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Out of Many
A History of the American People
Seventh Edition Brief Sixth Edition
Chapter
21
Urban America and
the Progressive Era
1900-1917
Out of Many: A History of the American People, Brief Sixth Edition
John Mack Faragher • Mari Jo Buhle • Daniel Czitrom • Susan H. Armitage
Copyright ©2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Urban America and the Progressive Era
1900-1917
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The Origins of Progressivism
Progressive Politics in Cities and States
Social Control and Its Limits
Challenges to Progressivism
Women’s Movements and Black Activism
National Progressivism
Conclusion
Suffragettes hold a victory jubilee, 1920.
Chapter Focus Questions
• What were the social and intellectual roots
of progressive reform?
• How did tensions between social justice
and social control divide progressives?
• How did the impact of new immigration
transform America?
• What new forms of activism emerged
among the working class, women, and
African Americans?
Chapter Focus Questions (cont’d)
• How did progressivism become a central
force in national politics?
North America and New York City
The Henry Street Settlement House
• The Henry Street Settlement House:
Women Settlement House Workers Create
a Community of Reform
 Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement began
as a visiting nurse service.
 Wald created a community of collegeeducated women who lived among the urban
poor working to improve their lives.
 Several of the women went on to become
influential political reformers.
The Henry Street Settlement House
(cont'd)
• The workers promoted health care,
cultural activities, and by promoting reform
legislation.
The Origins of Progressivism
1908 portrait of “Mamie,”
The Origins of Progressivism
• The depression of the 1890s, labor unrest
and the populist revolt led many
Americans to seek new answers to
society’s ills, turning to citizen
organizations and government for action.
• Progressivism drew from deep roots in
American communities and spread,
becoming a national movement, peaking
in the election of 1912.
Unifying Themes
• Three basic themes underlay the
Progressive movement:
 Anger over the excesses of industrial
capitalism, urban growth;
 Faith in social cohesion and common bonds
as a way to understand modern society;
 Belief in the need for citizens to take an active
social and political role to improve society.
Unifying Themes (cont'd)
• Progressivism was also inspired by
evangelical Protestantism and modern
sciences, often in tension with each other.
Photographing Poverty in the Slums
of New York
New Journalism: Muckraking
• A new breed of investigative journalist
began exposing the public to the plight of
slum life, pioneered by McClure’s
Magazine.
 Muckrakers published accounts of urban
poverty, and unsafe labor conditions, as well
as corruption in government and business.
New Journalism: Muckraking
(cont’d)
• Muckraking mobilized national opinion.
 Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
- unsanitary conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking
industry.
 Ida Tarbell
- unfair business practices by John D. Rockefeller
in her History of the Standard Oil Company.
 Lincoln Steffen
- urban political corruption in a series titled The
Shame of the Cities.
New Journalism: Muckraking
(cont'd)
• Muckraking mobilized national opinion.
 David Graham Phillips’ “The Treason of the
Senate”
- inspired Theodore Roosevelt to coin the term
“muckraker”
Intellectual Trends Promoting
Reform
• Social sciences provided empirical studies
used by reformers to push for reforms.
 Lester Frank Ward challenged some of the
intellectual supports for the prevailing social
Darwinism.
 Dewey, Commons, Ely
- education and labor
Intellectual Trends Promoting
Reform (cont'd)
• Social sciences provided empirical studies
used by reformers to push for reforms.
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- attacked constitutional interpretations that had
prevented states from passing legislation that
protected public interests.
• Social realities instead of abstract legal
arguments
The Female Dominion
• Jane Addams—Hull House
(Chicago,1889)
• Alternative to marriage for educated
women who provided crucial services for
slum dwellers
• Florence Kelley
 Her reports pushed legislation for the eighthour work day for women and child labor laws
in Illinois.
The Female Dominion (cont'd)
• Women began to dominate new positions
such as social workers, public health
nursing, and home economics.
A portrait of the young Jane Addams, probably
taken around the time she founded Hull House in
Chicago, in 1889.
Progressive Politics in Cities
and States
Progressive Politics in City and State
• Much of Progressives’ energy went into
local political battles.
• Addressing corruption and attacking
corporate power, Progressives called for
more responsive and activist government.
The Urban Machine
• Urban political machines were a closed
and corrupt system that:
 offered jobs and other services to immigrants
in exchange for votes
 drew support from businesses
• Though corrupt, politicians like Tammany
Hall’s “Big Tim” Sullivan were popular and
admired by constituents
The Urban Machine (cont'd)
• By the early twentieth century, machines
began promoting welfare legislation, often
allying themselves with progressive
reformers.
