Progressivism
Sources Populism-ideals Reform Darwinism Social Gospel Intellectual o Henry George Progress and Poverty (1879) single tax (land) o Edward Bellamy Looking Backward
Short term sources Industrialization Immigration o Seven million persons arrived in the first 10 years of the 20th century. o Southern and eastern Europe Rise of middle class-values
Origins of Progressive Thought "Discovery" of poverty 1. 2.Charity movement 3.Emancipation of Women 4. Social settlement movement
Definition of Liberalism Government should be more active Social problems are susceptible to government legislation and action Throw money at the problem
Definition of Progressivism Progressives-never a unified group with a single objective or set of objectives. Instead, they had many different, and sometimes contradictory goals, including: o End to "white slavery" (prostitution and the sweat shops) o Prohibition o "Americanization" of immigrants o Immigration restriction legislation o Anti-trust legislation o Rate regulation of private utilities o Full government ownership of private utilities o Women's suffrage o End to child labor o Destruction of urban political machines o "Taylorism" o Political reform
Types of Progressivisms Four basic types of Progressive reform, and each reform corresponded to a key word, repeated time and again in the rhetoric of Progressives: o Economic--"Monopoly" o Structural and Political--"Efficiency" o Social--"Democracy" o Moral--"Purity"
Basic Goals of Progressives Government, once purified, must act protecting the weakest members of society moralists Never challenged capitalism's basic tenets Paternalistic, moderate, soft-minded
Municipal Reform Samuel Jones mayor of Toledo,Ohio (1897 1904). introduced paid vacations and eight-hour work days for municipal employees. municipal ownership of public utilities gave the policemen walking sticks in place of clubs urged the repeal of Sunday closing laws.
1900-Hurricane "Galveston Plan" Commission form of government Adopted city manager system Galveston
State Progressives (Politics) Robert LaFollette Wisconsin Idea a United States Congressman from 1885 to 1891 governor of Wisconsin from 1900 to 1905, and United States Senator from 1905 to 1925. In 1924, LaFollette ran as an independent Progressive candidate for President and polled nearly 6 million votes out of some 30 million cas
Initiative Direct primary Direct election of U.S. Senators o Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1913). Referendum Recall Secret ballot
National Progressivism
Muckrakers Lincoln Steffens- an investigator of corruption in state and municipal governments, published Shame of the Cities in 1904 Edwin Markham-published an exposé of child labor in Children in Bondage(1914) Jacob Riis-depicted the misery of New York City slums in How the Other Half Lives (1890), an early advocacy of urban renewal Ida Tarbell-wrote a series of magazine articles detailing the business practices of Standard Oil, which appeared in McClure's and later were published in book form as The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) David Graham Phillips' Cosmopolitan article, "The Treason of the Senate," a bitter indictment of political corruption, provoked President Roosevelt's wrath, but created momentum that would culminate in the adoption of the 17th Amendment Henry Demarest Lloyd's Wealth against Commonwealth (1894) chronicled the rise of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) was largely responsible for federal legislation regulating food and drug practices; he was later a failed Socialist political candidate, a founder of the American Civil Liberties Association, a prolific fiction writer and Pulitzer Prize winner. o o Meat Inspection Act Pure Food and Drug Act
Riis Pics
Progressives and Business Between 1897 and 1901, more than 2,000 mergers took place in the United States. TR was pro-business but went after inefficiency Dissolved 44 trusts Northern Securities Case 1901, James J. Hill, E. H. Harriman, and J. P. Morgan had made a secret deal to combine their railroad stocks in a holding company, another type of trust. Their new company, the Northern Securities Company, controlled all the major railroads in the Northwestern states. 1904 in a stunning opinion for the court, Justice John Marshall Harlan declared that every combination that eliminates interstate competition was illegal. The court included combinations of manufacturing companies and railroads. The Supreme Court majority found that all monopolies tended to restrain trade and to deprive the public of the advantages that flow from free competition. The court ordered the breakup of the Northern Securities Company into independent competitive railroads.
