The Progressive Movement 1897-1920

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The Progressive Movement1897-1920

• Reform in America

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Effects of Industrialization Urbanization

• Negative Effects
• Poor living working conditions
• Low wages long hours
• Child Labor
• Government Corruption
• Gap between rich poor
• Pollution

• Positive Effects
• Economic growth
• New technologies goods
• Larger middle-class
• Increase population
• Urban development

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Progressivism

• Social political movement
• Middle-class, women
• Fix problems in America
• Goals
• End corruption
• Improve urban areas
• Improve work place
• Reform government
• Reform business

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Muckrakers

• Progressive journalists
• Wrote about societys problems evils
• Expose corruption, working living conditions,
  racial injustice
• Bring problems to the publics attention

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Ida Tarbell

• History of the Standard Oil Company (1902)
• Writes articles about Rockefellers monopoly
• 19 article series over 2 years
• Expose his business practices

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About Rockefeller

• the open disregard of decent ethical business
  practices by capitalists."
• "It takes time and caution to perfect anything
  which must be concealed. It takes time to crush
  men who are pursuing legitimate trade. But one of
  Mr. Rockefellers most impressive characteristics
  is patience. There never was a more patient man,
  or one who could dare more while he waited. He
  was like a general who, besieging a city
  surrounded by fortified hills, views from a
  balloon the whole great field, and sees how, this
  point taken, that must fall this hill reached,
  that fort is commanded. And nothing was too
  small the corner grocery in Browntown, the
  humble refining still on Oil Creek, the shortest
  private pipe line. Nothing, for little things
  grow."

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On the Man

• "the oldest man in the world -- a living mummy,"
• "money-mad" and "a hypocrite."
• "Our national life is on every side distinctly
  poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence
  he exercises,"
• never played fair, and that ruined their
  greatness for me.
• There is no gaming table in the world where
  loaded dice are tolerated, no athletic field
  where men must not start fair. Yet Mr.
  Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded
  diceBusiness played in this way loses all its
  sportsmanlike qualities. It is fit only for
  tricksters

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Monopoly
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Muckraking Monopolies

• Muckrakers attacked big business government
• Monopoly when one business controls an entire
  industry
• Unfair to small business owners consumers
• Laissez-faire Capitalism when government does
  not interfere with business, hands-off
• Progressives want government to be hands-on
• Regulate (control) business, make monopolies
  illegal

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Ray Stannard Baker

• Following the Color Line (1908)
• Traveled the South
• Expose racism,
• Jim Crow Laws, segregation, lynching, poll taxes,
  discrimination

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• A few years ago no hotel or restaurant in Boston
  refused Negro guests now several hotels,
  restaurants, and especially confectionary stores,
  will not serve Negroes, even the best of them.
  The discrimination is not made openly, but a
  Negro who goes to such places is informed that
  there are no accommodations, or he is overlooked
  and otherwise slighted, so that he does not come
  again. A strong prejudice exists against renting
  flats and houses in many white neighbourhoods to
  coloured people. The Negro in Boston, as in other
  cities, is building up "quarters," which he
  occupies to the increasing exclusion of other
  classes of people.
• In the sixteen years from 1884 to 1900 the
  number of persons lynched in the United States
  was 2,516. Of these 2,080 were in the Southern
  states and 436 in the North 1,678 were Negroes
  and 801 were white men 2,465 were men and 51
  were women. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and
  Georgia - the black belt states - are thus seen
  to have the worst records.

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Child Labor

• Progressives want to stop child labor
• Limit hours children worked
• 39 states passed child labor laws
• Florence Kelley
• National Child Labor Committee

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Florence Kelly

• Limit working hours for women children
• Oregon 10 hour workday
• Improve wages
• 1/3 workers in poverty
• 1912 Massachusetts passes minimum wage
• No national minimum wage until 1938 (25
  cents/hour)

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Lewis Hine

• Photographer
• Worked for N.C.L.C.
• Photographed child laborers
• Show people the truth
• Camera a powerful weapon
• "the work Hine did for this reform was more
  responsible than all other efforts in bringing
  the need to public attention."

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• Whether it be a painting or photograph, the
  picture is a symbol that brings one immediately
  into close touch with reality. In fact, it is
  often more effective than the reality would have
  been, because, in the picture, the non-essential
  and conflicting interests have been eliminated.

Leo, age 8, Tennessee textile factory, 1910
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Children in the Factory
John Dempsey (11), Rhode Island, 1909
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Children in the Mines
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Work at Home

• Mrs. Battaglia with Tessie, age 12, and Tony,
  age 7. Mrs. Battaglia works in a garment shop
  except on Saturdays, when the children sew with
  her at home. Get 2 or 3 cents a pair finishing
  men's pants. Said they earn 1 to 1.50 on
  Saturday. Father disabled and can earn very
  little. New York City

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• 1916 Congress passes Keating-Owen Act
• Regulate child labor
• Supreme Court rules unconstitutional
• Businesses do not follow child labor laws
• Government does not enforce laws
• Children continue to work

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Jacob Riis

• Immigrant from Denmark
• Police reporter for newspaper
• See living conditions, slums, ghettoes
• Poverty crime other problems
• Need to improve living conditions

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How the Other Half Lives

• Published in 1890
• Uses photographs to support observations
• Brings attention to urban living conditions
• "Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world
  does not know how the other half lives.' That was
  true then. It did not know because it did not
  care. The half that was on top cared little for
  the struggles, and less for the fate, of those
  who were underneath, so long as it was able to
  hold them there and keep its own seat."

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• On either side of the narrow entrance to Bandits'
  Roost is "the Bend". Abuse is the normal
  condition of "the Bend," murder is everyday crop,
  with the tenants not always the criminals. In
  this block between Bayard, Park, Mulberry, and
  Baxter Streets, "the Bend" proper, the late
  Tenement House Commission counted 155 deaths of
  children in a specimen year (1882). Their
  percentage of the total mortality in the block
  was 68.28, while for the whole city the
  proportion was only 46.20. In No. 59 next to
  Bandits' Roost, fourteen persons died that year,
  and eleven of them were children in No. 61
  eleven, and eight of them not yet five years old.

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Home of an Italian Ragpicker (1888)
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Mullens Alley (1888)
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Five Cents Lodging, Bayard Street (1889)
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Room in a Tenement Flat (1910)
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Blind Beggar (1890)
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A Downtown "Morgue" (unlicensed saloon) (1890)
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Women's Lodging Room in the West 47th Street
Station (1892)
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Men's Lodging Room in the West 47th Street
Station (1892)
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Children Sleeping in Mulberry Street (1890)
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Homeless Children (1890)
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Cityscape (1890)
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Election Reforms

• Direct Primary voters choose who will run from a
  party for a certain office
• Initiative allows people to create legislation
  (laws) 5-15
• Referendum voters sign in order to get
  legislation on the ballot
• Recall allows voters to remove elected officials
  with a new election
• 17th Amendment direct election of state Senators
• More democracy will fix a democracy