Lecture Outline: The Progressive Reform Movement

Foundations – Causes

• Rapid Industrialization, Immigration, Urbanization – late 19^th century

Problems

Industrial Capitalism

• Concentration of Wealth
• Creation of Industrial/Financial Monopolies

Social Fragmentation

• Immigration – Need for Assimilation
• Urbanization – Dangerous Classes

Three Choices

· Return to pre-Civil War Ideals

• Status Quo – Social Darwinism
• Take Action – Reform Darwinism

Response – Application of Reform Darwinism

Concept Reviewed

Specific Actions

• Use of voluntary / community organizations and government policies to assure:

· Democratic ideals of equality and liberty

· Preservation of American values

---

Who were the Reformers?

WASPS: White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant Men and Women

• Middle Class
• College Education
• Statistic Minded, realistic generation – birth of the social sciences
• Significance: Reformers set the agenda

---

Overview of the Progressive Movement

Diverse:

• Several Movements, Often Contradictory
• Unifying Factor: To confront the problems created by rapidly expanding urban and industrial world

Aspects

• The Social Justice Movement
• Progression from Voluntary Actions to State and Federal Laws
• National Progressivism: Administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson

Defining “Social Justice”

· Social:

· Economic

· Political:

· Connection: Progressivism = Social Justice

The Global Context

• Western European Nations – Late 19^th Century
• Actions and Rationale of Germany, France and England

---

The Muckrakers

• Investigative Reporting – Exposed the Underside of American economic, social, and political forces.
• Pejorative Term – Theodore Roosevelt
  
  
  

Three Landmark Articles

• Ray Stannard Baker’ - :”The Right to Work” – anthracite coal strike
• Lincoln Steffens – “The Shame of Minneapolis” - Political Corruption at the City Level
• Ida Tarbell - “The Oil War of 1872” – Attacked monopoly – John D. Rockefeller Standard Oil
  Company

Novels: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) – horrors of the Chicago meat-packing industry

---

Women and Children: Exploitation of Unskilled Workers = Women and Children Had to Work

End Child Labor - Florence Kelly

• Stint at Hull House – Settlement House
• Need for State Laws – Outlaw Child Labor

National Child Labor Committee

• Lobbied to End Child Labor – via State Laws
• National Bill – Defeated in 1906

Children’s Bureau in the Department of Labor -= 1912

• Child Labor: Outrage, Statistics, Photographs – Push legislation
• Lewis Hine

---

Women’s Working Conditions

• Florence Kelley and the National Consumer’s League

Muller v. Oregon – 1908

• “Mothers of future generations” needed limitation of working hours and job expectations
• Women are fundamentally weaker than men - “protective legislation”

---

Women’s Suffrage – Expand democracy

• State by state campaigns
• Amendment to U.S. Constitution
• Strategies to Gain Political Support

Birth Control Movement – Margaret Sanger

Crusades Against Saloons

• Brothels & Movie Houses
• Historical Roots – mid 19^th century
• Temperance Movement
• William Sanger – Prostitution = 1858
• Actions
• 18^th Amendment
• Saloon as Gathering Place – Replace with Coffee Shop

Home and School

• Home – Social Control by Progressive Reformers
• School – Progressive Education and John Dewey