
Typical NYC Sweatshop, 1910
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Asch Building, 8th through 10th Floors
Typical NYC Sweatshop, 1910
Typical NYC Sweatshop, 1910
Crumpled Fire Escape, 26 Died
Dead Bodies on the Sidewalk
Inside the Building After the Fire
Relatives Review Bodies
145 Dead
Scene at the Morgue
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
motivated people to regulate
business
Progressive Reform Goals:
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Break-up or regulation of trusts, banking reform
Reduce the threat of socialism (by improving workers’ lives)
Labor reform (working conditions and unionization)
Improve squalid conditions in the cities
Improve working conditions for female labor and end child
labor
Consumer protection
Increased democracy by voting reforms and killing political
machines
Conservation of nature
Increased morality, prohibition
Progressive crusaders created a reform movement not seen
since the 2nd Great Awakening
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Progressive Reform Methods
Muckrakers
• Investigative journalists
• Digging up dirt, exposing corruption and abuse
• Coined by Teddy Roosevelt as a criticism of
journalists
• Government will step in to solve the issues with
regulation
• Examples:
– Upton Sinclair- The Jungle, led to the Pure Food and Drug
Act and the Meat Inspection Act (1906)
– Ida Tarbell- The History of the Standard Oil Company
– Ida B. Wells- anti-lynching crusade
• Lincoln Stevens: The Shame of Cities,
exposed boss rule, leader of the movement
• McClure’s, Colliers’s, & Cosmopolitan
Magazines
• Helen Hunt Jackson- A Century of Dishonor
• Jacob Riis- How the Other Half Lives
Settlement Houses
• Settlement House movement became the epicenter of
Progressive activism and social reform.
• Some historians maintain that progressivism began in
1889 with the founding of Hull House
• Largely a female movement, moral crusaders
• First generation of college-educated women
• Teaching or volunteer (social) work were almost the only
permissible occupations for a young woman of their
social class.
• St. Jane Addams, founded Hull House, helped found the
NAACP and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
Women’s Labor
• States passed labor laws to limit
women’s working hours to protect
mothers
• Muller v. Oregon
– Brandeis Brief
– Ruled this was constitutional
• Adkins v. Children’s Hospital
1923
– The Supreme Court decided that a
minimum wage for women violated
the right to freedom of contract.
William Howard Taft was
the Chief Justice
Child Labor
• Florence Kelley of Hull House reported on child
labor
• Organized boycotts as the head of the National
Consumers League
• Keatings-Owen Act 1916 outlawed child labor
• Hammer v. Daughenhaut case in 1918 declared the
Keatings-Owen Act unconstitutional
• Not outlawed at the federal level until the New Deal
& 1930’s
• Mandatory school attendance laws helped fix the
issue
Progressives Climb their way to the
top
• Local- try to reform cities from
boss rule
• State- “Wisconsin method”
• Laboratory of democracy
• Robert La Follette
• National– Teddy Roosevelt, “Square Deal”
– Woodrow Wilson, “New Freedom”
Municipal reform
• Public ownership of water, sewage, and
transportation systems
• City managers elected to run cities
Democratic changes to state
governments
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Australian, or secret ballot, voter registration
Direct primaries in state elections
Direct election of U.S. Senators
Initiative- a method to compel the legislator to
consider a bill
• Referendum- a method for citizens to pass a
bill in a yes or no vote
• Recall- vote to remove a politician
Progressives Go to Washington
Progressive
Amendments
• 16th Income Taxmost important
• 17th Direct
Election of
Senators
• 18th Prohibition
• 19th Women’s
Suffrage
A graduated or progressive
income tax
• Income
–
–
–
–
–
0-8,000
8,000- 25,000
25,000-80,000
80,000-180,000
180,000 plus
% tax paid
get money back
5%
10%
20%
35%
$ amount paid
+5,000
-1,250
-8,000
-36,000
-350,000 if
made a million dollars
How does this compare to a tariff?