Timothy D. “Big Tim” Sullivan
Progressives and Urban Reform
• Reformers blamed machines on many
urban ills.
• Political progressivism arose in cities to
combat machines and address
deteriorating conditions, such as impure
water.
 They sought professional, nonpartisan
administration to improve government
efficiency.
Progressives and Urban Reform
(cont’d)
• Some business leader, like Cleveland’s
Thomas Johnson, moved into politics as
Progressives.
• Following a tidal wave in Galveston,
Texas, reformers pushed through a
commissioner system.
 Other cities adopted city manager plans and
the commissioner system.
Statehouse Progressives
• Governor and then Senator Robert La
Follette of Wisconsin forged a farmer-labor
small business alliance to push through
statewide reforms.
• Oregon passed referendum and initiative
amendments that allowed voters to bypass
legislatures and enact laws themselves.
Statehouse Progressives (cont'd)
• In New York, Theodore Roosevelt was a
popular activist.
Statehouse Progressives (cont’d)
• Western progressives like California’s
Hiram Johnson targeted railroad influence.
Statehouse Progressives (cont’d)
• Southern progressives pushed through
various reforms such as improved
educational facilities, but supported
discriminatory laws against African
Americans.
 Southern progressives pushed for a
completely segregated public sphere.
Social Control and Its Limits
Social Control and Its Limits
• Middle class urban WASPs saw new
immigrants as a threat to democracy.
• Through “social control,” Progressives
hoped both to restrain and reform
immigrants, industrial workers and African
Americans.
• This moralistic xenophobia was a powerful
source of support for Progressive policies.
The Prohibition Movement
• Groups developed to end the production,
sale, and consumption of alcohol.
 The Women’s Christian Temperance Union
- Pushed for temperance laws as well as nontemperance laws such as women suffrage,
homeless shelters, and prison reform.
 The Anti-Saloon League
- They played on anti-urban and anti-immigrant
sentiments.
The Prohibition Movement (cont'd)
• Native-born, small town and rural
Protestants generally supported
prohibition while recent immigrants
opposed it.
The Social Evil
• Reformers also attacked prostitution.
• A national movement used the media to try
to ban the “white slave” traffic allegedly
promoted by foreigners.
• Progressives investigated prostitution and
documented its dangers, though they were
unable to understand why women took it
up.
The Social Evil (cont'd)
• Progressive reform helped close down
brothels, but they were replaced by more
vulnerable street-walkers.
The Redemption of Leisure
• Reformers were aghast at the new urban
commercial amusements, such as
amusement parks, vaudeville, and the
most popular venue, the movies.
 Replaced municipal parks, libraries,
museums, YMCAs, and school recreation
centers
The Redemption of Leisure (cont'd)
• Movies
 Popular in tenement districts
 Became sophisticated, attracted middle class
 National Board of Censorship
Standardizing Education
• Progressives: School was the key agency
to break down the parochial ethnic
neighborhood and “Americanize”
immigrants.
• Expansion and bureaucratization
characterized educational development.
Standardizing Education (cont'd)
• High school evolved as comprehensive
institutions that offered college preparatory
and vocational education, supported by
the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act.
Challenges to Progressivism
Publicity poster for the 1913 pageant
Challenges to Progressivism
• While middle class Protestants promoted
their vision of Progressivism, other
challenged them.
• Growing organization of industrial workers
led to demands for more control over their
wages and working conditions.
• Race, class and varying skill levels all
limited the political influence of workers.
Newly landed European immigrant families on
the dock at Ellis Island in New York Harbor,
1900.
The New Global Immigration
• The early twentieth century saw a
tremendous growth in the size of the
working class.
 Sixty percent of the industrial labor force were
foreign-born, mostly unskilled workers from
southern and eastern Europe.
The New Global Immigration
(cont'd)
• Driven out by the collapse of peasant
agriculture and persecution, the new
immigrants depended on family and
friends to help them get situated.
The New Global Immigration
(cont’d)
• Many worked long hours for pay that failed
to keep them out of poverty.
The New Global Immigration
(cont'd)
• Non-European immigrants included:
 French-Canadians who worked in New
England textile mills,
 Mexicans who came as seasonal farm
workers—a large number stayed and
established communities throughout the
southwest,
 The Japanese, who worked in West coast
fishing and truck farming.
MAP 21.1 Immigration to the United States,
1901–1920
Urban Ghettos
• In large cities, immigrants established
communities in densely packed ghettos.
