Unit 2 Standard 2

Progressive EraAmerica tries to improve their society (1890 - 1918)

Goals: ✤ Regulate big business

✤ More rights to the people and make govt. more accountable

✤ Adapt to a more Urban nation and address Gilded Age Issues

Progressive “Umbrella”

✤ Direct Primary

✤ Populists

✤ Initiative

✤ Referendum

✤ Temperance

✤ Muckrakers

✤ Suffrage

✤ Prohibition

✤ Recall

✤ Activists

Muckrakers

✤ Jacob Riis - How the Other Half Lives (Tenements)

✤ Ida B Wells - Challenged Jim Crow laws and Lynching

✤ Ida Tarbell - The History of the Standard Oil Company

The Jungle

✤ Upton Sinclair’s book that ultimately leads to the Meat Inspection Act and the Food and Drug Act 1906. Exposes condition of Immigrants in urban America

Reforms

✤ 16 Amendment - A progressive income tax (the more you make the higher % you pay in taxes

✤ 17th Amendment - Direct election of senators

✤ Both were Populist Movements to level the playing field and increase regular peoples participation in government

Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette was a BOSS when it came to getting Progressive legislation passed!

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire✤ Garment factory fire in NYC

✤ Kills 146 of 500 employees (mostly women) when locked doors barred escape

✤ No safety codes in non union factory

✤ Leads to NYC passing 36 new labor laws between 1911 and 1914

Prohibition

✤ Temperance - Movement by mostly women to regulate alcohol consumption

✤ hard earned wages spent on alcohol and caused domestic problems

✤ 18th Amendment - prohibited the consumption of alcohol

Progressive Presidents

✤ Theodore Roosevelt

✤ trustbuster -limited power of big business monopolies which helped competition

✤ “Square Deal” for labor

✤ conservationist

✤ Woodrow Wilson

✤ lowered tariffs

✤ more control over economy

Conservation

✤ Roosevelt basically created the National Park System

✤ protected 230 million acres

✤ Gifford Pinchot - “natural resources must be reserved for the benefit of many”

Glacier Yosemite Yellowstone

Election of 1908

✤ Teddy steps down after two terms and supported Taft as his successor

✤ Taft busts up even more trusts

✤ fired Pinchot from U.S. forestry division

✤ Teddy outraged

Election of 1912

(New Nationalism) vs (New Freedom)

Wilson Wins

✤ Taft - Republican

✤ Roosevelt - Progressive

✤ Wilson - Democrat

✤ Eugene V Debs - Socialist

Reforms

✤ Sherman Act mostly busted unions..... it was redefined with Clayton Act

✤ FED

✤ Federal Trade Commission - Regulatory group that orders corporations to refrain from unfair business practices and false advertising

✤ 18 and 19th Amendment