The Progressive Movement Takes Shape

What is Progressivism?

Political response to the problems of Industrialization and its social by-products:• immigration• urban growth• concentration of corporate power• widening of class divisions

Progressivism’s strength was in the cities

Who were the progressives?

• Middle class• Protestant • Successful Urban

dwellers

Umbrella label - Social Gospel, Suffrage, Temperance, Settlement, Good Government, Civil Rights

Types of Progressive Reform

Wanted to reform the system to preserve it• Humanitarian - legislation to protect

worker• Morality - Purity Crusaders - Nativists• Economic - Break-up trusts and

monopolies• Political – provide good and efficient

government

Pressure for Reform

• Pressure to reform came from private interest groups

• Women’s Christian Temperance Union

• NAACP

• National American Women‘s Suffrage Association

Emphasis on the scientific approach to social problems

• Social Research

• Expert Opinion

• Statistical Data

• Human emotion propelled the movement

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Progressive Goals

• End “White slavery”

• Prohibition

• Immigration restriction

• “Americanization” of immigrants

• Regulation of utilities

• Women’s suffrage

Goals

• End child labor

• Destruction of urban political machines

• Efficiency

• Political Reform

End to “White Slavery”

Prohibition

Prohibition

• Saloons vice

• Drinking family tragedy

• Voting in saloons graft and corruption boss and political machines

Immigration Restriction

Anti-Trust

• Break up monopolies• Sherman Anti-Trust• Clayton Anti-Trust• Standard Oil Trust• Railroad Trust• T. Roosevelt –

“Trust-Buster”

Municipal Reform

• Provide better services to the city populations• Break up machines• Government regulation of utilities• Bath-houses, kindergartens, playgrounds,

improved sanitation, lodging houses for tramps, lower transit fares, equitable taxes

• Hazen Pingree, Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones

Settlement movement

• Reform movement

• Live in poor neighborhoods to witness effects of poverty first hand

• Jane Addams and Helen Gates Starr founded Hull House in Chicago

Jane Addams – Hull House

- First American Woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize

Settlement Movement

• Taught classes

• Medical clinics

• Day care and camps

• Legal advice

• Investigated community conditions

• Helped immigrants

• Jane Addams

• Lillian Wald

Hull House services

• Cultural events• Classes• Child care center• Clubs• Summer camps • Playgrounds• Employment and

legal aid• Healthcare clinics

Hull House

• Investigated city conditions – economic, political and health

• Foundation for future reform• Workers – college educated women• Contribution – widen people’s

perspectives on social conditions and close the gap between divisions in society

• First social workers

Florence Kelley

• Quaker

• Socialist

• Trained at Hull House

• Illinois’ first state factory inspector

• National Consumers’ League

• Fought child labor and sweat shop conditions

End to Child Labor

Women’s Suffrage

• Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt

• Sought constitutional amendment

• 19th Amendment achieved

Destruction of Political Machines

Muckrakers

Novelists and journalists who exposed wrong - doing

• Ida Tarbell - Standard Oil Trust

• Lincoln Steffens - The Shame of the Cities -St. Louis

• Upton Sinclair - The Jungle - Chicago’s meat-packing industry

State reforms - intended to democratize the process

• Secret ballot

• Direct primary - Wisconsin (1903)

• Initiative and Referendum

• Recall

• Seventeenth Amendment - direct election of Senators by the people - not the state legislatures

Reforming Society and Cities

• By 1907 - 30 states had abolished child labor

• 1903 - Muller v. Oregon - women laundry workers limited to a 10 hour day

• 1911 - New York State Factory Investigating Committee - 56 worker protection laws

• 1914 - 25 states passed laws making employers liable for job related injuries

The Wisconsin Idea

• Laboratory for progressive reform • Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette• direct primary• commission to regulate railroads• increased corporate taxes• passed a law limiting campaign spending• legislative reference library to inform

lawmakers

Theodore Roosevelt – 1st Progressive President

• Trust Buster• Square Deal• Settled 1902 Coal

Strike• Conservationist• Consumer protection

– Pure Food and Drug Act

– Meat Inspection Act

TR as President

• Saw the presidency as a “bully pulpit” – platform from which to bring change

• “square deal” – government should afford honesty and fairness in gov’t and business

• Opposed socialists • Condemned wealthy who opposed change

and abused their power

Anthracite Coal Strike - 1902

• United Mine Workers

• Mine owners refused arbitration

• TR threatened to seize the mines

• Workers received wage increase and shorter hours – no union recognition

• TR – became a friend to labor and expanded presidential power

Anthracite Miners – Scranton, PA 1902

Curbing the “Bad” Trusts

• 1902 – applied the Sherman Anti – Trust Act against Northern Securities Company (JP Morgan)

• Power of the federal government to regulate business combinations

• “good trusts” and “bad trusts”• 40 antitrust suits Trustbuster

Corralling the Corporations

• Elkins Act – 1903 – fines for railroad rebates

• Hepburn Act – 1906 – expanded Interstate Commerce Commission– Free passes on RR restricted– If shippers complained – ICC could nullify

rates

Conservationist

• TR increased national reserves of forests, coal lands and waterpower sites

• Secured passage of of Newlands Act (1902) to finance irrigation project – SW

• Encouraged conservation efforts of the Forest Service – appt. Gifford Pinchot

• Propelled conservation into national significance

Conservation and Preservation

• Gifford Pinchot –– Conservation – scientific timber management– Chief Forester - U.S. Forest Service

• John Muir – Preservation – preserve wildness of western

landscape– Founder of Sierra Club

Hetch – Hetchy Before

Hetch – Hetchy Today

Chicago 1905 “Hog Butcher of the World”

Goals of Conservationism?

• Use natural resources wisely

• Multiple – use resource management

– Recreation

– Sustained yield logging

– Watershed protection

– Summer stock grazing

Consumer Protection

• Pure Food and Drug Act 1906

• Meat Inspection Act 1906

• Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle

TR hands his policies to Taft as he leaves the presidency.

Wm. Howard Taft2nd Progressive President

• Failed at tariff reform

• Split the Republican Party over conservation

• Busted trusts• Reserved acreage• Angered TR

Woodrow WilsonLast Progressive President

• Clayton Anti-Trust Act

• Federal Trade Commission

• Lowered tariffs

• 16th Amendment – income tax

• Federal Reserve System

• Highly moralistic

Progressive Amendments

• 16th Amendment – Income Tax

• 17th Amendment – Direct election of Senators

• 18th Amendment – Prohibition

• 19th Amendment – Women’s suffrage

What is the heritage of the progressive movement?

• Belief that government has responsibility to act in public’s welfare

• Marked transition from laissez-faire to government regulation of the economy

• Demonstrated ability of our democratic institutions to meet problems arising from urbanization and industrialization

• President should provide strong and effective national leadership