Progressive Era
1890s-1920s
Vocabulary for 1900
Welfare = anything government does, that is
not war–including grants to railroads.
• US Constitution –”to provide for the
common welfare”.
Liberal = no government regulation of
business; laissez faire
2nd Great
Awakening
Social
Gospel
1920s
Revivalism
1950s
Revivalism
Christian
Evangelical
Movement
C
I
V
I
L
W
A
R
Antebellum
Reforms
[1810s1850s]
Populism
[1870s1890s]
Progressivism
[1890s-1920]
New Deal
[1930s1940s]
Great
Society
&
1960s Social
Movements
Well-Defined Voting Blocs in late 19th
century
Democratic
Bloc
 White southerners
(preservation of
white supremacy)
 Catholics
 Recent immigrants
(esp. Jews)
 Urban working
poor (pro-labor)
 Most farmers
Republican
Bloc
 Northern whites
(pro-business)
 African Americans
 Northern
Protestants
 Old WASPs (support
for anti-immigrant
laws)
 Most of the middle
class
Progressives
• From both Republican and
Democratic parties
• Bull Moose Party (1912) will be an off
shoot of the Republican party
Central idea of Progressives
• The government has a
responsibility to improve the
lives of the people.
L
a
b
o
r
U
n
i
o
n
s
S
u
f
f
r
a
g
e
t
t
e
s
P
o
p
u
l
i
s
t
s
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
n
c
e
M
u
c
k
r
a
k
e
r
s
C
i
v
i
l
R
i
g
h
t
s
c
o
n
s
e
r
v
e
t
i
o
n
G
o
v
e
r
n
m
e
n
t
R
e
f
o
r
m
PROGRESSIVES
• POPULISM (WITHOUT SILVER COINS)
• POLITICAL REFORMS
• PRAGMATISM
• PROFESSIONALISM
History of Scientific Disciplines
• Ancient and Medieval Study
– B. A. Liberal Arts
• Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric
• Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy
– Doctor (teacher)
•
•
•
•
Medicine
Laws
Theology
Philosophy
18th and 19th centuries
• Philosophy
– Natural Philosophy
•
•
•
•
•
Chemistry
Biology
Physics
Geology
Astronomy
Moral Philosophy
•
•
•
•
•
Sociology
Economics
Psychology
Anthropology
Political Science
Practical Fields
late 19th century
• Home Economics (applied Chemistry)
– Dietitian
• Nursing (applied Microbiology)
– Public Health
• Engineering (applied Physics)
– Civil (Reservoirs – clean water)
– Electric
– Mechanical
– Chemical
• Education (applied Psychology, sort of)
– “Normal School” needing teachers of teachers
– School counselors
• Social Worker (applied Sociology)
– Community organizer
•
•
•
•
City Manager (applied Political Science)
Park Ranger (applied Biology/Geology)
Agricultural Agent (applied Biology)
Union Organizer (applied Economics)
Problem—Horse driven
infrastructure
Great Horse Manure Crisis
• http://www.uctc.net/access/30/Access%2030%2
0-%2002%20-%20Horse%20Power.pdf
• From Horse Power to Horsepower E R I C M O R R I S
IN 1898, DELEGATES FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE
gathered in New York City for the world’s first international
urban planning conference. One topic dominated the
discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic
development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven
to desperation by horse manure.
The horse was no newcomer on the urban scene. But by
the late 1800s, the problem of horse pollution had reached
unprecedented heights. The growth in the horse population
was outstripping even the rapid rise in the number of human
city dwellers. American cities were drowning in horse manure
as well as other unpleasant byproducts of the era’s
predominant mode of transportation: urine, flies, congestion,
carcasses, and traffic accidents. Widespread cruelty to horses
was a form of environmental degradation as well.
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London
estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried
nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator
of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings
would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows. A public health
and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions
loomed.
And no possible solution could be devised.
Solution – Stoops &
Garbage men
• George Waring NYC
• Separated waste from
run off—sewage
treatment.
• “White Wings”
sanitation workers
• Old Style
Tenements
Dumbbell Tenement
Settlement Houses
NOT homes for
the homeless, though some had shelters.
• Originally from Social
Gospel movement
• Also called missions
• As with todays Peace
Corps and VISTA,
idea that workers
should live as
neighbors with the
people they want to
help.
• May have Protestant
Christian message.
• Had classes:
– English
– Sewing with machines
Jane Addams
20 years at Hull
House 1912
Chicago
Nobel Peace
Prize
• Lillian Wald
• Henry Street
Settlement
NYC
• Visiting Nurse
Public Health
Sue Barton, Visiting Nurse
by Helen Dore Boylston, 1938
First class It seemed strange to be going out of doors to go
to class, and it would seem stranger still, Sue thought, to be
tramping city streets all day long, with no supervisor or head
nurse at hand and tenements wherever you looked.
Sue had never been inside a tenement in her life, and
whenever she thought of the afternoon before her she was
divided in her emotions: glad that she was going to do this
kind of work, and a little frightened at the thought of going
into poverty stricken homes as a stranger, and perhaps as an
intruder. Still, the caretaker had said, “I can’t play no mean
trick on a Henry Street nurse.” And if Miss Wald had been
afraid there would be no Henry Street nurses.
