the progressive movement takes shape. what is progressivism? political response to the problems of...
TRANSCRIPT
What is Progressivism?
Political response to the problems of Industrialization and its social by-products:• immigration• urban growth• concentration of corporate power• widening of class divisions
Who were the progressives?
• Middle class• Protestant • Successful Urban
dwellers
Umbrella label - Social Gospel, Suffrage, Temperance, Settlement, Good Government, Civil Rights
Types of Progressive Reform
Wanted to reform the system to preserve it• Humanitarian - legislation to protect
worker• Morality - Purity Crusaders - Nativists• Economic - Break-up trusts and
monopolies• Political – provide good and efficient
government
Pressure for Reform
• Pressure to reform came from private interest groups
• Women’s Christian Temperance Union
• NAACP
• National American Women‘s Suffrage Association
Emphasis on the scientific approach to social problems
• Social Research
• Expert Opinion
• Statistical Data
• Human emotion propelled the movement
:
Progressive Goals
• End “White slavery”
• Prohibition
• Immigration restriction
• “Americanization” of immigrants
• Regulation of utilities
• Women’s suffrage
Prohibition
• Saloons vice
• Drinking family tragedy
• Voting in saloons graft and corruption boss and political machines
Anti-Trust
• Break up monopolies• Sherman Anti-Trust• Clayton Anti-Trust• Standard Oil Trust• Railroad Trust• T. Roosevelt –
“Trust-Buster”
Municipal Reform
• Provide better services to the city populations• Break up machines• Government regulation of utilities• Bath-houses, kindergartens, playgrounds,
improved sanitation, lodging houses for tramps, lower transit fares, equitable taxes
• Hazen Pingree, Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones
Settlement movement
• Reform movement
• Live in poor neighborhoods to witness effects of poverty first hand
• Jane Addams and Helen Gates Starr founded Hull House in Chicago
Settlement Movement
• Taught classes
• Medical clinics
• Day care and camps
• Legal advice
• Investigated community conditions
• Helped immigrants
• Jane Addams
• Lillian Wald
Hull House services
• Cultural events• Classes• Child care center• Clubs• Summer camps • Playgrounds• Employment and
legal aid• Healthcare clinics
Hull House
• Investigated city conditions – economic, political and health
• Foundation for future reform• Workers – college educated women• Contribution – widen people’s
perspectives on social conditions and close the gap between divisions in society
• First social workers
Florence Kelley
• Quaker
• Socialist
• Trained at Hull House
• Illinois’ first state factory inspector
• National Consumers’ League
• Fought child labor and sweat shop conditions
Women’s Suffrage
• Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt
• Sought constitutional amendment
• 19th Amendment achieved
Muckrakers
Novelists and journalists who exposed wrong - doing
• Ida Tarbell - Standard Oil Trust
• Lincoln Steffens - The Shame of the Cities -St. Louis
• Upton Sinclair - The Jungle - Chicago’s meat-packing industry
State reforms - intended to democratize the process
• Secret ballot
• Direct primary - Wisconsin (1903)
• Initiative and Referendum
• Recall
• Seventeenth Amendment - direct election of Senators by the people - not the state legislatures
Reforming Society and Cities
• By 1907 - 30 states had abolished child labor
• 1903 - Muller v. Oregon - women laundry workers limited to a 10 hour day
• 1911 - New York State Factory Investigating Committee - 56 worker protection laws
• 1914 - 25 states passed laws making employers liable for job related injuries
The Wisconsin Idea
• Laboratory for progressive reform • Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette• direct primary• commission to regulate railroads• increased corporate taxes• passed a law limiting campaign spending• legislative reference library to inform
lawmakers
Theodore Roosevelt – 1st Progressive President
• Trust Buster• Square Deal• Settled 1902 Coal
Strike• Conservationist• Consumer protection
– Pure Food and Drug Act
– Meat Inspection Act
TR as President
• Saw the presidency as a “bully pulpit” – platform from which to bring change
• “square deal” – government should afford honesty and fairness in gov’t and business
• Opposed socialists • Condemned wealthy who opposed change
and abused their power
Anthracite Coal Strike - 1902
• United Mine Workers
• Mine owners refused arbitration
• TR threatened to seize the mines
• Workers received wage increase and shorter hours – no union recognition
• TR – became a friend to labor and expanded presidential power
Curbing the “Bad” Trusts
• 1902 – applied the Sherman Anti – Trust Act against Northern Securities Company (JP Morgan)
• Power of the federal government to regulate business combinations
• “good trusts” and “bad trusts”• 40 antitrust suits Trustbuster
Corralling the Corporations
• Elkins Act – 1903 – fines for railroad rebates
• Hepburn Act – 1906 – expanded Interstate Commerce Commission– Free passes on RR restricted– If shippers complained – ICC could nullify
rates
Conservationist
• TR increased national reserves of forests, coal lands and waterpower sites
• Secured passage of of Newlands Act (1902) to finance irrigation project – SW
• Encouraged conservation efforts of the Forest Service – appt. Gifford Pinchot
• Propelled conservation into national significance
Conservation and Preservation
• Gifford Pinchot –– Conservation – scientific timber management– Chief Forester - U.S. Forest Service
• John Muir – Preservation – preserve wildness of western
landscape– Founder of Sierra Club
Goals of Conservationism?
• Use natural resources wisely
• Multiple – use resource management
– Recreation
– Sustained yield logging
– Watershed protection
– Summer stock grazing
Consumer Protection
• Pure Food and Drug Act 1906
• Meat Inspection Act 1906
• Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
Wm. Howard Taft2nd Progressive President
• Failed at tariff reform
• Split the Republican Party over conservation
• Busted trusts• Reserved acreage• Angered TR
Woodrow WilsonLast Progressive President
• Clayton Anti-Trust Act
• Federal Trade Commission
• Lowered tariffs
• 16th Amendment – income tax
• Federal Reserve System
• Highly moralistic
Progressive Amendments
• 16th Amendment – Income Tax
• 17th Amendment – Direct election of Senators
• 18th Amendment – Prohibition
• 19th Amendment – Women’s suffrage
What is the heritage of the progressive movement?
• Belief that government has responsibility to act in public’s welfare
• Marked transition from laissez-faire to government regulation of the economy
• Demonstrated ability of our democratic institutions to meet problems arising from urbanization and industrialization
• President should provide strong and effective national leadership