The Progressive Era

• Introduction
  • American becoming an urban nation
  • It will be one officially with the 1920 census 51%-49%
  • Real gap between rich and poor, black and white, urban and rural, and most people realized something needed to be done
  • Some wanted to experiment with socialism, communism, anarchism to fix the problem
  • A lot of the ideas of the progressives were the same as those of the farmers in the late 1880s and 90s
• Religion
  • By 1900, Roman Catholicism was the world largest denomination with 9 million members
  • Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Church - Science and Health With Key to the Scripture
  • Also, Social Gospel and Protestant Christianity
  • Salvation Army
  • YMCA and YWCA grew
    • Physical and religious instruction
    • Help rural youth
  • 1859 - On the Origin of Species published
    • Written by Charles Darwin
    • Argued evolution over creation
    • Survival of the fittest
  • Cause a religious split between "modernists" and "fundamentalists"
• Lust for Learning and Reading
  • 1870 - most states were making elementary school mandatory
  • 1880s-1890s - high schools became mandatory
    • Pre-Civil War a few hundred
    • By 1900  6,000
      • Tax payers provided free textbooks
  • Normal schools formed - trained teachers
  • Libraries began opening around the country
    • 1897 - Library of Congress opened
    • Andrew Carnegie gave $60 million for library construction
  • Newspapers and magazines grew tremendously
    • Rotary press popular - newspapers went down in price to a penny ("Penny Press")
  • Serials in magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, etc
  • Newspapers are, more than ever, a multi-featured source of news, entertainment, sports, etc.  Leading publishers were Joseph Pulitzer (NY World) and William Randolph Hearst (NY Journal and SF Examiner)
    • *Both used sensationalism or Yellow Journalism to increase sales and circulation
• Groups in America at 1900
  • Business Elite
    • 1% of business produced 44% of goods
  • The Poor
    • Half of all faculty workers lived in abject property - as bad as you can possibly get
    • Children would usually quit school after one year
    • Most kids started working at the age of 7
    • No safety or compensation
    • 1900, NYC had 3.5 million people - 2nd largest city in the world behind London
    • Skyscrapers started to appear
      • Made possible by elevators
    • Increased trash
      • Poor water, plumbing, sanitation
    • Great for criminals
    • Slums and tenements formed
      • "dumbbell" tenements
      • Horrible living conditions
  • Middle Class
    • Shrinking during this period and going in the lower direction
    • Most realized that, because of their location, something had to be done
    • They felt bad for the poor
    • They could see trouble coming
    • Leaders of the Progressive Movement
  • Organized Labor
    • Unions showed tremendous growth
    • AFL membership tripled
    • 1905 came the IWW - Industrial Workers of the World - the "Wobblies"
      • Founders were Big Bill Haywood and Mother Jones
      • It was history by 1920, and was left behind until the Great Depression
      • John L. Lewis was head of the Congress of Industrial Organization
  • Outsiders
    • Before 1880s, most immigrants came from British Isles and Western Europe
    • 1880s - "new immigrants" came from southern and eastern Europe
      • Preferred factory work and city life
      • Mostly uneducated
    • Immigrants brought their culture with them and thus eventually helped shape American culture
    • Many immigrants were watched over by political bosses
      • Bosses like Tweed gave work, housing, and clothes in exchange for work
    • "Native" Americans did not like the new immigrants
      • American Protective Association (APA) formed in 1887 and had up to 1 million members
      • Immigration Restrictive League
  • Women
    • Given the duty by men that they were to take care of the house
    • Began to talk about the injustices that were harming their families
      • Alcohol
    • Frances Willard was one of the founders of the WCTU (Women's Christians Temperance Movement)
      • Main issue was to prohibit alcohol
    • Carrie A. Nation would go into bars with the Bible in one hand and hatchet in the other and would start reading while swinging her hatchet
    • Sex was a very taboo subject
    • Victoria Woodhull
      • Feminist leader
      • "Free love"
      • No government involvement in relationships
    • 1873 Comstock Limb
      • Government would confiscate inappropriate (sexual) material sent in the mail
    • Sarah Platt Decker was the leader of the General Federation of Women's Clubs
      • Started out socially like the Grange
    • Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul fought for women's suffrage
    • Alice Paul led the National Woman's Party, who wanted a national amendment to change women's voting rights.
      • Gets arrested for blocking the sidewalk
      • Refused to eat in jail
      • They forced food down her throat because they didn’t want her to die
  • Black Americans
    • Booker T Washington
      • He believed that a vocational and common sense education should be available to all black men.
      • also believed that the black man should work to prove to the white people that they could be "trusted" with the vote and social equality
      • gave the famous speech The Southern Cotton Growers Exposition.
    • WEB Du Bois
      • disagreed completely with Booker T.
      • called Booker's speech Atlanta Compromise
      • The Souls of Black Folk is his famous book outlined his belief that the black people in the country should get together and support the best 10% of the population, called the "talented tenth" belief.
    • NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored) people in 1909
• Early Reforms
  • City government reform
    • The Galveston Experiment
      • A huge hurricane knocked Galveston right off the map in 1920, and since it took so long for repairs to get started, the city formed a commission form of government.
      • Over 400 cities eventually copied
    • The Council-Manager form of government
      • The Staunton Virginia Plan
      • in this form of government, the mayor is almost purely ceremonial, and the city council have more power.
      • the city manager makes the day to day decisions.
    • The Council-Mayor
      • This form of government is more old fashioned- the mayor makes more of the day to day decisions.
      • More of the larger cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Charlotte that actually needed reform did not get cleaned up as much as they should have.
  • States Government Reform
    • Robert Lafollette
      • Conservation
      • First governor to use a graduated income tax so that the rich people who could afford to pay more, would.
    • Governor Woodrow Wilson
      • Started state regulation of local monopolies that is still in effect today.
      • First to use corporate taxes to finance public education. This effectively reduced the burden of the property tax.
  • Other Early Reforms
    • Massachusetts
      • one of the first states to reform, for example the granger laws originated there.
      • first state to limit work day for women and children
      • first state to have a minimum wage- 25 cents!
    • New York
      • first state to have a workman's compensation law
    • Oregon
      • first state to have a secret ballot
    • Progressive Amendments: 16, 17, 18, and 19
      • 16th: income tax
      • 17th: direct election of senators
      • 18th: Prohibition of Alcohol
      • 19th: Women's suffrage
  • Summary
    • Some people say that the Progressive Movement was an extension of the Populist Movement.
    • Other people say that reform was brought about by the Social Gospel.
    • Another possible cause of the movement was simply time.
    • People thought that the government had a responsibility to prevent the suffering of its citizens.
    • Most progressives had faith in Democracy, and did not want socialism.
    • Everyone had an equal shake; against trusts and monopolies.
• The Intellectuals of the Progressive Movement
  • Intro
    • The middle class was the heart of the movement; however, it was the intellectuals and the liberal minority that started the movement.
    • Intellectuals would get their ideas out through magazines or serials. Magazines started in the late 1800s or the early 1900s
  • The Muckrakers
    • Teddy Roosevelt nicknamed these magazines Muckrakers, which is not supposed to be a complimentary name. Muckraker comes from a book, Pilgrim's Progress written in 1678. In the book the Muckrakers were a people who looked down in the dirt and raked muck and talked about all the things that were wrong in the world.
    • Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote Wealth Against Commonwealth almost completely aimed at US Steel.
    • The Treason of the Senate written by David G. Phillips led to the 17th amendment.
    • Lincoln Steffens wrote The Shame of the Cities which was published originally published as a serial in the McClure Newspaper.
      • The McClure Newspaper was the most famous Muckraker newspaper.
    • Ida Tarbell wrote against Standard Oil in The History of Standard Oil. "Not a very nice book" -Larry Williamson
    • Jacob Riis wrote How the Other Half Lives about how people lived in poverty in New York. He is a famous photographer, and much of his story is told through pictures. Riis was the photographer of this time period.
      • Black and Tan saloons were bottom of the barrel saloon. Black and Tan means black and white.
    • Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, with the intention to show the deplorable conditions of the meat workers, but most of what people took away from this book was how disgusting the meat that the meat industry was selling was.
    • John Sprago wrote The Bitter Cry of the Children about child labor.
    • Ray S. Baker wrote Following the Color Line about race relations and segregation in the North.
    • Frank Norris wrote The Octopus about the railroad industry. The tentacles on the octopus on the cover represented the rails of the railroad.
    • Frederick Law Olmstead was a landscaping architect who was "The Father of Central Park." Central Park becomes the model for what became known as the Playground Movement.
• The Republican Roosevelt
  • Background
    • Teddy was born rich, and he wasn't ashamed of it. This was important because it gave him confidence to attack railroads and other trusts knowing that his way of life was secure.
    • Teddy was born very sickly. He had asthma.
    • Graduated from Harvard and went into politics, joining the local Republican Party.
    • He wrote lots of books about people he thought showed courage throughout history.
    • Lost both his wife and his mother within two hours of each other on Valentine's day.
    • Thomas Platt and Mark Hanna appointed Roosevelt to VP in 1900 largely to get rid of them, since no one knows what the VP does. (Do you know what Joe Biden does cause I sure don't!)
    • Roosevelt became president when McKinley was assassinated, and the assassin Leon Czolgosz (Chal'-goz), an anarchist, took on "Old Sparky" aka the electric chair. 8 days after McKinley was shot Hanna says "Oh no, that damn cowboy is President."
  • The Square Deal: Roosevelt did this because he wanted everyone to have an equal opportunity, and a fair opportunity.
    • Control Coroporations
      • Northern Securitites
        • Gave him the nickname "The Trustbuster." He would eventually break up about 44 trusts.
        • He thought trusts were here to stay, but needed regulation.
        • First target was Northern Securities, owned primarily by JP Morgan. It was mainly Philander Knox, his attorney general, went after the company. They eventually took it down.
      • Created the Department of Commerce and Labor, mainly to help him evaluate whether a trust was good or bad.
      • Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902
        • Coal in those days was comparable to oil today.
        • The workers who went on strike wanted an 8 hour work day and 20% pay increase. John Mitchell was the leader of the United Mine Workers (which is still around).
        • The leaders of the coal mines were represented by George Baer.
        • Teddy sent federal troops to mine the coal, not break up the strike. Roosevelt actually takes the side of the workers, for the first time in forever (cue Frozen music). He called a conference between Baer and Mitchell. After they chatted and worked things out, the Workers got a 10% increase and a 9 hour work day!
        • Well why is this important? Because it is the first time the president takes the side of the workers.
    • Consumer Protection
      • Pure Food and Drug Act
        • Teddy tried to make medicines and food safe for the people.
        • Samuel Hopkins Adams was a prominent scientist who worked on the investigation.
        • The Patent Medicine Industry: you would rush to get a patent not on what the medicine would do, but for the name of the medicine. (the name was more important than what the medicine actually did).
    • Conservation of our natural resources