Progressivism Reading
Industrialization, immigration, and urban expansion were the major elements in the dramatic growth that the United States experienced during the last quarter of the 19th century. Accompanying this growth were both old and new concerns and problems about the lives of many Americans. (Growth and associated problems are covered in Chapters 17, 18, and 19.) By the turn of the century, a reform movement had developed that included a wide range of groups and individuals with a common desire to improve life in the industrial age. Their ideas and work became known as progressivism, because they wanted to build on the existing society, making moderate political changes and social improve- ments through government action. Most Progressives were not revolutionaries but shared the goals of limiting the power of big business, improving democracy for the people, and strengthening social justice. This chapter will examine the origins, efforts, and accomplishments of the Progressive era. It should be recognized that while the Progressives did not cure all of America’s problems, they improved the quality of life, provided a larger role for the people in their democracy, and established a precedent for a more active role for the federal government.
Origins of Progressivism
Although the Progressive movement had its origins in the state reforms of the early 1890s, it acquired national momentum only with the dawn of a new century and the unexpected swearing into office of a young president, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1901. So enthusiastic did middle-class Americans be- come about the need to adjust to changing times that their reformist impulse gave a name to an era: the Progressive era. It lasted through the Republican presidencies of Roosevelt (1901–1909) and William Howard Taft (1909–1913), and the first term of the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson (1913–1917). U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 diverted public attention away from domestic issues and brought the era to an end—but not before major regulatory laws had been enacted by Congress and various state legislatures.
Attitudes and Motives
Entering a new century, most Americans were well aware of how their country was rapidly changing. A once relatively homogeneous, rural society of independent farmers was becoming an industrialized nation of mixed ethnicity centered in the growing cities. For decades, middle-class Americans had been alarmed by the rising power of big business, the increasing gap between rich and poor, the violent conflict between labor and capital, and the dominance of corrupt political machines in the cities. Most disturbing to minorities were the racist, Jim Crow laws in the South that relegated African Americans to the status of second-class citizens. Crusaders for women’s suffrage added their voices to the call for political reform and greater democracy.
The groups participating in the Progressive movement were extremely diverse. There were Protestant church leaders who championed one set of reforms, African Americans proposing other reforms, union leaders seeking public support for their goals, and feminists lobbying their state legislatures for votes for women. Loosely linking their reform efforts under a single label, Progressive, was a belief that changes in society were badly needed and that government was the proper agency for correcting social and economic ills.
Who were the Progressives? Unlike the Populists of the 1890s, whose strength came from rural America, citizens active in the Progressive movement were chiefly middle-class residents of U.S. cities. The urban middle class had steadily grown in the final decades of the 19th century. In addition to doctors, lawyers, ministers, and storekeepers (the heart of the middle class in an earlier era), there were now thousands of white-collar office workers and middle managers employed in banks, manufacturing firms, and other businesses. Mem- bers of this business and professional middle class took their civic responsibili- ties seriously. They were disturbed about what might happen to American democracy from such conditions as unrest among the poor, excesses of the rich, corruption in government, and an apparent decline in morality. A missionary spirit inspired certain aspects of middle-class progressivism.
Protestant churches preached against vice and taught a code of social responsibil- ity, which included caring for the poor and the less fortunate and insisting on honesty in public life. The Social Gospel popularized by Walter Rauschenbusch (see Chapter 18) was an important element in Protestant Christians’ response to the problem of urban poverty.
Without strong leadership, the diverse forces of reform could not have overcome conservatives’ resistance to change. Fortunately for the Progressives, a number of dedicated and able leaders entered politics at the turn of the century to challenge the status quo. Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette in the Republican party and William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson in the Democratic party demonstrated a vigorous style of political leadership that had been sorely lacking from national politics during the Gilded Age.
What was the Progressives’ philosophy? The reform impulse was hardly new. In fact, many historians see progressivism as just one more phase in a reform tradition going back to the Jeffersonians in the early 1800s, the Jacksoni- ans in the 1830s, and the Populists in the 1890s. Without doubt, the Progres- sives—like American reformers before them—were committed to democratic values and shared in the belief that honest government and just laws could improve the human condition.
A revolution in thinking occurred at the same time as the Industrial Revolution. Charles Darwin, in his Origin of Species, presented the concept of evolu- tion, which had an impact well beyond simply justifying the accumulation of wealth (see Chapter 17). The way people thought and reasoned was challenged, and the prevailing philosophy of romantic transcendentalism in America gave way to a balanced pragmatism. In the early 20th century, William James and John Dewey were two leading American advocates of this new philosophy. They defined “truth” in a way that many Progressives found appealing. James and Dewey argued that the “good” and the “true” could not be known in the abstract as fixed and changeless ideals. Rather, they said, people should take a pragmatic, or practical, approach to morals, ideals, and knowledge. They should experiment with ideas and laws and test them in action until they found something that seemed to work well for the better ordering of society.
Progressive thinkers adopted the new philosophy of pragmatism because it enabled them to challenge fixed notions that stood in the way of reform. For example, they rejected laissez-faire theory as impractical. The old standard of rugged individualism no longer seemed viable in a modern society dominated by impersonal corporations.
Scientific management. Another idea that gained widespread acceptance among Progressives came from the practical studies of Frederick W. Taylor. By using a stopwatch to time the output of factory workers, Taylor discovered ways of organizing people in the most efficient manner—the scientific manage- ment system. Many Progressives believed that government too could be made more efficient if placed in the hands of experts and scientific managers. They objected to the corruption of political bosses partly because it was antidemocratic and partly because it was an inefficient way to run things.
The Muckrakers
Before the public could be roused to action, it first had to be well informed about the “dirty” realities of party politics and the scandalous conditions in factories and slums. Newspaper and magazine publishers found that their mid- dle-class readers loved to read about underhanded schemes in politics. There- fore, in-depth, investigative stories came to characterize much of the journalistic reporting of the era. Writers specializing in such stories were referred to as muckrakers by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Origins. One of the earliest muckrakers was Chicago reporter Henry Demarest Lloyd, who in 1881 wrote a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly attacking the practices of the Standard Oil Company and the railroads. Published in book form in 1894, Lloyd’s Wealth Against Commonwealth fully exposed the corruption and greed of the oil monopoly but failed to suggest how to control it.
Magazines. An Irish immigrant, Samuel Sidney McClure, founded Mc- Clure’s Magazine in 1893, which became a major success by running a series of muckraking articles by Lincoln Steffens (Tweed Days in St. Louis, 1902) and another series by Ida Tarbell (The History of the Standard Oil Company, also in 1902). Combining careful research with sensationalism, these articles set a standard for the deluge of muckraking that followed. Popular 10- and 15- cent magazines such as McClure’s, Collier’s, and Cosmopolitan competed fiercely to outdo their rivals with shocking expose´s of political and eco- nomic corruption.
Books. The most popular series of muckraking articles were usually col- lected and published as best-selling books. Articles on tenement life by Jacob Riis, one of the first photojournalists, were published as How the Other Half Lives (1890). Lincoln Steffens’ The Shame of the Cities (1904) also caused a sensation by describing in detail the corrupt deals that characterized big-city politics from Philadelphia to Minneapolis.
