Notes 1: Progressivism in America 1860-1920

Unit 1-5 – Political Movements at the Turn of the Century

December 14 2010

• “At the dawn of the new century, middle-class reformers addressed many of the problems that had contributed to the social upheavals of the 1890’s. Journalists and writers [known as muckrakers] exposed the unsafe conditions often faced by factory workers, including women and children.

• Intellectuals questioned the dominant role of large corporations in American society. Political reformers struggled to make government more responsible to the people. Together, these reform efforts formed the progressive movement, which aimed to restore economic opportunities and correct injustices in American life.

• Even though reformers never completely agreed on the problems or the solutions, each of their progressive efforts shared at least one of the following goals:– Protecting social welfare

– Promoting moral improvement

– Creating economic reform

– Fostering efficiency”

• Many social movements came out of this Progressivism to make this time period (1880 -1917) one of the most influential times of activism in America’s history.

Settlement Houses• After finally being granted the

right to a college education, many of the first wealthy women to go to college graduated and entered a life of social service. Jane Addams was one of these women. She had traveled to Europe and seen “settlement houses” where educated people lived and worked in inner-city neighborhoods to help those in need.

Jane Addams

Settlement Houses• She then took this idea

back to Chicago where she and others like her began Hull House. Hull House provided important services for poor immigrant families such as classes in literacy and citizenship, sport clubs, daycare for small children of working mothers, health clinics, lending libraries, theater productions and more.

Hull House in 1898

Settlement Houses• Addams and her supporters

believed that ghettoes were created by harsh economic conditions under which no person could prosper. They felt that with some education and assistance, working class people could rise up and have better lives. Hull House and others like it changed the face of industrial cities for the better.

Hull House volunteer visiting with a

neighborhood family

Prohibition• Some reformers believed that

morality, not economics, was at the root of urban problems. Many of these people felt that alcohol was at the heart of these moral issues. Therefore, these reformers worked for Prohibition, or the legal banning of alcohol. In 1874, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded to crusade for prohibition.

Prohibition• Members of the group would

enter saloons, scold customers, pray, and one woman even destroyed bottles of liquor with her hatchet. In 1920, the eighteenth amendment was passed; it made the transportation, manufacture, or sale of alcohol illegal in the U.S. Carrie Nation with her

hatchet

Anti-Alcohol Cartoon

Prohibition

• While prohibitionists finally got their wish, crime grew worse during prohibition and the eighteenth amendment was repealed in 1933 by the twenty-first amendment.

Bootleggers with their alcohol

Prohibition

• Do you think Prohibition was a good idea or a bad idea? Why?

• Why do you think Prohibition failed?

Muckrakers• The rise of the popular

press in America helped to make the Progressive Movement truly successful. Magazines and newspapers were widely published and read by many Americans. Some journalists wrote of the injustices in business and the poverty in urban tenements.

Muckrakers

• These journalists were known as muckrakers, and their writing made America aware of the work that the Progressives were doing and brought more support to their cause.