PROGRESSIVE ERA 1890s-1920

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PROGRESSIVE ERA1890s-1920

• A21w
• 9.2.13

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ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• Who were the Progressives?
• What reforms did they seek?
• How successful were Progressive Era reforms in
  the period 1890-1920?
• Consider political change, social change
  (industrial conditions, urban life, women,
  prohibition)

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ORIGINS OF PROGRESSIVE REFORM
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Progressivism
WHEN? Progressive Reform Era
1920s
1890s
1901
1917

• WHO? Progressives
• urban middle-class managers professionals
  women
• WHY? Address the problems arising from
• industrialization (big business, labor strife)
• urbanization (slums, political machines,
  corruption)
• immigration (ethnic diversity)
• inequality social injustice (women racism)

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Progressivism

• WHAT are their goals?
• Democracy government accountable to the people
• Regulation of corporations monopolies
• Social justice workers, poor, minorities
• Environmental protection
• Address political corruption
• HOW?
• Government (laws, regulations, programs)
• Efficiency
• value experts use of scientific study to
  determine the best solution
• Called Scientific Management
• Question is HOW MUCH?????

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Origins of Progressivism

• Muckrakers investigative journalists
• Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives (1890)
• Ida Tarbell The History of the Standard Oil
  Co. (1902)
• Lincoln Steffens The Shame of the Cities (1904)

HW Read only 1 and Answer ?s
Ida Tarbell
Lincoln Steffens
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REFORMS
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Well-known REFORMS

• Workplace labor reforms

Example Event Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire -
1911
It is remembered as one of the most infamous
incidents in American industrial history, as the
deaths were largely preventable The tragedy
brought widespread attention to the dangerous
sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the
development of a series of laws and regulations
that better protected the safety of workers
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As we watchin your notebook

• I. What were conditions like in the factory for
  the workers?
• Who was working?
• Work day?
• Working conditions?
• Safety?
• II. What happened to start the fire?
• III. Immediate Reaction of the workers
• IV. During the firewhat was happening?
• V. Problems that occurred battling the fire?
• VI. Aftermath

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Long-lasting Effects

• Changed the regulation by government of business
• Before government mostly stayed away from
  business
• Felt had no power to legislate it
• AFTERWARDS COULD NOT AVOID INSTITUTING LAWS TO
  PROTECT WORKERS

ONCE NEW YORK LEGISLATURE ENACTED SAFETY LAWS,
OTHER STATES FOLLOWED SUIT
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LONG-LASTING EFFECTS

• Workers also looked towards UNIONS to voice
  concern over safety and pay
• Factory Commission (1911)
• International Ladies Garment Workers Union
• Led a march of 100,000 to tell NY legislature to
  move into action and address concerns

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History Repeats Itself?

• March 25, 1990
• Happy Land Social Club (Bronx)
• 87 Killed (customers, not workers)
• Why?
• NO

Sprinkler System
Fire Alarms
Exits
Windows - iron bars
One Exit Door
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History Repeats Itself

• Sept. 3 1991
• North Carolina Poultry Factory
• 25 Killed (workers)
• Why?
• EXITS

Not marked well
Or blocked
Or padlocked (to prevent theft)
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Reforms into today

• Countless state and federal laws
• Unions gathered numerous new workers
• Employers have a clear set of guidelines that
  need to be followed to ensure safety of their
  employees
• Fire Drills and instructions posted
• Firefighting equipment must be maintained and
  portable fire extinguishers
• Fire Sprinklers
• Employee training

Look Around You
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Well-known SOCIAL REFORMS

• Additional Workplace labor reforms
• eight-hour work day
• improved safety health conditions in factories
• workers compensation laws
• minimum wage laws
• unionization

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 1913
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State Social Reform Child Labor
Breaker Boys Pennsylvania, 1911
Child Laborers in Indiana Glass Works, Midnight,
Indiana. 1908
Shrimp pickers in Peerless Oyster Co. Bay St.
Louis, Miss., March 3, 1911
Child Laborer, Newberry, S.C. 1908
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SOCIAL/LABOR REFORMS cont

• One of the most persistent causes of Progressive
  Era reformers was
• child labor reform.
• Children (ten to fifteen years old) worked in
  America.
• The 1890 census ? more than one million
• The 1910 census ?increased to two million
• Industries employed children as young as five or
  six to work as many as eighteen to twenty hours a
  day.

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Why so many children?

• Industrialization did not create child labor, but
  it did contribute to the need for child labor
  reform.
• The replacement of skilled artisans by machinery
  and the growth of factories and mills made child
  labor increasingly profitable for businesses.
• Why - Children cost less to employ than adults,
  and were paid only a fraction of what an
  adult worker would make (or sometimes,
  nothing)
• about 5 pence (penny) a day or
• 1.50 for 16 hours of work (25 now)
• Many employers preferred hiring children because
  they were quick, easy to train, could fit in
  small places, small fingers, and were willing to
  work for lower wages.

