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Chapter 21 - Urban America and the Progressive Era

 

 

The Henry Street Settlement House: Women Settlement House Workers Create a Community of Reform

  • The Henry Street Settlement House became a model for a new kind of reform community composed essentially of college-education women who encouraged and supported one another in a wide variety of humanitarian, civic, political, and cultural activities.

Currents of Progressivism

    • Progressivism was a movement to end political corruption, bring more business like methods to governing, and offer a more compassionate legislative response to the excesses of industrialization.
    • Progressivism was limited to whites in the South.
  • Unifying Themes
    • Anger over excesses of industrial capitalism and urban growth
    • Emphasis on social cohesion and common bonds as a way of understanding how modern societies and economies worked
      • Rejected individualism, believing that success relied on more than individual character, and opposed social Darwinism
    • Believed in a need for citizens to intervene actively
    • Two inspirations: evangelical Protestantism and a strain of progressive thought that looked to natural and social sciences to improve the human condition
  • The Female Dominion
    • College-educated, middle-class women made up the vanguard for progressivism.
    • Jane Addams founded the Hull House in Chicago in 1889.
    • Conventionally, women married early or entered the traditional female professions of teaching, nursing, and library work.
    • Florence Kelley helped direct the support of the settlement house movement behind groundbreaking state and federal labor legislation.
      • Wrote a report detailing the conditions of sweatshops and the effects of long hours on women and children
      • Published the Hull House Maps and Papers, the scientific study of poverty in America, in 1895
    • New female-dominated allowed women to combine professional aspirations with the older traditions of female moral reform, especially those centered on child welfare.
    • Female activist like Addams and Kelley reshaped the policies of the progressive era when politics was a historically male field.
  • The Urban Machine
    • Democratic Party machines, usually dominated by first- and second-generation Irish, controlled the political life of most large American cities.
      • The keys to machine strength were disciplined organization, the delivery of essential services to the immigrant community, and business elites.
      • The machine politician viewed his work as a business.
      • They exchanged votes for services.
    • Businesses that contracted with the city had to stay on the machine’s good side as just another business expense.
      • Businesspersons often bribed politicians and contributed to their campaigns, called “graft”.
    • Machines had close ties to organized prostitution and gambling, as well as legitimate businesses.
    • Machines focused on passing welfare legislation in the early twentieth century to expand their base of support. Machine politicians thus allied with progressive reformers.
      • As Catholic and Jewish immigrants became more prominent in the city, machines championed cultural pluralism, opposing prohibition and immigration restrictions and defending the contributions made by ethnic groups to the cities.
  • Political Progressives and Urban Reform
    • Political progressivism was a challenge to the power of machine politics and a response to deteriorating urban conditions.
    • Reformers placed much of the blame for urban ills on machines and looked for ways to restructure city government.
      • “Good government” movement, led by the National Municipal League, fought to make city management a non-partisan, even non-political, process by bringing the administrative techniques of large corporations to cities.
      • Reformers revised city charters for stronger mayors and the expanded use of appointed administrators and career civil servants.
    • Progressive politicians who focused on the human problems of the industrial city wanted to change policies rather than the political structure.
  • Progressivism in the Statehouse: West and South
    • Progressive politicians became a powerful force in state capitals, such as Republican dissident Robert “Fighting Bob” M. La Follette.
    • Western progressives favored institutional reform.
      • Oregon voters strengthened direct democracy through the initiative, a direct vote on specific measures put on the state ballot by petition, and the referendum, which allowed voters to decide on bills referred to them by the legislature.
      • Another reform was the primary, allowing voters to cross party lines, and the recall, giving voters the right to renounce voters by popular vote. All these reforms were widely copied in the West to reduce political power.
    • Western progressives targeted railroads, mining and timber companies, and public utilities for reform.
    • The populist tradition of the 1880s and 1890s was biracial protest, but progressivism was for whites only.
      • Progressives believed that disenfranchisement and segregation of blacks was a precondition to political and social reform. With African Americans removed, white voters could gain influence.
      • They passed statutes specifying poll taxes, literacy tests, and property qualifications with the goal of preventing voting by blacks, stripping black communities of political power.
      • To prevent the disenfranchisement of poor white voters, they established understanding and grandfather clauses to give election officials discretionary power to decide whether an illiterate person could understand the Constitution and white voters could vote if they could show their grandfathers could vote.
    • Southern progressives supported the push towards a fully segregated public sphere. They strengthened Jim Crow laws requiring separation of races in restaurants, streetcars, beaches, and theatres.
      • Schools were separate and unequal, with black taxpayers supporting improved white schools while their own children attended underfunded schools.
    • Based in the New South cities and growing among educated professionals, small businessmen, and women benevolent societies.

