Chapter 18

Within the NAACP and in other ways, African Americans struggled with what?

With questions about their place in white society. Du Bois voiced this dilemma poignantly, admitting that "one ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body." Somehow blacks had to reconcile that two-ness by combining racial pride with national identity. As Du Bois wrote in 1903, a black "would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American." That simple wish would haunt the nation for decades to come.

Settlement Houses

Young, educated middle-class women and men tried to bridge the gap between social classes that industrialism seemed to have opened by leaving their comfortable surroundings and living in inner-city outposts called settlement houses, an idea adopted from England. Residents envisioned the settlement house as a place where people could learn from each other and mutually mitigate modern problems through education, art, and reform. Between 1886 and 1910, over four hundred settlements were established, mostly in big cities, and they sponsored a variety of activities ranging from English language classes, kindergartens and nurseries, health clinics, vocational training, and playgrounds to art exhibits and amateur theater. As firsthand observers of urban poverty and poor housing, settlement house workers focused considerable energy on improving living conditions and marched at the vanguard of Progressivism. They backed housing and labor reform, offered meeting space to unions, and served as school nurses, juvenile probation officers, and teachers. They also worked in reform political campaigns. Though several men helped initiate the settlement movement, the most influential participants were women. Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, and Florence Kelley of Chicago's Hull House settlement, Lillian Wald of New York's Henry Street settlement, and Vida Scudder of Boston's Denison House were among many strong-minded leaders who not only broadened traditional roles of female service but also used settlement work as a springboard to larger roles in reform. Kelley's investigations into the exploitation of child labor prompted Illinois governor John Altgeld to appoint her state factory inspector; she later founded the National Consumers League. Wald helped make nursing a respected profession and cofounded the NAACP. And Addams had broad political influence, and her efforts on behalf of world peace garnered her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931

Did Roosevelt and Wilson stand closer together than their rhetoric implied?

Yes. Roosevelt and Wilson stood closer together than their rhetoric implied. Despite his faith in experts as regulators, Roosevelt's belief in individual freedom was as strong as Wilson's. And Wilson was not completely hostile to con- centrated economic power. Both men supported equality of opportunity (chiefly for white males), conservation of natural resources, fair wages, and social betterment. Neither would hesitate to expand government intervention through strong personal leadership and bureaucratic reform

Women's Suffrage

A new generation of Progressive feminists, represented by Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of nineteenth-century suffrag- ist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, carried on women's battle for the vote. Blatch had broad experience in suffrage activities, having accompanied her mother on speaking tours, and participated in the British women's suffrage movement. In America, Blatch linked voting rights to the improvement of women's working conditions. She joined the Women's Trade Union League and founded the Equality League of Self Supporting Women in 1907. Declaring that every woman worked, whether she per- formed paid labor or unpaid housework, Blatch believed that all women's efforts contributed to society's betterment. In her view, achievement rather than wealth and refinement was the best criterion for public status. Thus, women should exercise the vote, not to enhance the power of elites, but to promote and protect women's economic roles. By the early twentieth century, suffragists had achieved some successes. Nine states, all in the West, allowed women to vote in state and local elections by 1912, and women continued to press for national suffrage (see Map 18.1).Their tactics ranged from letter writing and publications of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, to spirited meetings and militant marches of the National Woman's Party, led by Alice Paul and Harriot Stanton Blatch. All these activities heightened public awareness. More decisive, however, was women's service during the First World War as factory laborers, medical volunteers, and municipal workers. By convincing legislators that women could successfully shoulder public responsibilities, women's wartime contributions gave final impetus to passage of the national suffrage amendment (the Nineteenth Amendment) in 1920. In spite of these accomplishments, the activities of women's organizations, feminists, and suffragists failed to create an interest group united or powerful enough to overcome men's political, economic, and social power. During the Progressive Era, the efforts of leaders like Blatch, Paul, and Catt helped clarify issues that concerned women and finally won women the right to vote, but that victory was only a step, not a conclusion. Discrimination in employment, education, and law continued to shadow women for decades to come.

What was political participation like during this time?

After the heated election of 1896, party loyalties eroded and voter turnout declined. (As before, only adult males could vote, and some states still retained property qualifications for participation in some elections. Others used poll taxes and literacy tests to deny the voting privilege to nonwhite and poor white males.) In northern states, voter participation in presidential elections dropped from 80 percent of the eligible electorate in the 1880s to under 60 percent by 1912. In southern states, it fell below 30 percent. Parties, it seemed, were losing sway over the ways that the people viewed politics. At the same time, new interest groups—which championed their own special causes— gained influence, making Progressive reform issue-oriented rather than influenced by party ideologies

What was the Federal Reserve Act (1913)?

Also under Wilson,the Federal Reserve Act (1913) estab- lished the nation's first central banking system since 1836. To break the power that syndicates like that of J. P. Morgan held over the money supply, the act created twelve district banks to hold reserves of member banks throughout the nation. The district banks, supervised by the Federal Reserve Board, would lend money to member banks at low interest, called the discount rate. By adjusting this rate (and thus the amount a member bank could afford to borrow), district banks could increase or decrease the supply of money in circulation. In other words, in response to the nation's economic needs, the Federal Reserve Board could loosen or tighten credit, making interest rates fairer, especially for small borrowers.

How did issues and methods of implementation distinguish Progressive reform from the preceding Populist movement?

Although goals of the rural-based Populists—moral regeneration, political democracy, and anti monopolism—continued after the movement faded, the Progressive quest for social justice, educational and legal reform, and government streamlining had a largely urban quality. Utilizing advances in mail, telephone, and telegraph communications, urban reformers could exchange information and coordinate efforts across the nation more easily than could rural reformers

Who won the election of 1912?

Amid passionate moral pronouncements from Roosevelt and Wilson, as well as a hard-hitting critique from Debs and a low-key defense of conservatism from Taft, the popular vote was inconclusive. The victorious Wilson won just 42 percent, though he did capture 435 out of 531 electoral votes. Roosevelt received 27 percent of the popular vote. Taft finished third, polling 23 percent and only 8 electoral votes. Debs won 6 percent but no electoral votes. One major outcome was evident, however; three-quarters of the electorate sup- ported some alternative to the view of restrained government that Taft represented. Thus, Wilson could proclaim on Inauguration Day in 1913.

What did another kind of reform arise from? Who did this new kind of reform represent?

Another kind of reform arose from the everyday needs and problems of industrial working classes. Reformers representing this group sometimes allied with others interested in social welfare and sometimes worked on their own to promote greater public responsibility for the health, safety, and security of families and workers at risk in the new urban industrial world.

Feminism

Around 1910, some of those concerned with women's place in society began using the term feminism to represent their ideas. Whereas the woman movement spoke generally of duty and moral purity, feminists emphasized rights and self- development as key to economic and sexual independence. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a major figure in the movement, denounced Victorian notions of womanhood and articulated feminist goals in her numerous writings. Her book Women and Economics (1898), for example, declared that domestic- ity and female innocence were obsolete, and attacked men's monopoly on economic opportunity. Arguing that paid employees should handle domestic chores, such as cooking, cleaning, and childcare, Gilman asserted that modern women must have access to jobs in industry and the professions.

During the 1890s, what was the U.S. going through generally?

During the 1890s, economic depression, labor violence, political upheaval, and foreign entanglements shook the nation. Technology had fulfilled many promises, but numerous Americans continued to suffer from poverty and injustice. Some critics regarded industrialists as monsters who controlled markets and prices for the sole purpose of maximizing profits. Others believed government was corroded by bosses who enriched themselves through abuse of power. Still others felt that members of the new middle class overlooked the needs of the laboring classes. Tensions created by urbanization and industrialization seemed to be fragmenting society into conflicting interest groups

What did educators argue?

Educators argued that expanded schooling, especially for swelling populations of immigrant and migrant children, produced responsible citizens and workers. Consequently, in the 1870s and 1880s, states passed laws that required children to attend school to age fourteen. Meanwhile, the number of public high schools grew from five hundred in 1870 to ten thousand in 1910. By 1900, educational reformers, such as psychologist G. Stanley Hall and philosopher John Dewey, asserted that to prepare children for a modern world, personal development should be the focus of the curriculum and that the school be the center of the community.

Margaret Sanger's Crusade?

Feminists also supported a single standard of behavior for men and women, and several feminists joined the birth con- trol movement led by Margaret Sanger. A former visiting nurse who believed in a woman's right to sexual pleasure and to determine when to have a child, Sanger helped reverse state and federal laws that had banned publication and distribution of information about sex and contraception. Her speeches and actions aroused opposition from those who saw birth control as a threat to family and morality. Ironically, while she advo- cated greater reproductive freedom for women, her beliefs had a darker side; she also was a eugenicist who perceived birth control as a means of limiting the numbers of children born to "inferior" immigrant and nonwhite mothers. Regardless, Sanger persevered and in 1921 formed the American Birth Control League, enlisting physicians and social workers to convince judges to allow distribution of birth control informa- tion. Most states still prohibited the sale of contraceptives, but Sanger succeeded in introducing the issue into public debate.