Many of the muckraking books were novels. Two of Theodore Dreiser’s novels, The Financier and The Titan, portrayed the avarice and ruthlessness of an industrialist. Fictional accounts such as Frank Norris’ The Octopus (on the tyrannical power of railroad companies) and The Pit (grain speculation) were more effective than many journalistic accounts in stirring up public demands for government regulations.
Decline of muckraking. The popularity of muckraking books and maga- zine articles began to decline after 1910 for several reasons. First, writers found it more and more difficult to top the sensationalism of the last story. Second, publishers were expanding and faced economic pressures from banks and advertisers to tone down their treatment of business. Third, by 1910 corporations were becoming more aware of their public image and developing a new spe- cialty: the field of public relations. Nevertheless, muckraking had a lasting effect on the Progressive era. It exposed inequities, educated the public about corruption in high places, and prepared the way for corrective action.
Political Reforms in Cities and States
The cornerstone of Progressive ideology was faith in democracy. Progres- sives believed that, given a chance, the majority of voters would elect honest officials instead of the corrupt officials handpicked by boss-dominated politi- cal machines.
Voter Participation
Progressives advocated a number of methods for increasing the participa- tion of the average citizen in political decision-making.
Australian, or secret, ballot. Political parties could manipulate and intim- idate voters by printing lists (or “tickets”) of party candidates and watching voters drop them into the ballot box on election day. In 1888, Massachusetts was the first state to adopt a system successfully tried in Australia of issuing ballots printed by the state and requiring voters to mark their choices secretly within the privacy of a curtained booth. By 1910, voting in all states was done this way.
Direct primaries. In the late 19th century, it was the common practice of Republicans and Democrats to nominate candidates for state and federal offices in state conventions dominated by party bosses. In 1903, the Progressive governor of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette, introduced his state to a new system for bypassing politicians and placing the nominating process directly in the hands of the voters. This method for nominating party candidates by majority vote was known as the direct primary. By 1915, some form of the direct primary was used in every state. The system’s effectiveness in overthrowing boss rule was limited, as politicians devised ways of confusing the voters and splitting the antimachine vote. Some southern states even used the primary system to exclude African Americans from voting.
Direct election of U.S. senators. Before the Progressive era, U.S. senators had been chosen not by the people but by majority vote of the state legislatures. Progressives believed this was a principal reason that the Senate had become a millionaires’ club dominated by big business. Nevada in 1899 was the first state to give the voters the opportunity to elect U.S. senators directly. By 1912, a total of 30 states had adopted this Progressive reform, and in 1913, adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment required that all U.S. senators be elected by popular vote.
Less successful were the Progressives’ efforts to reform the state legislatures, which largely remained under the control of political bosses and machines.
Initiative, referendum, and recall. If politicians in the state legislatures balked at obeying the “will of the people,” then Progressives proposed two methods for forcing them to act. Amendments to state constitutions offered voters (1) the initiative—a method by which voters could compel the legislature to consider a bill and (2) the referendum—a method that allowed citizens to vote on proposed laws printed on their ballots.
A third Progressive measure, the recall, enabled voters to remove a corrupt or unsatisfactory politician from office by majority vote before that official’s term had expired. Between 1889, when South Dakota adopted the initiative and referendum, and 1918 (the end of World War I), a total of 20 states—most of them west of the Mississippi—offered voters the initiative and the referendum, while 11 states offered the recall.
Social welfare. Urban life in the Progressive era was improved not only by political reformers but also by the efforts of settlement house workers (see Chapter 18) and other civic-minded volunteers. Jane Addams, Frances Kelly, and other leaders of the social justice movement found that they needed political support in the state legislatures for meeting the needs of immigrants and the working class. They lobbied vigorously and with considerable success for better schools, juvenile courts, liberalized divorce laws, and safety regulations for tenements and factories. Believing that criminals could learn to become effective citizens, reformers fought for such measures as a system of parole, separate reformatories for juveniles, and limits on the death penalty.
Municipal Reform
City bosses and their corrupt alliance with local businesses (trolley lines and utility companies, for example) were the first target of Progressive leaders. In Toledo, Ohio, in 1897, a self-made millionaire with strong memories of his origins as a workingman became the Republican mayor. Adopting “golden rule” as both his policy and his middle name, Mayor Samuel M. “Golden Rule” Jones delighted Toledo’s citizens by introducing a comprehensive program of municipal reform, including free kindergartens, night schools, and public playgrounds. Another Ohioan, Tom L. Johnson, devoted himself to the cause of tax reform and three-cent trolley fares for the people of Cleveland. As Cleveland’s mayor from 1901–1909, Johnson fought valiantly—but without success—for public ownership and operation of the city’s public utilities and services (water, electricity, and trolleys).
Controlling public utilities. Reform leaders arose in other cities through- out the nation seeking to break the power of the city bosses and take utilities out of the hands of private companies. By 1915 fully two-thirds of the nation’s cities owned their own water systems. As a result of the Progressives’ efforts, many cities also came to own and operate gas lines, electric power plants, and urban transportation systems.
Commissions and city managers. New types of municipal government were another Progressive innovation. In 1900, Galveston, Texas, was the first city to adopt a commission plan of government, in which voters elected the heads of city departments (fire, police, and sanitation), not just the mayor. Ultimately proving itself more effective than the commission plan was a system first tried in Dayton, Ohio, in 1913, in which an expert manager was hired by an elected city council to direct the work of the various departments of city government. By 1923, more than 300 cities had adopted the manager-council plan of municipal government.
State Reform
At the state level, reform governors battled corporate interests and champi- oned such measures as the initiative, the referendum, and the direct primary to give the common people control of their own government. In New York, Charles Evans Hughes battled fraudulent insurance companies. In California, Hiram Johnson successfully fought against the economic and political power of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In Wisconsin, Robert La Follette established a strong personal following as the governor (1900–1904) who won passage of the “Wisconsin Idea”—a series of Progressive measures that included a direct primary law, tax reform, and regulation of railroad rates.
Temperance and prohibition. Whether or not to shut down saloons and prohibit the drinking of alcohol was one issue over which the champions of reform were sharply divided. While urban Progressives recognized that saloons were often the neighborhood headquarters of political machines, they generally had little sympathy for the temperance movement. Rural reformers, on the other hand, thought they could clean up morals and politics in one stroke by abolishing liquor. The drys (prohibitionists) were determined and well orga- nized. By 1915, they had persuaded the legislatures of two-thirds of the states to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Political Reform in the Nation
While Progressive governors and mayors were battling conservative forces in the state houses and city halls, three presidents—Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson—sought broad reforms and regulations at the national level.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal
Following President McKinley’s assassination in September 1901, Theo- dore Roosevelt went to the White House at the age of 42, the youngest president in U.S. history and also the most athletic. He was unusual not simply because of his age and vigor but also because he believed that the president should do much more than lead the executive departments. He thought it was the presi- dent’s job to set the legislative agenda for Congress as well. Thus, by the accident of McKinley’s death, the Progressive movement suddenly shot into high gear under the dynamic leadership of an activist, reform-minded president.
