APUSH Chaps 19 & 20

Pure Food and Drug Act

An Act passed by the United States Congress in 1906 due to the public outcry after Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was published. In his book Sinclair describes rotten meat and filthy packing conditions in Chicago's meat packing plants, which led to this law and the creation of the federal Food and Drug Administration to oversee compliance with the new law.

Chicago school

An architectural school that was dedicated to the design of buildings who's form expressed, rather than masked, their structure and function. The presiding genius of the school was Louis Sullivan.

Progressivism

An overlapping set of movements to combat the ills of industrialization. This had important roots in cities.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Born in Western Massachusetts in 1868, he received an excellent local education and went on to earn his BA and PhD at Harvard, as well as to study with cutting-edge social scientists in Germany. By 1900 he had become a national civil rights leader and America's leading black intellectual. He believed in the gain of civil rights through gradual integration into white society. Famous for his sociological and historical studies, and he helped found the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and edited the organization's journal, The Crisis. Between 1900 and 1945, he helped organize Pan-African conferences in locations around the world. Toward the end of his life, he pursued this Pan-African ideal by moving to Ghana, the first modern African nation formed after the end of European colonialism. He died there in 1963.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

On March 25th, 1911, just before quitting time, a fire broke out in this company building. It quickly spread through the three floors the company occupied at the top of a 10-story building. Panicked workers discovered that, despite fire safety laws, employers had locked the emergency doors to prevent theft. Thousands of workers, mostly young immigrant women, we're trapped in the flames. Many leapt to their deaths; the rest never reached the windows. The average age of the 146 people who died was just 19. This tragedy sparked an outpouring of anger and grief in all New Yorkers. Facing demands for action, New York State appointed a factory commission that developed a remarkable program of labor reform: 56 laws dealing with such issues as fire hazards, unsafe machines, and wages and working hours for women and children.

Sherman Antitrust Act

The first federal attempt to forbid any "combination, in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade." It proved difficult to enforce and was soon weakened by the Supreme Court.

Tom Johnson

To recapture support from working-class Clevelanders, Democrats made a dramatic change in 1901, nominating this man for mayor. He was a reform-minded businessman, advocated municipal ownership of utilities and a tax system in which "monopoly and privilege" bore the main burdens. His comfortable victory transformed Democrats into Cleveland's leading reform party. While the new mayor did not fulfill the whole agenda of the Central Labor Union and its allies, he became an advocate of publicly owned utilities, and one of the nation's most famous and innovative reformers.

Louis Brandeis

a son of Jewish immigrants, he was hired by the National Consumers' League to be Muller's lawyer in the 1908 Muller vs. Oregon Supreme Court case. He was widely known as "the people's lawyer" for his eagerness to take on vested interests. His legal brief in this case devoted only two pages to the constitutional issue of state police powers. Instead he rested his arguments on data gathered by the NCL describing the toll that long hours took on women's health.

Race riot

when African Americans were attacked by white mobs triggered by street altercations or rumors of crime. One of the most virulent episodes occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1906, in which the rioters killed at least 24 blacks and wounded more than a hundred. These violent riots also happened in New York City, Evansville, Indiana, and Springfield, Illinois.

Omaha Platform

A 1892 statement by the Populists calling for stronger government to protect ordinary Americans.

Muller v. Oregon

A 1908 Supreme Court decision which upheld in Oregon law limiting women's work day to 10 hours. A major triumph in the movement to protect working-class women. This decision encouraged women's organizations to lobby for further reforms. This case specifically only protected women though, not men.

Lochner v. New York

A United States Supreme Court case in which the Court told New York state it could not limit bakers' workday to 10 hours because that violated bakers' rights to make a contract. Judges found support for such rulings in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Robert La Follette

A Wisconsin governor who made the state "a laboratory of democracy," as described by Theodore Roosevelt. He promoted the Wisconsin Idea, respected expertise with commitment to "more democracy," and won battles to restrict lobbying and to give Wisconsin citizens the right of recall and referendum. Continuing his career in the U.S. Senate, he, like Roosevelt, advocated increasingly aggressive measures to protect workers and rain in corporate my powers.

Mugwumps

A crude nickname that Liberal Republicans were ridiculed by. They were fence-sitters who had their faces on one side and their butts on the other.

