WHAT IS PROGRESSIVISM?
•Progressivism: Working toward better social, political, and
economic conditions
• New policies, ideas, or methods
• Believed Industrialization and Urbanization created problems
• Required direct human intervention
• Believed state and federal governments should pass laws to correct
problems
GOALS OF PROGRESSIVISM
•To improve life for the average American
• Regulation of business
• Increase government responsiveness
• Enact social welfare legislation
•To change the fundamental function of government
• Government can be a way to make social/economic change
• Promote the general welfare of citizens
• “Strengthen the state”
GOALS OF PROGRESSIVISM
•Political Reform: Women’s
suffrage, end of political
machines
•Anti-Monopoly business
practices: Want government
to bust trusts
MUCKRAKERS UNCOVER INJUSTICE
•Journalists and photographers began to
document terrible living and working
conditions in sensational stories
•To bring people’s attention to
problems, supposed to be shocking
• Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
• Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities
• Ida Tarbell, The History of Standard Oil
• John Spargo: The Bitter Cry of the Children
MUCKRAKERS UNCOVER INJUSTICE
•Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
•A book about the
unsafe/unsanitary
practices of the Chicago
meatpacking industry
• And the lives of immigrants who
worked there
PROGRESSIVES REFORM SOCIETY•The Social Gospel
• Following the Bible’s teachings about
charity and justice to improve society
• Christian leaders fought for causes
• End to child labor
• Shorter workweeks
• Government regulation of corporations
and trusts
PROGRESSIVES REFORM SOCIETY
•Reforms from the Social
Gospel
• Protecting Children: U.S.
Children’s Bureau created
• Improving Education: Many
states started requiring
attendance at school
PROGRESSIVES REFORM SOCIETY•Settlement Houses
• Community centers providing social services to the urban poor
• Jane Addams created Hull House in Chicago, 1889
• English classes for immigrants
• Nursery schools and Kindergartens
• Civic classes
• Addressed health and crime concerns
PROGRESSIVES HELP WORKERS• Early 1900s- US had highest rate of industrial
accidents
• Long hours, poor ventilation, hazardous
chemicals, unsafe machinery
• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)
• Workers locked in, doors chained
• Fire broke out and no one could escape
• Many jumped from 9th
or 10th
floors (to their death) or died in the fire
• 146 deaths
• KEY TURNING POINT: After the fire, laws were passed to make work
places safer
WOMEN DURING THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT•Middle-class women expanded beyond their household
roles
• Leaders in temperance, public health, and welfare reform
• Joined “women’s clubs” to create a space for women to work
together
• Reform led by educated women (Teachers, nurses, social work)
• Working women faced hardships (factories, servants/domestic
work)
WOMEN DURING THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
•Women’s Christian Temperance Union
• Supported Prohibition (no alcohol)
• Drinking led men to waste money, neglect and abuse families
•Margaret Sanger and Birth Control
• Ida B. Wells: Formed the National Association of Colored Women
REFORMING GOVERNMENT
• Need to reform the political process, free from boss control
• Improving city government
• Progressives fought for states to let people be more involved in politics
through voting
• Initiatives: Citizens can propose a law directly on the ballot
• Referendum: Citizens can approve/reject a law passed by legislature
• Recall: Voters can remove elected officials
PROGRESSIVE AMENDMENTS
• 16th
: Allows Congress to levy an income tax
• 17th
: Established direct election of US Senators
• 18th
: Prohibition of alcoholic Beverages
• Production, Transport and Sale of Alcohol illegal
• 19th
: Grants women the right to vote
THEODORE (TEDDY) ROOSEVELT
• Assistant Secretary of the Navy
• War Hero- Led “Rough Riders” in Spanish-American War
• McKinley’s VP
• Becomes President when McKinley is assassinated, 1900
• Youngest President at that point
• Program called the “Square Deal”= make the government more fair
THE SQUARE DEAL
•Controlling Corporations
• “The Trustbuster”
• Accepted big business, but
attacked irresponsible ones
•Consumer Protection
• Wanted to regulate industry to
protect the consumers
•Conservation of Natural
Resources
•1st
bust= Northern Securities Company
• Run by JP Morgan and Rockefeller
•Regulate, not destroy trusts
•Government as negotiator
• Willing to consider workers and employers’
points of view
•Regulating the Railroads
• Mann-Elkins and Hepburn Act
TRUSTBUSTING AND REGULATION
FOOD REFORM
•The Meat Inspection Act (1906)
• Requires US Department of
Agriculture to inspect all livestock
when slaughtered and processed
•Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
• Required all “habit forming” items
be labeled as such
CONSERVATION
•Added to National forest
system
• Forests to be preserved for
future use
•Government built dams,
reservoirs, etc
•National Parks System
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
•Restrained and Moderate
•Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor
• But did not do as Roosevelt wanted
• Busted more trusts than Roosevelt
• Roosevelt decides to run for President again-
“New Nationalism”
• “Fit as a bull moose” while running in 1912
• Progressive Party (Bull Moose Party)
THE ELECTION OF 1912
•Democrat: Woodrow Wilson
•Republican: William Howard Taft
•Progressives (or “Bull Moose” Party): Teddy Roosevelt
•Taft and Roosevelt split the Republican vote, so Wilson won
WOODROW WILSON AND NEW FREEDOM
•Professor and President at
Princeton
•New Freedom
• Plan to regulate corporations,
more opportunity to small
businesses
WILSON REGULATES THE ECONOMY•Underwood Tariff Act: Lowers tariffs
•Federal Reserve Act: Creates Federal Reserve to regulate banks
and money supply
• Clayton Anti-Trust Act: Created to destroy monopolies, helps
labor unions
• Federal Trade Commission (1914) eliminates “harmful and anti-
competitive business practices”
POST-RECONSTRUCTION•Southern states reasserted control over African Americans
•Segregation and Jim Crow Laws in the South
•Plessy vs. Ferguson
• “Separate but equal” facilities do not violate the Constitution or its
amendment
• Segregation was legal
•Voting Restrictions (poll tax, literacy test, grandfather
clause)
CONTRADICTIONS OF PROGRESSIVISM•Reform and change were not happening for non-white and
immigrant Americans
•Social Reform or Social Control?
