The Progressive Era, 1900-1920

Hey everybody. Uh, today's lecture is on the Progressive Era, from kind of roughly 1900 to 1920. And this was essentially a time where a lot of Americans were trying to kind of address all of these issues that had been built up since kind of industrialization in the Gilded Age in the kind of late 1800s. Um, doing this in a myriad of ways, as we'll talk about throughout this lecture.

Okay, so what was the Progressive Movement? Essentially, individuals that hoped to bring about significant change in American social and political life. The issues addressed varied. Now, one issue really defines the reform movement of the time. It wasn't kind of just on trying to reform economic issues, or just on cultural issues, or social issues. Um, it was kind of this whole myriad of different, um, things that progressives were attempting to address at the time.

I think the easier way to try to look at it is that the Progressive Movement was essentially kind of a backlash to all of these Gilded Age problems of wealth inequality, um, unsafe working conditions, kind of all of these things that were not really being addressed. There was no government regulations on, you know, working hours, wages. There was no disability. There was no, you know, um, kind of taxes at the time, at least not in any kind of, uh, graduated way where, kind of, wealthier pay more. More all of these things start to happen during this Progressive Era from 1900 to 1920.

Essentially, a lot of Americans are thinking, we see all of these problems, and yeah, maybe we can do things like open up settlement houses, talked about in the industrialization lecture. We can do things to try to alleviate individuals, um, suffering or problems. But there's not as, as many kind of widespread solutions or big ways to try to tackle these issues. It was everything was kind of, um, you know, individual-based.

So a lot of progressives are arguing to use the federal government. Thinking if businesses are not going to regulate themselves, if all these problems are going to keep going on, you know, year after year, decade after decade, then maybe if Americans start organizing politically, as the populace started to do in the late 1800s, um, if maybe if they start organizing politically and trying to force changes on businesses, then something could change.

So we'll kind of now get into some of the more specifics of maybe some examples of kind of what the Progressive Movement was doing at the time, or, um, ways in the, in which kind of progressive changes were being enacted.

So how did progressives attempt to reform society and why? One is to try to create safe, for more sanitary, kind of living and working conditions. For example, you have the publication of *The Jungle* by journalist Upton Sinclair in 1906. Um, Upton Sinclair was a journalist who essentially went kind of undercover working in Chicago meat packing plants for a few weeks. And he kind of reported what he found in this book. *The Jungle*, he kind of found that there was just lots of very gross and unsanitary things that were going on in these meat packing plants. For example, sometimes the beef would have been rotten, um, and doctored up with a bunch of dangerous chemicals for human consumption that would have sent out anyway. Or in some cases, there were dead rats or sawdust that were kind of mixed in with the meat, or people that were sick with diseases like tuberculosis and coughing up blood into the kind of meat packing assembly lines and having that go through, um, the processing, or having open latrines, kind of open toilets, just kind of right next to where they're processing all the meat, which caused a lot of the meat to still get tainted.

So he publishes this book, Upton Sinclair, in 1906, and it's kind of caused a big stir, raised a lot of awareness about still how, you know, a lot of the meat packing industry was still pretty dangerous for consumption at the time period. The president at the time was Teddy Roosevelt. He was, you know, Republican, became elected and kind of riding high in his popularity after the Spanish-American War. And he didn't believe Upton Sinclair. He thought, you know, he was full of it, thought he was maybe stretching the truth there. So Teddy Roosevelt sent a couple of his trusted friends down to Chicago, or over to Chicago, I guess, from Washington, and had them inspect the meat packing plants themselves. And when they reported back to Teddy Roosevelt, essentially saying, yeah, what Upton Sinclair said is true. There's just a lot of very kind of unsanitary practices going on within these meat packing plants.

So Teddy Roosevelt had helped kind of really push the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act later that year. Uh, both of those are fairly self-explanatory. The Meat Inspection Act was to just essentially make sure that the meat is actually meat and not sawdust or rat meat or anything like that. It's actual beef. Um, and the Pure Food and Drug Act similarly required, you know, labeling on certain products so that if you're buying some drug or piece of food, you know exactly what it is. It's not kind of doctored up with different things. And these was kind of some of the first attempts to kind of start to regulate some of the business, uh, kind of industries.

