James L. Roark • Michael P. Johnson - PowerPoint Presentation

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James L. Roark • Michael P. Johnson Patricia Cline Cohen • Sarah Stage Susan M. Hartmann

CHAPTER 21 Progressivism from the Grass Roots to the White House, 1890-1916

The American PromiseA History of the United States Fifth Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin'sSlide2

I. Grassroots ProgressivismA. Civilizing the City

1. The settlement house movement-Hull House 2. The social gospel 3. The social purity movement 4. Temperance 5. Progressive attitudes Slide3

I. Grassroots ProgressivismB. Progressives and the Working Class 1. The Women’s Trade Union League

brought together women workers and middle-class “allies” in order to organize working women into unions under the auspices of the AFL. 2. The uprising of twenty thousand 3. The Triangle fire in 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company killed 146 workers and injured scores more; owners escaped conviction for negligence when authorities determined fire had been started by a careless smoker.

4. Protective legislation advocates of protective legislation won a major victory in 1908 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Muller v. Oregon

, to uphold an Oregon law that limited the hours women could work to ten a day.

5. The National Consumers LeagueSlide4

II. Progressivism: Theory and PracticeA. Reform Darwinism and Social Engineering 1. Challenging social Darwinism

2. Efficiency and expertise 3. Scientific managementFrederick Winslow Taylor epitomized the movement toward scientific management; pioneered “systemized shop management”; aimed to elevate productivity and efficiency; advocated piecework, quotas, and pay incentives for productivity; alienated workers but gained converts among corporate managers and progressives

B. Progressive Government: City and State 1. Thomas Loftin Johnson in Clevelandfought for fair taxation and municipal ownership of street railways and public utilities; he called for greater democracy through the use of the initiative, referendum, and recall—devices that allowed the voters to have a direct say in legislative and judicial matters.

2. Robert M. La

Follette

in Wisconsin

3. Hiram Johnson in

California

as governor, introduced the direct primary; supported the initiative, referendum, and recall; strengthened the state’s railroad commission; supported conservation; and signed an employer’s liability law.Slide5

III. Progressivism Finds a President: Theodore RooseveltA. The Square Deal 1. Roosevelt’s rise to power

2. Trust bustingused the Sherman Antitrust Act to go after some of the nation’s largest corporations, including Northern Securities Company, which held a monopoly on railroad traffic in the Northwest; in 1904, the Supreme Court upheld the Sherman Act and called for the dissolution of Northern Securities; put Wall Street on notice that the president was willing to use the power of the government to control business; Roosevelt went on to use the Sherman Act against forty-three trusts; punished the “bad trusts,” which broke the law, and left the “good” ones alone; exerted the moral and political authority of the executive. 3. Mediating labor

disputes 1902, 147,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania went on strike; strike dragged on for the summer, and coal prices increasedRoosevelt invited representatives from both sides to Washington in Octoberwhen management refused to negotiate with representatives from United Mine Workers, Roosevelt threatened to seize the mines and run them with federal troops

4. The election of 1904 and the Square Deal

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III. Progressivism Finds a President: Theodore RooseveltB. Roosevelt the Reformer 1.

Mandate for reform 2. The Hepburn Act the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) real power to set rates and prevent discriminatory practices; worked skillfully behind the scenes to ensure the passage of the Hepburn Act in 1906; the act gave the ICC power to set rates subject to court review

3. Muckraking muckraking journalism, a term Roosevelt coined, had been of enormous help in securing progressive legislation, including the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. 4. Economic panic in 1907

C. Roosevelt and Conservation

1. Conserving natural resources

more than quadrupled the number of acres of land in government reserves and fought western cattle barons, lumber kings, mining interests, and powerful leaders in Congress; Roosevelt placed the nation’s conservation policy in the hands of scientifically trained experts like chief forester Gifford Pinchot; Pinchot preached conservation—the efficient, managed use of natural resources; contrasted with preservation; preservationists such as John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, believed the wilderness needed to be protected from all commercial exploitation; Roosevelt understood the need for both.

