Progressive Era 1900 1920 2015 Pearson Education Inc

Progressive Era (1900 -1920) © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Transformation of the Cities • Department stores, electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones, automobile, bicycles, subways • Increase in incomes for many meant more leisure time, (free time): • Amusement parks, spectator sports (boxing, baseball), landscape architecture (Central Parks), nickelodeons (5 cent movie theaters), Vaudeville (comedy, music and variety shows) • By 1900 - the city was the center of economic, social, and cultural life. • With all the good of urban life, the Gilded Age was ripe with corruption, inequality and problems. © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Time for Progress! • Numerous people in the United States were thinking about how best to respond to the extraordinary changes brought about by immigration, urbanization, and the rapid industrialization of the country. • These middle and upper-class reformers, journalists (known as muckrakers), ministers, wives, writers, or college professors proposed new ways of improving life using the people and the government as the way to make change © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Time for Progress! • Goals for Reform – Social (and environmental) – Economic (businesses and money) – Political (democracy and government) © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Social Gospel: 1890 • Social Gospel: – based on the idea that improving society was both the right thing for religious people to do and God’s will to improve humanity • BIG IDEA! Progressive Reformers also sought government regulation as a way to reform society © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Advocating for Social Progress © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Progressive Education • In 1899, John Dewey wrote The School and Society. – Increase of high schooling in the North (50% earned diploma by 1940) – Move to end child labor: “out of the factories, into the schools!” – Kindergarten concept (schools before 1 st grade that teach life skills) © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Women’s Empowerment • “When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. ” - Margaret Sanger – American Birth Control League (sent illegal contraception through the mail) – Planned Parenthood: health care for low income women formed by 1929 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Temperance • Certainly no political renewal movement was more rooted in Protestant Christianity than the women’s campaign against alcohol, known as temperance. • With increase in drinking and lost productivity on the job, spousal abuse, etc, mostly women drove this movement – Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) formed– most famous, Carrie A. Nation, a crusader who smashed bottles in bars with a hatchet, determined to end alcohol use forever! © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Prohibition By 1919, 18 th Amendment is ratified (passed), which bans the manufacture and sale of alcohol across all of the country © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Overcrowding and Immigrants • Settlement Houses - Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago, created to help immigrants adjust to life in America, day care, job training, etc. • Professional Social Workers: created to look for child abuse, spousal abuse, etc • YMCA: sporting and social organization • Salvation Army: charitable donations to the poor • City parks (like Fredrick Law Olmstead’s Central Park) and gradual destruction of tenements • National Parks created…the idea is to preserve and conserve land, avoid turning all of American into an urbran wasteland! © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Major National Parks MAP 19 -2, Major National Parks © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Advocating for Economic Change (economic change is anything that deals with money, for the individual, a business or for the country) © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Control of Monopolies (aka “trusts”) • Gilded Age economic philosophy was “Laissez faire”, meaning “hands off”, or very little government regulation of business practices • Government wanted to distinguish between “Good trusts” vs. “bad trusts” – Not all trusts (monopolies) are bad, they drive other businesses to be more competitive – “trust busting” laws were passed by Congress (Sherman Anti-trust Act) – Ida Tarbell/Frank Norris: journalists that wrote about the negative and unfair business practices certain businesses © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Controlling Big Business • Progressives wan to move away from laissez-faire (means “to leave alone”) economics, MORE government regulation of business to help workers and consumers – The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, exposed the unsanitary conditions in the meat packing industry • Led to the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act – American Bar Association created to license and regulate the legal industry (lawyers) – Medical licensing required…“first do no harm”, an oath doctors have to take – “gas and water socialism”: the idea that certain industries need to be regulated and controlled more by government than private businesses – Railroads and telephone company regulation of prices charged to consumers © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Major Economic Reforms • Understand what the laws did and WHY reforms were needed: – 16 th Amendment • Creation of a federal income tx • Allows govt to have more $$ to use for bettering society – Federal Reserve Bank • Regulates interest rates and stabilizes money supply © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Progress in Factory Systems • Henry Ford – Automobile assembly line: cheaper, faster, easier way to produce cars - was first millionaire to pay workers a “living wage” - 8 hour workday --hired African Americans --thought of “workers as consumers”. . . if you don’t pay your workers enough, how can they buy your products! © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Advocating for Political Change (any change that fixes government issues OR gives more power in our government to the people) © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Political Progressives – Lincoln Steffens exposes municipal (cities or towns) corruption in his muckraking book – “Fighting Bob”: Robert Lafollette Progressive Party governor and Wisconsin state senator, fought for better methods of voting to combat corruption © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Reforms to City & State Government • Know why all these reforms were needed: – Initiative: allows people to put an issue up for a vote, rather than waiting for an elected politician to take up the vote – Recall: allows people to hold an election to vote OUT an elected official, usually for ineffective or corrupt acts – secret ballot: allows votes to be submitted in private, eliminated corruption and voter intimidation – Mayor-city council: systems implemented to move away from corrupt and unqualified “political machines”, puts power in the hands of several qualified departments and leaders, not in one person © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Amendments to the U. S. Constitution • Understand what each Amendment did a WHY this political reform was needed: – 17 th Amendment: allowed for the direct election of Senators, voters chose – 19 th Amendment: women’s suffrage (right to vote) © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Progressive Politics on the National Stage • U. S. Presidents and the Progressive Movement – Theodore Roosevelt – becomes the most progressive president of the Era, backs unions and expands national park system – William H. Taft – VP to Roosevelt, “trust buster” and support of unions – Woodrow Wilson- reforms take a backseat to WWI, which breaks out in 1914, but does fight for women’s suffrage passed in 1919 © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Opposition to Progressivism…WHY? • Supporters of Social Darwinism didn’t believe in help/charity for the weakest members of society, they believe instead in “Survival of the Fittest” • Capitalism is “good” (a system where money is the incentive driving behavior, free market is good. You want anything in this society, you gotta earn the money to buy it, not get it from charity • Socialism is “bad”, the idea that some contribute (in taxes or effort), yet ALL benefit wasn’t popular with some • In the case of progress for African Americans, society was not ready for a “civil rights movement” yet. © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.