The Progressive Era

Issues of The Progressive Era

• Journalists and writers exposed the unsafe conditions often faced by factory workers, including women and children

• Intellectuals questioned the dominant role of large corporations in American society

• Political reformers struggled to make government more responsive to the people

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposed the meat industry

A Definition of the Progressive Movement

• These reform efforts formed the progressive movement, which aimed to return control of the government to the people, restore economic opportunity, and correct injustices in American life

Four Goals of Progressivism:

• Protecting the social welfare• Promoting moral

improvement• Creating economic reform• Fostering efficiency

Social Welfare:

• The Social Gospel and settlement house movements aimed to help the poor through community centers, churches, and social services

• The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) opened libraries, sponsored classes, and built swimming pools

Social Welfare:

• The Salvation Army fed the poor people in soup kitchens, cared for children in nurseries, and sent “slum brigades” to instruct poor immigrants in middle-class values of hard work and temperance

• Florence Kelley became an advocate for improving the lives of women and children, and would help pass the Illinois Factory Act in 1893, which limited women’s working hours and prohibited child labor

Promoting Moral Improvement:

• Prohibition, banning of alcoholic beverages, became a focal point to the fear that alcohol was undermining American morals

• The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) spearheaded the crusade for prohibition

Creating Economic Reform:

• The economic panic of 1893 prompted some Americans to question the capitalist economic system

• Some Americans, especially workers, embraced socialism

• Socialism addressed the problems with the uneven balance among big business, government, and ordinary people

Creating Economic Reform:

• Big business often received favorable treatment from government officials and politicians

• Journalists during the progressive movement wrote about the corrupt side of business and public life in mass circulation magazines during the early 20th century

• These journalists became known as muckrakers

Fostering Efficiency:• Many progressive leaders put their faith

in experts and scientific principles to make society and the workplace more efficient

• Many industry reformers applied scientific management studies to see just how quickly each task could be performed

• Such efforts at improving efficiency targeted not only industry, but government as well

Cleaning up Local Government:

• Reforming elections, the adoption of the secret ballot, the initiative, the referendum, and the recall

• The initiative and referendum gave citizens the power to create laws

Cleaning up Local Government

• Citizens could petition to place an initiative, a bill originated by the people rather than lawmakers-on the ballot

• Then voters, instead of the legislature, accepted or rejected the initiative by referendum, a vote on the initiative

• The recall enabled voters to remove public officials from elected positions by forcing them to face another election before the end of their term if enough voters asked for it

Direct Election of Senators:

• Before 1913, each state’s legislature had chosen its own U.S. senator, which put even more power into the hands of party bosses and wealthy corporations

• The Seventeenth Amendment in 1912 made direct election of senators the law of the land

Cartoon portraying the time needed to pass the 17th Amendment allowing the direct election of U.S. senators

The Issue of Women Suffrage

• Government reform-including efforts to give Americans more of a voice in electing their legislators and creating laws-drew increased numbers of women into public life. It also focused renewed attention on the issue of women suffrage.