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Lets hear about some history

• Camella Teoli Testifies about the 1912 Lawrence
  Textile Strike
• Background
• 30,000 largely immigrant workers walked out of
  the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile mills in
  January 1912
• The strike began because of unsafe working
  conditions in the mills
• Also Massachusetts had passed a law requiring a
  shorter work week? textile mill owners responded
  by reducing workers' wages

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Lets hear some history

• She went before a U.S. Congressional hearing in
  March 1912.
• Testified about losing her hair when it got
  caught in a textile machine she was operating.
• Gained national headlinesin part because
• Helen Taft, the
• wife of the President
  Taft,
• was there

The resulting publicity helped secure a strike
victory
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Where the Progressives came in

• Believed that child labor was detrimental to
  children and to society.
• Children should be
• Protected from harmful environments so that they
  would become healthy, productive adults.
• Their goals were to develop programs that would
• eliminate children's participation in industry
• increase their involvement in education and
  extracurricular activities.

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Child Labor Laws enacted

• The Keating-Owen Act (1916) would have freed
  children from child labor only in industries that
  engaged in interstate commerce

Supreme Court declared law unconstitutional in
1918 on the grounds that Congress could not
regulate local labor conditions
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Child Labor Laws enacted

• President Woodrow Wilson approved and signed into
  law the "Tax on Employment of Child Labor (1919)
• This placed a 10 tax on net profits of
  businesses that employed children under age
  fourteen or made them work more than eight hours
  a day, six days a week.
• The Supreme Court declared this law
  unconstitutional.

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Still a great deal of opposition to a national
amendment against child labor

• Opponents labeled the proposed amendment a
  communist idea that government would control the
  nation's businesses
• Yet the initial passage of bills may have had
  some effect on businesses
• Number of working children (10 15) declined by
  almost fifty percent between 1910 and 1920.

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Some laws did make it onto the books

• The Smith-Hughes Act (1917)
• Provided one million dollars to states that
  agreed to improve their public schools by
  providing vocational education programs.
• Why?
• Would offer children an alternative to work.
• By 1929 every state had a provision banning
  children under fourteen from working

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Keating-Owen Act

• In February 1941 the Supreme Court overruled the
  1918 decision
• As a result, businesses that shipped goods out of
  state had to abide by the ruling that children
  could only work outside of school hours and that
  children under eighteen were unable to work in
  jobs that were hazardous to their health.

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Progressive Reforms today

• For example
• Child Labor Laws do not permit employees younger
  than 18 to work with or repair, adjust, or clean
  power-driven machinery like meat/deli slicers or
  bakery mixers

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• Who was he?
• Grew up in wealthy family
• Began his career as a journalist at the New York
  Evening Post.
• - Later became an editor of McClure's
  magazine (worked with other muckrakers)
• - He and McClures took on corporate monopolies
  and political machines (corruption) , the awful
  conditions most Americans lived and worked in,
  the tainted food and water they ate and drank.

Cities began to use city commissions and city
managers see later
Lincoln Steffens
The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit,
not patriotism of credit, not honor of
individual gain, not national prosperity of
trade and dickering, not principle. "My business
is sacred," says the businessman in his heart.
"Whatever prospers my business, is good it must
be. Whatever hinders it, is wrong it must be. A
bribe is bad, that is, it is a bad thing to take
but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is
necessary to my business. Lincoln Steffens
The Shame of The Cities
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• Protect
• Social Welfare

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• A hundred thousand people lived in rear tenements
  in New York City last year. Here is a room
  neater than the rest. The spice of hot soapsuds
  is added to the air already tainted with the
  smell of boiling cabbage, of rags and
  uncleanliness all about. It makes an
  overpowering compound.
• How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis
Who was he? Social reformer, "muckraking"
journalist and social documentary
photographer Worked as a police reporter whose
work appeared in several New York newspapers -
documented the living and working conditions of
the poor
As a result of his work - NYC passed building
codes to promote safety and health.
Lets take a look
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Social Welfare Reformers

• Early Reform Program
• Social Gospel movement
• Preached salvation through service to the poor
• Leaders encouraged churches erected in poor
  communities
• Persuaded some business leaders to treat workers
  more fairly

• Target
• Relieving the poverty of immigrants and other
  city dwellers

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MUNICIPAL REFORM

• municipal reform
• utilities - water, gas, electricity, trolleys
• council-manager plan (Dayton, 1913)

Shoe line - Bowery men with gifts from ward boss
Tim Sullivan, February, 1910
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MUNICIPAL REFORM
strong mayor system
MAYOR
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
CITY SERVICES