Social control and its limits

·         Intro

o   Edward Ross: Social Control: said society needs ethical elite.

o   Progressives thought they should frame laws regulations for social control

·         The Prohibition movement

o   WCTU:

§  women don’t like men drinking alcohol and abusing them

§  1911 ¼ million members

o   Anti-saloon League

§  local option campaigns making small towns and counties ban liquor

o   Opponents of alcohol were protestants

·         The Social Evil

o   Anti-prostitution from the same guys reached all new highs

o   Reformers made media for anti-prost.

o   Made foreigners scapegoats for sexual anxieties of native whites.

o   1910: congress passed legislation that permitted deportation of foreign prostitutes and foreigners who helped them and employed them.

o   They didn’t get rid of it they just put it underground. 

·         The Redemption of Leisure

o   Progressives did not want the commercialization of leisure.

o   Frederic C. Howe: “Commercialized leisure, must be controlled by the community, if it is to become an agency of civilization rather than the reverse”

o   Movies most popular leisure activity in 1908

o   National Board of Censorship (NBC)

§  reformers regulated movies to improve the commercial; recreation of the urban poor

§  1914 NBC review 95% of films

·         Standardizing Education

o   Went from reading, writing, and math to also include respect and patriotism

o   Elwood Cubberley argued in Changing Conceptions of Education that education would allow immigrant children to break free from parochial ethnic neighborhoods.

o   Important trends for public schools:

§  Expansion

§  Bureaucratization

o    Children began school earlier and stayed there longer.

o   1918: every state had some form of compulsory school attendance.

o   1930: 47% of kids (14-17) were enrolled in school

o   1918 National Education Association defined Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. 

o   Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 provided federal grants to support vocational programs and set up the Federal Board for Vocational Education.

