The Progressives

Problems & Solutions

Progressivism An early 20th century reform movement

Four Major Goals:• Return control of gov’t to the people• Restore economic opportunity• Correct injustices• Moral improvement

Immigrants/Urbanization

The airshaft of a dumbbell tenement

Progressives & Solutions

• Jane Addams - settlement houses (Hull House)

• Cities:– Chlorination– Plumbing & ventilation

(dumbbell tenements)– Sanitation, police, fire

depts..– Brick/stone buildings

Labor

Company Owners

Company laborers

Labor Problems• Working conditions• Long hours, low pay 12+ hours 6-7 days a week,• 1899 women $269 a year, men $498• Carnegie $23 million no taxes• “Yellow-dog” contracts- a contract between a worker and an

employer in which, as a condition of employment, the worker agrees not to remain in or join a union.

• Injuries/death• Child labor (2 million in 1910)• %20 of boys full time jobs, %10 of girls

Labor Solutions• Unions:

– AFL (strikes)

– Knights of Labor (arbitration)

• Muller v. Oregon (Supreme Court) State could legally limit women’s working hours

• Worker compensation

• Collective bargaining

• Keating Owen Act- prohibited the transportation of goods made with child labor across state lines

Public Health/Consumer Fraud

Progressives & Solutions• Labels untruthful• Wretched meat• Contaminated products• Commission to investigate• Public criticism (The

Jungle)• Laws:

– Meat Inspection Act– Pure Food & Drug Act

Business Practices

Monopolies

Trusts

Progressives & Solutions• Ida Tarbell• Trusts made illegal

– Sherman Anti-Trust Act– Clayton Anti-Trust Act

• Govt. agencies created to be “watchdogs”– Interstate Commerce

Commission– Federal Trade Commission

• Reduced tariffs (Underwood Tariff)

• Elkins Act- RR rebates• Hepburn Act-free RR passes• Income tax: 16th

Amendment to the Constitution

Politics

Corruption

Patronage

Graft

Progressives & Solutions• “Political Machines”

– Controlled jobs, licenses, bought votes, graft, kickbacks, bribery, hired friends

• Pendleton Act- civil service commission

• 17th Amendment- direct election of senators

• Robert La Follette

• State reforms:– Initiative- leg can be from people

– Referendum- voted by people

– recall

Environment

Progressives & Solutions

• Industrial waste

• Leveled forests

• Overgrazed plains

• Spoil dumps

• Flooding from timber ind.

• TR & John Muir– National Reclamation Act

– National Parks

– Wildlife Refuges

Women/Minorities

Anti-Suffrage Cartoon

Alice Paul

Progressives & Solutions

• No Votes for Afr-Am.– Literacy test, poll tax

• Jim Crow Laws• Yield sidewalk• Discrimination• NAACP• No Votes for Women• Domestics, factories,

clerks• 19th Amendment

Were the Progressives Successful?

Was the industrial revolution a “revolution”?