US 2 – Honors

Mrs. Carchidi

*Chapter 21 – The Rise of Progressivism

Section 1 - The Progressive Impulse

I. Belief in Progress

A. Industrialization brought good things to the US but it also brought about unsafe working conditions and poor living conditions. It was to correct these ills that a number of educated men & women began the Progressive Movement.

1. Varieties of Progressivism included:

a) Anti-monopoly – the fear of concentrated power & the urge to limit & disperse

authority & wealth.

b) Faith in Knowledge – Social order was a result of intelligent social organization & rational

procedures for guiding social & economic life.

2. Many progressives were native born, middle & upper class, College educated men and women.

3. They wanted to restore control of the government to the people & correct the abuses that had crept into American life as a result of industrialization.

II. The Muckrakers

A. These were Progressive Journalists that helped to spread the message of reform. They were nicknamed MUCKRAKERS by Teddy Roosevelt because they dug up the “dirt” or “Muck” about an issue.

1.LINCOLN STEFFENS – wrote: “Tweed Days in St. Louis” & “The Shame of the Cities” in which he described political corruption in American cities. In his autobiography he stated that the biggest weakness of American society was our desire to be “special” and deserving of “special” treatment.

Lincoln Steffens

Ida Tarbell

2. ) IDA TARBELL – she wrote “The History of Standard Oil Company” in which she exposed J.D. Rockefeller’s business practices & eventually led to the break up of the Standard Oil Trust by the Supreme Court.

FRANK NORRIS

3.) FRANK NORRIS – he wrote “the Octopus” in this book he exposed the ways in which railroads misused their vast power to control the life of the farmers.

JACK LONDON

4.) JACK LONDON – “The Iron Heel” in which he warned that a bloody revolution might result if something was not done to curb capitalism’s abuses. (he also wrote the books Revolution & the War of the Classes and among his adventure series of books about life in Alaska are White Fang & Call of the Wild).

Ray Stannard

Baker

5.) RAY STANNARD BAKER – Following the Color Line - An honest report of segregation & racial discrimination in a nationwide context.

Upton Sinclair

6.) UPTON SINCLAIR – The Jungle - exposed the unsanitary practices in the meat packing plants. He was said he aimed for the reader’s heart & hit them in the stomach. This book turned many readers into vegetarians and eventually led to Congress passing a series of laws to keep food pure.

7.JACOB RIIS – “How the Other Half Lives” – Riis was a photojournalist who took pictures & wrote a book about life in the slums of cities in America.

Jacob Riis

How the Other

½ Lives

III. The Social GospelA. The Outrage of the Muckrakers combined

with a humanitarian sense of social responsibility, helped produce many reformers committed to the pursuit of social justice.

B. The Social Gospel became a powerful movement within American Protestantism & to a lesser degree in Catholicism & Judaism.

1. The Salvation Army – began in England – offered both material aid & spiritual service to the urban poor. (still in existence)

Walter Rauschenbusch

Baptist Minister

2. Walter Rauschenbusch – published a series of influential discourses on the possibilities for human salvation through Christian reform.a) “Translate the

evolutionary themes into religious faith and you have the doctrine of the Kingdom of God”

Pope Leo XIII

Father John A. Ryan

3. Pope Leo XIII – Rerum Novarum (“New Things”) – The pope said “a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke little better than slavery itself”.

a) Father John A. Ryan – worked for decades trying to expand the scope of Catholic social welfare organizations.

IV. The Settlement House MovementA. Progressive theorists argued that ignorance, poverty & criminality were not the result of inherent moral or genetic failings or of the workings of providence; they were the effects of an unhealthy environment. To elevate the distressed required an improvement of the conditions in which they lived.

1. JANE ADDAMS – an upper middle class woman set up HULL HOUSE in Chicago as a place where immigrants could go for learning how to be middle class Americans.

a) It offered Babysitting services, English speaking courses, food preparation, etc.

b)Hull House became the example for other settlement houses that followed. Over 400 were built across the US.

c)College Educated Middle Class Women who were unmarried found employment in the Settlement Houses and began working with Universities becoming the basis for the modern field of Sociology.

(1). Social Work became a field of study as a result.

Jane Addams & Hull House in Chicago

2. The emergence of the social work profession brought about a belief in knowledge & expertise. Many Progressive theorists felt that only with the expertise of scientists & engineers could the problems of the economy & society be fixed.

a. THORSTEIN VEBLEN – “A Theory of the Leisure Class”, 1899 – in which he argued that highly trained engineers could fully understand the “machine process” by which modern society must be governed.b. Scientific Method – aka “Taylorism” – It encouraged the

development of modern mass production techniques and the assembly line.