Working-Class Communities and Protest

  • In 1900, out of a labor force of 28.5 million, 16 million worked in industries, 11 million on farms. In 1920, out of labor force of 42 million, 29 million worked in industry, but only 10.4 million on farms.
  • Workers needed to sell their labor to earn wages to survive.
  • Race, ethnicity, and differences in skill were barriers to organizing in trade unions.
  • New Immigrants from Two Hemispheres
    • 60% of the industrial labor force was foreign-born by WWI.
      • Nine million came from southern and eastern Europe and arrived between 1900 and 1914.
      • In the 19th century, most came from industrial northern and western Europe (English, Welsh, Germans), bringing skills necessary for emerging industries.
      • The new Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Jewish, and Greek immigrants were unskilled.
    • Immigrants were driven away by commercial agriculture undermining subsistence farming, a shortage of land due to a falling death rate, and religions and political persecution.
    • Except for Jewish immigrants, most came to earn a stake and then return home.
    • Migration usually occurred due to social networks that helped migrants cope with immigration.
    • Immigrant communities used ethnicity as a resource to gain employment, specializing work by ethnic origin.
    • French Canadians also emigrated to the US in large numbers, looking for employment.
    • Mexican immigration increased, providing the labor for the West’s farms, railroads, and mines, spurred by economic and political crises, forming barrios.
    • Eighty-thousand Japanese entered the US, but were unable to become citizens. The Issei (first-generation) formed niches. The Issei and Nisei  (second-generation)  settled near Los Angeles.
  • Urban Ghettos
    • Immigrant communities took the form of densely packed ghettoes, constituting over 60% of the population of cities over 100,000.
    • New York City became the center of Jewish immigration and the ready-to-wear clothing industry, where workers (mostly Jewish, some Italian) worked on a task system.
    • The garment industry was seasonal, with long stretches of unemployment and 60 to 70 hour days in busy seasons.
    • Garment manufacturers paid thugs and prostitutes to beat strikers. The strikers won the support of the Women’s Trade Union League, creating the Uprising of 20,000. The workers failed to have their union recognized, but the International Ladies Garment Workers Union gained strength.
    • After the strikes, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire killed 146 women, prompting New York to create a Factory Investigative Commission, leading to new state laws for improved safety conditions and limiting the work-hours of women and children.
  • Company Ghettos
    • Immigrant workers and their families established communities in company towns. Their lives were completely controlled by the corporations, but maintained some community control in social networks.
    • Dangerous conditions led workers to create mutual aid associations that offered cheap insurance and death benefits.
    • Women boosted family incomes by taking in boarders and tending small gardens and livestock.
    • Immigrants, rather than assimilated, adapted and resisted by maintaining cultural values, joining local politics, and organizing unions.
    • Mining towns saw violent labor conflicts.
      • The United Mine Workers led a strike in September 1913 for improved safety, higher wages, and recognition of the union.
      • Governor Elias Ammons sent in the National Guard, but the strike had bankrupted the state in spring.
      • The coal companies sent in private guards, who attacked the mining camps on April 20, 1914. They killed 14, 11 of them children. This led to a violent struggle that ended when President Wilson sent in the Army.
  • The AFL: “Unions, Pure and Simple”
    • The AFL became the strongest organization of workers following the 1890s depression, organizing by craft.
    • Gompers refused to let the AFL accept non-whites and unskilled workers, pitting trades against each other and creating weaknesses in the union.
    • The National Association of Manufacturers launched an “open shop” (non-union) campaign to eliminate unions.
    • Courts ruled that the Sherman Anti-trust Act made secondary strikes illegal.
  • The IWW: “One Big Union”
    • The Western Federation of Miners led strikes marred by violence against the unsafe working conditions in mines, the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining Company hiring armed detectives and firing all union members during a strike. Idaho’s governor sent in troops to enforce martial law, breaking the strike and imprisoning strikers in bullpens.
    • In 1905, the WFM, the Socialist Party, and radical groups gathered in Chicago to found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), proclaiming “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” They worked to abolish the wage system and implement worker’s self-management.
    • William D. “Big Bill” Haywood became spokesman for the Wobblies (IWW members) and regularly denounced the conservative AFL, saying the IWW accepted all workers.
    • The IWW enjoyed strength among eastern industrial workers with multilingual appeals to form a united labor force among the ethnically diverse Lawrence, Massachusetts textile workforce.
    • The IWW remained a force in the lumber camps, mines, and wheat fields of the west; they focused on practical gains with revolution as a final end.
    • The Justice Department used the IWW’s anticapitalist and antiwar stance to crush it during WWI.
  • Rebels in Bohemia
    • In Greenwich Village, New York City, cultural radicals of a middle-class background emerged. They had a passion for modern art, sympathy for labor, and openness to socialism and anarchism.
    • They rejected Victorian sexual morality and traditional marriage and sex roles, advocated birth control, and experimented in homosexual relationships.
    • “Bohemians” referred to those who had artistic or intellectual aspirations who lived with disregard for conventional rules of behavior.
    • Greenwich Village offered a radical scene, publishing a paper called The Masses and worked as a haven for like-minded radicals.

Women’s Movement and Black Awakening

·         Introduction

o   Women took part in the settlement house movement, prohibition, suffrage, and birth control.

o   Fought so that their rights would not be undermined as racism grew.

·         The New Woman

o   40% of the people that graduated from college were women.

o   General Federation of Women’s Clubs

§  Clubs brought women together based on their values; cooperation, uplift, service.