In 1905, he authorized a federal investigation of John D. Rockefeller s Standard Oil Trust. The investigators uncovered secret rebates from railroads and concluded that Standard Oil held monopolistic control... from the well of the producer to the door step of the consumer. Roosevelt s Justice Department filed an antitrust suit under the Sherman Act in 1906. Roosevelt remained convinced that federal regulation of big business was the best way to tame the trusts. Filing lawsuits against individual monopolies to break them up was a costly and slow slog through the courts, he believed. Besides, he held the view that good monopolies benefited the public with efficient distribution of new products. o US STEEL
1903-Elkins Act 1903-Department of Commerce and Labor In December 1905, Roosevelt called on Congress to empower the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to ensure reasonable railroad rates for all. Congress responded with the Hepburn Act, which authorized the ICC to set maximum rail rates after finding that current ones were unreasonable.
Temperance Anti-Saloon League-1893 a non-partisan organization that focused on the single issue of prohibition. 18th Amendment
Gender The Suffragists o suffragists focused on winning for women the right to vote. The Social Feminists o Social feminists agreed with the suffragists that women should get the vote, but dedicated themselves to social o o o reforms other than suffrage.. Florence Kelley (1859-1932) was a prominent feminist and social reformer. From 1898 until 1932, Kelley served as the head of the National Consumers' League (NCL), a lobbying group for the rights of working women and children. In addition to the NCL, there were a host of other reform organizations headed by women: the Woman's Trade Union League, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the National Council of Colored Women. o These groups saw the state as a potentially beneficial agent of social welfare. o The new generation of social feminists were more conservative, but also more pragmatic. o In 1890, these new feminists formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). o NAWSA was led from 1900 to 1904 and again from 1915 to 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947). Catt believed it was a woman's natural right to participate in politics, and also wanted women to have the vote in order to reform society. Catt reasoned that if women had political power, they could not only improve life for themselves and for their children, but have influence over more global issues such as world peace. o Catt founded the League of Women Voters in 1920. Radical feminists o o o offered a much stronger critique of American society, economics, and politics. The most prominent radical feminist was Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), a sociologist, author, lecturer, and self-proclaimed socialist. In 1898, Gilman achieved international fame with her book, Women and Economics: The Economic Factor between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, a condemnation of the Cult of True Womanhood
One of the most significant was women's increasing ability to control fertility. In 1916, Margaret Sanger, a former nurse, opened the country's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Police shut it down ten days later. "No woman can call herself free," she insisted, "until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." Margaret Sanger coined the phrase "birth control Birth Control
Prostitution and White Slavery Attack Red light Districts Mann Act (1910) o Federal offense to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes
Racial Progressivism Northern Migration-200,000 from 1900-1910 Racial tensions in North o DW Griffiths Birth of a Nation(1915) o Reformation of KKK Niagara Movement- (1905) WEB Dubois-The Souls of Black Folk call for opposition to racial segregation and disenfranchise ment as well as policies of accommodation and conciliation Eventually became NAACP By 1914, the NAACP had 6,000 members and offices in 50 cities.
During Roosevelt's presidency, 148 million acres were set aside as national forest lands more than 80 million acres of mineral lands were withdrawn from public sale. Conservation
Election of 1912 Woodrow Wilson-Democrat William Howard Taft-Republican Theodore Roosevelt-Progressive Party
T. Woodrow Wilson (NJ) 435 Electoral Votes/6,293,152 Theodore Roosevelt (NY) 88 Electoral College/4,119,207 William H. Taft (OH) 83 Electoral College/3,486,333
Wilsonian Progressivism First Graduated Income Tax (up to 6%) o 16 amend. (1913) Federal Reserve Banks (1913) o o 12 reserve banks regulated by central board in Washington Cash reserves kept in FRB Fed has control over credit expansion or contraction Federal Trade Commission (1914) o Investigate companies and issue cease and desist orders against unfair trade practices that violated antitrust law Clayton Anti-trust act (1914) o making certain business practices illegal (such as price discrimination, agreements forbidding retailers from handling other companies products, and directorates and o agreements to control other companies). The power of this legislation was greater than previous anti-trust laws, because individual officers of corporations could be held responsible if their companies violated the laws. More importantly, the new laws set out clear guidelines that corporations could follow.
How to assess Progressivism? Era of social reform to ameliorate abuses of industrialization Promote creation of activist state Maternalist welfare programs Use techniques of incorporation Social Justice or Social Control?