Jane Addams

A daughter of the middle class, she opened the Hull House, the most famous social settlement, in 1889 with her companion Ellen Gates Starr. She thought that the Hull House acted as a bridge between the classes. She felt that the community center helped the poor as much as it help the rich and that both classes gave as much as they could of what they had. Her colleagues and her believed that working class Americans already knew what they needed, what they lacked were resources to fulfill those needs, as well as a political voice, so they begin to take action in order to provide these means to their community.

Yellow journalism

A derogatory term for mass-market newspapers. Newspapers such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the New York World, and The Sun, run by bigwig newspaper owners such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst where are prime examples of this.

Tenement

A five or six story building that housed twenty or more families in cramped, airless apartments. They fostered rampant disease and horrific infant mortality.

Newlands Reclamation Act

A law put in place by Theodore Roosevelt under which the federal government sold public lands to raise money for irrigation projects that expanded agriculture on arid lands. The law, interestingly, fulfilled one of the demands of the unemployed men who had marched with Coxey's Army. This act had much in common with earlier Republican policies to promote economic development in the West.

Lodge Bill

A nickname for the Federal Elections Bill of 1890 drafted by Massachusetts representative Henry Cabot Lodge. It proposed that whenever 100 citizens in any district appealed for intervention, a bipartisan federal board could investigate and seat the rightful winner. It was shot down.

Margaret Sanger

A nurse who moved to New York City in 1911 and volunteered with a Lower East Side settlement. Horrified by women's suffering from constant pregnancies- and remembering her devout Catholic mother, who died young after bearing 11 children- she launched a crusade for what she called birth control. Her column, "What Every Girl Should Know," soon garnered and indictment for violating obscenity laws. The publicity that resulted helped her launch a national birth control movement.

Free silver

A policy of loosening the money supply by expanding federal coinage to include silver as well as gold. Advocates of the policy thought it would encourage borrowing and stimulate industry, but the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan ended the movement and gave Republicans the power to retain the gold standard.

Mary E. Lease

A reformer between the 1880s and 1910s who stumped not only for the People's Party, which sought for more government regulation of the economy, but also for the Knights of Labor and Women's Christian Temperance Union, as well as for women's suffrage and public health.

Muckrakers

A term coined by Theodore Roosevelt as a way to dismiss writers "who focused too much on the negative side of American life." Reporter such as Ida Tarbell, who exposed the machinations of John D. Rockefeller, David Graham Phillips, who's "Treason of the Senate," published in Cosmopolitan in 1906 documented the deference of U.S. senators to wealthy corporate interests are just two examples of such reporters. The negative term stuck, but these people inspired thousands of readers to get involved in reform movements and tackle the problems caused by industrialization.

Talented tenth

A term used by harvard-educated sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois for the top 10% of educated African-Americans, whom he called on to develop new strategies to advocate for civil rights.

Vaudeville

A theater trend that arose in the 1880s and 1890s. Customers could walk in anytime and watch a continuous sequence of musical act, skits, magic shows, and other entertainment. First popular among the working class, this form of entertainment quickly broadened its appeal to include middle class audiences. This soon faced competition from early movie theaters.

How did the economic crisis of the 1890's shape American politics?

As a result of the panic, stock prices declined. 500 banks were closed, 15000 businesses failed, and numerous farms were unable to continue working. Many people faced starvation, homelessness, and other issues as a result. The depression was a major issue in the debates over the following years. The Republicans blamed the Democrats for the depression and scored a landslide victory in the 1894 state and Congressional elections. The Populists lost most of their strength and had to support the Democrats in 1896. The presidential election of 1896 was fought on economic issues and was marked by a decisive victory of the pro-gold, high-tariff Republicans led by William McKinley over pro-silver William Jennings Bryan.

Florence Kelley

By 1899 she was the leader of the National Consumers' League. Outspoken and skillful, she was a Hull House worker and a former chief factory inspector of Illinois. She believed that only government oversight could protect exploited workers. Under her crusading leadership, the NCL became one of the most powerful progressive organizations advocating worker protection laws.