Teddy Roosevelt’s “Square Deal”
• Would not favor business nor
labor in a strike, yet would broker
a ‘square deal’
• Anthracite Coal Miners Strike,
1902- Country worried about
people being able to heat their
house that winter, President calls
both sides to the White House to
negotiate a compromise
• Workers win 9 hour work day,
10% pay raise, yet no union
recognition
Trust Busting
• Difference between a ‘good’ and
‘bad’ trust
• Would add teeth to the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act
• Broke up the Northern Securities
Railroad company, Supreme
Court upheld his actions
• Directed his Attorney General to
take antitrust action against
Standard Oil and 40 other large
companies
•Yet during this time, more mergers took place
than any in US history
“The conservation president"
Other TR ideas
• ConservationNational Park
System
• Bully Pulpit
– The President
should use his
office and the
media to promote
his policy goals,
activist president
John Muir
• "Father of the National Parks”
• American naturalist, author,
environmental philosopher and early
advocate of preservation
of wilderness in the United States
• Founded the Sierra Club
• Petitioned Congress in 1890 to establish
the first national park, Yosemite
National Park
• Influential relationship with Teddy
Roosevelt, helped create the National
Park System
• Goal was to save the American soul
from the total surrender to materialism
Roosevelt hands his policies off to
William Taft
Taft Presidency
• Brought 90 anti-trust suits while in office,
twice that of Teddy Roosevelt
• Ordered the breakup of Standard Oil
• Parts of Standard Oil around today include
Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, parts of BP,
• Taft signed the high 37% Payne-Aldrich Tariff
that split the Republican Party and angered
reformers, it betrayed his campaign promise
Election 1912
The
GOP
After
the
Circus
The
Republican
Party
&
President
William H. Taft
The
Progressive
Party &
Former
President
Theodore
Roosevelt
People should rise
above their sectarian
interests to promote the general good.
The
“Bull Moose”
Party:
The Latest
Arrival
at the
Political Zoo
Theodore Roosevelt at
Osawatomie, KS: New Nationalism
Big business requires big government.
The
AntiThirdTerm
Principle
Progressive Party Platform
Women’s suffrage.
Graduated income tax.
Inheritance tax for the rich.
Lower tariffs.
Limits on campaign spending.
Currency reform.
Minimum wage laws.
Social insurance.
Abolition of child labor.
Workmen’s compensation.
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The Democratic Party &
Governor Woodrow Wilson
(NJ)
Could he rescue
the Democratic
Party from
“Bryanism”??
The Reform
Governor
of NJ:
It Takes
Time
to Remove
the Grime
Democratic Party Platform
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Government control of the monopolies
 trusts in general were bad
 eliminate them!!
Tariff reduction.
One-term President.
Direct election of Senators.
Create a Department of Labor.
Strengthen the Sherman Anti-Trust
Act.
Did NOT support women’s suffrage.
Opposed to a central bank.
The “Seas” [of Opportunity]
Open Up for the Democrats
The Socialist Party
& Eugene V. Debs
The issue is Socialism versus
Capitalism. I am for
Socialism because I am for
humanity.
“The Working Class Candidates”
Eugene V. Debs
for President
Emil Seigel
for Vice-President
Growth of the Socialist
Socialist
Socialist
Vote
Year
Party
Labor Party
Total
1888
2,068
2,068
1890
13,704
13,704
1892
21,512
21,512
1894
30,020
30,020
1896
36,275
36,274
1898
82,204
82,204
1900
96,931
33,405
130,336
1902
223,494
53,763
277,257
1904
408,230
33,546
441,776
1906
331,043
20,265
351,308
1908
424,488
14,021
438,509
1910
607,674
34,115
641,789
1912
901,873
Socialist Party Platform
Government ownership of railroads
and utilities.
Guaranteed income tax.
No tariffs.
8-hour work day.
Better housing.
Government inspection of
factories.
Women’s suffrage.
An Actual 1912 Ballot
Election Results
By 1912, 100,000 fewer people had voted for
Wilson than had voted for Bryan in 1908.
The 1912 election marked the height of the
Socialist movement in America.
SPOILER EFFECT:
GOP Divided by Bull Moose
Equals Democratic Victory!
Wilson’s “New Freedom”
• Promised to attack “the triple wall of
privilege”: tariffs, banking, and trusts
• Underwood Tariff, 1913- lowered tariff
substantially and included a graduated
income tax from 1% to 6%
• Federal Reserve Act- created a national
banking system of 12 district banks, ever
since then Americans have used Federal
Reserve Notes (Dollar bills) to buy goods
• Clayton Antitrust Act- Strengthened
Sherman Antitrust Act for breaking up
monopolies and contained a provision that
exempted labor unions from being
prosecuted as trusts. FTC (Federal Trade
Commission) created to regulate business.
African Americans- Outside
Reformers
Booker T. Washington
• “Up From Slavery”- autobiography
• Founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
that taught trade skills
• Thought African Americans should focus
on economic equality first
• “Atlanta Compromise Speech,” 1895– blacks should accept racism and focus
on economic development
– “cast down your bucket where you
are”
– races can be as separate as the fingers
on a hand, yet still work together
Tuskegee Institute
•Stressed a vocational education:
-Carpentry, masonry, farming..
W.E.B. Du Bois
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“The Souls of Black Folk”
First African American to receive a PhD (Harvard)
Niagara Movement
Founded NAACP
Talented 10th:
– The elite will lead the black community
– Need a liberal arts education
• Stressed political equality
immediately through agitation:
– march, protest, sue…
Washington vs. Du Bois
Accommodation,
Gradually gain rights.