§  Women participated in the stopping of child labor

o   NCL tried to bring women together despite class differences

·         Birth Control

o   Margaret Sanger

§  Coined the term “birth control”

§  mom had eleven kids

§  Organizer of IWW

§  Fled to Europe after being sentenced to 45 yrs in jail, because she gave out birth control pamphlet.

o   New generation of women used contraception to advance sexual freedom

·         Racism and Accommodation

o   Blacks were gaining wealth and influence, but were held back by racism.

o   Racist like Benjamin Tillman (SC senator) and Thomas Dixon (The Clansmen) referred to them as beasts.

o   Southern Progressives agreed that blacks were inferior, but wanted them to progress for economic gain.

o   B. T. Washington

§  Born slave in 1856

§  Formed Tuskegee Institute

§  Most influential black leader of the day

§  Autobiography: Up from Slavery (1901)

·         Racial Justice, The NAACP, Black Women’s Activism

o   W.E.B. Du Bois

§  Alternative to BTW’s leadership

§  First black to get a Ph.D.

§  DU Bois did not like BTW, because he “accepted the inferiority of blacks”

o   Niagara Movement

§  Organized in 1905

§  Wanted to promote racial integration, civil and political right, and equal access to economic opportunity.

o   NAACP

§  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, led by W.E.B. Du Bois.

§  1909: NAACP formed at National Negro Conference in NY.

§  Fought for political and civil equality.

o   The disfranchisement of black voters in the south severely curtailed African American political influence.

National Progressivism

·         Intro

o   Both major political parties took a more aggressive stance on reform issues of the day

o   Both President Theodore Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson reshaped the office of president in the pursuit of their reform agendas

·         Theodore Roosevelt and Presidential Activism

o   William McKinley assassinated in 1901 and Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest president to ever hold the office

o   Roosevelt’s History:

§  Born 1858 and was a sick child

§  Graduated from Harvard

§  Won an election for the state assembly of NY

§  Ran unsuccessful campaign for mayor of NY

§  Served as president of the NY City Board of Police Commissioners

§  Became assistant secretary of the navy in Washington

§  Lead the Rough Riders in Cuba during the Spanish-American War

§  Elected governor of NY

§  1900 became vice president

o   “Bully pulpit”-a platform from which he could exhort Americans to reform their society

o   Roosevelt preached the virtues of the “strenuous life” and believed the educated, wealthy Americans had a responsibility to serve, guide, and inspire the poor

o   1902 Roosevelt intervened in a strike by coal miners

§  Won better pay and working conditions without recognition of the miners’ union

§  Pushed efficient government as the solution to social problems

·         Trust-busting and Regulation

o   Sherman Antitrust Act—first federal antitrust measure passed in 1890

o   1902 Roosevelt directed the Justice Department to begin a series of prosecutions under the Sherman Antitrust Act

o   Northern Securities v. United States ruled that the stock transactions of the company constituted illegal combination in restraint of interstate commerce

o   In Roosevelt’s two terms the Justice Department filed 43 cases under the Sherman Antitrust Act

o   Roosevelt did not believe in breaking up large corporations, however

o   He considered government regulation the best way to deal with big business

o   The Pure Food and Drug Act established the Food and Drug Administration which tested and approved drugs before they went on the market

o   Meat Inspection Act allowed the Department of Agriculture to inspect and label meat products

o   Big businesses like these regulations and viewed them as a way to eliminate smaller competitors who could not meet the regulations

·         Conservation, Preservation, and the Environment

o   1905 Theodore Roosevelt created the US Forest Service and named Gifford Pinchot to head it

o   By 1909 the total timber and forest reserves had increased from 45 to 195 million acres, and more than 80 million acres of mineral lands had been withdrawn from public sale

o   The Roosevelt administration took a middle ground between preservation and unrestricted commercial development

o   John Muir was an essayist and founder of the modern environmentalist movement

§  Served as the first president of the Sierra Club, founded in 1892 to preserve and protect the mountain regions of the west coast as well as the Yellow Stone National Park

o   After an earthquake in 1906 San Francisco wanted to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley, but met much conservationist opposition

§  The project was approved by Congress in 1913

o   In 1916, preservationists obtained their own bureaucracy in Washington with the creation of the National Park System

o   The Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 established the Reclamation Bureau within the Department of Interior and provided federal funding for dam canal projects

