Reformers and Progressives

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Reformers and Progressives

• American History
• Unit II Becoming a World Power
• Chapter 6 Section 1- Progressivism

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Progressivism

• The Main Idea
• Progressives focused on three areas of reform
  easing the suffering of the urban poor, improving
  unfair and dangerous working conditions, and
  reforming government at the national, state, and
  local levels.
• Reading Focus
• What issues did Progressives focus on, and what
  helped energize their causes?
• How did Progressives try to reform society?
• How did Progressives fight to reform the
  workplace?
• How did Progressives reform government at the
  national, state, and local levels?

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Muckrakers

• Name applied to American journalists,
  novelists, and critics who in the first decade of
  the 20th cent. attempted to expose the abuses of
  business and the corruption in politics.
• The term derives from the word muckrake used by
  President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech in 1906,
  in which he agreed with many of the charges of
  the muckrakers but asserted that some of their
  methods were sensational and irresponsible.
• The muckraking movement lost support in about
  1912. Historians agree that if it had not been
  for the revelations of the muckrakers the
  Progressive movement would not have received the
  popular support needed for effective reform.

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Who were the reformers? What did they want?

• Mostly middle class people (Roosevelt called them
  Muckrakers) concerned with social issues of the
  times. Issues such as
• immigrants - oldcomers and newcomers
• city life- poor and needy, and prohibition
• crime and corruption
• strikes, Workmans compensation, minimum wage
• Political bosses
• city/state governments- direct democracy, tax
  laws
• Giant business corporations
• Womens Suffrage
• Child Labor

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Progressivism and Its Champions
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Muckrakers

• Miss Ida Tarbell had been at work for years on
  her history of the Standard Oil Company, and it
  began to run in McClure's in November 1902.
• Lincoln Steffen's first novel on municipal
  corruption, "Tweed Days in St. Louis" appeared in
  McClure's Oct 1902.
• Henry Demerest Lloyd's Wealth Against
  Commonwealth, published in 1894, attacked the
  Standard Oil Company.
• How the Other Half Lives, published in 1890 by
  Jacob Riis, exposed life in New York's slums.
• John Spargo, an Englishman, published The Bitter
  Cry of the Children, an account of young kids at
  work in sweatshops.
• Perhaps the most famous Muckraking novel, The
  Jungle by Upton Sinclair, exposed the horrors of
  the Chicago meat-packing plants and the
  immigrants who were worked to death in them.

Lincoln Steffen
Ida Tarbell
Upton Sinclair
Jacob Riis
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Reforming Society

• Growing cities couldnt provide people necessary
  services like garbage collection, safe housing,
  and police and fire protection.
• Reformers, many of whom were women like activist
  Lillian Wald, saw this as an opportunity to
  expand public health services.
• Progressives scored an early victory in New York
  State with the passage of the Tenement Act of
  1901, which forced landlords to install lighting
  in public hallways and to provide at least one
  toilet for every two families, which helped
  outhouses become obsolete in New York slums.
• These simple steps helped impoverished New
  Yorkers, and within 15 years the death rate in
  New York dropped dramatically.
• Reformers in other states used New York law as a
  model for their own proposals.

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Fighting for Civil Rights
Progressives fought prejudice in society by
forming various reform groups.

• NAACP
• National Association for the Advancement of
  Colored People
• Formed in 1909 by a multiracial group of
  activists to fight for the rights of African
  Americans
• 1913 Protested the official introduction of
  segregation in federal government
• 1915 Protested the D. W. Griffith film Birth of
  a Nation because of hostile African American
  stereotypes, which led to the films banning in
  eight states

• ADL
• Anti-Defamation League
• Formed by Sigmund Livingston, a Jewish man in
  Chicago, in 1913
• Fought anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jews,
  which was common in America
• Fought to stop negative stereotypes of Jews in
  media
• The publisher of the New York Times was a member
  and helped stop negative references to Jews

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Reforming the Workplace

• By the late 19th century, labor unions fought for
  adult male workers but didnt advocate enough for
  women and children.
• In 1893, Florence Kelley helped push the Illinois
  legislature to prohibit child labor and to limit
  womens working hours.
• In 1904, Kelley helped organize the National
  Child Labor Committee, which wanted state
  legislatures to ban child labor.
• By 1912, nearly 40 states passed child-labor
  laws, but states didnt strictly enforce the laws
  and many children still worked.
• Progressives, mounting state campaigns to limit
  workdays for women, were successful in states
  including Oregon and Utah.
• But since most workers were still underpaid and
  living in poverty, an alliance of labor unions
  and progressives fought for a minimum wage, which
  Congress didnt adopt until 1938.
• Businesses fought labor laws in the Supreme
  Court, which ruled on several cases in the early
  1900s concerning workday length.

