The Progressive Era

Political, social, and economic reform create an “Age of Optimism”.

Causes of Social Ills

• Immigration• Urbanization• Industrialization• Laissez-faire

economics• Unregulated market• Political machines

Roots of Progressivism• Muckrakers: journalists who exposed waste,

corruption, and scandal in the highly influential new medium of national magazines, such as McClure's.

• Progressives believed in science, technology, expertise and education as grand solutions to society's ills.

• Characteristics of progressivism included a favorable attitude toward urban-industrial society, belief in mankind's ability to improve the environment and conditions of life, belief in obligation to intervene in economic and social affairs, and a belief in the ability of experts and in efficiency of government intervention.

Progressive Ideals• Improving working

conditions, improving the way of life, exposing corruption, expanding democracy and making reforms were the main idea.

• Marked with the arrival of three great presidents: Theodore RooseveltWilliam Howard TaftWoodrow Wilson

Working Towards Progressive Goals

• Protecting Social Welfare• Promoting Moral Improvement

• Creating Economic Reform• Fostering Efficiency

Protecting Social Welfare• Social Gospel Movement hoped public

health measures and enforced schooling to develop skills, the quality of their moral lives would improve.

• Concerns: labor reforms, such as abolishing child labor, 12-hour day for workers at U.S. Steel, and regulating the hours of work by mothers.

• Reformers opened settlement houses like the Hull House in Chicago by Jane Addams.

• Helped the poor/immigrants by offering services such as daycare, education, and health care

• The YMCA was created to help rural youth adjust to the city without losing their religion

• Salvation Army’s mission: to perform social/charitable work, bringing the Christian message to the poor, destitute and hungry by meeting their physical and spiritual needs.

Promoting Moral Improvement

• Women’s Christian Temperance Movement – led crusade for Prohibition

• Improve morals to help the poor

• Started in Cleveland in 1874

Temperance Video

Creating Economic Reform

• Economic panic led to questions on capitalism

• American Socialist Part – formed in opposition to the capitalist system (Eugene Debs)

• Claimed uneven balance of Business/Gov’t vs. people

• Questioned Differences, Machines and Corruption

Fostering Efficiency

• Scientific management techniques applied

• Make workers more productive and efficient

• Studies create assembly line/shorter shifts

• Improved production

Assembly Line