U.S. History Chapter 13
 

The Origins of Progressivism:

Cleaning Up Government:
  • Corruption was widespread in the big city political machines
     
  • Efforts to reform grew from the desire to make government more efficient and responsive to its constituents but also from distrust of immigrants' participation in politics
     
  • Reforming Local Government
    • Natural disasters
    • Commissions
    • Council-manager
     
  • Reform Mayors
    • Hazen Pingree
      • Detroit, Michigan (1890-1897)
      • Concentrated on economic issues
        • Fairer tax structure
        • Lowered fares for public transportation
        • Rooted out corruption
        • City workers built schools, parks, and a municipal lighting plant
        • Lowered gas rates
        • Set up a system of work relief for the unemployed
    • Tom Johnson
      • Cleveland, Ohio (1901-1909)
      • Socialist
      • Believed that citizens should play a more active role in city government
        • Held large meetings and invited citizens to question officials about how the city was managed
      • Strove toward honest government
      • Johnson was one of 19 socialist mayors who worked to institute progressive reforms in America's cities
        • "Gas and water socialism"
          • Focused on dismissing corrupt and greedy private owners of utilities and converting the utilities to publicly owned enterprises
     
  • Reform at the State Level
    • Spurred by progressive governors, many states passed laws to regulate railroads, mines, mills, telephone companies, and other large businesses
    • Reform Governors
     
  • Protecting Workers
    • National Child Labor Committee
      • Formed in 1904 to end child labor
      • Joined by labor unions who thought that child labor lowered wages for all workers, they pressured the national government into passing the Keating-Owen Act of 1916
        • Barred goods made by children from interstate commerce
    • Keating-Owen was overturned by the Supreme Court in Hammer v. Dagenhart - 1918
      • Reversal of precedent on interstate commerce
    • Failing at the national level, reformers succeeded in banning child labor and setting maximum hours in nearly every state
    • Muller v. Oregon - 1908
      • Supreme Court said that a state could legally limit the working hours of women to ten hours
      • Duty of state to protect health and welfare of citizens overrides freedom of contract
      • Same argument used in Bunting v. Oregon to uphold ten hour workday for men
    • Workers' Compensation laws passed
     
  • Reforming Elections  
  • Women in Public Life
    • Women in the Work Force
      • Farm Women
        • Critical part of the economic structure of the family
        • Roles had not changed substantially
          • Cooking, cleaning, sewing, and a host of other chores
        • If husbands were ill or absent they had to plow and plant the fields and harvest the crops
      • Domestic Workers
        • African-American women migrated by the thousands to cities to work as cooks, laundresses, scrubwomen, and maids
        • Unmarried immigrant women also did domestic labor
      • Women in Industry
        • At the turn of the century, one out of five American women worked; 25% of them held jobs in manufacturing
        • Most were immigrants or the children of immigrants
        • Garment trade claimed about all women industrial workers
        • Typically held least skilled positions and received lowest pay
        • Working women were assumed to be supporting only themselves, while men were assumed to be supporting families
        • Other business opportunities
          • Stenographers, typists, bookkeepers, and teachers
            • Required high school education
            • By 1890 women high school graduates outnumbered men
     
  • Women's Leadership in Reform
    • Women in Higher Education
    • Smith and Wellesley College - 1875
    • Randolph Macon Women's College - 1891
    • Columbia, Brown and Harvard established separate colleges for women
    • Female graduates still expected to fulfill traditional domestic roles
    • Marriage no longer a woman's only option
      • Almost half of college-educated women in the late 19th century never married
      • Many began to apply skills toward achieving social reforms
     
  • Women and Reform
    • Not allowed to vote or run for office
    • Social Housekeeping
      • Targeted unsafe factories and labor abuses
      • Promoted housing reform, educational improvement, and food and drug laws
    • National Association of Colored Women (NACW) - 1896
      • Managed nurseries, reading rooms, and kindergartens
      • Mission was "the moral education of the race with which we are identified"
     
  • Suffrage
     
    • Women of Protest - Library of Congress
    • Suffrage Scrapbook - Library of Congress
       
    • Women split over rights for blacks
      • Some supported 14th and 15th Amendments as progress toward their goals
      • Others opposed them because they excluded women
    • Movement united by 1890 under the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
    • Leaders
    • Three Part Strategy
      1. Convince state legislatures to grant women the right to vote
        • Wyoming - 1869
        • By 1896, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho, but after that, no others
      2. Attempting to vote in order to test, in court, whether women were considered citizens under the 14th Amendment
        • Minor v. Happersett - 1875
          • Court said that while women might be citizens under the 14th Amendment, that didn't necessarily mean they had the right to vote
      3. Push for a national constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote
  Presidential Electon of 1900:  

Theodore Roosevelt's Presidency:

  • Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901
     
  • Strong president
     
  • The Square Deal
     
    • Six policies:
      1. Increase the power of the federal government
      2. Mediate strikes
        • Should be settled in an orderly and unbiased manner
        • Government shouldn't necessarily side with management and should intervene not only to protect private property but also to protect public welfare
      3. Regulate trusts
        • Wanted to curb trusts if their actions were oppressive to the public but did not want to destroy large corporations
      4. Regulate transportation
        • Strengthened the Interstate Commerce Act
          • Elkins Act - 1903
            • Once a railroad had set rates it could not raise them without first notifying the public
          • Hepburn Act - 1906
            • Gave the ICC power to set maximum railroad rates, with court approval, whenever shippers complained
      5. Public health
        • Response to The Jungle
        • Pure Food and Drug Act - 1906
          • Called for meat inspection and the listing of ingredients on labels
      6. Conserve natural resources
        • People began to realize that natural resources were limited
        • Roosevelt withdrew millions of acres of land from public sale and created a system of national parks
       
    • Active role for government
 
Presidential Electon of 1904:
Incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican who had succeeded to the Presidency upon William McKinley's assassination, easily won a term of his own (56.4%) against Democratic candidate Alton Brooks Parker (37.6%).
 