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Labor Law in the Supreme Court
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire

• In 1911, a gruesome disaster in New York
  inspired progressives to fight for safety in the
  workplace.
• About 500 women worked for the Triangle
  Shirtwaist Company, a high-rise building
  sweatshop that made womens blouses.
• Just as they were ending their six-day workweek,
  a small fire broke out, which quickly spread to
  three floors.
• Escape was nearly impossible, as doors were
  locked to prevent theft, the flimsy fire escape
  broke under pressure, and the fire was too high
  for fire truck ladders to reach.
• More than 140 women and men died in the fire,
  marking a turning point for labor and reform
  movements.
• With the efforts of Union organizer Rose
  Schneiderman and others, New York State passed
  the toughest fire-safety laws in the nation, as
  well as factory inspection and sanitation laws.
• New York laws became a model for workplace safety
  nationwide.

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The Unions
ILGWU
IWW
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Reforming Government

• City Government
• Reforming government meant winning control of it
• Tom Johnson of Cleveland was a successful reform
  mayor who set new rules for police, released
  debtors from prison, and supported a fairer tax
  system.
• Progressives promoted new government structures
• Texas set up a five-member committee to govern
  Galveston after a hurricane, and by 1918, 500
  cities adopted this plan.
• The city manager model had a professional
  administrator, not a politician, manage the
  government.

• State Government
• Progressive governor Robert La Follette created
  the Wisconsin Ideas, which wanted
• Direct primary elections limited campaign
  spending
• Commissions to regulate railroads and oversee
  transportation, civil service, and taxation
• Other governors pushed for reform, but some were
  corrupt
• New Yorks Charles Evan Hughes regulated
  insurance companies.
• Mississippis James Vardaman exploited prejudice
  to gain power.

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Election Reforms

• Progressives wanted fairer elections and to make
  politicians more accountable to voters.
• Proposed a direct primary, or an election in
  which voters choose candidates to run in a
  general election, which most states adopted.
• Backed the Seventeenth Amendment, which gave
  voters, not state legislatures, the power to
  elect their U.S. senators.
• Some measures Progressives fought for include

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Reforming Government

• City Government reforms
• New rules for police, releasing debtors from
  prison and a fairer tax system.
• 5 member commission system
• Council-manager model
• State government reforms
• Election reforms
• Seventeenth Amendment
• Initiative, referendum and recall.

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National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People

• 1909 On February 12th The National
  Association for the Advancement of Colored People
  was founded by a multiracial group of activists,
  who answered "The Call." They initially called
  themselves the National Negro Committee.
  Organized to end discrimination and to prevent
  violence against blacks, especially lynching.
• FOUNDERS
• Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry
  Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison
  Villiard, William English Walling and led the
  "Call" to renew the struggle for civil and
  political liberty.

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N.A.A.C.P.

• The NAACP started its own magazine, Crisis in
  November, 1910
• NAACP campaigned, especially in the Supreme Court
  against lynching, segregation and racial
  discrimination in housing, education, employment,
  voting and transportation.
• NAACP also fought for Womens Suffrage.

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City Government

• Commission Plan
• Replaced the mayor and council with a small
  board of commissioners, each elected at large and
  each responsible for a single area of municipal
  administration.
• Under the new plan voters could easily identify
  and punish those responsible for shortcomings in
  city services.

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City Government

• City Manager scheme
• Under this plan an elected city council
  determined basic policy and appointed a
  professional, nonpartisan city manager who was in
  charge of the day-to-day operation of the
  municipality. Worked well in small cities.
• Critics of corruption urged adoption of
  nonpartisan elections, new methods of municipal
  accounting, a civil service system for city
  employees, and state constitutional amendments to
  halt state legislative interference in municipal
  affairs.

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Child Labor

• The rise of child labor in the United States
  began in the late seventeen and early eighteen
  hundreds. Industrialization was a strong force in
  increasing the number of working children.
• By nineteen hundred more than two million U.S.
  children worked. Children worked in factories,
  mines, fields and in the streets. They picked
  cotton, shined shoes, sold newspapers, canned
  fish, made clothes and wove fabric. Children were
  forced into this situation in order to help
  support their families.

Sadie Pfeifer, 48 inches high. Has worked half a
year.
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Child Labor

• Working conditions were often horrendous.
  Children would work twelve hours a day, six days
  a week throughout the year.
• The hours were long, the pay was low and the
  children were exhausted and hungry.
• Factory children were kept inside all day long,
  children who worked the fields spent long, hot
  days in the sun or went barefoot in mud and rain.
  
