Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 19011912

1
Chapter 28

• Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt,
  1901-1912

2
The Progressive Era

• "The real heart of the movement was to use
  government as an agency of human welfare."

• The Progressive Era was a time of tremendous
  social, economic, and political changes
• Beginning in the late 1800s with the challenge to
  the "spoils system" of machine politics,
  progressivism gathered momentum between 1900 and
  1916, as the desire for reform permeated the
  minds of the American people.

Unlike presidents of the Gilded Age, Teddy
Roosevelt saw the office as a place of action
3
Muckrakers

• They dug up the dirt on political figures and
  captains of industry and wrote articles about
  them exposing the truths of their practices.
• Lincoln Steffens wrote a series of articles in
  McClures entitled The Shame of the Cities
• Ida Tarbell exposed the Standard Oil Company in
  the same magazine
• Thomas Lawson exposed corrupt stock market
  practices in Frenzied Finance
• David G. Phillips claimed in Cosmopolitan that
  75-90 of all Senators were representing the
  railroads and trusts but not the people.

ABOVE Lincoln Steffens, RIGHT Ida Tarbell , and
other so called muckrakers took on some of the
business giants at the turn of the century
through the press.
4
The Fear of Spreading Socialism

• Political progressives had two goals
• Use state power to curb the trusts
• Stem the Socialist threat by generally improving
  the common person's conditions of life and labor

• Progressives called for such things as direct
  election of Senators (17th Amendment-1913),
  national prohibition (18th Amendment-1919), woman
  suffrage (19th Amendment-1920), city-manager
  system of local municipal administration. They
  attacked "slumlords", juvenile delinquency, and
  wide-open prostitution.

Socialism has been a nasty word in the U.S. for a
very long time, but had gotten many converts who
were tired of big business by the turn of the
century.
5
Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire

• On March 25, 1911, 146 women died when a fire
  broke out at the Asch building in New York
  (sweatshop)
• The fire broke out on the 8th floor. Women
  working here and on the 10th floor managed to
  escape, but those working on the 9th found out to
  late
• One door leading to the stairwell filled with
  smoke and fire while the only other door had been
  locked to prevent the women from taking breaks
  during their 14-hour work day
• The owners were not found criminally negligent
  but did lose a civil lawsuit
• New York soon passed laws regulating hours and
  conditions.

When the exterior fire escape collapsed and the
elevator stopped working, some of the immigrant
women smashed out windows and risked the 9-story
jump rather than burning to death or being
overcome by the smoke. Only one survived the
fall. Fire department ladders could only reach
the 6th floor.
6
The Supreme Court

• The Supreme Court held in Muller v. Oregon (1908)
  that women were protected because of their
  peculiar structure
• In 1904, the Supreme Court upheld TR's decision
  to dissolve the Northern Securities Company
• The Supreme Court didnt always favor the worker,
  in Lochner v. New York (1905) the court ruled
  against establishing a ten-hour day for bakers.

LEFT Before becoming a member of the court
himself in 1916, Louis Brandeis successfully
argued the merits of an Oregon Law limiting the
number of hours women could work in a day.
7
Theodore Roosevelt

• Roosevelt's Triumphs - The president's program, a
  Square Deal, called for
• control of corporations
• consumer protection
• conservation of natural resources
• TR intervened in the 1902 Pennsylvania coal
  strike but did so by getting both management and
  labor to compromise on demands
• The significance this time was that TR threatened
  the mine owners that he would seize their
  companies and operate them with federal troops.

The 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike The mostly
illiterate immigrant workers went on strike in
May. By the fall coal was becoming scarce and in
the era before gas and electricity, coal was the
primary source of heat for most Americans. Mine
owners believed the public would go against the
strikers as it got colder, but they hadnt
figured on TR getting mad at them. RIGHT the
mine owners, who also owned the housing of their
employees (company town) have evicted the
strikers hoping to end the work stoppage.
8
Congress finally ends laissez-faire

• Roosevelt created the Department of Commerce and
  Labor (later separated), passed the Elkins Act of
  1903 and the even more effective Hepburn Act of
  1906 which regulated the railroads
• The Interstate Commerce Commission was expanded
  and given the strength to establish maximum
  shipping rates
• TR believed that there were good trusts and
  bad trusts. He felt that indiscriminately
  smashing all large businesses would be bad for
  the economy as a whole. He believed in
  regulating, not fragmenting. He wanted to prove
  that the government ruled the country, not
  business.