"City Beautiful" movement

By the turn of the 20th century this movement arose to advocate for more and better urban park spaces. Though most parks still featured flower gardens and tree-lined paths, they also made room for skating rinks, tennis courts, baseball fields, and swimming pools.

National Child Labor Committee

Created in 1907, it hired photographer Lewis Hine to record real conditions in mines and mills where children worked. Impressed by the committee's investigations, Theodore Roosevelt sponsored the first White House Conference on Dependent Children in 1909, bringing national attention to child welfare issues. In 1912, momentum from the conference resulted in creation of the Children's Bureau in the United States Labor Department.

Jacob Riis

Danish foreign journalist who included photographs of tenement interiors in his famous 1890 book, How The Other Half Lives. He had a profound influence on Theodore Roosevelt when the future president served as New York City's police commissioner. Roosevelt asked him to lead him on tours around the tenement, to help him better understand the problems of poverty, disease, and crime.

National Municipal League

Formed after a devastating hurricane in 1900 killed an estimated 6000 people in Galveston, Texas and destroyed much of the city, rebuilders adopted a commission system that became a nationwide model for efficient government. This group advised cities to elect small councils and hire professional city managers who would direct operations like a corporate executive. The league had difficulty persuading politicians to adopt its business-oriented model. They won their greatest victories in young, small cities like Phoenix, Arizona.

NAACP

Formed as a result of the 1908 bloody race riot that broke out in Springfield, Illinois. Appalled by the white mobs violence in the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, New York settlement worker Mary White Ovington called together a group of sympathetic progressives to formulate a response. Their meeting in 1909 created this organization. Most leaders of the Niagara Movement soon joined. The group found allies many African American women's clubs and churches. It also cooperated with the National Urban League (1911), a union of agencies that assisted black migrants in the North.

Women's Trade Union League

Founded in New York in 1903, it was financed by wealthy women who supported its work. The league trained working-class leaders like Rose Schneiderman, who organized unions among garment workers. Although often frustrated by the patronizing attitude of elite sponsors, trade union women joined together in the broader struggle for women's rights. When New York held referenda on women's suffrage in 1915 and 1917, strong support came from Jewish and Italian precincts where unionize garment workers lived. Working-class voters hoped, in turn, that enfranchised women would use their ballots to help industrial workers. This labor organization that began in a single city eventually grew to national stature.

Theodore Roosevelt

From a prominent family, he had chosen an unconventional path. After graduating from Harvard, he plunged into politics, winning a seat as a Republican New York assemblyman. Disillusioned by his party's resistance to reform, he left politics in the mid-1880s and moved to a North Dakota Ranch, but all of his cattle died in the blizzards of 1887. He returned East, winning appointments as a United States Civil Service commissioner, head of the New York City police commission, and McKinley's assistant secretary of the navy. An energetic presence in all of these jobs, he gained broad knowledge of the problems America faced at the municipal, state, and federal levels. After serving in the war of 1898, he was elected as New York's governor. In this job, he pushed through civil service reform and tax on corporations. Seeking to neutralize this Progressive and rather unpredictable star, Republican bosses chose Roosevelt as McKinley's running mate in 1900, hoping the vice presidency would be a political dead end. Instead, they suddenly found Roosevelt in the White House. The new president, who called for vigorous reforms, represented a major shift for Republicans.

Federal Reserve Act

Gave the nation a banking system more resistant to such crises as that which almost happened in 1907 when the Knickerbocker Trust Company almost failed. If this had happened the entire banking system could have collapsed. This law created 12 district reserve banks funded and controlled by their member banks, with a central Federal Reserve Board to impose regulation. The reserve could issue currency- paper money based on assets held in the system- and set the interest rate that district reserve banks charge to their members. It thereby regulated the flow of credit to the general public. The act strengthened the banking system and, to a modest degree, discouraged risky speculation on Wall Street.

Wisconsin Idea

Greater government intervention in the economy, with reliance on experts, particularly progressive economists, for policy recommendations.

Pendleton Act

In 1883 this law established a non-partisan Civil Service Commission to fill federal jobs by examination. Initially, civil service applied to only 10% of such jobs, but the act laid the groundwork for a sweeping transformations of public employment. By the 1910s, Congress extended the act to cover most federal positions.

