lOMoARcPSD|50743832

Progressive

BA (Hons.) History (University of Delhi)

Scan to open on Studocu

Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university

Downloaded by Spriha Kalita (sprihakalita555@[Link])
 lOMoARcPSD|50743832

THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT

In the history of American society and politics, “Progressivism” was a many-sided reform movement that emerged in
the final years of the nineteenth century, flourished from about 1900 to 1920, and faded away by the early 1920s. Its
greatest achievements occurred between 1910 and 1917. Progressivism reflected a growing consensus among
Americans that major changes in the late 19th century had produced imbalances in their society. Progressivism
manifested itself in everything from railroad regulation to woman suffrage to immigration control to realist art and
literature.

Progressivism at its core was much more inclined to urban sector. The main leadership was provided by the newly
emerging politicians, university professors, students and clergymen. Legions of activist women, despite lacking the
suffrage, were enormously effective. Most prominent in national politics were Theodore Roosevelt, Wiiliam Howard
Taft and Woodrow Wilson. A new leadership was provided by “Muckrakers” who were a group of writers, including
the likes of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell, during this era who tried to expose the problems that
existed in American society as a result of the rise of big business, urbanization, and immigration.

The rise of Progressivism can be attributed to several factors. Reformers were disturbed by the growth of political
corruption. They worked to destroy the invisible government of bosses and machines, impose higher standards of
honesty, and make officials more directly responsible to the electorate. They were appalled by the growth of monopoly
and by the exploitation of the farmers and the working class. The progressives believed that it was the function of the
government to ensure that the economic system promoted the general welfare.

Muckrakers -The 1890s and early 1900s witnessed a profound social and political reaction to the excesses and
corruption of the Gilded Age. Journalists and other writers began bringing social issues to the attention of the
American public. The term “muckraker” was used during the Progressive Era to characterize reform -minded
American journalists who largely wrote for popular magazines. They worked to expose social ills and corporate and
political corruption. Muckraking magazines took on corporate monopolies and crooked political machines while
raising public awareness of chronic urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, and social issues such as child labour.
The term “muckrakers” is a reference to a character in John Bunyan’s classic Pilgrim’s Progress, “the Man with the
Muck-rake,” who rejected salvation to focus on filth. The term became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt
referred to the character. The first example of muckraking, was Henry Demarest Lloyd’s denunciation of trusts in
‘Wealth Against Commonwealth’ in 1894. In 1902, McClure’s magazine published an analysis of political corruption
in St. Louis by Lincoln Steffens. The first instalment of Ida Tarbell’s ‘A History of the Standard Oil Company’ also
emerged. Soon, numerous magazines joined in on the effort to expose corruption and institute reform through
journalism. Other well-known muckrakers were Ray Stannard Baker, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Charles E. Russell,
Norman Hapgood and Mark Sullivan. By 1914, muckraking became sensational and unreliable, and therefore it lost
its audience. But in its early stages the movement was of great importance in winning popular support for
Progressivism.

The muckrakers appeared at a moment when journalism was undergoing changes in style and practice. In response
to the exaggerated facts and sensationalism of yellow journalism, objective journalism, as exemplified by The New
York Times under Adolph Ochs after 1896, reported facts with the intention of being impartial and a newspaper of
record. The growth of wire services also had contributed to the spread of the objective reporting style. In contrast
with objective reporting, muckrakers saw themselves primarily as reformers and were politically engaged. Journalists
of the previous eras were not linked to a single political, populist movement, whereas the muckrakers were
associated with Progressive reforms. Muckrakers continued some of the investigative exposures and sensational
traditions of yellow journalism, but instead wrote to change society.

