The Progressive Movement, c. 1890–1920

This is Unit Six, part one, on the Progressive movement, from the muckrakers to the Nineteenth Amendment. Unit Five closed by asking whether Gilded Age politics failed democracy, and pointed to the reformers who took up the Populists' unfinished work. This unit is those reformers. Carry one contradiction through it. The anchor says most Progressives sought a perfected democracy that expanded the vote to worthy citizens and restricted those considered unfit. Expansion and restriction were one programme. This part shows mostly the expansion. Part two brings the restriction back. By the end you will be able to name the muckrakers and what each exposed. To state the Progressives' aims and the contradiction inside the first. To name the four Progressive amendments. To distinguish mainstream reformers from radicals. And to explain how two opposite suffrage strategies combined to win the vote.

Three entries on the journalists who turned exposure into a demand for reform.

The muckrakers.

USH2 0751 The Muckrakers

Journalists who exposed corruption, poverty and business abuses were labelled muckrakers by Theodore Roosevelt, writing in magazines such as McClure's, and their work fed public demands for reform. The anchor notes they wrote largely for a White, middle-class, native-born audience. Unit four's Jacob Riis was among the first.

The muckraker who took on Standard Oil.

USH2 0752 Tarbell and Standard Oil

Ida Tarbell exposed the ruthless methods of Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and Henry Demarest Lloyd attacked the same company in Wealth Against Commonwealth in eighteen ninety-four, laying out the price wars and rebates of unit three for the reading public. The Yawp says Tarbell described Standard Oil's ruthlessness and its taste for political corruption.

The muckrakers of the cities and the mines.

USH2 0753 Steffens and Baker

Lincoln Steffens exposed corruption in city politics in The Shame of the Cities, and Ray Stannard Baker investigated wages and safety in the coal mines. Digital History says Steffens argued that businessmen's hunger for contracts and franchises kept the machines running. Unit four's machines had backers.

Three entries on what the Progressives believed, the contradiction inside it, and the amendments it produced.

What the Progressives believed.

USH2 0754 Three Progressive Aims

The anchor names principles most Progressives shared: perfecting democracy, balancing democracy with efficiency and expertise, and regulating the economy while rejecting party politics, with scientists, engineers and professionals trusted to design better government. Progressives, the anchor says, saw themselves as agents of social justice, guiding and protecting the urban poor and the working class.

The contradiction inside the first aim.

USH2 0755 Worthy Citizens and the Unfit

The anchor says most Progressives sought a perfected democracy that expanded the vote to worthy citizens and restricted participation by those considered unfit, judged, in the anchor's words, on account of health, education, or race. Expansion and restriction were parts of the same programme. The contradiction comes from the anchor itself, and it returns at this unit's close, in part two.

The amendments the era produced.

USH2 0756 Four Amendments

Progressive pressure produced four constitutional amendments in seven years. The Sixteenth, ratified February third, nineteen thirteen, gave Congress power to tax incomes without apportionment among the states. The Seventeenth, ratified that April, made senators elected by the people of each state. The Eighteenth, ratified January sixteenth, nineteen nineteen, prohibited the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating liquors. The Nineteenth, ratified August eighteenth, nineteen twenty, barred denying the vote on account of sex. The Populists of unit five lost their elections and won their argument: two Omaha planks arrived in nineteen thirteen. The Eighteenth was later repealed, by the Twenty-first, in unit eleven.

Four entries on a fire that changed factory law, and on the reformers who made safety and child labour their causes.

The fire that changed factory law.

USH2 0757 The Triangle Fire

On March twenty-fifth, nineteen eleven, fire swept the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, eight storeys up in New York's Asch Building, killing one hundred forty-six garment workers, most of them young immigrant women. Management had blocked doors and fire escapes to control workers and keep out union organisers, and many were trapped.

What the fire changed.

USH2 0758 After the Fire

The Triangle fire led New York to pass its first workplace inspection laws and safety codes, turning public outrage into regulation, with factory inspectors checking the exits and fire escapes owners had once locked. A disaster made possible a reform that years of argument had not. The pattern recurs in this unit.

A reformer who made safety her cause.

USH2 0759 Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley led the National Consumers League, founded in eighteen ninety-nine, as its first general secretary, campaigning for workplace safety and an eight-hour day for women. The Yawp places her at Hull House from eighteen ninety-one to eighteen ninety-nine, and says she moved Jane Addams toward social reform. The settlement movement of unit four had become a political force.

The campaign against child labour.

USH2 0760 Child Labour

The National Child Labor Committee, founded in nineteen oh four, won the Keating-Owen Act of nineteen sixteen, barring interstate trade in goods made by children, and Lewis Hine photographed child workers over the decade-long campaign. The Supreme Court later struck the act down, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of unit eleven achieved its aim in nineteen thirty-eight.

Two entries: a state that became a laboratory of reform, and the long campaign against alcohol.

The state that became a laboratory of reform.

USH2 0761 The Wisconsin Idea

As governor of Wisconsin from nineteen oh one to nineteen oh six, Robert La Follette hired experts to research and advise on legislation, and Wisconsin had the first workers' compensation system, a minimum wage law, and a progressive tax. La Follette, Fighting Bob, served as senator from nineteen oh six to nineteen twenty-five and ran for president in nineteen twenty-four.