2. Congressional backlash

Antiquities Act of 1906 gave the president unchecked power to protect significant federal lands; Roosevelt did not hesitate to use that power, creating 18 national monuments, 6 national parks, and 150 national forests; in 1907, Congress put the brakes on Roosevelt’s environmental efforts by passing a law limiting his power to create forest reserves in six western states; in the days leading up to the law’s enactment, Roosevelt saved 16 million acres from development by creating twenty-one new reserves and enlarging eleven more.Slide8
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III. Progressivism Finds a President: Theodore RooseveltD. The Big Stick 1. Foreign policy and executive power

2. The Panama Canal Roosevelt jealously guarded the Monroe Doctrine’s American sphere of influence, and his proprietary attitude toward the Western Hemisphere became further evident in his Panama Canal dealingsColumbia wouldn’t sell the land to the United States; New York investors prompted Panamanians to stage a successful uprisingthe

United States recognized the new government and purchased the land for $10 million. 3. The Roosevelt Corollary The United States would not intervene in Latin America as long as nations conducted their affairs with “decency”

in

effect, made the United States the policeman of the Western Hemisphere and served notice to the European powers to keep out.

4. A rising force in world affairs

5. Brokering peace with

Japan

earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his role in negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War

;

arranged

the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” in 1907, which allowed the Japanese to save face by voluntarily restricting immigration to the United States; to demonstrate America’s naval power and to counter Japan’s growing bellicosity, Roosevelt dispatched the Great White Fleet, sixteen of the navy’s most up-to-date battleships, on a “goodwill” mission around the

world

American

relations with Japan improved, and in the 1908 Root-

Takahira

agreement, the two nations pledged to maintain the Open Door and support the status quo in the Pacific.Slide13
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III. Progressivism Finds a President: Theodore RooseveltE. The Troubled Presidency of William Howard Taft 1. A lawyer with no feel for politics

2. The tariff issue 3. Alienating Roosevelt ; fired Gifford Pinchot and alienated Roosevelt; by late summer 1910, after returning from abroad, Roosevelt had taken sides with the progressive insurgents in his party; beginning to sound more and more like a candidate. 4. Progressive reform in Congress the Democrats swept the congressional elections of 1910; the new Democratic majority in the House, working with progressive Republicans in the Senate, achieved a number of key reforms; included legislation to regulate mine and railroad safety, to create a Children’s Bureau in the Department of Labor, and to establish an eight-hour workday for federal workers; the Congress sent to the states the Sixteenth Amendment, which provided for a modest graduated income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment, which called for the direct election of senators; Taft sat on the sidelines.

5. Dollar diplomacy championed “dollar diplomacy,” naively believing he could substitute “dollars for bullets”; in the Caribbean, he provoked anti-American feeling by attempting to force commercial treaties on Nicaragua and Honduras, and by dispatching the U.S. Marines to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic in 1912, pursuant to the Roosevelt Corollary;

6. Roosevelt’s

criticism

final breach between Taft and Roosevelt came in 1911, when Taft’s attorney general filed an antitrust suit against U.S. Steel, citing Roosevelt’s agreement with the Morgan interests in the 1907 acquisition of Tennessee Coal and Iron.Slide17
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IV. Woodrow Wilson and Progressivism at High TideA. Progressive Insurgency and the Election of 1912 1. The Republican

primaries 1912, Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Republican nomination; but for all his popularity, he had lost control of the party machine, and Taft refused to step aside; Roosevelt ran in thirteen primaries and won 278 delegates to Taft’s 48, but Taft’s bosses refused to seat the Roosevelt delegates at the Chicago convention; Taft won nomination on the first ballot. 2. The Bull Moose Party planks called for woman suffrage, presidential primaries, conservation of natural resources, a minimum wage for women, an end to child labor, workers’ compensation, social security, and a federal income tax; nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.

