• progressivism means imposing order on the growing chaos and to curb industrial societies glaring injustices
  • optimistic vision progressives believed in progress they believe that society was capable of improvement they believe that society was close to perfection and it had the opportunity to be perfect it wasn’t destiny
  • natural laws of the marketplace and the doctrines of the laissez-faire and social Darwinism were not enough to create order and stability that society needed
  • nation’s problems had to be tackled by progressives and that the government should take role in the process
  • central promises of progressives anti-monopoly, social cohesion, belief in organization and efficiency
  • anti-monopoly the fear of concentrated power was the urge to limit and dispersed authority and wealth
  • social cohesion the belief that individuals are not autonomous but part of a great web of social relationships and the welfare of any single person is dependent on the welfare of society as a whole
  • belief in organization and efficiency social order was a result of intelligent social organization and rational procedures for guiding social and economic life
  • crusading journalists muckrakers first to articulate new spirit of reform most other targets were railroads which muckrakers considered too powerful and corrupt
  • Ida Tarbell did a study of standard oil trust corporate power and corruption
  • most influential muckraker Lincoln Steffens a reporter for McClure magazine his portraits of machine government and boss rule
  • muckrakers had a sense of justice and outrage combined with humanitarian sense of social responsibility pursuit of social justice
  • Salvation Army began in England spread to the US Christian social welfare organization offered material and spiritual aid to the urban poor
  • many ministers priests and rabbis went to the cities to preach
  • religion and reform help bring progressive ideas a powerful oral and polls and concern for the plight of the poor

Club Women

  • women’s club were common in 1880s and 1890s cultural organization provided middle and upper-class women with an outlet for their intellectual energy
  • 500 clubs hundred thousand members in 1892 x 1917 there was over 1 million members
  • by 1900 they wanted to be involved with social reform they started out planning trees and supporting schools building hospitals and parks but then they started to support child labor laws workers compensation. Food and drug legislation occupational safety Indian policy
  • in 1914 they started women’s suffrage many club members were from wealthy families some organizations had a lot of money at their disposable
  • Black women sometimes joined white clubs and also had clubs of their own
  • independent national Association of colored women crusaded against lynching wanted to make lynching of federal crime
  • 1898 women and economics book by Charlotte Gilman said definition of sexual roles was obsolete openly challenge the existing male-dominated order
  • the women’s clubs changed the way laws regulated child labor, inspection of workplaces, regulation the food and drug industry, urban housing, and persuaded women to join unions

 

woman suffrage

  • largest single reform movement of the progressive era fight for woman suffrage attracted support from men and women women wanted basic clinical rights
  • women argued natural rights women deserve the same rights as men including the right to vote in the 1890s the role as mother wife sister daughter was smaller than the larger role of being part of society
  • argument challenge the views of men who believe society required a distinctive female world where women would serve first as wives and mothers first didn’t want to change the social order
  • anti-suffrage organizations and political crusades talked about divorce promiscuity and neglect of children and they Down the suffrage movement but the reference
  • national American woman suffrage Association grew from 13,000 in 1893 to 2,000,000 in 1917 widely admired women like Jane Adams gave respectability to the cause
  • the cause also gain strength because they said suffrage is safer because women had special experiences as mothers and wives to bring to public life
  • some suffrage advocate said women had the right to vote war would become a thing of the past because women would through their maternal instincts and their calming peaceful influence stopped the belligerents of men
  • World War I gave the final push to the movement for suffrage
  • suffrage sometimes promised to be radical to reshape the role of women and reform social order among working-class immigrant and black women in particular
  • big triumphs of the suffrage movement began in 1910 Washington became the first state in 14 years to extend the vote to women, California gave the right to vote to women in 1911, four other Western states in 1912
  • Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi in 1913, 1917 New York and Michigan gave women the right to vote, by 19 1939 states granted the women the right to vote, in 1920 suffered just one ratification of the 19th amendment
  • 1920 19th amendment women’s right to vote
  • some people want a clear legal protection for women’s rights and put have it discrimination on the basis of sex but that would come for a while

Crusades for order and reform

  • reformers put their energies to the political process crusaded for moral issues
  • their campaigns to eliminate alcohol, to stop prostitution, to regulate divorce, to restrict immigration, to curb the power of monopolies, and for woman suffrage
  • the temperance crusade wanted to eliminate alcohol to restore order to society
  • alcohol took away wages workers spent hours in bars drunk violence murder in urban families women saw alcohol is a source of some of their greatest problems of abuse and irresponsible male behavior
  • temperance is been a major movement before the Civil War many with strong religious ideas
  • by 1916 19 states passed prohibition laws but the consumption of alcohol was actually increasing
  • World War I
  • Congress made an amendment ratified by every state except for Connecticut and Rhode Island with large populations of Catholic immigrants opposed prohibition 18th amendment became law January 1920

Immigration Restriction

  • growing immigrant population have created social problems
  • some people thought helping new residence adapt to American society was the best approach others said assimilation had failed the only solution was to limit the flow of new immigrants
  • people argued the introduction of immigrants into American society was diluting the. He of the nation’s racial stock
  • the science of you genetics spread the belief that human inequalities were hereditary and a immigration was contributing to the mold occasion of unfit an expert chaired by Sen. William Billingham of Vermont had big reports filled with statistics saying Southern and Eastern Europeans said they weren’t as good as the old immigrants and they should be restricted
  • nativist supported by some leading national progressives Theodore Roosevelt Sen. Lodge and other powerful who saw immigration is a source cheaper labor immigrants and immigrant
  • employers wanted in Gratian because they needed cheap labor
  • World War I locked immigration temporarily