Module 7-The Progressive Era

1. Progressive Movement
 White, middle-class, urban, educated
reformers (lots of women)
 Roots were in the Populist Movement
 Four goals: social, moral, economic and
political reform.
Seneca Falls
Convention
1848

2. Protecting Social Welfare
 Social Gospel
Movement, settlement
houses inspire other
reform groups
 YMCA and Salvation Army
are formed
 Pass law prohibiting child
labor, limiting women’s
hours
Children working in NC
textile mill

3. Handwritten draft of
confederation of the
YMCA circa 1833

4. Promoting Moral Improvement
 Some feel poor should uplift themselves by
improving own behavior
 Prohibition - banning of alcoholic drinks
 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
spearheads prohibition crusade

5. Newspaper Headline
Announcing US states had
approved Prohibition

6. Woman’s Temperance Crusade:
Mother Stewart and her Staff

7. Creating Economic Reform
 1893 panic prompts doubts
about capitalism; many become
socialists
 Expose corruption in politics,
business
 Many use experts, science to
make workplace more efficient
 Scientific management - time &
motion studies applied to
workplace
 Assembly lines speed up
production, make people work
like machines
Turn of the Century
Assembly Lines

9. Political Reform
 Put power back in the hands of the people
 End corruption by political machines
 Reform at the local, state, and federal levels.

11. NY Times Political Cartoon attacking Politicians and Tammany Hall

12. Immigration and Urban Poor
 Most poor immigrants are forced to live in
slums because they can’t afford anything
else.
 Tenements are multi-family dwellings found
in the slums and are usually deteriorating.

13. New York City Tenement Slums

14. Working Conditions
 Very bad: long hours, low pay, dangerous
conditions.
 Ex: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Fire breaks out
on upper floors of a ten story bldg. Workers
can’t escape because all the exterior doors
had been locked by owner.
 Over 200 women died.
 Owner rec’d small fine.

15. Police and remains of victims of Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

16. Unequal Distribution
of Wealth
 The most wealth is held by the smallest
number of people. A few very wealthy
people, while almost everyone else is poor.
American Most Wealthy
including JP Morgan,
Andrew Carnegie and
Cornelius Vanderbilt

17. Activists and Reformers
 Muckrakers – investigative journalists who
write to expose corruption and bad
conditions in hopes of change.
 Frank Norris
 Lincoln Steffens – The Shame of the Cities
 Ida Tarbell – Standard Oil
 Upton Sinclair – Meatpacking
 Jacob Riis – How the Other Half Lives
(immigrants)

18. Muckrakers
Lincoln Steffens
(above) and
Frank Norris
(right)
Muckrakers Ida
Tarbell (left) and
Upton Sinclair
(below)

19. Jacob Riis photograph documenting crowded conditions inside NY
slums

20. Social Gospel Movement
 Society must be reformed and improved.
 Settlement Houses – Jane Addams, Hull House
 Carrie Nation – Temperance Movement
Carrie Nation (left)
and Food Lines at
Hull House (right)

22. Theodore Roosevelt’s
Square Deal
 President McKinley shot; Roosevelt
becomes president at 42
 Roosevelt works to give citizens a
Square Deal through progressive
reforms.
 The three Cs (goals) of the Square
Deal:
 Control Corporations
 Consumer Protection
 Conservation Theodore
Roosevelt

23. Artist’s
depiction of
the
Assassination
of William
McKinley

24. Controlling Corporations
 Trustbusting
 Roosevelt wants to curb trusts that hurt
public interest – not “good” trusts.
 breaks up some trusts under Sherman
Antitrust Act
 U.S. v E.C. Knight & Co.

25. Cartoon attacking
the US Senate
titled “The Bosses
of the Senate.”
The banner in
back reads “This
is a Senate of the
Monopolists, by
the Monopolists
and for the
Monopolists”

26. Cartoon depicting
Trustbuster
Theodore Roosevelt

27. Anthracite Coal Mine Strike
 Coal reserves low – strike threatens public
 Teddy Roosevelt miners, operators to accept
arbitration
 First time Federal government sides with
workers.

