Topic 17 – Urban America and The Progressive Era 1901-1921.

Topic 17 – www.buschistory.net

Urban America and The Progressive Era

1901-1921

What is Progressivism?

• A broad movement to ameliorate societal problems

• Included broad Legislation and local social efforts

• Includes 4 Constitutional Amendments: 16-19• Presidents Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson• 1901-1921

Progressivism in General• Found in all classes, regions, and classes• Not a unified movement, but a collection of reforms• Themes:

– Anger towards rise of big business– Emphasis on the lack of individualism and social Darwinism– Belief that citizens need to intervene to improve society

• Inspiration:– Evangelical Protestantism– Natural and social scientists

• Believed they had a mission to frame laws that restricted minorities

Promoting Reform• Muckraking

– Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives– S. S. McClure’s McClure’s– Lincoln Steffens’s The Shame of the

Cities– Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle

• Social Sciences (sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics)– Lester Frank Ward (sociologist against

social Darwinism)– John Dewey (philosopher that critiqued

approach to education)– John R. Commons (organized a state

industrial commission)– Richard Ely (wanted government to

intervene and solve social problems)– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (wanted laws

to take changing social conditions into account)

Social Control• Prohibition

– WCTU was a large temperance group for women– Core strength was Protestant, rural Americans– 18th Amendment (1919)

• Prostitution• Standardized education

Immigrants, Cities, and Unions• Immigrants were majority in the industrial labor force

– Ghettos– Company towns

• Garment industry– The Uprising of the 20,000– ILGWU– Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)

• Ludlow Massacre (1914)• American Federation of Labor (founded 1886)• Industrial Workers of the World (1905)

Women and African Americans• Settlement house movement

– Jane Adams and Hull House (1889)

– Florence Kelley• General Federation of

Women’s Clubs• Anti-prostitution• Birth control debate

(Margaret Sanger)• Muller v. Oregon limits

maximum hours for working women

• 4/5 of 10 million African Americans lived in the South

• Racial Darwinism• Booker T. Washington and

Tuskegee Institute• W. E. B. Du Bois and NAACP

A Disagreement on African American Reforms

• Booker T. Washington –(4/5 1856 – 11/14 , 1915

• Washington offered black acquiescence in disenfranchisement and social segregation if whites would back the idea of black progress in education, agriculture, and economics.

• Blacks would learn trades that are useful to whites

• W.E.B. DuBois – 2/23, 1868 – 8/27, 1963

• Disagreed with Washington’s acceptance of lesser status for Blacks

• Fought for complete equality in education, employment, and voting

Teddy Roosevelt 1901- 1909

• Foreign Policy– Roosevelt Corollary– Big Stick– Panama Canal– Russo-Japanese War– Great White Fleet

– http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/progressivism/

• Domestic Reforms– Pure Food and Drug

Act– Meat Inspection Act– Elkins Act– Hepburn Act– Trust Buster –

Northern Securities– Square Deal– Conservation

Conservation and Preservation• Newlands Reclamation Act (1902)

– Established Reclamation Bureau to turn arid land into farms• National Conservation Committee

– Studied minerals, water, forest, and soil resources• US Forest Service (1905)

– Gifford Pinchot was the head– Fought with John Muir over a dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley– Later went head to head with Richard Ballinger about coal mines in

Alaska• National Park Service (1916)

After Roosevelt…• Roosevelt chose William Howard Taft to be

his successor• Taft won the 1908 election• Unhappy with Taft’s presidency, Roosevelt

tried to run for presidency again in 1912• Four candidates:

– Woodrow Wilson (Democrat– Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive/Bull

Moose)– William Taft (Republican)– Eugene Debs (Socialist)

• Wilson won

William Howard Taft 1909-1913

• Payne-Aldrich Tariff• 90 Anti-Trust suits• US Steel• US Chamber of Commerce• Corporate Income Tax• Dollar Diplomacy

Woodrow Wilson 1913-1921• Sixteenth Amendment – Income Tax -1913• Seventeenth Amendment - Election of Senators by popular

vote - 1913• Eighteenth Amendment – Prohibition – 1919• Twentieth Amendment – Suffrage - 1919• The Underwood-Simmons Act (1913)

– Reduced taxes on materials such as wool, sugar, agricultural machinery, shoes, iron and steel

• The Federal Reserve Act (1913)– Established 12 Federal Reserve Acts

• Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)– Replaced Sherman’s Antitrust Act– Exempted labor unions

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC) (1914)– Government controls corporations like the ICC controls railroads