identify the causes of progressivism and compare it to populism

Chapter 25 Section 1

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The Drive for Reform

• Identify the causes of Progressivism and compare it to Populism.

• Analyze the role that journalists played in the Progressive Movement.

• Evaluate some of the social reforms that Progressives tackled.

• Explain what Progressives hoped to achieve through political reforms.

Objectives


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Terms and People• Progressivism – movement that believed honest

and efficient government could bring about social justice

• muckrakers – socially conscious journalists and writers who dramatized the need for reform

• Lincoln Steffens – muckraking author of Shame of the Cities, exposed corruption in urban government

• Jacob Riis – muckraking photographer and author of How The Other Half Lives, exposed the condition of the urban poor


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Terms and People (continued)

• Social Gospel – belief that following Christian principles could bring about social justice

• settlement house – community center that provided services for the urban poor

• Jane Addams – leader in the settlement house movement

• direct primary – allowed voters to select candidates rather than having them selected by party leaders


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Terms and People (continued)

• initiative – gave citizens the power to propose laws

• referendum – allowed citizens to reject or accept laws passed by their legislature

• recall – gave voters the power to remove legislators before their term is up


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What areas did Progressives think were in need of the greatest reform?

Progressivism was a movement that believed the social challenges caused by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration in the 1890s and 1900s could be addressed.

Progressives believed that honest and efficient government could bring about social justice.


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• believed industrialization and urbanization had created social and political problems.

• were mainly from the emerging middle class.

• wanted to reform by using logic and reason.

Progressives were reformers who:


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Progressives believed honest and efficient government could bring about social justice.

They wanted to end corruption.

They tried to make governmentmore responsive to people’s needs.

They believed that educated leaders should use modern ideas and scientific techniquesto improve society.


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Progressives targeted a varietyof issues and problems.

• corrupt politicalmachines

• trusts andmonopolies

• inequities

• safety

• city services

• women’s suffrage


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Muckrakers used investigative reporting to uncover and dramatize societal ills.Lincoln Steffens The Shame of the Cities

John SpargoThe Bitter Cry of the Children

Ida TarbellThe History of Standard Oil


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Jacob Riis exposed the deplorable conditions poor people were forced to live under in How the Other Half Lives.


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Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, provided a shocking look at meatpacking in Chicago’s stockyards.

The naturalist novel portrayed the struggle of common people.


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Progressive novelists covered a wide range of topics.

• Theodore Dreiser’s, Sister Carrie, discussed factory conditions for working women.

• Francis Ellen Watkins’s, Iola Leroy, focused on racial issues.

• Frank Norris’s, The Octopus, centered on the tensions between farmers and the railroads.


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Christian reformers’ Social Gospel demanded a shorter work day and the end of child labor.

Jane Addams led the settlement house movement.

Her urban community centers provided social services for immigrants and the poor.


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Progressives succeeded in reducing child labor and improving school enrollment.

The United States Children’s Bureau was created in 1912.


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The Gilded AgeThe Gilded AgeChild Labor in Child Labor in

AmericaAmerica


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Child Labor: the Lucky Ones

• Child labor was a national disgrace during the Gilded Age. The lucky ones swept the trash and filth from city streets or stood for hours on street corners hawking newspapers.


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Child Labor: the Less Fortunate

• The less fortunate coughed constantly through 10-hour shifts in dark, damp coal mines or sweated to the point of dehydration while tending fiery glass-factory furnaces.


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A Matter of Survival

• By and large, these child laborers were the sons and daughters of poor parents or recent immigrants who depended on their children's meager wages to survive. But they were also the offspring of the rapid, unchecked industrialization that characterized large American cities as early as the 1850s.


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1870: 750,000 Child Laborers

• In 1870, the first U.S. census to report child labor numbers counted 750,000 workers under the age of 15, not including children who worked for their families in businesses or on farms.


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1911: 2 Million Child Laborers

• By 1911, more than two million American children under the age of 16 were working - many of them 12 hours or more, six days a week. Often they toiled in unhealthful and hazardous conditions; always for minuscule wages.


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Photographer Lewis W. Hine

• But until the documentary photographs of Lewis Wikes Hine appeared in popular and progressive publications in the teens, the public turned a blind eye to the pervasive and cruel exploitation of children in the work place.