“Square Deal” for labor. Presidents in the 19th century had consistently taken the side of business in its conflicts with labor—Hayes in the railroad strike of 1877, Cleveland in the Pullman strike of 1894. Roosevelt, however, in the first economic crisis of his presidency, demonstrated that he favored neither business nor labor but insisted on a Square Deal for both. The crisis involved a strike of anthracite coal miners through much of 1902. If the strike continued, many Americans feared that—without coal—they would freeze to death when winter came. Roosevelt took the unusual step of trying to mediate the labor dispute by calling a union leader and coal mine owners to the White House. The mine owners’ stubborn refusal to compromise angered the president. To ensure the delivery of coal to consumers, he threatened to take over the mines with federal troops. The owners finally agreed to accept the findings of a special commission, which granted a 10 percent wage increase and a nine- hour day to the miners (but did not grant union recognition).
Voters overwhelmingly approved Roosevelt and his Square Deal by elect- ing him by a landslide in 1904.
Trust-busting. Roosevelt further increased his popularity by being the first president since the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to enforce that poorly written law. The trust that he most wanted to bust was a combination of railroads known as the Northern Securities Company. Reversing its position in earlier cases, the Supreme Court in 1904 upheld Roosevelt’s action in breaking up the railroad monopoly. Roosevelt later directed his attorney general to take antitrust action against Standard Oil and more than 40 other large corporations. Roosevelt did make a distinction between breaking up “bad trusts,” which harmed the public and stifled competition, and regulating “good trusts,” which through efficiency and low prices dominated a market.
Railroad regulation. President Roosevelt also took the initiative in per- suading a Republican majority in Congress to pass two laws that significantly strengthened the regulatory powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Under the Elkins Act (1903), the ICC had greater authority to stop railroads from granting rebates to favored customers. Under the Hepburn Act (1906), the commission could fix “just and reasonable” rates for railroads.
Consumer protection. The Jungle, a muckraking book by Upton Sinclair, described in horrifying detail the conditions in the Chicago stockyards and meatpacking industry. The public outcry following the publication of Sinclair’s novel caused Congress to enact two regulatory laws in 1906:
Conservation. As a lover of the wilderness and the outdoor life, Roosevelt made an enthusiastic champion of the cause of conservation. In fact, Roosevelt’s most original and lasting contribution in domestic policy may have been his efforts to protect the nation’s natural resources. Three actions stood out as particularly important.
Taft’s Presidency
The good-natured William Howard Taft had served in Roosevelt’s cabinet as secretary of war. Honoring the two-term tradition, Roosevelt refused to seek reelection and picked Taft to be his successor. The Republican party readily endorsed Taft as its nominee for president in 1908 and, as expected, defeated for a third time the Democrats’ campaigner, William Jennings Bryan.
More trust-busting and conservation. Taft continued Roosevelt’s Pro- gressive policies. As a trustbuster, Taft ordered the prosecution of almost twice the number of antitrust cases as his predecessor. Among these cases was one against U.S. Steel, which included a merger approved by then President Theo- dore Roosevelt. An angry Roosevelt viewed Taft’s action as a personal attack on his integrity. As a conservationist, Taft established the Bureau of Mines, added large tracts in the Appalachians to the national forest reserves, and set aside federal oil lands (the first president to do so).
Two other Progressive measures were at least equal in importance to legislation enacted under Roosevelt. The Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to suspend new railroad rates and oversee telephone, telegraph, and cable companies. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified by the states in 1913, authorized the U.S government to collect an income tax. (This reform was originally proposed by the Populists in their 1892 platform.) Progressives heartily approved the new tax because, at first, it applied only to the very wealthy.
Split in the Republican party. Progressives in the Republican party were unimpressed with Taft’s achievements. In fact, they became so disenchanted with his leadership that they accused him of betraying their cause and joining the conservative wing of the party. These were their reasons:
Rise of the Socialist Party
A third party developed in the first decade of the 1900s that was dedicated to the welfare of the working class. Originally called the Socialist Labor party in 1897, it changed its name in 1901 to the Socialist Party of America. The Socialist platform called for more radical reforms than the Progressives favored: public ownership of the railroads, utilities, and even of major industries such as oil and steel.
Eugene V. Debs. One of the founders of the Socialist party, Eugene Debs, was the party’s candidate for president in five elections—the first in 1900, the last in 1920. A former railway union leader who adopted socialism while jailed for the Pullman strike, Debs was an outspoken critic of business and a champion of labor.
Influence. On such issues as workers’ compensation and minimum wage laws, Progressives and some Socialists joined forces. For the most part, however, Progressives wanted to distance themselves from the ideas of Socialists, since the majority of voters favored only mild reforms, not radical causes. Eventually, however, some Socialist ideas were accepted: public ownership of utilities, the eight-hour workday, and pensions for employees.
The party reached its peak in the presidential election of 1912 when Debs received over 900,000 votes—6 percent of the total.
The Election of 1912
Reform efforts dominated a campaign that involved four notable presiden- tial candidates.
Candidates. President Taft was renominated by the Republicans after his supporters excluded Theodore Roosevelt’s delegates from the party’s conven- tion. Progressive Republicans then formed a new party and nominated Theodore Roosevelt. (Roosevelt’s claim that he was as strong as a bull moose gave the new Progressive party its nickname: the Bull Moose party.) After lengthy balloting, Democrats united behind Woodrow Wilson, a newcomer who had first been elected to office in 1910 as governor of New Jersey. The Socialist party, gaining strength, again nominated Eugene V. Debs.
Campaign. With Taft enjoying little popularity and Debs considered too radical, the election came down to a battle between Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt called for a New Nationalism, with more govern- ment regulation of business and unions, women’s suffrage, and more social welfare programs. Wilson pledged a New Freedom, which would limit both big business and big government, bring about reform by ending corruption, and revive competition by supporting small business.
Results. With the Republicans split, Wilson won easily with 435 electoral votes (Roosevelt received 88, Taft 8, and Debs none). The Democrats gained control of Congress, although Wilson was a minority president with 41 percent of the popular vote (Roosevelt got 27 percent, Taft 23 percent, and Debs 6 percent). The overwhelming support for the Progressive presidential candidates ensured that reform efforts would continue under Wilson, while the failure of the Progressive party to elect local candidates gave evidence that the new party would not last. But the idea contained in Roosevelt’s New Nationalism—of strong federal government regulations helping the people—did have a lasting influence for much of the century (see, in Chapter 24, the New Deal, and, in Chapter 28, the Great Society).
Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Program
Wilson, who grew up in Virginia during the Civil War, was only the second Democrat elected president since the war (Cleveland was the other), and the first southerner to occupy the White House since Zachary Taylor. A complex man, Wilson was idealistic, intellectual, righteous, and inflexible. Like Roosevelt, he believed that a president should actively lead Congress and, when necessary, appeal directly to the people to rally their support for his legisla- tive program.
In his inaugural address in 1913, the Democratic president pledged again his commitment to a New Freedom. To bring back conditions of free and fair competition in the economy, Wilson attacked “the triple wall of privilege”: tariffs, banking, and trusts.
