The Progressive Impulse

1. The Progressive Impulse • Progressivism was an optimistic vision, an idea of progress, believed society was capable of improvement and that continued growth and advancement were the nation's destiny, believed that direct, purposeful human intervention in social and economic affairs was essential to ordering and bettering society

2. The Progressive Impulse • Antimonopoly was the fear of concentrated power and the urge to limit and disperse authority and wealth, this appealed to workers, farmers, and to some middle class Americans

3. The Progressive Impulse • Social Cohesion was the belief that individuals are not autonomous but part of a great web of social relationships, the welfare of any single person is dependent on the welfare of society as a whole

4. The Progressive Impulse • Based on a deep faith in knowledge, social order was a result of intelligent social organization and rational procedures for guiding social and economic life

5. The Progressive Impulse • Role of Government – modernized government must play an important role in the process of improving and stabilizing society

6. The Progressive Impulse • Muckrakers – crusading journalists, committed to exposing scandal, corruption and injustice to public view

7. The Progressive Impulse • Charles Francis Adams Jr- began to uncover corruption among railroad barons

8. The Progressive Impulse • Ida Tarbell – most notable of railroad trust exposes, wrote an enormous and influential study of the Standard Oil trust

9. The Progressive Impulse • Lincoln Steffens wrote a portrait of machine governments and boss rule, his tone studied moral outrage (The Shame of the Cities) - all helped arouse sentiment for urban political reform

10. The Progressive Impulse • Muckrakers investigated governments, labor unions, corporations; explored the problems of child labor, immigrant ghettoes, prostitution, and family disorganization; denounced the waste of natural resources, subjugation of women, and occasionally the oppression of blacks

11. The Progressive Impulse • Muckrakers argued that people themselves must take greater interest in public life by presenting social problems to the public with indignation and moral fervor they helped inspire other Americans to take action

12. The Progressive Impulse • Expressed basic progressive impulses: opposition to monopoly, belief in the need for social unity in the face of corruption and injustice

13. The Progressive Impulse • Social Gospel – reformers committed to the pursuit of social justice, powerful movement within American Protestantism, chiefly concerned with redeeming nation's cities

14. The Progressive Impulse • Salvation Army- example of fusion of religion with reform, offered both material aid and spiritual service to the urban poor

15. The Progressive Impulse • Charles Sheldon wrote In His Steps about a young minister who abandoned comfortable life to work among the needy, became the most successful novel of the era

16. The Progressive Impulse • Walter Rauschensbusch published a series of influential discourse on the possibilities for human salvation through Christian reform “One could hear human virtue cracking and crashing all around.” Walter Rauschenbusch

17. The Progressive Impulse • Catholic liberal Father John A. Ryan worked to expand the scope of Catholic social welfare system

18. The Progressive Impulse • Critics of Social Gospel saw it as irrelevant moralization, William Graham Sumner argued that people's fortunes reflected their inherent "fitness" for survival, many progressive theorists disagreed: ignorance, poverty and criminality were not result of genetic failings- effects of unhealthy environment

19. The Progressive Impulse • Jacob Riis exposed the crowded immigrant neighborhoods of the American cities through photographs and lurid descriptions

20. The Progressive Impulse • Jane Adams established the Hull House which became a model for more than 400 similar institutions, sought to help immigrant families adapt to the language and customs of their new country, training ground for future female leaders, spawned the profession of social work where women played a vital role, produced elaborate surveys, reports and collected statistics

21. The Progressive Impulse • Women played an important role in social work where they produced elaborate surveys and reports, collected statistics, and published scholarly tracts on the need for urban reform

22. The Progressive Impulse • Many reforms came to believe that only enlightened experts and well-designed bureaucracies could create stability and order

23. The Progressive Impulse • Thorstein Veblen was one of the most influential social scientists, critical of the "leisure class" (industrial tycoons), proposed new economic system in which power would reside in the hands of highly trained engineers

24. The Progressive Impulse • Taylorism: impulse toward expertise and organization, encouraged development of mass production techniques, assembly line, new organization, resulted in a dramatic expansion in number of Americans engaged in administrative and professional tasks, the new Middle Class placed high value on education

