Progressive Era

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Progressive Era

• Becker
• US History

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Progressivism

• Reaction to corruption of Gilded Age
• Social reforms react to abuses of industry
• Ex. Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
• Political reforms react to govt corruption
• Maternalist welfare programs
• WI governor Fighting Bob La Follette
• Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson

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Muckraking Journalism

• Writers expose problems in industry
• McClures Magazine, Cosmo, Colliers Magazine
• Lincoln Steffens The Shame of the Cities
• Jacob Riis urban slums, How the Other Half Lives
• Ida Tarbell, oil industry, History of Standard
  Oil
• Upton Sinclair, meatpacking industry, The Jungle
• Theodore Dreiser, banking industry, The Financier
• Frank Norris, rail industry, The Octopus

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Progressive Goals

• Regulate big business
• stop abusive trusts/monopolies
• Humanize big business
• stop abuses of workers rights
• Add a govt role in economy private life
• End to laissez faire economic policy
• Reform boss and spoils system
• Merit system for government jobs

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Accomplishments of Era

• Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906
• First laws governing labeling of food products
• Ingredients must be disclosed
• Health inspections of production/preparation
• Safety inspections of production/preparation
• Meat Inspection Act of 1906
• Sanitary conditions in meat packing facilities

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Features of Progressive Reform

• Desire to make society more moral and more just
• Desire to distribute income more equitably
• Desire to broaden opportunities for individual
  advancement
• Women were active in progressivism
• --Suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony

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Political Reforms

• Put power back into the hands of the people
• Innovative changes in city government
• City managers and commission model
• The Direct Primary
• Initiative, Referendum and Recall
• The Secret Ballot
• Direct Election of Senators
• 17th Amendment, 1913
• Suffrage for Women
• 19th Amendment, 1920

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THREE-PART STRATEGY FOR WINNING SUFFRAGE

1. Convince state legislatures to adopt vote
   (Succeeded in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Colorado)
2. Pursue court cases to test 14th Amendment
3. Push for national constitutional Amendment

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Legal Milestones

• 1908 Muller v. Oregon
• Shorter working hours for women
• Men/women are different physically/mentally
• Men/women can be treated differently at work
• Lochner v. New York
• Maximum workday laws violate freedom of contract
• Cant deprive citizen of right to work w/o due
  process
• 1917 Bunting v. Oregon overturned, 10-hr workday
  upheld
• Hammer v. Dagenhart
• Congress cannot ban child labor
• State responsibility

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Child Labor Keating Owen Act, 1916

• Keating Owen
• Hammer v. Dagenhart
• Child Labor Tax Law
• Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company
• Child Labor Amendment?
• 1941 Fair Labor Standards Act
• 1941 U. S. v. Darby

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Social and Moral Reform

• 1910 Mann Act
• uses Interstate Commerce Clause to ban
  prostitution
• City Beautification movement
• Tear down slums and tenements
• 1927 Buck v. Bell
• Eugenics mandatory sterilization of mentally
  disabled
• Prohibition
• 18th Amendment (Volstead Act), 1919

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McKinley

• Businessmans businessman
• Gold standard hated by populists, socialists
• September 1901 attends Pan-American Expo
• "Why should I? No one would wish to hurt me."
• Anarchist Leon Czolgosz in receiving line
• Conceals gun in bandage on hand
• Shoots president twice before being punched out
• McKinley "Don't let them hurt him!
• McKinley remains standing until in private
• Kidney, pancreas ruptured bullet lodged in back
• Edisons X-ray machine shipped in, too late

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Presidential Progressivism Theodore Roosevelt

• Drive, energy and personality
• TRs interests and early years
• NYC police commissioner
• Spanish-American War Rough Riders
• Rise from NY Governor to VP
• McKinleys assassination
• Youngest prez _at_ 42

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Trustbusting

• TR wants to regulate to get businesses to act
  right
• TR gets reputation as trustbuster
• Interstate Commerce Commission had no teeth
• 1903 Elkins Act bans giving/accepting rebates
• 1906 Hepburn Act gives teeth to ICC
• Northern Securities Case
• TR sues JP Morgans NW railroad monopoly
• Declared an illegal trust
• Sues a total of 44 bad trusts
• Federal Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food and Drug
  Act

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PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT

• Unregulated product claims and unhealthy products
• Halts sale of contaminated foods and medicines
• Calls for truth in labeling

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A Tough Act to Follow

• The Election of 1908
• William Jennings Bryan - again
• TR promised not to run again
• Endorses Taft, Sec of War
• Tafts political experience
• Not a dynamic politician
• Living in TRs shadow
• Never comfortable as President
• The lonesomest job in the world
• Tafts weight
• Tafts foreign policy

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VI. Presidency of Taft (cont.)

• Controversy over the Tariff
• More conservative than TR, but also more trust
  suits
• 90 trust-busting lawsuits
• Growing tension with Teddy
• The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair
• TRs Conservation Record
• Tafts misunderstanding

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The Election of 1912

• Growing split within the Republican Party
• Creation of Bull Moose Party
• Progressive Party Platform New Nationalism
• Democrats drafted Woodrow Wilson
• Results of the Election

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Democratic Progressivism

• Progressive and dynamic speaker
• Sympathetic to small businessmen
• Could be a stubborn, moral crusader and ideologue

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A. New Freedom

• Wilsons brand of progressivism
• Wants to recreate the golden age of small
  business
• Wilson wants to open channels for free and fair
  competition
• Historic Jeffersonian approach to federal power
• Triple Wall of Privilege
• Banking, tariffs, trusts

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Key Wilsonian Legislation

• Underwood Tariff Act (1913)
• Federal Reserve Act (1913)
• Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914)
• Federal Trade Commission (1914)

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Congressional Progressivism After 1914

• Wilson not a progressive in social reform
• Appointment of Brandeis to Supreme Court
• Congress takes over the progressive agenda
• Civil Rights
• Federal Highways Act
• Womens suffrage

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The Waning of the Progressive Movement

• Progressive movement peaks by 1917
• Success of the movement led to its decline
• Advent of WWI actually hurt progressives
• Progressives weary of their reform zeal
• Ironically, voter participation has steadily
  declined since the election of 1912