Chapter 28

1901-1912

Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt

• 1900 population of America nearly 76 million• 1 in 7 was foreign born

• New crusaders or “progressives” waged war against monopoly, corruption, inefficiency, and social injustice• Progressive army large and diverse• “Strengthen the State”

“Fourteen Years of Peace”

Progressive Roots

• Groundswell of new reformist wave took from the Greenback Labor Party of the 1870’s and the Populist Party of the 1890’s

• Individualism outworn in the modern machine age

• Progressive theorists say society could no longer afford laissez faire or “let-alone” policy

• 1894 – Henry Demarest Lloyd’s Wealth Against Commonwealth• Charged into the Standard Oil Company

Progressive Attack

• 1899 – Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class• Attack on “predatory wealth” & “conspicuous

consumption”• Wasteful “business” - making money for

money’s sake rather than making goods to satisfy needs

• Jacob A. Riis – Danish reporter for New York Sun• How the Other Half Lives – dirt, disease, vice &

misery of New York slums• Influenced future New York City commissioner

Theodore Roosevelt

• Theodore Dreiser – novelist• The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914)• Battered promoters and profiteers

• High-minded messengers promoted brand of progressivism based on Christian teachings• Demanded better housing and living conditions for

urban poor using religious doctrine

• Feminists added social justice to suffrage• Jane Addams• Lillian Wald

Other Forms of Progressivism

Raking Muck with the Muckrakers

• Aggressive 10-15% magazines• McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Collier’s, Everybody’s• Editors and young reporters branded as

“muckrakers” because of their pugnacious writing

• Some scandalous exposures published as best-selling books

Exposing Evil

• 1902 - Lincoln Steffens launched series of articles in McClure’s “The Shame of the Cities”• Unmasked alliance between big business &

municipal government

• Followed by pioneering journalist Ida M. Tarbell• Published exposé of the Standard Oil Company

• Thomas W. Lawson – made $50 million on the stock market• Wrote series of articles “Frenzied Finance” 1905-1906• Rocketed the circulation of Everybody’s• Died a poor man

• David G. Phillips wrote series in Cosmopolitan “The Treason of the Senate” 1906• Charged that 75 out of 90 senators only

represented railroads and trusts• Impressed Roosevelt• Fatally shot in 1911

• “White slave” traffic in women

• Rickety slums

• Industrial Accidents

• Subjugation of blacks – Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color Line 1908

• Child labor – John Spargo’s The Bitter Cry of the Children 1906

Social Evils

• Vendors spiked medicine heavily with alcohol

• Adulterated and habit-forming drugs

• Attacks in Collier’s ably reinforced by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley – chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture• Performed experiments on self

Potent Patent Medicines

Political Progressivism

• Progressives sought two goals:• 1) to use state power to curb trusts• 2) stem the socialist threat by generally improving the common person’s

living & labor conditions

• Less a minority movement, more a majority mood

• Pushed for direct primary elections to undercut power-hungry bosses

• Agitated for the “referendum”• Placed laws on the ballot for final approval by the people

• Rooted out graft• Limited amount of money candidates could spend for election

• Direct election of US senators

• The Seventeenth Amendment• Approved 1913• Established direct election of US senators

Objectives

• Received powerful support from the progressives in the early 1900’s• Women’s votes would elevate political tone• Foes of the saloon could count on enfranchised females

• “Votes for Women” & “Equal Suffrage for Men and Women”

• Suffragists protested “Taxation Without Representation”

Women’s Suffrage

Progressivism in the Cities and States

• Appointed expert-staffed commissions to manage urban affairs• Designed to take politics out of municipal administration

• Valued efficiency more highly than democracy

• Attacked “slumlords,” juvenile delinquency & prostitution

• Tried to halt sale of franchises for public utilities

Reforms

• Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette• Crusader who emerged as one of the most militant

progressive Republican leaders• Became governor of Wisconsin 1901• Wrested considerable control from corporations and

returned it to the people

• Hiram W. Johnson• Elected Republican governor of California 1910• Helped break grip of Southern Pacific Railroad

• Charles Evans Hughes• Reformist Republican governor of New York• Gained national fame as an investigator of malpractices

Progressive Women

• The settlement house movement • exposed middle class women to poverty, political corruption, & intolerable

working/living conditions

• The women’s club movement• Literary clubs for women to improve themselves

• Woman’s place in the home

• New activities included moral and maternal issues

• Women’s Trade Union League, National Consumers League, Children’s Bureau, Women’s Bureau• Wedges in federal bureaucracy gave women stage for social

investigation & advocacy

“Separate Spheres”

