21.1: The Origins of Progressivism

• The different progressive cruises and movements are backed by three basic attitudes.

  • The first was anger over industrial capitalism's excesses and urban growth.

  • Unlike the populist-era reformers, who were mostly rural and small towns, progressives concentrated their energies in factories, mines and cities on the social and political disorders of Americans.

• Journalism changes helped fuel a new consciousness of reform by drawing people's attention to urban poverty, political corruption, the distress of industrial workers and unethical business practices.

• Sociologist Lester Frank Ward presented the orthodox theory, which attributed social inequality to natural selection and 'the survival of the most fitting,' in his innovative work Dynamic Sociaology.

• It could take many forms to muckrake cruises.

  • In the 1890s, Ida B. Wells, who was a young African American editor, undertook to study a rise in lynchings in Memphis.

• The housing movement began in the 1890's to offer an alternative to traditional concepts of private charities and humanitarian reform.

21.2: Progressive Politics in Cities and States

• By the turn of the century, the political life of most major American cities was controlled by machines in the Democratic Party, often dominated by Irish first and second generation.

• Oregon was the first State to adopt two other reforms in 1902: the initiative, the popular legislative power and the referendum, and the right to vote in favor of a legislative proposal in popular terms.

  • Several countries also adopted the related "Australian" reform or secret ballot, which took the voting printing and distribution mechanics from the parties and placed them on the government's responsibility

21.3: Social Control and its Limits

• The Christian Women's Temperance Union  has become a powerful mass organisation, over the last two decades of the 19th century.

• The focus was narrower for other temperance groups.

  • Founded in 1893, the anti-Saloon League began to hold a local campaign to prevent liquor within their geographical boundaries in rural counties and small towns.

• Many of the same reformers who fought and drank also tried to eradicate prostitution.

• There were intervals during the entire nineteenth century of cruises against "social evil," but between 1895 and 1920 the intensity was different.

• Progressives faced a thorny problem in commercial entertainment's growing popularity.

  • The leisure was spent in the Vaudeville and burlesque theaters, amusement parks, dance halls and movie halls for large numbers of working-class adults and children.

• The public school was primarily viewed by progressive educators as a "Americanization" agent.

  • The leading education reformer, Elwood Cubberley, expressed his opinion that schools could be a vehicle to free immigrant children from the parochial ethnic neighborhood.

21.4: Challenges to Progressivism

• The first two decades of the 20th century saw the size and scope of immigration transformed profoundly, with over 14.5 million people all over the world making their way to the USA.

• In major cities, the form of densely packed ghettos has taken on new immigrant communities.

  • By 1920, almost 60% of the population of towns over 100,000 were immigrants and their children.

• The Americas Labor Federation became the most strong and stable workers' organization following the 1890s depression.

  • By 1904, the membership of the Union grew to 1.7 million from under 500,000 in 1897.

• The New York City neighborhood of Greenwich Village was coalesced during the 1910s by an important small community of peers, reporters, poets, social workmen, lawyers and political activists.

21.5: Women’s Movements and Black Activism

• An increasing number of trained middle-class women have attracted a steady proliferation of women's organizations.

  • The middle class home was emptier as more men were at work, more children were attending school and family numbers declined.

• In her campaign to provide contraception information and instruments to women, Margaret Sanger invented a phrase 'Birth Control' in around 1913.

  • In 1910, Sanger lived with husband and three children in a suburb of New York City, a 35-year-old woman nurse and housewife.

  • She had been excited about a socialist talk and persuaded her husband to go to town.

• At the turn of the century, four-fifths of the 10 million African Americans of the nation still lived in the South.

  • In the towns, most blacks have been left in menial work, but small, medium-sized African Americans have won the foothold of services and products to the black community

• At the beginning of the 1900s, W.E.B. Du Bois created a major alternative to the leadership of Washington.

  • A black middle class product, Du Bois was educated at Fisk and Harvard University and was the first Afro-American to receive his doctorate in 1895.

• From this conference came a new interracial organization, the Colored People's National Association.

21.6: National Progressivism

• The murder of William McKinley in 1901 led to the youngest man ever to hold the office of President, Theodore Roosevelt, forty-two years old.

  • He directed a number of proceedings under the Sherman Antitrusts Act to the Justice Department in 1902.

• The Hepburn Act strengthened by permitting it to set maximum railway rates and to inspect financial records the Interstate Commerce Commission, established in 1887 as the first independent regulatory agency.

• The Food and Drug Administration, which tested and certified drugs before being placed on the market, was established by the Pure Food and Drug Act.

• Theodore Roosevelt, as a naturalist and outdoor expert, believed that the government needed to regulate the natural environment.

• After a second term, Roosevelt held up his promise in 1908.

  • As his successor, he chose War Secretary William Howard Taft.

• He and the Democratic Party declared themselves to be the true advancers.

  • Wilson contrasted his New Freedom campaign with the New Nationalism of Roosevelt, instead of seeing Taft as his main rival.

• Founded in 1914, the Federal Trade Commission tried to give the federal government the same kind of regulatory control over companies the ICC had over trains.

• The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, replaces the old Sherman Act of 1890 as the nation's fundamental law of antitrust, was also supported by Wilson.