AP U.S. History Chapter 20 The Progressives (1873-1920)
Main Idea / DetailsThe Rise of Progressivism / 1890-1920 known as the ‘Progressive Era’
Even today scholars disagree on what ‘Progressivism’ means
Reformers attempted to make Washington more responsive to their demands.
Ultimately, it was the presidency, not the Congress, which became the most important vehicle of national reform.
By the time the United States entered World War I the federal government which had exercised very limited powers prior to the twentieth century, had greatly expanded its role in American life.
The Progressive Impulse / Progressivism was a movement that believed industrialization & urbanization created many social problems.
Most agreed that the government should take a more active role in solving these problems.
Progressives were members of both political parties
Many were urban, educated, middle-class Americans
Progressivism was a partial reaction to ‘laissez-faire’ economics
Because of the poverty & crime in cities, reformers began to doubt the free market’s ability to address these problems
They concluded that the government in its present form needed fixing before these other problems could be addressed
Progressives had a strong faith in science & technology; that it benefited people and could produce solutions for society
Modern life was too complex to be left in the hands of party bosses, untrained amateurs, and antiquated institutions
The Muckrakers / Nickname given by Theodore Roosevelt in a speech to the first group of journalists and others who investigated economic monopolies and trusts, social conditions & political corruption
Roosevelt’s speech was reprinted in both expensive and less expensive magazines: McClure’s, Collier’s & Munsey’s printed articles exposing corruption
Ida Tarbell- exposed the Standard Oil Company’s business practices
"I never had an animus against Standard Oil's size and wealth, never objected to their corporate form," wrote Ida Tarbell in her autobiography. "I was willing that they should combine and grow as big and rich as they could, but only by legitimate means. But they had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me."
John Rockefeller, of course, disagreed: "It was the law of nature, the survival of the fittest, that [the small refiners] could not last against such a competitor. Undoubtedly... some of them were very bitter. But there was no band of greedy men plundering them. An able, intelligent, far-seeing organization simply outstripped men in the casual, haphazard way of doing business. That was inevitable."
Charles Edward Russell
1860-1941
“The best way to abolish the muckraker is to abolish the muck.”
Charles Edward Russell attacked conditions within the beef industry, especially working conditions in the slaughterhouses of Chicago
Upton SinclairWrote “The Jungle” exposing conditions in the slaughterhouses of Chicago
Sinclair told how dead rats were shoveled into sausage-grinding machines; how bribed inspectors looked the other way when diseased cows were slaughtered for beef, and how filth and guts were swept off the floor and packaged as "potted ham."
In short, "The Jungle" did as much as any animal-rights activist of today to turn Americans into vegetarians.
But it did more than that. Within months, the angry and gagging public demanded sweeping reforms in the meat industry.
President Theodore Roosevelt was sickened after reading an advance copy.
He called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) and, for the first time, setting up federal oversight on food processing and packaging
Lincoln Steffans1866-1936
In The Shame of the Cities, Steffens sought to bring about political reform in urban America and ‘boss rule’ by appealing to the emotions of Americans. He tried to make them feel outraged and "shamed" by showing examples of corrupt governments throughout urban America
Jacob Riis1849-1914 wrote ‘How the Other Half Lives’ describing slum conditions in New York as well as pioneering flash photography techniques
Tenement Slum
Muckrakers reached the peak of their influence in the first decade of the 20th century.
They helped inspire other Americans to take action
The Social Gospel / The growing outrage at social and economic injustice helped motivate many reformers committed to the pursuit of what came to be known as ‘social justice.’
A loose definition would be justice that goes beyond the individual and seeks justice for a society as a whole
This impulse helps create the rise of the ‘Social Gospel.’
The movement was strongest within the Protestant community but Catholics and Jews also advocated on a smaller scale for social justice.
The Salvation Army, an English institution that arrived on American shores, was an example of the fusion of religion and reform.
Many ministers, priests, and rabbis left traditional parish work to offer material and spiritual service to the poor.
