Progressive Era Part 1

1. 1890-1920

2.  Disparity of wealth (Very wealthy Haves)
 Workers rights
 Working conditions
 Wages, hours, child labor, danger, etc.
 Poverty in cities –Tenements, poor sanitation
 Racial discrimination – Immigrants & African
Americans
 Corruption in Social Justice
 Immigrants, Women, AfricanAmericans, Children

3. Progressive Era
 Occurred in reaction to the extreme corruption,
workplace conditions, and injustice of the Gilded
Age
 Popular Presidents of the Progressive Era include
Teddy Roosevelt & Woodrow Wilson

4. Progressivism
Movement based on the idea
that new ideas and honest,
efficient government could bring
about social justice

5. Progressive Beliefs
 Move away from laissez faire with
government regulating industry
 Make US government responsive to the
people (voting)
 Limit power of the political bosses.
 Improve worker’s rights, conditions for
poor and immigrants
 Clean up the cities
 End segregation and Jim Crow

6. Areas to Reform
Social Justice
Political Democracy
Economic Equality
Conservation

7. Social Justice
Improve working
conditions in industry,
regulate unfair
business practices,
eliminate child labor,
help immigrants and
the poor

8. Political Democracy
Give the government
back to the people, get
more people voting and
end corruption with
political machines.

9. Economic Justice
•Fairness and opportunity in
the work world, regulate
unfair trusts and bring about
changes in labor.
•Demonstrate to the
common people that U.S.
Government is in charge and
not the industrialists.

10. CONSERVATION
Preserve natural
resources and the
environment

11. Populists vs Progressives
Populists---rural
Progressives---cities
Populists were poor and uneducated
Progressives were middle-class and educated.
Populists were considered too radical
Progressives stayed politically mainstream.
Populists initially failed
Progressives had more success

12. What is a muckraker?
Writer/journalist who exposes the problems
of society in order to bring about reform

13.  Lincoln Steffens
(magazine editor)
 The Shame of the Cities
 Political corruption in
Philadelphia
 Link between big business
and crooked politicians
 Jacob Riis
(photographer,
NY Evening Sun)
 How the Other
Half Lives
 Poor living conditions
in tenements
Muckrakers

14.  IdaTarbell
 The History of Standard Oil
 Robber baron business
practices of Rockefeller
 Described the firms cutthroat
methods of eliminating
competition.
 John Spargo
 The Bitter Cry of the Children
 Child Labor
 Also, Lewis Hine
Muckrakers

15.  Lewis Hine was a school teacher
turned muckraker during the
Progressive era.
 In 1908, Hine became a photographer who
was interested in exposing the ills of society.
 From 1908-1912, he targeted the abuses of
child labor inAmerican Industry.
 He produced a photo essay on child labor in
1909

16. Frank Norris
The Octopus
Unfair business practices of the Southern Pacific
Railroad
Muckrakers

17.  Upton Sinclair
 The Jungle
 Working conditions for
immigrants; unsanitary
conditions in
meat-packing plants
 Frances E.W. Harper
 Iola Leroy
 Struggles of African Americans
Muckrakers

22. Who are the Progressives?
 In addition to Muckrakers, they were also
Religious Groups
 1. Preaching of the "social gospel."
 2. Create acts of god, churches should work to
improve conditions for workers and the poor.
 3. Religious organizations like the YMCA,
YWCA, concentrated efforts on helping
newcomers adjust to life in the big cities.
Investigates slum conditions, provided food and
clothing and set up settlement houses.

23. Who are the Progressives?
 Radical Groups
 1. Socialist Party
 a. Organized in 1901 by labor leaders
including Eugene V. Debs.
 b. Wanted govt. takeover of some big
businesses, laws regulating business as well as a
minimum wage and laws setting the length of the
work week to 40 hours.

25. What increased segregation?
Jim Crow Laws (1876-1965)
 Legalized segregation
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
 “Separate but equal”
Segregation

26. How did African Americans face discrimination in voting?
15th Amendment
PollTax
LiteracyTests
Grandfather Clauses
How?
Southern states evade 15th Amend.
Required money to vote
Must pass a test to vote
If your ancestors could vote prior to 1866, then so could you
How did these discriminate African Americans?

27. BookerT.Washington
 Hard work
 “Pull yourself up by your
bootstraps”
 Tuskegee Institute, vocational education
W.E.B. DuBois
 Disagreed withWashington
 Wanted blacks to demand
full equality
Opposing
Discrimination

28.  Founded in 1909
 Springfield, Illinois
 Founded byW.E.B.
DuBois, Ida B.Wells,
Florence Kelly, and
other progressive
reformers

29.  The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific
practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of
Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln.
 Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of
white liberals that included MaryWhite Ovington and OswaldGarrison
Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists,William EnglishWalling
and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial
justice.
 Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (includingW. E.
B. Du Bois, Ida B.Wells-Barnett and Mary ChurchTerrell), signed the call,
which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.
source naacp.org

30.  The NAACP's principal objective is to ensure
the political, educational, social and
economic equality of minority group citizens
of United States and eliminate race prejudice.
The NAACP seeks to remove all barriers of
racial discrimination through the democratic
processes.
 This group helps pave the way for continued
work towards civil rights for African
Americans.

31. Tuskegee Institute

32. Who opposed
discrimination, and how?
Ida B.Wells
Worked to stop lynching
National
Association of
ColoredWomen
“Brave men do not gather
by thousands to torture
and murder a single
individual, so gagged and
bound he cannot make
even feeble resistance or
defense.”