Urban Ghettos (cont'd)
• New York City became the center of
Jewish immigrants, many of whom worked
at piece-rates in the ready-to-wear
garment industry.
 Garment work was highly seasonal.
 Working conditions were generally cramped,
dirty, and dark.
 Workers worked long hours to produce the
quota for each day.
Urban Ghettos (cont’d)
• A general strike by 20,000 workers
contributed to the growth of the
International Ladies Garment Workers
Union.
• The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New
York led to laws to protect workers.
New York City police set up this makeshift
morgue to help identify victims of the disastrous
Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, March 25,
1911.
Company Towns
• Some industrial workers lived in
communities often dominated by a single
corporation that owned the houses, the
stores, and regulated life.
Company Towns (cont'd)
• Ethnic groups maintained many cultural
traditions.
 Immigrants resisted the discipline of the
factory by taking time off for cultural activities,
spreading out the work by slowing down, and
becoming increasingly involved in unions.
Company Towns (cont’d)
• Factories were dangerous places with high
accident and death rates.
• In western mining communities, corporate
power and violent labor conflict occurred.
• The 1914 Ludlow Massacre shocked
Americans into awareness of labor issues.
Competing Visions of Unionism: the
AFL
• The leading labor organization at the turn
of the century was the American
Federation of Labor (AFL) led by Samuel
Gompers.
• With the exception of the mineworkers,
most AFL unions were not interested in
organizing unskilled immigrants, women,
or African Americans.
The AFL (cont’d)
• The AFL was on the defensive from “open
shop” campaigns promoted by trade
associations and court injunctions that
barred picketing and boycotting.
• AFL activism led industrialists to counter
with the 1903 National Association of
Manufacturers.
Competing Visions of Unionism: the
IWW
• Radical workers, especially from the
mining camps in the West, organized the
Industrial Workers of the World.
• Led by “Big Bill” Haywood, the IWW tried
to organize the lowest paid workers.
 Haywood boasted that the IWW excluded no
one from their ranks.
The IWW (cont’d)
• The IWW used direct action, including
strikes.
• The IWW gained temporary power in the
East but remained a force in the West.
• During WW I, the IWW was crushed in
response to its radicalism and anti-war
stance.
Rebels in Bohemia
• A small community of middle-class artists
and intellectuals in Greenwich Village,
New York City, called “Village bohemians”
supported the IWW and other radical
causes.
• The term “bohemian” referred to anyone
who had artistic or intellectual aspirations
and who lived with disregard for
conventional rules of behavior.
Rebels in Bohemia (cont'd)
• The Village bohemia died out with the
onset of World War I, but left a lasting
cultural influence.
Women’s Movements and
Black Activism
Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger
Women’s Movements and Black
Activism
• Working through segregated clubs and
associations, African American women
fought racism along with many other
issues confronted by middle class white
Progressives.
• The leaders and organizations produced in
the Progressive era would have a long
range impact on race relations.
The New Women
• Middle-class women’s lives were changing
rapidly.
 More were receiving an education and joined
various clubs involved in civic activities.
• By 1900, the General Federation of
Women’s Clubs had 150,000 members.
• Women became involved in numerous
reforms, from seeking child labor laws to
consumer safety and sanitation.
Birth Control
• Margaret Sanger promoted wider access
to contraceptives and opened a birth
control clinic in a working-class
neighborhood in Brooklyn.
• The new birth control advocates embraced
contraception as a means for sexual
freedom for middle class women.
Birth Control (cont'd)
• Despite resistance from male doctors and
local governments, the movement spread
rapidly around the country.
Racism and Accommodation
• While 4/5 of American blacks lived in the
rural South, even in urban area they faced
many barriers.
• The turn of the century was an intensely
racist era.
 Segregation was institutionalized throughout
the South.
 Violent attacks on blacks were supported by
vicious characterizations in popular culture.
Racism and Accommodation (cont’d)
• Racism was based on the assumed innate
inferiority of blacks.
 Racial Darwinism: policy of neglect and
repression
 Southern progressives pushed for
paternalistic uplift.
Racism and Accommodation (cont'd)
• Booker T. Washington
 Washington advocated black accommodation
and urged that blacks focus on self-reliance
and economic improvement.
In July 1905, a group of African American
leaders met in Niagara Falls, Ontario, to
protest legal segregation and the denial of
civil rights to the nation’s black population.
Racial Justice, the NAACP,
and Black Women’s Activism
• W. E. B. Du Bois criticized Booker T.