Walter Rauschenbusch
A Protestant minister published a series of discourses on the possibilities for human salvation through Christian reform.
To Rauschenbusch, the message of Darwinism was not survival of the fittest. He believed all Americans should work to ensure humanitarian evolution of society.
The Settlement House Movement / Progressives believed the influence of the environment on the individual.
Social Darwinists did not.
Social Darwinist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910).
Sumner was a Yale-based sociologist and political economist who espoused an extreme laissez faire position, arguing that the government had absolutely no role in the economy's functions.
Not only did Sumner argue against antitrust legislation, but also against protective tariffs and government intervention on behalf of management in labor strike situations.
To Sumner, the economy was a natural event and needed no guidance in its evolution.
In 1907, Sumner published his most influential book, Folkways, in which he argued that customs and mores were the most powerful influences on human behavior, even when irrational. He concluded that all forms of social reform were futile and misguided.
Sumner's views contrasted sharply with those of the advocates of the Social Gospel argued that people’s fortunes reflected their inherent ‘fitness’ for survival.
Progressive theorists disagreed.
Nothing produced more distress, urban reformers believed, than crowded immigrant neighborhoods.
One response to the problems of these communities was borrowed from England, the settlement house.
The most famous one was the first one, Hull House
1889 - Hull House opens in Chicago
Founded byJane Addams
Ellen Gates Starr
Hull House became the model for similar institutions throughout the country.
Staffed by educated members of the middle-class, mostly women, settlement houses sought to help immigrant families adapt to the new language and customs of the country.
Settlement houses avoided the condescension and moral disapproval of earlier philanthropists.
Young, mostly unmarried women were important participants to the settlement house movement.
The close and well-tended buildings that settlement houses created were not only a model for immigrant women but an appropriate work site for elite women as well.
Settlement houses helped create another important element of progressive reform: the profession of social work.
Universities and colleges created social work programs, partly in response to the settlement houses.
Haves / Society / Have Nots
Social Darwinism
Get what you deserve
Herbert Spencer philosopher/Darwinist
William Graham Sumner sociologist
Russell H. Conwell/ minister
Horatio Alger minister/writer / Intelligence
Education
Motivation/Determination
Common Sense
Focus
Common Values
Common Goals
*Andrew Carnegie / Social Gospel (Reform Darwinism)
Help Thy Neighbor (via gov’t)
Washington Gladden/minister
Walter Rauschenbusch/minister
Lester Frank Ward/sociologist
The Allure of Expertise / Progressives involved in humanitarian efforts placed high value on knowledge and expertise.
Even nonscientific problems, they believed, could be solved scientifically
Proposed a new economic system in which power would reside in the hands of highly trained engineers.
The Professions / The late 19th century saw the types of work people did change.
An increasing number of Americans (mostly male) had administrative and professional occupations
Cities required specialized services: scientists, engineers, doctors, attorneys,and teachers.
This in turn required universities and colleges to adjust their curricula to prepare students for these new occupations.
As the demand for professional services increased, so did the pressures for reform.
The medical community formed the American Medical Association (AMA); by 1920 nearly two-thirds of all American doctors were members
The nation’s law schools expanded. The legal profession established the American Bar Association (ABA)
The National Association of Manufacturers (1895) and the United States Chamber of Commerce (1912) showed that businesses also wanted an organization of their own.
Even farmers, long viewed as independents, formed the National Farm Bureau federation designed to spread scientific farming methods.
These organizations removed the incompetent and untrained and lent prestige and status to their trades.
Women and the Professions / American women found themselves excluded from most of the emerging professions, but nevertheless, a substantial number of middle-class women entered professional careers
While some managed to establish themselves as physicians, lawyers, engineers, scientists and corporate managers, most turned to the ‘helping professions’
In the late19th century more than two-thirds of all grammar school teachers were women.
For educated black women the existence of segregated schools in the South created a substantial market for African American teachers.
Nursing also became primarily a women’s field during and after the Civil War.
