1. The Progressive Era

2. The Origins of Progressivism

3. Objectives
Explain the four goals of progressivism
Summarize progressive efforts to clean up government
Identify progressive efforts to reform state government, protect workers, and reform elections

4. Four Goals of Progressivism
Protecting Social Welfare
Promoting Moral Improvement
Social Gospel Movement continues
Soften harsh condition of industrialization
Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)
Libraries
Classes
Recreational activities
The Salvation Army
Soup kitchens
Nurseries
Prohibition
Banning of alcoholic beverages
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
Founded in Cleveland
Spearhead the prohibition push
Became the largest women’s group in history
Expanded the role of women and pushed for suffrage

5. Four Goals of Progressivism
Creating Economic Reform
Fostering Efficiency
Panic of 1893
People began to question the capitalist economic system
Workers especially begin to embrace socialism
Muckrakers
Journalist who wrong about the corrupt side of business
Scientific Management
“Brandeis brief”
Focusing on the data of social scientists on high costs of long working hours
“Taylorism”
Using time and motion studies to improve efficiency by breaking manufacturing into smaller parts

6. Cleaning Up Local Government
Reforming Local Government
Reform Mayors
Commission
Galveston, TX – 1900
500 cities by 1917
City Council
Dayton, OH –1913
~250 cities by 1925
Hazen Pingree: Detroit, MI –
Fairer tax structure
Lower mass transit fares
Rooted corruption
Work relief
Converting utilities to publicly owned enterprises
Held large open forum meetings to question city officals

7. Reform at the State Level
Reform Governors
Protecting Working Children
“Fighting Bob” La Follette
Took on railroad
Taxed them as any other business
Commission to regulate rate
Did not want to “smash corporations, but merely drive them out of politics”
National Child Labor Committee
Organized exhibitions of evidence gathered of harsh working conditions
Photographs
Statistics
Keating-Owen Act – 1916
Prohibited the transportation across state lines of good produced by child labor

8. Reform at the State Level
Efforts to Limit Working Hours
Reforming Elections
Muller v. Oregon – 1908
10 hour work day for women
Bunting v. Oregon – 1917
10 hour work day for men
Worker Compensation
Maryland – 1902
Initiative
Bill organized by the people rather than law makers
Referendum
A vote on an initiative
Recall
Enabled voters to remove public officalls by forcing them face another election
Primaries
Allowed voters, not political machines to pick canidates

9. Reform at the State Level
Direct Elections of Senators
Seventeenth Amendment
Previously the state legislature chose its own U.S. Senators
Gave more power to
Party bosses
Big business