PROGRESSIVE ERA 1890s-1920

1
PROGRESSIVE ERA1890s-1920

• A21w
• 9.2.13

2
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• Who were the Progressives?
• What reforms did they seek?
• How successful were Progressive Era reforms in
  the period 1890-1920?
• Consider political change, social change
  (industrial conditions, urban life, women,
  prohibition)

3
ORIGINS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM
4
Progressivism
WHEN? Progressive Reform Era
1920s
1890s
1901
1917

• WHO? Progressives
• urban middle-class managers professionals
  women
• WHY? Address the problems arising from
• industrialization (big business, labor strife)
• urbanization (slums, political machines,
  corruption)
• immigration (ethnic diversity)
• inequality social injustice (women racism)

5
Progressivism

• WHAT are their goals?
• Democracy government accountable to the people
• Regulation of corporations monopolies
• Social justice workers, poor, minorities
• Environmental protection
• HOW?
• Government (laws, regulations, programs)
• Efficiency
• value experts, use of scientific study to
  determine the best solution

6
Origins of Progressivism

• Muckrakers
• Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives (1890)
• Ida Tarbell The History of the Standard Oil
  Co. (1902)
• Lincoln Steffens The Shame of the Cities (1904)
• Upton Sinclair- The Jungle

Ida Tarbell
Lincoln Steffens
7
MUNICIPAL STATE REFORMS
8
Progressive Legislation

• Municipal Reforms
• Commission System
• Voters elect 5 commissioners with expertise to
  head city departments
• City-Manager Plan
• Voters elect a city council to make laws, council
  hires a qualified manager to run city
• Both attempt to run government more efficiently

9
MUNICIPAL REFORM
strong mayor system
MAYOR
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
CITY SERVICES

• council-manager plan (Dayton, 1913)

COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
CITY MANAGER
CITY SERVICES
10
Progressive Legislation

• State Reforms
• Direct Primary
• An election where voters choose the candidates
  who will later run in a general election
• 17th Amendment
• U.S. Senators will now be elected by the people-
  popular vote (and NOT by state legislators) more
  democratic

11
Progressive Legislation

• Secret Ballot
• Voters could not be pressured to vote for certain
  candidates- Hurt political machines
• Initiative
• Allows voters to introduce NEW legislation with
  signatures on a petition
• Referendum
• Allows voters to CHANGE a law already in place,
  also done with signatures
• Recall
• Allows voters to REMOVE an elected official from
  office by holding a new election

12
STATE SOCIAL REFORMS

• professional social workers
• settlement houses - education, culture, day care
• child labor laws
• Enable education advancement for working class
  children

13
STATE SOCIAL REFORMS

• workplace labor reforms
• eight-hour work day
• improved safety health conditions in factories
• workers compensation laws
• minimum wage laws
• unionization
• child labor laws

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 1913
14
State Social Reform Child Labor
Breaker Boys Pennsylvania, 1911
Child Laborers in Indiana Glass Works, Midnight,
Indiana. 1908
Shrimp pickers in Peerless Oyster Co. Bay St.
Louis, Miss., March 3, 1911
Child Laborer, Newberry, S.C. 1908
15
Settlement Houses

• Settlement Houses
• Tried to bridge the gap between social classes
• Almost like communes for recent immigrants
• Hull-House Jane Addams

Jane Addams (1905)
Hull-House Complex in 1906
16
TEMPERANCE

• Temperance Crusade
• Womens Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
• Anti-Saloon League

Frances Willard (1838-98), leader of the WCTU
Anti-Saloon League Campaign, Dayton
17
Prohibition

• Womens Christian Temperance Union (example)
• Group that led fight against alcohol, wanted
  prohibition
• Believed alcohol was responsible for
  unemployment, crime, and divorce
• Carrie Nation was a radical temperance crusader.
  Smashed saloons with hatchet
• Accomplished goal with passage of 18th Amendment

18
TEMPERANCE PROHIBITION

• Eighteenth Amendment

Prohibition on the Eve of the 18th Amendment, 1919
19
NATIONAL REFORM

• Roosevelt, Taft Wilson as Progressive presidents

20
ESSENTIAL QUESTION

• How effective were Progressive Era reformers and
  the federal government in bringing about reform
  at the national level in the period 1900-1920?

