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 govern-
ment had to be more responsible for the well-being of the people. The chapter continues with a look at growing urbanization and im-
migration, 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
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire
A. Union Strikes
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.
3. It was the city that became the focus of Progressive politics and of a new mass-consumer society.
a. New York was the largest city.
B. The Muckrakers
1. A new generation of journalists writing for mass-circulation national magazines exposed the ills of industrial and urban
life.
2. Major novelists of the era took a similar unsparing approach to social ills.
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 land of freedom.
2. The new immigrants clustered in close-knit ethnic neighborhoods.
E. Consumer Freedom
1. The advent of large department stores in central cities, chain stores in urban neighborhoods, and retail mail–order houses
2. Leisure activities also took on the characteristics of mass consumption.
F. The Working Woman
1. Traditional gender roles were changing dramatically as more and more women were working for wages.
a. Married women were working more.
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.
3. Ford paid his employees five dollars a day so that they could afford to buy his cars.
H. The Promise of Abundance
2. The desire for consumer goods led many workers to join unions and fight for higher wages.
I. An American Standard of Living
2. Mass consumption came to occupy a central place in descriptions of American society and its future.
III. Varieties of Progressivism
A. Industrial Freedom
1. Frederick W. Taylor pioneered scientific management.
a. Eroded freedom of the skilled workers
3. Many believed that unions embodied an essential principle of freedom—the right of people to govern themselves.
4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) includes part of a speech by John Mitchell, the head of the United
B. The Socialist Presence
2. Socialism flourished in diverse communities throughout the country.
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
1. The AFL sought to forge closer ties with forward–looking corporate leaders who were willing to deal with unions as a way
to stabilize employee relations.
2. A group of unionists who rejected the AFL’s exclusionary policies formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
E. The New Immigrants on Strike
2. The Lawrence strike demonstrated that workers sought not only higher wages but also the opportunity to enjoy the
finer things in life.
4. The Ludlow strike ended soon after many strikers were killed.
F. Labor and Civil Liberties
2. Like the abolitionist movement before it, the labor movement, in the name of freedom, demanded the right to assemble,
organize, and spread its views.
3. Labor unions fought for the right to assemble and speak freely.
G. The New Feminism
1. Feminists’ forthright attack on traditional rules of sexual behavior added a new dimension to the discussion of personal
freedom.
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.
I. The Birth-Control Movement
1. Emma Goldman lectured on sexual freedom and access to birth control.
3. The birth-control issue became a crossroads where the paths of labor radicals, cultural modernists, and feminists
intersected.
J. Native Americans and Progressivism
1. The Society of American Indians was founded in 1911 as a reform organization independent of white control.
2. Carlos Montezuma became an outspoken critic, demanding that all Indians be granted full citizenship.
IV. The Politics of Progressivism
A. Effective Freedom
2. Progressives assumed that the modern era required a fundamental rethinking of the functions of political authority.
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
1. The philosopher John Dewey was a prominent proponent of a school of philosophy called pragmatism that emerged in the
late 1800s and strongly influenced Progressive thinkers.
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.
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, bypassing state
2. The most influential Progressive administration at the state level was that of Robert M. La Follette, who made Wisconsin
a “laboratory for democracy.”
E. Progressive Democracy
2. But the Progressive era also witnessed numerous restrictions on democratic participation.
a. Voting was seen more as a privilege for a few.
F. Government by Expert
1. Order, efficiency, and centralized management were important themes of Progressive reform.
G. Jane Addams and Hull House
1. Organized women reformers spoke for the more democratic side of Progressivism.
3. Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago.
H. Spearheads for Reform
2. Settlement houses produced many female reformers.
I. The Campaign for Women’s Suffrage
2. By 1900, over half the states allowed women to vote in local elections dealing with school issues.
J. Maternalist Reform
2. Muller v. Oregon upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law setting maximum working hours for women.
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
1. Roosevelt regarded the president as “the steward of the public welfare.”
3. Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to dissolve the Northern Securities Company.
B. Roosevelt and Economic Regulation
2. He improved the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and regulated the food and drug industries.
C. John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature
2. John Muir developed a broad following for his evangelical romanticizing of nature.
D. The Conservation Movement
1. Congress began regulating the economic development of “forest reserves,” but President Roosevelt made conservation a
federal policy.
3. Western governments at all levels had to regulate the scarce resource of water.
E. Taft in Office
2. He supported the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
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.
G. New Freedom and New Nationalism
1. Wilson insisted that democracy must be reinvigorated by restoring market competition and freeing government from
domination by big business.
3. The Progressive Party platform offered numerous proposals to promote social justice.
H. Roosevelt’s Americanism
2. Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism was one example.
a. Roosevelt wanted immigrants to “Americanize” rather than retain traditional cultures.
I. Wilson’s First Term
1. Wilson proved himself a strong executive leader.
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.
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
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Eugene Debs
Emma Goldman
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850–1920
Immigration to the United States, 1789–1930
Jane Addams
Theodore Roosevelt
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889–1963
Votes for Women
William “Big Bill” Haywood
Woodrow Wilson
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.
Recchiuti, John Louis. Civic Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New York City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2006.
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, urban slums, politi-
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 evi-