The Progressive Movement, c. 1890–1920

This is Unit Six, part two, on Black leadership, the Progressive presidents, and who Progressivism was for. Part one closed with the Nineteenth Amendment, and pointed to the campaign against lynching. It also left a contradiction open. The anchor says most Progressives expanded the vote to worthy citizens and restricted those considered unfit. This part brings that restriction back. Watch for it beside every reform. At the last entry the course asks directly who Progressivism was for, and answers with both halves. By the end you will be able to compare Washington's and Du Bois's strategies in their own terms. To explain Roosevelt's good and bad trusts, and why his record is contested. To contrast Roosevelt at the coal strike with Cleveland at Pullman. To describe Wilson's New Freedom reforms. And to explain who Progressivism was for.

Six entries: the campaign against lynching, and two strategies for Black advancement, each presented in its own terms.

The campaign against lynching.

USH2 0773 Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells, born in the last years of slavery, became a pioneering campaigner against lynching after a mob killed three of her friends in Memphis in eighteen ninety-two, documenting lynchings and exposing the false charges used to justify them. The Yawp says she saw her campaign as a kind of anti-imperialist activism. She later helped found the NAACP.

The most prominent Black leader of the era.

USH2 0774 Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama in eighteen eighty-one and led it until nineteen fifteen, championing industrial education and vocational training as the path to Black advancement. Carnegie, Rockefeller and Julius Rosenwald supported his work, and the Yawp calls Tuskegee a model of Black vocational education championed across the South.

The bargain he proposed.

USH2 0775 The Atlanta Compromise

In his Atlanta address of eighteen ninety-five, Washington urged African Americans to pursue economic self-improvement before demanding immediate civil rights, offering patience and training in place of protest. The anchor calls it the Atlanta Compromise. The Yawp says Du Bois attacked Washington and urged Black Americans to concede nothing.

The movement Du Bois founded.

USH2 0776 Du Bois and the Niagara Movement

In nineteen oh five W. E. B. Du Bois and his allies met at a Canadian hotel and founded the Niagara Movement, with chapters in twenty-one states within a year and a Declaration of Principles demanding universal suffrage, compulsory education, and an end to convict leasing. Du Bois looked to a talented tenth of educated African Americans to lead.

The organisation that grew from it.

USH2 0777 The NAACP

After the Springfield, Illinois, race riot, Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell were among the founders of the NAACP in nineteen oh nine, with an investigative bureau for lynchings and a task force for federal legislation. Du Bois edited its magazine, The Crisis, for more than two decades. The Yawp calls the NAACP the Niagara Movement's offspring.

How to hold Washington and Du Bois together.

USH2 0778 Washington and Du Bois

Washington and Du Bois are often presented as a quarrel, but they held two coherent strategies for the same people. Washington urged economic self-improvement through industrial education first, with civil rights to follow, and won the support of wealthy White philanthropists. Du Bois demanded equal rights at once, universal suffrage and higher education for a talented tenth, and built the Niagara Movement and the NAACP to press for them. The course presents both strategies in their own terms and makes neither its voice. Ask what each thought should come first, economic security or political rights, and what each was willing to accept in the meantime. Unit nine adds a third voice, Marcus Garvey's.

Six entries on the president who made Progressivism national: his trust suits, a strike he settled, a novel, and conservation.

The Square Deal.

USH2 0779 The Square Deal

Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal promised action on the trusts, public health and conservation, and in nineteen oh three he created a Department of Commerce and Labor, whose Bureau of Corporations investigated big business. The anchor says Roosevelt brought more than two dozen successful antitrust suits, more than any earlier president.

The first of the suits.

USH2 0780 Northern Securities

In nineteen oh two Roosevelt filed suit against the Northern Securities Company, a railroad holding company in which bankers including J. P. Morgan held a controlling share, and in nineteen oh four the Supreme Court broke it up, five votes to four. The Sherman Act of unit five, long unenforced, finally had a president willing to use it.

How far Roosevelt's trust-busting went.

USH2 0781 Good Trusts and Bad

Roosevelt enjoyed the nickname trustbuster, but the anchor says he did not consider all trusts dangerous. He distinguished good trusts, which used their size to deliver goods and services more cheaply, from bad ones that abused their power. The Yawp quotes his principle: government was not against the corporations, but was bound to control them wherever the need was shown. He let Morgan's U.S. Steel continue and even take over smaller firms. How much he changed is contested. The record supports both a trustbuster, with the most suits of any president to his time, and a regulator who accepted bigness and policed conduct. Name both.

A strike Roosevelt settled differently.

USH2 0782 The Anthracite Coal Strike

In nineteen oh two, as a long anthracite coal strike held the country's attention, Roosevelt brought owners and miners' leaders to the White House to bargain, and the settlement brought minor wage increases and a slight improvement for the miners. Contrast Cleveland at Pullman in unit three: a president who sent troops, set beside one who acted as steward.