• These young workers could not attend school and
  rarely knew how to read or write

Breaker Boys" were used in the anthracite coal
mines to separate slate rock from the coal after
it had been brought out of the shaft. They often
worked 14 to 16 hours a day.
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Child Labor

• Children in the United States continued to work
  under deplorable conditions until well into the
  mid-twentieth century.
• In the early nineteen hundreds, reformers began
  working to raise awareness about the dangers of
  child labor and tried to establish laws
  regulating the practice.
• In 1904, the National Child Labor Committee was
  formed. Throughout the nineteen hundreds,
  Congress and the Supreme Court were at odds over
  child labor regulation.
• 1938- the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed and
  children were freed from the bondage of dangerous
  work

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Lewis Hines

• In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee
  employed Lewis Hine as their staff investigator
  and photographer. Hine traveled the country
  taking pictures of children working in factories.
  Hine also lectured on the subject and once told
  one audience "Perhaps you are weary of child
  labor pictures. Well, so are the rest of us, but
  we propose to make you and the whole country so
  sick and tired of the whole business that when
  the time for action comes, child labor pictures
  will be records of the past."

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Congress Attempts to Control Child Labor

• In 1916 Congress made its first effort to control
  child labor by passing the Keating-Owen Act. The
  legislation forbade the transportation among
  states of products of factories, shops or
  canneries employing children under 14 years of
  age, of mines employing children under 16 years
  of age, and the products of any of these
  employing children under 16 who worked at night
  or more than eight hours a day. In 1918 the
  Supreme Court ruled that the Keating-Owen Act was
  unconstitutional.
• After the Supreme Court ruled that the
  Keating-Owen Act was unconstitutional, Congress
  passed a Second Child Labor Law. This levied a
  tax of ten per cent on the net profits of
  factories employing children under the age of 14,
  and of mines and quarries employing children
  under the age of 16. This legislation was
  declared unconstitutional as a result of the
  Drexel Furniture Company case in 1922.

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Fair Labor Standards Act

• June, 1938, that Congress passed the Fair Labor
  Standards Act. The main objective of the act
  was to eliminate "labor conditions detrimental to
  the maintenance of the minimum standards of
  living necessary for health, efficiency and
  well-being of workers". This included the
  prohibition of child labor in all industries
  engaged in producing goods in inter-state
  commerce. It set the minimum age at 14 for
  employment outside of school hours in
  non-manufacturing jobs, at 16 for employment
  during school hours, and 18 for hazardous
  occupations.

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Direct Democracy

• Secret Ballot
• Direct Primary- People select the candidates
• INITIATIVE The people may initiate(propose) by
  5-8 petition of voters a bill to a legislature.
• REFERENDUM The people may use referendum
  (popular ballot) to enact, approve or reject acts
  of the legislature.
• RECALL All elected public officials in the
  State, except judicial officers, are subject to
  recall (by petition) by the voters of the State
  and forced to stand for re-election at any time.
• 17th Amendment Direct Election of Senators. The
  Senate of the United States shall be composed of
  two Senators from each State, elected by the
  people thereof, for six years and each Senator
  shall have one vote

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Progressive Movement

• The Progressive Movement was an effort to cure
  many of the ills of American society that had
  developed during the great spurt of industrial
  growth in the last quarter of the 19th century.
  The frontier had been tamed, great cities and
  businesses developed and an overseas empire
  established, but not all citizens shared in the
  new wealth, prestige and optimism.
• Progressivism was rooted in the belief that man
  was capable of improving the lot of all within
  society. Progressivism also was full of strong
  political overtones and rejected the church as
  the driving force for change. Supporters of the
  movement were found in both major political
  parties, Democrat and Republican.
• Specific goals included
• Remove corruption and undue influence from
  government
• Conservation
• Include more people more directly in the
  political process.
• Government must play a role to solve social
  problems and establish fairness in economic
  matters.
• Race- Blacks and Native Americans
• Child Labor, Workers- young and old, workers
  compensation,
• Political Reform- Direct Election, political
  reform,
• Anti- monopoly reform.

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Progressive Movement

• The efforts and successes
• Interstate Commerce Act (1887) and the Sherman
  Antitrust Act (1890).
• A minority supported socialism with government
  ownership of the means of production.
• conservation movement
• railroad legislation
• food and drug laws.
• elect senators
• prohibition
• suffrage to women.
• Workers compensation, civil service, and minimum
  wage
• efforts to place limitations on child labor were
  routinely thwarted by the courts.
• The needs of blacks and Native Americans were
  poorly served by the Progressives.
• Secret Ballot, Direct Election, direct primary
  and initiative, referendum and recall
• Robert LaFollette- Leader in reform measures and
  the candidate of the reform element of his party
  for the nomination for governor in 1896 and 1898
  in 1900 unanimously nominated for Governor of
  Wisconsin and elected by the largest plurality
  ever given a candidate for that office.

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