Tariff reduction. Wasting no time to fulfill a campaign pledge, Wilson on the first day of his presidency called a special session of Congress to lower the tariff. Past presidents had always sent written messages to Congress, but Wilson broke this longstanding tradition by addressing Congress in person about the need for lower tariff rates to bring consumer prices down. Passage of the Underwood Tariff in 1913 substantially lowered tariffs for the first time in over 50 years. To compensate for the reduced tariff revenues, the Underwood bill included a graduated income tax rate of from 1 to 6 percent.
Banking reform. Wilson’s next major initiative concerned the banking system and the money supply. He was persuaded that the gold standard was inflexible and that banks, rather than serving the public interest, were too much influenced by stock speculators on Wall Street. The president again went directly to Congress in 1913 to propose a plan for building both stability and flexibility into the U.S. financial system. Rejecting the Republican proposal for a private national bank, he proposed a national banking system with 12 district banks supervised by a Federal Reserve Board. After months of debate, Congress finally passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1914. Ever since, Americans have purchased goods and services using the Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) issued by the federally regulated banking system.
Business regulation. Two major pieces of legislation in 1914 completed Wilson’s New Freedom program:
Other reforms. Wilson was at first opposed to any legislation that seemed to favor special interests, such as farmers’ groups and labor unions. He was finally persuaded, however, to extend his reform program to include the follow- ing Progressive measures:
In championing greater democracy for the American people, leaders of the Progressive movement thought only in terms of the white race. African Americans were, for the most part, ignored by Progressive presidents and governors. President Wilson, with a strong southern heritage and many of the racist attitudes of the times, acquiesced to the demands of southern Democrats and permitted the segregation of federal workers and buildings.
The status of African Americans had declined steadily since the days of Reconstruction. With the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), racial segregation had been the rule in the South and, unofficially, in much of the North as well. Ironically and tragically, the Progressive era coincided with years when thousands of blacks were lynched by racist mobs. Progressives did nothing about segregation and lynching for two reasons: (1) They shared in the general prejudice of their times. (2) They considered other reforms (such as lower tariffs) to be more important than antilynching laws because such reforms benefited everyone in American society, not just one group.
Of course, African-American leaders strongly disagreed and took action on their own to alleviate conditions of poverty and discrimination.
Two Approaches: Washington and Du Bois
Economic deprivation and exploitation was one problem; denial of civil rights was another. Which problem was primary was a difficult question that became the focus of a debate between two African-American leaders: Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Washington’s stress on economics. By far the most influential African American at the turn of the century was the head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Booker T. Washington. In his Atlanta Exposition speech in 1895, Washington argued that blacks’ needs for education and economic progress were of foremost importance, and that they should concentrate on learning industrial skills for better wages. Only after establishing a secure economic base, said Washington, could African Americans hope to realize their other goal of political and social equality. (See Chapter 16.)
Du Bois’ stress on civil rights. Unlike Washington, who had been born into slavery on a southern plantation, W. E. B. Du Bois was a northerner with a college education, who became a distinguished scholar and writer. In his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois criticized Booker T. Washington’s approach and demanded equal rights for African Americans. He argued that political and social rights were a prerequisite for economic independence.
Washington’s pragmatic approach to economic advancement and Du Bois’ militant demands for equal rights framed a debate in the African-American community that continued throughout much of the 20th century.
Urban Migration
At the close of the 19th century, about nine out of ten African Americans lived in the South. In the next century, this ratio steadily shifted toward the North. The migration began in earnest between 1910 and 1930 when about a million people traveled north to seek jobs in the cities. Motivating their decision to leave the South were: (1) deteriorating race relations, (2) destruction of their cotton crops by the boll weevil, and (3) job opportunities in northern factories that opened up when white workers were drafted in World War I. The Great Depression in the 1930s slowed migration, but World War II renewed it. Between 1940 and 1970, over 4 million African Americans went north. Although many succeeded in improving their economic conditions, the newcomers to northern cities also faced racial tension and discrimination.
Civil Rights Organizations
Increased racial discrimination during the Progressive era was one reason that a number of civil rights organizations were founded in the first decade of the 20th century.
Women, Suffrage, and the Progressive Movement
The Progressive era was a time of increased activism and optimism for a new generation of feminists. By 1900, the older generation of suffrage crusad- ers led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had passed the torch to younger women. Although the younger generation of men were generally more liberal than their elders, not all male Progressives enthusiastically endorsed the women’s movement. President Wilson, for example, refused to support the suffragists’ call for a national amendment until late in his presidency.
The Campaign for Women’s Suffrage
Carrie Chapman Catt, an energetic reformer from Iowa became the new president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1900. Catt argued for the vote as a broadening of democracy which would empower women, thus enabling them to more actively care for their families in an industrial society. At first, Catt continued NAWSA’s drive to win votes for women at the state level before changing strategies and seeking a suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Militant suffragists. A more militant approach to gaining the vote was adopted by some women, who took to the streets with mass pickets, parades, and hunger strikes. Their leader, Alice Paul of New Jersey, broke from NAWSA in 1916 to form the National Woman’s party. From the beginning, Paul focused on winning the support of Congress and the president for an amendment to the Constitution.
Nineteenth Amendment (1920). The dedicated efforts of women on the home front in World War I finally persuaded a majority in Congress and President Wilson to adopt a women’s suffrage amendment. Its ratification as the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 guaranteed women’s right to vote in all elections at the local, state, and national levels. Following the victory of her cause, Carrie Chapman Catt organized the League of Women Voters, a civic organization dedicated to keeping voters informed about candidates and issues.
Other Issues
Although gaining the vote received the most attention in the Progressive era, women activists also campaigned for other rights. Some progress was achieved in securing educational equality, liberalizing marriage and divorce laws, reducing discrimination in business and the professions, and recognizing women’s rights to own property.
Origins of Progressivism
Although the Progressive movement had its origins in the state reforms of the early 1890s, it acquired national momentum only with the dawn of a new century and the unexpected swearing into office of a young president, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1901. So enthusiastic did middle-class Americans be- come about the need to adjust to changing times that their reformist impulse gave a name to an era: the Progressive era. It lasted through the Republican presidencies of Roosevelt (1901–1909) and William Howard Taft (1909–1913), and the first term of the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson (1913–1917). U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 diverted public attention away from domestic issues and brought the era to an end—but not before major regulatory laws had been enacted by Congress and various state legislatures.
Attitudes and Motives
Entering a new century, most Americans were well aware of how their country was rapidly changing. A once relatively homogeneous, rural society of independent farmers was becoming an industrialized nation of mixed ethnicity centered in the growing cities. For decades, middle-class Americans had been alarmed by the rising power of big business, the increasing gap between rich and poor, the violent conflict between labor and capital, and the dominance of corrupt political machines in the cities. Most disturbing to minorities were the racist, Jim Crow laws in the South that relegated African Americans to the status of second-class citizens. Crusaders for women’s suffrage added their voices to the call for political reform and greater democracy.
