The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era An Urban Age and a Consumer Society Farms and Cities For the last time in American history, farms and cities grew together. American agriculture entered what would later be remembered as its golden age. ● It was the city that became the focus of Progressive politics and of a new mass-consumer society. ○ New York was the largest city. The city captured the imagination of artists, writers, and reformers. The Muckrakers A new generation of journalists writing for mass-circulation national magazines exposed the ills of industrial and urban life ● Lincoln Steffens (political corruption) & Ida Tarbell (hating on standard oil) Major novelists of the era took a similar unsparing approach to social ills. Immigration as a Global Process Between 1901 and 1914, 13 million immigrants came to the United States, many through Ellis Island. Industrial expansion and the decline of traditional agriculture set in motion a larger process of worldwide migration. ● Asian and Mexican immigrants entered the United States in smaller numbers. The Immigrant Quest for Freedom Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, the new immigrants arrived imagining the United States as a land of freedom. ● Some immigrants were birds of passage, who planned on returning to their homeland. The new immigrants clustered in close-knit ethnic neighborhoods. ● Churches were pillars of these immigrant communities. Consumer Freedom The advent of large department stores in central cities, chain stores in urban neighborhoods, and retail mail-order houses for farmers and small-town residents made the vast array of goods now pouring from the nation’s factories available to consumers throughout the country. ● Leisure activities also took on the characteristics of mass consumption. The Working Woman Traditional gender roles were changing dramatically as more and more women were working for wages. a. Married women were working more. ● The working woman became a symbol of female emancipation. ● Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed that the road to women's freedom lay through the workplace. Battles emerged within immigrant families of all nationalities between parents and their self-consciously "free" children, especially daughters. The Rise of Fordism Henry Ford concentrated on standardizing output and lowering the price of automobiles. ● Ford revolutionized manufacturing with the moving assembly line. Ford paid his employees five dollars a day so that they could afford to buy his cars. The Promise of Abundance Economic abundance would eventually come to define the American way of life, in which personal fulfillment was to be found through acquiring material goods. ● The desire for consumer goods led many workers to join unions and fight for higher wages. An American Standard of Living Earning a living wage came to be viewed as a natural and absolute right of citizenship. ● Mass consumption came to occupy a central place in descriptions of American society and its future. Varieties of Progressivism Industrial Freedom Frederick W. Taylor pioneered scientific management & eroded freedom of the skilled workers ● White-collar workers also felt a loss of freedom. Many believed that unions embodied an essential principle of freedom—the right of people to govern themselves. The Socialist Presence The Socialist Party brought together surviving late nineteenth-century radicals. ● Socialism flourished in diverse communities throughout the country. Eugene Debs was socialism’s loudest voice & ran for president in 1912 on the Socialist ticket. AFL and IWW The AFL sought to forge closer ties with forward-looking corporate leaders who were willing to deal with unions as a way to stabilize employee relations. A group of unionists who rejected the AFL’s exclusionary policies formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The New Immigrants on Strike Immigrant strikes demonstrated that while ethnic divisions among workers impeded labor solidarity, ethnic cohesiveness could also be a basis of unity. ● The Lawrence Strike demonstrated that workers sought not only higher wages but also the opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life. ● The New Orleans Dockworker Strike showed interracial solidarity. ● The Ludlow Strike ended soon after many strikers were killed. Labor and Civil Liberties The courts rejected the claims of labor & like the abolitionist movement before it, the labor movement, in the name of freedom, demanded the right to assemble, organize, and spread its views. ● Labor unions fought for the right to assemble and speak freely. Native Americans and Progressivism The Society of American Indians was founded in 1911 as a reform organization independent of white control. ● Carlos Montezuma became an outspoken critic, demanding that all Indians be granted full citizenship. The Politics of Progressivism Effective Freedom Progressives assumed that the modern era required a fundamental rethinking of the functions of political authority. ● Drawing on the reform programs of the Gilded Age and the example of European legislation, Progressives sought to reinvigorate the idea of an activist, socially conscious government. Progressives could reject the traditional assumption that powerful governments posed a threat to freedom because their understanding of freedom was itself in flux. Pragmatism The philosopher John Dewey was a prominent proponent of a school of philosophy called pragmatism that emerged in the late 1800s and strongly influenced Progressive thinkers. ● As a philosophical movement, pragmatism, as explained in a 1907 book by the philosopher William James, insisted that institutions and policies must be judged by their concrete effects, not their longevity or adherence to traditional beliefs. ● Pragmatism encouraged an experimental approach to social problems, characteristic