1. Chapter 21 – The Progressive Spirit of Reform
Section Notes
Video
The Gilded Age and the Progressive Movement
Reforming the Workplace
The Rights of Women and Minorities
The Progressive Presidents
The Impact of Women’s Suffrage
Maps
Election of 1912
History Close-up
Working Conditions for Children, Early 1900s
Images
Primary Source: The Tammany Ring
Primary Source: The Other Half
Child Labor
Suffragettes
Standardized Test Practice Photo
Quick Facts
Gilded Age Presidents
Expanding Democracy
The Progressive Amendments,
Chapter 21 Visual Summary

2. The Gilded Age and the Progressive Movement
The Big Idea
From the late 1800s through the early 1900s, the Progressive movement addressed problems in American society.
Main Ideas
Political corruption was common during the Gilded Age.
Progressives pushed for reforms to improve living conditions.
Progressive reforms expanded the voting power of citizens.

3. Main Idea 1: Political corruption was common during the Gilded Age.
Political machines strongly influenced city, county, and even federal politics in the late 1800s.
Political machines used both legal and illegal means to get their candidates elected to public office.
Stuffed ballot boxes with votes for their candidates
Paid people to vote with bribes, or bribed vote counters
Supporters of political machines were often rewarded with government jobs.
The most notorious political machine was New York City’s Tammany Hall, headed by William Marcy Tweed.

4. Corruption in Washington
The administration of Ulysses S. Grant, who was elected in 1868 and reelected in 1872, was charged with corruption.
In Grant’s second term, federal officials were jailed for taking bribes from whiskey distillers.
The scandal caused many Americans to question the honesty of national leaders.

5. Cleaning Up Political Corruption
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881) promised radical and complete changes in government and made some minor reforms.
James B. Garfield (1881) attempted reforms, but was assassinated by a disgruntled federal-office seeker early in his term.
Chester A. Arthur (1881–1885), Garfield’s vice president, became president. Backed the Pendleton Civil Service Act passed in 1883.
Grover Cleveland (1885–1889, 1893–1897), a Democrat, worked hard to hire and fire people based on merit, not party loyalty.
Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893) helped control inflation and passed the Sherman Antitrust Act.
William McKinley (1897–1901) avoided scandal and helped win back public trust in the government.

6. Main Idea 2: Progressives pushed for reforms to improve living conditions.
Progressives were reformers who worked to solve problems caused by rapid industrial and urban growth.
Eliminate causes of crime, disease, and poverty
Ease overcrowding in cities
Advocate for better education
Promote better working conditions and less child labor
Fight corruption in business and government
Muckrakers were journalists who wrote about child labor, racial discrimination, slum housing, and corruption in business.
Influenced voters, causing them to pressure government officials

7. Reform Successes Reforms and Reformers
Progressives started settlement houses, such as Jane Addams’s Hull House.
City planners
Helped design safer building codes
Opened new public parks
Civil and sanitation engineers
Improved transportation
Addressed pollution and sanitation issues, including waste disposal and clean water
Death rates dropped in cities where city planners and civil engineers addressed urban ills.

8. Social Reforms
Education reform included the enacting of school attendance laws.
Susan Blow opened the first American public kindergarten.
John Dewey advocated new teaching methods designed to help children learn problem-solving skills, not just memorize facts.
Joseph McCormack led the American Medical Association in supporting public health laws.

9. Main Idea 2: Progressive reformers expanded the voting power of citizens.
Progressives worked to reduce the power of the political machines by
Ending corrupt ballot practices
Adopting the secret ballot
Adopting the direct primary, which allowed voters to choose party candidates rather than having it done by party bosses
The Seventeenth Amendment allowed Americans to vote directly for U.S. senators.

10. Recall, Initiative, and Referendum
Some states and cities adopted the recall.
It was a special vote that gave citizens the opportunity to remove an elected official from office.
Initiative
Some states adopted the initiative.
It allowed voters to propose a new law and vote on it.
Referendum
Some states adopted the referendum.
It permitted voters to directly approve or reject a proposed or enacted law.

11. Government Reforms The Cities
Some cities adopted a council-manager form of government, in which a professional manager runs the city.
Other cities adopted a commission form of government, in which a group of elected officials runs the city.
The States
Governor Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin challenged the power of the political bosses.
He began a series of reforms called the Wisconsin Idea.
His reforms decreased the power of the political machine.
The Wisconsin Idea influenced other states.

12. Reforming the Workplace
The Big Idea
In the early 1900s, Progressives and other reformers focused on improving conditions for American workers.
Main Ideas
Reformers attempted to improve conditions for child laborers.
Unions and reformers took steps to improve safety in the workplace and to limit working hours.

13. Main Idea 1: Reformers attempted to improve conditions for child laborers.
Marie Van Vorst focused attention on the problem of child labor.
Many children worked in industry—in 1900 more than 1.75 million children age 15 or younger.
Children as young as seven years old provided cheap labor for manufacturers but brought home only small amounts of money to their families.
Reformers wanted labor laws to protect women and children.

14. Child-Labor Reform
Florence Kelley was a leader in the fight against child labor.
Massachusetts passed the first minimum-wage law in 1912, and established a commission to set wage rates for children.
Congress passed federal child-labor laws in 1916 and 1919, banning child-labor products from interstate commerce.
The Supreme Court ruled the laws unconstitutional.

15. Main Idea 2: Unions and reformers took steps to improve safety in the workplace and to limit working hours.
Workplace accidents were coming in 1800s and early 1900s.
Some 35,000 Americans were killed industrial accidents in 1900.
About 500,000 suffered injuries in 1900.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire that killed 146 workers, mostly women and girls, led to laws to improve factory safety.
Reformers fought for workers’ compensation laws, which guaranteed a portion of lost wages to workers injured on the job.
In 1902 Maryland became the first state to pass a workers’ compensation law.

