HIS 112 Chapter 22

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HIS 112Chapter 22

• The Progressive Era

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Presidents

• 1885-1189 Grover Cleveland
• 1889-1892 Benjamin Harrison
• 1892-1896 Grover Cleveland
• 1896-1900 William McKinley
• 1900-1901 William McKinley, assassinated by
  Leon Czolgosz shot 6 Sept. died 14 Sept.
• 1901-1908 Teddy Roosevelt

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The Progressive Era

• Was between 1895 1920
• Characterized as a series of movements, aimed in
  some way at reforming or restoring American
  Society its values and its institutions
• Wanted to reform, not destroy

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3 Goals

• End abuses of power in business and politics
• Replace corrupt power with reformed social
  institutions
• Apply the principles of science and efficiency on
  a nationwide scale to all social, economic, and
  political institutions

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Changing America

• More moving to cities
• Rising middle class
• Influx of immigrants
• New business elite
• Industry with its advantages and disadvantages
• Cities growing too rapidly
• Jobs and lay-offs

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• Progressives Reformers who wished to correct
  the wrongs of society
• Most were native-born Protestant middle class
  both men and women
• They worked in white collar jobs lawyers,
  doctors, teachers, engineers, technicians, social
  workers, ministers, business professionals,
  librarians

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• Progressivism was not one cohesive program of
  reform
• It was a series of movements
• Reformers had their own pet projects
• Stricter regulation of business
• Laws to protect workers urban poor
• Reforms for government
• Others wanted to restrict immigration, curb
  immorality, abolish prostitution and saloons

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• Lincoln Steffens who wrote Shame of the Cities in
  1904 helped to make progressivism a national
  movement
• Writers, reporters who investigated and attacked
  social, economic, and political wrongs were often
  called muckrakers coined by Teddy Roosevelt

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• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was published in
  1906 it was about the sale of tainted meat,
  fraudulent insurance schemes, and prostitution
• Very influential book
• This book helped get the Pure Food and Drug Act
  and the Meat Inspection Act passed into law in
  1906

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• Progressives believed they could restore order
  through research, legislation, and enlightened
  social thinking
• There was also a repressive component
• One group tried to impose its morality on others,
  sometimes by law

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• They campaigned against
• Gambling
• Amusement Parks
• Dance Halls
• Saloons
• Prostitution
• The Movies

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• The Temperance Movement and the Anti-Saloon
  League of 1895 wanted to get rid of alcohol and
  then the abuses from it would lessen
• Child abuse
• Domestic abuse
• Prostitution
• Poverty

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• Reformers worked to get drugs regulated
• Bayer Drug Company used to sell heroin in 1898
• Reformers wanted cocaine removed from Coca-Cola
  it contained cocaine until 1900

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• Some progressives wished to restrict immigration
• The Immigration Restriction League (1894) of
  Boston wanted immigrants to pass literacy tests
  in English before being allowed in
• Pseudo-scientific studies in 1911 said statistics
  proved new immigrants were degenerate with low
  mental capacities

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• Eugenics Movement
• Wished to control reproduction to alter
  characteristics of a species
• Carnegie Foundation funded genetics research and
  Charles Davenport, a zoologist, racist, and
  anti-Semite who was for immigration restrictions
• He influenced the passage of sterilization laws
  in some states

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Push for Rights

• Both women and blacks pushed for their rights
• Booker T. Washington was the foremost black
  leader from 1890s to 1915
• born a slave in Virginia in 1856
• Attended a freedmens school
• 1881, began Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a
  vocational school

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• Washington said that in order for blacks to get
  ahead, they needed to acquire useful vocational
  skills, so they could prove their economic value
• He felt then racism would fade away
• Washington made these statements in in a speech
  known as the Atlanta Compromise

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• W.E.B. DuBois, a Ph.D. from Harvard, challenged
  this view
• he said blacks needed to agitate for equality
• He said blacks must resist all forms of racial
  discrimination and get an education
• These issues were discussed in 1905 at a meeting
  in Niagra

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• That meeting became known as The Niagra Movement
• W.E.B. DuBois and a group of white reformers
  founded the National Association for the
  Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, in 1910
• DuBois was its leader

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• Margaret Sanger
• Born in 1883
• 1 of 11 children
• Saw poverty connected to large families
• Married and had 3 children but wanted more
• Frequented Greenwich Village and became familiar
  with young radicals

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• These radicals- Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and
  Bill Haywood- were determined to improve the
  conditions of the world
• Sanger joined the Industrial Workers of the
  World, the IWW, and became a nurse
• She tried to teach women about hygiene and their
  own bodies

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• Sanger wrote pamphlet that were banned in the
  mail
• She became concerned about women who were denied
  contraceptives they needed their husbands
  permission
• So Sanger learned all she could about
  contraception and wrote pamphlet about it

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• 1916
• She opened the first birth control clinic in
  Brooklyn and was sent to jail for 30 days for it
• She formed the New York Birth Control League to
  push for laws to help physicians who wished to
  prescribe birth control

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• 1921
• She started the American Birth Control League
• The Catholic Church opposed it
• Others like Eleanor Roosevelt joined the movement

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• 1940
• Eleanor Roosevelt came out officially in support
  of family planning
• 1940s, all states but Connecticut and
  Massachusetts approved the distribution of birth
  control
• Margaret Sanger helped found Planned Parenthood

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• 1966
• When Margaret Sanger died, the FDA had just
  approved the use of the birth control pill

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Other Changes

• New Pastimes
• Football
• Movies
• Vaudeville
• Music Ragtime and Jazz
• New dances
• New painting styles
• New poetry
• All seemed to be changing