·         Republican Spilt

o   Roosevelt promised to retire after his second term and named Secretary of War William Howard Taft his successor

o   The gap between the “insurgent” progressives and “stand pat” wing split the Republican party

o   Taft was much different from Roosevelt

§  He brought a much more restrained concept of the presidency to the White House

§  He supported constitutional amendments legalizing a graduated income tax, he supported safety regulations for mines and railroads, and the creation of the federal Children’s Bureau

§  He differed from progressive and Roosevelt on political fights involving tariff, antitrust, and conservation policies

o   In 1910, when Roosevelt came back from a safari to Africa and a European tour he directly challenged Taft

o   In June 1912, Taft was nominated again for president

o   Mad, Roosevelt left and was nominated by the Progressive Party as presidential nominee in August 1912

o   Roosevelt ran on a platform called “New Nationalism” which focused on a vision of a strong federal government, ran by an active president, regulating and protecting various interests in American society

·         The Election of 1912: A Four-Way Race

o   Republicans were badly split

o   Democrats had Governor Woodrow Wilson as their candidate

§  Got the nomination with the help of William Jennings Bryan

o   Wilson declared that his party was full of true progressives and found Roosevelt, not Taft, to be his true rival

o   Wilson’s New Freedom campaign ran in contrast to Roosevelt’s and emphasized restoring conditions of free competition and equality in economic opportunity

o   Wilson argued that the federal government had become too large and focused on states’ rights and small government

o   Eugene V. Debs was the fourth, and most radical, choice for votes and ran for the Socialist party

o   Debs:

§  He drew large and sympathetic crowds when he spoke

§  His speeches were filled with radical socialist ideals

§  His speeches caused Roosevelt and Wilson to have very left wing platforms which included many things that were considered radical only 10 years before

o   In the end, the Republican split gave Wilson the election and in many aspects this election was the first “modern” presidential race

·         Woodrow Wilson’s First Term

o   Underwood-Simmons Act of 1913—substantially reduced tariff duties on a variety of raw materials and manufactured goods

o   Sixteenth Amendment—gave Congress the power to levy taxes on income, and imposed an gradual tax on personal income

o   Federal Reserve Act—restructured the nation’s banking and currency system

§  Created 12 Federal Reserve Banks, regulated by a central board in Washington

o   Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914—replaced the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 as the nation’s basic antitrust law

o   Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—established in 1914, sought to give federal government the same sort of regulatory control over corporations that the ICC has over railroads

o   On social issues Wilson was more cautious his first two years

o   After fear of losing support from his party he changed

§  He supported a rural credits act which gave government capital to federal farm banks and federal aid to agricultural extension programs in schools

§  He favored a workers’ compensation bill for federal works

§  He signed the Keating-Owen Act, banning child labor under the age of 14 from companies involved in interstate commerce

·         Conclusion    

o   The political and social landscape reflected the tensions and ambiguities of progressivism itself

o   Blacks couldn’t vote

o   Laws made it harder for big-city machines to control voting

o   In one party cities the majority’s primary usually decided the general election

o   Stricter election laws made it harder for third parties to get on the ballot give voters less choices

o    What became important in this time period was political participation, Interest-group activity, congressional and statehouse lobbying, and direct appeals to public opinion

o   Social progressives and their allies made many advances through a range of social legislation

o   Emphasis on efficiency, uplift, and rational administration collided with humane impulses

o   Progressives confronted new realities and changed many things through reform

 
AP Questions 

1.       B (Unifying Themes Pg 724)

2.       C (The Female Dominion Pg 725)

3.       A (Political Progressives and Urban Reform Pg 728)

4.       D (Progressivism in the statehouse: West and South Pg 729)

5.       B (Intellectual Trends Promoting Reform Pg 731-732)

6.       E (Bottom of Intellectual Trends Promoting Reform Pg 732)

7.       E

8.       B (Standardizing Education pg 735)

9.       C (The AFL: “Unions, Pure and Simple pg 742)

10.   B

11.   A

12.   E

13.   A

14.  C

 

Subject: 
Subject X2: 

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