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