C29 - Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt - 1901-1912 Flashcards
Hiram Johnson
Progressive Governor of CA in 1910. Prosecuted and took power from “grafters” - corrupt people.
Hepburn Act
1906: Another law passed to deal with the problem of the RR Corporations.
Outlawed the practice of offering “free passes” to some customers (which encouraged bribery of lawmakers and public officials).
conservation
Movement backed by many citizens and near and dear to TR. People were alarmed by the speed that trees were being cut down and the land changed by people.
TR claimed many acres of land as National Forests that could not be touched by loggers.
Reclamation was very important: the process of making land that is unusable (Desert, e.g.) into land that can be used (e.g. building a dam to irrigate desert land).
John Muir, famous naturalist was close to TR.
Jack London’s book: “Call of the Wild” in 1903 was widely read- a book about nature.
Citizens were interested in the conservation movement - people worried that losing all virgin land in the US would be bad for the national soul - people wanted to preserve it.
Sierra Club and even the Boy Scouts of the USA were dedicated to preserving the wildness of the western US.
TR and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot held a spot in the middle - they believed that US natural resources shouldn’t just be preserved…they believed US natural resources should be used wisely for the public good.
Meat Inspection Act
1906: Gave US govt. power to inspect every process of meat production.
Passed in reaction to Upton Sinclair’s book and also in reaction to European countries threatening to stop importing US meat due to some of it being tainted.
Ida Tarbell
1904: Published a magazine story that was very critical of the Standard Oil Company and its business practices. Laster she and others bought a magazine: The American.
Forest Reserve Act
1891: Gave President authority to set aside land to become National Parks.
Pure Food and Drug Act
1906: passed to prevent mislabeling and mishandling food and pharmaceuticals.
Elkins Act
1903: Passed to deal with unethical and bad practices by RR’s. Outlawed the practice of RRs offering “Rebates” to shippers.
Lincoln Steffens
1902: reporter who published a series in McClures Magazine called The Shame of the Cities, exposing corruption between big businesses and local governments.
David G. Phillips
1906: Wrote series for Cosmopolitan Magazine called the “Treason of the Senate”, charging that most senators were bought and paid for by big business interests. President Roosevelt was impressed by this series.
He was shot in 1911 by a man who thought Phillips had hurt his family by his writings.
Old Guard
The part of the Republican Party that was more interested in keeping things the same (status quo) - like Taft.
The other part of the Republican Party, the Progressives, wanted change - like Roosevelt.
Muckrakers
writers for magazines who exposed big business and government corruption. some amount of exaggeration was involved at times because each magazine tried to attract readers by encouraging its reporters to be sensational in their reporting.
T. Roosevelt scolded them, compared them to people who “raked muck” for a living.
Muckrakers wrote about social ills like: forced child labor, tenement slums that had terrible conditions where people lived, large numbers of industrial acccidents/unsafe working conditions, Bad conditions that many blacks still lived in, illiteracy, etc.
Jacob Riis
1890: Newspaper reporter. wrote How the other Half Lives., about how terrible the NY slums were. His work shocked middle class Americans. His book deeply influenced Theodore Roosevelt.
Henry Demarest
A Muckraker in the early 1900s.
Payne Aldrich Act
1909: A bill that reduced the Tariff, but only a little…not nearly as much as the progressive wing of the Republican Party wanted.
This made those republicans angry with President Taft - they accused him of going back on campaign promises.
Seventeenth Amendment
Approved in 1913: Established direct election of US Senators. Gave citizens more of a say in who their US Senators would be.
This was pushed for by progressives who thought that too many Senators were bought and paid for by Big Corporations and special interests.
Carey Act
1894: Gave federal land to states on the condition that it be irrigated (water brought in) and settled.
Thorstein Veblen
1899: wrote Theory of the Leisure Class, which criticized the rich and claimed they were predatory…took advantage of others to gain their wealth.
Upton Sinclair
1906: He published “The Jungle”, a novel that talked about the terribly unsanitary conditions in the meat processing industry and in slaughterhouses, etc.
TR and the US public found these details sickening, and led to support for the 1906 Meat Inspection Act, which required federal inspectors to inspect every step of the process.
rule of reason
1911: Supreme Court ruling that greatly watered down the federal government’s power to bring anti-trust lawsuits against big corporations.
Ruling held that only those combinations of companies that “unreasonably restrained trade” could be called illegal.
Robert M. La Follette
1901 became Governor of WI - militant progressive leader. He took much power away from dishonest lumber and railroad “interests” in WI and gave the power back to the people.
First to set up regulated public utilities.
dollar diplomacy
Critics of President Taft called his foreign relations program dollar diplomacy. Taft was encouraging US investors to put money into foreign lands. Taft thought that the result would be increased influence for the US in these foreign lands.
Northern Securities case
1902: TR brought an anti-trust suit against this RR company organized by J.P. Morgan and James J. Hill (powerful big $ moguls of the day).
In 1904, the RR appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld TR’s case. They ordered the Northern Securities Company to be dissolved.
This had a huge impact on Wall Street and angered big business in the US.
Also made TR well known as a “trust buster”
TR brought over 40 others trust busting cases, and the Supreme Court declared other trusts illegal too: the beef trust, sugar, fertilizer, etc.
