PROGRESSIVISM: THE SEARCH FOR ORDER

WHO WERE THE PROGRESSIVES?

• Broadly defined: a collection of people who strove to bring about change in American social, political, economic life. • In general Progressives are reacting to “bigness”

in American society—want to preserve individual freedoms.

CITIES

• Progressivism is generally centered in urban spaces. While artists become preoccupied with cityscapes, and urban life, there still exists massive inequality even as the city came to symbolize modernity.• “Muckraking” journalists such as Lincoln Steffens,

Ida Tarbell, and Upton Sinclair capture the corruption of party bosses, the corporate greed of Standard Oil, and unsanitary conditions of slaughterhouses in Chicago.

MULBERRY STREET, NYC. CIRCA 1900

VANDERBILT MANSION, FIFTH AVE.

IMMIGRATION

• Between 1901-14, about 13 million immigrants came to America from Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Many of these immigrants are motivated by “push” factors in their own country, and “pull” factors in America. Many (Irish/Mexican) want to make enough money to acquire land back home.• Asian and Mexican immigrants flood into the

Western U.S.

COMING TO AMERICA

• By 1910 1/7 Americans was foreign born• Formed ethnic neighborhoods in urban centers

like Germans in Milwaukee, Jewish in NY. Many see the US as a land of economic/religious/legal opportunity, and relied on friends/relatives to make that happen. Immigration is a carefully considered and planned venture.

CONSUMERS

• In Progressive Era, the growth of department stores, mail order catalogues, chain stores make mass consumption (the ability to afford and enjoy luxury goods) central to American freedom.• Leisure also part of consumption: amusement

parks, dance halls, and theaters attract large crowds.• Ability to consume is limited by wage inequality

and income distribution. Desire for consumer goods sparks workers to join unions, fight for higher wages.

MS. INDEPENDENT

• Native-born white women see the number of jobs available to them expand. By 1920, 25% of employed women were office workers or telephone operators.

• Working woman becomes a symbol of female emancipation. Earning money independently, they participate in a consumer society. They still face wage discrimination/exclusion form many jobs

• Desire to work, be “American” causes tension in immigrant families. Daughters resist curfews, spend part of their wages of clothing, makeup, leisure.

HENRY FORD’S EXPEDITION

• 1905 founds Ford Motor Company, introduces the Model T in 1908.• Ford concentrates on standardizing output and

lower prices (more cars, more cheaply, for more people). In 1913 his factory in Michigan adopts the moving assembly line.• Although Ford pays his workers well ($5/day),

conditions in his plant were poor and the work was monotonous.• In 1910 Ford’s cost $700 each, in 1916, it was

$316

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS

• As large auto, electrical, steel companies seek greater control over production with scientific management, many white collar workers (corporate managers, salespeople) complain of the loss of autonomy. The greater number of these workers also undermined personal freedom in that these were workers who used to operate their own business.• This helps lead to idea of industrial freedom; was

believed to be at heart of labor troubles.

SOCIALISTS

• Founded in 1901, the party calls for reforms like free college, improvement in working conditions, and control over the econonmy through public ownership of RR’s and factories.• By 1912 Socialist Party had 150,000 members

and flourished in immigrant communities like the Lower East Side, and Milwaukee.

EUGENE DEBS

• For two decades, Debs spoke all across the country for “political equality and economic freedom,” as he led the Socialist movement in the United States.• In 1912 he receives 900,000 votes for President,

and the socialist paper The Appeal to Reason has the highest circulation of any weekly in the country at 700,000.

AFL AND IWW

• By 1904, AFL membership had risen to 1.4 million. At the same time, under Samuel Gompers, the AFL joined the National Civic Federation, with business leaders like George Perkins and Mark Hanna, which accepted the right to collectively bargain for “responsible” unions.

• In 1905, a rejection of the AFL’s representation of all white, skilled, native born workers leads to the formation of the International Workers of the World. The IWW wanted to organize ALL workers excluded from the AFL: immigrants, agricultural workers, women, blacks, etc.

STRIKE ONE

• The IWW was often called into run strikes of immigrant workers who demand to collectively bargain. In 1912, workers in the wool mills in Lawrence MA, called in the IWW after workers went on strike to protest pay cuts. The IWW organized the workers and engineered the successful realization of their demands

LUDLOW

• Not all strikes (or even most) had the success of Lawrence. In Sept. 1913, workers from the Rockefeller owned Colorado Fuel Iron Company demanded recognition of the UMW, wage increases, an 8hr workday, and the right to shop and live in non-company own places.• Evicted from their housing, workers move into

tent colonies, which armed militia attack and burn on April 20th, 1914. Killing 30 men, women, and children.

FREE SPEECH

• Struggles like Ludlow put free speech at the center of public discourse.• IWW speakers, attempting to Unionize the west,

are often arrested or jailed for addressing crowds. • State courts regularly issue injunctions prohibiting

these workers from speaking.• IWW would send hundreds of speakers to one

locale, forcing local officials to arrest them all and become overwhelmed.

FEMINISM

• A word first used in the Progressive Era, it came to mean a merged call for suffrage, economic opportunity, and greater sexual freedom. • Free sexual expression and reproductive choice

become central elements of women’s liberation.