What did American educators justifiably congratulate themselves for?

for increasing enrollments and making instruction more meaningful. By 1920, 78 percent of children between ages five and seventeen were enrolled in public schools; another 8 percent attended private and parochial schools. These figures represented a huge increase over 1870 attendance rates. There were 600,000 college and graduate students in 1920, compared with only 52,000 in 1870. Yet few people looked beyond the numbers to assess how well schools were doing their job. Critical analysis seldom tested the faith that schools could promote equality as well as personal growth and responsible citizenship

Panic of 1907?

In 1907, economic crisis forced Roosevelt to compromise his principles and work more closely with big business. That year, a financial panic caused by reckless speculation forced some New York banks to close in order to prevent frightened depositors from withdrawing money. J. P. Morgan helped stem the panic by persuading financiers to stop dumping stocks. In return for Morgan's aid, Roosevelt approved a deal allowing U.S. Steel to absorb the Tennessee Iron and Coal Company— a deal at odds with Roosevelt's trust-busting aims. But during his last year in office, Roosevelt retreated from the Republican Party's traditional friendliness to big business. He lashed out at "malefactors of great wealth" and supported stronger business regulation and heavier taxation of the rich. Having promised that he would not seek reelec- tion, Roosevelt backed his friend, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, for the Republican nomination in 1908, hoping that Taft would continue his initiatives. Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan for the third time, but the "Great Commoner" lost again. Aided by Roosevelt, who still enjoyed great popularity, Taft won by 1.25 million popular votes and a 2-to-1 margin in the electoral college

Candidates in 1912?

In 1910, when Roosevelt returned from Africa, he found his party torn and tormented. Reformers, angered by Taft's apparent insensitivity to their causes, formed the National Progressive Republican League and rallied behind Robert La Follette for president in 1912, though many hoped Roosevelt would run. Another wing of the party remained loyal to Taft. Disappointed by Taft's performance (particularly his firing of Pinchot), Roosevelt began to speak out. He filled speeches with references to "the welfare of the people" and stronger reg- ulation of business. When La Follette became ill early in 1912, Roosevelt, proclaiming himself fit as a "bull moose," threw his hat into the ring for the Republican presidential nomination. Taft's supporters controlled the Republican convention and nominated him for a second term. In protest, Roosevelt's supporters bolted the convention to form a third party—the Progressive, or Bull Moose, Party—and nominated the fifty- three-year-old former president. Meanwhile, Democrats took forty-six ballots to select their candidate, New Jersey's Progressive governor Woodrow Wilson. Socialists, by now an organized and growing party, again nominated Eugene V. Debs. The ensuing campaign exposed voters to the most thorough debate on the nature of American democracy since 1896.

The legal profession also embraced new emphases on what?

on experience and scientific principles. Harvard law professor Roscoe Pound and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., associate justice of the Supreme Court (1902-1932), led an attack on traditional views of law as universal and unchanging. "The life of the law," wrote Holmes, sounding like Dewey, "has not been logic; it has been experience." The opinion that law should reflect society's needs challenged the practice of invoking inflexible legal precedents that often obstructed social legislation. Louis D. Brandeis, a lawyer who later joined Holmes on the Supreme Court, insisted that judges' opinions be based on scientifically gathered information about social realities. Using this approach, Brandeis collected extensive data on harmful effects of long working hours to convince the Supreme Court, in Muller v. Oregon, to uphold Oregon's ten-hour limit on women's workday.

Who disliked Progressivism?

It would be a mistake to assume that a Progressive spirit captivated all of American society between 1895 and 1920. Large numbers of people, heavily represented in Congress, disliked government interference in economic affairs and found no fault with existing power structures. Defenders of free enterprise opposed regulatory measures out of fear that government programs undermined the initiative and competition that they believed were basic to a free-market system. "Old-guard" Republicans, such as Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island and House Speaker Joseph Cannon of Illinois, championed this ideology. Outside Washington, D.C., tycoons like J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller insisted that progress would result only from maintaining the profit incentive and an unfettered economy.

How did people become more discontented with government?

Mistrust of tyranny had traditionally prompted Americans to believe that democratic government should be small, interfere in private affairs only in unique circumstances, and withdraw when balance had been restored. But in the late 1800s, this laissez-faire viewpoint weakened when problems resulting from economic change seemed to overwhelm individual effort. Corporations pursued government aid and protection for their enterprises. Discontented farmers sought government regulation of railroads and other monopolistic businesses. And city dwellers, accustomed to favors performed by political machines, came to expect government to act on their behalf. Before 1900, state governments had been concerned largely with railroads and economic growth; the federal government had focused primarily on tariffs and the currency. But after 1900, issues of regulation, both economic and social, demanded attention. More than in the past, public opinion, roused by muckraking media, influenced change.

Who was Booker T. Washington?

Most black people could neither escape nor conquer white society. They sought other routes to economic and social improvement. Self-help, a strategy articulated by educator Booker T. Washington, offered one popular alternative. Born into slavery in Virginia in 1856, Washington obtained an education and in 1881 founded Tuskegee Institute, an all-black vocational school, a philosophy that blacks' best hope for assimilation lay in at least temporarily accommodating to whites. Rather than fighting for political rights, Washington counseled African Americans to work hard, acquire property, and prove they were worthy of respect. Washington voiced his views in a speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895. "Dignify and glorify common labor," he urged, in what became known as the Atlanta Compromise. "Agitation of questions of racial equality is the extremest folly." Envisioning a society where blacks and whites would remain apart but share similar goals, Washington observed that "in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all matters essential to mutual progress

How Wilson's manner and attitudes reflect his background?

On one hand, he was a superb orator who could inspire loy- alty from white people with religious imagery and eloquent expressions of American ideals. But he harbored strong disdain for African Americans; he wrote that southern slaves had been treated "indulgently," belittled blacks who held office during Reconstruction, opposed admitting blacks to Princeton, and had no misgivings about Jim Crow laws. At Princeton, he upset tradition with curricular reforms and battles against the univer- sity's aristocratic elements, and he earned enough of a reputa- tion as a reformer so that in 1910 New Jersey's Democrats, eager for respectability, nominated him for governor. After winning the election, Wilson repudiated the party bosses and promoted Progressive legislation. A poor administrator, he often lost his temper and stubbornly refused to compromise. His accomplish- ments nevertheless attracted national attention and won him the Democratic nomination for president in 1912

Progressive reformers generally occupied the center of what?

the ideological spectrum. Moderate, socially aware, sometimes contradictory, they believed on one hand that laissez-faire was obsolete and on the other that a radical departure from free enterprise was dangerous. Like Thomas Jefferson, they expressed faith in the conscience and will of the people; like Alexander Hamilton, they desired strong central government to act in the interest of conscience. Their goals were both idealistic and realistic. As minister-reformer Walter Rauschenbusch wrote, "We shall demand perfection and never expect to get it."

What did Ben Lindsey belief? What was his importance? What did he devote his life to?

Outraged that "good-natured" children were housed with hardened criminals, Lindsey later wrote, "Here were two boys, neither of them serious enemies of society, who were about to be convicted of burglary and have felony records for the rest of their lives. . . . I had made up my mind to smash the system that meant so much injustice to youth." In 1901, Lindsey ran for county judge and began a long career "smashing the system" and advocating for the welfare of children. He spoke and wrote extensively about protecting juveniles from hard-hearted criminal prosecution, exploitive labor practices, and burdens of poverty. He and his wife, Henrietta, worked to promote a separate juvenile court system and aid to families whose children might be at risk of becoming lawbreakers. They wrote reform laws that were adopted by many states and foreign countries. The Lindseys' efforts to abolish injustice showed both genuine compassion and middle-class bias, and they occupied part of a broader movement aimed at finding solutions to the social and economic problems of modern American society.

How did Socialists emerge?

Some people felt disillusioned and wanted to create a different society altogether. A blend of immigrant intellectuals, industrial workers, former Populists, and women's rights activists, they turned to socialism. Taking a cue from European counterparts—especially in Germany, England, and France, where the government sponsored such socialist goals as low-cost housing, workers' compensation, old-age pensions, public ownership of municipal services, and labor reform—they advocated that the United States adopt similar measures. By 1912, the Socialist Party of America, founded in 1901, claimed 150,000 members, and the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason achieved the largest circulation—700,000 subscribers—of any weekly newspaper in the country

New legal thinking provoked what?

