Political Reform and the Progressive Era

Political Reform and the Progressive Era • Objectives: • Describe reforms designed to end corruption in big business. • Explain the contributions of Presidents T. Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson. • Expound upon the gains of the Women’s Movement. • Illustrate the struggles of various ethnic groups in the United States. 1

Taming the Spoils System • Spoils System – the practice of rewarding political • supporters with government jobs • (Ex. Ambassadorships) • This happened at both the federal and state levels. • As soon as a new executive (president or governor) was elected, a whole new set of advisors and government employees would be hired. • This results in what is known as a “fat government”. • Some have connected the assassination of President Garfield with this practice. 2

Founding of the Civil Service • The Pendleton Act which stated that the Federal government would base employment offers on the existence of skills necessary to successfully fulfill the duties of a position. • This was accomplished through a series of exams and interviews. • Passed on January 16, 1883 under President Chester Arthur. Authored by Senator George Pendleton, a Democrat from Ohio. 3

Controlling Big Business • The Interstate Commerce Act (1887) founded the Interstate Commerce Commission(ICC). • This was the first Federal regulatory commission. • The original purpose was to regulate the movement of goods around the country by railroad, but it eventually was extended to the trucking industry as well. • The Commission was allowed to set standard rates for any commercial good that had to travel across state lines to be delivered. • Examples: shipping services, agricultural goods, • telephone services, oil, timber, etc. 4

Controlling Big Business • The Sherman Antitrust Act was enacted on July 2, 1890. • The Act provides: • “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal". The Act also provides: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony.” 5

Controlling Big Business • Many judges sided with big business making the Sherman Antitrust Act more of a “paper tiger” than anything else. • The Act was successful in reigning in unions, however; because the federal government could now order workers that produced “necessary goods and services” back to work. • This phrase was interpreted broadly to include almost any industry. 6

What’s a Progressive? • Progressives strongly opposed waste and corruption, seeking change in regard to worker's rights and protection of the ordinary citizen in general. • Initially the movement was successful at local level, and then it progressed to state and gradually national. • The Progressives pushed for social justice, general equality and public safety, but there were contradictions within the movement, especially regarding race. 7

Robert M. La Follette • Republican Senator from Wisconsin and a progressive reformer. • He ran for President of the United States as the nominee of his own Progressive Party in 1924, carrying Wisconsin and 17% of the national popular vote. • La Follette has been called “arguably the most important and recognized leader of the opposition to the growing dominance of corporations over the Government.” 8

The Wisconsin Idea • La Follette championed numerous progressive reforms, including the first workers' compensation system, railroad rate reform, direct legislation, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, direct election of U.S. Senators, women's suffrage, and progressive taxation. • Many of these issues were brought to forefront of national politics during his campaign for U.S. Senator. • Muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens began covering his campaign and attempted to spread vicious rumors about La Follette. • This only gave him a bigger platform upon which to discuss his ideas. His later presidential campaign would not have been possible without this publicity. 9

The Primary System • Prior to 1903 party leaders were the people responsible for choosing candidates. • Wisconsin developed a system in which people would vote to choose electors that would relay their choice for a particular candidate. • By 1917 all but 4 states followed suit. 10

Other Election Reforms • Some states gave their voters even more power by adding more ways for them to impact legislation. • Recall – people may vote to remove an elected official after they have taken office • Referendum – a proposed legislative act goes to the people for final approval, rather than to a vote in the legislature. • Initiative – people sign a petition to propose a law and then it is either put on the ballot or sent to the legislature for ratification. 11

Passage of the 16th Amendment • The government was trying to find a way to finance the growth of infrastructure. Congress passed a federal income tax into law, but it was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. So they wrote an amendment to change the Constitution • Ratified by Congress on February 3, 1913, this Amendment allows the Federal Government to levy an income tax. The money collected may be distributed however the legislature sees fit and does not need to be spent proportionally. • The courts later interpreted the Sixteenth Amendment to allow a direct tax on "wages, salaries, commissions, etc. without apportionment." 12

Passage of the 17th Amendment • It was ratified on April 8, 1913 and was first put into effect for the election of 1914. • It amends Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution to provide for the direct election of Senators by the people of a state rather than their election or appointment by a state legislature. • It also allows the governor of each state, if authorized by that state's legislature, to appoint a senator in the event of an opening, until an election occurs. 13

Muckrakers • The term muckraker most associated with a group of American investigative reporters, novelists and critics from the late 1800s to early 1900s, who investigated and exposed societal issues such as conditions in slums and prisons, sweatshops, mines and unsanitary conditions in food processing plants. • Muckrakers were often accused of being socialists or communists. • In the early 1900s, muckrakers shed light on such issues by writing books and articles for popular magazines and newspapers such as Cosmopolitan, The Independent, and McClure's. • President Theodore Roosevelt is credited with originating the term 'muckraker.' During a speech in 1906 he likened the muckrakers to the Man with the Muckrake, a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678). 14

Theodore Roosevelt • Was born in 1831 to a wealthy merchant family. He was the second of five children. • His younger brother Elliot is the father of Eleanor Roosevelt. • His father had supported Abraham Lincoln; his mother was a former southern belle with two brothers who were officers in the Confederate Army. • As a child he was severely asthmatic, but was also said to be hyperactive and mischievous. • Because of his illness he was home schooled. He did very well but was horrible at math. • In 1876 he graduated from Harvard and then went on to Columbia Law School. 15

Theodore Roosevelt • When offered a chance to run for New York Assemblyman in 1881, he dropped out of law school to pursue his new goal of entering public life. • He became good friends with fellow Progressive Henry Cabot Lodge (they will later become bitter enemies). • Later he would become head of the Civil Service Commission under both Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. • He was named Assistant Secretary of the Navy by William McKinley in 1897. • Later he would accept the post of Vice President after his success in the Spanish-American War. 16

The Assassination of McKinley • While greeting a crowd of supporters during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York President William McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901. • Leon Frank Czolgosz waited in line with a pistol in his right hand concealed by a handkerchief. At 4:07 P.M. Czolgosz fired twice at the president. • The first bullet grazed the president's shoulder. The second, however, went through McKinley's stomach, colon, and kidney, and finally lodged in the muscles of his back. • At 2:15 A.M. on September 14, 1901, eight days after he was shot, he died from gangrene surrounding his wounds. His last words were "It is God's way; His will be done, not ours.“ and he was buried in Canton, Ohio. • This left Roosevelt at 42 as the youngest President in American history up until this point. • Czolgosz was later found guilty of murder, and was executed by electric chair at Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901. 17

TR and Big Business • His 20,000-word address to the Congress in December 1901, asked Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits." They did not act but Roosevelt did, issuing 44 lawsuits against major corporations; he was called the “trust-buster” • The first suit he brought (on behalf of the federal government) was against the Northern Securities Company in 1902. • This large railroad trust had been formed earlier that year by E. H. Harriman, James J. Hill, J.P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefeller, and their associates. • The company controlled the Northern Pacific Railway, Great Northern Railway, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and other associated lines through a merger. • After vigorous federal prosecution, the company was dissolved according to the 1904 Supreme Court ruling in the Northern Securities case, five to four. • The companies were convicted under the Sherman Antitrust Act, overturning the previous decision of United States v. E. C. Knight Co. • In that case, the Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act was insufficient in regulating that monopoly. 18

TR & Organized Labor • In 1902 the United Mine Workers of America went on strike in Pennsylvania. • Resulting in a shut down of anthracite mines for 163 days. • To avoid a national emergency Roosevelt called the mine owners and the labor leaders to the White House and negotiated a compromise. • The miners were granted a 10% pay increase and a 9-hour day (from the previous 10 hours), but the union was not officially recognized and the price of coal went up to offset the cost of the pay increase. • In later comments, Roosevelt acknowledged the “noble intent” of labor unions and suggested the courts were biased against them. 19

TR and Consumers • Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle shocked and sickened readers with its description of a meat packaging plant • Led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act in 1906 [T]he meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Upton Sinclair

TR and Consumers (2) • Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, Dr. Harvey Wiley discovered the unhealthy ingredients people were taking as “medicine” • Congress passes Pure Food and Drug Act • Law requires manufacturers to list all ingredients on a label

TR and Conservation • TR made conservation a matter of public policy • TR wanted to protect environment from lumber and mining companies • TR was a great outdoorsman – loved to fish and hunt and appreciated beauty of the land • With TR’s help, Congress creates U.S. Forest Service and sets aside land to be used as a national park • First national park – Yellowstone National Park

William Howard Taft • TR decided not to run for president in 1908. • TR chose Taft to be his successor – Taft was Secretary of War • Taft was governor of Philippines – did a very good job • Problem – Taft was not as energetic or as liberal as TR

