CHAPTER 18 The Progressive Era, 1900–1916
This chapter concentrates on the history of the Progressive era, an age when political and economic freedoms
expanded for many. The opening story of the tragic 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company highlights the
prevailing feeling in America that the government had to be more responsible for the well-being of the people. The
chapter continues with a look at growing urbanization and immigration, muckrakers’ responses to these forces, and
the emergence of a consumer society that brought a new meaning to freedom—consumer freedom. As industry
continued to prosper through Fordism and the principles of scientific management, the promise of abundance
encouraged workers to fight for higher wages. Next, the chapter explores freedom’s many meanings, looking
specifically at the Socialist Party, labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), and civil liberties. Rounding out this section on the varieties of Progressivism is a
discussion of Native American Progressivism. The next section addresses the politics of Progressivism. Progressives
assumed that the modern era required a fundamental rethinking of the functions of political authority. Out of this
belief came the idea of effective freedom. Enlarging democracy, governing by experts, and spearheading reform
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire
A. Union Strikes
B. City Expansion and Social Inequality
C. Progressive Reformers
II. An Urban Age and a Consumer Society
A. Farms and Cities
1. For the last time in American history, farms and cities grew together.
4. The city captured the imagination of artists, writers, and reformers.
B. The Muckrakers
1. A new generation of journalists writing for mass-circulation national magazines exposed the ills of
2. Major novelists of the era took a similar unsparing approach to social ills.
a. Theodore Dreiser
b. Upton Sinclair
C. Immigration as a Global Process
1. Between 1901 and 1914, 13 million immigrants came to the United States, many through Ellis Island.
3. A large part of this migration shift occurred in Asia.
4. Asian and Mexican immigrants entered the United States in smaller numbers.
D. The Immigrant Quest for Freedom
1. Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, the new immigrants arrived imagining the United States as a
2. The new immigrants clustered in close-knit ethnic neighborhoods.
a. Churches were pillars of these immigrant communities.
E. Consumer Freedom
1. The advent of large department stores in central cities, chain stores in urban neighborhoods, and retail
2. Leisure activities also took on the characteristics of mass consumption.
a. Vaudeville
F. The Working Woman
2. The working woman became a symbol of female emancipation.
3. Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed that the road to woman’s freedom lay through the workplace.
4. Battles emerged within immigrant families of all nationalities between parents and their self-
consciously “free” children, especially daughters.
G. The Rise of Fordism
1. Henry Ford concentrated on standardizing output and lowering the price of automobiles.
H. The Promise of Abundance
1. Economic abundance would eventually come to define the American way of life, in which personal
fulfillment was to be found through acquiring material goods.
2. The desire for consumer goods led many workers to join unions and fight for higher wages.
I. An American Standard of Living
1. Earning a living wage came to be viewed as a natural and absolute right of citizenship.
a. Father John A. Ryan
2. Mass consumption came to occupy a central place in descriptions of American society and its future.
III. Varieties of Progressivism
A. Industrial Freedom
2. White-collar workers also felt a loss of freedom.
4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) includes part of a speech by John Mitchell, the
head of the United Mine Workers, on “The Workingman’s Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910).
B. The Socialist Presence
1. The Socialist Party brought together surviving late nineteenth-century radicals.
2. Socialism flourished in diverse communities throughout the country.
a. New York
b. Milwaukee
C. The Gospel of Debs
1. Eugene Debs was socialism’s loudest voice.
2. He ran for president in 1912 on the Socialist ticket.
D. AFL and IWW
2. A group of unionists who rejected the AFL’s exclusionary policies formed the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW).
a. William “Big Bill” Haywood
E. The New Immigrants on Strike
1. Immigrant strikes demonstrated that while ethnic divisions among workers impeded labor solidarity,
ethnic cohesiveness could also be a basis of unity.
