Progressivism and Its Champions• Industrialization helped many but also created dangerous working

environments and unhealthy living conditions for the urban poor.• Progressivism, a wide-ranging reform movement targeting these

problems, began in the late 19th century.

archives.gov

Muckrakers

Investigative journalists who highlight corruption, abuse, or unsafe conditions in industry, society, or politics and call for reform.

Muckrakers** Journalistic “Voice” of Progressives Investigative journalists – Expose corruption and other problems

that needed to be addressed (no solutions)

Profitable for magazines:McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Collier’s

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle Lincoln Stephen’s The Shame of the CitiesIda Tarbell’s History of the Standard Oil Co.** coined by T. Roosevelt

3

Goals of Progressives1) End laissez-faire2) End abuses of monopolistic power with

antitrust legislation ex: Sherman Antitrust Act

3) Make government more responsive Government the vehicle

to improved society4) Limit power of party bosses

end government abuse of power

4

Progressive Methods

5

Rely on Scientific Data Value of Expert Opinion Use Collective Action Inform using Publications--

muckrakers Pressure on legislatures to pass

laws

MuckrakersIda Tarbell Wrote articles and History of

Standard Oil attacking Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company

Changed forever the role of investigative reporter by digging for facts in hundreds of documents

Complained of ruthless business tactics

History of Standard Oil was listed as #5 on list of top 100 works of American journalism in the 20th Century.

The History of the Standard Oil Company

(1904)•Exposed unfair business practices such as “rebates” used by Rockefeller’s Oil Trust to put small companies out of business

•Lead to passage of more Anti-Trust Legislation

• Hepburn Act (1906)

• Mann-Elkins Act (1910)

• Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914)

“Very often people who admit facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, ‘it’s business’. That is, ‘it’s business’ has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, and special privileges.”

- Ida Tarbell,

The History of the Standard Oil Company

Upton Sinclair A socialist trying to raise an outcry over

working conditions under capitalism He wanted people to demand socialism

from their government (do away with capitalism)

Belief workers should control both the government and the means of production

11

“I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit them in the stomach.”

MuckrakersUpton Sinclair

Wrote a novel called The Jungle

Exposed what conditions were like in meat packing industry

Tried to get people mad at terrible working conditions but people more disgusted at lack of food regulations

Sinclair is quoted as saying, “I aimed at their brains and hit them in the stomach.”

[T]he meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one. There were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public breakfast.

Chapter 14

"All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate

them; and there are not merely rivers of hot blood and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering-vats and soup cauldrons, glue-factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell-there are also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers hung out to dry and dining rooms littered with food black with flies, and toilet rooms that are open sewers."

Chapter 26, pg. 328

Muckrakers

Jacob Riis

Danish immigrant who faced New York poverty

Exposed the slums through magazines, photographs, and a best-selling book

African-AmericansIgnored by main progressive movement

Booker T. WashingtonTake a lower status temporarilyVocational training (Tuskegee Institute)

W.E.B. DuBoisDid not agree with BTW (“leading the way

backward”)“Talented Tenth” AIM HIGHER!!!!

Founded NAACP (1905) - fought racism

21

Ida B. Wells Early civil rights leader Journalist Focused on lynching in the South

Fighting for Civil Rights

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

1915: Protested the D. W. Griffith film Birth of a Nation because of hostile African American stereotypes, which led to the film’s banning in eight states

ADL

Anti-Defamation League Formed by Sigmund

Livingston, a Jewish man in Chicago, in 1913

Fought anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jews, which was common in America

Progressives fought prejudice in society by forming various reform groups.

Progressivism & Eugenics

Produce superior races of people

Social DarwinismNo miscegenationAnti-immigrationControl & organize racesRacial purity“Intelligence” Sterilization

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art The Realist movement

in art and literature preceded the Progressive movement, but was inspired by backlash against the earlier Romantic artists and their ideals.

Writers include Henry James, Anton Chekov, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck.

Artists include Manet and Edward Hopper

Musicians include Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin