Lecture 5 – The Progressive Era (1890-1916)

Progressivism: Defined

• Broad-based reform movement that peaked in the early 20^th century
• Reaction and consequence of growth of business
• Focused on problems created by industrialization and urbanization
• Affects American politics in the 20^th century
• This movement has more success than the populist movement and borrows from many of the ideas of populism.
• Throughout the lecture, please consider the relationship between the two movements.

Progressivism’s Objectives

• Attack the problems of the cities from many fronts
• Settlement house: calls for bridging distance between the classes
• Social gospel: idea of churches playing a role in social reforms
• Social purity movement: desire to clean up vice, including prostitution and alcohol abuse
• Consider whom the Progressive Era movement targets.  For example, women are beneficiaries of the movement and also key participants in accomplishing progressive era reforms.

Progressivism and Women

•  Progressives advocate new laws to protect the rights of female workers
• One group, the Women’s Trade Union League calls for protection of the working woman
• Belief that long hours can damage the health of the female worker

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union

• The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (introduced already last week) continues to be a major activist organization, contributing to the passing of various local county laws in late 19th century, and ultimately Prohibition, which we will consider next week.

National Consumer’s League

• Progressive organization that fostered cross-class alliances
• Led by Florence Kelley
• Used tools such as boycotts to call for better wages and working conditions
• Promoted laws that protected the rights of the worker

Progressive Government

• There were politicians who were considered Progressive politicians at both the local city level and the state level
• Became quite popular around 1900

Robert M. La Follete : An example of a politician dedicated to the Progressive cause

• Launched a long political career as a governor in Wisconsin
• Used scientists and academics to help him make laws
• Lowered railroad rates, raised railroad taxes (on big business), improved education, supported environmental conservation, established factory regulation, and workers’ compensation (paid if injured on the job)

Hiram Johnson: Progressive Political Representative in CA

• Served as governor of CA from 1911 to 1917 and later as a senator
• Tried to get rid of big railroad business influence in the government
• Introduced the recall, the initiative, and the direct primary (all aspects of state government that we have today)
• Supported conservation
• Signed an employer’s liability law (liable for the health and safety of their workers)

Theodore Roosevelt

• Roosevelt is often considered one of the most Progressive of the Presidents for his domestic policy.  He is committed to social reforms such as the establishment of the regulatory Food and Drug Act as well as major conservation efforts.

Progressive Era Journalism

• Called “muckraking” became popular and effective in sparking reforms
• A type of journalism and literary efforts that exposed the ills of certain industries, including the meat packing industry and other food and drug businesses
• Journalists also looked for collusion between government and big business
• Considered a major impetus for Progressive Era reforms

Upton Sinclair

• Writes “The Jungle,” a novel published in 1906 that has a sensational account of filthy conditions of the meat-packing industry
• It was rumored that after reading this book, the President could no longer eat his sausage for breakfast

Ida B. Tarbell

• American teacher, author, and “muckraker”
• Exposes the ills of the big business “trust” Standard Oil
• Contributed to the anti-government sentiment against the Standard Oil company

Plessy v. Fergusson

• Court case that legally upholds segregation
• States that “separate but equal” facilities are okay
• Of course, rarely were separate facilities (including schools, modes of transportation) equal to the facilities for whites
• Doctrine of “white supremacy” grows in the progressive era

D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation

• A popular movie in the beginning of the 20th century; depicts former slaves as violent dangerous to white women
• Depicts the KKK as the heroes who protect southerners from former slaves

President Taft

• A much less active president than TR
• Left it up to the courts to arbitrate social issues
• Relied on the conservatives in politics, the Republicans (the party of both TR and Taft)
• Undid some of TR’s conservation efforts
• Fired a man who criticized his alliances with western businessman, caused a scandal

Dollar Diplomacy

• Taft did follow TR’s foreign policy, but still had trouble here
• He championed commercial goals rather than building better alliances
• Provoked anti-American feeling in the Caribbean by attempting to strong-arm commercial treaties

The Election of 1912

• Roosevelt decides to run again for President  in 1912 against Taft but ends up splitting votes  between the Progressive interests and the Republican Party
• The Democrats are delighted by the split and they smell victory and put Woodrow Wilson up for president

Federal Reserve Act of 1913

• Most significant domestic law of Wilson’s presidency
• Establishes a national banking system with 12 regional banks
• Gives the US its first efficient banking system and currency system
• Provides also for  greater government control over banking helps business and government
• Doesn’t prevent the US economy from going through major ups and downs, however, which would lead to the Great Depression in the 1930s

Clayton Anti-Trust Act, 1914

• More key legislation under Wilson that is “Progressive”
• Outlaws “unfair competition”
• Outlaws things such as price discrimination and having directors from one corporation sit on the board of another
• Hopes to guide business activity to more healthy competition rather than strong government regulation

The Socialist Party

• Emerges in 1900 as a party of middle class and native-born Americans, partly in response to dissatisfaction with the Progressives
• Lead by a man named Eugene V. Debs
• Preached cooperation over competition
• Urged men and women to liberate themselves from the chains of work
• Supported socialism and said only with socialism could democracy exist

The Limits of Progressive Reform

• Progressivism was never that radical of a movement
• Goal remained to reform the existing system but did not alter traditional American institutions or values
• Did redefine liberalism, tied it to the expanding power of the government to regulate society
• Was sometimes elitist though it called for democracy
• Did increase the power of the president
• Expanded the power of the federal governments
• And did work to bring about more social justice, particularly for the poor worker
• Not based on racial equality