Progressivism

Progressives focused on three areas of reform: easing the suffering of the urban poor, improving unfair and dangerous working conditions, and reforming government at the national, state, and local levels.

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. Journalists called muckrakers and urban photographers exposed people to the plight of the unfortunate in hopes of sparking reform. Jacob Riis Danish immigrant who faced New York poverty Exposed the slums through magazines, photographs, and a best-selling book His fame helped spark city reforms. Ida Tarbell Exposed the corrupt Standard Oil Company and its owner, John D. Rockefeller Appealed to middle class scared by large business power Lincoln Steffens Shame of the Cities (1904) exposed corrupt city governments Frank Norris Exposed railroad monopolies in a 1901 novel

Reforming Society

Growing cities couldnt provide people necessary services like garbage collection, safe housing, and police and fire protection.

Reformers, many of whom were women like activist Lillian Wald, saw this as an opportunity to expand public health services.

Progressives scored an early victory in New York State with the passage of the Tenement Act of 1901, which forced landlords to install lighting in public hallways and to provide at least one toilet for every two families, which helped outhouses become obsolete in New York slums.

These simple steps helped impoverished New Yorkers, and within 15 years the death rate in New York dropped dramatically. Reformers in other states used New York law as a model for their own proposals.

Fighting for Civil Rights

Progressives fought prejudice in society by forming various reform groups.
NAACP

ADL

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Formed in 1909 by a multiracial group of activists to fight for the rights of African Americans 1913: Protested the official introduction of segregation in federal government 1915: Protested the D. W. Griffith film Birth of a Nation because of hostile African American stereotypes, which led to the films banning in eight states

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

Fought to stop negative stereotypes of Jews in media The publisher of the New York Times was a member and helped stop negative references to Jews

Reforming the Workplace

By the late 19th century, labor unions fought for adult male workers but didnt advocate enough for women and children.
In 1893, Florence Kelley helped push the Illinois legislature to prohibit child labor and to limit womens working hours. In 1904, Kelley helped organize the National Child Labor Committee, which wanted state legislatures to ban child labor. By 1912, nearly 40 states passed child-labor laws, but states didnt strictly enforce the laws and many children still worked.

Reforming the Workplace

Progressives, mounting state campaigns to limit workdays for women, were successful in states including Oregon and Utah. But since most workers were still underpaid and living in poverty, an alliance of labor unions and progressives fought for a minimum wage, which Congress didnt adopt until 1938. Businesses fought labor laws in the Supreme Court, which ruled on several cases in the early 1900s concerning workday length.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company FireThe Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire

In 1911, a gruesome disaster in New York inspired progressives to fight for sa in the workplace. About 500 women worked for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a high-rise building sweatshop that made womens blouses.

Just as they were ending their six-day workweek, a small fire broke out, whic quickly spread to three floors.

Escape was nearly impossible, as doors were locked to prevent theft, the flim fire escape broke under pressure, and the fire was too high for fire truck ladd to reach.

More than 140 women and men died in the fire, marking a turning point for la and reform movements.

With the efforts of Union organizer Rose Schneiderman and others, New York State passed the toughest fire-safety laws in the nation, as well as factory inspection and sanitation laws.
New York laws became a model for workplace safety nationwide.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Reforming Government
City Government

State Government

Reforming government meant winning control of it:

Tom Johnson of Cleveland was a successful reform mayor who set new rules for police, released debtors from prison, and supported a fairer tax system.

Progressive governor Robert La Follette created the Wisconsin Ideas, which wanted:

Direct primary elections; limited campaign spending Commissions to regulate railroads and oversee transportation, civil service, and taxation

Progressives promoted new government structures:

Texas set up a five-member committee to govern Galveston after a hurricane, and by 1918, 500 cities adopted this plan. The city manager model had a professional administrator, not a politician, manage the government.

Election Reforms

Some measures Progressives fought for include

Direct primary: voters select a partys candidate for public office

17th Amendment: voters elect their senators directly

secret ballot: people vote privately without fear of coercion

initiative: allows citizens to propose new laws

referendum: allows citizens to vote on a proposed or existing law

recall: allows voters to remove an elected official from office

Women and Public Life

The Main Idea Women during the Progressive Era actively campaigned for reforms in education, childrens welfare, temperance, and suffrage.

Opportunities for Women

By the late 1800s, more educational opportunities arose as colleges, such as Oberlin College in Ohio, started enrolling women. Most of the women who attended college at this time were from the upper or middle classes and wanted to use their skills after graduation. A few African American women attended college, but this was more rare. However, many employment opportunities were still denied to women, as organizations such as the American Medical Association didnt admit women until many years later.

Denied access to their professions, many women poured their knowledge and skills into the reform movement, gaining valuable political experience as they fought for change.