Women and Reform / The prominence of women in the reform movements is one of the most striking features of progressivism
Women could still not vote in most states and they almost never held public office
They still lived in a culture in which most people, male and female, believed that women were not suited for the public world.
The “New Woman” / What explains the prominent role so many women played in the reform movement?
By the end of the 19th century, most incoming –producing activities had moved out of the home and into the factory or office.
Children were beginning school at earlier ages and spending more time there.
Many wives and mothers did not work for wages therefore the home was no longer an all-consuming place
Running water, electricity and eventually household appliances made for less housework.
Declining family size also changed women’s lives.
Middle-class white women in the late 19th century had fewer children than their mothers and grandmothers
Women’s life expectancy rose, they lived more years after their children were grown
Some educated women shunned marriage entirely
The divorce rate rose rapidly in the late 19th century:
The ratio in 1880 was 1:21
By 1916 the ratio had increased to 1:9
The Clubwomen / Women’s clubs began largely as cultural organizations to provide middle and upper-class women an outlet for their intellectual energies
By the early 20th century the clubs were less focused on cultural activities and more concerned with contributing to social betterment
With the wealthier members, some clubs had access to substantial sums of money to make their influence felt
Black women occasionally joined clubs dominated by white women, but most clubs excluded blacks so African Americans formed clubs of their own.
The National Association of Colored Women was one such organization
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote Women and Economicsin 1898, arguing that the traditional definition of gender roles was exploitive and obsolete
Clubwomen were an important force in winning passage of state and ultimately federal laws that regulated the
a. conditions of women and child labor
b. government inspection of workplaces
c. regulation of the food and drug industries
d. reformed policies toward Indian tribes
e. new standards for housing, and
f. outlawed the sale of manufactured alcohol.
They also pushed for ‘mothers pensions’ to widowed and abandoned mothers with small children
1912- they pressured Congress to establish the Children’s Bureau in the Labor Department
The Women’s Trade Union League was a remarkable joining of union members and upper-class reformers
The WTUL held public meetings, raised money to support strikes, marched on picket lines and bailed out striking women from jail
Woman’s Suffrage / July 1848-Elizabeth Cady StantonLucretia Mott
organized the 1st women’s rights convention in
Seneca Falls, New York *Suffrage= the right to vote
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lucretia Mott
The right of women to have the vote caused a great deal of controversy.
While Stanton and Mott boldly proclaimed that women deserved the same rights as men, most men and some women, known asanti-suffragists, believed allowing women to vote would weaken marriages and families.
Anti-suffragists associated women’s suffrage with divorces, looseness, promiscuity and the neglect of children.
Under the leadership of
Anna Howard Shaw
and
Carrie Chapman Catt
membership in the National American Woman Suffrage Association grew from about 13,000 members in 1893 to over 2 million in 1917.
In order to win over those opposed to women’s suffrage the movement suffragists argued that enfranchising women would help the temperance movement by giving its largest group of supporters a political voice.
The vote (by men) to go to war in Europe in1917 gave a final, decisive push to the movement suffrage.
Many middle-class people reasoned that if blacks, immigrants, and other ‘base’ groups had the vote, it was a matter of justice to allow educated, ‘well-born’ women to vote
Alice Paul, a Quaker, organized large protest marches in Washington, D. C. Her supporters picketed the White House, blocked sidewalks, chained themselves to lampposts and went on hunger strikes when arrested & jailed. Paul would leave the National American Woman Suffrage Association and found the more radical National Women’s Party.
Utah had granted women the vote throughout the late 19th century.
Now the state of Washington, along with California and four other Western states extended suffrage to women between 1910-1912
In 1913, Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi to give women the vote.
August 26, 1920 the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote was ratified
The Assault on Parties / Most progressive goals required the involvement of the federal government.
Only government was big enough to counter the influence of powerful private interests.
However, the federal government was poorly adapted to perform the types of ambitious tasks Progressives envisioned
Many reformers believed the first step was to change the dominant role of the political parties
The Populists and the Greenback movement had both tried to break the hold both Democrats & Republicans had on public life.
