7.4: The Progressive Era

7.4: Compare the goals and effects of the Progressive reform movement.

In the last set of notes, we talked about imperialism for the United States and for this set of notes, we’re going to be moving on to the Progressive Era!

Progressives

So who were the Progressives? Well, they were a very diverse group of people but essentially, they all shared the belief that society could be improved through political action. They were made up of a lot of different people such as labor union leaders, church leaders, feminists, the working class, African Americans, and immigrants. They also advocated for a lot of different topics. For example, they worked to limit the power of big businesses and to stabilize the economy, especially after the Panic of 1893. They worked for the rights of workers and to resolve conflicts between factory owners and managers and different labor groups. They wanted to secure the franchise (the right to vote) for women, stop segregation in the South, stop the problem of alcohol, help the lives of immigrants, and many more. Essentially, these were people that believed government intervention was necessary to improve society. And there needed to be a lot of that intervention.

Progressive Reforms and the Expansion of Democracy

In addition, democracy also expanded during the Progressive Era. Many Progressives wanted to break up political machines such as Tammany Hall in order to limit or destroy their political influence over the cities they had control of. Progressives were able to do this by establishing the Australian Ballot, or secret ballot, meaning that now, people would vote in secret. Prior to this era, votes were done publicly for the political bosses to see. This was how these machines maintained power. They provided favors and aid to the community in exchange for the people’s votes, and because people didn’t vote in secret at the time, they were able to make sure who voted for them and who didn’t.

As a continuation of the post-Civil War reform movements of the last few decades, Progressives got the 16th Amendment passed to reduce wealth inequality. This amendment allowed the government to create an income tax on people.

Progressives also pushed for the direct election of senators and this led to the passing of the 17th Amendment in 1913. Before this, senators were elected by the state legislatures but this started to become a problem during the Gilded Age when many millionaires and businesses started paying to put senators in power. The 17th Amendment changed this so now, it was no longer state legislatures electing these senators, but the people.

Progressives were also successful in getting the 18th and 19th Amendments passed as well. During this time, a lot of women and groups such as the Anti-Saloon League and the American Temperance Society were fighting for temperance, or limitations on the consumption of alcohol. During the Progressive Era, they were successful in getting the 18th Amendment passed, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt

Additionally, during this time, several Progressive presidents were elected, one of the most important being Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President, who became president after William McKinley, the 25th, got assassinated. He went by a program called the Square Deal and during his presidency, he went against many big businesses. For example, during the United Mine Workers Strike in which roughly 140,000 miners walked off the job in 1902, causing mines to close and coal prices to rise, Roosevelt invited the mining companies and the miners to come to the White House for a conference. In this conference, after the companies refused to negotiate, Roosevelt threatened to seize the mines using the army and consequently, the companies agreed to accept negotiations and decisions from an independent commission that Roosevelt would appoint. This commission’s decisions led to a 10% wage increase for the workers and a reduction in working hours from 10 per day to 9 per day. This was the first strike settled by federal arbitration.

In addition, Roosevelt began enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to break up trusts and monopolistic industries. But he was able to differentiate between good trusts which became dominant through honest practices and low prices, and bad trusts that dominated by harming competition. For example, he instructed the Justice Department to sue the Northern Securities Company for violating the act in 1902. The Northern Securities Company was a holding company that owned many rail networks all over the country and so as a result, the Supreme Court ordered the company to be dissolved. Over his presidency, there would be over 40 more suits against other companies, including Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company.

In addition, after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposed the meat packing industry, Roosevelt passed the Pure Food and Drug Act to regulate the labeling of food and drug products. Then, the Meat Inspection Act was also passed to make the mislabeling of meat products illegal and also to make sure that meat products were processed in strictly sanitated conditions. Roosevelt was also a conservationist and during this time, many of the country’s forests and natural resources were disappearing. So during this time, reserved 230 million acres of public land and turned them into national forests, national parks, national monuments, and many more.

