HISTORY 1DD3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 21: Practical Action, Margaret Sanger, Carrie Chapman Catt
22 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Chp 21 Identifications
Progressivism
● Background Info: As industry grew, the number of secretaries, engineers,
advertisers, lawyers, physicians, and teachers drastically increased. New
professional groups arose, bringing new allegiances and a sense of identity toward
memberships. Middle-class women found more opportunities than before. This
sense of the “New Woman” was confirmed by the divorce rate, up to 1 in 9 by 1916.
● The progressive reform impulse drew on women’s clubs, settlement houses, and
private groups by the middle-class. On issues directly affecting factory workers, the
political machines provided support and often took the initiative.
● Progressivism was a series of political/cultural responses to industrialization’s by-
products, including immigration, cities, corporate power, and class divisions.
● In contrast to Populists, progressivism was based in the cities, and sought to
reform, not replace, industrial capitalism.
● Progressives argued about which parts of the industrial order needed attention.
Some called for stricter regulations of business, while others focused on protecting
workers. Yet others sought immigration restriction and social control strategies.
● Central to progressivism was belief that social problems could be solved through
study and effort. Progressives gathered research and expert opinion to support their
causes. Passionate reformers’ human emotion drove the movement forward.
Thorstein Veblen
● Background Info: In the 1880s and 90s, Social Darwinism came under attack from
some Gilded Age intellectuals, and this attack intensified in the 20th century.
● Veblen shared the era’s admiration for the efficiency and science, but scorned the
business class’ “wastemanship”.
● Veblen mercilessly satirized the lifestyle of the rich corporates, dissecting their habits
and arguing that they flaunted their wealth to assert superiority.
William James
● James, in his influential 1097 essay “Pragmatism”, argued that the truth emerges
from experience of life realities, not abstract theorizing.
● James stressed practical action and gave confidence that conditions could improve
through purposeful action. He also added skepticism toward the conventional
wisdom of conservatives.
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life, and the New Republic
● No thinker captured faith in the power of new ideas better than Croly did.
● Croly had grown up in a cosmopolitan world where social issue were hotly debated,
and called for an activist govt that would serve to promote the welfare of all citizens
in his The Promise of American Life (1909).
● To build support, he founded the New Republic magazine in 1914.
Jane Addams
● Addams, founder of the Hull House (settlement house), rejected the idea that
unrestrained competition offered the best path to social proress.
● Instead, she asserted that well-being of all was necessary, and urged middle-class to
recognize their common interests in with workers for better conditions.
John Dewey
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
● Dewey believed that the key institution that could bring about better conditions was
the public school. He banished bolted down chairs and desks from his school at
Univ. of Chicago and encouraged interaction among students.
● He stated that the ideal school would teach kids to live as members of a social group.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
● Other thinkers believed social change lay in transforming the nation’s courts.
● Holmes argued that law must evolve as society changes.
● Holmes was appointed a Supreme Court justice in 1902.
● With new social thinking, the courts slowly became more receptive to reform.
Novelists, Journalists, Artists, and Muckrakers
● Advances in printing and photo reproduction ensured a mass audience for novelists
and journalists who chronicled corporate wrongdoing, municipal corruption, slum
conditions, and industrial abuses.
● Novels and journals, such as Frank Norris’s The Octopus (1901) and Dreiser’s
The Financier (1912) based their fiction on actual people, and wrote to undermine
the reputation of the privileged industrial elites.
● Articles also began to expose urban corruption and corporate wrongdoing. President
Roosevelt criticized such authors as “muckrakers”.
● Muckrakers emphasized facts, and gathered material by working as factory laborers
or living in slum tenments (first-hand experience).
● Muckrakers awakened the middle-class readers to conditions in industrial US.
● Some exposes - such as Steffens’ The Shame of the Cities (1904) and Ida
Tarbell’s History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) - became bound in book
form.
● Artists and photographers played a role as well, especially appealing to those who
could not read. Lewis Hine’s photos of child workers with stunted bodies helped
build support for national legislation outlawing child labor.
Hazen Pingree and the progressive reform mayors
● Detroit reform mayor Pingree brought honesty to city hall, lowered transit fares,
adopted a fairer tax structure, and provided public baths for the poor.
● Elsewhere, Tammany Hall in NYC, Hiram Johnson in CA, and Samuel Jones in Ohio,
all uncovered corruption and began reforms for the poor.
● They probed the roots of urban mis-govt., and passed laws regulating rates that
monopolistic municipal utilities could charge and increasing their taxes.