Employment Opportunities
Job opportunities for educated middle-class women grew in the 1800s. By the late 1800s, these opportunities in public life changed how women saw the world and the role they wanted in their communities. Some new workplace opportunities for women included Women worked as teachers and nurses in the traditional caring professions, but they also entered the business world as bookkeepers, typists, Newspapers and magazines began to hire more women as journalists and artists, trying to cater to the new consumer group Working-class and uneducated women took industry jobs that paid less than men, as employers assumed women were being supported by their fathers.

secretaries, and shop

clerks.

formed by educated
women.

Prohibition

Progressive women also fought in the Prohibition movement, which called for a ban on making, selling, and distributing alcoholic beverages.

Reformers thought alcohol was responsible for crime, poverty, and violence.
Two major national organizations led the crusade against alcohol.

The Anti-Saloon League

The Womens Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), headed by Frances Willard, which was a powerful force for both temperance and womens rights

Evangelists like Billy Sunday and Carry Nation preached against alcohol, and Nation smashed up saloons with a hatchet while holding a Bible.

The Temperance Movement

Congress eventually proposed the Eighteenth Amendment in 1917, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol. It was ratified in 1919, but was so unpopular that it was repealed in 1933.

Rise of the Womens Suffrage Movement

After the Civil War, suffragists, who had supported abolition, called for granting women the vote but were told that they should wait. Many were angered that the Fifteenth Amendment granted voting rights to African American men but not to women.

Women began to see success in the West, as in 1869 the Wyoming Territory granted women the vote, followed by the Utah Territory a year later and five more western states not long after.

Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony wrote pamphlets, made speeches, and testified before every Congress from 1869 to 1906 in support of womens rights. In 1873 the Supreme Court ruled that even though women were citizens, that did not automatically grant them voting rights, but that it was up to the states to grant or withhold that right.

Anti-Suffrage Economic Arguments

The liquor industry feared that Some believed women were giving too the women the vote frail to handle the turmoil of would lead to Prohibition. polling places on Election Day. As women became active in Some believed voting would other reform movements, such as food and drug safety and interfere with a womans duties at home or destroy families. child labor, business owners feared women would vote for Some claimed that women did regulations that would drive not have the education or up costs. experience to be competent Religious voters. Others believed that most Churches and clergy members women did not want to vote,preached that marriage was a sacred bond and the entire and that it was unfair for family was represented by the suffragists to force the vote on husbands vote. unwilling women.

Social

Women Gain the Vote

The Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the vote, was proposed by Congress in 1918 and passed in 1920 with support from President Wilson.

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt used the power of the presidency to push for progressive reforms in business and in environmental policy.

Roosevelts View of the Presidency

From Governor to Vice President

Roosevelts rise to governor of New York upset the Republican political machine. To get rid of the progressive Roosevelt, party bosses got him elected as vice president, a position with little power at that time. President William McKinley was shot and killed in 1901, leaving the office to Roosevelt. At 42 years old he was the youngest president and an avid reformer. Roosevelt saw the presidency as a bully pulpit, or a platform to publicize important issues and seek support for his policies on reform.

Unlikely President

View of Office

The Square Deal

The Square Deal became Roosevelts 1904 campaign slogan and the framework for his entire presidency. He promised to see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less. Roosevelts promise revealed his belief that the needs of workers, business, and consumers should be balanced. Roosevelts square deal called for limiting the power of trusts, promoting public health and safety, and improving working conditions.
The popular president faced no opposition for the nomination in his party. In the general election Roosevelt easily defeated his Democratic opponent, Judge Alton Parker of New York.

Regulating Big Business

Roosevelt believed big business was essential to the nations growth but also believed companies should behave responsibly. He spent a great deal of attention on regulating corporations, determined that they should serve the public interest.

Dismay Over Food and Drug Practices

Food

Food producers used clever tricks to pass off tainted foods:

Dairies churned spoiled milk into fresh butter. Poultry sellers added formaldehyde, which is used to embalm dead bodies, to old eggs to hide their smell.

Unwary customers bought the tainted food thinking it was healthy.

Drugs

Drug companies were also unconcerned for customer health:

Some sold medicines that didnt work. Some marketed nonprescription medicines containing narcotics.

Mrs. Winslows Soothing Syrup, intended to soothe babies teething pain, contained heroin. Gowans Pneumonia Cure contained the addictive painkiller morphine.

Upton Sinclair and Meatpacking

Of all industries, meatpacking fell into the worst public disrepute. The novelist Upton Sinclair exposed the wretched and unsanitary conditions at meatpacking plants in his novel The Jungle, igniting a firestorm of criticism aimed at meatpackers.

Roosevelt ordered Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson to investigate packing house conditions, and his report of gruesome practices shocked Congress into action.

In 1906 it enacted two groundbreaking consumer protection laws.

The Meat Inspection Act required federal government inspection of meat shipped across state lines. The Pure Food and Drug Act outlawed food and drugs containing harmful ingredients, and required that containers carry ingredient labels.