25. The Progressive Impulse • Doctors who considered themselves trained professionals began forming local associations and societies- American Medical Association reorganized into a national professional society

26. The Progressive Impulse • Johns Hopkins compared favorably with the leading medical schools in Europe, and doctors there such as William H. Welch taught by moving the students out of the classrooms and into laboratories and clinics

27. The Progressive Impulse • By 1916 lawyers in 48 states had established professional bar associations • The Progressive Impulse • Business administration created the National Association of Manufactures and the United States Commerce

28. The Progressive Impulse • Admission requirements into newly formed professions effort to defend the professions from the untrained and incompetent, women found themselves excluded from most of the emerging professions, most important job for women was teaching – 90% of all professional women were teachers

29. The Progressive Impulse • Women's Professions had much in common with other professions, value placed on training and expertise, creation of professional organizations and professional identity – usually helping professions like nursing and librarians

30. Women and Reform • New Woman – house work was less onerous, occupies only a small part of the day, began looking for activities outside the home, declining family size, lived longer, single women were among the most prominent female reformers, high levels of education became available

31. Women and Reform • The divorce rate rose quickly in the late 19th century from one divorce in 21 to one in 9 by 1916. • Boston Marriages – women lived together, sometimes romantically

32. Women and Reform • Women's Clubs were a large network of organizations to provide an outlet for intellectual energies, General Federation of Women's Clubs had over 1 million members by 1917, became more concerned with social betterment, most excluded blacks who formed their own clubs

33. Women and Reform • National Association of Colored Women: some crusaded against lynching, protested aspects of segregation

34. Women and Reform • Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her book Woman and Economics argued that the traditional definition of gender roles was obsolete

35. Women and Reform • Accomplishments of Clubs – supported schools, libraries, settlement houses, built hospitals, important force in winning passage of state laws that regulated conditions of women and child labor, outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcohol

36. Women and Reform • Mother's Pensions – some state legislatures provided pensions to widowed or abandoned mothers with small children, became part of the Social Security system

37. Women and Reform • Children’s Bureau in the Labor Department directed to develop policies to protect children

38. Women and Reform • Women’s Trade Union League persuaded women to join unions, the WTUL raised money to support strikers on picket lines and bail strikers out of jail

39. Women and Reform • Suffrage seemed a very radical demand, women presented their views in terms of "natural rights", Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed that a woman is the arbiter of her own destiny

40. Women and Reform • Powerful anti suffrage movement emerged: defended existing social norms, posed a threat to "natural order", suffrage associated with divorce, promiscuity, looseness and neglect of children

41. Women and Reform • Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt were a Boston social worker and journalist, thanks to them membership in the National American Woman Suffrage Association grew to over 2 million, argued enfranchisement would help temperance movement.

42. Women and Reform • National American Woman Suffrage Association believed war would become a thing of the past, promised to reshape the role of women and reform social order, separation of the suffrage movement from more radical feminist goals and its associations with other reform causes of concern helped it gain widespread support

43. Women and Reform • Some suffrage advocates claimed that once women could vote war would stop, one reason why WW1 gave a decisive push for suffrage

44. Women and Reform • Florence Kelley helped organize NAACP, was a prominent social reformer

45. Women and Reform • In 1910, Washington became the first state in 14 years to extend suffrage to women, California followed a year later, strength of suffrage in western states result of an absence of large Catholic communities, suffrage fight rarely intersected with other, more divisive issues

46. Women and Reform • By 1919, 39 states has given women the right to vote, in 1920 ratification of the 19th amendment guaranteed political rights to women, Alice Paul was the head of the militant National Woman's Party and argued women needed a constitutional amendment that would provide clear legal protection for their rights, prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex- Equal Rights Amendment

47. The Assault on the Parties • Only government could effectively counter the many powerful private interests that threatened the nation

48. The Assault on the Parties • Before they could reform society effectively they would have to reform government- considered parties corrupt, undemocratic and reactionary

49. The Assault on the Parties • Former Mugwumps (Independent Republicans) became important supporters of progressive political reform

50. The Assault on the Parties • States adopted secret ballot- helped chip away at the power of the parties over the voters