The novel that changed food law.

USH2 0783 The Jungle

Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle followed a Lithuanian immigrant family working in Chicago's stockyards and exposed the meatpacking industry. Roosevelt had a presidential commission investigate, and it confirmed the conditions Sinclair described. The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act both passed in nineteen oh six.

Roosevelt's other great cause.

USH2 0784 Conservation

Roosevelt placed about two hundred thirty million acres under federal protection, including more than one hundred fifty national forests, five national parks, fifty-one bird preserves and eighteen monuments, with Gifford Pinchot as the first chief of the Forest Service. Unit two carried the arid West; this unit carries conservation as federal policy.

Two entries on Roosevelt's successor, and the three-way election their quarrel produced.

Roosevelt's successor.

USH2 0785 Taft

William Howard Taft, elected in nineteen oh eight, signed the Mann-Elkins Act of nineteen ten, extending the Interstate Commerce Commission's authority to telephones and telegraphs, and fired Gifford Pinchot in the Ballinger-Pinchot affair over the sale of federal land. Roosevelt, back from Africa, called Taft a fathead and a puzzlewit, and prepared to run again.

The three-way election that followed.

USH2 0786 The Election of 1912

In nineteen twelve Roosevelt ran on the Progressive, or Bull Moose, ticket against Taft and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, splitting the Republican vote, and Wilson won with forty-two percent. Digital History gives Roosevelt twenty-seven percent, still a record for a third-party candidate, and Taft twenty-three. Together they outpolled Wilson.

Four entries on Wilson's programme: a tariff, a central bank, a stronger antitrust law, and labour laws.

Wilson's programme.

USH2 0787 The New Freedom

Wilson's New Freedom, the Yawp says, emphasised incentives for small businesses to compete rather than trust-busting or federal regulation. The Underwood Tariff of nineteen thirteen cut duties and taxed incomes above four thousand dollars for married couples at one percent, and Digital History says it substantially lowered duties for the first time since the Civil War.

The new central banking system.

USH2 0788 The Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve Act of nineteen thirteen created twelve privately owned regional reserve banks under a board appointed by the president. The farmers of unit five had demanded federal action on the currency, and the federal government now took a permanent role in it.

The next antitrust law.

USH2 0789 Clayton and the FTC

The Clayton Antitrust Act of nineteen fourteen extended the Sherman Act, forbidding interlocking directorates and limiting one corporation's ownership of another's stock, and a new Federal Trade Commission policed unfair business practices. The Yawp says only with Clayton did Congress attempt to close the loopholes in earlier antitrust law.

Wilson's labour laws.

USH2 0790 Wilson's Labour Laws

Wilson signed the Adamson Act, the first federally mandated eight-hour day, for railroad workers, along with the Keating-Owen child labour law and the Federal Farm Act. In nineteen sixteen he beat Charles Evans Hughes by only twenty-three electoral votes and fewer than six hundred thousand popular votes.

One entry to close the unit, and it brings back the contradiction part one left open.

Who Progressivism was for.

USH2 0791 Who Progressivism Was For

The anchor answers this with both halves in a single sentence: most Progressives sought to perfect democracy by expanding the vote to worthy citizens while restricting those considered unfit on account of health, education, or race. The democratic half is real: senators elected by the people, women's suffrage, safety and child labour laws, and Addams's campaigns, which Digital History says included legal protections for immigrants. So is the restrictive half. Digital History says disfranchisement and segregation spread in the South and even in the federal government, and reforms such as at-large voting lessened immigrants' political influence. The Yawp says southern Democrats presented disfranchisement and segregation as progressive reforms, and that some suffragists argued White women's votes would maintain White supremacy. Two misreadings sit on either side. One celebrates Progressivism as democracy's widening and forgets who was excluded by design. The other dismisses it as elite control and forgets the fire codes, the child labour laws and the vote for women. The debate between Washington and Du Bois was conducted under that exclusion. Hold both halves: the same movement widened democracy for some Americans and narrowed it for others.

Look at what you can now do. You can compare Washington and Du Bois in their own terms: economic self-improvement first, or equal rights at once, and what each would accept in the meantime. You can explain Roosevelt's distinction between good trusts and bad, and why his record supports both a trustbuster and a regulator who accepted bigness. You can contrast two presidents and two strikes: Cleveland sending troops at Pullman, and Roosevelt bringing both sides to the White House to bargain. You can describe Wilson's New Freedom: a lower tariff with an income tax, the Federal Reserve, the Clayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission, and the eight-hour day for railroad workers. And you can explain who Progressivism was for. The same movement widened democracy for some Americans and narrowed it for others.