Chapter 13 : The Socialist Challenge - Progressivism, 1890-1920 Flashcards
The Gilded Age (1873)
Mark Twain and Charles D. Warner
Denouncing the age’s corruption of government and oppression of the workers
Gilded
A derogatory adjective indicating that only the surface is covered with gold (deceptive)
Social Darwinism
Herbert Spencer (GB)
William Graham Sumner (US)
The Darwin theory adapted to the social system
Spencer: “the survival of the fittest”
Notion of competition/hierarchy/classes
Notion of the deserving/undeserving poor
What is Progressivism?
- A general spirit of reform
- A response to industrialization
- A demand for better living and working conditions
- A request for a more democratic system
- A redefinition of the role of government in a time of radical change in the economy
Earlier reform movements, 1790 - present
- The temperance movement (prohibition of alcohol, 1850-1919)
Maine Law (1851)
Prohibition (1919)
Prohibition repealed (1933)
- Abolitionism (1790-1865)
Abolition of Slavery (1865)
- Reforming working conditions (1830-present)
8h day at Ford’s (1914)
- Women’s rights (1790-present)
Women’s vote (1920)
Examples of progressive reforms
- Pure Food & Drug Act
- Factory Safety Regulations
- Limits on Working Hours (mainly for women)
- Restrictions on Child Labor
- Workers’ Compensation for injuries
- Housing and Sanitation Reforms
- Anti-Prostitution Campaign
- Direct election of senators
First signs of reforms, 1880s
- Rise of the unions (Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor)
- 1883 Civil Service Act created a merit system for federal employees
- 1887 Interstate Commerce Commission established by Congress to regulate unfair practices
The Antitrust laws (or competition laws)
- Sherman Antitrust Act, 1890: the government is given permission to sue any trust or other form of monopoly
- The law attempts to prevent the artificial raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply
- Opposed by the Supreme Court until 1904
Results? Moderate!
Many companies sued and claimed loss of economic freedom
Liberty of contract and free labor v. better working conditions
State and federal regulation of business long seen by courts as insult to free labor
4 constitutional amendments
- Women’s vote (1920)
- Direct election of senators (1913)
- Income tax (1913)
- Prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcohol (1919)
Populism, 1888-1896
- Started with the farmers’ movement called the Grange earlier
- The populists asked for a new relationship between freedom and the government
- More regulation
- They advocated black and white cooperation
- Favored women’s suffrage
Immigration
Ellis Island created in New York harbor (1892)
30 million immigrants between 1880 and 1930
Immigrants from Italy, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire
1 million Mexicans 1900-1930
Angel Island (San Francisco, the Ellis Island of the West) Asians - Restrictions on Asian immigration (1882: Chinese Exclusion Act; 1907: Gentleman's Agreement with Japan)
Women
Gender roles were changing
8 million women worked for wages, 1/4 married
25% of labor force in 1920
Emancipation of the married woman
Emancipation of immigrants’ daughters
Activist women
Work grants a “spirit of personal independence”
Women and Economics, 1898 - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Reform campaigns by women
- The abolition of slavery
- The temperance movement
- The women’s vote
- Social reforms
Famous actions
Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger demanded birth control (“What every girl should know”)
Jane Addams founded the Hull House in Chicago (1889)
1900: half the states allowed women in local elections
Income and unemployment
Progressive reformer Louis D. Brandeis defended the idea of a right to a decent income and protection against unemployment (the right to assistance derived from citizenship itself).
By 1913, 22 states had compensation laws to benefit workers injured on the job
Theodore Roosevelt
Replaced assassinated William McKinley in September 1901
Elected in 1904. Stepped up government intervention in the economy (strenghtening the Inter-state Commerce Commission)
Anarchist Leon Czolgosz killed McKinley in 1901. He was sentenced to death.
The US passed a law (Alien Immigration Act, 1903) preventing anarchists from entering the country and caused those residing in the US to be deported.
- “Square Deal”: distinguishing between good and bad corporations
- Used the antitrust laws against JP Morgan’s Northern Securities Company (railroads)
- But recognized Standard Oil and US Steel as “good” corporations
Interest in conservation
Woodrow Wilson (1912-1920)
Wilson’s “New Freedom” program to promote small entrepreneurs, right to unionize, strengthened antitrust laws
Stability of the economic system
- 1913
Creation of the Federal Reserve System (currency, aid to banks, influence interest rates) - 1916
Keating-Owen Act outlawed child labor in manufactures involved in interstate commerce
Adamson Act: 8 hour day on nation’s railroads
Foreign policy
- 1898 Spanish-American war (Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico)
- 1914 Panama Canal completed
- 1914 Produced 1/3 of all industrial goods sold in the world
- 1917 Bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark; entered the First World War
Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points: a new international order (1918)
- Self-determination for all nations
- Freedom of the seas, free trade
- Open diplomacy
- Colonized people given “equal weight” in deciding their future
- Creation of a “general association of nations” to preserve the peace
The Treaty of Versailles was rejected by the Senate in 1919
The place of Blacks
- Segregation (housing, schools, military forces)
- Lynchings
- W.E.B. Dubois (The Soul of Black Folks, 1909)
Dubois joined a group of reformers (mostly jews and blacks) launched the NAACP (1909) to fight oppression through the courts
Prohibition
Many states had prohibition laws since the 19th century
The movement was moral
It involved people from the countryside, middle class, religious, traditionalists, Anglo-Saxon, a sort of reaction to modernity
Amendment voted in 1919 (until 1933)
Women’s suffrage
19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote (1920)
The end of progressivism
- New era after the war: the Roaring 20s
- End of reform movement
- Economic crisis (over-production)
- New approach to modernity (movies, cars, cities, radio, consumerism)
- Era of the gangsters (linked to prohibition)
- Financial capitalism (speculation)
- Immigration quotas
