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The Progressive Era
By about 1890, it became very clear that rapid industrialization had caused numerous problems for the country. Progressivism was a new movement that proposed ways to solve or lessen these problems. The Progressives’ central assumptions included optimism about progress—they wanted to continue the growth and advancement of the nation. However, this growth and advancement could not continue to occur as recklessly as it had in the Gilded Age. Progressives believed purposeful human intervention was necessary to solve America’s problems.
Responding to the concentration of wealth in the Gilded Age (in which a very small percentage of society controlled the vast wealth of the nation), one of the central goals of the Progressives was to break up monopolies and trusts. They felt that individual welfare was dependent on the welfare of society as a whole, so they emphasized social cohesion. Additionally, they believed that the implementation of social organization and rational procedures would lead to greater stability in society.
Muckrakers
In order to solve problems, Progressive journalists first had to expose them to the public. One of those journalists, Upton Sinclair, went so far as to go undercover to expose dangerous and unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry. After experiencing the horrors that immigrants and workers faced in Chicago’s meatpacking district, Sinclair published a book in 1905, The Jungle, that exposed everything he had learned. The stories in The Jungle were so shocking that President Theodore Roosevelt facilitated the passage of both the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act within a year of the book’s publication. Because Sinclair and other journalists like him dug up all the “muck” that companies worked to hide, they came to be called muckrakers. They used research and undercover experiences to provide detailed, accurate accounts of political and economic corruption and social hardships in the early 20th century.
Ida Tarbell was another well-known muckraker, whose History of the Standard Oil Company exposed the techniques that John D. Rockefeller used to outmaneuver anyone who got in his way. Jacob Riis, a progressive photographer, used new flash photo technology to shoot conditions inside dark tenements. His book, How the Other Half Lives, included photos and facts from the public record that explained the living conditions of the poor. The book horrified readers so much that it led to the creation of the New York Tenement House Commission, which gathered statistical information about tenements and made recommendations for reform.
Temperance
The temperance movement to ban alcohol also grew prominent in the Progressive Era. The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement and the Anti-Saloon League were representative of the temperance crusade. Members argued that temperance was necessary because workers spent much of their wages in saloons, drunkenness often led to violence, and working-class women lost their husbands’ pay. Additionally, employers complained about workers missing work or coming to work drunk, and political reformers noticed that political machines did a lot of their “business” in saloons. In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) went into effect, banning the sale, transport, and manufacture of alcohol.
Environmental Conservation
As president, Theodore Roosevelt was particularly concerned with the environment and promoted conservation—policies to protect land from managed development. He used executive power to restrict private development on government land by adding it to the national forest system. The National Reclamation Act (1902) provided federal funds for the construction of dams, reservoirs, and canals in the West, which opened new lands for cultivation and would eventually provide cheap electric power. Roosevelt also signed into effect legislation designating land as national parks, beginning the National Park System. Overall, Roosevelt conserved about 250 million acres of public land, including national forests, bird and game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments.
Race Relations
Two significant Progressive reformers put forth their arguments on how to solve racial issues. First was Booker T. Washington, who argued that Black people must first work to earn respect from white society and then request more civil rights later. Washington asserted that the best type of work for Black people was to learn a skilled trade, for which he founded the Tuskegee Institute (later Tuskegee University) to educate them to do so.
Conversely, W.E.B. Du Bois was a member of the Niagara Movement, which was dedicated to fighting for political and social equality for African Americans. He also helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization that worked through the court system to advance civil rights. Du Bois promoted the idea that a “talented tenth” of Black people should get traditional college educations so they could act as leaders; he did not believe (as Booker T. Washington did) that they should postpone civil rights.
Ida B. Wells, a Black woman and muckraker, also worked throughout the 1890s to draw attention to the terrible violence of lynching, mob attacks ending in the execution of a Black person or civil rights supporter that occurred mainly in the South. Having been enslaved in her childhood before the Civil War, Wells became a teacher and then a journalist, publishing a series of pamphlets educating Northerners on race relations in general and lynching, specifically.
State Political Reforms
Considering the amount of government corruption in the Gilded Age, it’s not surprising to find that the Progressives tried to make as many political reforms as possible.
At the state level, Robert La Follette, the Governor of Wisconsin, decided to turn his state into a “laboratory of progressivism.” He passed legislation that allowed for direct primaries, elections that allowed the people to choose candidates rather than political bosses or state senates; initiatives, which allowed citizens to propose legislation for the ballot; and the referendum, in which the electorate voted on a single issue that has been referred to them for a decision. He also regulated railroads and utilities; made laws to regulate workplaces and provide workers’ compensation; and doubled state taxes on railroads and corporations. Eventually, many parts of this “Wisconsin Idea” would be enacted at the federal level.
Federal Political Reforms
At the federal level, many reforms were enacted that expanded democracy. The Seventeenth Amendment changed the way senators were chosen; instead of being selected by state legislatures, now voters could vote directly for them. Regarding women’s suffrage, leaders began to justify suffrage in new ways. They maintained that suffrage would allow women to bring their special virtues to bear on society’s problems. For example, war might become a thing of the past since women would help curb the natural belligerence of men. Additionally, enfranchising women would help the temperance movement. In 1920, Congress guaranteed political rights to women throughout the nation with the Nineteenth Amendment.
President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to distinguish between good and bad trusts, and more strictly enforced the Sherman Antitrust Act. Under President Woodrow Wilson’s administration, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), which strengthened and clarified the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, including language to prevent antitrust legislation from being used against labor unions (as the Sherman Antitrust Act had been).
Other federal reforms that were enacted during the Wilson administration were aimed at reducing tariffs and regulating the economy. The Underwood Tariff of 1913 reduced tariffs (a major source of government income) from 40 percent to 25 percent. The Sixteenth Amendment legalized a graduated federal income tax, which taxed individual earnings and corporate profits. This replaced much of the revenue lost due to the Underwood Tariff. Under the graduated tax system, larger incomes were taxed at higher rates than smaller incomes. To make the U.S. money supply more stable and flexible, Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law in 1913.