28. Coal miners evicted from company owned housing, northeast
Pennsylvania, 1902 Because mining companies owned their
employees' housing, striking workers risked their homes as well as
their jobs.

29. Railroad Regulation
 Roosevelt pushes for federal regulation to
control abuses
 Northern Securities vs. U.S
 Elkins Act - stops rebates, sudden rate
changes
 Hepburn Act - limits passes, ICC to set
maximum rates

30. Consumer Protection
 Regulating Foods and Drugs
 Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle -
unsanitary conditions in
meatpacking
 Roosevelt pushes for Meat
Inspection Act:
 dictates sanitary
requirements
 creates federal meat
inspection program

31. Cartoon Depicting T Roosevelt leading the investigations of the Meat
Industry

32. Consumer Protection (cont.)
 Food, drug advertisements make false claims;
medicines often unsafe
 Pure Food and Drug Act halts sale of
contaminated food, medicine
 requires truth in labeling

35. Conservation and Natural
Resources
 U.S. Forest Bureau established
 Roosevelt sets aside forest reserves,
sanctuaries, national parks
 Believes conservation part preservation, part
development for public
 Pres. most noted for conservation

36. Teddy
Roosevelt
and
Naturalist
John Muir

37. Taft Becomes President
 Taft wins with
Roosevelt’s support
 Cautiously progressive
agenda; gets little
credit for successes
(actually busts more
trusts than Theodore
Roosevelt)
William H Taft

38. American Tobacco v. U.S.
 Taft signs Payne-
Aldrich Tariff -
compromise bill,
moderate tariffs
 Progressives angry,
think he abandoned
low tariffs,
progressivism
Cartoon depicting Progressives
feelings over the Payne Aldrich Tariff

39. The Republican Party Splits
 Theodore Roosevelt wants to be president
again
 Taft’s people outmaneuver TR’s for
Republican nomination
 Progressives form Bull Moose Party;
nominate Roosevelt
 Run against Democrat Woodrow Wilson,
reform governor of New Jersey

41. Democrats Win in 1912
 Wilson endorses progressive platform called
the New Freedom
 Wants to attack Triple Wall of Privilege:
tariffs, banks, trusts.
 calls all monopolies evil

42. Democrats Win in 1912 cont.
 Roosevelt wants oversight of big business;
not all monopolies bad
 Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs
wants to end capitalism
 Wilson wins great electoral victory

43. Woodrow Wilson on campaign in Ohio

44. Lower
Tariffs
 Underwood
Tariff Act --
substantially
reduces tariffs
for the first time
since Civil War

45. Wilson Wins Financial Reforms
 Sixteenth Amendment legalizes graduated
federal income tax
 Federal Reserve System - landmark banking
reform
 Decentralizes banking
 Nation divided into 12 districts; fed.
reserve bank in each district
 This is a bank for banks. Your bank
deposits money here.

46. Newspaper headlines
declaring the approval of
the Federal Reserve Act

47. Stronger Anti-Trust Laws
 Clayton Antitrust Act stops
companies buying stock to form
monopoly
 Stronger than Sherman Anti-trust
and can’t be used against labor
 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) -
new “watchdog” agency
 investigates regulatory violations
 ends unfair business practices

48. Reforming Local Government
 Try to make government efficient, responsive
to voters
 Some cities adopt government by
commission of experts
 Many use council-manager: people elect
council that appoints manager

49. Reform at the State Level
 Governors push states to pass laws to
regulate large businesses
 Robert M. La Follette is 3-term governor, then
senator of Wisconsin
 attacks big business

51. Reforming Elections
 Direct Primaries allow voters, not party
machines, to choose candidates
 Initiative - bill proposed by people, not
lawmakers, put on ballots
 Referendum - voters, not legislature, decide
if initiative becomes law
 Recall - voters remove elected official
through off-cycle election

52. Election Reforms (cont.)
 Direct Election of Senators
 Seventeenth Amendment permits popular
election of senators
 Secret Ballot (Australian Ballot) – no one is
allowed to know how a person votes.