V. The ProfessionsA.The late 19th Century saw a dramatic expansion in the number of Americans engaged in

administrative & professional tasks. This was the “new” middle class who placed a high value on education & individual accomplishment.

1. American Medical Association – was reorganized in 1901 into a national association & by 1920 2/3rd of all American doctors were members.

a) The AMA quickly called for strict, scientific standards for admission to the practice of medicine, with doctors themselves serving as protectors of the standards.

b) State & Local governments responded by passing new laws requiring the licensing of all physicians & granting licenses only to those practitioners approved by the profession.

2. Professional Bar Associations – were organized in 48 states virtually all of them succeeded in creating central examining boards, composed of lawyers to regulate admission to the profession

a) Law Schools expanded greatly in numbers and in the rigor of their curricula.3. National Association of Manufacturers – created in 1895 & the United States

Chamber of Commerce created in 1912 were run by businessmen and supported the creation of schools of business administration among other things.

B. American women found themselves excluded from most of the emerging professions but a substantial number of middle class women entered professional careers nevertheless.

1. Female Physicians – by 1900 5% of all American physicians were female – a proportion that remained unchanged until the 1960’s.

2. Teachers – 90% of all professional women were teachers1. Black Educated women Teaching was one of the only

professional opportunity they could hope to fine.3. Nursing – considered a menial occupation was by the turn

of the century becoming a professional job needing certification from schools of nursing.

4. Librarians was predominantly female5. Advanced degrees opened up professional opportunities in

the new and expanding women’s colleges.

Section 2 – Women & ReformI. The “New Woman”

A . The New Woman was a product of social & economic changes that affected the private world as much as the public one.

1. By the end of the 19th Century almost all income producing activity had moved out of the home & into the factory or the office.

2. Children were beginning to go to school at earlier ages & spending more time there3. The home was a less all-consuming place because of new technological innovations

such as running water, electricity & household appliances.4. Middle Class women who had domestic help became more involved in activities

outside the home.5. Many educated women shunned marriage entirely, believing that only by remaining

single could they play the roles they envisioned in the public worlds.a) 10% of American women did NOT marry b) Single women were the most prominent female reformers of the time.

(1.) Jane Addams & Lillian Wald in the settlement house movement(2.) Frances Willard in the temperance movement(3.) Anna Howard Shaw in the suffrage movement.

c) “Boston Marriages” – women lived with other women in long-term relationships

d) Divorce Rates rose from 1 in every 21 marriages in 1809 to 1 in 9 marriages in 1916.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L13b0t9aARY

Anna Howard ShawFrances Willard

Lillian Wald

II.The ClubwomenA. Among the most visible signs of the increasing public roles of women in the late 19 th & early 20th

centuries were the women’s clubs that became the vanguard of many important reforms1. GFWC – Greater Federation of Women’s Clubs – coordinated the activities of local

organizations nearly 500 clubs which had 100,000 members in 1892 & by 1917 over 1 million members strong

2. National Association of Colored Women – modeled on their white counterparts but also took positions on issues of particular concern to blacks such as lynching & segregation.

3. Women’s Trade Union League – founded in 1903 by female union members & upper-class reformers. Committed to helping female workers by raising money to:

a) support strikes, b) march on picket lines c) & bailed striking women out of jail.

4. National Child Labor Committee (1904) – organized by Florence Kelley – worked to persuade state legislatures to pass laws against employing young children

a) By 1912 – 39 states passed child labor laws & limited older children’s employmentb) Kelley worked with Josephine Goldmark and her brother Louis D. Brandeis the

lawyer who represented them in front of the Supreme Court in the case MULLER V. OREGON, 1908

i. BRANDEIS BRIEF – broke new legal ground by including extensive evidence of the bad effects that working long hours had on women’s health & well being.

ii. This brief convinced the Supreme Court to uphold the Oregon Law that established a 10 hour workday in the state. & became the model for the defense of other social legislation.

Florence

Kelley

Louis Brandeis

III.Woman SuffrageA. Under the leadership of Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman

Catt the NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFFRAGE ASSOCIATION grew from 13,000 members in 1893 to over 2 million by 1917.1. Jane Addams gave added respectability to the cause when she

joined.2. Suffrage supporters argued that women would bring their

special experiences & special sensitivities to public lifea.) Many felt with women voters WAR would be

outlawed.b.) Also many felt it would help the temperance

movement if women were allowed to vote.3. 1920 – Suffragists won ratification of the 19th Amendment

which guaranteed political rights to women throughout the nation. B. National Woman’s Party founded in 1916 & headed by New Jersey’s own ALICE PAUL wanted not just the right to vote but an EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

1. This amendment would provide clear, legal protection for their rights & would prohibit all discrimination on the basis of sex.

