The Progressive EraProgressivism is an umbrella for a wide range of economic, political and social reforms. These included efforts to outlaw the sale of alcohol; regulate child labor and sweatshops; scientifically manage natural resources; Americanize immigrants and bust or regulate trusts. Drawing support from the urban, college-educated middle class, Progressive reformers sought to eliminate corruption in government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, improve working conditions, and give the public more direct control over government through direct primaries to nominate candidates for public office, direct election of Senators, the initiative, referendum, and recall, and women's suffrage.

But most progressives believed that government should get more involved in solving these conditions and that people should have a greater voice in government

Tenement living

Poor working conditions

Big Business Trusts

Political Inequality

Political corruption

Andrew Carnegie mansion on the corner of 91st Street and 5th Avenue in NYC 1890

Hell’s Kitchen NYC 1890s

How can this be changed?

North AdamsLowell

Miner Boys

Slaughterhouses

Muckrakers

Crusading investigative reporters and photo journalists who dug up the dirt on social conditions and corruption. This term was coined by Teddy Roosevelt

Riis

Sinclair

Tarbell

History of Standard Oil

HinesLewis Hine

John Spargo

Jane AddamsHull House

Mother Jones

Suffragettes

Alice Paul

Government Reform and Conservation

La Follette

Jacob Riis Born in Ribe, Denmark, he immigrated to the US to start a new life. Hired as a reporter at the New York Tribune, he exposed the hardships of immigrants living in the tenements of New York.

His famous work, How the Other Half Lives, addressed these conditions. Up to 12 people lived in a room barely1 3’ by 13’. Rodents and disease spread throughout cramped areas with little ventilation and light, many without indoor plumbing. As a result of these conditions the death rate for children under 5 years of age sky-rocketed, Just on Mulberry and Baxter streets, children under 5 recorded a rate of 139.83% as compared to those over 5 with a 15% death rate.

His book resulted in the tenement laws of 1879, 1901, and 1905

Upton SinclairBorn in Baltimore Maryland, Sinclair quickly saw the difference between social classes as he moved from the home of an alcoholic father to his wealthy grandparents. This experience committed this reformer to socialism [a political and economic theory that suggests the means of producing and distributing a good be controlled by the state to end the gap between rich and poor. In Marxian socialism, the overthrow of the capitalists is required to achieve this means].

His most famous work was The Jungle that exposed working conditions in the meatpacking plants of Chicago. Many slaughtered animals were diseased and conditions in the factories led to rat and human pieces, as well as saw dust and ropes, being added to meat.

The result of his work was the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

The Jungle

John Spargo Born in a small town in Wales, his father labored as a stonecutter as did he. Spargo was intrigued with the socialist teachings of Henry Hyndman, an English Marxist and joined the Social Democratic Federations. Coming to America in 1901, he joined the Socialist Party and founded the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy.

His interest in socialist reform led him to disclose the conditions of child labor, especially those of small boys in mines. The Bitter Cry of Children exposed deformities of trappers who sat in a bent position all day lifting heavy stones from the mines. Several times, while in factories, he heard screams from children who were smothered by unattended machinery.

In 1903 he discovered that 30,000 children less than 14 years old were employed in textile mills and 20,000 under the age of 12. That number rose to 2 million five years later.

His book led to the Keating Owens Bill that banned the sale of products from any factory or shop that employed children under the age of 14 and from any mine that worked children under 16 for more than 8 hours a day

Lewis Hine Born in Wisconsin, he was only 16 when his father passed and he had to start work. He moved to Chicago to study and met Frank Mann who recommended him for a teaching position in the Ethical Cultural School of New York. Here he purchased a camera and captured photographs of immigrants at Ellis Island

In 1908, the National Child Labor Committee employed Hine to document child labor abuses in American factories. His books included Child Labour in the Carolinas and Day Laborers before Their Time. He found children as young as six working in factories for 12 hour days. Dust and cotton fibers in the air were factors for the high incidences of tuberculosis, bronchitis and asthma. In 1900 26.1% of the male labor force were boys and 6.4% were girls. Those statistics dropped by 1930.

His works are also responsible for the Keating Owen Bill.

Child Labour in the Carolinas

Day Laborers before Their Time

Ida Tarbell

The History of Standard Oil

Raised in Pennsylvania, her father, Frank Tarbell owned and operated an oil company. Eventually, his company was destroyed when Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller came to town. His control of the Cleveland banks to purchase other companies and the manipulation of the railroads with kickbacks and rebates were tactics used during the Cleveland Massacre to drive companies similar to Tarbell’s out of business. Rockefeller eventually controlled over 90% of the nation’s oil. His Standard Trust put 2,950 shares into the hands of nine trustees and Rockefeller also devalued his company at $70,000,000 instead of its true value of $200,000,000 to further cheat investors out of profit-sharing.

These unfair business practices were exposed in Ida Tarbell’s book, The History of the Standard Oil Company. Originally written as a series of articles published in McClure’s magazine, the book was published and played a vital role in the dissolution of Standard Oil under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. President Roosevelt also established the Bureau of Corporations and the Department of Commerce to further insure fair business procedures.

Jane Addams Born in Chicago, Jane lost her mother at the age of 3 and was raised by her father who died suddenly after she graduated from Rockville Seminary. To recuperate, she and a friend, Ellen Starr traveled to England where they saw first-hand the effects of industrialization on the workers. But they also saw Toynbee Hall, a settlement house. Upon her return, Jane founded Hull House which eventually amounted to 13 buildings. Chicago was a good place for this home for immigrants because 3 of every four persons were immigrants and most lived in Ward Nineteen, known for its unsanitary conditions

Due to the Immigrants Protective League and the collection of garbage, Ward Nineteen’s death rate dropped from third highest to seventh.