Some resistance. Judges loyal to laissez-faire economics and strict interpretation of the Constitution overturned laws that Progressives thought necessary for effective reform.Thus,despite Holmes's forceful dissent, in 1905 the Supreme Court, in Lochner v. New York, revoked a state law limiting bakers' working hours. In this and similar cases, the Court's majority argued that the Fourteenth Amendment protected an individual's right to make employment contracts without government interference. Judges also weakened federal regulations by invoking the Tenth Amendment, which prohibited the federal government from interfering in matters reserved to the states.

What did the Social Gospel serve as?

The Social Gospel served as a response to Social Darwinism, the application of natural selection and survival of the fittest to human interactions. But another movement that flourished during the Progressive Era, eugenics, sought to apply Darwinian principles to society in a more intrusive way. The brainchild of Francis Galton, an English statistician and cousin of Charles Darwin, eugenics rested on the belief that human character and habits could be inherited. If good traits could be inherited, so could unwanted traits, such as criminality and mental illness. Just as some Progressives believed that society had an obligation to intervene and erase poverty and injustice, eugenicists believed that society had an obligation to prevent the reproduction of those thought to be mentally defective and criminally inclined by preventing them from marrying and, in extreme cases, sterilizing them. Such ideas targeted immigrants and people of color. Though supported by such American notables as Alexander Graham Bell, Margaret Sanger, and W. E. B. Du Bois, eugenics was discredited, especially after it became a linchpin of Nazi racial policies, but modern genetic engineering has evolved from some of the eugenics legacy.

Woodrow Wilson?

The public fondly called Roosevelt "Teddy" and "TR," but Thomas Woodrow Wilson was too aloof to be nicknamed "Woody" or "WW." Born in Virginia in 1856 and raised in the South, Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian minister. He earned a BA degree at Princeton, studied law at the University of Virginia, received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and became a professor of history, jurisprudence, and political economy before returning to Princeton, where he served as the university's president from 1902 to 1910. Between 1885 and 1908, he published several respected books on American history and government.

What was the Underwood Tariff of 1913?

Wilson and Congress attempted to restore trade competi- tion and aid consumers with the Underwood Tariff of 1913. By reducing or eliminating certain tariff rates, the Underwood Tariff encouraged importation of cheaper foreign materials and manufactured goods. To replace revenues lost because of tariff reductions, the act levied a graduated income tax on U.S. residents—an option made possible when the Sixteenth Amendment, which empowered Congress to create such a tax, was ratified earlier that year. The tax was tame by today's standards. Incomes under $4,000 ($98,000 in current dollars) were exempt; thus, almost all factory workers and most farmers escaped taxation. Individuals and corporations earning between $4,000 and $20,000 had to pay a 1 percent tax; thereafter rates rose to a maximum of 6 percent on earnings over $500,000.

Wilson offered what?

Wilson offered a more idealistic proposal, the "New Freedom," based on ideas of Progressive lawyer Louis Brandeis. Wilson argued that concentrated economic power threatened individual liberty and that monopolies should be broken up so that the marketplace could become genuinely open. But he would not restore laissez-faire. Like Roosevelt, Wilson would enhance government authority to protect and regulate. Wilson stopped short, however, of advocating the cooperation between business and government inherent in Roosevelt's New Nationalism.

At the state-level, faith in a reform-minded executive prompted Progressives to support a number of skillful and charismatic governors. Who was perhaps the most dynamic of these governors?

Wisconsin's Robert M. La Follette. A small- town lawyer, La Follette rose through the state Republican Party to become governor in 1900. In office, he initiated a multipronged reform program, including direct primaries, more equitable taxes, and regulation of railroads. He also appointed commissions staffed by experts, who supplied him with data that he used in speeches to arouse support for his policies. After three terms as governor, La Follette became a U.S. senator and carried his ideals into national politics. "Fighting Bob" displayed a rare ability to approach reform scientifically while still exciting people with moving rhetoric. His goal, he proclaimed, was "not to 'smash' corporations, but to drive them out of politics, and then to treat them exactly the same as other people are treated."

Who was W.E.B. Du Bois? What was the "Talented Tenth"? What was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP)?

A New Englander and the first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard, Du Bois was both a Progressive and a member of the black elite. He first studied at all-black Fisk University, then in Germany, where he learned about scientific investigation. While a faculty member at Atlanta University, Du Bois compiled fact-filled sociological studies of black urban life and wrote poetically in support of civil rights. He treated Washington politely but could not accept accommodation. "The way for a people to gain their reason- able rights," Du Bois asserted, "is not by voluntarily throwing them away."Instead,blacks must agitate for what was rightfully theirs. Du Bois believed that an intellectual vanguard of cultured, educated blacks, the "Talented Tenth," should lead in the pursuit of racial equality. In 1909, he joined white liberals who also were discontented with Washington's accommodationism to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The organization aimed to end racial discrimination, eradicate lynching, and obtain voting rights through legal redress in the courts. By 1914, the NAACP had fifty branch offices and six thousand members.

What became a driving principle behind reform in higher education?

A more practical curriculum also became the driving principle behind reform in higher education. Previously, the purpose of American colleges and universities had resembled that of their European counterparts: to train a select few for careers in law, medicine, and religion. But in the late 1800s, institutions of higher learning multiplied as states established public universities using federal funds from the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. The number of private institutions also expanded. Between 1870 and 1910, the total number of BA degrees granted by American colleges and universities grew from 9,400 to 37,200. Curricula broadened as educators sought to keep pace with technological and social changes. Harvard University, under President Charles W. Eliot, pioneered in substituting electives for required courses and experimenting with new teaching methods. The University of Wisconsin and other state universities achieved distinction in new areas of study, such as political science, economics, and sociology. Many schools, private and public, considered athletics vital to a student's growth, and men's intercollegiate sports became a permanent feature of student life and source of school pride

What happened as an effect on the view of restricting immigration?

A new breed of men and women pressed for political reform and institutional change in the two decades before the First World War. Concerned middle-class professionals, confident that new ways of thinking and planning could bring about progress, and representatives of working classes, who experienced social problems firsthand, helped broaden government's role to meet the needs of a mature industrial society. But their questioning of prevailing assumptions also unsettled conventional attitudes toward race and gender.

African American leaders differed sharply over what?

African American leaders differed sharply over how— and whether—to pursue assimilation in their new environments. In the wake of emancipation, ex-slave Frederick Douglass urged "ultimate assimilation through self-assertion, and on no other terms." Others favored separation from white society and supported emigration to Africa or the establishment of all-black communities in Oklahoma Territory and Kansas. Others advocated militancy, believing, as Lewis H. Douglass, Frederick Douglass's son, wrote in the wake of a vicious attack on African Americans in Atlanta in 1906, "Our people must die to be saved and in dying must take as many along with them as it is possible to do with the aid of firearms and all other weapons."

What did Roosevelt believe in when in regards to race relations?

Although he angered southern congressmen by inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House to discuss racial matters, Roosevelt believed in white superiority and was neutral toward blacks only when it helped him politically. An incident in 1906 illustrates this belief. That year, the army transferred a battalion of African American soldiers from Nebraska to Brownsville, Texas. Anglo and Mexican residents resented their presence and banned them from parks and businesses. They also pro- tested unsuccessfully to Washington. On August 14, a battle between blacks and whites broke out, and a white man was killed. Brownsville residents blamed the soldiers, but when army investigators asked the troops to identify who had partic- ipated in the riot, none of the soldiers cooperated. As a result, Roosevelt discharged 167 black soldiers without a hearing or trial, and prevented them from receiving their pay and pensions even though there was no evidence against them. Black lead- ers were outraged. Roosevelt, hoping that African Americans would support Republican candidates in the 1906 elections, had stalled before doing anything. But after the elections, he signed the discharge papers and offered no support when a bill was introduced in the Senate to allow the soldiers to reenlist.

How did American reformers also adopted foreign ideas?

American reformers also adopted foreign ideas. Some reform plans were introduced by Americans who had encountered them while studying in England, France, and Germany; others, by foreigners visiting the United States. (Europeans also learned from Americans, but the balance of the idea flow tilted toward the United States.) Americans copied from England such schemes as the settlement house, in which reformers went to live among and aid the urban poor, and workers' compensation for victims of industrial accidents. Ideas about city planning were imported from Germany. Other reforms, such as old-age insurance, subsidized workers' housing, and rural reconstruction, also originated abroad.

How was Wilson racist?