The lecture, this morning, was held in a small classroom,
very like the classrooms of a hospital. It had the familiar
bed, with the familiar doll in it; there was the usual
bedside table and chair.
But why the stack of
newspapers? …….
The stack of newspapers was explained at once.
They were used for a great variety of things—for making
waste bags, as table covers, as padding for babies’
mattresses, for pillows when a shampoo or an irrigation
was to be given and there was no rubber sheet….
The instructor went on from this to the important
subject of the nurse’s bag…”There must be no carrying
of infection from one house to another,” she said.
“Therefore, the bag must never touch anything in the
house. Always set it on a newspaper. Wash your hands
before taking out your equipment, and before returning
it—sterilized—to the bag.”…
The instructor paused a moment, scanning the rows
of faces. Then she said: “Can anyone tell me why it
is best to work in the kitchen rather than in the
bathroom?”
There was a brief silence. Then the girl who
wore her hat so jauntily said, “Because the kitchen
will have water, and a stove for sterilizing things—
and because there probably isn’t any bathroom.
“Good. That's exactly it. Nearly always the
bathroom is out in the hall of the tenement, and used
by many other families. If this is the case, and you
have waste fluids to be thrown out, don’t let any
helpful member of the family throw them into the
sink—where dishes are to be washed. There is sure
to be a mop pail in the house. Use it, instead. It can
be carried out later and emptied.”
The street swarmed with life in
spite of the icy wind. Hawkers bellowed,
housewives clamored, children scrambled
shrieking underfoot; old people sat stolidly
on tenement steps, their faces impassive
but their eyes bright with interest. The
smell of fruit, pickled herrings, and the sea
mingled with the rich brown smell of
roasting chestnuts and blue wood smoke
from fires, burning in pails along the
gutter. Far up the street, beyond slanting
rooftops and rakish chimneys, the slim arc
of a bridge was white in the sun….
First Day
The afternoon was a jumble of disconnected impressions,
which taken together, made a clear complete picture. There
were only general impressions at first, the black line of
tenement roofs against the sky; the sharp cold of the
February wind; the smell of the sea and smoke; hallways
with plaster peeling from the walls; dark flights of shaking
stairs; grimy doors; a smell of cabbages and unaired feather
beds—and a sudden, sharp picture of Mrs. Kirmayer
standing on a windy street corner looking up at the
tenements. Her hat brim cast a slanting shadow across her
steady eyes. “I love these old streets,” she said.
The words were simple, direct, and undramatic, but
they were the summary of twenty-five years of toil and
teaching in crowded tenements—twenty-five years of
trudging through winter snows and the stifling heat of
summers that had vanished, one by one, into a rich past.
Linotype printing
• makes
newspapers
and
magazines
inexpensive
NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES
EXPOSE THE PROBLEMS OF
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Publishers of the “Yellow Press”
• William Randolph
Hearst
• Joseph Pulitzer
MUCKRAKERS
Jacob Riis, How The Other Half
Lives, 1890
• "I went up the dark stairs in one of those
tenements," Riis wrote of one expedition into a
rear tenement, "and there I trod upon a baby. It
is the regular means of introduction in the old
dark houses, but I never was able to get used to
it. I photographed the baby standing with its
back against the public sink in a pool of filth that
overflowed on the floor. I do not marvel that one
in five children in the rear tenement, into which
the sunlight never comes, was killed by the
house. It seemed strange, rather, that any
survived."
John Spargo
The Bitter Cry of the Children 1906
• As I stood in that breaker I thought of the reply of
the small boy to Robert Owen. Visiting an
English coal mine one day, Owen asked a
twelve-year-old lad if he knew God. The boy
stared vacantly at his questioner: “God?” he
said, “God? No, I don’t. He must work in some
other mine.” It was hard to realize amid the
danger and din and blackness of that
Pennsylvania breaker that such a thing as belief
in a great All-good God existed.
Lewis Hines
National Child Labor Committee
1908
Standard Oil as an octopus
Ida Tarbell
THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL
COMPANY (1904)
• The memorandum said squarely that the
intent and purpose of this was to make the
United Pipes the sole feeders of the
railroads. It was a plan not unlike the
South Improvement Company in design-to
put everybody but yourself out of
business, and it had the merit of stating its
intent and purpose with perfect candour.
Upton Sinclair
The Jungle 1906
• I aimed for the
heart of America
and hit its
stomach
• Frank Norris
The Octopus: A
California Story
1901
• The ranchers
fight the railroads
(the “octopus”)
Lincoln Steffens
The Shame of the Cities 1904
• An orator reminded his hearers that his
was the ward of Independence Hall, and
naming over signers of the Declaration of
Independence, he closed his highest flight
of eloquence with the statement that
"these men, the fathers of American
liberty, voted down here once.” “And," he
added, with a catching grin, "they vote
here yet."
One of the reasons why political
machines ceased to exist in most
large cities was because
Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall NYC
they were no
longer the sole
source of
political and
social welfare
benefits.
Ida B. Wells
Southern Horrors 1892
• There is, therefore, only
one thing left to do;
save our money and
leave a town which will
neither protect our lives
and property, nor give
us a fair trial in the
courts, but takes us out
and murders us in cold
blood when accused by
white persons.[