Foreign policy:
  • Treaty of Portsmouth  
  • Panama Canal
    • US helped Panama win independence from Columbia
    • After gaining independence, Panama gave the U.S. a ten mile wide canal zone forever
    • Building began in 1904 and was finished in1914
    • Greatly increased U.S. position as a world power
     
  • Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
    • Any interfering in Latin America would be done by the U.S.
    • The U.S. would protect its interests in Latin America, if necessary by being the policeman of the area
    • "Walk softly and carry a big stick"
     
  • Roosevelt easily won the election of 1904 over Democrat Judge Alton B. Parker
 

November 16, 1907 - Oklahoma becomes the 46th state.

 

Progressivism Under Taft:

Presidential Electon of 1908:

  • Roosevelt picked William Howard Taft as his successor to carry on his policies
  • Democrats ran William Jennings Bryan for the third time against Taft
  • Taft won easily (51.6%) largely due to popularity of Roosevelt
     
  • Though Taft pursued a cautiously progressive agenda, he received little credit for it
    • Roosevelt busted 44 trusts in 7 1/2 years while Taft busted 90 in 4 years
  • Not as effective at the bully pulpit or at subduing troublesome members of his own party
  • Tariffs and conservation posed his first problems
    • Payne-Aldrich Tariff
      • After promising to lower tariffs in the campaign, Taft signed this bill which was crafted by conservative Senate Republicans
    • Disputing Public Lands
      • Taft angered conservationists by appointing as his secretary of the interior Richard A. Ballinger, a wealthy Seattle lawyer who disapproved of conservationist controls on western lands
      • Ballinger removed 1 million acres of forest and mining lands from the reserved list and approved the sale to Seattle businesses of several million acres of coal-rich land in Alaska
      • Gifford Pinchot, head of the U.S. Forest Service under Roosevelt, testified against Ballinger in a congressional hearing
      • Taft fired Pinchot
      • Pinchot retaliated in a book called The Fight for Conservation - 1910
 
  • The Republican Party Split
     
    • Problems Within the Party
      • Progressives and conservatives split over Taft's support of political boss Joseph Cannon, Speaker of the House
        • Under Cannon's virtual dictatorship, the House often ignored or weakened progressive bills
        • With the help of Democrats, progressive Republicans stripped Cannon of most of his power in March 1910
      • The Bull Moose Party
        • Roosevelt returned from big game hunting in Africa in 1910 and declared that the country needed a "New Nationalism" under which the federal government would exert its power for the "welfare of the people"
        • By 1912 Roosevelt had decided to run for a third term
        • Taft was the incumbent, and his supporters were able to refuse seats to Roosevelt delegates at the Republican Convention
        • Roosevelt supporters held their own convention and formed the Progressive Party and nominated Roosevelt
        • The Progressive Party became known as the Bull Moose Party after Roosevelt's boast that he was "as strong as a bull moose"
        • Platform
          • Direct election of senators, initiative, referendum, recall, women's suffrage, national workman's compensation, an eight-hour workday, a minimum wage for women, a federal law against child labor, and a federal trade commission to regulate business
     
  • Presidential Electon of 1912:
     
    • Democrats ran Woodrow Wilson
      • Endorsed a progressive platform, called the New Freedom, that demanded even stronger antitrust legislation, banking reform, and reduced tariffs
    • Split between Taft and Roosevelt turned nasty
      • Taft ran as a Republican
      • Roosevelt ran as a Progressive
      • Wilson benefited
    • Eugene Debs ran as the Socialist Party candidate
    • Wilson captured only 42% of the popular vote, but he won an electoral victory and a Democratic majority in Congress
    • Roosevelt defeated Taft in both popular and electoral votes
    • 75% of went to reform candidates Wilson, Roosevelt, and Debs
      • Wilson could claim mandate to expand the government's role in social reform
     
    Wilson's New Freedom:
    • Progressive Reform Under Wilson
       
    • Attack on the triple wall of privilege
      • Trusts, tariffs, and high finances
        • Trusts
          • Clayton Antitrust Act
            • Sought to strengthen the Sherman Antitrust Act
            • Corporations could no longer acquire the stock of another corporation if doing so would create a monopoly
            • If a company violated the law, its officers would be prosecuted
            • Specified that labor unions and farm organizations not only had a right to exist but also would no longer be subject to antitrust laws
          • Federal Trade Act
            • Federal Trade Commission
              • Power to investigate possible violations of regulatory statutes, to require periodic reports from corporations, and to put an end to unfair business competition and unfair business practices
        • Tariffs
          • Believed high tariffs created monopolies by reducing competition
          • Underwood Tariff - 1913
            • Substantially reduced tariff rates for first time since Civil War
          • Needed to replace lost revenue
            • 16th Amendment - 1913
              • Legalized a graduated (progressive) federal income tax
              • Taxed larger incomes at higher rates than smaller incomes
        • High Finances
          • Needed to make credit more readily available and a way to quickly adjust the amount of money in circulation
          • Federal Reserve Act - 1913
            • Federal Reserve System
              • Divided country into twelve districts
              • Each district had a federal reserve bank with which all banks within the district were affiliated
              • Federal Reserve banks made loans to member banks which in turn made loans to customers
              • Federal Reserve determines interest rates on loans
              • Still serves as the basis for the nation's banking system