Amid his reforms, however, Wilson never overcame his racism. He fired several black federal officials, and his administration preserved racial separation in Washington, D.C. restrooms, restaurants, and government buildings. Wilson responded to protesting blacks that "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen." When the pathbreaking but inflammatory film about the Civil War and Reconstruction The Birth of a Nation was released in 1915, Wilson allowed a showing at the White House, though he subsequently prohib- ited it during the First World War.

After reading the novel, Roosevelt ordered what? What did he find?

An investigation. Finding Sinclair's descriptions accurate, he supported the Meat Inspection Act, which, after considerable political maneuvering, passed Congress in 1906. Like the Hepburn Act, this law reinforced the principle of government regu- lation, requiring that government agents monitor the qual- ity of processed meat. But as part of a compromise with meatpackers and their congressional allies, the bill provided that the government, rather than the meatpackers, had to finance inspections, and meatpackers could appeal adverse decisions in court. Nor were companies required to provide date-of-processing information on canned meats. Most large meatpackers welcomed the legislation anyway because it restored foreign confidence in American meat products.

Theodore Roosevelt

As a youth, Roosevelt suffered from asthma and nearsightedness. Driven throughout his life by an obsession to overcome his physical limitations, he exerted what he and his contem- poraries called "manliness," meaning a zest for action and dis- play of courage in a "strenuous life." In his teens, he became a marksman and horseman, and as a college student competed on Harvard's boxing and wrestling teams. In the 1880s, he went to live on a Dakota ranch, where he roped cattle and brawled with cowboys. Descended from a Dutch aristocratic family, Roosevelt had wealth to indulge in such pursuits. But he also inherited a sense of civic responsibility that guided him into a career in public service. He served three terms in the New York legislature, sat on the federal Civil Service Commission, served as New York City's police commissioner, was assistant secretary of the navy, and won election as governor of New York. In these offices Roosevelt earned a reputation as a combative, politically crafty leader. In 1898, he thrust himself into the Spanish-American War by organizing a volunteer cavalry brigade, called the Rough Riders, to fight in Cuba. Although his dramatic act had little impact on the war's outcome, it excited public imagination and made him a media hero

Some reformers saw immigration restriction as what?

As an acceptable way of controlling the composition of American society. A leading restrictionist was Madison Grant, whose The Passing of the Great Race (1916) strongly bolstered theories that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe threatened to weaken American society because they were inferior mentally and morally to earlier Nordic immigrants. Such ideas prompted many people, including some Progressives, to conclude that new laws should curtail the influx of Poles, Italians, Jews, and other eastern and southern Europeans, as well as Asians. Efforts to limit immigration reached fruition in the 1920s, when restrictive legislation drastically closed the door to "new" immigrants.

Giffford Pinchot

As chief forester of the United States and principal advo- cate of "wise use" policy, Pinchot promoted scientific man- agement of the nation's woodlands. He obtained Roosevelt's support for transferring management of the national forests from the Interior Department to his bureau in the Agriculture Department, arguing that forests were crops grown on "tree farms." Under his guidance, the Forest Service charged fees for grazing livestock within national forests, supervised bidding for the cutting of timber, and hired university-trained foresters as federal employees. Pinchot and Roosevelt did not seek to lock up— preserve—resources permanently; rather, they wanted to guarantee—conserve—their efficient use and make those who profited from using public lands pay the government for that privilege. Although antigovernment, pro-development attitudes still prevailed in the West, many of those involved in natural resource development welcomed such a policy because, like regulation of food and drugs, it enabled them to manage their operations more effectively, such as when Roosevelt and Pinchot encouraged lumber companies to engage in refor- estation. As a result of new federal policies, the West and its resources fell under the Progressive spell of expert management.

As higher education expanded, so did.....?

As higher education expanded, so did female enrollments. Between 1890 and 1910, the number of women attending colleges and universities swelled from 56,000 to 140,000. Of these, 106,000 attended coeducational institutions (mostly state universities); the rest enrolled in women's colleges, such as Wellesley and Barnard. By 1920, 283,000 women attended college, accounting for 47 percent of total enrollment. But discrimination lingered in admissions and curriculum policies. Women were encouraged (indeed, they usually sought) to take home economics and education courses rather than science and mathematics, and most medical schools refused to admit women or imposed stringent quotas. Separate women's medical schools, such as the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia and Women's Medical College of Chicago, trained female physicians, but most of these schools were absorbed or put out of business by larger institutions dominated by men

What did Wilson find necessary? What did he do to accomplish this? What was the Federal Trade Commission?

As president, Wilson found it necessary to blend New Freedom competition with New Nationalism regulation; in so doing, he set the direction of future federal economic policy. Corporate consolidation had made restoration of open competition impossible. Wilson could only try to pre- vent abuses by expanding government's regulatory powers. He thus supported congressional passage in 1914 of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and a bill creating the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Clayton Act corrected deficiencies of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 by outlawing such prac- tices as price discrimination (lowering prices in some regions but not in others) and interlocking directorates (management of two or more competing companies by the same execu- tives). The act also aided labor by exempting unions from its anti-combination provision, thereby making peaceful strikes, boycotts, and picketing less vulnerable to government inter- ference. The FTC could investigate companies and issue cease and desist orders against unfair practices. Accused com- panies could appeal FTC orders in court; nevertheless, the FTC represented another step toward consumer protection.

"Social Housekeeping"

Because female activists were generally barred from holding public office (except in a few western states), they asserted traditional female responsibilities for home and family as the rationale for reforming society through an enterprise that his- torians have called "social housekeeping." Rather than advocate reforms like trust-busting and direct primaries, female reformers formed organizations and worked collectively for factory inspection, regulation of children's and women's labor, improved housing, and consumer protection. Such efforts were not confined to white women. Mostly excluded from white women's organizations, African American women had their own associations, including the Colored Women's Federation, which sought, among other goals, to establish a training school for "colored girls." Founded in 1895, the National Association of Colored Women was the nation's first African American social service organiza- tion; it concentrated on establishing nurseries, kindergartens, and retirement homes. Black women also developed reform organizations within Black Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches

Why did whites welcome Washington's accommodation policy?

Because it advised patience and reminded black people to stay in their place. Because he said what they wanted to hear, white businesspeople, reformers, and politicians chose to regard Washington as representing all African Americans. Although Washington endorsed a separate- but-equal policy, he projected a subtle racial pride that would find more direct expression in black nationalism in the twentieth century, when some African Americans would advocate control of their own businesses and schools. Washington never argued that blacks were inferior; rather, he asserted that they could enhance their dignity through self-improvement. Some blacks, however, concluded that Washington endorsed second-class citizenship. His southern-based philosophy did not appeal to educated northern African Americans like newspaper editors William Monroe Trotter in Boston and T. Thomas Fortune in New York. In 1905, a group of "anti-Bookerites" convened near Niagara Falls and pledged militant pursuit of such rights as unrestricted voting, economic opportunity, integration, and equality before the law. Representing the Niagara movement was W. E. B. Du Bois, an outspoken critic of the Atlanta Compromise

Why did state laws resulting from Progressive efforts to improve labor conditions had more effect than did political reforms?

Because middle-class and working-class reformers agreed on the need for them. Prodded by middle-class/working- class coalitions, many states enacted factory inspection laws, and by 1916 nearly two-thirds of states required compensation for victims of industrial accidents. The same State laws resulting from Progressive efforts to improve labor conditions had more effect than did political reforms because middle-class and working-class reformers agreed on the need for them. Prodded by middle-class/working- class coalitions, many states enacted factory inspection laws, and by 1916 nearly two-thirds of states required compensation for victims of industrial accidents. The same State laws resulting from Progressive efforts to improve labor conditions had more effect than did political reforms because middle-class and working-class reformers agreed on the need for them. Prodded by middle-class/working- class coalitions, many states enacted factory inspection laws, and by 1916 nearly two-thirds of states required compensation for victims of industrial accidents. The samehhhh State laws resulting from Progressive efforts to improve labor conditions had more effect than did political reforms because middle-class and working-class reformers agreed on the need for them. Prodded by middle-class/working- class coalitions, many states enacted factory inspection laws, and by 1916 nearly two-thirds of states required compensation for victims of industrial accidents. The same alliance induced some legislatures to grant aid to low- income mothers with dependent children. Under pressure from the National Child Labor Committee, nearly every state set a minimum age for employment (varying from twelve to sixteen) and limited hours that employers could make children work. Labor laws did not work perfectly, however. They seldom provided for the close inspection of factories that enforcement required. And families that needed extra income evaded child labor restrictions by falsifying their children's ages to employers.

Why was the concept of general welfare still conflicting with the principle of equal rights when majorities imposed their will on minorities?