There were some successes.
The (Australian) secret ballot was adopted; political parties no longer printed ballots (minus the oppositions names)
Municipal Reform / Lincoln Steffans believed party rule was most damaging in the cities, therefore municipal government became one of the first targets of reform
For decades ‘respectable’ citizens avoided participation in municipal government.
By the end of the century, a new generation of activists, some from aristocratic families, others from the new middle class, were taking an interest in government.
They faced a formidable challenge as they faced off against party bosses, an entrenched political organization, special interest groups, and the constituency of recent immigrants who depended on the political machine for jobs and services
New Forms of Governance / There were many different types of progressivism; different causes led to different approaches, and progressives even took opposing positions on how to solve problems
Efficiency progressives took their ideas from business; by applying principles of scientific management government could become more efficient
Efficiency progressives argued that the government needs ‘experts’ not politicians; they preferred a council-manager system, or the Commission plan
Galveston, Texas, suffered a devastating hurricane in 1900.
The citizens found their current government unable to meet the challenges of rebuilding the city.
Galveston was the first American city to turn to a commission type plan.
It proved successful and became a model for other cities
Tom Johnson - the celebrated reform mayor of Cleveland,Ohio waged a war against the powerful streetcar interest in his city. He fought to lower streetcar fares (3 cents) and ultimately impose municipal ownership on certain basic utilities. He also advanced public baths, milk and meat inspection standards, and an expanded park system
Statehouse Progressivism / The InitiativeAllowed a group of citizens to introduce legislation and required the legislature to vote on it
The ReferendumAllowed proposed legislation to be submitted to voters for approval
Direct Primary
The RecallAllowed voters to demand a special election to remove an elected official from office before his term expired
Sources of Progressive Reform / Eastern, middle-class reformers dominated the public image and the substance of late-19th and early 20th century progressivism.
Others who wanted to improve social conditions included working-class Americans, African Americans, westerners and even party bosses.
The Temperance Crusade / Many Progressives believed alcohol was to blame for many problems in American life.
Men would often spend their meager wages on alcohol leaving nothing for the family and leading to physical abuse
Many Christians opposed alcohol consumption
The temperance movement advocated moderation of alcohol but later believed the only solution was the elimination of alcohol
In 1874, the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTM) was organized
By 1911, the movement had almost 250,000 members and was calling for a complete ban, or prohibition, on alcohol
Making Government Efficient
Democracy & Progressivism / Not all progressives agreed w/the efficiency progressives
Many believed society needed more democracy, not less
They wanted to make elected officials more responsive to voters
“Laboratory of Democracy” / Wisconsin voters elected Robert La Follette as governor
Ran against party bosses & political machine
Pressured the state legislature to require each party hold a direct primary(all party members could vote to select a candidate)
LaFollette’s success gave Wisconsin the nickname “laboratory of democracy”
He claimed “Democracy is based on knowledge…the only way to beat the boss…is to keep the people thoroughly informed.”
Progressives in other states pushed for more changes
Direct Election of Senators / Constitution originally directed each state legislature to elect two senators from the state
Social Welfare Progressivism / In 1900, almost 2 million children under the age of 16 worked outside the home
Muckraker John Spargo’s book ‘The Bitter Cry of the Children’ presented detailed evidence on child labor conditions
States began passing laws limiting the amount of hours children were allowed to work and passing mandatory education laws requiring children to attend school
Health & Safety Codes / The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory fire in New York killed almost 150 women
This tragedy led to the city passing strict building codes and safety measures
Progressives and unions pressured industry to provide safer working conditions and compensation for injury on the job
The Prohibition Movement
Progressives versus Big Business / Many Progressives believed that wealth was concentrated in the hands of too few people.
They were concerned about trusts and holding companies- giant corporations that dominated many industries
Progressives disagreed over how to regulate Big Business
Roosevelt in Office