of Progressivism. State and Local Reforms State and local governments enacted most of the era’s reform measures. ● The Gilded Age mayors Hazen Pingree and Samuel "Golden Rule" Jones pioneered urban Progressivism. Progressivism in the West The Oregon System instituted the initiative and referendum. Initiatives, also known as direct legislation, enabled citizens to propose and vote directly on laws, bypassing state legislatures. ● Referendums similarly provided for popular votes on public policies. ● Recalls allowed for the removal of public officials by popular vote. The most influential Progressive administration at the state level was that of Robert M. La Follette, who made Wisconsin a "laboratory for democracy." Progressive Democracy Progressives hoped to reinvigorate democracy by restoring political power to the citizenry and civic harmony to a divided society. ● But the Progressive era also witnessed numerous restrictions on democratic participation. Government by Expert Order, efficiency, and centralized management were important themes of Progressive reform. ● "Mastery" required applying scientific inquiry to modern social problems. Jane Addams and Hull House Organized women reformers spoke for the more democratic side of Progressivism. ● In doing so, they placed on the political agenda new understandings of female freedom. Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago. Spearheads for Reform The "new woman" was college educated, middle class, and devoted to providing social services. Settlement houses produced many female reformers. The Progressive Presidents Theodore Roosevelt Roosevelt regarded the president as "the steward of the public welfare." ● The Square Deal attempted to confront the problems caused by economic consolidation by distinguishing between "good" and "bad" corporations. Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to dissolve the Northern Securities Company. Roosevelt and Economic Regulation Roosevelt helped mine workers during a 1902 coal strike. ● He improved the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and regulated the food and drug industries. John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature The United States led the industrial world in efforts to preserve natural beauty. ● Congress created Yellowstone National Park in 1872 with future tourism in mind. John Muir developed a broad following for his evangelical romanticizing of nature. ● Muir’s Sierra Club led the fight against uncontrolled logging by timber companies. The Conservation Movement Congress began regulating the economic development of "forest reserves," but President Roosevelt made conservation a federal policy. Conservation also reflected the Progressive thrust toward efficiency and control. ● Western governments at all levels had to regulate the scarce resource of water. Taft in Office Taft pursued antitrust policy even more aggressively than Roosevelt. ● He supported the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Progressive Republicans broke from Taft after the Ballinger-Pinchot affair. The Election of 1912 The election was a four-way contest between Taft, Roosevelt, the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and the Socialist Eugene Debs. ● It became a national debate on the relationship between political and economic freedom in the age of big business. New Freedom and New Nationalism ● Wilson insisted that democracy must be reinvigorated by restoring market competition and freeing the government from domination by big business. ● Roosevelt called for heavy taxes on personal and corporate fortunes and for federal regulation of industries, including railroads, mining, and oil. The Progressive Party platform offered numerous proposals to promote social justice. Roosevelt’s Americanism A redefinition of what it meant to be an American united many strands of Progressive-era thought. Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism was one example. ● Roosevelt wanted immigrants to "Americanize" rather than retain traditional cultures. ● He believed that fitness for citizenship was both inborn and related to past historical experience. ● Only persons with "self-control"—mainly white people—were capable of participating in democracy. Wilson’s First Term Wilson proved himself a strong executive leader & moved aggressively to implement his version of Progressivism. ● Underwood Tariff ● Clayton Act The Expanding Role of Government Wilson abandoned the idea of aggressive trust-busting in favor of greater government supervision of the economy. ● Federal Reserve System ● Federal Trade Commission The New Feminism Feminists’ forthright attack on traditional rules of sexual behavior added a new dimension to the discussion of personal freedom. ● Heterodoxy was part of a new radical bohemia. The Rise of Personal Freedom Issues of intimate personal relations that were previously confined to private discussion blazed forth in popular magazines and public debates. The Birth-Control Movement Emma Goldman lectured on sexual freedom and access to birth control. Margaret Sanger placed the issue of birth control at the heart of the new feminism. ● The birth-control issue became a crossroads where the paths of labor radicals, cultural modernists, and feminists intersected. The Campaign for Women's Suffrage The campaign for women’s suffrage became a mass movement. By 1900, over half the states allowed women to vote in local elections dealing with school issues. Maternalist Reform Ironically, the desire to exalt women’s roles within the home did much to inspire the reinvigoration of the suffrage movement. ● Muller v. Oregon upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law setting maximum working hours for women. ○ A breach in "liberty of contract" doctrine The Idea of Economic Citizenship Brandeis argued that the right to government assistance derived from citizenship itself