3. Four Progressives Democrats were delighted at the split in the Republican ranks; smelled victory and nominated Woodrow Wilson; voters in 1912 chose from four candidates who claimed to be progressives—Taft, Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and the Socialist candidate, Eugene V. Debs.

4. “The new nationalism” versus “The new

freedom

”

Wilson’s New Freedom, based on the Democratic principles of limited government and states’ rights, promised to use antitrust legislation to get rid of big corporations and give small businesses and farmers better opportunities. Wilson and Roosevelt fought it out, but in the end, the Republican vote was split while the Democrats remained united; Wilson won a decisive victory in the electoral college; Taft received only eight electoral votes.Slide20
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IV. Woodrow Wilson and Progressivism at High TideB. Wilson’s Reforms: Tariff, Banking, and the Trusts

1. The Underwood Tariff lowered rates by 15 percent; to compensate for lost revenue, the House approved a moderate federal income tax. 2. The Federal Reserve Act Wilson was concerned about J. P. Morgan and Company’s control of 341 directorships in 112 corporations and control of more than $22 billion in

assets; the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the most significant domestic legislation of Wilson’s presidencyestablished a national banking system privately controlled but regulated and supervised by a Federal Reserve Board appointed by the presidentgave

the nation its first efficient banking and currency system, provided for a greater degree of government control over banking, and made currency more elastic and credit adequate for the needs of business and agriculture.

3. The Clayton Act and the FTC

4. A mission fulfilled?

C

. Wilson

, Reluctant Progressive

1. “Special privileges to none”

2. About face in

1916

appointed progressive Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, threw his support behind legislation to obtain rural credits for farmers, supported workers’ compensation and the Keating-Owen child-labor law, and encouraged Congress to establish an eight-hour day on the

railroads

reform

, along with his pledge to keep the country out of World War I, helped him win reelection in 1916.Slide22
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V. The Limits of Progressive ReformA. Radical Alternatives 1. The Socialist Party

2. The Industrial Workers of the World nicknamed the Wobblies; union dedicated to organizing the most destitute segment of the workforce, the unskilled workers disdained by Samuel Gompers’s AFL; unhesitatingly advocated direct action, sabotage, and the general strike—tactics designed to trigger a workers’ uprising. 3. Margaret Sanger and the birth control movementSanger

and her followers saw birth control not only as a sexual and medical reform, but also as a means to alter social and political power relationships and to alleviate human miserybirth control became linked with freedom of speech when Margaret Sanger’s feminist journal, the Woman Rebel, was confiscated by the Post Office for violating social purity lawsopened the nation’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York; police shut it down after ten

days

the

birth control movement would become less radical after World War I; but in its infancy, it was part of a radical vision for reforming the world that made common cause with the socialists and the IWW in challenging the limits of progressive reform.Slide24

V. The Limits of Progressive ReformB. Progressivism for White Men Only 1. Woman suffrage

Alice Paul launched an effort to lobby for a federal amendment to give women the vote; in 1916, she founded the militant National Woman’s Party (NWP), which became the radical voice of the suffrage movement; advocated direct action such as mass marches and civil disobedience. 2. Racism in the South and West 3. The Atlanta Compromise progressives preached the disfranchisement of black voters as “reform” and also witnessed the rise of Jim Crow legislation to segregate public facilities; in the face of this growing repression, Booker T. Washington, the preeminent black leader of the day, urged caution and restraint; introduced the “Atlanta Compromise,” an

accommodationist policy that appealed to whites 4. Constitutional racism

5. The rise of W.E.B. Du Bois and the

NAACP

major race riot in Atlanta left 250 African Americans dead; W.E.B. Du Bois was Washington’s foremost critic; urged blacks to fight for civil rights and racial justice; in 1905, founded the Niagara Movement calling for universal male suffrage, civil rights, and a black intellectual elite; in 1909, the Niagara movement helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a coalition of blacks and whites that sought legal and political rights for African Americans through the courts.