You also have some events that led to trying to improve working conditions throughout the United States. Some kind of events that took place that caused some ripple effects and changes across the country. So at this time, um, kind of the early 1900s, there still was no kind of, you know, there was no 40-hour work week. That will come later. Um, but some states did have regulations that set max, uh, limits on the amount of hours that people could work. For example, the state of Oregon had within their state had said that women in factories, uh, cannot work more than 10 hours. That that is kind of the limit that women can work.

And in this court case of *Muller v. Oregon*, Kurt Muller was an individual that had many of the women working for him work more than 10 hours. So he was sued. This kind of gets brought up to the Supreme Court where they're challenging the constitutionality of this Oregon state law that limited the working hours for women. Um, and ultimately, the Supreme Court would rule that this was, in fact, they kind of upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law that set this maximum working hours for women. Um, this kind of had, this could be taken in different ways. Um, some women were very happy about this because they thought, you know, I don't want to work more than 10 hours in a day, particularly if they're pregnant or anything like that. Um, so this was kind of a victory for many women in the state of Oregon. Whereas other women kind of believed that I didn't really, you know, I don't want to be limited. I want to work however many hours I want to work. We shouldn't be limited just because of our sex. Um, so there was kind of different outlooks on this law.

One way or the other, but ultimately this *Muller v. Oregon* was significant in terms of limiting working hours and inspiring later legislation in other states around the country. Um, by 1917, 30 states had enacted laws limiting the hours of labor for female workers. Um, again, the Supreme Court ruled under Justice, uh, Louis Brandeis. He argued that women had less strength and endurance than men, and thus long hours of labor were dangerous for women, and their unique ability to bear children gave the government a legitimate interest in limiting their working conditions. Um, again, women felt different ways about this. Some agreed, some thought that this was an infringement on their freedom. Um, but nonetheless, this would have ripple effects as more and more states started to enact, kind of, max working hours, both for men and women down the line.

Another event that began to, uh, inspire kind of changes around the country to improve working conditions was the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in Manhattan, New York, in 1911. So essentially, this, um, you know, giant, kind of factory building in New York, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, was primarily staffed by women. Um, it was about 200 women or so that worked within this factory making shirtwaists. And in 1911, this building ended up catching fire. Um, kind of how this ends up inspiring different legislation is kind of due to how this event unfolds. Because with this Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the factory owners did not like that many of the women were taking cigarette breaks. They were kind of taking too many breaks, in their, in their eyes. So before this fire broke out, they got into the practice of, once women came to work at this Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, the women would be locked in the factory. The factory owners, after all the women got into the factory, would lock the doors and use, kind of, chains and a padlock and lock the doors shut so that nobody could leave and they had to stay in the building until their shift was over.

So in 1911, this whole factory catches fire and the whole building goes up in flames, and the women cannot leave. They are locked in. The factory owners had booked it. They left and they just left the factory because it was on fire, and they left all of these women trapped inside. Um, there was one fire escape on the side of the building, but it was really poorly made, and as soon as this fire broke out, it essentially melted the fire escape, so nobody could get out. Um, so many women began jumping out of the top of the building, out of various windows. There were firemen posted down below with, kind of, giant nets that they were holding out, trying to catch people, but everybody was still just falling through them and falling to their death. Um, by the end of it, 146 women had died, 71 were injured. Um, so this was kind of a big story across the United States and kind of more of a need for reform was pushed after this, particularly after, um, they kind of went to court and since there were no laws about, kind of, regulations according to fire escapes or anything like that, or trying to keep your workers safe, um, the owners faced no consequences in court. They weren't, you know, required to pay the families anything or, you know, do anything. They were kind of said, well, you know, tough, I guess that's what happens.

So the owners faced no consequences in court, and this event kind of convinced many Americans across the country of the need for reform of working conditions, of creating more, you know, stable fire escapes, of not locking people into the factory as they're working, doing things that try to keep the workers safe while they're at work.

Another area that progressives were kind of attempting to reform was this issue of vast wealth inequality. As the industrialization time period went on in the late 1800s, you know, as I talked about in that previous lecture, there was just kind of more and more wealth that was, um, being held by smaller and smaller numbers of Americans. So a couple of presidents kind of took it upon themselves to try to break up these massive companies that held a lot of power, um, over various industries, such as Rockefeller's Standard Oil, a lot of the railroad companies, um, began to be broken up during this time period. What was called trust busting. Again, trust was kind of the name back then for corporations, so kind of breaking up these giant corporations.