The groups participating in the Progressive movement were extremely diverse. There were Protestant church leaders who championed one set of reforms, African Americans proposing other reforms, union leaders seeking public support for their goals, and feminists lobbying their state legislatures for votes for women. Loosely linking their reform efforts under a single label, Progressive, was a belief that changes in society were badly needed and that government was the proper agency for correcting social and economic ills.
Who were the Progressives? Unlike the Populists of the 1890s, whose strength came from rural America, citizens active in the Progressive movement were chiefly middle-class residents of U.S. cities. The urban middle class had steadily grown in the final decades of the 19th century. In addition to doctors, lawyers, ministers, and storekeepers (the heart of the middle class in an earlier era), there were now thousands of white-collar office workers and middle managers employed in banks, manufacturing firms, and other businesses. Mem- bers of this business and professional middle class took their civic responsibili- ties seriously. They were disturbed about what might happen to American democracy from such conditions as unrest among the poor, excesses of the rich, corruption in government, and an apparent decline in morality. A missionary spirit inspired certain aspects of middle-class progressivism.
Protestant churches preached against vice and taught a code of social responsibil- ity, which included caring for the poor and the less fortunate and insisting on honesty in public life. The Social Gospel popularized by Walter Rauschenbusch (see Chapter 18) was an important element in Protestant Christians’ response to the problem of urban poverty.
Without strong leadership, the diverse forces of reform could not have overcome conservatives’ resistance to change. Fortunately for the Progressives, a number of dedicated and able leaders entered politics at the turn of the century to challenge the status quo. Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette in the Republican party and William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson in the Democratic party demonstrated a vigorous style of political leadership that had been sorely lacking from national politics during the Gilded Age.
What was the Progressives’ philosophy? The reform impulse was hardly new. In fact, many historians see progressivism as just one more phase in a reform tradition going back to the Jeffersonians in the early 1800s, the Jacksoni- ans in the 1830s, and the Populists in the 1890s. Without doubt, the Progres- sives—like American reformers before them—were committed to democratic values and shared in the belief that honest government and just laws could improve the human condition.
A revolution in thinking occurred at the same time as the Industrial Revolution. Charles Darwin, in his Origin of Species, presented the concept of evolu- tion, which had an impact well beyond simply justifying the accumulation of wealth (see Chapter 17). The way people thought and reasoned was challenged, and the prevailing philosophy of romantic transcendentalism in America gave way to a balanced pragmatism. In the early 20th century, William James and John Dewey were two leading American advocates of this new philosophy. They defined “truth” in a way that many Progressives found appealing. James and Dewey argued that the “good” and the “true” could not be known in the abstract as fixed and changeless ideals. Rather, they said, people should take a pragmatic, or practical, approach to morals, ideals, and knowledge. They should experiment with ideas and laws and test them in action until they found something that seemed to work well for the better ordering of society.
Progressive thinkers adopted the new philosophy of pragmatism because it enabled them to challenge fixed notions that stood in the way of reform. For example, they rejected laissez-faire theory as impractical. The old standard of rugged individualism no longer seemed viable in a modern society dominated by impersonal corporations.
Scientific management. Another idea that gained widespread acceptance among Progressives came from the practical studies of Frederick W. Taylor. By using a stopwatch to time the output of factory workers, Taylor discovered ways of organizing people in the most efficient manner—the scientific manage- ment system. Many Progressives believed that government too could be made more efficient if placed in the hands of experts and scientific managers. They objected to the corruption of political bosses partly because it was antidemocratic and partly because it was an inefficient way to run things.
The Muckrakers
Before the public could be roused to action, it first had to be well informed about the “dirty” realities of party politics and the scandalous conditions in factories and slums. Newspaper and magazine publishers found that their mid- dle-class readers loved to read about underhanded schemes in politics. There- fore, in-depth, investigative stories came to characterize much of the journalistic reporting of the era. Writers specializing in such stories were referred to as muckrakers by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Origins. One of the earliest muckrakers was Chicago reporter Henry Demarest Lloyd, who in 1881 wrote a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly attacking the practices of the Standard Oil Company and the railroads. Published in book form in 1894, Lloyd’s Wealth Against Commonwealth fully exposed the corruption and greed of the oil monopoly but failed to suggest how to control it.
Magazines. An Irish immigrant, Samuel Sidney McClure, founded Mc- Clure’s Magazine in 1893, which became a major success by running a series of muckraking articles by Lincoln Steffens (Tweed Days in St. Louis, 1902) and another series by Ida Tarbell (The History of the Standard Oil Company, also in 1902). Combining careful research with sensationalism, these articles set a standard for the deluge of muckraking that followed. Popular 10- and 15- cent magazines such as McClure’s, Collier’s, and Cosmopolitan competed fiercely to outdo their rivals with shocking expose´s of political and eco- nomic corruption.
Books. The most popular series of muckraking articles were usually col- lected and published as best-selling books. Articles on tenement life by Jacob Riis, one of the first photojournalists, were published as How the Other Half Lives (1890). Lincoln Steffens’ The Shame of the Cities (1904) also caused a sensation by describing in detail the corrupt deals that characterized big-city politics from Philadelphia to Minneapolis.
Many of the muckraking books were novels. Two of Theodore Dreiser’s novels, The Financier and The Titan, portrayed the avarice and ruthlessness of an industrialist. Fictional accounts such as Frank Norris’ The Octopus (on the tyrannical power of railroad companies) and The Pit (grain speculation) were more effective than many journalistic accounts in stirring up public demands for government regulations.
Decline of muckraking. The popularity of muckraking books and maga- zine articles began to decline after 1910 for several reasons. First, writers found it more and more difficult to top the sensationalism of the last story. Second, publishers were expanding and faced economic pressures from banks and advertisers to tone down their treatment of business. Third, by 1910 corporations were becoming more aware of their public image and developing a new spe- cialty: the field of public relations. Nevertheless, muckraking had a lasting effect on the Progressive era. It exposed inequities, educated the public about corruption in high places, and prepared the way for corrective action.
Political Reforms in Cities and States
The cornerstone of Progressive ideology was faith in democracy. Progres- sives believed that, given a chance, the majority of voters would elect honest officials instead of the corrupt officials handpicked by boss-dominated politi- cal machines.
Voter Participation
Progressives advocated a number of methods for increasing the participa- tion of the average citizen in political decision-making.
Australian, or secret, ballot. Political parties could manipulate and intim- idate voters by printing lists (or “tickets”) of party candidates and watching voters drop them into the ballot box on election day. In 1888, Massachusetts was the first state to adopt a system successfully tried in Australia of issuing ballots printed by the state and requiring voters to mark their choices secretly within the privacy of a curtained booth. By 1910, voting in all states was done this way.
Direct primaries. In the late 19th century, it was the common practice of Republicans and Democrats to nominate candidates for state and federal offices in state conventions dominated by party bosses. In 1903, the Progressive governor of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette, introduced his state to a new system for bypassing politicians and placing the nominating process directly in the hands of the voters. This method for nominating party candidates by majority vote was known as the direct primary. By 1915, some form of the direct primary was used in every state. The system’s effectiveness in overthrowing boss rule was limited, as politicians devised ways of confusing the voters and splitting the antimachine vote. Some southern states even used the primary system to exclude African Americans from voting.
