PROGRESSIVE

ERA
1890s-1920
A21w
9.2.13
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
► Who were the Progressives?
► What reforms did they seek?
► How successful were
Progressive Era reforms in
the period 1890-1920?
Consider: political change, social change (industrial conditions, urban life, women, prohibition)
 ORIGINS OF
PROGRESSIVE
REFORM
Progressivism
WHEN? “Progressive Reform Era”
1890s 1901 1917 1920s

WHO? “Progressives”
urban middle-class: managers & professionals;
women

WHY? Address the problems arising from:

industrialization (big business, labor strife)
urbanization (slums, political machines, corruption)
immigration (ethnic diversity)
inequality & social injustice (women & racism)
Overview
• The period of US history from the 1890s to the 1920s is
usually referred to as the Progressive Era, an era of
intense social and political reform aimed at making
progress toward a better society.
• Progressive Era reformers sought to harness the power of
the federal government to eliminate unethical and unfair
business practices, reduce corruption, and counteract the
negative social effects of industrialization.
• During the Progressive Era, protections for workers and
consumers were strengthened, and women finally achieved
the right to vote.
 Progressivism
WHAT are their goals?
► Democracy – government accountable to the people
► Regulation of corporations & monopolies
► Social justice – workers, poor, minorities
► Environmental protection

HOW?
► Government (laws, regulations, programs)
► Efficiency
value experts, use of scientific study to determine the
best solution
Pragmatism – William James, John Dewey ( Darwinism)

(Cf. scientific management/Taylor )

HOW MUCH?????
Origins of Progressivism
► “Muckrakers”
► Jacob Riis – How the Other Half Lives (1890)
► Ida Tarbell – “The History of the Standard Oil Co.” (1902)
► Lincoln Steffens – The Shame of the Cities (1904)

Ida Tarbell Lincoln Steffens

MUNICIPAL
& STATE
REFORMS
MUNICIPAL REFORM
► municipal reform
► utilities - water, gas, electricity, trolleys
► council-manager plan (Dayton, 1913)

Shoe line - Bowery

men with gifts
from ward boss
Tim Sullivan,
February, 1910
 MUNICIPAL REFORM
strong mayor system
MAYOR

COUNCIL COUNCIL COUNCIL COUNCIL COUNCIL

CITY
MEMBER MEMBER MEMBER MEMBER MEMBER
SERVICES

council-manager plan (Dayton, 1913)

COUNCIL COUNCIL COUNCIL COUNCIL COUNCIL
MEMBER MEMBER MEMBER MEMBER MEMBER

CITY
MANAGER

CITY SERVICES
STATE POLITICAL REFORM
► secret ballots
► direct primary
► Robert M.
LaFollette
► Seventeenth
Amendment
(1913)
► initiative
► referendum
Robert M. LaFollette,
► recall Wisconsin Governor 1900-06
Amendment XVII
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two
Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof,
for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The
electors in each state shall have the qualifications
requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the
state legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any state
in the Senate, the executive authority of such state shall
issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided,
that the legislature of any state may empower the
executive thereof to make temporary appointments until
the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature
may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the
election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes
valid as part of the Constitution.
 STATE POLITICAL REFORM

Voter
Participation
in Presidential
Elections,
1876-1920
 STATE SOCIAL REFORMS
► professionalsocial workers
► settlement houses - education, culture, day
care
► child labor laws
Enable education & advancement for working
class children
 STATE SOCIAL REFORMS
► workplace & labor reforms
eight-hour work day
improved safety & health conditions in
factories
workers compensation laws
minimum wage laws
unionization
child labor laws

Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory Fire, 1913
 State Social Reform: Child Labor
“Breaker Boys” Pennsylvania, 1911
Child Laborers in Indiana Glass Works,
Midnight, Indiana. 1908

Shrimp pickers in Peerless Oyster Co.

Child Laborer, Newberry, S.C. 1908 Bay St. Louis, Miss., March 3, 1911
Settlement Houses
► Settlement Houses
► Hull-House – Jane Addams

Jane Addams (1905) Hull-House Complex in 1906

 TEMPERANCE
► Temperance Crusade
► Women’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU)
► Anti-Saloon League
Frances Willard (1838-98),
leader of the WCTU

Anti-Saloon League Campaign, Dayton

TEMPERANCE & PROHIBITION
► Eighteenth Amendment

Prohibition on the Eve of

the 18th Amendment, 1919
SOCIALISM
ALTERNATIVES
 SOCIALISM
► Socialist
Party ► Industrial Workers of the
► Eugene V. Debs World (IWW or “Wobblies”)

Socialists parade, May Day, 1910

Eugene V. Debs
NATIONAL
REFORM
Roosevelt, Taft & Wilson
as Progressive presidents
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
How effective were Progressive
Era reformers and the federal
government in bringing about
reform at the national level in
the period 1900-1920?
Assassination of President McKinley, Sept 6, 1901
Theodore Roosevelt:
the “accidental President”
Republican (1901-1909)

(The New-York Historical Society)