Williams v. Mississippi

In 1898 Supreme Court case that allowed poll taxes and literacy tests to stand in the way of African Americans' right to vote.

Industrial Workers of the World

In 1905, the Western Federation of Miners (WTM), led by fiery leaders such as William "Big Bill" Haywood, helped create this new movement. The Wobblies, as members of this movement were called, fervently supported the Marxist class struggle. As syndicalists, they believe that by resisting in the workplace and ultimately launching a general strike, workers could overthrow capitalism. A new society would emerge, run directly by workers. At its height, around 1916, the IWW had about 100,000 members. Though divided by internal conflicts, the group helped spark a number of local protests during the 1910s, including strikes of railcar builders in Pennsylvania, textile operatives Massachusetts, rubber workers in Ohio, and miners in Minnesota.

Upton Sinclair

In 1906 this journalist exposed some of the most extreme forms of Labor exploitation in his novel The Jungle, which described appalling conditions in Chicago meat-packing plants. What caught the nation's attention was not his account of workers' plight, but his descriptions of rotten meat and filthy packing conditions. With constitutes up in arms, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and created the federal Food and Drug Administration to oversee compliance with the new law.

New Nationalism

In a 1910 speech, Theodore Roosevelt called for this movement. It promoted government intervention to enhance public welfare, including a federal child labor law, more recognition of labor rights, a national minimum wage for women, women's suffrage, and curbs on the power of federal courts to stop reform.

Eugene V. Debs

In the 1890s, he had founded the American Railway Union (ARU), a broad-based group that included both skilled and unskilled workers. In 1894, amid the upheavals of depression and popular protest, the ARU had boycotted luxury Pullman sleeping cars in support of a strike by workers at the Pullman company. Railroad managers, claiming the strike obstructed the United States mail, persuaded Grover Cleveland's administration to intervene against the union. The strike failed, and he served time in prison along with other ARU leaders. The experience radicalized him, and in 1901 he launched the Socialist Party of America. He translated socialism into an American idiom, emphasizing the democratic process as a means to defeat capitalism. By the early 1910s, his party had secured a minor but persistent role in politics. Both the progressive and socialist parties drew strength from the West.

"Waving the bloody shirt"

Late 1800s slang for whipping up old animosities that ought to be set aside. When politicians appealed to war loyalties critics ridiculed them for this.

National Consumers' League

Originally founded in 1890 by Josephine Shaw Lowell. It was called the New York Consumer's League and the organization wanted to improve wages and working conditions for female store clerks. The league encouraged shoppers to patronize only stores where wages and working conditions were known to be fair. By 1899 the organization had changed its name and become the NCL. At its head stood the outspoken and skillful Florence Kelley, a Hull House worker and former chief factory inspector of Illinois.

Reformers in the Progressive Era came from different backgrounds and represented several distinct interests. What were some of those backgrounds and interests? How did their goals differ?

Reformers, just like regular people, differed. Some reformers, such as Robert La Follette, grew up on farms. Others, such as Jane Addams, grew up in cities, the heart of industrialism. These backgrounds often had to do with what they wanted to reform. La Follette wanted to make politics uncorrupt because that was an issue in the Midwest, while Addams wanted to help immigrants and the poor because those were the types of struggles she saw affecting society in Chicago.

Williams Jennings Bryan

The Democratic nomination for the 18 96 presidential election. The party amazed the country by embracing parts of the populist radical farmer labor program. He was a young Nebraska Congressman, free silver advocate, and a passionate defender of farmers who attacked the gold standard.

Why did so many reform initiatives of the early twentieth century emerge in large cities? What were some of those initiatives, and what was their political impact?

The majority of reform initiatives from the early 20th century emerged in large cities because many of the issues people were trying to reform we're rooted in industrialization. Cities were the home of industrialization, so it's only natural for reformers to work there. Some initiatives that reformers worked towards where better public health, the elimination of prostitution, city beautification, gender equality, and more. These movements tended to cause great citywide and/or national impact. For example, due to Upton Sinclair's book that talked of the disgusting practices of the meatpacking industry in Chicago, new federal laws were passed in order to guarantee that food be kept clean, and therefore less likely to contain deadly diseases, during its processing.