But the concept of general welfare often conflicted with the principle of equal rights when majorities imposed their will on minorities. Even if one agreed that laws should address society's needs, whose needs should prevail? The United States was (and remains) a mixed nation where interests of gender, race, religion, and ethnicity often conflict. Thus outcries resulted when a native-born Protestant majority imposed Bible reading in public schools (offending Catholics and Jews), required businesses to close on Sundays, limited women's rights, restricted religious practices of Mormons and other groups, prohibited interracial marriage, and enforced racial segregation. Justice Holmes asserted that laws should be made for "people of fundamentally differing views," but fitting such laws to a nation of so many different interest groups sparked debates that continue to this day.

By 1900 how was the situation for the U.S. like?

By 1900, the previous decade's political tumult had calmed, and economic depression subsided. The nation emerged victorious from a war against Spain and an era of new political leaders, including a new brand of president, was dawning. A sense of renewal served both to intensify anxiety over continuing problems and to raise hopes that somehow those problems could be fixed so that democracy could be reconciled with capitalism.

By the 1910s, what were reformers like? Progressivism?

By the 1910s, reformers of various sorts were calling themselves Progressives; in 1912, they formed a political party by that name to embody their principles. Historians have uniformly used the term Progressivism to refer to the era's spirit, while disagreeing over its meaning and over who actually was a Progressive. Nonetheless, the era between 1895 and 1920 included a series of movements, each aiming in one way or another to renovate or restore American society, values, and institutions with hope that a better future lay ahead.

What was central to Theodore Roosevelt's campaign?

Central to Theodore Roosevelt's campaign as Progressive Party nominee was a scheme called the "New Nationalism," a term coined by reform editor Herbert Croly. The New Nationalism envisioned an era of national unity in which government would coordinate and regulate economic activity. Echoing his statements made in the last years of his presi- dency, Roosevelt asserted that he would establish regulatory commissions of experts who would protect citizens' interests and ensure wise use of economic power.

"The Woman Movement"

Challenges to established social assumptions also raised questions of identity among women. The ensuing quandaries resembled those faced by racial minorities: What tactics should women use to achieve rights? What should be women's role in society? Should they try to achieve equality within a male- dominated society? Or should they assert particular female virtues to create a new place for themselves within society?The answers that women found involved a subtle but important shift in their politics. Before 1910, crusaders for women's rights referred to themselves as "the woman move- ment." This label applied to middle-class women who strove to move beyond the household into higher education and paid professions. Like African American and Native American leaders, women argued that legal and voting rights were indispensable to such moves. They based their claims on the theory that women's special, even superior, traits as guardians of family and morality would humanize society. Settlement house founder Jane Addams, for example, endorsed woman suffrage by asking, "If women have in any sense been respon- sible for the gentler side of life which softens and blurs some of its harsher conditions, may not they have a duty to perform in our American cities?"

What altered approaches to education?

Changing attitudes about childhood and increases in school attendance altered approaches to education. As late as 1870, when families needed children at home to do farmwork, Americans attended school for an average of only a few months a year for only four years. By 1900, however, the urban-industrial economy and its expanding middle class helped to create a more widespread appreciation of childhood as a special life stage requiring that youngsters be sheltered from society's dangers and promoting their physical and emotional growth. Those concerned about children's development believed that youngsters required forms of education and activity appropriate to a child's biological and cultural development.

William Howard Taft Administration

Early in 1909, Roosevelt traveled to Africa to shoot game, leav- ing Taft to face political problems that Roosevelt had managed to postpone. Foremost was the tariff; rates had risen to exces- sive levels. Honoring Taft's pledge to cut tariffs, the House passed a bill sponsored by New York representative Sereno E. Payne that provided for numerous reductions. Protectionists in the Senate prepared, as in the past, to amend the bill and revise rates upward. But Senate Progressives, led by La Follette, attacked the tariff for benefiting special interests, trapping Taft between reformers who claimed to be preserving Roosevelt's antitrust campaign and protectionists who still dominated the Republican Party. In the end, Senator Aldrich restored most cuts the Payne bill had made, and Taft—who believed the bill had some positive provisions and understood that extreme cuts re not politically possible—signed what became known as the Payne-Aldrich Tariff (1909). In Progressives' eyes, Taft had failed the test of filling Roosevelt's shoes.

In 1900, how did discrimination exist?

In 1900, nine-tenths of African Americans lived in the South, where repressive Jim Crow laws had multiplied in the 1880s and 1890s. Denied legal and voting rights, and officially segregated in almost all walks of life, southern blacks faced constant exclusion as well as relentless violence from lynching and countless acts of intimidation. In 1910, only 8,000 out of 970,000 high-school-age blacks were enrolled in southern high schools. In response, many African Americans moved northward in the 1880s, accelerating their migration after 1900. The conditions they found in places like Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit represented relative improvement over rural sharecropping, but they still confronted job discrimination, inferior schools, and segregated housing.

Socialists united behind who?

In politics, socialists united behind Eugene V. Debs, the American Railway Union organizer who drew nearly 100,000 votes as Socialist Party candidate in the 1900 presidential election. A spellbinding orator who appealed to urban immigrants and western farmers alike, Debs won 400,000 votes in 1904 and polled 900,000 in 1912, at the pinnacle of his and his party's career. Although Debs and other Socialist Party leaders, such as Victor Berger of Wisconsin, the first socialist to be elected to the U.S. Congress, and New York labor lawyer Morris Hillquit, did not always agree on tactics, they made compelling overtures to reform-minded people.

In reality, Taft was as sympathetic to reform as Roosevelt was. How was this evident?

In reality, Taft was as sympathetic to reform as Roosevelt was. He prosecuted more trusts than Roosevelt; expanded national forest reserves; signed the Mann-Elkins Act (1910), which bolstered regulatory powers of the ICC; and supported such labor reforms as shorter work hours and mine safety legislation. The Sixteenth Amendment, which legalized the federal income tax as a permanent source of federal revenue, and the Seventeenth Amendment, which provided for direct election of U.S. senators, were initiated during Taft's presidency (and ratified in 1913). Like Roosevelt, Taft compromised with big business, but unlike Roosevelt, he lacked the ability to rouse the public with spirited rhetoric. Roosevelt had expanded presidential power and infused the presidency with vitality. "I believe in a strong executive," he once asserted. "I believe in power." Taft, by contrast, believed in the restraint of law. He had been a successful lawyer and judge, and returned to the bench as chief justice of the United States between 1921 and 1930. His caution and unwillingness to offend disappointed those accustomed to Roosevelt's magnetism

How did Progressive reform in the South resemble that in other regions?

In some ways, Progressive reform in the South resembled that in other regions. Essentially urban and middle class in nature, it included the same goals of business regulation, factory safety, pure food and drug legislation, and moral reform as existed in the North. The South pioneered some political reforms; the direct primary originated in North Carolina; the city commission plan arose in Galveston, Texas; and the city manager plan began in Staunton, Virginia. Progressive governors, such as Braxton Bragg Comer of Alabama and Hoke Smith of Georgia, introduced business regulation, educational expansion, and other reforms that duplicated actions taken by their northern counterparts

What was Progressivism like in the West?

In the West, several politicians championed humanitarianism and regulation, putting the region at the forefront of campaigns to expand functions of federal and state governments. Nevada's Progressive Senator Francis Newlands advocated national planning and federal control of water resources. California governor Hiram Johnson fought for direct primaries, regulation of child and women's labor, workers' compensation, a pure food and drug act, and educational reform. Montana's Senator Thomas J. Walsh fought against corruption and for woman suffrage

How did Southern and Western women, white and black, make notable contributions to Progressive causes, just as they did in the North and East?

In western states, women could vote on state and local matters and thus participated directly in political reform. But the more effective women's reform efforts in both regions took place outside politics, and their projects remained racially distinct. White women crusaded against child labor, founded social service organizations, and challenged unfair wage rates. African American women, using a nonpolitical guise as homemakers and religious leaders—roles that whites found more acceptable than political activism—served their communities by advocating for cleaner streets, better education, and health reforms.

How did the "muckrakers" emerge?

Indignation over abuses of power motivated many middle-class reformers.Their views were voiced by journalists whom Theodore Roosevelt dubbed "muckrakers" (after a character in the Puritan allegory Pilgrim's Progress, who, rather than looking heavenward at beauty, looked downward and raked the muck on the floor to expose evil). Muckrakers fed public tastes for scandal and sensation by exposing social, economic, and political wrongs. Their investigative articles in McClure's, Cosmopolitan, and other popular magazines attacked adulterated foods, fraudulent insurance, prostitution, and political corruption. Lincoln Steffens's articles in McClure's, later published as The Shame of the Cities (1904), epitomized muckraking style. Steffens hoped his exposés of bosses' misrule in various cities would inspire outrage and, ultimately, reform. Other celebrated muckraking works included Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), a novel that disclosed outrages of the meatpacking industry; Ida M.Tarbell's disparaging history of Standard Oil (first published in McClure's, 1902-1904); Burton J. Hendrick's Story of Life Insurance (1907); and David Graham Phillips's Treason of the Senate (1906).

