The Progressive Era saw reforms aimed at combating corruption and improving life for common citizens. Muckrakers exposed corruption in big business, inspiring political progressives to pursue trust-busting and labor reforms. Women played a large role in reforms like temperance, suffrage, and child labor laws. Teddy Roosevelt pursued trust-busting and consumer protections like meat inspections. Conservation of natural resources was also a priority. However, divisions grew between conservative and progressive Republicans.

1. The Progressive Era
WHAT WORD DO YOU
SEE IN “PROGRESSIVE?”

2. Rank Male name Female name
1 John Mary
2 William Helen
3 James Anna
4 George Margaret
5 Charles Ruth
6 Robert Elizabeth
7 Joseph Florence
8 Frank Ethel
9 Edward Marie
10 Henry Lillian
11 Thomas Annie
12 Walter Edna
13 Harry Emma
14 Willie Alice
15 Arthur Bessie
16 Albert Bertha
17 Fred Grace
18 Clarence Rose
Popularity
in 1900

3. The Origins of
Progressivism

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6. “Muckrakers” Expose Corruption
Ida M. Tarbell exposed Standard Oil
Company’s cut-throat methods of
eliminating competition
Some view Michael Moore as a modern muckraker
David G. Phillips accuses 75 of 90
senators as being puppets of big
business

7. Political Progressives
Two Goals:
1. Reign in Trusts
2. Improve common person’s life and work
 Workers in a candle
factory

8. Changes to Elections
 Initiatives – petitioning to
get proposals put on ballot
 Referendum Votes –
voting on initiatives
 Recall– voting to remove
an official from office
 1899 - Minnesota passed
the first statewide primary
system

9. DIRECT ELECTION OF SENATORS
 Before 1913, each
state’s legislature chose
its U.S. senators
 Progressives pushed
for the popular
(general public)
election of senators
 As a result, 17th
Amendment (1913)

10. Progressivism in Cities
Commission Style Government – Galveston 1901
Under the commission plan voters elect a small governing
commission, typically five or seven members… As a group the
commissioners constitute the legislative body of the city
responsible for taxation, appropriations, ordinances, and other
general functions. Individually, each commissioner is in charge
of a specific aspect of municipal affairs, e.g., public works,
finance, or public safety. One commissioner is designated
chairman or mayor, but his function is principally one of
presiding at meetings ... Thus the commission plan blends
legislative and executive functions in the same body.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/moc01
By 1920, 500 US cities used this plan

11. Progressivism in States
 States begin reigning in corporations, railroads, etc.
 Public Utility Commissions introduced

12. Female Progressives
 Provides opportunity for women to increase civic
involvement
 Jane Addams – Starts Hull House in Chicago, a
settlement home
 Instruction in English
 Counseling for new-comers to city-life
 Child care
 Cultural Activities
http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/_museum/ghoststories.html

13. Female Progressives
 Fighting prejudice, many women discuss reforms as
extensions of traditional roles as wives and mothers
 Focus on issues like child labor, communicable
diseases (TB), food safety
 Nearly every state limited or
banned child labor by 1918

14. http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/index.html#faces
One of the spinners in Whitnel Cotton Mill. She was 51
inches high. Has been in the mill one year. Sometimes
works at night. Runs 4 sides - 48 cents a day. When asked
how old she was, she hesitated, then said, "I don't
remember," then added confidentially, "I'm not old enough
to work, but do just the same." Out of 50 employees, there
were ten children about her size.

15. Faces of Lost Youth: Furman Owens, 12-years-old. Can't
read. Doesn't know his A,B,C's. Said, "Yes I want to learn
but can't when I work all the time." Been in the mills 4
years, 3 years in the Olympia Mill. Columbia, South
Carolina.
Furman Owens, 12-years-old. Can't read. Doesn't
know his A,B,C's. Said, "Yes I want to learn but
can't when I work all the time." Been in the mills
4 years, 3 years in the Olympia Mill. Columbia,
South Carolina

16. Some boys and girls were so small they had to climb up
on to the spinning frame to mend broken threads and to
put back the empty bobbins. Bibb Mill No. 1.

17. Tony Casale, age 11, been selling 4 years. Sells
sometimes until 10 p.m. His paper told me the boy had
shown him the marks on his arm where his father had
bitten him for not selling more papers. He (the boy)
said, "Drunken men say bad words to us."

