Download Progressive Era - Miami Beach Senior High School

Standard 912.A.3.2
The Progressive Era (1890 - 1920). The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social
activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1890s to the 1920s. The main
objective of the Progressive movement was eliminating corruption in government. The movement
primarily targeted political machines and their bosses. By taking down these corrupt representatives
in office a further means of direct democracy would be established. They also sought regulation of
monopolies (Trust Busting) and corporations through antitrust laws. These antitrust laws were seen
as a way to promote equal competition for the advantage of legitimate competitors.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was an American statesman,
author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United
States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving
force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century.
He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under William McKinley, resigning after one year to
serve with the Rough Riders, where he gained national fame for courage during the Spanish–
American War, In charging up San Juan Hill in Cuba. Returning a war hero, he was elected governor
of New York in 1898. The state party leadership distrusted him, so they took the lead in moving him
to the prestigious but powerless role of vice president as McKinley's running mate in the election of
1900. Roosevelt campaigned vigorously across the country, helping McKinley's re-election in
a landslide victory based on a platform of peace, prosperity, and conservatism.
Following the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt, at age 42,
succeeded to the office, becoming the youngest United States President in history. Leading his party
and country into the Progressive Era, he championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies, promising
the average citizen fairness, breaking of trusts, regulation of railroads, and pure food and drugs.
Making conservation a top priority, he established a myriad of new national parks, forests, and
monuments intended to preserve the nation's natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on
Central America, where he began construction of the Panama Canal. He greatly expanded the
United States Navy, and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project the United States'
naval power around the globe. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the
1906 Nobel Peace Prize.
Elected in 1904 to a full term, Roosevelt continued to promote progressive policies, but many of his
efforts and much of his legislative agenda were eventually blocked in Congress. Roosevelt
successfully groomed his close friend, William Howard Taft, to succeed him in the presidency. After
leaving office, Roosevelt went on safari in Africa and toured Europe. Returning to the USA, he
became frustrated with Taft's approach as his successor. He tried but failed to win the presidential
nomination in 1912. Roosevelt founded his own party, the Progressive, so-called "Bull Moose" Party,
and called for wide-ranging progressive reforms. The split among Republicans enabled the
Democrats to win both the White House and a majority in the Congress in 1912. The Democrats in
the South had also gained power by having disenfranchised most blacks (and Republicans) from the
political system from 1890 to 1908, fatally weakening the Republican Party across the region, and
creating a Solid South dominated by their party alone. Republicans aligned with Taft nationally would
control the Republican Party for decades.
The Treaty of Portsmouth formally ended the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on
September 5, 1905[1] after negotiations lasting from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval
Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, in the United States. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was
instrumental in the negotiations, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
TRUST-BUSTING", a term that referred to President Theodore Roosevelt's policy of
prosecuting monopolies, or "trusts," that violated federal antitrust law.
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of a series of significant consumer protection
laws enacted by Congress in the 20th century and led to the creation of the Food and Drug
Administration. Its main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled
food and drug products, and it directed the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry to inspect products and refer
offenders to prosecutors. It required that active ingredients be placed on the label of a drug’s
packaging and that drugs could not fall below purity levels established by the United States
Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was an inspirational piece
that kept the public's attention on the important issue of unsanitary meat processing plants that later
led to food inspection legislation.
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) served as the 27th President of the
United States (1909–1913) and as the 10th Chief Justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only
person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor
of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt
split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate.
Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913. The 16th
Amendment changed a portion of Article I, Section 9. The Congress shall have power
to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without
apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or
enumeration.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924), better known as Woodrow
Wilson, was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th President of the United
States from 1913 to 1921.
he oversaw the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton
Antitrust Act, and the Federal Farm Loan Act. Having taken office one month after ratification of
the Sixteenth Amendment, Wilson called a special session of Congress, whose work culminated in
the Revenue Act of 1913, introducing an income tax and lowering tariffs. Through passage of
the Adamson Act, imposing an 8-hour workday for railroads, he averted a railroad strike and an
ensuing economic crisis.
The Federal Reserve Act ,enacted December 23, 1913, is an Act of Congress that created and
established the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, and
which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes (now commonly known as the U.S.
Dollar) and Federal Reserve Bank Notes as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by
President Woodrow Wilson.
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 made both substantive and procedural modifications to federal
antitrust law. Substantively, the act seeks to capture anticompetitive practices by prohibiting
particular types of conduct, not deemed in the best interest of a competitive market. It also stated
that antitrust laws could not be used against labor unions or farmers cooperatives.
The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 established the Federal Trade Commission. The Act,
signed into law by Woodrow Wilson in 1913, outlaws unfair methods of competition and outlaws
unfair acts or practices that affect commerce
The Seventeenth Amendment (Amendment XVII) to the United States Constitution established the
popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states
The term muckraker was used in the Progressive Era to characterize reform-minded American
journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt. In the USA, the modern
term is investigative journalism.
Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 6, 1944) was an American teacher, author
and journalist. She was one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries and is thought to have pioneered investigative journalism. She is best known for
her 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company. She depicted John D. Rockefeller as
crabbed, miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author who
wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well-known and
popular in the first half of the twentieth century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.
In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle, which
exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in
part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection
Act.
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement, beginning in the 1880s and peaking
around the 1920s in England and the US, with a goal of getting the rich and poor in society to live
more closely together in an interdependent community. Its main object was the establishment of
"settlement houses" in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would
live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income
neighbors. The "settlement houses" provided services such as daycare, education, and healthcare to
improve the lives of the poor in these areas
Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a pioneer
American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and
leader in women's suffrage and world peace. She created the first settlement house in the United
States, Chicago's Hull House
Women's suffrage in the United States, the legal right of women to vote in that country, was
established over the course of several decades, first in various states and localities, sometimes on a
limited basis, and then nationally in 1920.
In 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, passed a resolution in
favor of women's suffrage despite opposition from some of its organizers, who believed the idea was
too extreme. By the time of the first National Women's Rights Convention in 1850, however, suffrage
was becoming an increasingly important aspect of the movement's activities.
The first national suffrage organizations were established in 1869 when two competing organizations
were formed, one led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the other by Lucy
Stone. After years of rivalry, they merged in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA) with Anthony as its leading force.
the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920. It states, "The
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of sex."
William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights
activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois rose to national
prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who
wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta compromise, an
agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and
submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic
educational and economic opportunities. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased
political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American
intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the Talented Tenth and believed that African Americans
needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.
Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator,
author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington
was the dominant leader in the African-American community.
Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became
the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the
South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the postReconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama.
He called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge
directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South.