PROGRESSIVE AGE

Political Ideology

Ideology

A set of beliefs, attitudes, and ideas:

Politics Social concerns Moral concerns Economics Diplomacy

Changes from time to time

Liberal Conservative

Challenge existing attitude and practices, prefer new approaches, seek to change society and seek to change/or improve behavior

Embrace conventional wisdom of their time, prefer tradition, accept the status quo, and prefer small, incremental change

Ideology

Liberal (Left) Conservative (Right)

• Regulate big business: trusts

• Insure free market competition

• Government is an agent of social change

• Federal gov’t governs• Level playing field for all• More secular• Manage natural resources• Loose Construction

“survival of the fittest”States’ rightsLimited governmentProperty RightsIndividual RightsRegulate moralityMore religiousUse natural resourcesStrict Construction

Progressive Era Ideology

Socialism Eugene Debs

Government owns (nationalization) important businesses: oil, steel, transportation

DemocraticProvides equal power

relationships between management and workers

Provides safety net for all: social and economic

Popular around 1900-1920

Progressive Era Ideology

“Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.”

Progressivism: Conservative Movement?

Preserve market system (capitalism) and remove it from the “plutocracy” through reform

Feared that American values and democracy were undermined by labor unions and immigration

(Moral Progressives) wanted to regulate individual behavior

Immigrants: main source of crime, poverty, and vice

Xenophobia: feared Catholicism and Judaism, new languages and customs, and foreign ideas

Order and stability to chaotic patterns of urbanization and industrialization

Reforms were band-aids; did not address the fundamental problems of the socio-economic structure

Mark Hanna: Chair of the Republican Party

Progressivism: Conservative Movement?

Ignored the Rise of Jim Crow

Preserving the free market system

Segregation furtheredIgnored the plague of

lynchingDrive for women’s

suffrage prolongedSupreme Court struck

down the Keatings-Owens Act

Prohibition: 18th amendment

Mann ActNarcotics Tax ActNativism: Literacy testsAmericanization: public

school systemElimination of gambling;

Blue LawsAnti-gambling lawsEstablishment of

professional standards: ABA, AMA, Chamber of Commerce, etc.

Suffrage Map

Progressivism: Liberal Movement?

Federal government governs, not the trusts

Government is an agent of social change or activism

Role of Federal government must change with the times

“the bully pulpit” Elimination of corruption at the

state and local levels Square deal Increased democracy

Australian Ballot Initiative, Referendum, Recall Direct Primaries

Private social programs Settlement house movement National Consumers League NAACP

Progressivism: Liberal Movement?

Conservation Antiquities Act Forest Service National Park System

Consumer ProtectionRailroad RegulationFederal Reserve SystemClayton Anti-Trust Act Northern Securities

CaseFederal Trade

Commission

16th Amendment17th amendment19th amendment

Conservative or Liberal?

"The Progressive movement from 1895 to 1917 was a triumph of conservatism rather than a

victory for liberalism.”

Using the documents and your knowledge of the period, assess the validity of this

statement.