53. Cartoon portraying the time needed to pass the 17th Amendment allowing the
direct election of U.S. senators
By Spencer, for the Omaha World Herald, 1912

54. Women Win Suffrage
 Carrie Chapman Catt, head of
NAWSA, stresses
organization, lobbying
 National Woman’s Party
aggressively pressures for
suffrage amendment
 Nineteenth Amendment
grants women right to vote

56. The End of Progressivism
 Outbreak of World
War I distracts
Americans;
 Reform efforts stall

57. Civil Rights at the Turn of the
20th Century
 Roosevelt does not support civil rights for
African Americans
 invites Booker T. Washington to White
House
 NAACP - National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
 goal is full equality among races
 Founded 1909 by W. E. B. DuBois and black,
white reformers

58. W.E.B. DuBois
Booker T Washington

59. NAACP flag in New York City

60. African Americans Fight Legal
Discrimination
 Voting Restrictions
 All Southern states restrict voting, deny
equality
 Some limit vote to those who can read;
officials give literacy tests
 Some have poll tax that must be paid
annually to vote
 Some add grandfather clause to constitution
to let poor whites vote
 can vote if self, father, grandfather voted
before 1867

61. Political Cartoon by Theodore Geisel attacking the Poll Tax

62. Cartoon depicting Intimidation of Black voters titled "Of course he wants
to vote the Democratic ticket!”

63. African-American Responses to
Jim Crow
 Booker T. Washington - racism will end if
blacks get labor skills
 Heads Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute, now a university
 W. E. B. Du Bois, first African American to get
Harvard doctorate
 disagrees with Washington
 Founds Niagara Movement to encourage
liberal arts study

65. African-American Responses
(cont.)
 Opposing Discrimination
 Racial etiquette -
informal rules for
black-white relations
 enforce second-class
status for blacks
 Moderate reformers, like
Booker T.
Washington, get white
support

66. African-American Responses
(cont.)
 W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B.
Wells think problems too
urgent to postpone
 Born a slave, Ida B. Wells
becomes teacher,
newspaper editor
 campaigns for racial
justice and anti-lynching
laws

67. Violence
 African Americans who do not follow
etiquette are punished, lynched
 more than 1,400 killed 1882–1892
Lynching and Burning of
Black victim in Omaha on
Sept 29, 1919

68. Discrimination in the North
 Usually de facto segregation
 Many blacks migrate North for better paying
jobs, social equality
 Are forced into segregated neighborhoods
 Rejected by labor unions; hired last, fired
first by employers
 Competition between blacks, working-class
whites sometimes violent

69. Racist whites lynching 3 African American circus workers in Duluth, MN, in 1920

70. Black family preparing to move north during the Great
Migration

71. New Technologies
 Electricity – sewing machines
 Skyscrapers
 Airplanes:
 Orville & Wilbur Wright use engines to fly
“heavier-than-air” craft
 first successful flight December 1903 –
Kitty Hawk, NC
 Airplanes first used for mail and cargo

72. New York
Skyscraper
called the Flat
Iron Building

73. Wright Brothers Airplane 1902

74. Production Processes
 Ford’s innovations:
 Pays $5/day – more than any other job
 First to see workers as consumers
 Uses the assembly line to be more efficient
 Model T is under $300, most Americans can
afford one.

75. Henry Ford
and his
Model T

76. Advertising and Consumerism
 Anything that makes us more alike
contributes to mass culture: movies, books,
radio, music, fashion, etc.
 Montgomery Ward, Sears Roebuck catalogs
bring goods to small towns
 Rural free delivery (RFD) - post office
delivers direct to every home

77. Rural Free Delivery Wagon

78. Movies and Photography
 Movie camera – first movie was The Great
Train Robbery – silent films.

79. Photography Explosion
 Pre-1880s, photography requires heavy
equipment, time
 George Eastman develops light-weight
equipment, studio processing
 1888, introduces Kodak camera, easy to
operate
 millions use Kodak camera
 helps create field of photojournalism

80. 1923 Advertisement
for Kodak Camera