Progressive Movements study guide summary

 

 

 

Progressive Movements study guide summary

 

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Progressive Movements study guide summary

Progressive Movement

           How was American foreign policy changing?

A. Urban America

1. Origins of Progressivism

a) Unifying Themes

 Progressivism drew from deep roots in American communities
- spread out to become a national movement
Progressives articulated American fears
- growing concentration of power
- excesses of industrial capitalism and urban growth
Progressives were not revolutionaries
- did reject the older Social Darwinist assumptions
- such as government should intervene to address social problems.
drew upon evangelical Protestantism
- especially the Social Gospel movement
- scientific attitude to promote social change

b) Women’ Role

 college-educated female reformers
- 1890s
- establishing settlement houses
- serve the immigrant communities
- led them to confront numerous social issues
Jane Addams founded Hull House
- Chicago
- 1889
- Working there served as an alternative to marriage for educated women
- provided crucial services for slum dwellers
Women worked outside political institutions
- could not vote
- existing political machines were a closed and corrupt system.

c) Urban Machines & Reform

 Machines offered jobs and other services to immigrants
- in exchange for votes
- drew support from businesses
- provided kickbacks and protection in return
machines began promoting welfare legislation
- early 20th century
- often allying themselves with progressive reformers
- reformers blamed the machines for many urban ills
Political progressivism arose in cities to combat machines
- address deteriorating conditions, such as impure water
- sought professional, nonpartisan administration to improve government efficiency
reformers pushed through a commissioner system
- each elected official was directly responsible for a different department
- Other cities adopted city manager plans

d) State, Regional & National Movements

 Progressives became powerful political forces in state level
Governor and then Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin
- forged a farmer-labor-small business alliance
- push through statewide reforms like tougher corporate taxes
Oregon’s referendum and initiative amendments
- allowed voters to bypass legislatures and enact laws themselves.
Western progressives like California’s Hiram Johnson targeted railroad influence
Southern progressives pushed through various reforms
- improved educational facilities
- supported laws that relegated African Americans to second-class citizenship

e) Muckraking

 A new breed of investigative journalist began exposing the public to the plight of slum life
- muckrakers published accounts of urban poverty, unsafe labor conditions, corruption in government and business
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
- exposed the unsanitary conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry
Muckraking mobilized national opinion
- showing that reform campaigns were not limited to the local community.
emerging social sciences provided empirical studies used by reformers to push for reforms

2. Social Control and Its Limits

a) Sex, Booze & Rock and Roll

 middle-class progressives worried about the increased numbers of urban immigrants
- sought methods of social control
Temperance groups pushed for restrictions or bans on alcohol
- Women’s Christian Temperance Union
- Anti-Saloon League
- Native-born, small town and rural Protestants generally supported prohibition
- recent immigrants opposed it
proponents began to push for a constitutional amendment
- 1913
Reformers also attacked prostitution
- illicit trade that was connected with corrupt city machines
- Progressive reform helped close down brothels
- replaced by more vulnerable street-walkers.
Reformers also sought to “improve” recreational activities
- aghast by the new urban commercial amusements
- amusement parks, vaudeville, and movies
reformers and movie producers and exhibitors in New York City established the National Board of Censorship
- review movies and pressure filmmakers
- avoid sensational subjects

b) Education

 school was the key agency to break down the parochial ethnic neighborhood
- “Americanize” immigrants
- students started earlier and stayed later in school
- High school evolved as comprehensive institutions
- offered college preparatory and vocational education