• Settlement houses Americanize immigrants: replace cultures with
white, protestant, middle-class values
•Racism limits the Goals of Progressivism
• Woodrow Wilson, a Progressive President, approved segregated
offices in D.C.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
• Born a slave in 1856
• Educator, author, speaker and advisor to Presidents
• Wanted economic advancement of African Americans
• Build up economic resources
• Establish reputation as hardworking and honest
• NOT focus on ending segregation
• Gain equal rights by demonstrating “industry, thrift, intelligence and
property”
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
•Atlanta Compromise Speech
• In front of a mostly white audience
•Supported segregation
• Blacks and whites could exist as separate fingers of a hand
• IF both worked together
• Equality
•Founded the Tuskegee Institute
W.E.B. DU BOIS
• Born in the North, earned a Ph. D. from Harvard
• Sociologist, historian, Civil Rights Activist, Author and Editor
• Believed blacks should demand FULL and IMMEDIATE equality
• Criticized Washington’s willingness to accommodate southern
whites
• Helped to found the NAACP
IDA B. WELLS
•African-American female reformer
•Led crusade against lynching
• Wrote pamphlets and articles
•Helps found the NAACP
AFRICAN AMERICANS DEMAND REFORM
•1909 NAACP Founded
• National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
• By black and white progressives
• Early 1900s, used courts to
challenge unfair laws
REDUCING PREJUDICE, PROTECTING RIGHTS
• Anti-Defamation League founded to defend Jews (and others) from
physical and verbal attack
• Mexican Americans found mutualistas: Provide legal help
• Native Americans protest federal Indian policy
• Asian Americans protest laws that prevent them from becoming
citizens
SENECA FALLS, NY (1848)
• In the early 1800s, women involved in many
causes
• Abolition (no slavery)
• Temperance (no alcohol)
• Group of men and women meet at Seneca Falls, NY in 1848
• Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott
• Write the Declaration of Sentiments
• Document designed after Declaration of Independence, lists rights desired by
American Women
THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT (1871)
•Grants African-American men the right to vote
• Disappoints many women who thought it might extend voting rights
to all
•Sojourner Truth (1869)
• “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word
about the colored women . . . and if colored men get their rights, and not
colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the
women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.”
FROM SENECA FALLS TO THE 1910S
• Women’s suffrage movement split in early years
• Unite in 1890 to form National American Women’s
Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
• Led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton
• Two key strategies
• Try to win suffrage at state levels
• Try to pass a Constitutional Amendment, but need
¾ of states to ratify
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
•Tried to introduce an
Amendment bill in the
late 1800s
•Every time, it was killed
by the Senate
ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS
•Many people who opposed suffrage were women
•Reasoning:
• Women were high-strung, irrational, emotional
• Women were not smart or educated enough
• Women should stay at home
• Women were too physically frail to walk to the polling station
• Women would become too masculine if they voted
GEOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCES
A NEW GENERATION
•Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony both die by 1906
•Early 1900s
• Many young middle-class women went to
college and joined the suffrage movement
• Many working-class women joined the cause in
hopes of improving working conditions
DIFFERENT STRATEGIES
•Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American
Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
•State-by-state strategy
•Support President Wilson even though he does not
support suffrage
•Act ladylike! Don’t embarrass the movement
DIFFERENT STRATEGIES
•Alice Paul and the National Women’s
Party- more aggressive
• Focus on a Constitutional Amendment
• Refused to support President Wilson if he
wouldn’t support suffrage
• NWP members arrested for picketing in front
of the White House
• Put in jail, hunger strike, force-fed
THE NINETEENTH AMENDMENT (1920)
• In 1920, Tennessee became the 36th
state to ratify the
Amendment
• “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State
on account of sex.”
• Gave Congress the power to enforce this
MAKE YOUR OWN SPEECH•For the rest of class, you will be writing your own speech on
Women’s Rights. Either:
• During the Progressive Era
• Or from a modern-day standpoint
• Your speech must:
• Address grievances, or problems with women’s rights
• Include a list of demands- what do you want to see happen
• Be at least a full paragraph (5 sentences minimum)
THE PROGRESSIVE LEGACY
•Social Reform
•Muckraking
•The Social Gospel
•Settlement Houses
•Involvement of Educated Women
THE PROGRESSIVE LEGACY
•The Women’s Movement
•Begins at Seneca Falls 1848
•State-by-state voting rights
•19th
Amendment, 1920
THE PROGRESSIVE LEGACY
•Civil Rights Reform
•Booker T. Washington: African Americans should
better themselves
•WEB Du Bois: Change NOW
•Ida B. Wells: Anti-lynching activist
THE PROGRESSIVE LEGACY
•Political Reform: Voters have more influence
•17th
and 19th
amendments
•Initiatives
•Referendums
•Recalls
THE PROGRESSIVE LEGACY
•Regulating the Economy:
•Antitrust laws
•Federal Reserve
•Consumer protection
•Safety and Child Labor Laws
THE PROGRESSIVE LEGACY
•Conservation:
•Managing natural resources
•Dams and National parks
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