Teddy Roosevelt is one of several men to come to
the presidency from tragedy and prove himself
worthy of the task during the 20th century.
9
Sinclair turns Americans into vegetarians

• Upton Sinclairs The Jungle (1906), had intended
  to demonstrate the plight of workers but instead
  disgusted the country with descriptions of
  unsanitary meat-packing slaughterhouses
• It led to a period in the US when many Americans,
  including TR, didnt eat meat
• As a result, TR introduced the Meat Inspection
  Act of 1906 which was coupled with the Pure Food
  and Drug Act to make food prepared for interstate
  shipment or export subject to federal inspection
  and prevent the mislabeling of foods and
  pharmaceuticals.

10
The Conservation Movement

• Americans had felt their territory was a land of
  unlimited resources, but by the end of the
  century it was clear that steps would have to be
  taken to preserve Americas natural beauty
• The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 granted the
  president the right to set aside land as national
  parks and other reserves
• The Carey Act of 1894 and the Newlands Act of
  1902 brought irrigation to the dry desert west as
  a system of dams was eventually placed on every
  western river
• Roosevelt set aside 125 million acres of land for
  federal reserve, but also fought to use land
  intelligently, angering developers and romantic
  preservationists.

LEFT Gifford Pinchot headed the federal Division
of Forestry for TR and shared his view on
multiple-use resource management. RIGHT John
Muir had been a friend of Pinchot but did not
feel the same about conservation. Muir was the
leader of the preservationist movement entirely
against resource management. He started the
Sierra Club in 1892 and even swayed TR on a
camping trip in Yosemite in 1903.
11
Election of 1908

• Roosevelt claimed to have fulfilled two-terms and
  was off to Africa for an extended safari, but
  before he left gave his full support to Taft, his
  Secretary of War, and convinced him to run.
  Bryans third and final attempt was yet another
  failure
• William Howard Taft (Rep.) 321 - 7,675,320
• William Jennings Bryan (Dem.) 162 - 6,412,294
• Eugene V. Debs (Socialist) - 420,793

Bryan (LEFT) lost his third and final
presidential bid as William Howard Taft (RIGHT)
won easily with the endorsement of Theodore
Roosevelt
12
President Taft

• William Howard Taft had reluctantly accepted the
  Republican nomination at the urging of his wife
  and Roosevelt
• While TR loved a good fight, Taft was passive, a
  trait that didnt help when dealing with Congress
• Dollar Diplomacy as called by his critics, Taft
  encouraged foreign investment into areas of
  national concern with the promise that the
  military would be used to protect those
  investments
• Trustbusting Taft brought suits against 90
  trusts (TR 44), and successfully broke up
  Standard Oil, but when he went after US Steel
  Corp he upset his old friend.

Already a large man when he took office, it is
said he gained an additional 100 pounds in four
years and yes, got stuck in the White House
bathtub.
13
Taft continues to stumble

• The Republicans had always been the party of
  higher tariffs to protect business, but in the
  era of reform progressives were looking to reduce
  tariffs
• Taft had run on a campaign promise to do just
  that, however, when Congress introduced the
  Payne-Aldrich Tariff in 1909 he failed to keep
  that promise
• Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy When Secretary of
  the Interior Richard Ballinger opened land in
  Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska up for corporate
  development in 1910 it upset Pinchot. Taft
  dismissed Pinchot furthering the rift between
  himself and the reform wing of the Republican
  party

Teddy and William in happier days.

• When Roosevelt came out soon afterward denouncing
  Taft in public it signaled that the Republican
  party was about to implode.