Like prohibition, what did the Mann Act reflect?

It reflected sentiment that government could improve behavior by restricting it. Middle- class reformers believed that the source of evil was neither original sin nor human nature but the social environment. If evil was created by human will, it followed that sin could be eradicated by human effort.The new working classes,however, resented such meddling as unwarranted attempts to control them. Thus, when Chicagoans voted on a referendum to make their city dry shortly before the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, three-fourths of the city's immigrant voters opposed it, and the measure went down to defeat.

Why was SAI's emphasis on racial pride squeezed between pressures for assimilation on one side and tribal allegiance on the other?

Its small membership did not fully represent the diverse and unconnected Native American groups, and its attempt to establish a unifying governing body fizzled. Some tribal governments no longer existed to select representatives, and most SAI members simply promoted their self-interest. At the same time, the goal of achieving acceptance in white society proved elusive. Individual hard work was not enough to overcome prejudice and condescension, and attempts to redress grievances through legal action faltered for lack of funds. Ultimately, the SAI offered little to poverty-stricken Native Americans on reservations and elsewhere, who seldom knew that the organization even existed. Torn by internal disputes, the association folded in the early 1920s.

How did Roosevelt show willingness to compromise on legislation to ensure the purity of food and drugs?

Knowing that the political process made it difficult to achieve full business regulation, Roosevelt showed willing- ness to compromise on legislation to ensure the purity of food and drugs. For decades, reformers had been urging govern- ment regulation of processed meat and patent medicines. Public outrage at fraud and adulteration flared in 1906 when Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a fictionalized exposé of Chicago meatpacking plants. Sinclair, a socialist whose objective was to improve working conditions, shocked public sensibilities with vivid descriptions.

How did formerly local organizations formed around specific interests and issues become nationwide after 1890?

Many formerly local organizations that had formed around specific interests and issues became nationwide after 1890. These organizations included professional associations, such as the American Bar Association; women's organizations, such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association; problem-oriented groups, such as the National Consumers League; civic-minded clubs, such as the National Municipal League; and minority group associations, such as the National Negro Business League and the Society of American Indians. Because they usually acted outside established parties, such groups made politics more fragmented and issue focused than in earlier eras.

Middle class Progressive reformers rejected what?

Middle-class Progressive reformers rejected the laissez- faire principle of government. Increasingly aware that a simple, inflexible government was inadequate in a complex industrial age, they reasoned that public authority needed to counteract inefficiency and exploitation. But before activists could effectively use such power, they would have to reclaim government from politicians—whose venality, they believed, had soiled the democratic system. Thus, eliminating corruption from government was one central thrust of Progressive activity.

What three goals did middle-class reformers organize their ideas and actions around?

Middle-class reformers organized their ideas and actions around three goals. First, they sought to end abuses of power. Attacks on monopoly and corruption were not new; Jacksonian reformers of the 1830s and 1840s, as well as Populists of the 1890s, belonged to the same tradition. Progressives, however, broadened the offensive. Trust-busting, consumers' rights, and good government became compelling political issues. Second, Progressives such as Ben Lindsey wished to supplant corrupt power with humane institutions, such as schools, courts, and medical clinics. Though eager to protect individual rights, they asserted that society had the responsibility and power to improve individual lives, and they believed that government, acting for society at large, must intervene to protect the common good and elevate public interest above self- interest. Their revolt against fixed categories of thought challenged entrenched views on women's roles, race rela- tions, education, legal and scientific thought, and morality. Third, Progressives wanted to enlist experts who would apply their special knowledge to end wasteful competition and promote social and economic order. Science and the scientific method—planning, control, predictability—were their central values. Just as corporations applied scientific management techniques to achieve economic efficiency, Progressives advocated expertise and planning to achieve social and political efficiency.

How did moral outrage begin in regards to prostitution?

Moral outrage erupted when muckraking journalists charged that international gangs were kidnapping young white women and forcing them into prostitution, a practice called "white slavery." Accusations were exaggerated, but they alarmed some moralists who falsely perceived a link between immigration and prostitution, and who feared that prostitutes were producing genetically inferior children. (These moralists seldom expressed the same concern for African American women.) Although some women voluntarily entered "the profession" because it offered much higher income than other forms of work and other women occasionally performed sexual favors in return for gifts, those fearful about the social consequences of prostitution prodded governments to investigate and pass corrective legislation. The Chicago Vice Commission, for example, undertook a "scientific" survey of dance halls and illicit sex, and published its findings as The Social Evil in Chicago in 1911. The report concluded that poverty, gullibility, and desperation drove women into prostitution. Such investigations publicized rising numbers of prostitutes but failed to prove that criminal organizations deliberately lured women into "the trade."

Crusades against corrupt politics made the system more what?

More democratic. By 1916, all but three states had direct primaries, and many had adopted the initiative, referendum, and recall. Political reformers achieved a major goal in 1913 with adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provided for direct election of U.S. senators, replacing election by state legislatures. Such measures, however, did not always achieve desired ends. Party bosses, better organized and more experienced than reformers, were still able to control elections, and special-interest groups spent large sums to influence voting. Moreover, courts usually aided entrenched power rather than reining it in.

The Social Gospel?

Much of Progressive reform rested on religious underpinnings from which arose new thoughts about how to fortify social relations with moral principles. In particular, a movement known as the Social Gospel, led by Protestant ministers Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden, and Charles Sheldon, would counter cutthroat capitalism by interjecting Christian churches into worldly matters, such as arbitrating industrial harmony and improving the conditions of the poor. Believing that service to fellow humans provided the way to securing individual salvation and creating God's kingdom on earth, Social Gospelers actively participated in social reform and governed their lives by asking, "What would Jesus do?"

Prior to the Progressive Era, reformers had attacked what?

Prior to the Progressive Era, reformers had attacked dis- honesty in city governments through such reforms as civil service, nonpartisan elections, and close scrutiny of public expenditures. After 1900, campaigns to make cities run more efficiently resulted in city-manager and commission forms of government, in which urban officials were chosen for professional expertise rather than for political connections. But reforming city administration was not sufficient to realize the improvements reformers sought, and they turned to state and federal governments for help.

John Dewey importance on progressive education?

Progressive education, based on Dewey's The School and Society (1899) and Democracy and Education (1916), was a uniquely American phenomenon. Dewey believed that children should be taught to use intelligence and ingenuity as instruments for controlling their environments. From kindergarten through high school, Dewey argued, children needed to learn through direct experience, not by rote memorization. Dewey and his wife, Alice, put these ideas into practice in their own Laboratory School, located at the University of Chicago.

How did a new middle class emerge in the Progressive movement and start their own reform?

Progressive goals—ending abuse of power, protecting the welfare of all people, reforming institutions, and promoting social efficiency—existed at all levels of society. But a new middle class of men and women in professions of law, medicine, engineering, social service, religion, teaching, and business formed an important reform vanguard. Offended by corruption and immorality in business, government, and human relations, these people were determined to apply the rational techniques that they had learned in their professions to problems of the larger society. They also believed they could create a unified nation by "Americanizing" immigrants and Native peoples—meaning educating them to conform to middle-class customs and ideals.

Progressives had faith in what?

Progressives had faith in the ability of humankind to create a better world. They voiced such phrases as "humanity's universal growth" and "the upward spiral of human development." Rising incomes, new educational opportunities, and increased availability of goods and services created an aura of confidence that social improvement would follow. Judge Lindsey expressed the Progressive creed when he wrote, "In the end the people are bound to do the right thing, no matter how much they fail at times."

Prohibition reforms? Anti-Saloon League?

Protecting women and children brought together reform coalitions. But when an issue involved regulating behavior such as drinking habits and sexual conduct, class differences emerged, especially when reformers used morality and social control as bases for their agenda. For example, the Anti-Saloon League, formed in 1893, intensified the long-standing campaign against drunkenness and its costs to society. This organization allied with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (founded in 1874) to publicize alcoholism's role in causing health problems and family distress. The league was especially successful in shifting attention from the immorality of drunkenness to using law enforcement to break the alleged link between the drinking that saloons encouraged and the accidents, poverty, and poor productivity that resulted. Against the wishes of many working-class people who valued individual freedom to drink where and when they wanted, the war on saloons prompted many states and localities to restrict liquor consumption. By 1900, one-fourth of the nation's population lived in "dry" communities that prohibited the sale of liquor.

White Slave Traffic Act (Mann Act)?