Scott Joplin

The master of ragtime. The composer was the son of former slaves, and grew up along the Texas-Arkansas border. He took piano lessons as a boy from a German teacher. He and other traveling performers introduced ragtime to national audiences at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Seeking to elevate African American music and secure a broad national audience, he warned pianists, "It is never right to play 'Ragtime' fast." but his instructions were widely ignored. Young Americans embraced ragtime.

Hull House

The most famous social settlement and one of the first. This social sediment was on Chicago's West Side, and was founded by Jane Addams and her companion Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. There dilapidated mansion, flanked by saloons in a neighborhood of Italian and Eastern European immigrants, served as a spark plug for community improvement and political reform.

Solid South

The post-Reconstruction goal- achieved by the early 20th century- of almost complete electoral control of the South by the Democratic Party.

Compare the reform legislation passed during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency with that of Wilson's term. How were these goals and achievements shaped by the broader agenda of the party that held power (Republicans, in Roosevelt's case, and Democrats, in Wilson's)?

Theodore Roosevelt, who originally ran for the presidency as a Republican, reflected Republican ideals by advocating for reform, especially social reform. He instigated many new laws such as the Newlands Reclamation Act, most of which helped the general public and the common man much more than it could ever have helped businesses. Wilson on the other had, believed in the Democratic ideal of acting in a more political manner. Some examples of acts passed under Wilson include the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments which both focused on the political act of reformation.

Social settlement

These Community welfare centers investigated the plight of the urban poor, raised funds to address urgent needs, add help neighborhood residents Advocate on their own behalf. At the movement speak in the early 20th century, dozens of social settlements operated across the United States.

Mutual aid society

Theses societies collected dues from members and paid support in case of death or disability on the job. They also functioned as fraternal clubs. By 1903, Italians in Chicago had 63 of these, mostly composed of people from a particular province or town.

Clayton Antitrust Act

This law amended the Sherman Act. In this act, the definition of illegal practices was left flexible, subject to the test of whether an action "substantially lessen[ed] competition." The new Federal Trade Commission received broad powers to decide what was fair, investigating companies and issuing " cease and desist" practices.

Ragtime

This music, apparently named for its ragged rhythm, combined a steady beat in the bass (played with the left hand on the piano) with syncopated, offbeat rhythms in the treble (played with the right). This form of music became wildly popular among audiences of all classes and races who heard in its infectious rhythms something exciting. This form of music originated from black performers.

Gilded Age

This period of time when politics was corrupt and stagnant and elections centered on "meaningless hoopla." This term, borrowed from the title of an 1873 novel co-written by Mark Twain, suggests that America had achieved a glittery outer coating of prosperity and lofty rhetoric, but underneath suffered from moral decay. Economically, the term seems apt: a handful of men made spectacular fortunes, and their triumphs belied a rising crisis of poverty, pollution, and erosion of workers' rights.

Blues

This style of music originated with African American trumpet player and bandleader W.C. Handy, who was born in Alabama and electrified national audiences by performing music drawn from the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. This type of music spoke of hard work and heartbreak. It spoke to the emotional lives of young urbanites who were far from home, experiencing dislocation, loneliness, and bitter disappointment along with the thrills of city life.

What were the limitations and achievements of urban governments run by political machines?

Urban governments under the rule of political machines arranged for companies to operate street cars, to bring clean water and gas light, and to remove garbage. The machines also helped immigrants who were down-on-their-luck, either because of lack of income or a tragedy, to get back on their feet. However, homelessness and hunger ran rampant while political machines did close to nothing to help those who were struggling with these issues. Because people felt so strongly on these subjects, they eventually brought political machines down.

Referendum

Voting directly on a proposed law, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators.

Recall

Voting to remove unpopular politicians from office.

Political machine

local party bureaucracies that kept an unshakable grip on both elected and appointed public offices. A machine like New York's infamous Tammany Society consisted of layers of political functionaries. At the bottom where the precinct captains who new every city neighborhood and block; above them were ward bosses and, at the top, powerful citywide leaders, who had usually started at the bottom and worked their way up. Machines dispensed jobs and patronage, arranged for urban services, and devoted their energies to staying in office, which they did, year after year, on the strength of their political clout and popularity among urban voters.