When Teddy Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1901, he kind of saw his role as president as a mediator between labor and corporate executives. So he set about breaking up the kind of massive corporations that he viewed as stifling economic competition, or those that treated workers very poorly and unduly influenced politicians. Teddy Roosevelt had said at the time that, quote, "The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are creatures of the state, and the state not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them whenever the need of such control is shown."

So Roosevelt's first major target was the Northern Securities Company. This was owned by the financier J.P. Morgan, and it essentially was three major western railroads that, uh, monopolized transportation between the Midwest and the Pacific Ocean. It kind of controlled all of their railroads from the Midwest to the West. Um, and in 1904, he ordered the Northern Securities Company to be dissolved, which is a major victory for the kind of antitrust movement. William Taft, who would end up succeeding Teddy Roosevelt, the next president, went after double the monopolies that Teddy Roosevelt did. He successfully persuaded the Supreme Court to break up Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, which had controlled 90% of all oil in the United States, into separate marketing, producing, and refining companies. He also later went after U.S. Steel and other kind of conglomerates that, uh, Andrew Carnegie had been a part of, trying to break up these massive companies so that they didn't control all of one resource in the United States, or control, you know, access to almost all of the railroads so that they couldn't kind of arbitrarily charge whatever rates they wanted because everybody had to go through them because they were the one company that controlled all of the things in one resource or one kind of industry.

You also had the formation of the, kind of, briefly lived Progressive Party in 1912. Um, this occurred because Teddy Roosevelt became president in 1901. He was succeeded by William Taft. And William Taft was going to, you know, both of them were Republicans, and William Taft is going to run for reelection in 1912. But Teddy Roosevelt also wanted to run for the presidency in 1912. But the Republican Party chose William Howard Taft over Teddy Roosevelt to, uh, continue to run for president. Um, so Teddy Roosevelt said, I'm going to make my own political party. I'm going to run under my own kind of ticket by myself. So in the election of 1912, um, Teddy Roosevelt created the Progressive Party. Um, where Taft kind of took this all-encompassing view on the illegality of monopolies. He kind of viewed any monopoly as bad. Roosevelt emphasized regulating corporations that he viewed personally as bad for stifling economic competition. So maybe if there was a giant company, but it was kind of more playing by the rules, keeping prices competitive and fair, he didn't go after them as much. Um, but nonetheless, he was still pretty similar to Taft. He just kind of wanted to run for president, but he created his own political party through the Progressive Party and garnered some support in that way.

Um, overall, national politicians tended to be a bit uneven in enforcing trust busting. Their focus on doing so was a result of political pressure on politicians by workers, farmers, and progressive writers like Upton Sinclair. Kind of, if some issue kind of gained enough traction in the press, then, you know, maybe politicians would shift their focus and try to, um, address that.

You also had in the election of 1912, not just the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Progressive Party, but you also had the Socialist Party that was running a candidate for president. Um, the election of 1912 is again pretty unique in that regard. Um, there were multiple political parties that were all running and polling across the country. There were progressive, um, candidates in various elections that were winning. There were socialist candidates, especially in the West and in the South, in many instances, that were winning Congress seats, that were winning, kind of, state legislature seats. So the election of 1912, you have between the Democrats, Woodrow Wilson, you have the Republican, William Howard Taft, you have the progressive candidate, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Socialist Party under Eugene Debs. Um, which is again, just kind of interesting of, it's just kind of this one year where there was just a lot of political parties all succeeding across the country. Um, obviously Democrats and Republicans were still the most popular, but the progressives and socialists were making a dent. And again, I think this is part of a big kind of backlash, all of these issues built up during the industrialization time period.

But the Socialist Party was founded in America, anyway, at least the American version of it was founded in 1901. Um, in many cases, it was made up of former populists and a portion of the labor movement. They were calling for reforms such as free college education, legislation to improve working conditions, and, kind of, ultimately, democratic control, control of the economy through public ownership of railroads and factories. Many of the things that populists had been advocating for before, but now, kind of, um, also done by the Socialist Party. By 1912, the Socialist Party had 150,000 members and published hundreds of newspapers across the United States. And their, kind of, leader was Eugene Debs, Eugene V. Debs. Um, he gave speeches across the country arguing, uh, for decades, kind of arguing for the nationalization of the railway system, having the government take it over. So, you know, whereas somebody like Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft were trying to break up the companies to make them more economically competitive and, kind of, spread out the, um, you know, the ownership groups, like the Socialist Party were saying, just have the government take it over and have them make it, kind of, a low rate across the board. Um, that some success. They ultimately, the Socialists never won more than 6% total of the national vote. Um, but again, in, in 1912, they received 900,000 votes for the presidency, Eugene V. Debs running as the candidate. Um, but numerous small towns across the country elected socialists in their city governments.