Progressives like Louis D. Brandeis believed that the key to increasing industrial freedom lay in empowering workers
to participate in the decision-making process via strong unions. The labour strife of the Gilded Age continued into the
early 20th century. The membership of the American Federation of Labour increased manifold. The AFL mainly
represented the skilled industrial and craft laborers, nearly all of them white, male, and native-born. So, in 1905, a
group of unionists who rejected the AFL’s exclusionary policies formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
which included the immigrant factory-labour force, migrant agricultural workers, women, blacks, and even the
despised Chinese on the West Coast. During the Progressive era, the word “feminism” first entered the political

Downloaded by Spriha Kalita (sprihakalita555@[Link])

 lOMoARcPSD|50743832

vocabulary. Feminists’ forthright attack on traditional rules of sexual behaviour added a new dimension to the
discussion of personal freedom. “Control over one’s body” now suggested the ability to enjoy an active sexual life
without necessarily bearing children. Emma Goldman regularly included the right to birth control in her speeches and
distributed pamphlets with detailed information about various contraceptive devices. Margaret Sanger placed the
issue of birth control at the heart of the new feminism, in her column on sex education, “What Every Girl Should
Know”. The Society of American Indians was a reform organization that focused on Native Americans’ justice. It
demanded that Indians be granted full citizenship and all the constitutional rights of other Americans.

PROGRESSIVE REFORMS

Progressivism was an international movement since the world experienced similar social strains arising from rapid
industrialization and urban growth. Progressives believed that the modern era required a fundamental rethinking of
the functions of political authority. Progressives sought to reinvigorate the idea of an activist, socially conscious
government. In this light, reforms were introduced in several spheres.

State and Local Reforms - Progressives worked to reform the structure of government to reduce the power of political
bosses, establish public control of “natural monopolies” like gas and water works, and improve public transportation.
They raised property taxes in order to spend more money on schools, parks, and other public facilities. Gilded Age
mayors Hazen Pingree and Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones pioneered urban Progressivism by forcing gas and telephone
companies to lower their rates, and established a municipal power plant. They instituted an eight-hour day and paid
vacations at factories that produced oil drilling equipment. Since state legislatures defined the powers of city
government, urban Progressives often carried their campaigns to the state level. Pingree became governor of Michigan
in 1896, and continued his battle against railroads and other corporate interests. The most influential Progressive
administration at the state level was that of Robert M. La Follette, who made Wisconsin a “laboratory for democracy”.
He instituted a series of measures known as the ‘Wisconsin Idea’, including nominations of candidates for office
through primary elections rather than by political bosses, the taxation of corporate wealth, and state regulation of
railroads and public utilities.

Democracy - Progressives hoped to reinvigorate democracy by restoring political power to the citizenry. They believed
that political reforms could help to create a unified “people” devoted to greater democracy and social reconciliation.
Democracy was enhanced by the Seventeenth Amendment—which provided that U.S. senators be elected directly.
The era culminated with a constitutional amendment enfranchising women. The Progressive era also witnessed
numerous restrictions on democratic participation, most strikingly the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South,
arising out of new literacy tests, residency and registration requirements. The Progressives focused more on
appointing qualified personnel for devising policies, than on popular participation.

City Management - The Progressives concentrated on reforming municipal and state governments to create better
ways to provide services as cities grew rapidly. The result was “municipal administration,” which effectively managed
legal processes, market transactions, bureaucratic administration, and urban reform. One example of Progressive
reform was the rise of the city-manager system, in which salaried, professional engineers ran the day-to-day affairs
of city governments under guidelines established by elected city councils. Additionally, many cities created municipal
“reference bureaus” that conducted surveys of government departments looking for waste and inefficiency. After in-
depth surveys, local and even state governments were reorganized to reduce the number of officials and to
eliminate overlapping areas of authority among departments. City governments also were reorganized to reduce the
power of local ward bosses and to increase the powers of the city council.