(Vocational Education)
Full civil rights now!
(Liberal Arts
Education)
Limits of Progressivism
• Progressives have been criticized for attempting to
impose their middle-class WASP values on all of society.
• Not include African Americans, immigrants, and other
minorities
• Took Native American children from their families and
placed them in boarding schools to assimilate them.
• Increasingly Nativist over time, presided over the Red
Scare of 1919-1920 and anti-immigration laws
• Eugenics
• Legislated morals: prohibition, impractical
• Do not try to destroy the system of market capitalism
(socialism), just regulate it to save it
Political:
Fix:
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Gilded Age problem: Corruption, political machine &
boss rule, plutocracy (rule of the rich)
Women’s suffrage, 19th Amendment
Direct election of Senators, 17th Amendment
3rd Parties, The Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
Civil service exams
Secret ballots
Primaries allow voters, not party machines, to choose
candidates
• Initiative: citizens propose new laws to the legislature
• Referendum: citizens approve or reject a law passed by the
legislature
• Recall: voters remove corrupt public officials from office
Economic:
Gilded Age problem: Monopolies and big business
dominate labor and the common person
Fix:
• TR- Trust busting big companies, like Standard Oil, put teeth in
the Sherman Antitrust Act
• Wilson- Clayton Antitrust Act, strengthened the Sherman Act
and was not used against labor
• TR, Square Deal for Labor, like the Coal Miners strike
• Taxes- 16th Amendment- income tax, changed from a consumer
based tax burden with tariffs to a graduated income tax
• Banking: Federal Reserve System, Wilson, private banking
under federal control
• Public utilities and transportation
• Business Regulation: (Ending laissez-faire economics)
– Fire Codes from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
– Consumer regulation from The Jungle -> Pure Food
and Drug Act, FDA created
– Child Labor ended- Florence Kelley
– Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—Wilson, new
“watchdog” agency to investigate regulatory
violations and end unfair business practices
Social:
Gilded Age problem: Urbanization and New stock
immigrants changing traditional WASP values,
declining morals
Fix:
• 18th Amendment, prohibition, Carry Nation
• Settlement Houses, Jane Addams, Hull House
• Immigration restrictions: Literacy tests, Chinese
Exclusion Act, Gentleman’s Agreement, Eugenics
• Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
• Americanization movement, Pledge of Allegiance,
public education
• America’s entrance into WWI brought an end to
the reform fever of the Progressives
Progressives- Politics
• National
– 17th Amendment, direct election of Senators
– 19th Amendment, Women’s suffrage
– TR, Wilson, & Taft, Bull Moose Party, 1912 Election,
– National Parks System- Conservation
– Civil Service Exams, decrease patronage
• State
– Robert Lafollette, “Wisconsin Plan” Laboratory of Democracy
– Direct primaries, secret ballot, voter registration, expand Civil
Service workers
– Initiative, referendum, & recall
• Local
– Lessen the power of boss rule, City managers, commission
governments, experts run cities, civil service exams, Muckrakers:
Lincoln Steffens & The Shame of Cities
Economic
• National
– TR-Trust Busting
• Sherman Anti Trust Act -> Clayton Anti Trust Act, Federal Trade
Commission (FTC)
– RR Regulation: Eakins & Hepburn Acts
– Lowering tariffs and 16th Amendment- income tax
– Business regulation: FDA, Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food & Drug Act
– Child Labor- Keating Owens Act, Florence Kelley, National Consumer
League
– Federal Reserve System- banking
• State
– Consumer protection laws, state professional licenses, state child labor
laws, women’s maximum working hour laws
• Local
– Gov owned utilities & sanitation, public transportation, fire safety codes
– Muckrakers expose these problems, Tarbell-Standard Oil, Sinclair & The
Jungle
Social
• National
– 18th Amendment, prohibition, WCTU & Anti-Saloon League
– Mann Act- prostitution
– Comstock Law- Sanger arrested for promoting birth control
– Immigration reform
• Literacy tests, Gentleman’s Agreement, Quota System and Red Scare
& Palmer Raids after WWI
• State
– State prohibition laws, Eugenics laws
• Local
– Social Gospel Movement (Salvation Army, YMCA…), Social Work,
settlement Houses, City Beautiful movement, dry counties, WCTU &
Anti-Saloon League, Americanization Movement
Homework, 15 points
• Outline Washington and Du Bois DBQ
– Summarize each document with 2 bullet points (5
points)
– Make a chart with ¾ analytical categories and put
the documents and outside information in those
categories (at least 2 per category) (5 points)
– Write a fully developed paragraph (3/4 page) (5
points)