Direct election of U.S. senators. Before the Progressive era, U.S. senators had been chosen not by the people but by majority vote of the state legislatures. Progressives believed this was a principal reason that the Senate had become a millionaires’ club dominated by big business. Nevada in 1899 was the first state to give the voters the opportunity to elect U.S. senators directly. By 1912, a total of 30 states had adopted this Progressive reform, and in 1913, adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment required that all U.S. senators be elected by popular vote.
Less successful were the Progressives’ efforts to reform the state legislatures, which largely remained under the control of political bosses and machines.
Initiative, referendum, and recall. If politicians in the state legislatures balked at obeying the “will of the people,” then Progressives proposed two methods for forcing them to act. Amendments to state constitutions offered voters (1) the initiative—a method by which voters could compel the legislature to consider a bill and (2) the referendum—a method that allowed citizens to vote on proposed laws printed on their ballots.
A third Progressive measure, the recall, enabled voters to remove a corrupt or unsatisfactory politician from office by majority vote before that official’s term had expired. Between 1889, when South Dakota adopted the initiative and referendum, and 1918 (the end of World War I), a total of 20 states—most of them west of the Mississippi—offered voters the initiative and the referendum, while 11 states offered the recall.
Social welfare. Urban life in the Progressive era was improved not only by political reformers but also by the efforts of settlement house workers (see Chapter 18) and other civic-minded volunteers. Jane Addams, Frances Kelly, and other leaders of the social justice movement found that they needed political support in the state legislatures for meeting the needs of immigrants and the working class. They lobbied vigorously and with considerable success for better schools, juvenile courts, liberalized divorce laws, and safety regulations for tenements and factories. Believing that criminals could learn to become effective citizens, reformers fought for such measures as a system of parole, separate reformatories for juveniles, and limits on the death penalty.
Municipal Reform
City bosses and their corrupt alliance with local businesses (trolley lines and utility companies, for example) were the first target of Progressive leaders. In Toledo, Ohio, in 1897, a self-made millionaire with strong memories of his origins as a workingman became the Republican mayor. Adopting “golden rule” as both his policy and his middle name, Mayor Samuel M. “Golden Rule” Jones delighted Toledo’s citizens by introducing a comprehensive program of municipal reform, including free kindergartens, night schools, and public playgrounds. Another Ohioan, Tom L. Johnson, devoted himself to the cause of tax reform and three-cent trolley fares for the people of Cleveland. As Cleveland’s mayor from 1901–1909, Johnson fought valiantly—but without success—for public ownership and operation of the city’s public utilities and services (water, electricity, and trolleys).
Controlling public utilities. Reform leaders arose in other cities through- out the nation seeking to break the power of the city bosses and take utilities out of the hands of private companies. By 1915 fully two-thirds of the nation’s cities owned their own water systems. As a result of the Progressives’ efforts, many cities also came to own and operate gas lines, electric power plants, and urban transportation systems.
Commissions and city managers. New types of municipal government were another Progressive innovation. In 1900, Galveston, Texas, was the first city to adopt a commission plan of government, in which voters elected the heads of city departments (fire, police, and sanitation), not just the mayor. Ultimately proving itself more effective than the commission plan was a system first tried in Dayton, Ohio, in 1913, in which an expert manager was hired by an elected city council to direct the work of the various departments of city government. By 1923, more than 300 cities had adopted the manager-council plan of municipal government.
State Reform
At the state level, reform governors battled corporate interests and champi- oned such measures as the initiative, the referendum, and the direct primary to give the common people control of their own government. In New York, Charles Evans Hughes battled fraudulent insurance companies. In California, Hiram Johnson successfully fought against the economic and political power of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In Wisconsin, Robert La Follette established a strong personal following as the governor (1900–1904) who won passage of the “Wisconsin Idea”—a series of Progressive measures that included a direct primary law, tax reform, and regulation of railroad rates.
Temperance and prohibition. Whether or not to shut down saloons and prohibit the drinking of alcohol was one issue over which the champions of reform were sharply divided. While urban Progressives recognized that saloons were often the neighborhood headquarters of political machines, they generally had little sympathy for the temperance movement. Rural reformers, on the other hand, thought they could clean up morals and politics in one stroke by abolishing liquor. The drys (prohibitionists) were determined and well orga- nized. By 1915, they had persuaded the legislatures of two-thirds of the states to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Political Reform in the Nation
While Progressive governors and mayors were battling conservative forces in the state houses and city halls, three presidents—Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson—sought broad reforms and regulations at the national level.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal
Following President McKinley’s assassination in September 1901, Theo- dore Roosevelt went to the White House at the age of 42, the youngest president in U.S. history and also the most athletic. He was unusual not simply because of his age and vigor but also because he believed that the president should do much more than lead the executive departments. He thought it was the presi- dent’s job to set the legislative agenda for Congress as well. Thus, by the accident of McKinley’s death, the Progressive movement suddenly shot into high gear under the dynamic leadership of an activist, reform-minded president.
“Square Deal” for labor. Presidents in the 19th century had consistently taken the side of business in its conflicts with labor—Hayes in the railroad strike of 1877, Cleveland in the Pullman strike of 1894. Roosevelt, however, in the first economic crisis of his presidency, demonstrated that he favored neither business nor labor but insisted on a Square Deal for both. The crisis involved a strike of anthracite coal miners through much of 1902. If the strike continued, many Americans feared that—without coal—they would freeze to death when winter came. Roosevelt took the unusual step of trying to mediate the labor dispute by calling a union leader and coal mine owners to the White House. The mine owners’ stubborn refusal to compromise angered the president. To ensure the delivery of coal to consumers, he threatened to take over the mines with federal troops. The owners finally agreed to accept the findings of a special commission, which granted a 10 percent wage increase and a nine- hour day to the miners (but did not grant union recognition).
Voters overwhelmingly approved Roosevelt and his Square Deal by elect- ing him by a landslide in 1904.
Trust-busting. Roosevelt further increased his popularity by being the first president since the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to enforce that poorly written law. The trust that he most wanted to bust was a combination of railroads known as the Northern Securities Company. Reversing its position in earlier cases, the Supreme Court in 1904 upheld Roosevelt’s action in breaking up the railroad monopoly. Roosevelt later directed his attorney general to take antitrust action against Standard Oil and more than 40 other large corporations. Roosevelt did make a distinction between breaking up “bad trusts,” which harmed the public and stifled competition, and regulating “good trusts,” which through efficiency and low prices dominated a market.
Railroad regulation. President Roosevelt also took the initiative in per- suading a Republican majority in Congress to pass two laws that significantly strengthened the regulatory powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Under the Elkins Act (1903), the ICC had greater authority to stop railroads from granting rebates to favored customers. Under the Hepburn Act (1906), the commission could fix “just and reasonable” rates for railroads.
Consumer protection. The Jungle, a muckraking book by Upton Sinclair, described in horrifying detail the conditions in the Chicago stockyards and meatpacking industry. The public outcry following the publication of Sinclair’s novel caused Congress to enact two regulatory laws in 1906:
- The Pure Food and Drug Act forbade the manufacture, sale, and trans- portation of adulterated or mislabeled foods and drugs.