The Settlement Houses - The Settlement House movement was a reformist social movement with the objective of
getting the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community. Settlement
houses often offered food, shelter, and education that was provided by virtue of charity on the part of wealthy
donors, the residents of the city, and (for education) scholars who volunteered their time. The most famous
settlement house in the United States is Chicago’s Hull House, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates
Starr. Hull House became “a community of university women” whose main purpose was to provide social and
educational opportunities for working-class people, many of whom were recent European immigrants living in the
surrounding neighbourhood. The “residents,” as volunteers at Hull were called, held classes in literature, history, art,
domestic activities (such as sewing), and many other subjects. Hull House also held concerts that were free to
everyone, offered free lectures on current issues, and operated clubs for both children and adults. They built

Downloaded by Spriha Kalita (sprihakalita555@[Link])

 lOMoARcPSD|50743832

kindergartens and playgrounds for children, established employment bureaus and health clinics, and showed female
victims of domestic abuse how to gain legal protection.

The Hull House instigated an array of reforms in Chicago, including stronger building and sanitation codes, shorter
working hours, safer labour conditions, and the right of labour to organize. Female activism spread throughout the
country. Reformers portrayed child labour as a menace to white supremacy, depriving white children of educations
they would need as adult members of the dominant race. These reformers devoted little attention to the condition
of black children. Women’s groups in Alabama were instrumental in the passage of a 1903 state law restricting child
labour, but these laws were enforced only sporadically. The settlement houses have been called “spearheads for
reform”, since they produced prominent Progressive figures like Julia Lathrop, the first woman to head a federal
agency, the Children’s Bureau.

Safety Reforms - Early efforts in safety reforms were driven by poor conditions exposed by tragedies such as the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial
disaster in the history of New York City. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers. Because the managers
had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits—a common practice at the time to prevent pilferage and
unauthorized breaks—many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped to the streets below
from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and
helped spur the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which fought for better working
conditions for sweatshop workers. In New York City, a Committee on Public Safety was formed, headed by noted
social worker Frances Perkins, to identify specific problems and lobby for new legislation, such as the bill to grant
workers shorter hours in a work week, known as the “54-Hour Bill.” The New York State Legislature then created the
Factory Investigating Commission to, investigate factory conditions. Their findings led to 38 new laws regulating
labor in New York State.

Education - Early Progressive thinkers placed a comprehensive system of education at the top of the Progressive
agenda, reasoning that if a democracy were to be successful, the general public needed to be educated. Progressives
advocated to expand and improve public and private education at all levels. Child-labour laws were designed to
prohibit children from entering the workforce before a certain age, further compelling children into the public
schools.

Women’s Suffrage - After 1900, the campaign for women’s suffrage became a mass movement. Membership in the
National American Woman Suffrage Association grew from 13,000 in 1893 to more than 2 million by 1917. By 1900,
more than half the states allowed women to vote in local elections dealing with school issues. In 1913, Illinois
became the first state east of the Mississippi River to allow women to vote in presidential elections. These
campaigns, which brought women aggressively into the public sphere, were conducted with a new spirit of militancy.
The Nineteenth Amendment of 1920 guaranteed women the right to vote.

Welfare State - Female reformers helped to launch a mass movement for direct government action to improve the
living standards of poor mothers and children. “Maternalist” reforms like mothers’ pensions rested on the assumption
that the government should encourage women’s capacity for bearing and raising children and enable them to be
economically independent. The Muller v. Oregon of 1908 culminated in the reduction of working hours for women.
Brandeis envisioned a welfare state with universal economic entitlements, including the right to a decent income and
protection against unemployment and work-related accidents. In 1913, twenty-two states had enacted workmen’s
compensation laws to beneit workers, male or female, injured on the job. This legislation was the first wedge that
opened the way for broader programs of social insurance. Welfare State - The Children’s Bureau was established as
the first national government office in the world that focused solely on the well-being of children and their mothers,
in 1912. The Bureau played a major role in the passage and administration of the Sheppard-Towner Act, the first
federal grants-in-aid act for state-level children’s health programmes. The Sherwood Act of 1912, was the first
important U.S. pension law in the 20th century. It awarded pensions to all veterans.

