Reform as Recurring Aspect of American Life

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Reform as Recurring Aspect of American Life
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Antebellum Reform Movements

• Temperance Movements
• Christian Ministers
• Prisons and Asylums
• Dorothea Dix
• Womens Rights and Abolition
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

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Postbellum (After Civil War) Movements

• YMCA
• Salvation Army

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Progressive Era

• Social Gospel Movement
• Muckrakers
• Settlement House Movement
• Etc.

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Progressivism

• series of political and cultural responses to
  industrialization and its by products
  immigration, urbanization, corporate power and
  class divisions. Strength lay in the cities, and
  it enlisted journalists, academics, and social
  theorists.

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New Social Views

• Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class
• Herbert Croly
• Promise of American Life
• New Republic
• John Dewey, Democracy and Education
• Oliver Wendall Holmes, The Common Law
• Judicial Activism

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Progressivism and Social Control

• Confident they could improve society by research
  and legislation
• They knew what was best for people

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Moral Control in Cities

• Mass Entertainment
• Music Halls
• Vaudeville
• Nickelodeons
• Alcohol and Prostitution
• Shift to Legislation

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Progressive Legislation

• 18th Amendment
• Censorship Boards
• John D. Rockefeller financed American Social
  Hygiene Association
• Passed Mann Act (1910)

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Immigration Restriction and Eugenics

• Racist undertones of Progressivism
• Racialism and Racism
• Immigration Restriction
• 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
• 1907 Gentlemans Agreement
• 1917 - Immigration Act
• Eugenics
• Charles B. Davenport
• 1924 National Origins Act

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Theodore Roosevelt

• and the Progressive Presidency

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• William McKinley assassinated in 1901, bring TR
  to the White
• Strong support of progressive movement
• Wrote histories and pursued the strenuous life
  boxing, wrestling, hunting, etc.

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TR and the Modern Presidency

• President can do anything that the constitution
  does not specifically prohibit.
• Sent drafts of bills to congress, and intervened
  to win passage
• Reorganized the executive branch appointed able
  professionals.
• Skillfully handled the mass media

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Roosevelt and Labor

• Coal Strike of 1902
• TR invites owners and union to the White House
• Owners refused to negotiate
• Asked TR to use military to break strike
• TR threatened to use the military to seize and
  operate the mines, not cruse the union.
• Owners agree to negotiate set precedent for
  government intervention in labor disputes

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Corporate Regulation

• Trust Buster
• Favored government regulation to prevent
  corporate abuse
• Sue under Antitrust laws Northern Securities
  Company
• 1904 Supreme Court orders dissolution of company
• Elected in his own right 1904
• Pushes regulatory government

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Regulatory Government

• 1906 Hepburn Act
• 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act
• 1906 Meat Inspection Act
• TR pushed for 8 hour day stock market
  regulation and inheritance and income taxes

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Taft and the Insurgents

• William Howard Taft hand picked by TR
• Presided over more active antitrust program
• Supported constitutional amendment to allow a
  national income tax
• Party split between reform and conservative Taft
  unable to mediate
• Reformers formed the National Progressive League
  TRs supporters formed the Progressive Party

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Woodrow Willson

• And Progressive Reform

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Election of 1912

• Republican Party split brings Democrats to power.
• New Jersey Governor Woodrow Willson runs on
  Democratic ticket
• Campaigned as a progressive
• New Nationalism (TR) vs. New Freedom (Wilson)
• Wilson wins with 42 of popular vote

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Implementing the New Freedom

• 1913 Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act
• Reform banking and currency
• Federal Reserve Act (1913)
• Break up monopolies
• Federal Trade Commission to prevent illegal
  restrictions on competion rather than break
  monopolies
• No more reforms did not support womans suffrage
  and was a racist resegregated Washington.