Roosevelt’s
“Square Deal”
► 1902 Anthracite Coal
Miners Strike
► “Square Deal”

Anthracite miners at Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1900

 Roosevelt the “trust-buster”

► Northern Securities Company (1904)

► “good trusts” and “bad trusts”
► Hepburn Railroad Regulation Act (1906)

“ONE SEES HIS FINISH UNLESS GOOD GOVERNMENT RETAKES THE SHIP”
 Consumer Protection
► Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
► Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
► Meat Inspection Act (1906)

Chicago Meatpacking Workers, 1905 "A nauseating job, but it must be done"
 Roosevelt &
Conservation
► Used the Forest
Reserve Act of 1891
► U.S. Forest Service
(1906) Theodore Roosevelt and
► GiffordPinchot Gifford Pinchot, 1907

► White House
conference on
conservation -1908
► John Muir Theodore
Roosevelt &
John Muir
at Yosemite
1906
CONSERVATION:
National Parks and
Forests
 William
Howard Taft
President 1909-13
Republican

Postcard with Taft cartoon

Taft Birthplace today, Mt. Auburn
 Taft’s Progressive Accomplishments
► trust-busting ► BUT:Caused split in
Republican Party
► forest and oil
reserves Payne-Aldrich Tariff (1909)
Pinchot-Ballinger
► Sixteenth
Controversy
Amendment

(Taft has) “…completely

twisted around the policies
I advocated and acted
upon.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
Election of 1912
► Woodrow Wilson
► Progressive Party
(“Bull Moose party”)
► “New Nationalism”
► significance

Woodrow Wilson
Theodore
Roosevelt
cartoon,
March 1912
1912
Presidential
Election
 Wilson
► Woodrow Wilson
► “New Freedom”
► Underwood Simmons
Tariff (1913)
► Sixteenth Amendment
(1913)
► Federal Reserve Act (1913)
► Federal Trade
Commission Act (1914)
► Clayton Anti-Trust Act
(1914)
Wilson at the peak of his power
► Keating-Owen Act (1916)
Federal Reserve System
► Federal Reserve Act
WOMEN &
SUFFRAGE
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION
To what extent did economic and
political developments as well as
the assumptions about the nature of
women affect the position of
American women during the period
1890-1925?
 WOMEN
► “women’s
professions”
► “new woman”
► clubwomen

A local club for nurses was formed in New

York City in 1894. Here the club members
are pictured in their clubhouse reception
area. (Photo courtesy of the Women's History and Resource
Center, General Federation of Women's Clubs.)

The Women's Club of Madison, Wisconsin conducted classes in food,

nutrition, and sewing for recent immigrants. (Photo courtesy of the Women's
History and Resource Center, General Federation of Women's Clubs.)
 Women’s Suffrage
► National American
Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA)
► Carrie Chapman Catt

Ohio Woman Suffrage Headquarters,

Cleveland, 1912
Woman suffrage before 1920
 Women’s Suffrage
► AlicePaul
► National Woman’s Party
► Nineteenth Amendment
► Equal Rights Suffragette
Banner
Amendment 1918

19th Amendment
National Woman’s Party members picketing in front of the White House, 1917 (All: Library of Congress)
 RACE
RELATIONS
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
offered different strategies for dealing
with the problems of poverty and discri-
mination faced by black Americans at the
end of the nineteenth and beginning of
the twentieth centuries. How appropriate
were each of these strategies (considering
the context in which each was developed)?
Black Population, 1920
African-Americans
► Booker T. Washington
► W.E.B. Du Bois
► Niagara Movement
► “talented tenth”
► NAACP

W.E.B. Du Bois

Booker T.
Washington
The dark side of progressivism
Though Progressive reformers achieved many noteworthy
goals during this period, they also promoted
discriminatory policies and espoused intolerant
ideas. The Wilson administration, for instance,
despite its embrace of modernity and progress,
pursued a racial agenda that culminated in the
segregation of the federal government. The years of
Wilson’s presidency (1913-1921) witnessed a revival
of the Ku Klux Klan and a viciously racist backlash
against the economic and political gains of African
Americans in the post-Reconstruction period
Labor unions, which were very active in Progressive politics,
supported restrictions on immigration and spewed
xenophobic rhetoric that blamed immigrants for low wages
and harsh working conditions in factories across the nation.
Federal immigration policies in the Progressive Era,
including the Immigration Act of 1917 and the National
Quota Law of 1921, severely limited immigration based on
nationality, and excluded virtually all Asian immigrants.
In line with their view of human nature as capable of being
engineered and manipulated, many Progressive reformers
advocated selective breeding, or eugenics. Eugenics was
considered “the science of better breeding” and aimed to
improve the genetic quality of the human population through
policies that would encourage the more “desirable” elements
of society to have more children while preventing
“undesirables” from reproducing. Eugenics was based on a
racial and class hierarchy that placed white, Anglo-Saxon
Protestants at the top. Lower classes, ethnic minorities,
recent immigrants, the mentally ill, and the developmentally
disabled all occupied lower rungs on this hierarchy. In 1907,
the United States became the first country to pass a
compulsory sterilization law.