23) Progressive Movement Flashcards
Progressives Overview
- Progressive leaders were primarily middle-class reformers concerned with urban and consumer issues
- Reformers believed that government should be used to ameliorate social problems
- Wanted to use government power to regulate industrial production and improve labor conditions
- Rejected Social Darwinism
Progressive Goal - Democratization of the Political Process
- Direct election of senators
2. Women’s suffrage
Progressive Goal - Reform of Local Governments
- Initiative, recall, and referendum - ways to make local governments more responsive to public opinion
- Commission or city-manager forms of government to make local governments more professional
- Nonpartisan local governments to weaken political machines
Progressive Goal - Regulation of Big Business
- Passage of child labor laws
- Passage of antitrust legislation
- Passage of Pure Food and Drug Act
Progressive Constitutional Amendments
- 16th Amendment: Congress power to lay and collect income taxes
- 17th Amendment: Senators shall be elected by popular vote
- 18th Amendment: Prohibition
- 19th Amendment: Women’s Suffrage
16th Amendment (1913)
- Established Congress’s right to impose a Federal Income Tax
- Designed to relieve the poor of a disproportionate burden in funding the federal government and make the wealthy pay for a greater share of the nation’s tax burden
17th Amendment (1913)
- Allowed voters to cast direct votes for Senators (prior, senators were chosen by state legislatures)
18th Amendment (1920)
- Prohibition
19th Amendment (1920)
- Women’s right to vote
What did Teddy Roosevelt Reform Initiatives address?
- Conservation of natural resources and wildlife
- Unsanitary conditions in meatpacking industry
- Monopolization and consolidation of the railroad industry
- Unsafe drug products
What did Woodrow Wilson Reform Initiatives address?
- Launched an all-out assault on high tariffs, banking problems, and trusts
- Supported the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 : established a system of district bank by a central board
Muckrackers
- Investigative reporters who promoted social and political reforms by exposing corruption and urban problems
- Leading critics of urban bosses and corporate robber barons
- Rise of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines enabled muckrakers to reach a large audience
State and Local Reforms
- Many states enacted the initiative, referendum, and recall
- Several states enacted legislation that would undermine the power of the political machine
Jane Addams
- Founded the Hull House in Chicago (settlement house)
- Hull house and other settlement houses were dedicated to helping the urban poor
- Settlement-house workers established day nurseries for working mothers, published reports condemning deplorable housing conditions, and taught literacy classes
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
- Successfully convinced many women that they had a moral responsibility to improve society by working for prohibition
Dorothea Dix
- Worked tirelessly on behalf of the mentally ill
Ida B. Well-Barnett
- African American civil rights advocate
- Early women’s rights advocate
- Noted for her opposition to lynching
Other women’s reform issues
- Passage of child labor legislation at the state level
- Campaigns to limit the working hours of women and children
Women were most likely to work outside their homes in what occupations?
- Domestic servants
- Garment workers
- Teachers
- Cigar makers
Women were least likely to work outside their homes in what occupations?
- Physicians
- Lawyers
Initiative (in legislative process)
- A means by which a petition signed by a requisite number of voters can be presented as an electoral measure to the people as a whole
Recall (in legislative process)
- Allows voters to removed an elected government official from office with whom they are displeased
- Reformers championed the recall as a means of removing corrupt officials
Referendum (in legislative process)
- Allows voters to directly cast ballots on proposed laws
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
- 146 factor workers (all women) died as a result of the fire