Hull House featured the first public playground, gym, kindergarten, art gallery and classes to teach immigrants English.

For this accomplishment, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Addams was also a peace pacifist and an advocate for women’s rights

Hull House

Alice Paul

Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920

Born into a Quaker family, Paul believed in equal rights for all. She received an impeccable education from Swarthmore and the University of Pennsylvania but it was during her travels to England that she encountered the Pankhursts, aggressive suffragettes. They were arrested many times and sent to jail where Alice went on a hunger strike and was force-fed with a tube.

Upon her return to the US, Paul joined the National American Women’s Suffrage Association to get the right to vote with Pankhurst-like tactics. Here too she was jailed for her protests. Her goal was realized in 1920 when the country adopted the 19th Amendment that granted women the vote. Alice Paul split with the NAWSA when they did not adopt her tactics and formed her own Nation Women’s Party.

The “Alice Paul Amendment” or as it is now known, the “Equal Rights Amendment” was finally passes in 1972 to grant women equal opportunities in education and the work place. “We’ve come a long way, baby….”

Carrie Chapman Catt Catt entered the battle for women’s rights when she saw her father going off to vote and her mother remained at home. She was the only female in her graduating class and the first woman school superintendent. One night on her way home from her job in a clothing factory she was sexually assaulted. This made her realize women were vulnerable without the vote and something needed to be done.

1,740,800 women were employed as domestic servants, 124,000 were teachers but had to quit when they became pregnant, 68,000 were nurses but only 212 were doctors and only 2 were architects. Most women were confined to low paying jobs where thy would earn possibly $5.00 a week compared to $35.00 they could make as a prostitute.

She became the President of the NAWSA, the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance and founded the League of Women Voters. Together with her book, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement and her “winning plan” the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920

Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement

Nineteenth Amendment

Mother Jones Born in Cork, Ireland, she could recall British soldiers marching through her town with the heads of Irish rebels on their bayonets. Her grandfather was hanged for his rebel actions. She immigrated to Canada and then the US, settling in Memphis, Tennessee where she met her husband but a yellow fever epidemic would kill him and their four small children. Trying to rebuild her life, she moved to Chicago and had great success as a dressmaker but lost everything in the Chicago fire of 1871.

She knew what it meant to be poor and alone. From her husband, she learned about working conditions and went to the Knights of Labor for help. She organized unions for men, women and children but is most known for her work in West Virginia and Colorado because these mines had the worst conditions. The deadliest mine accident occurred in West Virginia killing 358 people.

She always encouraged miners to “join the union, boys” and was instrumental in founding the IWW International Workers of the WorldMiners’ Angel

Robert La Follette “Fighting Bob” began his career as a lawyer but was offered a bribe to issue an unfair ruling in a court case. He spent three years in the Wisconsin House of Representatives and was elected governor. These experiences convinced him that the government belonged directly in the hands of the people and they needed help with direct elections, civil service reform and regulation of big business.

To educate the public for government involvement, he started the “Wisconsin Idea” that appointed the best professors at universities and specialists in the field of economics and social scientists that advised legislators to write laws.

He also instituted the Seventeenth Amendment that allowed all people the right to vote for US Senators. Before, they were elected by state legislators. He also established Initiative, that allowed the public to bring issues to their law makers with petitions, referendum, that allowed the public to vote on issues that might become a law, and recall, that allowed the public to recall inefficient elected officials

Wisconsin Idea

Seventeenth Amendment

Initiative, Referendum, Recall

Theodore Roosevelt Born into a wealthy New York family, he was home-schooled because he had severe asthma. He conquered the illness with his father’s help performing roughed outdoor activities. He eventually went to Harvard. He was a Republican

He served as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of NY where he used the works of Riis and Sinclair to pass the tenement laws, Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

He became President in 1901 when Mc Kinley was assassinated and continued his progressive reforms.

United Mine Workers - first President to side with unions and threatened to seize the mines. Miners got a 10% raise but union was not recognized

Trustbuster - Dissolved Morgan’s Northern Securities because if violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. He filed 42 anti-trust suits including those against Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Co.

Passed the Hepburn Act that gave ICC power to set railroad rates

Started departments of Commerce and Labor

Conservation

Established Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks

Newland Reclamations Act

Used sale of pubic land for irrigation

William Howard TaftPayne-Aldrich Tariff

Taft had promised to lower tariffs but the US House and Senate wanted higher tariffs to protect American goods. PA tariff barely cut tariffs and actually raised some. His progressive supporters felt betrayed

Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy

Ballinger was appt. by Taft as Sec. of Interior and tried to make 1 million acres of public forests and mineral reserves available for private industry. Pinchot (Roosevelt appt) accused Ballinger of turning over public land in Alaska for his own profits and leaked the accusations to the press. Taft fired Pinchot and a Congressional committee found Ballinger innocent but Taft lost control of House and Senate in 1910 over this. Opposed by Roosevelt and Bull Moose Party. Lost to Wilson.

Trust Buster

Brought 90 cases to court in four years including Standard Oil and Am Tobacco Co. that begun under Roosevelt

Children’s Bureau

Mann-Elkins

Woodrow WilsonDemocrat

Underwood Tariff

Reduced tariff on imported good by 30% because pressure from foreign competitors would inspire Americans to produce better goods at lower prices

Sixteenth Amendment - Income Tax

Federal Reserve Act

Created 12 federal banks for bank members to store reserves. Board controlled interest rates so they increased or decreased money supply by lowering and raising rates

Federal Trade Commission

Had power to investigate companies and force them to “cease and desist” unfair practices

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

Stopped companies from forcing retailers to buy only their goods

Banned price discrimination - No discounts to chain stores

Unions were not unlawful combinations of trade, allowed strikes, peaceful pickets and boycotts