Economic Theory - Many Progressives hoped that by regulating large corporations, they could liberate human
energies from the restrictions imposed by industrial capitalism. Yet the Progressive movement was divided over
which of the following solutions should be used to regulate corporations. Pro-labour Progressives such as Samuel
Gompers argued that industrial monopolies were unnatural economic institutions that suppressed the competition
necessary for progress and improvement. U.S. antitrust law is the body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive

Downloaded by Spriha Kalita (sprihakalita555@[Link])

 lOMoARcPSD|50743832

behaviour (monopolies) and unfair business practices. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft
supported trust-busting. Progressives such as Benjamin Parke DeWitt argued that in a modern economy, large
corporations and even monopolies were both inevitable and desirable. With their massive resources and economies
of scale, large corporations offered the United States advantages that smaller companies could not offer. Yet, these
large corporations might abuse their great power. The federal government should allow these companies to exist
but regulate them for the public interest. President Theodore Roosevelt generally supported this idea and was later
to incorporate it as part of his political philosophy of “New Nationalism.”

In Kansas, the governor in 1905 supported a primary election bill including direct election of candidates for the Senate.
He backed further civil service reform, juvenile courts, a pure food law, and many other measures reflecting a more
pro-active state government. Kansas also passed a comprehensive child labor law in 1905. In California, steps towards
environment conservation brought up the question of whether private interests or local governments should control
water and hydroelectric power etc.

National Leaders

Poverty, economic insecurity, and lack of industrial democracy were national problems that demanded national
solutions. One school of thought (supported by Theodore Roosevelt) argued that growth of big business was inevitable,
and rather than dissolving them, the government should regulate them. Another group (favoured by Woodrow Wilson)
laid more emphasis on prohibiting monopoly, protecting small businesses and enforcing effective competition.

Roosevelt Administration - Roosevelt became the President after the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.
Roosevelt called for the enforcement of the Sherman Act on Big Businesses including the Northern Securities
Company, Standard Oil etc. He favoured regulation of corporations by the Federal government instead of by the states.
The Congress passed the Elkins Act which would require railroads to adhere to published rates and forbade them from
giving rebates. He proposed to strengthen the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Hepburn Act authorized the
Interstate Commerce Commission to order a reduction of unreasonable rates. Roosevelt also intervened in the coal
strike of 1902 on the side of the miners, ensuring that arbitration on behalf of the government could be present to
ensure a peaceful outcome. He was into conservation activities, often reclaiming land from corporations to further
these measures such as reforestation, and established national parks like the Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier. With
the passing of the Newlands Act of 1902, the Federal government could establish irrigation projects on arid land,
including dams. He also ensured greater regulation of medication and marked a break with the strict laissez-faire
doctrine.

William Howard Taft-Taft succeeded Roosevelt as the President in 1909. He persuaded the Supreme Court to declare
John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and to order its breakup into
separate companies. The government also won a case against American Tobacco, which the Court ordered to end
pricing policies that were driving smaller firms out of business. Taft supported the Sixteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, which authorized Congress to enact a graduated income tax.

Wilsonian Administration- The Underwood Tariff abolished tariffs on a number of imported goods. In order to
compensate for expected loss of revenue, he instituted a small income tax authorized by the 16th Amendment. The
Glass-Owen Federal Reserve Act of December 1913 reformed the monetary system. 12 Federal Banks were set up in
different regions, supervised by a Federal Reserve Board and only Federal Reserve notes were to recognized as legal
tenders. Reserves of all member banks would be deposited in the Federal Reserve banks, making it possible for the
country’s banking capital to be mobilized in order to aid institutions which might be in danger. The administration
continued trust-busting measures. His later years also had a number of progressive legislations such as the La Follette
Seaman’s Act to improve labour conditions on ships, the Adamson Act setting eight-hour days for employees on
interstate railways, Federal Farm Loan Act to make mortgages available for farmers at relatively low rates of interest.
However, the outbreak of World War I checked the progress of the reforms The Clayton Act of 1914 exempted labour
unions from antitrust laws and barred courts from issuing injunctions curtailing the right to strike. In 1916 came the
Keating-Owen Act outlawing child labour in the manufacture of goods sold in interstate commerce, the Adamson Act
establishing an eight-hour workday on the nation’s railroads, and the Warehouse Act, which extended credit to