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National Child Labor Committee

• Hine was hired by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), a social welfare organization founded in 1904, to document the working conditions of children who worked for pennies in fields, factories, textile mills, sweatshops, coal mines, canneries and on city streets.


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Protested Conditions

• The NCLC was not alone in decrying child labor. Numerous organizations protested the crowded and unsanitary conditions in factories and factory dormitories where disease spread rampantly.


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Arguments Against Child Labor

• They argued that the rigors of child labor weakened the future work force; and that at its worst, child labor caused death. They reasoned that children who were working 10-hour days were unfairly denied the universal education promised them by the state.


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Keating-Owen Act• The tireless efforts

of reformers, social workers and unions seemed to pay off in 1916 at the height of the progressive movement when President Woodrow Wilson passed the Keating-Owen Actbanning articles produced by child labor from being sold in interstate commerce.The act was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court just two years later.


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Dangers in the Mills

• Young girls continued to work in mills, still in danger of slipping and losing a finger or a foot while standing on top of machines to change bobbins; or of being scalped if their hair got caught.


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Cave-Ins and Explosions

• And, as ever, after a day of bending over to pick bits of rock from coal, breaker boys were still stiff and in pain. If a breaker boy fell, he could still be smothered, or crushed, by huge piles of coal. And, when he turned 12, he would still be forced to go down into the mines and face the threat of cave-ins and explosions.


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Fair Labor Standards Act

• Child labor continued unabated until the sweeping Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed, just two years before Lewis Hine died, and after countless children had fallen prey to disease, injury and premature death.


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Minimum Wage & Limited Age

• The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established a minimum wage and limited the age of child laborers to 16 and over, 18 for hazardous occupations. Children 14 and 15 years old were permitted to work in certain occupations after school.


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Child Labor Still Exists

• Child labor still exists in agriculture, especially among migrant families; and U.S. companies who buy products made by child laborers abroad are often the targets of protest.


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The Good Old Days . . .• "The mill is close to the golf course, so on a nice day we

can look out the window and watch the men at play."• Glass factory: "...boys traveled a distance of nearly 22

miles in an 8-hour shift at a constant slow run to and from ovens... average pay of 72 cents per 8-hour shift...."

• Silk Mills: "...girl not 9 years old... cleaned bobbins for 3 cents an hour... must stand at their work... 12-hour shifts... by night... unceasingly... watching the threads... before... scores of revolving spindles... some of them making 25,000 revolutions per minute...."

• Garment Factory: "...to reach their quota, girls had to put in an 84-hour week at a wage averaging 5 cents an hour...“

• Soap-Packing Plants: "...girls were exposed to caustic soda that turned their nails yellow and ate away at their fingers..."


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. . . They Were Terrible!

• Flower-Making Workshops: "...arsenic, liberally applied to produce vivid colors, wrecked the appearance and health... with sores, swelling of the limbs, nausea... complete debility..."

• Tobacco Stripping: "In their homes, ... women and children... endure the most sickening exhalations as they stripped the leaves... tobacco (dust) is everywhere... they sleep in it... (it) seasons their food and befouls the water they drink..."

• Cannery: "...children as young as six employed as headers and cleaners (of shrimp and fish)... stand for shifts of 12 hours and longer in open sheds... hands immersed in cold water..."


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BibliographyAdapted from: Child Labor Reform Exhibits

http://www.dol.gov/oasam/library/special/child/childlabor.htm


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In 1911, 156 workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Many young womenjumped to their deathsor burned.

In the 1900s, the U.S. had the world’s worst rate of industrial accidents.

Worker safety was an important issue for Progressives.


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To reform society, Progressives realized they must also reform government.

• Government couldnot be controlled by political bosses and business interests.

• Government needed to be more efficient and more accountable to the people.


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Cities and states experimented with new methods of governing.

In Wisconsin, Governor Robert M. La Follette and other Progressives reformed state government to restore political control to the people.

• direct primaries• initiatives• referendums• recalls


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Progressive governors achieved state-level reforms of the railroads and taxes.

On the national level, in 1913, Progressiveshelped pass the 17th Amendment, providing for the direct election of United States Senators.

Two Progressive Governors, Theodore Roosevelt of New York and Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, would become Progressive Presidents.


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Section Review

Know It, Show It QuizQuickTake Quiz

identify the causes of progressivism and compare it to populism

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