• Sweatshops – factories where workers toiled long hours for low wages

• Florence Kelley – former resident of Jane Addams’s Hull House• Became first chief factory inspector of Illinois & advocate for improved

factory conditions• 1889 – took control of National Consumer’s League

Reform

• 1908

• Louis D. Brandeis persuaded Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers by presenting evidence of harmful effects on weaker bodies• Progressive triumph over existing legal doctrine

Muller v. Oregon

• 1905

• Invalidated a New York law establishing a ten-hour day for bakers

• 1917 – Supreme Court upheld ten-hour law for factory workers

Lochner v. New York

• 1911 – Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York• Violations of the fire code turned factory into death

trap• Killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant

women

• New York legislature passed stronger laws regulating hours and conditions

• 1917 – 30 states had workers’ compensation laws

Enforcing Factory Laws

• Alcohol intimately connected with prostitution

• 1900 – cities like New York had 1 saloon for every 200 people

• Some states passed “dry” laws which controlled, restricted, or abolished alcohol

• About to be floored by Eighteenth Amendment 1919

Demon Rum

• Antiliquor campaigners received support from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union

• Founder Frances E. Willard mobilized nearly 1 million women to “make the world homelike”

• Allied with the Anti-Saloon League

Anti-liquor Efforts

TR’s Square Deal for Labor

• For capital, labor & the public

• Embraced three C’s:• Control of the corporations• Consumer protection• Conservation of natural resources

“Square Deal”

• 1902 – strike broke out in coal mines of Pennsylvania• 140,000 workers demanded improvements, 20% increase & reduction of

working day from 10 to 9 hours

• George F. Baer – reflected high-and-mighty attitude of employers

• Roosevelt threatened to operate mines with federal troops

• Owners grudgingly consented• 10% increase• 9 hour work day

• 1903

• Urged by Roosevelt due to antagonisms between capital and labor

• The Bureau of Corporations authorized to probe business engaged in interstate commerce• Helped break stronghold of monopoly

Department of Commerce and Labor

TR Corrals the Corporations

• Interstate Commerce Commission (1887) proved inadequate• Extended to reach express companies, sleeping car companies & pipelines• Given authority to nullify existing rates & stipulate maximum rates

• Elkins Act of 1903• Heavy fines could now be imposed on railroads that gave rebates and

shippers that accepted them

• Hepburn Act of 1906• Free passes were severely restricted

The Railroad Octopus

• “Good” trusts with public consciences

• “Bad” trusts lusted greedily for power

• 1902 – Roosevelt attacked Northern Securities Company, organized by J. P. Morgan and James J. Hill

• 1904 – Supreme Court upheld Roosevelt’s antitrust suit and dissolved Northern Securities Company• Angered big business, enhanced Roosevelt’s reputation

Antitrust Bludgeon

Caring for the Consumer

• Foreign governments threatening to ban all American meat imports

• American consumers hungered for safer canned products

• Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle 1906• Described filth, disease & putrefaction in Chicago’s slaughterhouses

• Roosevelt induced Congress to pass Meat Inspection Act of 1906• Decreed that preparation of meat would be subject to federal inspection

• Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906• Designed to prevent adulteration and mislabeling

Earth Control

• The Desert Land Act of 1877• Federal government sold arid land on the condition that the purchaser

irrigate within 3 years

• The Forest Reserve Act of 1891• Authorized the president to set aside forests as national parks• Rescued 46 million acres

• The Carey Act of 1894• Distributed federal land to the states on the condition that it be irrigated and

settled

Feeble Conservation

• Gifford Pinchot – head of the federal Division of Forestry• Roosevelt seized leadership

• The Newlands Act of 1902• Washington was authorized to collect money from the sale of lands in

western states and use the funds for development of irrigation projects

• The Roosevelt Dam• Constructed on Arizona’s Salt River, dedicated 1911• Dozens of dams thrown across every major western river

• Set aside 125 million acres of forestry, millions of acres of coal & water

• 1902 – banned Christmas trees from White House

Roosevelt Takes Charge

• Concern about disappearance of frontier as a national characteristic of individualism and democracy

• Too much civilization not good for the national soul

• Jack London’s Call of the Wild 1903• Brought up by worried city dwellers

• Boy Scouts of America• Largest youth organization

• The Sierra Club 1892• Dedicated to preserving wilderness

National Concern

• 1913 – federal government allowed San Francisco to build dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park• Deep division among conservationists• Offended preservationists, including famed naturalist John Muir

• Pinchot and Roosevelt battle against greedy commercial interests and romantic preservationists

• “Multiple-use resource management”• Sought to combine recreation, sustained-yield logging, watershed protection,