21
Assassination of President McKinley, Sept 6, 1901
22
Theodore Roosevelt the accidental
PresidentRepublican (1901-1909)
(The New-York Historical Society)
23
Progressive Presidents-Roosevelt

• Square Deal became TRs 1904 campaign slogan
• three basic ideas conservation of natural
  resources, control of corporations, and consumer
  protection
• Settled Strikes
• United Mine Workers went on strike to get better
  pay and fewer hours
• TR was arbitrator-third neutral party listens to
  both sides and settles dispute

24
Roosevelt Trust-Buster

• Trust busting breaking up monopolies
• Distinguished between good trusts and bad
  trusts.
• Kept eye on good trusts to make sure they did
  not take advantage of consumers
• Filed 44 anti-trust lawsuits against bad trusts

25
Consumer Protection

• Upton Sinclairs The Jungle
• Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
• Meat Inspection Act (1906)

Chicago Meatpacking Workers, 1905
"A nauseating job, but it must be done"
26

• Consumer Issues
• Meat Inspection Act of 1906
• prevent adulterated or misbranded meat and meat
  products from being sold as food and to ensure
  that meat and meat products are slaughtered and
  processed under sanitary conditions.
• Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906
• ban foreign and interstate traffic in
  adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products
• required that active ingredients be placed on the
  label of a drugs packaging and that drugs could
  not fall below purity levels
• Interstate Commerce Commission regulated shipping
  between states, mainly controlled prices

27
Roosevelt Conservation

• Believed strongly in Conservation (saving forest)
• Wanted to save nations forests by preventing
  short sighted over cutting
• Started National Park Service(1906)
• Used the Forest Reserve Act of 1891
• U.S. Forest Service Gifford Pinchot
• White House conference on conservation -1908

Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, 1907
Theodore Roosevelt John Muir at Yosemite1906
28
CONSERVATIONNational Parks and Forests
29
William Howard TaftPresident 1909-13Republican
Postcard with Taft cartoon
30
Accomplishments of Taft

• William Howard Taft
• Filed 90 anti-trust suits including Standard Oil
  and American Tobacco
• 16th Amendment
• allows the Congress to levy an income tax
• 17th Amendment
• Created Department of Labor enforces labor laws
• Passed mine safety laws
• Established 8 hour workday for companies doing
  business w/ federal govt.

31
Taft

• Taft angered many Progressives
• Progressive favored lower tariffs to help
  consumers
• Taft signed a bill that raised tariffs
• Ballinger-Pinchot Affair
• Tafts Secretary of Interior, Richard Ballinger
  allowed for the sale of vast amounts of timber in
  Alaska
• Head of US Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot
  criticized Ballinger for selling out
• Taft fired Pinchot

32
Taft

• Passed Mann-Elkins Act that extended powers of
  ICC (interstate commerce commission) to
  telephone/telegraph
• Established Federal Childrens Bureau
• Did not agree with bully pulpit for prez

Taft throwing out first pitch at a baseball game.
1st President to do this.
33
Election of 1912

• Woodrow Wilson
• Progressive Party (Bull Moose party)
• New Freedom-campaign slogan

(Taft has) completely twisted around the
policies I advocated and acted upon.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
Theodore Roosevelt cartoon, March 1912
34
Wilson Accomplishments

• Underwood Tariff-
• reduced tariffs- lowered prices for consumers
• Federal Reserve Act
• 3 Level banking system that controls the flow of
  money in the US by controlling interest rates
• Clayton Anti-Trust Act
• Broadened and strengthened the Sherman Act (1890)
• Federal Trade Commission
• Est. to investigate corporations so they are not
  fraudulent or corrupt
• Workmens Compensation
• provided benefits to workers hurt on the job

35
Accomplishments

• 18th Amendment
• established the prohibition of alcoholic
  beverages the production, transport and sale of
  alcohol is illegal (though not the consumption or
  private possession)
• 19th Amendment
• prohibits any United States citizen from being
  denied the right to vote on the basis of sex

Video Quiz
36
WOMEN SUFFRAGE
37
ESSENTIAL QUESTION

• To what extent did economic and political
  developments as well as the assumptions about the
  nature of women affect the position of American
  women during the period 1890-1925?

38
WOMEN

• womens professions
• new woman
• clubwomen

A local club for nurses was formed in New York
City in 1894. Here the club members are pictured
in their clubhouse reception area. (Photo
courtesy of the Women's History and Resource
Center, General Federation of Women's Clubs.)
The Women's Club of Madison, Wisconsin conducted
classes in food,nutrition, and sewing for recent
immigrants. (Photo courtesy of the Women's
History and Resource Center, General Federation
of Women's Clubs.)
39
Womens Suffrage

• National American Woman Suffrage Association
  (NAWSA)
• Carrie Chapman Catt

Ohio Woman Suffrage Headquarters, Cleveland, 1912
40
Woman suffrage before 1920
41
Womens Suffrage

• Alice Paul
• National Womans Party
• Nineteenth Amendment
• Equal Rights Amendment

Suffragette Banner 1918
19th Amendment
National Womans Party members picketing in front
of the White House, 1917
(All Library of Congress)
42
RACE RELATIONS
43
ESSENTIAL QUESTION

• Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois offered
  different strategies for dealing with the
  problems of poverty and discri-mination faced by
  black Americans at the end of the nineteenth and
  beginning of the twentieth centuries. How
  appropriate were each of these strategies
  (considering the context in which each was
  developed)?

44
Black Population, 1920
45
African-Americans

• Booker T. Washington
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Niagara Movement
• talented tenth
• NAACP

W.E.B. Du Bois
Booker T. Washington