Reformers nonetheless believed they could attack prostitution by punishing both those who promoted it and those who practiced it. In 1910, Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act (Mann Act), prohibiting interstate and international transportation of a woman for immoral purposes. By 1915, nearly every state had outlawed brothels and solicitation of sex. Such laws ostensibly protected young women from exploitation, but in reality they failed to address the more serious problem of sexual violence that women suffered at the hands of family members, presumed friends, and employers.

What else did Roosevelt support? Hepburn Act?

Roosevelt also supported regulatory legislation, espe- cially after his resounding victory in the presidential elec- tion of 1904, in which he won votes from Progressives and businesspeople alike. After a year of wrangling with railroads and their political allies, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Hepburn Act (1906), which strength- ened the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) by giv- ing it authority to inspect railroad financial records and set "just and reasonable" freight rates and extending that authority over ferries, express companies, storage facilities, and oil pipelines. The Hepburn Act still allowed courts to overturn ICC decisions, but in a break from previous laws, it required shippers to prove they were not in violation of regulations, rather than making the government demon- strate violations.

How did Roosevelt carry his youthful exuberance into the White House?

Roosevelt carried his youthful exuberance into the White House. (A British diplomat once quipped, "You must always remember that the president is about six.") Considering himself a Progressive, he concurred with his allies that a small, unin- volved government would not suffice in the industrial era. Instead, economic progress necessitated a government powerful enough to guide national affairs. "A simple and poor society," he observed, "can exist as a democracy on the basis of sheer individualism. But a rich and complex society cannot so exist." Especially in economic matters, Roosevelt wanted government to act as an umpire, deciding when big business was good and when it was bad. But his brash patriotism and dislike of qualities that he considered effeminate also recalled earlier eras of unbridled expansion, when raw power prevailed in social and economic affairs.

How did Roosevelt participate in conservation?

Roosevelt combined the Progressive impulse for efficiency with his love for the outdoors to make lasting contributions to resource conservation. Government involvement in this endeavor, especially the establishment of national parks, had begun in the late nineteenth century. Roosevelt advanced the movement by favoring conservation over preservation. He not only exercised presidential power to protect such natural wonders as the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, as well as such human marvels as the native cliff dwellings in Colorado and Arizona, by declaring them national monuments; he also backed a policy of "wise use" of forests, waterways, and other resources to conserve them for future generations. Previously, the government had transferred ownership and control of natural resources on federal land to the states and private interests. Roosevelt, however, believed the most efficient way to use and conserve resources would be for the federal government to retain management over lands that remained in the public domain. Roosevelt used federal authority over resources in several ways. He created five national parks and fifty-one national bird reservations, and protected waterpower sites from sale to private interests. He also supported the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which controlled sale of irrigated federal land in the West, and in 1908 brought the nation's governors to the White House to discuss the efficient use of resources. During his presidency, Roosevelt tripled the number and acreage of national forests and backed conservationist Gifford Pinchot in creating the U.S. Forest Service.

What did Roosevelt's approach to labor resemble?

Roosevelt's approach to labor resembled his compro- mises with business over matters of regulation. When the United Mine Workers struck against Pennsylvania coal mine owners in 1902 over an eight-hour workday and higher pay, the president urged arbitration between the conflicting par- ties. Owners, however, refused to recognize the union or to discuss grievances. As winter approached and nationwide fuel shortages threatened, Roosevelt roused public opinion. He threatened to use federal troops to reopen the mines, thus forcing management to accept arbitration of the dispute by a special commission. The commission decided in favor of higher wages and reduced hours and required management to deal with grievance committees elected by the miners. But in a compromise with management, it did not mandate recognition of the union.The decision,according to Roosevelt, provided a "square deal" for all. The settlement also embod- ied Roosevelt's belief that the president or his representatives should determine which labor demands were legitimate and which were not. In Roosevelt's mind, there were good and bad labor organizations (socialists, for example, were bad), just as there were good and bad business combinations.

Courts did uphold some regulatory measures, particularly those intended for?

Safeguarding life and limb. A string of decisions, beginning with Holden v. Hardy (1898), in which the Supreme Court sustained a Utah law regulating working hours for miners, confirmed the use of state police power to protect health, safety, and morals. Judges also affirmed federal police power and Congress's authority over interstate commerce by upholding legislation, such as the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Meat Inspection Act, and the Mann Act. In these instances citizens' welfare took precedence over the Fourteenth and Tenth Amendments

How did the dilemma of identity also vexed American Indians, but also add tribal dimension?

Since the 1880s, most Native American reformers had belonged to white-led organizations. In 1911, however, some middle-class Native Americans formed their own association, the Society of American Indians (SAI), to work for better education, civil rights, and health care. Under leadership of prominent professionals, who called themselves "Red Progressives," the SAI sought to promote unity among all Native peoples and, like white Progressives, invested faith in inevitable progress. To this end, the society advocated an annual "American Indian Days" to cultivate pride and offset images of savage peoples promulgated in Wild West shows

What is social science?

Social science—the study of society and its institutions— experienced changes similar to those affecting education and law. In economics, scholars used statistics to argue that laws governing economic relationships were not timeless. Instead, they claimed, theory should reflect prevailing social condi- tions. Economist Richard T. Ely, for example, argued that poverty and impersonality resulting from industrialization required intervention by "the united efforts of Church, state, and science." A new breed of sociologists led by Lester Ward, Albion Small, and Edward A. Ross agreed, adding that citizens should work to cure social ills rather than passively wait for problems to solve themselves. Meanwhile, historians Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles A. Beard, and Vernon L. Parrington examined the past to explain present American society. Beard, like other Progressives, believed that the Constitution was a flexible document amenable to growth and change, not a sacred code imposed by wise forefathers. His Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913) argued that a group of merchants and business-oriented lawyers created the Constitution to defend private property. If the Constitution had served special interests in one age, he argued, it could be changed to serve broader interests in another age

Segregated schools

Southern states, in keeping with separate but equal policies, created segregated colleges for blacks in addition to institutions for whites. Aided by land grant funds, such schools as Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (A&M), South Carolina State University, and the A&M College for the Colored Race (North Carolina) opened their doors. "Separate" was a more accurate description of these institutions than "equal" as African Americans continued to suffer from inferior educational opportunities. Nevertheless, African American men and women found intellectual stimulation in all-black colleges and used education to promote the advancement of their race.

Government during the Progressive Era?

The Progressive Era's theme of reform in politics, institutions, and social relations drew attention to government, especially the federal government, as the foremost agent of change. Although the federal government had notable accomplish- ments during the preceding Gilded Age, its role had been mainly to support rather than control economic expansion, as when it transferred western public lands and resources to pri- vate ownership.Then,in September 1901,the political climate suddenly shifted. The assassination of President William McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz vaulted Theodore Roosevelt, the young vice president (he was forty-two), into the White House. As governor of New York, Roosevelt had angered state Republican bosses by showing sympathy for regulatory legislation, so they rid themselves of him by push- ing him into national politics. Little did they anticipate that they provided the stepping-stone for the nation's most force- ful president since Abraham Lincoln, one who imbued the office with much of its twentieth-century character.

Upper Class Reformers?

The Progressive spirit also stirred some male business leaders and wealthy women. Executives like Alexander Cassatt of the Pennsylvania Railroad supported some—but not excessive— government regulation and political restructuring to protect their interests from more radical reformers. Others, like E. A. Filene, founder of a Boston department store, and Tom Johnson, a Cleveland streetcar magnate, were humanitarians who worked unselfishly for social justice. Business- dominated organizations like the Municipal Voters League and U.S. Chamber of Commerce thought that running schools, hospitals, and local government like efficient businesses would help stabilize society. Elite women led and gave financial support to organizations like the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), which aided unmarried working women, and to settlement houses.

What did the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 do?

The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) not only prohibited dangerously adulterated foods but also addressed abuses in the patent medicine industry. Makers of tonics and pills had long been making undue claims about their products' effects and liberally using alcohol and narcotics as ingredients. Ads in popular publications, like one for a "Brain Stimulator and Nerve Tonic" in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue, made wildly exaggerated claims. Although the law did not ban such products, it required that labels list the ingredients—a goal consistent with Progressive confidence that if people knew the facts, they would make wiser purchases.

How did Roosevelt make an impact in regulation of trusts?

The federal regulation of business that has continued to the present began with Roosevelt's presidency. Roosevelt turned attention first to massive trusts created in previous decades by corporate consolidation. Although labeled a "trustbuster," Roosevelt actually considered business con- solidation an efficient means to achieve material progress, but he distinguished between good and bad trusts; bad ones were those that unfairly manipulated markets. Thus, he instructed the Justice Department to use antitrust laws to prosecute railroad, meatpacking, and oil trusts, which he believed exploited the public. Roosevelt's policy tri- umphed in 1904 when the Supreme Court, convinced by the government's arguments, ordered the breakup of Northern Securities Company, the huge railroad combi- nation created by J. P. Morgan. Roosevelt chose, however, not to attack other trusts, such as U.S. Steel, another of Morgan's creations.