Washington for accepting “the alleged
inferiority of the Negro.”
 Du Bois supported programs that sought to
attack segregation, the right to vote, and
secure city equality.
Racial Justice, the NAACP,
and Black Women’s Activism (cont'd)
• He helped found the interracial
organization known as the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People.
Black Women Activism (cont’d)
• Black women became a powerful force for
social services, with 50,000 members of
black women’s clubs by 1914.
 They organized settlement houses,
campaigned for suffrage, temperance, and
advances in public health.
National Progressivism
1909 cartoon by Clifton Berryman depicts
President Theodore Roosevelt
National Progressivism
• The Progressive impulse began at the
local and state levels, and, with leaders
like La Follette, Johnson, Roosevelt and
Wilson, moved to the national level.
• Both political parties were reshaped by
Progressivism.
Theodore Roosevelt and
Presidential Activism
• A colorful, shrewd and creative populist,
Roosevelt preached the virtue of the
“strenuous life” and urged the well-to-do to
serve the less fortunate.
• Roosevelt viewed the presidency as a
“bully pulpit” to promote progressive
reforms.
 He pressured mine owners into a settlement
that won better pay for miners.
Trust-busting and Regulation
• Roosevelt favored passing regulatory laws
including:
 Hepburn Act: strengthened the Interstate
Commerce Commission
 Pure Food and Drug Act
 Meat Inspection Act
• “Trustbuster”: justice department to
prosecute monopolies
Trust-busting and Regulation
(cont’d)
• Growing public concern with the rapid
business consolidations taking place in the
American economy.
 TR considered government regulation the
best way to deal with big business.
Trust-busting and Regulation
(cont'd)
• Big businesses support
 Stricter regulations would push smaller
businesses out of the market.
 Meatpackers could compete better in the
European market with the federal stamp of
approval required under the Meat Inspection
Act.
The Birth of Environmentalism
• Roosevelt believed that the conservation
of forest and water resources was a
national problem of vital import.
• Along with Forestry Department head
Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt withdrew
millions of acres of public land from
development
The Birth of Environmentalism
(cont’d)
• Roosevelt supported the conservation
efforts of John Muir, the founder of the
modern environmental movement.
• By the 1910s, the government had taken a
major role in western water resource
management and development.
This political cartoon, drawn by Charles
Jay Budd, appeared on the cover of
Harper’s Weekly, September 28, 1912.
The Election of 1912: A Four-Way
Race
• Roosevelt’s handpicked successor carried
on many of Roosevelt’s policies, but
disappointed his supporters over the tariff,
anti-trust cases and conservation policies.
• Returning from abroad in 1910,Roosevelt
challenged Taft for Republican leadership.
The Election of 1912: A Four-Way
Race (cont'd)
• Unable to win the party nomination,
Roosevelt ran as a “Bull Moose”
Progressive promoting an activist,
reforming New Nationalism.
MAP 21.2 The Election of 1912
The Election of 1912: A Four-Way
Race
• Reforming New Jersey Governor
Woodrow Wilson won the Democratic
nomination.
• Woodrow Wilson promoted his New
Freedom platform crafted by Louis
Brandeis.
• The Socialist Party, which had rapidly
grown in strength, nominated Eugene
Debs, who got 6% of the vote.
The Election of 1912: A Four-Way
Race (cont'd)
• Wilson won 42 percent of the vote, enough
to defeat the divided Republicans and
sweep the Electoral College.
Woodrow Wilson’s First Term
• Wilson followed Roosevelt’s lead in
promoting an activist government by:
 lowering tariffs,
 pushing through a graduated income tax,
 restructuring the banking and currency
system under the Federal Reserve Act.
 expanding the nation’s anti-trust authority and
establishing the Federal Trade Commission.
Woodrow Wilson’s First Term
(cont’d)
• Although he supported workman’s
compensation and child labor laws, on
other social reforms Wilson proved more
cautious.
• More troubling, the Southerner Wilson
ordered segregation of the federal work
force.
Conclusion
Conclusion
• From the Henry Street Settlement House
in 1895 to state and federal legislation by
1916, the Progressive Movement played a
powerful role in politics and society.
• The movement was weakened by internal
divisions and infighting, and marred by
blindness to the issue of racism.
Conclusion (cont’d)
• While politics became more democratic in
form, voter turnout dropped and public and
business interest groups stepped up
lobbying to influence government.
• Undermined by World War I, the
movement nonetheless left a lasting
legacy
Chronology