18. EFFORTS TO LIMIT WORK HOURS
 The Supreme Court and
states enacted or
strengthened laws
reducing women’s hours
 Worker’s compensation to
aid families of injured
workers

19.  Primary Source
 Future Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis believed long working hours
hurt society
 Muller v. Oregon
Laws protecting female
workers are Constitutional
b/c factory labor is harmful
to women's bodies

20. “The boys working in the breaker are bent double, with little
chance to relax; the air at times is dense with coal-dust, which
penetrates so far into the passages of the lungs that for long
periods after the boy leaves the breaker, he continues to cough
up the black coal dust. Fingers are calloused and cut by the coal
and slate, the noise and monotony are deadening; and, worse
still grave danger from the machinery to those boys who persist
in playing about the breaker, and even for those at their regular
work. While I was in the region, two breaker boys of 15 years,
while at work assigned to them, fell or were carried by the coal
down into the car below. One was badly burned and the other
was smothered to death. This was at the Lee Breaker at
Chauncy, Pennsylvania, January 6, 1911; the boy who was killed
was Dennis McKee. The coroner told me that this boy had
reached his 15th birthday only a few days before his death and
the evidence seems to prove that he was working in another
breaker before he was 14 years old.”
SOAPSTone & So What?

21. Women and Reform
 Poor conditions, pay, & hours push women for change
 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire - hundreds die
 Social Clubs
 Often turn into
reform movements

22. Moral Improvement
 Morality was the key to
fixing problems in society
 Prohibition
WCTU
Anti- Saloon League
Both founded by women
 Why were women anti-
alcohol?

23.  Carrie Nation – walked
into bars and smashed
bottles with her ax
 Prohibition was also led
by racists and against
Catholics, Jews, and
immigrants

25. Women and Reform
 NAWSA - National American
Women’s Suffrage Assoc.
 Women’s Suffrage won’t happen until 1920

26. Sufferin til Suffrage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dPF0SGh_PQ&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

27. Teddy Roosevelt’s
Square Deal

28. 1. Big Business
2. Consumer Protection
3. Environment
Progressive Reforms to:

29. Big Business
 Coal miners strike in PA – want
20% increase
 Mine owners won’t compromise
 TR summons both side to
White House
 Threatens owners w/ Federal
take –over of mines
 Workers get 10% raise, 9 hr day

30. Corporations
 ICC – expanded, given
real authority

31. Rail Road Regulation
 He wanted federal regulation of the RR
 Passed many acts to build on the ICC
 Elkins Act
 Hepburn Act

32. Consumers
 Upton Sinclair - The
Jungle
 “aimed for the nation’s
heart and hit its
stomach”
 Primary Source

33.  Meat Inspection Act –
new requirement for
meat packers, created
meat inspection
program
 Pure Food and Drug
Act – stopped sale of
contaminated foods
and medicines, called
for truth in labeling

34. “A woman's simplest duty, one would say, is to keep her house
clean and wholesome and to feed her children properly. Yet if
she lives in a tenement house, as so many of my neighbors do,
she cannot fulfill these simple obligations by her own efforts
because she is utterly dependent upon the city administration
for the conditions which render decent living possible. Her
basement will not be dry, her stairways will not be fireproof, her
house will not be provided with sufficient windows to give light
and air…She cannot even secure untainted meat for her
household, she cannot provide fresh fruit, unless the meat has
been inspected by city officials, and the decayed fruit, which is
so often placed upon sale in the tenement districts, has been
destroyed in the interests of public health…. then she must bring
herself to the use of the ballot - that latest implement for self-
government. May we not fairly say that American women need
this implement in order to preserve the home?
– Jane Addams “Why Women Should Vote”
SOAPSTone & So What?

35. Environment
 “Conservationist
President”
 Protection of Natural
Resources
 Resources were not
endless

36.  "There can be nothing in the world more beautiful
than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias
and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the
Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and
our people should see to it that they are preserved for
their children and their children's children forever,
with their majestic beauty all marred."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.nps.gov/thro/historyculture/theodore-roosevelt-and-conservation.htm

37. Taft as President
 Republican
 Hand-picked to run in 1908
 Very cautious, moderate agenda
 Danced around issues, not forceful
http://www.classroomhelp.com/lessons/Presidents/presimages/taft_bathtub.jpg

38. Taft as President
 Real “trustbuster”
 Sued 90 trusts v. 44 by T.R.
 Tendency to shoot self in
foot

39. The Republican Party Splits
 The Old guys - Conservatives
 The New progressives
 Same party- different ideas
 This causes the split