Progressive Roots and Muckrakers: A Movement for Social Justice

1. Chapter 31 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

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4. I. Progressive Roots • Progressive ideas and theories: • The old philosophy of hands-off individualism seemed out of place in modern machine age • Progressive theorists were insisting that society could not longer afford the luxury of a limitless “let-alone” (laissez-faire) policy • The people, through government, must substitute mastery for drift • Politicians and writers began to pinpoint targets: • Bryan, Altgeld, and the Populists branded the “bloated trusts” with the stigma of corruption and wrongdoing.

5. I. Progressive Roots(cont.) • 1894 Henry Demarest Lloyd charged the Standard Oil Company in his book Wealth Against Commonwealth • Thorstein Veblen assailed the new rich in his The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899): • It was a savage attack on “predatory wealth” and “conspic-uous consumption:” • In his view the parasitic leisure class engaged in wasteful “business” rather than productive “industry” • He urged that social leadership pass from these superfluous titans to truly useful engineers. • Jacob A. Riis shocked middle-class Americans in 1890: • With How the Other Half Lives

6. I. Progressive Roots(cont.) • A damning indictment of the dirt, disease, vice, and misery of the rat-gnawed human rookeries knows as New York slums • The book deeply influenced Theodore Roosevelt. • Novelist Theodore Dreiser: • Used his blunt prose to batter promoters and profiteers in The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914) • Socialists registered appreciable strength at the ballot box (see pp. 642-643) • Social gospel movement: • Promoted a brand of progressivism based on Christian teachings • They used religious doctrine to demand better housing and living conditions for the urban poor

7. I. Progressive Roots(cont.) • Other reformers: • University-based economists urged new reforms modeled on European examples • Feminists added social justice to suffrage on their list of needed reforms • Urban pioneers entered the fight to improve the lot of families living and working in the festering cities.

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9. II. Raking Muck with the Muckrakers • Muckraking magazines—McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Collier’s and Everybody’s: • They dug deep for the dirt that the public loved • Enterprising editors financed extensive research • President Theodore Roosevelt called them muckrakers • Some famous reformer-writers were Lincoln Steffens, Ida M. Tarbell • Their targets were: • Corrupt alliance between big business and municipal gov’t., exposé of Standard Oil Company, malpractices of life insurance companies and tariff lobbies, trust, etc. • Some of the most effective fire of the muckrakers was directed at social evils:

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12. II. Raking Muck with the Muckrakers (cont.) • The immoral “white slave” traffic in women, the rickety slums, the appalling number of industrial accidents, subjugation of blacks and the abuse of child labor • Vendors of potent patent medicines were also criticized • The muckrakers signified much about the nature of the progressive reform movement: • They were long on lamentation but stopped short of revolutionary remedies • They counted on publicity to right social wrongs • They sought not to overthrow capitalism but to cleanse it • The cure of American democracy was more democracy

13. III. Political Progressivism(cont.) • “Who were the progressives?” • Militarists—like Theodore Roosevelt • Pacifists—Jane Addams • Female settlement workers, labor unionists, and enlightened businessmen • They sought to modernize American institutions to achieve two goals: • To use the state to curb monopoly power • To improve the common person’s conditions of life and labor.

14. III. Political Progressivism(cont.) • They emerged in both political parties, in all regions, and at all levels of government • Their objective was to regain power by: • Pushing for direct primary elections • Favored initiative so that voters could directly propose legislation themselves • Agitated for the referendum that would place laws on the ballot for final approval by the people • For recall to enable voters to remove faithless elected officials.