It's not going to be until, kind of, post the Russian Revolution in 1917, when, you know, there's a socialist revolution in Russia and communists ultimately will end up coming to power, that there begins to be this big fear of socialism and communism. Um, we'll kind of talk about that later.

Another measure that was passed to try to address vast wealth inequality was the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1909. And this is essentially a graduated income tax. You know, basically, one whose rate of taxation is higher for wealthier citizens. So if you make a lot more money, you're going to be taxed more. This is when that starts. It's with the 16th Amendment in 1909. This was sought after by southern and western farmers, many progressives, former populists, who believed taxation should be based on the ability to pay. As many people who were incredibly poor, especially farmers who felt they were being kind of screwed over by rail companies, the railroad companies, you know, didn't have as much money, could barely, they were maybe losing money when they were farming. So have the, kind of, more wealthy Americans pay more was kind of this popular feeling at the time. Obviously, in time since this has been, you know, uh, arguable, or certainly a lot of Americans have disagreements over whether or not this is a good or bad thing. But nonetheless, at the time, this is why it was passed, trying to address this vast wealth inequality.

There were also a couple of measures, um, attempting to address corruption in politics. As there were, kind of, you know, many politicians at the time were much more blatantly, kind of, corrupt. They could accept bribes, um, kind of appoint their friends into powerful political, uh, positions. So one amendment that got passed was the 17th Amendment in 1913, trying to address this. And the 17th Amendment made it so that U.S. Senators would be chosen by popular vote rather than by state legislatures. So, you know, from 1776 all the way up till 1913, you know, you think of when we have elections today, you vote for your, you know, representatives to Congress and your, you know, your people in the House and the people in the Senate. But that wasn't the case prior to this. So all the way up until this point, it might be just kind of, you know, yeah, you have one of your friends become Senator if you're a politician, be like, hey, you know, I'll have my friend Bob or whatever become the next Senator of Ohio. Um, so many Americans were arguing, we shouldn't have that happen. We should directly elect the Senators instead of having them being appointed by political parties. And that passed in 1913.

You also have the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. And this amendment allowed women to vote nationally after years of pressure from many activists. Um, so again, all the way up from the beginning of the country up until 1920, just half of the country could not vote. Women could not vote all the way until 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment. Now women, you know, black, white, all women could now vote in 1920. I'm going to do, kind of, a whole lecture on the women's suffrage movement later, so we'll kind of save that for later. But I, I should at least say, in terms of the addressing corruption in politics, um, many people argued at the time that women in politics could kind of purify corrupt politicians and allow for a more true democracy. Especially that at this time, women were believed to be more of the homemakers, people that raise children and teach children how to do things, that this kind of, you know, moralistic, good influence would be beneficial for politics. But, but it certainly allowed for a more true democracy because again, you have prior to this, half of the U.S. population couldn't vote just because they were women, and after 1920, they were able to do so.

Another area that progressives were kind of seeking to reform was, you know, what many considered social ills of the time period, kind of societal corruption. Um, one kind of group was those that took part in the Social Gospel movement. And these were many, kind of, American Protestant reformers that viewed unregulated, monopoly-dominated capitalism as socially harmful, unjust, and anti-Christian. Of, you know, kind of not caring for the vast majority of people. They were concerned with the salvation of all of these poor people that were not able to continue to have jobs or being hurt on the job or injured, like in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. That there's this kind of, you know, inability to care for people that many Protestant reformers were attempting to alleviate. So many that took part in the Social Gospel movement were opening settlement houses, talked about in the industrialization lecture, to provide aid for the poor, while also supporting politicians, um, that addressed a variety of progressive reforms.

You also have the, uh, issue of alcoholism and drinking of alcohol. Um, there was a woman named Carry Nation, as they say here, advocated for temperance with a hatchet. Carrie Nation was a woman from Kansas whose husband had died of alcoholism, of, you know, drinking himself to death. And she waged war on drinking establishments across the state. She described herself at the time as, quote, "a bulldog running along the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like." Uh, she would go around the state attacking numerous liquor establishments by smashing bottles, just kind of walk into a bar and just start breaking all of the liquor bottles. She was thrown in jail multiple times, and this kind of captivated the country and drew a lot more attention to this anti-liquor crusade that was growing in support around the country at the time. And ultimately, this would end up with the passage of the 18th Amendment, uh, the prohibition of alcohol in 1919.