BIRTH CONTROL

• Women’s presence in the labor market strengthen demands for birth control. The right to control one’s body comes to mean enjoying an active sex life without bearing children.• Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger were two

women who braved arrest, abuse, and condemnation for lecturing/educating women about their right to sexual freedom in speech and print.

ATLANTIC CROSSINGS

• The Progressive Era is really a transnational dialogue about reform going on in countries across the world. • Britain, France, and Germany all create pension

systems, minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, and regulate workplace safety during this time.• In the US this prompts discussion of what type of

government would be necessary to implement these types of reforms

ACTIVIST STATE

• Progressives reject notion that powerful government threatened individual liberty. Only the government had the power to intervene in public/private life for greater good.

• Most reforms take place at state/local level and are aimed at political bosses, natural monopolies like gas and water works. Progressives want to increase taxes in to order to improve schools, parks, etc.

• Most influential state gov. Robert Lafollette of Wisconsin. In his “Wisconsin Idea” Lafollette implemented the nomination of candidates through primaries, taxation of corporate wealth, and regulation of railroads and utilities.

PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY…?

• Progressives have no one coherent program, partially as a result, they expand and contract freedom in contradictory ways.• 17th Amendment: direct election of Senators.• Suffrage for women (19th Amendment).• Localities replace mayors w/non-partisan

commissioners or city managers. This negates political machines, but is a further degree from popular control.• New literacy tests/registration reqs limit right to

vote among poor and immigrants.

JANE ADDAMS

• Founds Hull House in Chicago in 1889 as a “settlement house” dedicated to improving the lives of poor immigrant women.• By 1910, more than 400 homes had been

established nationwide. They ran schools, employment bureaus and health clinics.• Quickly learn that legislation is required for

dealing with housing, income, and health inequalities.

SUFFRAGE

• After 1900, campaign for women’s suffrage begins to become a larger movement.• National American Women’s Suffrage Association

membership booms, and campaigns have success in places like Wyoming Colorado Idaho and Utah. These campaigns combine militancy, publicity, and advertising.• These campaigns are costly, and increasingly the

focus shifts to the national level.

TEDDY

• Increasingly, the political question of the day becomes how can the US achieve Jeffersonian ends with Hamiltonian means. Self determination and individual freedom through government intervention in the economy.• Roosevelt is the first president to fully grapple

with this question; he becomes President after McKinley is assassinated in 1901. Roosevelt was a proponent of the “strenuous life” of manly adventure and daring. In many ways he becomes a model for the 20th century activist president.

THE SQUARE DEAL

• Seeks to address problems of economic consolidation by distinguishing between good and bad corporations.• Perhaps TR’s most famous example was his

prosecution of the Northern Securities Company. This was a holding company used by JP Morgan that monopolized rail transport between the Great Lakes and the Pacific. In 1904, the Supreme Court ordered Northern Securities dissolved.

SQUARE DEAL, PART II

• Roosevelt also believed the president should help settle labor disputes. In 1902, he brought union leaders and managers to the White House when a strike paralyzed the coal industry. Roosevelt appointed a special commission to help settle the strike.• After winning re-election in 1904, Roosevelt

helped strengthen the ICC, helping pass the Hepburn Act in 1906. This gave the ICC power to set railroad rates, and key step in establishing federal regulatory power.

TAFT

• William H. Taft was TR’s hand picked successor in 1908, defeating William Jennings Bryan. Pursuing antitrust policy vigorously, Taft influenced the Supreme Court in 1911 to declare Standard Oil in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and ordered it broken up into several companies.

• This case, along with the prosecution of American Tobacco Company, allowed for a rule of reason in antitrust policy, going after bad companies for stifling competition. Taft also supported the 16th Amendment, which implemented a graduated income tax, providing the government with a reliable and flexible revenue source.

1912 ELECTION

• Taft tended to ally with the conservative wing of the Republican party, and alienated some of the Progressives, including TR. After Roosevelt failed to wrest the Rep. nomination from Taft, he launched a third party called the Progressive, or Bull-Moose Party. Both faced challenges from Democrat Woodrow Wilson and (to much lesser degree) Socialist Eugene V. Debs.

WILSON VS. TR

• the fight between Roosevelt and Wilson over the federal government’s role in the economy captivated most voters in 1912.

• Wilson argued that government had to be independent of big business and restore market competition without creating “big” government. His program, the New Freedom, involved strengthening antitrust, protecting workers rights to organize unions, and encouraging small business. Roosevelt’s program, the New Nationalism, accepted bigness and the need for strong government regulation to check its abuses. Roosevelt proposed heavy personal and corporate taxes and federal regulation of industries such as rail, mining, and oil.

WILSON

• The split in the Republican Party gave Wilson a resounding victory. With Democrats controlling Congress, Wilson passed the Underwood Tariff, which reduced duties on imports but made up for them with a graduated income tax on the wealthy. The Clayton Act of 1914 exempted unions from antitrust laws and barred courts from issuing injunctions that limited workers’ right to strike.

• Wilson pushed Congress to create the Federal Reserve System in 1913, which gave government-regulated banks the ability to issue currency, help failing banks, and influence interest rates. In 1914, Congress, at Wilson’s urging, also created the Federal Trade Commission, tasked with investigating and prosecuting “unfair” business activity such as price-fixing and monopoly.