Taft – The Good and the Bad • Good • Broke up more trusts than TR • Created agency to control child labor • Gave government workers 8-hour work day • Bad • Tariff increase (Payne-Aldrich Tariff) • Gave conserved lands to business for development Uncle Joe Cannon Nelson Aldrich Sereno Payne

Gifford Pinchot • He was a progressive who strongly believed in the efficiency movement. • The most economically efficient use of natural resources was his goal. • Pinchot developed a plan by which the forests could be developed by private interests, under set terms, in exchange for a fee. • Pinchot made the standards at the Forestry Service very high and quickly set off to professionalize the forestry industry. • He was fired from the Forestry Service by Howard Taft for speaking out against policies of the Department of the Interior that were environmentally unsound 25

Governor Pinchot • Governor William Sproul appointed him Pennsylvania State Commissioner of Forestry in 1920. • Pinchot's aim, however, was to become governor. His 1922 campaign for the office concentrated on popular reforms: government economy, enforcement of Prohibition and regulation of public utilities. He won and became Pennsylvania’s 29th governor. • Pinchot retired at the end of his term in 1927. But won a second term in 1930, battling for regulation of public utilities, relief for the unemployed, and construction of paved roads to "get the farmers out of the mud." • This was the achievement he was most proud of. 26

Election of 1912 • Roosevelt endorsed William Howard Taft as the Republican candidate in 1908 because he claimed to be a genuine "progressive“. • In that election Taft easily defeated three-time candidate William Jennings Bryan. • Many claim that the Progressive movement “lost steam” under Taft because he was not as charismatic a leader as Roosevelt. This lead many to leave the party to support the newly liberal Democrats. • In 1910, Roosevelt and Taft broke off their friendship. Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination to Taft and ran in the 1912 election on his own one-time Bull Moose ticket. • He beat Taft in the popular vote. • This split caused Democrat Woodrow Wilson to pull ahead because neither could gain enough electoral votes to win. 27

Wilson and New Freedom • Wilson continued the work begun by Roosevelt in trust-busting. • He spoke to Congress urging them to revive the free enterprise system and to “wake up the economy”. • In 1914, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was founded. • This agency investigates reports of fraud by businesses. • Later, Wilson signed the Clayton Antitrust Act which reiterated the legislative intent of the Sherman Act while limiting the use of that act to regulation of unions. Library of Congress (111-SC-4984) 28

The Women’s Movement • In July 1848 more than 300 men and women assembled in Seneca Falls, New York, for the nation's first women's rights convention. • On the first day, Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented the organizers' Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions(patterned after the Declaration of Independence). • The Seneca Falls declaration held that "all men and women" are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. • The 12 resolutions of the Declaration of Sentiments called for the repeal of laws that enforced unequal treatment of women, the recognition of women as the equals of men, the granting of the right to vote, the right for women to speak in churches, and the equal participation of women with men in "the various trades, professions, and commerce." 29

Suffrage • Connections made at the convention eventually lead to the creation of the National Women’s Suffrage Association. • Suffragewas granted in the “new” western states in the late 1800s mainly because of the low population and the need for registered voters for the rights of incorporation. • As the need for more income grew so too did the number of women in the workforce, nearly 5 million by 1900. • This only added fuel to the suffrage fire because now women were subjected to direct taxation and were still not allowed to vote. • They therefore had TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION! 30

Leaders of the Suffrage Movement • Susan B. Anthony – arrested for illegal voting • Elizabeth Cady Stanton – one of the first women to become a lawyer • They were the first generation leaders of the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA)

Next Generation of Woman’s Suffrage Leaders • Carrie Chapman Catt – strategy to win state by state approval; met with leaders in Washington many times • Alice Paul – grass roots support through protest and civil disobedience

New Opportunities for Women • Prior to the emergence of a solidified women’s movement, the entrance of women into certain professions was limited. • While women could study to become professionals, many states refused to license them. • Around the same time, women’s organizations which had once been only social in nature (The Daughter’s of the American Revolution, The Women’s Auxiliary, etc.) began to take on political stances. 33

Women’s Clubs • Women joined clubs to read books and share ideas • Clubs raised money for libraries, schools and parks • African American women formed own clubs to battle against segregation • Florence Kelley – investigates sweatshop conditions and organized boycotts of goods produced by factories that employed children