3. The New Orleans dockworker strike showed interracial solidarity.
4. The Ludlow strike ended soon after many strikers were killed.
F. Labor and Civil Liberties
1. The courts rejected the claims of labor.
3. Labor unions fought for the right to assemble and speak freely.
G. The New Feminism
2. Heterodoxy was part of a new radical bohemia.
H. The Rise of Personal Freedom
1. Issues of intimate personal relations that were previously confined to private discussion blazed forth in
popular magazines and public debates.
a. Sigmund Freud
I. The Birth-Control Movement
1. Emma Goldman lectured on sexual freedom and access to birth control.
J. Native Americans and Progressivism
2. Carlos Montezuma became an outspoken critic, demanding that all Indians be granted full citizenship.
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
A. Effective Freedom
1. Progressivism was an international movement; cities throughout the world experienced similar social
strains from rapid industrialization and urban growth.
3. Drawing on the reform programs of the Gilded Age and the example of European legislation,
Progressives sought to reinvigorate the idea of an activist, socially conscious government.
4. Progressives could reject the traditional assumption that powerful government posed a threat to freedom
because their understanding of freedom was itself in flux.
B. Pragmatism
2. As a philosophical movement, pragmatism, as explained in a 1907 book by the philosopher William
3. Pragmatism encouraged an experimental approach to social problems, characteristic of Progressivism.
4. Dewey was a founder of the New School for Social Research in New York City, which stressed the
importance of scientifically evaluating public policy.
a. The idea that social improvement could be achieved with proper information was widely shared
among American Progressives.
C. State and Local Reforms
2. The Gilded Age mayors Hazen Pingree and Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones pioneered urban
Progressivism.
D. Progressivism in the West
1. The Oregon System instituted the initiative and referendum.
a. Initiatives, also known as direct legislation, enabled citizens to propose and vote directly on laws,
2. The most influential Progressive administration at the state level was that of Robert M. La Follette, who
E. Progressive Democracy
1. Progressives hoped to reinvigorate democracy by restoring political power to the citizenry and civic
harmony to a divided society.
F. Government by Expert
1. Order, efficiency, and centralized management were important themes of Progressive reform.
a. “Mastery” required applying scientific inquiry to modern social problems.
G. Jane Addams and Hull House
2. In doing so, they placed on the political agenda new understandings of female freedom.
3. Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago.
H. Spearheads for Reform
1. The “new woman” was college educated, middle class, and devoted to providing social services.
2. Settlement houses produced many female reformers.
I. The Campaign for Women’s Suffrage
1. The campaign for women’s suffrage became a mass movement.
2. By 1900, over half the states allowed women to vote in local elections dealing with school issues.
J. Maternalist Reform
1. Ironically, the desire to exalt women’s roles within the home did much to inspire the reinvigoration of
the suffrage movement.
K. The Idea of Economic Citizenship
1. Brandeis argued that the right to government assistance derived from citizenship itself.
V. The Progressive Presidents
A. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to dissolve the Northern Securities Company.
B. Roosevelt and Economic Regulation
1. Roosevelt helped mine workers during a 1902 coal strike.
2. He improved the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and regulated the food and drug industries.
C. John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature
1. The United States led the industrial world in efforts to preserve natural beauty.
a. Congress created Yellowstone National Park in 1872 with future tourism in mind.
3. Muir’s Sierra Club led the fight against uncontrolled logging by timber companies.
D. The Conservation Movement
2. Conservation also reflected the Progressive thrust toward efficiency and control.
3. Western governments at all levels had to regulate the scarce resource of water.
E. Taft in Office
1. Taft pursued antitrust policy even more aggressively than Roosevelt.
3. Progressive Republicans broke from Taft after the Ballinger-Pinchot affair.
F. The Election of 1912
1. The election was a four-way contest between Taft, Roosevelt, the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and the
Socialist Eugene Debs.
a. It became a national debate on the relationship between political and economic freedom in the age of
big business.
G. New Freedom and New Nationalism
2. Roosevelt called for heavy taxes on personal and corporate fortunes and for federal regulation of
industries, including railroads, mining, and oil.