- The Meat Inspection Act provided that federal inspectors visit meatpacking plants to ensure that they met minimum standards of sanitation.
Conservation. As a lover of the wilderness and the outdoor life, Roosevelt made an enthusiastic champion of the cause of conservation. In fact, Roosevelt’s most original and lasting contribution in domestic policy may have been his efforts to protect the nation’s natural resources. Three actions stood out as particularly important.
- During his presidency, Roosevelt made repeated use of the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 to set aside 150 million acres of federal land as a national reserve that could not be sold to private interests.
- In 1902, Roosevelt won passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act, a law providing money from the sale of public land for irrigation projects in western states.
- In 1908, the president publicized the need for conservation by hosting a White House conference on the subject. Following this conference, a National Conservation Commission was established under Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania, whom Roosevelt had earlier appointed to be the first director of the U.S. Forest Service.
Taft’s Presidency
The good-natured William Howard Taft had served in Roosevelt’s cabinet as secretary of war. Honoring the two-term tradition, Roosevelt refused to seek reelection and picked Taft to be his successor. The Republican party readily endorsed Taft as its nominee for president in 1908 and, as expected, defeated for a third time the Democrats’ campaigner, William Jennings Bryan.
More trust-busting and conservation. Taft continued Roosevelt’s Pro- gressive policies. As a trustbuster, Taft ordered the prosecution of almost twice the number of antitrust cases as his predecessor. Among these cases was one against U.S. Steel, which included a merger approved by then President Theo- dore Roosevelt. An angry Roosevelt viewed Taft’s action as a personal attack on his integrity. As a conservationist, Taft established the Bureau of Mines, added large tracts in the Appalachians to the national forest reserves, and set aside federal oil lands (the first president to do so).
Two other Progressive measures were at least equal in importance to legislation enacted under Roosevelt. The Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to suspend new railroad rates and oversee telephone, telegraph, and cable companies. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified by the states in 1913, authorized the U.S government to collect an income tax. (This reform was originally proposed by the Populists in their 1892 platform.) Progressives heartily approved the new tax because, at first, it applied only to the very wealthy.
Split in the Republican party. Progressives in the Republican party were unimpressed with Taft’s achievements. In fact, they became so disenchanted with his leadership that they accused him of betraying their cause and joining the conservative wing of the party. These were their reasons:
- Payne-Aldrich Tariff. During his 1908 campaign, Taft had promised to lower the tariff. Instead, conservative Republicans in Congress passed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff in 1909, which raised the tariff on most imports. Taft angered Progressives in his party not only by signing the tariff bill but by making a public statement in its defense.
- Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy. The Progressives liked and respected the chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, as a dedicated conservationist. On the other hand, they distrusted Taft’s secretary of the interior, Richard Ballinger, especially after he opened public lands in Alaska for private develop- ment. In 1910, when Pinchot criticized Ballinger, Taft stood by his cabinet member and fired Pinchot for insubordination. Conservatives applauded; Pro- gressives protested.
- House Speaker Joe Cannon. Progressive Republicans became even angrier with the president when he failed to support their effort to reduce the dictatorial powers of Congress’ leading conservative, Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon.
- Midterm elections. Fighting back against his Progressive critics, Taft openly supported conservative candidates for Congress in the midterm elections of 1910. It was a grievous mistake. Progressivism was now at high tide, and Progressive Republicans from the Midwest easily defeated the candidates endorsed by Taft. After this election, the Republican party was split wide open between two opposing groups: a conservative faction loyal to Taft and a Progressive faction. The latter group of Republicans fervently hoped that their ex-president and hero, Theodore Roosevelt, would agree to become their candidate again in 1912.
Rise of the Socialist Party
A third party developed in the first decade of the 1900s that was dedicated to the welfare of the working class. Originally called the Socialist Labor party in 1897, it changed its name in 1901 to the Socialist Party of America. The Socialist platform called for more radical reforms than the Progressives favored: public ownership of the railroads, utilities, and even of major industries such as oil and steel.
Eugene V. Debs. One of the founders of the Socialist party, Eugene Debs, was the party’s candidate for president in five elections—the first in 1900, the last in 1920. A former railway union leader who adopted socialism while jailed for the Pullman strike, Debs was an outspoken critic of business and a champion of labor.
Influence. On such issues as workers’ compensation and minimum wage laws, Progressives and some Socialists joined forces. For the most part, however, Progressives wanted to distance themselves from the ideas of Socialists, since the majority of voters favored only mild reforms, not radical causes. Eventually, however, some Socialist ideas were accepted: public ownership of utilities, the eight-hour workday, and pensions for employees.
The party reached its peak in the presidential election of 1912 when Debs received over 900,000 votes—6 percent of the total.
The Election of 1912
Reform efforts dominated a campaign that involved four notable presiden- tial candidates.
Candidates. President Taft was renominated by the Republicans after his supporters excluded Theodore Roosevelt’s delegates from the party’s conven- tion. Progressive Republicans then formed a new party and nominated Theodore Roosevelt. (Roosevelt’s claim that he was as strong as a bull moose gave the new Progressive party its nickname: the Bull Moose party.) After lengthy balloting, Democrats united behind Woodrow Wilson, a newcomer who had first been elected to office in 1910 as governor of New Jersey. The Socialist party, gaining strength, again nominated Eugene V. Debs.
Campaign. With Taft enjoying little popularity and Debs considered too radical, the election came down to a battle between Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt called for a New Nationalism, with more govern- ment regulation of business and unions, women’s suffrage, and more social welfare programs. Wilson pledged a New Freedom, which would limit both big business and big government, bring about reform by ending corruption, and revive competition by supporting small business.
Results. With the Republicans split, Wilson won easily with 435 electoral votes (Roosevelt received 88, Taft 8, and Debs none). The Democrats gained control of Congress, although Wilson was a minority president with 41 percent of the popular vote (Roosevelt got 27 percent, Taft 23 percent, and Debs 6 percent). The overwhelming support for the Progressive presidential candidates ensured that reform efforts would continue under Wilson, while the failure of the Progressive party to elect local candidates gave evidence that the new party would not last. But the idea contained in Roosevelt’s New Nationalism—of strong federal government regulations helping the people—did have a lasting influence for much of the century (see, in Chapter 24, the New Deal, and, in Chapter 28, the Great Society).
Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Program
Wilson, who grew up in Virginia during the Civil War, was only the second Democrat elected president since the war (Cleveland was the other), and the first southerner to occupy the White House since Zachary Taylor. A complex man, Wilson was idealistic, intellectual, righteous, and inflexible. Like Roosevelt, he believed that a president should actively lead Congress and, when necessary, appeal directly to the people to rally their support for his legisla- tive program.
In his inaugural address in 1913, the Democratic president pledged again his commitment to a New Freedom. To bring back conditions of free and fair competition in the economy, Wilson attacked “the triple wall of privilege”: tariffs, banking, and trusts.
