Chapter 20: The Progressives

• Who were Progressives?


  mostly middle-class, city dwellers, often women

  goals: non-reckless economic progress, break-up trusts
• Muckrakers: Journalists committed to exposing scandal, corruption, and injustice. Targeted trusts

  Famous Muckrakers:

  • Charles Francis Adams- uncovered corruption among railroad barons
  • Ida Tarbell- published devasting writings about the Standard Oil Company
  • Lincoln Steffens- exposed corruption in municipal (city) government
  • Upton Sinclair- The Jungle, Meat Inspection Act
  • David G Phillips- accused the senate of being controlled by trusts
• Social Gospel


  the effort to make faith into a tool of social reform chiefly concerned with redeeming the nations' cities, contributed to the fusion of religion & reform which helped bring to progressivism a powerful moral commitment

  Examples:

  • The Salvation Army
  • Charles Sheldon's book In His Steps
• Settlement Houses

  helped poor women, immigrants, and children adjust to American life. inspired the social work profession

  Most famous:

  • Hull House founded by Jane Addams in Chicago
• Reforms for Professions

  There was a dramatic expansion of professional society. However, reform was needed to keep demand high, remove "undesirables", and add more prestige to professions

  • American Medical Association (AMA)
  • States established bar associations
  • National Farm Bureau Federation

  (women were excluded from most professions and flocked to jobs in settlement houses, teaching, and social work)
• Womens Reform

  mostly single women, supported temperance and settlement houses

  -Women's clubs (General Federation of Women's Clubs)

  • Organizations for women to meet, planted trees, supported schools, etc.
  • an important force in winning the passage of state (& ultimately federal) law especially in temperance and child labor
• Womens Suffrage

  movement gained momentum when suffragists argued "separate spheres" would not be challenged, temperance movement favored suffrage

  • The National American Woman Suffrage Association (led by Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt)
  • 19th Amendment- gave women the right to vote in 1920
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  • Alice Paul- advocated both women's suffrage and the equal rights amendments (not passed)
• Voting Reforms (state level)

  initiative: voters could propose legislation

  referendum: final approval of laws would be approved by voters

  direct primary: an attempt to move the selection of candidates from the bosses and give it to the people

  the recall: voters could remove elected officials

  secret ballot