Um, many American reformers associated alcohol with almost every social ill that existed at the time: domestic abuse, poverty, crime, and disease. Many wives talked about, you know, husbands coming home and, you know, being abusive, or that drinking was kind of draining the wages of various families as people stayed out later and later at night, particularly now that electricity exists and this whole nightlife was flourishing in cities across the United States, that excessive drinking was leading, leading to a lot more crime. Um, so this kind of led this great push towards banning alcohol across the United States. Um, this would have all sorts of different effects. Typically, in my class, we read an entire book on this, on this topic, but we're not going to do that here for the summer class. But essentially, kind of, some of the big issues was there was no real method of enforcing prohibition. There was no, kind of, a lot of like, kind of federal agents that were going around. So the federal government was kind of deputizing anybody that wanted to enforce prohibition. One of the main groups that became essentially deputized by the federal government to police drinking was the Ku Klux Klan, kind of the infamous white supremacist, uh, white supremacist group. So the Ku Klux Klan would go around and basically bust all of the Catholics, African-Americans, bust any minorities. Um, and they were going around acting as the police for the federal government in enforcing prohibition. And the Klan had basically argued that, you know, drinking was a sin and impure and immoral. Um, it wouldn't be until, kind of, years later it was found out that a lot of the clansmen were drinking a lot themselves and womanizing and all these other things, that, kind of, led to a decline in support of prohibition. And also, it wouldn't be again until FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the 1930s, where he kind of ends up repealing prohibition, um, partially to kind of spur the economy during the Great Depression, but also because there had been so much kind of resentment built up in the years that it had existed, of how it was policed, who was being charged. Um, it was kind of very unevenly enforced against minorities and Catholics, particularly.

Finally, we've got another kind of area that progressives are focusing on at the time, and this is attempting to kind of protect nature. As all of these, um, manufacturers are making all this stuff, there's again no real regulations on where do you dump your waste, where do you get rid of your, kind of, toxic waste. Is it okay to dump stuff in rivers and lakes and and oceans, things of that nature? And there began to be this kind of push to try to preserve or conserve different parts of the environment. Preservationists, kind of, to explain the difference between the two, preservationists were individuals that advocated setting aside pristine lands for their aesthetic and spiritual value. In other words, kind of just set aside a piece of land that will not be touched. It will not be mined. It will not be, you know, messed with. Set it aside so that Americans and future generations could visit and see what did it look like, you know, prior to people coming here and developing everything and trying to mine and extract all of the natural resources out of everywhere they could. So one of the most, kind of, foremost preservationists at the time was a gentleman by the name of John Muir. Um, he had created the Sierra Club in 1892 in order to preserve the Sierra Nevada mountains. Um, and after successfully campaigning the government to preserve a larger portion of the Yosemite National Park in 1890, it's kind of when that was set aside to be preserved as its own place. And he continued to push for preservation of parks across the country so that again, people in the future could visit and see what it looked like without, um, all of this kind of industrial development.

Conservationists differed in that they emphasized the efficient use of available resources through planning, control, and the prevention of waste. So conservationists differed from preservationists, and they thought that we still want to extract natural resources like iron and whatnot. Um, we still want to do this, but let's try to do it in a way that minimizes waste as much as possible, that kind of limits the damage to the surrounding environment, to the ecosystem as much as possible. Um, Teddy Roosevelt was one of these. He was kind of more in the conservation side of the debate. Um, and but still, both of them had to kind of work together to help also pack the, or pass the National Parks Act of 1916. And this ends up creating the National Park Service to oversee, care for, and preserve parks and monuments all over the country. Began to kind of expand the amount of national parks all over the country as industrialization was accelerating. Let's try to at least set some places aside so people can visit this in the future and, you know, kind of see how things were prior to this industrialization time period and prior to people living and moving there and all of that.

Um, ultimately, this Progressive Era kind of signaled a turning point that had been reached for many Americans who were suddenly willing to confront the Gilded Age's problems with national political solutions, kind of using the government to try to pass acts, to try to make laws and regulations. And this introduced new patterns in the relationship between American society, American culture, and American politics. Um, you begin to have, you know, many Americans that are more prone to using the government to try to enact changes across the country rather than trying to do things themselves on their own, um, like creating settlement houses and things of that nature. So talk more about this moving forward.