Prohibition • In 1874 a group of women, lead by Frances Willard, formed the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). • They held meetings with officials which “revealed the evils of alcohol”. According to this group alcohol was a direct CAUSE of each of the following societal ills: • Domestic Violence • Child Abuse • Unemployment • Murder • Theft • Vagrancy • After hearing this convincing argument, and being pressured by their constituents, Congress passed the 18th Amendment. 35

The 18th Amendment • The "Volstead Act," was passed by Congress over President Wilson's veto on October 28, 1918 and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor and established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. • Section 1. … the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States … for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. • It is the only amendment to the United States Constitution to ever be repealed (by the Twenty-first Amendment). 36

Carrie Nation • Carrie Nation led a radical response to sale of alcohol • First marriage ended because her husband became alcoholic • She was generous to needy and poor; visited prisoners in jail • Came to public attention when she used bricks and hatchets to close down bars in Kansas • Her actions led to several beatings and jail time • She collapsed during a lecture on the evils of alcohol and died several months later • She was also a supporter of women’s suffrage

Unexpected Consequence • The passage of the 18th Amendment did little to stop the flow of alcohol • Made alcohol more attractive (fun doing bad things!) • Speakeasies – Hidden bars in cities operating against the law • Bootleggers - those who smuggled alcohol across state lines • Organized Crime – large scale criminal operations • Al Capone – famous gangster who made millions off of illegal booze; jailed for tax evasion • FBI in charge of enforcing prohibition FBI agent Elliot Ness

Challenges Facing African Americans • Jim Crow laws allowed for an increased period of discrimination against African Americans to exist following the Civil War Amendments. • Discrimination in housing, lending, education and employment were particularly unfair in both the North and South. • Redlining, or the informal segregation of where certain groups are allowed to live, started in this period and some say that it still exists today. 39

Booker T. Washington • Became most prominent African American of his time • Taught himself to read • Founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama • Wanted blacks to learn a trade and move up gradually (economic power social equality) • View popular among white leaders Tuskegee Institute today

W.E.B. Du Bois • First African American to receive PhD from Harvard University • Criticized Washington’s approach to equality • Believed blacks had to fight for their rights in the courts • In 1909, helped found the NAACP – an organization to help blacks obtain equal rights in the courts

Other Famous African Americans • George Washington Carver made great strides in the field of genetics. His successful cross breeding of peanut plants in the South saved the industry from ruin. • Sarah Walker created a line of hair care products for African American women and became the first American woman to earn more than $1 million. • Ida B. Wells was a civil rights advocate and an early women's rights advocate active in the Woman Suffrage Movement. She lead the crusade to have the practice of lynching outlawed. , 42

Challenges Facing Mexican Americans • In the Southwest Mexican migrant farmers had been crossing the border for work for decades. • It was not until around 1900 that things got so bad in Mexico that they were compelled to stay. • They were often paid very little and, like African Americans, were denied housing and education. • Many Mexican Americans settled in Texas and southern California. • The population of Los Angeles tripled between 1910 and 1920 as a result. 43

Response by Mexican Americans • Sought to preserve language and culture • Barrios – ethnic neighborhoods • Mutualistas – mutual aid societies • Paid for insurance • Paid for legal advice • Raised money for sick and needy

Challenges Facing Asian Americans • Following the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 many West Coast companies started to recruit workers from other Asian countries like Japan and the Philippines. • They too were forced to endure discrimination in housing, lending and education. • Many in the western states did not dissociate these new immigrants from the Chinese who had “taken” their jobs on the railroad and they engaged in anti-Asian protests. 45

Gentlemen’s Agreement • In 1906, San Francisco forced Asian children to attend separate schools from whites • Japan protested the move and created an international crisis • Unions pressured TR to limit Japanese immigration • “Gentlemen’s Agreement” reached in 1907 • Japan would stop sending workers to U.S. • U.S. stop the segregated schools

Religious Minorities • As the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe increased, so too did the number of Roman Catholics in the United States. • Groups like the Anti-Catholic American Protective Association lobbied Congress for quotas on Catholic immigrants. • People of the Jewish faith faced stereotypes of being greedy and untrustworthy. • Many formed small communities within larger cities so they could provide for themselves and not have to be degraded by other prejudiced business owners. • Examples: Little Italy, Greenwich Village, etc. 47

Political Reform and the Progressive Era