2. Many women did not support this amendment & it still hasn’t been ratified (the last time it came close was 1979-1980)

Carrie Chapman Catt

Alice Paul

Lucy Burns

Section 3 – The Assault on the Parties I Municipal Reform

A. Municipal government became the first target of those working for political reform.1. City Commission – After a hurricane & tidal wave

destroyed Galveston, Texas in 1900 the community replaced the Mayor & City council with an elected, non-partisan commission to run the city. (Fire Commissioner, Police Commissioner, etc.)

2. City Manager – appointed administrator to direct the government & the operation of the city. He was an expert in municipal affairs & not politically affiliated.

II. Statehouse ProgressivismA. Progressives did not limit their reform efforts to social ills. They wanted to combat corruption in government by restoring control of the gov’t. to the people at the local, state & National levels.

1. Direct Primary – nominating election in which voters choose the candidates who will later run in a general election

2. Initiative – procedure enabling voters in a state to introduce legislation for consideration by lawmakers.

3. Referendum – by securing a specified number of signatures on a petition, voters can compel the legislature to place a measure on the ballot

4. Recall – enables voters to remove an elected official from office by calling for a new election

5. Australian Ballot – Secret Vote – a ballot printed at public expenses that lists all candidates & is cast in secret.

B. Robert Lafollette (Fighting Bob), Governor of Wisconsin was the 1st progressive elected as a governor of a state. His reforms became known as the Wisconsin Idea & were later used at the national level by Teddy Roosevelt.

1. Among his reforms were:a) He persuaded legislators to levy heavier taxes on the

RR’s & newer public utilities.b) Hew persuaded the legislators to create commissions

to regulate companies with a public interest.c) He also started a movement for the conservation of

Wisconsin’s forests & waterpower sites.d) By using University scholars to help legislators find

needed facts & draft laws that the courts could not easily set aside.

e) He also appointed scholars to serve on the new state regulator commissions.

2. LaFollette was elected to the US Senate in 1905 where he continued to battle for reform until his death in 1925.

ROBERT

LAFOLLETTE

C. In addition to progressive reformers labor unions continued to battle for better conditions.

1. AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR – Pres. Samuel Gompers felt strongly that the union needed to work WITHIN the system to change their lot. Skilled workers were organized & struck for better wages, working conditions, pension & workmen’s compensation laws.

2. Union Labor Party – was able to get California to pass a child labor law, workmen’s compensation law, & a limitation on working hours for women.

3. TRIANGLE FACTORY FIRE – over 146 workers were killed in this fire in NYC most of t hem women who had been locked inside their factory while it was burning. This fire led to NYC government to force the state of NY to protect the workers, especially the women.a) Senator Robert E. Wagner & Assembly man Alfred E. Smith

– both from working class backgrounds in NYC introduced and with the help of Tammany Hall were able to steer though a series of pioneering labor laws that imposed strict regulations on factory owners & established effective mechanisms for enforcement.

b) The Triangle Fire also helped educated women in spurring reform.

D.) The western progressives were not as effective at the local level because so much of the reforms that were needed in the west came under Federal Gov’t. Control

1. This is why aspiring politicians were much quicker to look to Washington as a place form which they could influence the

future of their regiona. George Norris of Nebraskab. Hiram Johnson of Californiac. William Borah of Idaho

III. AFRICAN AMERICANS & REFORMA.) Race received relatively little attention from white

progressives but among African Americans themselves, the progressive era produced some significant challenges to existing racial norms.

1. Booker T. Washington – A former slave who in the late 19th century wanted Af.-Am. to work for immediate self- improvement rather than long-range social change.

2. W.E.B. DuBois – had never known slavery, was born in Massachusetts, educated at Fisk University in

Atlanta & at Harvard. He wanted African-Americans to accept nothing less than a full university education. They should aspire to the professions.

Booker T. Washington W.E.B. DuBois

a.)1905 – He & his supporters met at Niagara Falls and launched the Niagara Movement.

b.) Four Years later DuBois & his followers formed the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE

ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEPOPLE (NAACP).The NAACP led the drive for equal rights and using this principal as a weapon in lawsuits in federal courts.