Downloaded by Spriha Kalita (sprihakalita555@[Link])

 lOMoARcPSD|50743832

farmers when they stored their crops in federally licensed warehouses. In 1914, the Congress established the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate and prohibit “unfair” business activities.

The majority of Americans in the early twentieth century, Progressives included, did not believe in racial equality and
those were the peak years of segregation, Jim Crow laws, and lynchings. Yet, some Progressives joined to create the
NAACP and the Urban League. No one favoured American imperialism more than Theodore Roosevelt, yet he was
undeniably a Progressive leader.

HISTORIOGRAPHY
The Progressive Movement was a series of movements operating at the local, state and national levels of
government of society between 1900 and 1917.

Until the period of World War II, most Americans wrote within the Progressive school. They interpreted these
reform movements and reformers within a liberal framework. In their eyes, these movements challenged the
dominant position of the business and privileged classes. Vernon L. Parrington saw Progressivism as a “democratic
renaissance”. The movement concerned itself not only with political democracy but with economic democracy as
well. To Parrington, Progressivism was a broad-based movement that included members of the middle classes,
journalists, and scholars. John D. Hicks opines that although the Populist movement failed, it was victorious in the
long run because much of the program was taken forward by later reformers, the Progressives.

The Marxist historians were highly critical of progressivism because of its superficial nature and its refusal to adopt
more radical solutions to meet the basic needs of American society. John Chamberlain calls the Progressive
movement an “abysmal failure”. The Progressive reforms were piecemeal, and their failure resulted in the Great
Depression of the 1930s.

To the scholars writing after 1940s, the Progressive ideology remained too simplified. They argued that Americans
were unprepared for the challenges they faced in the Great Depression oft of the 1930s and worldwide conflict of
the 1940s. The Neoconservative historians stressed the basic goodness of American society. While they did not deny
that conflicts and struggles between sections, classes, and special interest groups have occurred, they insisted that
such struggles were always fought within a liberal framework and that protagonists were never in disagreement over
fundamentals.

Richard Hofstadter wrote within the Progressive tradition and as a liberal partisan. He studied the careers of
presidents like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He opined that the Populist and Progressives had similar deficiencies; neither had faced up to the fundamental
problems of an industrialized and corporate America. While the Populists were native and conservative, the
Progressives were not modern either. Implicit in his writings therefore, was the assumption that American history
occurred within a conservative mould, and that a genuine struggle between classes as portrayed by the Progressive
historians had never taken place. George E. Mowry was one of the first historians to see Progressivism as a
movement by a particular class aimed at reasserting its declining position of leadership.

Recent historians like Louis Hartz argue that because America never had a feudal tradition, it did not experience
struggles between conservatives, liberals and Marxians that characterized the history of European countries. The
differences between the Americans have been over means than ends. To view American history in terms of class
struggle was to misunderstand the basic agreements that united all Americans. The Neoconservative historians
argued that the Progressive movement was conservative in nature. According to them, Progressive reformers
tragically misunderstood man’s propensity for evil.

Organizational historians saw American history as being dominated by bureaucratic and hierarchical structures.
Thus, there was a corresponding shift from individualistic values to values like efficiency, order, rationale and
systematic control. Alfred D. Chandler opined that progressivism was an attempt to govern the society in
accordance with these new ideals. Samual Hays noted the increasing role of “experts” in the progressive reforms.

The New Left historians like Gabriel Kolko argued that political capitalism sought to eliminate growing competition
in the economy.

Downloaded by Spriha Kalita (sprihakalita555@[Link])