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Progressive Era. Progressive: broad loosely defined political movement of individuals and groups who hoped to bring significant change. Business men who wanted to give workers a voice Female reform organizations Social scientist Anxious middle class. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
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Progressive: broad loosely defined political movement of individuals and groups who hoped to bring significant change • Business men who wanted to give workers a voice • Female reform organizations • Social scientist • Anxious middle class
Muckrakers • Lincoln Steffens: Shame of Cities • Ida Tarbell: History of Standard Oil • Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie • Upton Sinclair: The Jungle
The Working Woman • Charlotte Perkins Gilman: road to woman’s freedom lay through the workplace
The Rise of Fordism The Assembly Line
The Promise of Abundance • Shift from capital goods to consumer products • Economic abundance would eventually come to define American way of life • Fulfillment was acquiring material goods • Desire for consumer goods led many to join unions and fight for higher wages
Living Wage • Earning a living wage came to be viewed as a natural and absolute right of citizenship • Mass consumption came to occupy a central place in descriptions of American society and its future
Industrial Freedom • Frederick W. Taylor and Scientific management
Socialist Presence • Eugene V. Debs • Radicals
Birth Control Movement • Margaret Sanger
Spearhead for Reform • Jane Addams and Hull House
Roosevelt and the Trusts • Sherman Antitrust Act • Coal Miners Strike • Improved Interstate Commerce Commission • Regulate Food and Drug Industry
Conservation Movement • John C. Muir and Sierra Club • Gifford Pinchot, head of US Forest Service • Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier
Taft in Office • More aggressive antitrust policy • Supported 16th amendment (graduated income tax) • Ballinger-Pinchot Affair
Election of 1912 • Taft (Republican) • Roosevelt (Progressive) • Wilson (Democrat) • Debs (Socialist)
New Freedom and New Nationalism • Wilson: New Freedom • Democracy invigorated by restoring market competition and freeing gov from big business domination • Protect rights of labor unions • Economic competition without government regulation • Roosevelt: New Nationalism • Heavy taxes on personal and corporate functions and federal regulation of industries including railroads, mining and oil • Social justice • Intervention of government
Wilson’s First Term • Underwood Tariff: reduced duties on imports • Graduate income tax on wealthy 5% • Clayton Act 1914: exempted labor unions from antitrust laws and barred courts from stopping strikes • Keating-Owen Act: outlaw child labor • Adamson Act: 8 hr workday on railroad • Warehouse Act: extended credit to farmers who stored crops in federally licensed warehouses
Expanding Role of Government • Wilson abandons idea of aggressive trust-busting in favor of greater economic supervision of economy • Federal Reserve System: 12 regular banks, overseen by central board appointed by president and empowered to handle issuance of currency, aid banks in danger of failing & influence interest rates to promote economic growth • Federal Trade Commission: to investigate & prohibit unfair business activities such as price fixing and monopolistic practices