Progressive Era Reform Work 18951920

1
Progressive Era Reform Work (1895-1920)
2
I. Progressivism (ca. 1895-1920 peak 1912 w all
3 Pres. candidates Progr.)

• Urban Counterpart to Popularism
• B. Basic Premises
• 1. Progress inevitable good
• 2. Celebrated modern age
• 3. Scientific approach to social problems
• 4. Faith in human rationality
• 5. Malleable society is perfectible

3

• C. Progressive Women Natural Morality
  Pacifism
• 1898 Spanish-American War in Philippines
• Jane Addams Crystal Eastman Peace Mov
• Anarchist Emma Goldman, Patriotism 1905

4

• Charlotte Gilman, The Man-Made War
• Theodore Roosevelt vs. William James

5
II. Reform Poor Work Living Conditions

• Immigrants or Native-Born?
• Fannia Cohn, Clara Lemlich,
• Pauline Newman, Rose Schneiderman
• Florence Kelley

6
GROUP WORK SKLAR/ORLECK

• MAIN QUESTION Comparing the work you did on
  Orleck to the questions below, why do Orleck and
  Sklar portrayals of labor reform in the same era
  differ so much in who they focus on, the dynamics
  among those people, and the driving force behind
  reform?
• 1. What were Sklars questions, or what is she
  trying to figure out?
• 2. On whom did Sklar focus? What characterized
  that/those figure(s)? Who were the heroes and
  antagonists? What or who caused change?
• 3. What enabled women, in particular to create
  change? What was the nature of alliances such as
  how cross-gendered or cross-classed alliances
  looked?
• 4. What kind of evidence does Sklar present?
• 5. What does Sklar conclude?

7

• B. Control Fertility to Improve LivesMargaret
  Higgins Sanger (1879-1966)
• Family influences, Education, Marriage (William
  Sanger) Motherhood, Socialism, IWW, Nursing

8

• C. Eugenics Involuntary Sterilization Laws 1915
  13 states ? 1930 30 states

9
SANGERS

• 1. Why would people not want birth control
  available to working-class women?
• 2. Were Margaret Sangers portrayal of poor
  Americans negative or positive? To whom did that
  appeal and how?
• 3. Where do you see socialist ideas in Sangers
  mission?
• 4. How did William Sanger justify helping his
  wife?

10
D. Purity, Piety Womens Rights

• Womens Christian Temperance Union (1873-1920)
• Lottie Moons Mission
• to China (1870s-1912)

11
E. Masculine Virility Diet Reform

• Cattle Ranching Cowboys (MT, WY, CO, AZ, NM,
  TX)
• Meat Packing Centers (CO, NB, KS, MO)
• George Beard, Sexual Neurastenia Nervous
  Exhaustion Its Hygiene, Causes, Symptoms
  Treatment with a Chapter on Diet for the Nervous
  (1898)
• Socialist Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
  Assembly-line Capitalism
• (Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food Drug Act 1906)
• Sylvester Graham Dr. John Kellogg Western Health
  Reform Institute
• Womens Christian Temperance Union Dept. of
  Health Hygiene
• Dr. James Caleb Jackson health institute in
  Dansville, NY
• Reforming Women and Vegetarianism