3. The Progressive Party platform offered numerous proposals to promote social justice.
H. Roosevelt’s Americanism
1. A redefinition of what it meant to be an American united many strands of Progressive-era thought.
2. Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism was one example.
I. Wilson’s First Term
2. With Democrats in control of Congress, Wilson moved aggressively to implement his version of
Progressivism.
J. The Expanding Role of Government
1. Wilson abandoned the idea of aggressive trust-busting in favor of greater government supervision of
the economy.
a. Federal Reserve System
b. Federal Trade Commission
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Explain the key ideas and main groups that shaped the Progressive movement.
• Discuss the ways in which Progressivism expanded democracy and limited democracy.
• Discuss how working empowered women in the Progressive era. Be sure to comment on the arguments made by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Voices of Freedom. Compare her ideas to those expressed by feminists.
• How did labor strife bring new meaning to the idea of freedom of expression, and what was the new
workingman’s conception of industrial liberty, as defined by John Mitchell?
• Explain the new feminism and why the birth-control movement was so radical.
• Explain the impact of the philosophy of pragmatism on the Progressive movement.
• What were the differences between Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and Wilson’s New Freedom?
• Describe how the Native Americans were able to participate in the reform movement of the Progressive era,
either to their advantage or disadvantage.
• Can we see the origins of the modern environmental movement during the Progressive era? Explain.
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Eugene Debs
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/
This site focuses on Eugene Debs, a voice of socialism in the early 1900s. It includes links to his many speeches.
Emma Goldman
https://jwa.org/womenofvalor/goldman
From the Jewish Women’s Archive, this collection on Goldman includes primary sources on her life as well as modern articles
about her role in U.S. history.
This Harvard University website includes selected historical materials from Harvard’s libraries, archives, and museums that
document voluntary immigration to the United States from 1787 to 1929.
Jane Addams
www.hullhousemuseum.org/
The Jane Addams Hull House Museum website offers useful links to related sites, information about Jane Addams and Hull
House, material for educators, and accounts of the urban experience of immigrants.
Theodore Roosevelt
www.loc.gov/collections/theodore-roosevelt-films/?fa=subject:documentary+films&sb=title_s
A Library of Congress site that presents “Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film.”
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/
This Cornell University website includes primary documents and secondary sources on the Triangle Fire.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/
This companion site to the PBS American Experience documentary The Triangle Fire (2018) provides articles, time lines, film
clips, and primary documents on the tragic event.
Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889–1963
http://hullhouse.uic.edu/hull/urbanexp/contents.htm
This site, sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, includes letters,
newspaper and magazine articles, memoirs, and unpublished manuscripts that pertain to the history of Hull House.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York: Random House, 2006.
Blum, John Morton. The Progressive Presidents. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982.
Gould, Lewis. America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman, 2001.
Hoganson, Kristin. “Cosmopolitan Domesticity: Importing the American Dream, 1865–1920.” American Historical Review 107,
no. 1 (2002): 55–83.
Lears, Jackson. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009.
Link, Arthur. Woodrow Wilson. Lake Mary, FL: Davidson Publishing, 1979.
Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. New York: Macmillan, 2001.
Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Newman, Louise Michele. White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Group Activity: Progressive Activists
Organize the students into small groups and allow each student to pick a prepared topic out of a hat (e.g., business monopolies,
2. Show students the PBS documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire (see Supplemental Web and Visual Resources).
Stop the film before the trial of the owners takes place. Then organize the class into a jury to try the two accused owners for
murder. Ask the students to provide evidence for guilt or innocence. The class will then debate the outcome, with each student
casting a secret ballot. Resume the film and run it to its conclusion. Then provide the students with your own summary of the
evidence and reveal the outcome of the mock trial. Ask the students questions, such as “How did the outcome of the trial
shape industrial development? What happened to the workers who survived, to the owners, and to the factory? What are some
recent industrial accidents that have shaped labor relations and industrial growth?”