3. Working Class Communities

a) New Immigrants

 tremendous growth in the size of the working class
- early twentieth century
- added their voices to those calls for social justice
Sixty percent of the industrial labor force was foreign-born
- mostly unskilled workers from southern and eastern Europe
- Driven out by the collapse of peasant agriculture and persecution
new immigrants depended on family and friends to help them get situated
- worked long hours for pay
- failed to keep them out of poverty
Non-European immigrants from Japan
- worked in fishing and truck farming
Many Mexican immigrants
- seasonal farm workers
- large number stayed
- established communities throughout the southwest
immigrants established communities in densely packed ghettos
New York City
- center of Jewish immigrants
- worked at piece-rates in the ready-to wear garment industry
ethnic groups maintained many cultural traditions

b) Company & Factory Reform

 The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
- New York City
- killed 146 woman garment workers
- led reformers to join forces with political bosses to create a factory investigation commission
- enact laws to protect workers
lived in communities often dominated by a single corporation
- owned the houses, the stores, and regulated life
Factories were dangerous places
- high accident and death rates
Women supplemented the family income
- taking in boarders and raising food
Immigrants resisted the discipline of the factory
- taking time off for cultural activities
- spread out the work by slowing down
- increasingly involved in unions
mining communities of the West
- corporate power and violent labor conflict
Ludlow, Colorado
- 1914
- clash between private guards and strikers
- 14 dead

c) AFL & IWW

 American Federation of Labor
- leading labor organization at the turn of the century
- generally represented skilled workers in trade unions
- most AFL unions were not interested in organizing unskilled immigrants
- nor did it admit women or African Americans
Radical workers organized the Industrial Workers of the World
- especially from the mining camps in the West
- tried to form unions of the unorganized lowest paid workers
Led by “Big Bill” Haywood
IWW used direct action
- including strikes
- temporary power in the east
- remained a force in the West

4. Women’s Movements and Black Activism

a) New Woman

 Middle-class women’s lives were changing rapidly
- More were receiving an education
- more were becoming involved in various clubs
- involved in civic activities
- working-class women connected with the world beyond their homes
women become involved in numerous reforms
- seeking child labor laws
- consumer safety
- sanitation
Margaret Sanger promoted wider access to contraceptives
- opened a birth control clinic
- working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn

b) Racism and Racial Justice

 turn of the century was an intensely racist era
- Segregation was institutionalized throughout the South
Violent attacks on blacks were supported by vicious characterizations in popular culture
Booker T. Washington emerged
- most prominent black leader
- advocated black accommodation
- urged that blacks focus on self-reliance and economic improvement
W. E. B. DuBois
- scholar and activist
- criticized Washington for accepting “the alleged inferiority of the Negro.”
- supported programs that sought to attack segregation, the right to vote, and secured city equality
helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- struggle to overturn barriers to equality

5. National Progressivism

a) Theodore Roosevelt

 assassin’s bullet killed William McKinley
- 1901
Theodore Roosevelt became president
Roosevelt viewed the presidency as a “bully pulpit”
- promote progressive reforms
pressured mine owners into a settlement
- won better pay for miners.
directed the Justice Department
- prosecute a number of unpopular monopolies
- actions that won him the sobriquet “trustbuster.”
Roosevelt accepted centralization
- favored regulation
Hepburn Act
- strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission
Pure Food and Drug Act
- Caffeine replaced cocaine in Coca Cola in 1903
founded the Forest Service
- supported the conservation efforts of John Muir
- founder of the modern environmental movement
- bitter fight pitted developers and environmentalists over a dam in Yosemite National Park
Roosevelt announced his Square Deal program
- second term
- way to stave off radicalism through progressive reform

b) Woodrow Wilson

 Republican successor, William Howard Taft
- supported some of his reforms
Taft wound up alienating many progressives
Roosevelt then challenged Taft for Republican leadership
1912 election
- Roosevelt ran for president on the new Progressive Party
- Democrats ran a progressive candidate, Woodrow Wilson
- Socialist Party nominated Eugene Debs
Wilson won 42 percent of the vote
- enough to defeat the divided Republicans
Wilson followed Roosevelt’s lead in promoting an activist government
- lowered tariffs
- pushed through a graduated income tax
- restructured the banking and currency system under the Federal Reserve Act
- expanded the nation’s anti-trust authority
- established the Federal Trade Commission

 

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Progressive Movements study guide summary