(1) GUINN V. UNITED STATES, 1915 – The Supreme Court outlawed the “grandfather clause” that kept blacks form voting. (Oklahoma laws was to deny the right to vote to any citizen whose ancestors had not been enfranchised by 1860)

(2) BUCHANAN V. WARLEY, 1917 – Supreme Court overturned a Louisville, Kentucky law

requiring segregated housing.3. The National Urban League – founded in 1910 it has worked to improve job opportunities & housing for urban blacks.4.) Ida Wells Barnett – A southern educated black woman who at great personal risk fought to end lynching & challenge segregation in the south.

Section 4 – Crusade for Social Order, Reform & Challenging the Capitalist OrderI. The Temperance CrusadeA.) Drunkenness spawned violence, & occasionally murder, within urban families. Women saw alcohol as a source of some of the greatest problems of working-class wives & mothers & hoped through temperance to reform male behavior & thus improve women’s lives.

1. WOMEN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION (WCTU) – President was FRANCES WILLARD – this group wanted to stop the manufacture, sale & transportation of all alcoholic beverages.

a) WCTU educated the people as to the dangers of Alcoholism

b) 1917 – their goal was realized when the 18th Amendment was passed which barred the manufacture, sale or importation of alcoholic beverages.

c) 1933 – the 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment because the 18th was so unpopular & hard to enforce.

II. Immigration RestrictionA. Virtually all reformers agreed that the growing immigrant population had created social problems but there was wide disagreement on how to best respond.

1. The Carnegie Foundation wanted to turn eugenics into a method of altering human reproduction. To GRADE Races & Ethnic groups according to their genetic qualities.

a) EUGENICS – the science of altering the reproductive processes of plants & animals to produce new hybrids or breeds

b) Advocated the forced sterilization of the mentally retarded, criminals & others.

c) Spread the belief that human inequalities were hereditary & that immigration was contributing to the multiplication of the unfit.

2. MADISON GRANT – wrote the book The Passing of the Great Race (1916) in which he said that it was important to protect the purity of Anglo-Saxon & other NORDIC stock from pollution by eastern Europeans, Hispanics, & Asians.

3. The Dillingham Report – argued that the newer immigrant groups from southern & Eastern Europe had proven themselves less able to be assimilated than earlier immigrants.

a) Immigration should be restricted by nationality.b) Powerful opponents managed to block the restriction movement for a time but by

WW I the nativist tide was clearly gaining strength.

III. The Dream of SocialismA. Between 1900 & 1914 Radical critiques of the capitalist system

attracted more support than at any other time.1.) Eugene V. Debs, Pres. of the American Railway Union,

received nearly 1 million ballots in the 1912 Presidential race.

2.) Progressive Intellectuals like Lincoln Steffens, Frances Willard, Florence Kelley and others were attracted to socialism because of its support for pacifism & labor militancy.

3.) All socialists agreed that there needed to be basic structural changes in the economy but they differed widely on how

to do this.a.) Some wanted to allow small-scale private enterprise

to survive but would nationalize major industries

b.) some believed in working for reform through electoral politics

c.) others favored the militant goals of the European Marxists.

B.) Many Americans felt that labor unions were socialist but the one union that wanted to create a communist state was the International Workers of the World (IWW) aka. Wobblies

1. William “Big Bill” Haywood was the president of the IWW a) advocated a single union for all workers

b) abolition of the wage slave systemc) rejected political action in favor of strikes (general

strikes)d) used terrorist methods to make their point

(blowing up rail lines, etc.)2. At the start of WWI the IWW went on strike in Washington

& Idaho virtually shutting down production of timber.a) The Federal Gov’t. Imprisoned the leaders of the union

& a series of laws that were passed at the state level effectively outlawed the IWW.

3. After WWI the fear of communism from the Russian Revolution caused the socialist party in the US to go into decline & it no longer was a political force in the USA.

IV. Decentralization & Regulation A. Many reformers felt that the greatest threat to the nation’s economy was excessive corporate centralization & consolidation.

1. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 & the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1912 were enacted to give the Supreme Court and the federal gov’t. the power to break up monopolies, combinations in restraint of trade, etc.

a.) The Gov’t used these acts to break up unions more than illegal corporations but they were used and some large monopolies were broken up as a result.

2. Progressives viewed big business in two ways: Good Trusts vs. Bad Trusts.a) Louis D. Brandeis – Other People’s Money, 1913 –

argued that Bigness was a threat to freedom.b) Herbert Croly – The Promise of American Life – 1909 -

argued that since economic consolidation was destined to remain a permanent feature of American society, continuing oversight by a strong, modernized government was essential.

c) Walter Lippmannn – Drift & Mastery -1914 - argued that business need to bring order to themselves learning new ways of cooperation & self-regulation.