5-3.5

It is essential for students to know:

• The progressive movement developed in response to the social and political problems that arose as a result of the growth of industry and cities in the late 19th century.
• Progressivism was largely a middle class movement that promoted the idea that society’s problems could be solved by the passage of laws. The movement started as a political response to problems at the city government level and moved to the state and national level.
• The progressive movement also allowed for oppressive responses to perceived problems. As cities grew with the increase in immigration and movement from the farm, middle class Americans were concerned about the living conditions and the corruption of city governments. Crowded conditions led to problems providing sanitation, water and housing and contributed to the opportunities for corruption among city officials who were often supported by their ethnic constituents.
• Middle class Americans lived in the cities too and paid taxes for city government.
• Progressive reformers advocated the establishment of city parks and beautification projects, safer housing and sanitation. They also promoted teaching immigrants to adapt to their new country by establishing settlement houses where immigrants were taught social skills.
• Progressives were also very concerned about unsafe conditions in factories and about the long hours that workers, particularly women and children, were expected to work.
• However, they did not support labor unions’ actions such as collective bargaining and strikes to address these issues. Instead they advocated the passage of laws.
• Conditions in the factories were publicized by the increasingly popular newspapers and magazines, illustrated with photographs showing the unsafe working conditions. Writers of articles about corporate power and unsafe working conditions were called muckrakers, a term first used by President Teddy Roosevelt, because they exposed the corruption of the system.
• Reformers advocated restricting child labor and passing laws requiring that children attend school. This was in direct opposition to the wishes of many working class families who needed the income provided by their working children. Workers sometimes resented the interference of reformers in their lives.
• Some compulsory school attendance laws were passed at the state level, but a federal child labor law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The federal government did not successfully enforce child labor laws or minimum wage and maximum hours laws for workers until the New Deal reforms following the Great Depression.
• Progressives were more successful at the federal level in addressing the problems associated with Big Business. Progressives feared that Big Business not only had too much control over the economy but also that trusts had too much influence over the American government.
• During the late 19th century, Congress passed a law declaring monopolies, or trusts in restraint of trade, to be unlawful. [Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 1890]. However, this law did not end monopolies because the Supreme Court limited its effectiveness.
• When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, there was an assertive progressive in the White House. The president was encouraged by muckraking writers such as Ida Tarbell, who exposed the oil trust, and Upton Sinclair, who exposed the meat-packing trust. Roosevelt began to use the old law to successfully break up trusts and earned the name “trust-buster.” Roosevelt also protected the rights of the consumer by pushing for the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act and he promoted the regulation of railroads.
• Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson continued this work and are known, along with Roosevelt, as the progressive presidents.
• Progressives were also concerned about improving society by controlling the moral behavior of all Americans and particularly of the immigrants.
• The movement to limit the consumption of alcohol [the temperance movement] had been going on since the time of the American Revolution and got a popular boost as a result of the influx of immigrants in the late 19th century. Some states passed prohibition laws and others passed blue laws to limit the sale of alcohol.
• When World War I started, propaganda against the Germans, who were known for their beer drinking, and the voluntary rationing of grain, helped progressives push through Congress a national prohibition amendment that was then ratified by the states.
• The 18th amendment outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. However, it could not stop people from drinking and thus it promoted illegal activities such as bootlegging and speakeasies until it was repealed by the 21st amendment in the 1930s.
• [This is also a good time to address indicator 5-6.2 “Explain how humans change the physical environment of regions and the consequences of such changes, including use of natural resources and the expansion of transportation systems (P, G, E).”
• Many progressives, including President Roosevelt, advocated for the creation of national parks and the preservation of the land because of the impact of industrialization and urbanization.]

It is not essential for students to know:

• Students do not need to know the names of the many muckrakers, such as Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine who exposed problems through increasingly available newspapers and magazines and the medium of photography.
• Students do not need to remember the many other economic reforms associated with progressivism.
• Progressives pushed for the 16th amendment that allowed the income tax so that some Americans could not amass great wealth and therefore have a greater influence on the government. The income tax also provided another method for financing a growing government bureaucracy designed to implement progressive reforms and allowed the progressives to lower the tariff which would help farmers by promoting international trade.
• They do not need to know that progressives regulated banking and the money supply by establishing the Federal Reserve System nor do they need to know now the railroads were regulated.
• Students do not need to know about the political reforms of the progressives, including the 17th amendment that called for the popular election of Senators, the 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote, and the secret ballot.
• They do not need to know about the many reforms passed by city and state governments, including the establishment of city parks, school reforms such as the establishment of kindergartens, child labor laws and new systems of government such as the city manager system.
• Students do not need to know about the many other progressives and progressive organizations.
• Progressive African Americans such as W.E.B. DuBois protested the segregation of Jim Crow in the South and discrimination in the North by founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]. However, whites in the South argued that literacy tests and poll taxes that denied African Americans the right to vote were also progressive because they limited voting by a group whose ballot selections might be coerced. Women, such as Jane Addams who founded the Hull House in Chicago, were very active in the progressive movement as muckrakers and as advocates for workplace reform and for their own right to vote. Indeed,
• progressive women claimed that when given the vote they would clean up government. Some progressives, such as John Muir, advocated for conservation of the natural resources of the United States. Conservationists found an ally and a champion in Theodore Roosevelt who organized the U.S. Forestry Service and promoted the establishment of many national parks, including Grand Canyon National Monument.
• Although students should understand that World War I helped to pass progressive initiatives such as Prohibition and women’s suffrage, students do not need to remember that World War I brought about the temporary end of the progressive movement. Postwar reaction against the idealism of the war effort ultimately resulted in the election of conservative Republican presidents who reversed much of the progress made by progressivism in the control of Big Business and the protection of the workers. Progressivism would be revived in the New Deal.