16. The Courts and Labor
Some businesses opposed workplace regulations, believing that the economy should operate without government interference. They went to court to block new labor laws.
New York passed a law in 1897 limiting bakers to a 10-hour workday.
Bakery owner Joseph Lochner sued.
In Lochner v. New York (1905), the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional.
The court ruled that the state could not restrict employers from entering into any kind of agreement with employees.
In 1908, however, the Supreme Court upheld a law restricting women’s work hours in Muller v. Oregon, ruling that it was a public health issue.

17. Labor Organizations
Labor unions tried to improve working conditions and pay.
Union membership rose from 800,000 in 1900 to about 5 million in 1920.
American Federation of Labor led by Samuel Gompers
Supported capitalism, an economic system in which private firms run industry
Some unions supported socialism, a system in which the government owns most industry.
Leading socialist union was Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
IWW led by William “Big Bill” Haywood

18. The Rights of Women and Minorities
The Big Idea
The Progressive movement made advances for the rights of women and some minorities.
Main Ideas
Women fought for temperance and the right to vote.
African American reformers challenged discrimination and called for equality.
Progressive reforms failed to benefit all minorities.

19. Main Idea 1: Women fought for temperance and the right to vote.
New educational opportunities drew more women into the Progressive movement.
Denied access to such professions as law and medicine, women entered fields such as social work and education.
Women’s clubs campaigned for many causes, including temperance, women’s suffrage, child welfare, and political reform.

20. Temperance
Women reformers took up the cause of temperance: avoidance of alcohol consumption.
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union campaigned to restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Radical temperance fighter Carry Nation stormed saloons and smashed bottles with an axe in the 1890s.
Temperance efforts led to the Eighteenth Amendment (1919), banning the production, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.

21. Women’s Suffrage
Women reformers fought for suffrage, or the right to vote.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1890).
Alice Paul founded the more radical National Woman’s Party (1913).
Used parades and public demonstrations, picketing, and hunger strikes to spread their message
Suffragists won the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment (1919).

22. Main Idea 2: African American reformers challenged discrimination and called for equality.
Booker T. Washington encouraged African Americans to improve their educational and economic well-being.
Ida B. Wells spoke out against discrimination and drew attention to the lynching of African Americans.
W. E. B. Du Bois attacked discrimination and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They called for economic and educational equality for African Americans.
The National Urban League, founded in 1911, helped African Americans moving from the South to find jobs and housing.

23. Main Idea 3: Progressive reforms failed to benefit all minorities.
The Society of American Indians wanted Native Americans to adopt the ways of white society, but many of them resisted.
Chinese Americans formed their own groups to help support their members, including neighborhood and district associations, cultural groups, churches, and temples.
Built San Francisco’s Chinese hospital in 1925
Immigration by Mexicans increased during this period, and many worked in farming.
Progressive reforms did little to improve working conditions for farm workers.

24. The Progressive Presidents
The Big Idea
American presidents in the early 1900s did a great deal to promote progressive reforms.
Main Ideas
Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive reforms tried to balance the interests of business, consumers, and laborers.
William Howard Taft angered Progressives with his cautious reforms, while Woodrow Wilson enacted far-reaching banking and antitrust reforms.

25. Main Idea 1: Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive reforms tried to balance the interests of business, consumers, and laborers.
Theodore Roosevelt called his reform policy the Square Deal.
Used his policy to help settle the 1902 coal miners’ strike
Threatened to take over the mines unless managers agreed to arbitration, a formal process for settling disputes, with the strikers

26. Regulating Big Business
Influenced by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Roosevelt urged Congress to enact meat inspection laws.
Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
Prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transport of mislabeled or contaminated food and drugs
Roosevelt persuaded Congress to regulate railroad shipping rates.
Was the first president to successfully use the 1890 Sherman Trust Act to break up a monopoly
The public largely supported this expansion of federal regulatory powers.

27. Conservation
Roosevelt strongly supported conservation, the protection of nature and its resources.
Considered it an important national priority
Some preservationists wanted to protect nature to save its beauty.
Other preservationists wanted to make sure the nation used its natural resources efficiently.
Roosevelt responded by
Adding 150 million acres of public land to the Forest Service to regulate use of forest resources by business
Doubling the number of national parks to preserve natural beauty
Created 18 national monuments
Started 51 bird sanctuaries

28. Main Idea 2: William Howard Taft angered Progressives with his cautious reforms, while Woodrow Wilson enacted far-reaching banking and antitrust reforms.
William Howard Taft moved more cautiously than Roosevelt had toward reform and regulation.
Progressives were disappointed in Taft’s approach to reform.
Taft’s signing of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, which raised prices for consumers, was opposed by many Progressives.

29. Election of 1912 All four candidates were reformers.
Taft ran for reelection on the Republican ticket.
Roosevelt, angry at Taft, formed the Progressive Party to run for president.
Woodrow Wilson ran on the Democratic ticket and was elected president by a wide margin.
Eugene V. Debs ran on the Socialist Party ticket.
Woodrow Wilson won by a wide margin as the Republican voters split between Taft and Roosevelt.

30. Wilson’s Reforms
Introduced the modern income tax, made possible by ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913
Addressed banking reform with the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, creating a national banking system
Pushed for laws to regulate big business
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 strengthened laws against monopolies.
The Federal Trade Commission, created in 1914, had the power to investigate and punish unfair trade practices.

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