15. III. Political Progressivism(cont.) • Rooting out graft became a prime goal • Introduced the secret Australian ballot to counteract boss rule • Direct election of senators was a favorite goal to be achieved by a constitutional amendment: • The Seventeenth Amendment, approved in 1913, established the direct election of U.S. senators. • Woman suffrage received powerful support: • States like Washington, California, and Oregon gradually extended the vote to women

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19. IV. Progressivism in the Cities and States • Progressives scored most impressive gains in the cities: • Example of Galveston, Texas: appointed expert-staffed commissions to manage urban affairs • Other communities adopted the city-manager system • Urban reformers attacked: “slumlords,” juvenile delinquency, wide-open prostitution • They looked to German and English cities for examples

20. Progressivism in the Cities and States (cont.) • To clean up their water supplies • Light their streets • Run their trolley cars • They bubbled up to states, like Wisconsin: • Governor Robert M. (“Fighting Bob”) La Follette was an overbearing crusader and militant progressive Republican leader • He wrested considerable control from the crooked corporations and returned it to the people • He perfected a scheme for regulating public utilities

21. Progressivism in the Cities and States (cont.) • Other states marched toward progressivism: • Undertook to regulate railroads and trusts • Leaders were Hiram W. Johnson of California, Charles Evans Hughes of New York.

22. V. Progressive Women • Women were an indispensable part of the progressive army: • Critical focus was the settlement house movement—which offered a side door to public life: • They exposed middle-class women to the problems plaguing America’s cities: • Poverty, political corruption, and intolerable working and living conditions • Gave them skill and confidence to attack those evils

23. V. Progressive Women (cont.) • Women’s club movement provided a broader civic entryway for middle-class women • Women, whose place was seen in the home, defended their new activities as an extension—not a rejection—of their traditional roles: • Thus driven to moral and “maternal” issues • Agitated through organizations like the National Consumers League (1899) and the Women’s Trade Union League (1903), both in the Department of Labor • Campaigns for factory reform and temperance

24. V. Progressive Women (cont.) • Florence Kelley became the State of Illinois's first chief factory inspector: • Was one of the nation’s leading advocates for improved factory conditions • Took control of the newly founded National Consumers League • In the landmark case Muller v. Oregon(1908): • Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers by presenting evidence of the harmful effects of factory labor on women’s weaker bodies • Progressives hailed Brandeis’s achievement as a triumph over existing legal doctrines.

25. V. Progressive Women (cont.) • American welfare state focused more on protecting women and children rather than granting benefits to everyone • Setbacks: • 1905, when the Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York invalidated a New York law establishing a ten-hour day for bakers • If laws regulating factories were not enforced they proved worthless—for example, a lethal fire (1911) at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company of New York • By 1917 thirty states had workers’ compensation laws.

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27. V. Progressive Women (cont.) • Corner saloons attracted the progressives: • Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) founded by Frances E. Willard • Some states and counties passed “dry “ laws to control, restrict, or abolish alcohol • Big cities were generally “wet” due to immigrants who were accustomed in the Old Country to the free flow of alcohol • By World War I (1914) nearly one-half lived in “dry” territory

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29. VI. TR’s Square Deal for Labor • TR feared public interest was submerged in the progressive movement: • “Square Deal” for capital, labor, and the public at large: • His program embraced three C’s: • Control of the corporations • Consumer protection • Conservation of natural resources • First test came in the anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania

30. VI. TR’s Square Deal for Labor (cont.) • Roosevelt urged Congress to create the new Department of Commerce and Labor (1903)—ten years later it was separated in two • The Bureau of Corporations was authorized to probe businesses engaged in interstate commerce: • This bureau helped to break stranglehold of monopoly • Cleared the road for the era of “trust-busting.”

31. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations • First—the railroads: • Hatch Act (1903) aimed at railroad rebate evil • Heavy fines could be imposed both on the railroads that gave rebates • And on the shippers that accepted them. • Hepburn Act (1906): free passes, with their hint of bribery, were severely restricted • Interstate Commerce Commission was expanded: • Included express companies, sleeping-car companies and pipelines • The Commission could nullify existing rates and stipulate maximum rates

32. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations(cont.) Trusts—Roosevelt’s opposition: • Trusts was a fighting word in the progressive era • He believed they were here to stay: • Some were “good” trusts—public consciences • Some were “bad” trusts—lusted greedily for power • His first burst into headlines was an attack on the Northern Securities Company (1902): • A railroad holding company organized by financial titan J.P. Morgan and empire builder James J. Hill • They sought to achieve a virtual monopoly • TR challenged potentates of industrial aristocracy

33. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations(cont.) • The Supreme Court upheld TR’s antitrust suit and ordered Northern Securities Company to dissolve • The Northern Securities decision jolted Wall Street • Angered big business • Greatly enhanced Roosevelt’s reputation as a trust smasher • TR initiated over forty legal proceedings against giant monopolies: • Supreme Court (1905) declared the beef trust illegal • The heavy fist of justice fell upon monopolists controlling sugar, fertilizer, harvesters, and other key products • TR’s real purpose was symbolic: to prove conclusively that the government, not private business, ruled the country

34. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations(cont.) • He believed in regulating, not fragmenting, the big business combines • He hoped to make the business leaders more amenable to federal regulation • He never swung his trust-crushing stick with maximum force • Industrial behemoths more “tame” at the end of TR’s reign • His successor, William Howard Taft: • Actually “busted” more trusts than TR • Taft launched a suit against U.S. Steel (1911) but it caused a political reaction by TR.

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36. VIII. Caring for the Consumer • Roosevelt backed a noteworthy measure (1906) that benefited both corporations and consumers: • The meat packing industry called for safer canned products • Caused by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) • It intended to focused on the plight of workers • But instead appalled the public with his description of disgustingly unsanitary preparation of food products • It described Chicago’s slaughterhouses.

37. VIII. Caring for the Consumer (cont.) • Roosevelt induced Congress to pass: • The Meat Inspection Act (1906): • Decreed that the preparation of meat shipped over state lines would be subject to federal inspection from corral to can • The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906): • Designed to prevent the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals

38. IX. Earth Control • Steps to conservation of US natural resources: • Desert Land Act (1877): • Whereby the federal government sold arid land cheaply on the condition that the purchaser irrigate the thirsty soil within three years. • Forest Reserve Act (1891): • Authorized the president to set aside public forests as national parks and other reserves • Some 46 million acres were rescued.

39. IX. Earth Control (cont.) • Carey Act (1894): • Distributed federal land to the states on condition that it be irrigated and settled. • New day for the history of conservation dawned with Roosevelt (see “Makers of America: The Environmentalists,” pp. 652-653) • He seized the banner of conservation leadership • Congress responded with the landmark Newlands Act (1902): • Washington was authorized to collect money from the sale of public land in western states • Use the funds for the development of irrigation projects.

40. IX. Earth Control (cont.) • The Roosevelt Dam, constructed on the Arizona’s Salt River, was appropriately dedicated by Roosevelt (1911) • TR worked to preserve the nation’s shrinking forests: • He set aside in federal reserves some 125 million acres • He earmarked million of acres of coal deposits, and water resources useful for irrigation and power • Conservation and reclamation was Roosevelt’s most enduring tangible achievement • The disappearance of the frontier—was believed to be the source of national characteristics as individualism and democracy

41. IX. Earth Control (cont.) • Organizations and societies created: • Result of Jack London’s Call of the Wild (1903) • Outdoor-oriented Boy Scouts of America • Audubon Society to save wild native birds • The Sierra Club (1906) dedicated to preserve the wildness of the western landscape • Losses: • (1913) when San Francisco built a dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley

42. IX. Earth Control (cont.) • It caused a deep division between conservationists that persists to the present day • Roosevelt’s chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, believed that “wilderness was waste” • Pinchot and TR wanted to use the nation’s natural endowment intelligently—thus two battles: • One against greedy commercial interests that abused nature • And against romantic preservationists who simply were “woodman-spare-that-tree” sentimentality • A national policy was developed of “multiple-use resource management” • Sought to combine recreation, sustained-yield logging, watershed protection, and summer stock grazing on the same expanse of federal land

43. IX. Earth Control (cont.) • Westerners learned how to work with the federal management of natural resources: • Through new agencies, such as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Reclamation • They worked with federal conservation programs devoted to the rational, large-scale, and long-term use of natural resources • Single-person enterprises were shouldered aside, in the interest of efficiency, by the combined bulk of big business and big government

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