Ballinger-Pinchot affair
1910: Taft’s Secretary of Interior, Ballinger, made some land in WY and MT open to corporate development.
Taft’s head of the Agriculture department, Pinchot, sharply disagreed with this move.
Taft then fired Pinchot, which angered many in the Progressive wing of the Republican party. Also angered TR.
Taft was embraced by the Old Guard wing of the Republican Party (the less progressive people).
This caused a huge rift in the “Grand Old Party” (the Republican Party), by 1910. Partly caused by Taft’s clumsiness. Democrats had major victories, then in the Congressional elections of 1910.
referendum
Giving all citizens the ability to vote on a specific issues, rather than just having a representative vote. This was used in many local elections.
initiative
Like the “referendum”, another method of direct lawmaking by citizens. (The opposite of having representatives vote on a law).
Citizens can come up with a law, have a petition, etc.
William Howard Taft
TR’s Secretary of War and Roosevelt’s choice to replace him as President.
350 lbs.
Taft ran against Democrat William Jennings Bryan (who’d run 2x before) in the 1908 election.
Taft became President in 1909.
He was not as politically able as TR and became passive with Congress, was a poor judge of public opinion, and was prone to putting his “foot in his mouth”.
He was more interested in the status quo (believed in by the Old Guard in the Republican Party) as President than in reform (believed in by the Progressives in the party like TR). He angered many in the Republican party who wanted reform.
Charles Evans Hughes
Reformist Governor of NY - investigated and took power from large gas and insurance companies and the coal trust.
Eighteenth Amendment
Passed in 1920. Prohibition. Prohibited alcohol.
recall
Law passed giving citizens the right to kick a public official out of office for wrongdoing.
Newlands Act
1902: Pushed by TR - gave US the right to collect money from the sale of public lands in the Desert in order to fund federal irrigation and dam building projects.
e. g. - Roosevelt Dam was opened in 1911 in AZ.
Desert Land Act
1877: the US federal government sold desert land at a cheap price in return for the buyer’s promise that they would irrigate the dry land within 3 years.
Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire
1911: 146 workers died in a fire. The company had terrible working conditions and had violated the fire code laws of NY by locking workers in, etc.
This caused a public outcry against unsafe working conditions, and by 1917, 30 states had laws protecting workers, like Workers Compensation (paid workers who were hurt in industrial accidents).
Anthracite Coal Strike
1902: 100,000+ coal miners went on strike to protest long hours & unsafe working conditions.
Coal was used to heat schools, hospitals and homes…some were forced to shut down due to cold.
Finally President TR brought the owners of the mines and representatives of the workers together at the White House. He threatened to have US troops take over the mines, unless the owners agreed to arbitration. An agreement was made and workers got a pay raise and a 9-hour work day.
Muller v. Oregon
1908: Supreme Court case, where the law accepted the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers by presenting evidence of the harmful effects of factory labor on women’s weaker bodies.
Lochner v. New York (era of Lochner)
1905: Supreme Court Case. Struck down a NY law that mandated a 10-hour work day for bankers.
But in 1917, the Supreme Court reversed itself, partly due to the reformist progressive movement in the US. In 1917, it did uphold a 10-hour workday.
Progressivism - goals
Progressives were mostly middle-class people who felt threatened by the power of huge corporations and special interests. They also felt threatened by the huge masses of poor immigrants and by the labor unions.
The did not want to overthrow capitalism…they wanted to cleanse it. They felt that more democracy (influence by the common man) was needed.
They pushed for the 17th Amendment (Direct election of US Senators), they wanted direct primary elections to control the power that party bosses had. They pushed for the “referendum” (when a law is voted for by all citizens, not just by representatives). They pushed for the “recall”, which allowed citizens to kick an elected official out of office for wrongdoing. They pushed for laws to limit the amount of $ candidates could spend on their own election (giving people of modest means a chance to run for office). Also pushed for laws to limit the amount of $ donors could give to a candidates (to cut down the chance that rich, special interests could buy influence by helping put a lawmaker in office).
Also pushed for women’s suffrage (right to vote).
Progressives had big victories at the city level, and even at the state level (WI was one of the first with a strong progressive movement).
Progressive women
Women could not yet vote, but they formed Women’s Clubs and Settlement Houses where they came together to be part of public life and push for Progressive causes.
They fought against unsafe working conditions, unsafe food handling practices, unsafe “airless” tenements where many people lived in germ-infested areas.
Pushed hard for anti-alcohol or “dry” laws - through groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League.
Federal (US) Government gets involved in managing disputes between Corporations and Labor
1903: TR urged Congress to create the new Dept. of Commerce and Labor.
They had the power to investigate Corporations who did “interstate” (between states) commerce.
They were highly useful in breaking monopolies.
Aldrich Vreeland Act
1908: Gave banks the ability to issue emergency currency. This was in response to the brief financial panic of 1907.
TR’s lasting legacy
Largest/most influential contribution to the US: his leading the Conservation movement.
Greatly enlarged the prestige and power of the office of President.
Developed the technique of using publicity to gain power for his ideas.
Square Deal - for workers, consumers and the public: 3C’s: Control the Corporations, Consumer Protection, Conservation.
Helped the public see that the US was a World Power.