The campaign against alcohol.

USH2 0762 Temperance

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded in eighteen seventy-four, and the Anti-Saloon League campaigned to ban alcohol county by county and state by state, and forty percent of counties were dry by nineteen oh six, a dozen states by nineteen oh nine. Their pressure produced the Eighteenth Amendment. Digital History traces the Anti-Saloon League's inspiration to the Populist movement.

Three entries on the era's radical wing, and on how it differed from the mainstream reformers.

The Progressive Era's radical wing.

USH2 0763 The Socialist Party

The Socialist Party of America, founded in nineteen oh one, elected over seventy mayors, over thirty state legislators and two congressmen, Victor Berger and Meyer London, by nineteen eighteen, the anchor says; the Yawp counts Socialist mayors in thirty-three cities. Eugene Debs ran for president in five elections, twice winning nearly a million votes.

The most radical union of the era.

USH2 0764 The Industrial Workers of the World

In nineteen oh five William Big Bill Haywood and other radicals founded the Industrial Workers of the World, a union welcoming all workers regardless of race or gender, whose tools were direct action and the general strike. By nineteen twelve the Wobblies led the silk strike at Paterson, the textile strike at Lawrence and the iron strike on the Mesabi Range.

How the mainstream and the radicals differed.

USH2 0765 Mainstream and Radical

Florence Kelley and Big Bill Haywood both belong to the Progressive Era, and they are often filed together, but they were not the same movement. Kelley worked through the National Consumers League and state legislatures for safety laws, an eight-hour day and limits on child labour, reforming the industrial system from within. Haywood's Industrial Workers of the World sought to replace the system through direct action and the general strike. One wanted better terms from industrial capitalism; the other wanted to end it. Ask what each wanted to do with the system: repair it or abolish it. The anchor says the government met the Wobblies with arrests, tar-and-featherings, shootings and lynchings, a response the mainstream reformers never faced.

Seven entries on the suffrage campaign, from its largest organisation to the amendment, and on one earlier argument that had failed.

The suffrage movement's largest organisation.

USH2 0766 NAWSA

In eighteen ninety Stanton and Anthony formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which Carrie Chapman Catt reorganised from nineteen hundred, and by nineteen hundred Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming had granted women the vote in state and local elections. The movement's roots reach back to the suffrage split of unit one.

The parade that launched a new militancy.

USH2 0767 The 1913 Parade

On March third, nineteen thirteen, the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns led a suffrage parade of eight thousand through Washington, and violence along the route sent more than one hundred women to hospital. Ida B. Wells-Barnett refused to march at the rear and joined the Illinois delegation instead.

The party Paul founded.

USH2 0768 The National Woman's Party

In December nineteen thirteen Alice Paul's Congressional Union broke from the National American Woman Suffrage Association and became the National Woman's Party, which the Yawp describes taking to the streets with marches and protests that mobilised thousands. Paul sought a constitutional amendment through direct action, a new militancy in the movement.

The pickets outside the White House.

USH2 0769 The Silent Sentinels

From January nineteen seventeen Paul's Silent Sentinels picketed the White House for nearly two years, demanding a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage. Arrested picketers went on hunger strike in jail and were force-fed to keep them alive. When their treatment became public, the anchor says, President Wilson changed his position and supported a constitutional right to vote.

How the two suffrage leaders differed.

USH2 0770 Catt and Paul

Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul sought the same goal and are often remembered as one movement, but their methods were opposite. Catt led the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the larger and older organisation, and worked within politics. Paul led the National Woman's Party in marches, pickets and hunger strikes, and her pickets stood outside the White House even in wartime. The anchor says that while they used different strategies, their combined efforts won the vote. So ask how each applied pressure: from inside the political system or from outside it. The anchor's verdict is that both mattered, and that combination is a lesson later movements in this course repeat.

The amendment itself.

USH2 0771 The Nineteenth Amendment

Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment on June fourth, nineteen nineteen, and ratification was complete on August eighteenth, nineteen twenty: the vote is not to be denied or abridged on account of sex. Tennessee was the thirty-sixth state to ratify. Unit eight carries the final vote there; this unit carries the campaign.

An earlier argument for the vote.

USH2 0772 An Earlier Argument

Before the parades, Mary Ann Shadd Cary testified to the House Judiciary Committee that the Fourteenth Amendment already guaranteed women the vote, the same argument Virginia Minor lost before the Supreme Court in eighteen seventy-five. Citizenship alone had not carried the vote. The movement needed an amendment that named women's suffrage directly.

Look at what you can now do. You can name the muckrakers: Tarbell on Standard Oil, Steffens on the cities and the businessmen behind the machines, and Baker on the mines. You can state the Progressives' aims, perfecting democracy, trusting expertise and regulating the economy, and the contradiction inside the first: expanding the vote for some and restricting it for others. You can name the four amendments: the income tax, the direct election of senators, prohibition, and women's suffrage, two of them Populist planks. You can distinguish the mainstream from the radicals by asking whether each wanted to repair the industrial system or abolish it. And you can explain how Catt's work inside politics and Paul's pressure from outside combined to win the Nineteenth Amendment.