• council-manager plan (Dayton, 1913)

COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
COUNCIL MEMBER
CITY MANAGER
CITY SERVICES
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STATE POLITICAL REFORM

• secret ballots
• direct primary
• Robert M. LaFollette
• Seventeenth Amendment (1913)
• initiative
• referendum
• recall

Robert M. LaFollette, Wisconsin Governor 1900-06
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Well-known SOCIAL REFORMS

• The Settlement House Movement
• Community Centers in slum neighborhoods
• Provided- education (ex English classes),
  culture (ex crafts, drama plays, music
  painting), day care
• Also the YMCA and Salvation Army took on service
  roles
• Way to address some of the ongoing problems of
  urbanization

Butler YMCA when established?
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Famous Settlement House

• Chicago Hull-House Jane Addams

Jane Addams (1905)
Hull-House Complex in 1906
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Background on Jane Addams

• Was the daughter of a well-to-do Illinois
  businessman
• Jane often went with her father on his trips to
  the mills that he owned.
• One day in 1867, her father had business in the
  town of Freeport.
• The mill next to the poorest section of town.
• Rows of run-down houses crowded one beside the
  other
• Children dressed in ragged, dirty clothing played
  in the streets.

• "Papa, why do these people live in such horrid
  little houses so close together?" she asked.
• "Because they have no money to live in better
  places," he replied.
• "Well, when I grow up, I shall live in a big
  houseBut it will not be built among the other
  large houses, but right in the midst of horrid
  little houses like these."

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In 1889Pursuing a dream

• Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr, rented a
  run-down mansion that once had belonged to a man
  named Charles Hull.
• Location in one of Chicago's industrial areas.
• Many European immigrants lived in the
  neighborhood.
• Spoke little, if any, English
• Lived in crowded, dirty tenements.
• Most worked in nearby factories
• earning barely enough money to feed their
  families.

• Addams and Starr hoped that Hull House would
  bring some light into these people's lives

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Regarding Hull House
The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to
aid in the solution of the social and industrial
problems which are engendered by the modern
conditions of life in a great city. It insists
that these problems are not confined to any one
portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve,
at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end
of society and the destitution at the
other. Jane Addams "20 Years at Hull House",
1910
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Many services offered

• Kindergarten class/daycare for children left at
  the settlement while their mothers worked in the
  sweatshops
• Established the citys first public playground,
  bathhouse, and public gymnasium

• Provided nutritious food for the sick
• Offered courses
• Became well known for its success in aiding
  American assimilation, especially with immigrant
  youth

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Stepped up to help

• For example, one Italian bride had lost her
  wedding ring and in turn was beaten by her
  husband for a week. She sought shelter at the
  settlement and it was granted to her.
  
• In another case, a woman was about to give birth
  to an illegitimate baby, so none of the Irish
  nurses would touch it.
• Addams and Starr stepped in and delivered the
  baby

• Starr and Addams volunteered as on-call doctors
  when the real doctors weren't available (studied
  medicine)
• Acted as midwives
• Saved babies from neglect
• Prepared the dead for burial
• Nursed the sick
• Gave shelter to domestic violence victims.

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Her Legacy

• won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for her work
• When she died in 1935, Hull House filled an
  entire city block.
• It had inspired the creation of hundreds of
  similar houses across the U.S.

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Progressive Journalism

• Focus on Corruption and social injustice
• Raise the consciousness of America
• Muckrakers
• Upton Sinclair
• and The Jungle 1906

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Background

• Born in Baltimore
• Grew up poor though money on his mothers side
  (stayed with grandparents due to mother-son
  relationship)
• Gave him insight into how both the rich and the
  poor lived

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Background cont

• He graduated in 1897 ? Columbia University
• Major - Law, but he was more interested in
  writing, and he learned several languages
  including Spanish, German and French.
• He supported himself through college by writing
  boys' adventure stories and jokes

• Love for reading (5 yrs old)
• read every book that his mother owned for a
  deeper understanding of the world.
• Entered City College of New York (14 yrs old)
• He wrote jokes, dime novels and magazine articles
  in boy's weekly
• and pulp magazines to pay for his
• tuition.

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Investigative work

• In 1904, Sinclair spent seven weeks in disguise,
  working undercover in Chicago's meatpacking
  plants to research his political fiction exposé
• When it was published two years later, it became
  a bestseller

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Excerpt from The Jungle
Audio Online
ExtraVideo
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Upton Sinclairs The Jungle Aftermath

• Consumer Protection
• Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
• Halted the sale of contaminated foods and
  medicines and called for truth in labeling
• Meat Inspection Act (1906)
• The Act mandated cleaner conditions for
  meatpacking plants

Chicago Meatpacking Workers, 1905
"A nauseating job, but it must be done"