Unit 15: Progressivism

• Muckraking


  Journalists who alerted the public to wrongdoing
• Theodore Roosevelt: 'Approved of legitimate exposure of wrongdoing but condemned those who "earn their livelihood by telling… scandalous falsehoods about honest men"'
• Muckraking


  • A new breed of investigative journalism began exposing the public to the plight of slum life; pioneered by McClure's Magazine
• Muckraking mobilized national opinion
• Muckraking literature


  • Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (unsanitary conditions in Chicago's meatpacking industry)
  • Ida Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company (unfair business practices by John D. Rockefeller)
  • Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of the Cities (urban political corruption)
  • David Graham Phillips' "The Treason of the Senate" (1906)
• Progressivism aimed to fix the problems exposed by muckrakers
• Progressivism


  Not a single unified movement; different views in categories: social, moral, economic, political - some overlapped, some conflicted
• Beliefs of Progressives


  • Government should be more accountable to its citizens
  • Curb the power and influence of wealthy interests
  • Be given expanded powers so that it could become more active in improving the lives of its citizens
  • Become more efficient and less corrupt so that they could competently handle an expanded role
• Muckrakers published accounts of urban poverty (low incomes, unemployment, sanitation), and unsafe labor conditions, as well as corruption in government and business
• Urban growth 1870-1900


  • Issues caused: Immigrants established communities in densely packed ghettos, garment work was seasonal, working conditions were cramped, dirty, and dark, workers worked long hours
• Distribution of wealth


  • Top 1% of population owned 25% of nation's wealth
  • Top 10% of population owned 70% of nation's wealth
  • Growing middle class
  • Large numbers of poor farmers and city dwellers
• Jacob Riis


  1849-1914; born in Denmark; became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums of New York; early adoption of flash in photography; wrote "How the Other Half Lives"
• Photographs in "How the Other Half Lives"

  • Reveal urban life and the people that live in cities; captions try to explain the conditions
• In large cities, immigrants established communities in densely packed ghettos
• New York City became the center for ethnic immigrants, many of whom worked at piece-rates in the ready-to-wear garment industry
• Garment work was seasonal, working conditions were generally cramped, dirty, and dark, workers worked long hours to produce the quota for each day
• The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 resulted in many casualties
• Suffrage


  The right to vote; enfranchisement; franchise
• Feminism


  Political and social equality
• People opposed woman suffrage because they believed women were high-strung, irrational, emotional, not smart or educated enough, should stay at home, were too physically frail, and would become masculine if they voted
• Alternative to marriage for educated women

  • Provided crucial services for slum dwellers, such as social workers, public health nursing, and home economics
• Jane Addams - Hull House (Chicago, 1889)


  • Florence Kelley - Her reports pushed legislation for the eight-hour work day for women and child labor laws in Illinois
• Working through segregated clubs and associations, African American women fought racism along with many other issues confronted by middle class white Progressives
• The leaders and organizations produced in the Progressive era would have a long range impact on race relations
• Middle-class women's lives were changing rapidly, with more receiving an education and joining various clubs involved in civic activities
• By 1900, the General Federation of Women's Clubs had 150,000 members
• Women became involved in numerous reforms, from seeking child labor laws to consumer safety and sanitation
• Margaret Sanger


  Promoted wider access to contraceptives and opened a birth control clinic in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn
• The new birth control advocates embraced contraception as a means for sexual freedom for middle class women
• WWI allowed women to shift from low paying domestic service to higher-paying industrial jobs
• At the end of the conflict, nearly all women lost their war-related jobs
• In 1920 Congress created a Women's Bureau in the Department of Labor
• Prior to WWI, women in several western states had won the right to vote
• Reasons why Western states were open to woman suffrage earlier

  Sparsely populated, so women's votes would give them more representation; the West was less tied to tradition; the Populist movement politicized many women; in Utah, the Mormons supported it so women could vote in support of polygamy
• Most suffragists had opposed entry into WWI
• In 1848, a group of men and women gathered in Seneca Falls, NY, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and wrote the Declaration of Sentiments
• Before 1910, the women's suffrage movement split, but then united in 1890 under the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
• Two big strategies of NAWSA

  • Try to win suffrage state-by-state
  • Try to pass a Constitutional Amendment (but this would need to be ratified by 36 states--or three-fourths)
• Susan B. Anthony tried several times to introduce an Amendment bill in the late 1800s, but it was always killed in the Senate
• In the early 1900s many young middle-class women were going to college and joining the suffrage movement, and many working-class women also joined the cause, hoping the right to vote would help improve working conditions