Presidency of William Howard Taft

After Roosevelt’s presidency, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s secretary of war, succeeded him in the Election of 1908 as the 27th President. He continued Roosevelt’s Progressive policies and continued Roosevelt’s practices of trustbusting. He prosecuted 99 trusts, almost twice as many as Roosevelt, but he didn't differentiate between the good and bad ones. This led to him prosecuting one against U.S. Steel, which included a merger that had been approved by Roosevelt.

This angered Roosevelt and he saw it as a personal attack on him so, in the Election of 1912, Roosevelt decided to run for a third term. The Republicans nominated Taft and so the Progressive Party was formed by anti-Taft and Progressive republicans to nominate Roosevelt. But because the votes were divided between Taft and Roosevelt for the Republicans, the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, was able to win the election and become the 28th President. The Democrats also won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Black Progressives

Other progressives, such as black Progressives, were working to achieve social justice and equality among the races. In 1896, the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson established the idea of “separate but equal” and that segregated facilities were legal as long as they were equal in quality. But throughout the country, especially in the South, this equality in quality was almost never the case. So in order to solve this problem and also to stop the lynching of black people, two important organizations emerged. First, the Niagara Movement, led by W.E.B. DuBois, was established to plan protests to secure rights for the black population. Second, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established with the goal of abolishing all segregation and expanding education for black children. But while these two groups were made up of many Progressives, most of their supporters were only black Progressives. Other Progressives didn’t really care about equality and social justice.

Presidency of Woodrow Wilson

During Wilson’s presidency, he set forth a new Progressive program called New Freedom to increase competition between businesses, support a smaller government, and control federal authority. He also passed a variety of other reforms to help the economy and regulate businesses:

  • Underwood Tariff Act (1913): Lowered tariffs by 15% and removed duties from sugar, wool, and several other goods

  • Federal Reserve Act (1913): Created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, and gave the president the power to govern the entire system

  • Clayton Antitrust Act (1914): Another antitrust act that broke up monopolies and legalized strikes, boycotts, and labor unions

Progressive Era Journalists

So now let’s talk about the Progressive Era journalists! These journalists were very influential during the Progressive Era because it was through their work that many of the societal issues that needed reforming became revealed to the public. These journalists became known as “muckrakers” and they went around investigating different parts of society and writing about what they saw for Americans to read. Here are some examples of these journalists:

  • Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a story about the unsanitary and dangerous conditions of the meat packing industry

  • Lincoln Steffens wrote articles about political machines and exposed the practices of Boss Tweed

  • Ida Tarbell wrote an expose of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company and the problems with trusts

  • Jacob Riis created How the Other Half Lives, a book that was a compilation of photographs that exposed the unsanitary living conditions of the poor and working class and all of the diseases they had to suffer with

  • Margaret Sanger wrote about the lack of birth control for women

Through their work, these journalists were able to make the flaws of society into public knowledge. It was this exposure that led many Americans to start pushing the government to intervene and make changes.

Then, in 1920, after decades of fighting for women’s rights, the 19th Amendment was passed, giving women the right to vote.

Additionally, Progressives established some legislative reforms to continue the expansion of democracy such as the initiative, the referendum, and the recall.

  • Initiative: Allowed voters to, with enough votes, force the government to put a law on the ballot or to a referendum

  • Referendum: Allowed voters to vote directly on a proposal, law, or political issue without needing state legislature or representatives

  • Recall: Allowed voters to remove a politician from office before their term ends

Progressives were also partially responsible for the establishment of direct primaries, which placed the nominating process of presidential candidates into the hands of voters. Now, candidates were no longer decided by politicians and instead were decided by voters.

In addition, by 1915, two-thirds of the United States’ cities owned their own water systems and soon after, many came to own their own gas lines, electric power plants, and transportation systems.

These reforms were key to expanding democracy and Progressives utilized these new reforms to pass women’s suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol. Essentially, during this period, the people were gaining more power and more say in their government, unlike in the Gilded Age when people were unable to do anything against businesses and corrupt politicians.

In 1909, Frederick Taylor published a book called Scientific Management with the goal of making factory work more efficient. Essentially, in this book, he argued that in order to save time and increase productivity in factories, factories should have a clear separation of tasks, use scientific methods to determine the best way of doing a job, and also have a strict hold over what their employees do and how they spend their time.