The Progressives Confront Industrial Capitalism

Progressivism

The Progressives• Middle Class• Nurture Over Nature• ‘Realistic Generation’• Optimistic

Social and Economic Reformers – crusaded for better housing, cleaner streets, improved sanitation, safer factories and more humane working conditions and challenged unchecked power of giant corporations and “trusts.” Not surprisingly, such reforms most often had working-class support.

Cultural Reformers – campaigned against what they saw as immorality and vice embodies in prostitution, gambling, and especially, drinking. Less likely to enjoy support of working class.

Political Reformers – tried to rein in urban political machines and political corruption. Sometimes they worked for expanded political franchise (as in the movement for women’s suffrage), but at other times they actually restricted voting rights (by backing literacy tests.)

The Social Justice Movement• ‘Muckrakers’• Working Women and Children

– National Child Labor Committee– Children’s Bureau in Department of Labor– Muller v. Oregon– Woman Suffrage– Birth Control Movement

• Home and School• Anti-Vice Crusades

– Saloons• Women’s Christian Temperance Union• Anti-Saloon League• 18th Amendment (Adopted in 1919, repealed in 1933)

• Movie Theaters– D.W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation (1915)

• Prostitution

The Worker in the Progressive Area• Adjusting to Industrial Labor

– U.S. as Industrial Power– Fordism– Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)

• Union Organizing– American Federation of Labor (AFL)– National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)– Organizing Female Workers

• Women’s Trade Union League

• Garment Workers and the Triangle Fire– New York City Garment Workers/Working Conditions– 1909 Strike (ILGWU and WTUL)– Fire at Triangle Shirtwaist Company

• Investigative Commission• State Legislation• Industrial Relations Commission (1912)• Women’s Suffrage

• Radical Labor– Industrial Workers of the World

Reform in the Cities and States

• Municipal Reformers• City Beautiful Movement• Reform in the States– “Democratic” Laws– Child/Female Labor Bills– Robert La Follette, Wisconsin

Theodore Roosevelt and the Square Deal• A Strong and Controversial President• Dealing with Trusts• Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drugs

– Upton Sinclair, The Jungle– Meat Inspection Act, 1906– Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906

• Conservation and Preservation– Roosevelt – National Forests, Newland Act, National Conservation Commission– Gifford Pinchot– John Muir

• Sierra Club• Yosemite National Park• Boy Scouts (1910)• Camp Fire Girls (1912)• Hetch-Hetchy Debate

• William Howard Taft• The Election of 1912

– Woodrow Wilson – Democrat– William Howard Taft – Republican– Theodore Roosevelt – Progressive Party– Eugene V. Debs - Socialist

Progressivism for Whites Only

Progressive Contradiction

– Booker T. Washington– W.E.B. Du Bois– Niagara Movement– NAACP

• Progressive Contradiction• Booker T. Washington• W.E.B. DuBois• The Niagara Movement• The National Association for the Advancement

of Colored People (NAACP)

Woodrow Wilson and the New Freedom• Tariff and Banking Reform– Underwood Tariff– 16th Amendment– Federal Reserve system

• Wilson’s Limitations• Moving Closer to a New Nationalism– Clayton Act– Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

• The Progressive Presidents• The Limits of Progressivism