& summer stock grazing with federal land

The “Roosevelt Panic” of 1907

• “Teddy bear” Roosevelt personally popular

• Republican bosses considered him dangerous and unpredictable

• 1907 – Short & punishing panic on Wall Street, blamed Roosevelt• Conservatives referred to Roosevelt as “Theodore the Meddler”• Paved the way for fiscal reforms• Need for more elastic medium of exchange

• 1908 – Congress passed Aldrich-Vreeland Act• Authorized national banks to issue emergency currency backed by various

kinds of collateral

• Led to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913

Panic of 1907

The Rough Rider Thunders Out

• William Howard Taft• Amiable, ample-girthed & huge-framed• Secretary of war progressive• Personally chosen by Roosevelt

• William Jennings Bryan• Twice-beaten• Griped that Roosevelt had stolen policies from Bryanite camp

• Taft wins 321-162 electoral and 7,675,320-6,412,294 popular

• Socialists’ Eugene V. Debs (hero of the Pullman Strike) amassed 420, 793 votes

The Election of 1908

• Greatly enlarged the power and prestige of the presidential office

• Technique of using publicity as a political bludgeon

• Helped shape the progressive movement and liberal reform campaigns

• The Square Deal was the grandfather of the New Deal

• Opened eyes of Americans to the fact that they shared the world with other nations

Remembering Roosevelt

Taft: A Round Peg in a Square Hole

• “Everybody loves a fat man”

• Second in his class at Yale

• Enviable reputation as a lawyer and judge

• Regarded as hostile to labor unions

• Trusted administrator under Roosevelt

William Howard Taft

• Taft had none of the arts of a dashing political leader and none of Roosevelt’s zest

• Adopted an attitude of passivity toward Congress

• Poor judge of public opinion

• Chronic victim of “foot-in-mouth” disease

Political Handicaps

The Dollar Goes Abroad as a Diplomat

• Taft’s approach to foreign policy

• By preempting investors from rival powers, bankers would strengthen American defenses and foreign policies

• Brought further prosperity

“Dollar Diplomacy”

• Taft saw Manchurian railway monopoly a possible strangulation of Chinese economy and consequent slamming of Open Door

• 1909 – Philander C. Knox, Secretary of State • proposed group of bankers buy Manchurian railroads and turn them over to

China under a self-liquidating arrangement

• Japan and Russia bluntly rejected and Taft was showered with ridicule

Trouble in China

• Washington urged Wall Street bankers to pump dollars into the financial vacuums in Honduras and Haiti

• The Monroe Doctrine would not permit foreign nations to intervene

• US decides to put its money where its mouth was

• Revolutionary upheaval in Nicaragua• Partly fomented by American interests• 1912 - resulted in 2,500 marines that remained for 13 years

Revolution-Riddled Caribbean

Taft the Trustbuster

• Taft brought 90 suits against trusts in 4 years v. Roosevelt who brought 44 in 7 ½ years

• 1911 – Supreme Court ended the Standard Oil Company• In restraint of trade in violation with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

• “Rule of Reason”• Only those combinations that “unreasonably” restrained trade were illegal

• Antitrust suit against U.S. Steel Corporation • Infuriated Roosevelt

Smasher of Monopolies

Taft Splits the Republican Party

• Taft’s campaign promise to lower tariffs• Called Congress into special session March 1909• House passed moderately reductive bill

• Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island• Led senatorial reactionaries to tack on upward tariff

revisions

• Taft signed Payne-Aldrich Bill, betrayed campaign promises• Only items left on duty-free list were hides, sea moss,

& canary seed

“Mother of Trusts”

• Taft established Bureau of Mines to control mineral resources, rescued millions of acres of coal lands, and protected water-power sites

• These accomplishments overshadowed by the Ballinger-Pinchot quarrel in 1910• Richard Ballinger opened lands in Wyoming, Montana & Alaska for corporate

development• Gifford Pinchot criticized• Taft dismissed Pinchot on insubordination – protests arose from

conservationists

“Conservation”

• Spring of 1910, Taft split the Grand Old Party

• Roosevelt returned to New York June 1910

• Gave a speech at the stump at Osawatomie, Kansas• Proclaimed “New Nationalism” which urged the national government to

increase its power to remedy economic and social abuses

Roosevelt Steps In

• Republicans lost congressional elections of 1910• Democrats – 228 seats• Republicans – 161 seats

• Socialist representative Victor L. Berger elected from Milwaukee• Reforming temper of the times

Democrats Take Over

The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture

• 1911 – National Progressive Republican League formed• Leading candidate Senator La Follette

• 1912 – Roosevelt formally wrote to 7 state governors that he was willing to accept the Republican nomination

• June 1912 – Republican convention in Chicago• Roosevelt adherents refused to vote• Taft triumphed

Roosevelt’s Last Run