Tariff reduction. Wasting no time to fulfill a campaign pledge, Wilson on the first day of his presidency called a special session of Congress to lower the tariff. Past presidents had always sent written messages to Congress, but Wilson broke this longstanding tradition by addressing Congress in person about the need for lower tariff rates to bring consumer prices down. Passage of the Underwood Tariff in 1913 substantially lowered tariffs for the first time in over 50 years. To compensate for the reduced tariff revenues, the Underwood bill included a graduated income tax rate of from 1 to 6 percent.
Banking reform. Wilson’s next major initiative concerned the banking system and the money supply. He was persuaded that the gold standard was inflexible and that banks, rather than serving the public interest, were too much influenced by stock speculators on Wall Street. The president again went directly to Congress in 1913 to propose a plan for building both stability and flexibility into the U.S. financial system. Rejecting the Republican proposal for a private national bank, he proposed a national banking system with 12 district banks supervised by a Federal Reserve Board. After months of debate, Congress finally passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1914. Ever since, Americans have purchased goods and services using the Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) issued by the federally regulated banking system.
Business regulation. Two major pieces of legislation in 1914 completed Wilson’s New Freedom program:
- Clayton Antitrust Act. This act greatly strengthened the provisions in the Sherman Antitrust Act for breaking up monopolies. Most important for organized labor, the new law contained a clause exempting unions from being prosecuted as trusts.
- Federal Trade Commission. The new regulatory agency was empow- ered to investigate and take action against any “unfair trade practice” in every industry except banking and transportation.
Other reforms. Wilson was at first opposed to any legislation that seemed to favor special interests, such as farmers’ groups and labor unions. He was finally persuaded, however, to extend his reform program to include the follow- ing Progressive measures:
- Federal Farm Loan Act. In 1916, 12 regional federal farm loan banks were established to provide farm loans at low interest rates.
- Child Labor Act. This measure, long favored by settlement house workers and labor unions alike, was enacted in 1916. It prohibited the shipment in interstate commerce of products manufactured by children under 14 years old. The Supreme Court, however, found this act to be unconstitutional in the 1918 case of Hammer v. Dagenhart.
In championing greater democracy for the American people, leaders of the Progressive movement thought only in terms of the white race. African Americans were, for the most part, ignored by Progressive presidents and governors. President Wilson, with a strong southern heritage and many of the racist attitudes of the times, acquiesced to the demands of southern Democrats and permitted the segregation of federal workers and buildings.
The status of African Americans had declined steadily since the days of Reconstruction. With the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), racial segregation had been the rule in the South and, unofficially, in much of the North as well. Ironically and tragically, the Progressive era coincided with years when thousands of blacks were lynched by racist mobs. Progressives did nothing about segregation and lynching for two reasons: (1) They shared in the general prejudice of their times. (2) They considered other reforms (such as lower tariffs) to be more important than antilynching laws because such reforms benefited everyone in American society, not just one group.
Of course, African-American leaders strongly disagreed and took action on their own to alleviate conditions of poverty and discrimination.
Two Approaches: Washington and Du Bois
Economic deprivation and exploitation was one problem; denial of civil rights was another. Which problem was primary was a difficult question that became the focus of a debate between two African-American leaders: Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Washington’s stress on economics. By far the most influential African American at the turn of the century was the head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Booker T. Washington. In his Atlanta Exposition speech in 1895, Washington argued that blacks’ needs for education and economic progress were of foremost importance, and that they should concentrate on learning industrial skills for better wages. Only after establishing a secure economic base, said Washington, could African Americans hope to realize their other goal of political and social equality. (See Chapter 16.)
Du Bois’ stress on civil rights. Unlike Washington, who had been born into slavery on a southern plantation, W. E. B. Du Bois was a northerner with a college education, who became a distinguished scholar and writer. In his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois criticized Booker T. Washington’s approach and demanded equal rights for African Americans. He argued that political and social rights were a prerequisite for economic independence.
Washington’s pragmatic approach to economic advancement and Du Bois’ militant demands for equal rights framed a debate in the African-American community that continued throughout much of the 20th century.
Urban Migration
At the close of the 19th century, about nine out of ten African Americans lived in the South. In the next century, this ratio steadily shifted toward the North. The migration began in earnest between 1910 and 1930 when about a million people traveled north to seek jobs in the cities. Motivating their decision to leave the South were: (1) deteriorating race relations, (2) destruction of their cotton crops by the boll weevil, and (3) job opportunities in northern factories that opened up when white workers were drafted in World War I. The Great Depression in the 1930s slowed migration, but World War II renewed it. Between 1940 and 1970, over 4 million African Americans went north. Although many succeeded in improving their economic conditions, the newcomers to northern cities also faced racial tension and discrimination.
Civil Rights Organizations
Increased racial discrimination during the Progressive era was one reason that a number of civil rights organizations were founded in the first decade of the 20th century.
- In 1905, W. E. B. Du Bois met with a group of black intellectuals in Niagara Falls, Canada, to discuss a program of protest and action aimed at securing equal rights for blacks. They and others who later joined the group became known as the Niagara Movement.
- On Lincoln’s birthday in 1908, Du Bois, other members of the Niagara Movement, and a group of white progressives founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Their mission was no less than to abolish all forms of segregation and to increase educational opportunities for African-American children. By 1920, the NAACP was the nation’s largest civil rights organization, with over 100,000 members.
- Another organization, the National Urban League, was formed in 1911 to help those migrating from the South to northern cities. The league’s motto, “Not Alms But Opportunity,” reflected its emphasis on self- reliance and economic advancement.
Women, Suffrage, and the Progressive Movement
The Progressive era was a time of increased activism and optimism for a new generation of feminists. By 1900, the older generation of suffrage crusad- ers led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had passed the torch to younger women. Although the younger generation of men were generally more liberal than their elders, not all male Progressives enthusiastically endorsed the women’s movement. President Wilson, for example, refused to support the suffragists’ call for a national amendment until late in his presidency.
The Campaign for Women’s Suffrage
Carrie Chapman Catt, an energetic reformer from Iowa became the new president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1900. Catt argued for the vote as a broadening of democracy which would empower women, thus enabling them to more actively care for their families in an industrial society. At first, Catt continued NAWSA’s drive to win votes for women at the state level before changing strategies and seeking a suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Militant suffragists. A more militant approach to gaining the vote was adopted by some women, who took to the streets with mass pickets, parades, and hunger strikes. Their leader, Alice Paul of New Jersey, broke from NAWSA in 1916 to form the National Woman’s party. From the beginning, Paul focused on winning the support of Congress and the president for an amendment to the Constitution.
Nineteenth Amendment (1920). The dedicated efforts of women on the home front in World War I finally persuaded a majority in Congress and President Wilson to adopt a women’s suffrage amendment. Its ratification as the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 guaranteed women’s right to vote in all elections at the local, state, and national levels. Following the victory of her cause, Carrie Chapman Catt organized the League of Women Voters, a civic organization dedicated to keeping voters informed about candidates and issues.
Other Issues
Although gaining the vote received the most attention in the Progressive era, women activists also campaigned for other rights. Some progress was achieved in securing educational equality, liberalizing marriage and divorce laws, reducing discrimination in business and the professions, and recognizing women’s rights to own property.