What did the outbreak of the First World War and approaching presidential election campaign prompt Wilson to support? What was the Federal Loan Act? What was the Adamson Act?

The outbreak of the First World War (see Chapter 20) and approaching presidential election campaign prompted Wilson to support stronger reforms in 1916. To aid farmers, he backed the Federal Farm Loan Act. This measure created twelve federally supported banks (not to be confused with Federal Reserve banks), which could lend money at moderate interest to farmers who belonged to credit institutions—a diluted version of the subtreasury plan that Populists had proposed a generation earlier. To forestall railroad strikes that might disrupt transportation at a time of national emergency, Wilson also pushed passage of the Adamson Act, which mandated eight-hour workdays and time-and-a-half overtime pay for railroad laborers. He pleased Progressives by appointing Brandeis, the "people's advocate," to the Supreme Court, though an anti-Semitic backlash almost blocked Senate approval of the Court's first Jewish justice. In addition, Wilson backed laws that regulated child labor and provided workers' compensation for federal employees who suffered work-related injuries or illness.

What were the sources of reform?

The reform impulse had many sources. Industrial capitalism had created awesome technology, unprecedented pro- ductivity, and a cornucopia of consumer goods. But it also brought harmful overproduction, domineering monopolies, labor strife, and destruction of natural resources. Burgeoning cities facilitated the amassing and distribution of goods, services, and cultural amenities; they also bred poverty, disease, and crime. The influx of immigrants and rise of a new class of managers and professionals reconfigured the social order. And the depression of the 1890s forced leading citizens to realize what working people already knew: the promise of American life was not being kept; equality of opportunity was elusive

How were prominent Progressives not "progressive" in every respect?

Their attempts to Americanize immigrants reflected bigotry as well as naiveté. As governor, Hiram Johnson promoted discrimination against Japanese Americans, and whether Progressive or not, most southern governors, such as Smith, Comer, Charles B. Aycock of North Carolina, and James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, rested their power on appeals to white supremacy. In the South, the disfranchisement of African Americans through poll taxes, literacy requirements, and other means meant that electoral reforms benefitted only whites—and then only white men with enough cash and schooling to satisfy voting prerequisites. Settlement houses in northern cities kept blacks and whites apart in separate programs and buildings.

Public health organizations such as the National Consumers League (NCL) did what?

They joined physicians and social scientists to bring about some of the most far-reaching Progressive reforms. Founded by Florence Kelley in 1899, the NCL pursued protection of female and child laborers and elimination of health hazards in the marketplace. After aiding in the success of Muller v. Oregon, the organization supported reform lawyers Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter in court cases to protect women workers. Local NCL branches united with women's clubs to advance consumer protection measures, such as the licensing of food vendors and inspection of dairies. They also urged city governments to fund neighborhood clinics that provided health education and medical care to the poor.

What happened with the Progressive and conservative wings of the Republican Party?

They openly split. Soon after the tariff controversy, a group of insurgents in the House, led by Nebraska's George Norris, challenged Speaker "Uncle Joe" Cannon of Illinois, whose power over committee assignments and the scheduling of debates could make or break a piece of legislation. Taft first supported, then abandoned, the insurgents, who nev- ertheless managed to liberalize procedures by enlarging the influential Rules Committee and removing selection of its members from Cannon's control. In 1910, Taft also angered conservationists by firing Gifford Pinchot, who had protested Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger's plans to aid private development by selling Alaskan coal lands and reduc- ing federal supervision of western waterpower sites.

How did others take more secular pathways?

Those who believed in service to all people tried to assimilate immigrants and Native peoples by expanding their educational, economic, and cultural opportunities. At times, well-intentioned humanitarians undermined their efforts by imposing their own values on people of different cultures. Working-class Catholic and Jewish immigrants, for example, sometimes rejected the Protestant creed and Americanization efforts of Social Gospelers and resented middle-class reformers' interference in their prerogative to raise children according to their own beliefs.

To remedy corrupt policies, Progressives advocated what?

To remedy corrupt politics, these Progressives advocated nonpartisan elections to prevent the fraud and bribery bred by party loyalties. To make officeholders more responsible, they urged adoption of the initiative, which permitted voters to propose new laws; the referendum, which enabled voters to accept or reject a law; and the recall, which allowed voters to remove offending officials and judges from office. The goal, like that of the business consolidation movement, was efficiency: middle-class Progressives would reclaim government by replacing the boss system with accountable managers chosen by a responsible electorate.

Working-Class Reformers?

Vital elements of what became modern American liberalism derived from working-class urban experiences. By 1900, many urban workers were pressing for government intervention to ensure job safety and security. They advocated such bread- and-butter reforms as safe factories, shorter workdays, workers' compensation, protection of child and women laborers, better housing, and a more equitable tax structure. Politicians like Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York and Governor Edward F. Dunne of Illinois worked to alleviate hardships that resulted from urban-industrial growth. They trained in the trenches of machine politics, and their constituents were the same people who supported political bosses, supposedly the enemies of reform. Yet bossism was not necessarily incompatible with humanitarianism. When "Big Tim" Sullivan, an influential boss in New York's Tammany Hall machine, was asked why he supported shorter work days for women, he explained, "I had seen me sister go out to work when she was only fourteen and I know we ought to help these gals by giving 'em a law which will prevent 'em from being broken down while they're still young." Those who represented working-class interest did not subscribe to all reforms. As protectors of individual liberty, they opposed schemes such as prohibition, Sunday closing laws, civil service, and nonpartisan elections, which conflicted with their constituents' interests. On the other hand, they joined with other reformers to pass laws aiding labor and promoting social welfare.

When prosecution of Northern Securities began, what occurred?

When prosecution of Northern Securities began, Morgan reportedly collared Roosevelt and offered, "If we have done anything wrong, send your man to my man and they can fix it up." The president refused but was more sym- pathetic to cooperation between business and government than his rebuff might suggest. Rather than prosecute at every turn, he urged the Bureau of Corporations (part of the newly created Department of Labor and Commerce) to assist com- panies in merging and expanding. Through investigation and consultation, the administration cajoled businesses to regulate themselves; corporations often cooperated because government regulation helped them operate more efficiently and reduced overproduction.

Ultimately, American socialism had difficulty sustaining what?

Widespread acceptance. Some Progressives joined the Socialist Party, but most reformers favored capitalism too much to want it overthrown. Municipal ownership of public utilities represented their limit of drastic change. In Wisconsin, where Progressivism was most advanced, reformers refused to join forces with Berger's more radical group. In California, Progressives temporarily allied with conservatives to prevent socialists from gaining power in Los Angeles. Although some AFL unions supported socialist goals and candidates, many other unions opposed a reform like unemployment insurance because it would increase taxes. Moreover, private real estate interests opposed government intervention in housing, and manufacturers tried to suppress socialist activity by blacklist- ing militant laborers.

What else did middle and working class groups unite behind?

measures that restricted working hours for women and that aided retirees. After 1908, when the Supreme Court, in Muller v. Oregon, upheld Oregon's law prohibiting laundries from making female employees work more than ten hours a day, more states passed laws protecting female workers. Meanwhile, in 1914, efforts of the American Association for Old Age Security made progress when Arizona established old-age pensions. Judges struck down the law, but demand for pensions continued, and in the 1920s many states enacted laws to provide for needy elderly people.

While male reformers of the Progressive Era dealt primarily with issues of politics and institutions, they......

often ignored issues directly affecting former slaves, nonwhite immigrants, American Indians, and women. Yet activists within these groups caught the Progressive spirit, challenged entrenched customs, and made strides toward their own advancement. Their efforts, however, posed a dilemma. Should women and nonwhites aim to imitate white men, with white men's values as well as their rights? Or was there something unique about racial and sexual cultures that they should preserve at the risk of sacrificing broader gains? Both groups fluctuated between attraction to and rejection of the culture that excluded them

Despite reform efforts, consumption of alcohol increased as a result of what?

the influx of immigrants whose cultures included social drinking, convincing prohibitionists that a nationwide ban was the best solution. They enlisted support from such notables as Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and former president William Howard Taft, and in 1918 Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment (ratified in 1919 and implemented in 1920), outlawing the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors. Not all prohibitionists were Progressive reformers, and not all Progressives were prohibitionists. Nevertheless, the Eighteenth Amendment represents an expression of the Progressive goal to protect family and workplace through reform legislation.