● Some supported substituting professional managers chosen in citywide elections over
mayors elected on a ward-by-ward basis.
● Electoral-reform movement expanded to the state level, and with the secret ballot,
made it harder to rig elections. In Wisconsin, direct primary elections was
introduced.
● To restore govt. by the people, some put forth measures that would allow voters to
remove a public official from office if they got enough signatures.
Workers in Corporate America
● Background Info: Giant companies continued to rise after 1900.
● Many workers actually benefited from corporate growth, but still found their wages
barely enough to support themselves and their families.
● To survive, entire families went to work. ⅔ of young immigrant women entered the
work force, and child labor continued to persist.
● Despite the eight-hour movement, many faced long hours and great hazards.
● Vacations, retirement benefits, and employers responsibilities were unheard of.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
● Workers understood the hazards of their jobs better than anyone, and provided a
source of information for reformers to begin their research.
Robert La Follette and the "Wisconsin Idea"
● Background Info: Progressives argued that since corporations had benefited from
government’s economic policies, they were also subject to govt. supervision.
● None passed laws more avidly than Wisconsin Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” La
Follette. La Follette won governorship as an independent in 1900.
● He set up a railroad commission, increased corporate taxes, met regularly with
reform-minded professors, and adopted the direct-primary system.
● La Follette’s reforms gained national attention as the “Wisconsin Idea.”
Triangle Shirtwaist fire (Mar 25, 1911)
● Many young women and few men were still at work in NYC on late Saturday
afternoon when the upper floor workrooms at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory caught
on fire.
● The fire fed on cloth and turned into an inferno. Panicked workers rushed for doors
that swung inward, and were jammed shut by the crush of people trying to get out.
● Others, out of desperation, jumped out of the building and to their death.
● The next morning, headlines counted 141 dead.
● The fire offered horrifying evidence of industrialization’s liabilities.
● NY senator Robert F. Wagner, a leader of Tammany Hall, headed the
investigating committee set up after the fire, and passed 56 protection laws.
Florence Kelley
● Kelley became a Hull House resident in 1891.
● In 1893, she helped prohibit child labor in IL and limit working hours for women.
● In 1899, she became the general secretary of the National Consumers’ League,
which pressured for improved factory conditions.
● Kelley argued, “Why are seals, bears, reindeer, fish .. suitable for federal protection,
but not children?”
campaigns to reform cities
● Background Info: The urban population grew to become a majority by 1920, and
cities lacked adequate parks, services, facilities, and other basic civic amenities.
● Drawing on the efforts of Frederick Law Olmsted, reform-minded men and women
campaigned for parks, street lights, and laws against unsightly billboards and wires.
● Daniel Burnham, architect of the 1893 Chicago world fair, led efforts to revive
DC, Cleveland, and other cities. Chicago adopted various aspects of his plans and
spent $300m to build parks, museums, and wider boulevards. He also proposed a
majestic domed city hall, believing imposing buildings would ensure a civic-minded
population.
● Beyond beautification, Progressives also sought practical goals including better
housing, garbage collecting, and street cleaning. NY passed laws imposing health
and safety regulations in tenements in 1911 and provided a role model for other
cities.
● In the 1880s, germs’ role in causing diseases was discovered, and public health
advocates called for better water/sewer systems and regulation of food handlers.
They also campaigned for school examinations and vaccination programs.
● As a result, infant mortality dropped from 16% in 1900 to 7% in 1920.
● Urban reformers also became aware of pollution’s impact on health, and began anti-
smoke campaigns. One Chicago merchant complained that “soot tax” he paid to
clean his stores was larger than his real-estate taxes!
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Background info: as industry grew, the number of secretaries, engineers, advertisers, lawyers, physicians, and teachers drastically increased. New professional groups arose, bringing new allegiances and a sense of identity toward memberships. This sense of the new woman was confirmed by the divorce rate, up to 1 in 9 by 1916. The progressive reform impulse drew on women"s clubs, settlement houses, and private groups by the middle-class. On issues directly affecting factory workers, the political machines provided support and often took the initiative. Progressivism was a series of political/cultural responses to industrialization"s by- products, including immigration, cities, corporate power, and class divisions. In contrast to populists, progressivism was based in the cities, and sought to reform, not replace, industrial capitalism. Progressives argued about which parts of the industrial order needed attention. Some called for stricter regulations of business, while others focused on protecting workers. Yet others sought immigration restriction and social control strategies.
