PROGRESSIVISM AND THE REPUBLICAN ROOSEVELT

1
PROGRESSIVISM AND THE REPUBLICAN ROOSEVELT

• Chapter 28

2
The Progressives

• By 1900 America was faced with social problems
• Progressivism.
• "political movement that addresses ideas,
  impulses, and issues stemming from modernization
  of American society that emerged at the end of
  the nineteenth century
• Unlike farmers populism
• But urban and middle class, Dr, Lawyers,
  businessmen, protestant Jane Addams
• Denigration of country life
• Honest and efficient government AND business

3
Progressivism

• Scientific planning
• More democracy
• Break monopolies
• Eugenics- IQ tests, immigration, increase of
  discrimination against Southern Blacks
• Basic prescription use government as an agency
  of human welfare.
• At heart, a rejection of Laissez Faire

4
Roots of Progressivism

• Pressure from
• Socialists from Europestart to gain strength in
  US
• Christians preaching Social Gospelfocused on the
  needs of the poor and the workers at the mercy of
  corporations.
• Feministssuffrage movement included social
  justice in their call for reform because women
  were often those who suffered the most.
• Urban pioneers exposing corruption of cities and
  working conditions of children and women.

5
Muckrakers

• Magazines and Newspapers began to compete with
  each other to expose evil and corruption
• TR dubs Muckrakers.
• Lincoln SteffensShame in the Cities
• Ida Tarbellexpose of Standard Oil
• David PhillipsThe Treason of the Senate

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Muckraking Targets

• Malpractice of life insurance company
• tariff lobbies
• beef trust
• money trust
• railroad barons
• White slave traffic in women
• Slums
• High rate of industrial accidents
• Child labor
• Plight of blacks in the south
• Adulterated Patent Medicine

7
Goals of Muckrakers

• Was out-pouring of national criticism and
  exposure of ways in which the system was broken.
• Articles had a profound impact on the nation
• Like progressives in general, these articles were
  long on complaint but short on solutions.
• They sought not to overthrow capitalism, but to
  cleanse it to cure the ills of American democracy.

8
Progressives in the Middle

• Were mainly middle-class people including many
  lawyers, teachers, physicians, ministers and
  business people
• They felt that old-fashioned ways meant waste and
  inefficiency, and eagerly sought out the "one
  best system".
• Curbing capitalism insulation against socialism.
• Progressives crossed party boundaries, existed in
  all regions and at all levels of government.

Robert M. La Follette (1855-1925) speaking before
an audience of 12,000 in Los Angeles, 1907
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Goals of Progressives

• Regain the power that had slipped from the hands
  of the people into the hands of the special
  interest. Thus, pushed for
• primary elections.
• initiatives
• referendum
• recalls, allowing voters to remove candidates who
  were screwing up.
• Another objective was rooting out corruption.
• corrupt practices acts.
• secret ballot
• direct election of US senators.
• This eventually passes as the 17th Amendment.
• Womans suffrage.

10
Progressivism In The Cities And States

• Progressives scored their biggest victories at
  the State and City level.
• City commission form of government --Galveston
  Texas.
• Urban reformers
• Wisconsin a test lab for progressive proposals.
• Gov. Robert La Follette.
• Hiram Johnson in California
• Women suffrage, recall, initiative, founder of
  progressive party, isolationist . War Truth
• Charles Evans Hughes in New York.
• Lessland Act, the power as governor to oversee
  civic officials as well as officials in state
  bureaucracies. Fired many corrupt officials.

11
Progressive Women

• Settlement House movement
• Social Clubs.
• Womens issues
• Sweat shops.
• Triangle waistshirt fire
• 146 young women die
• Fire inspection safety

Story Of Us- Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Segment
From Episode 7 - YouTube.flv
Triangle video FLV
12
Temperance Movement

• Temperance movement
• Womans Christian Temperance Union Frances
  Willard.
• one million members.
• Some states and counties passed laws controlling,
  restricting or banning liquor.
• The big cities generally stay wet

13
TRs Square Deal For Labor

• Roosevelt a progressive.
• Demanded a Square Deal for capital, labor and
  the public.
• Believed the government should uphold the public
  interest.
• He pushed control of three Cs
• corporations,
• consumer protection
• conservation of natural resources.
• Intervened in the coal strike of 1902.
• Significance
• Department of Commerce and Labor 1903. - the
  ninth Cabinet office

14
TR Corrals The Corporations

• Interstate Commerce Commission was largely
  ineffective.
• Elkins Act of 1903
• Illegal for railroads to give rebates on their
  published freight rates
• Strengthened the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887
  by imposing heavy fines on railroads
• Hepburn Act of 1906
• Interstate Commerce Commission given new teeth.
• jurisdiction expanded allowed to set maximum
  rates and nullify existing rates.

15
TR Trust Busting

• Under TR the Justice Department initiated over 40
  anti-trust suits.
• The Northern Securities case was one of the
  earliest and most important antitrust cases and
  provided important legal precedents for many
  later case

16
Caring For The Consumer

• TR backed legislation protecting against
  adulterated and mislabeled food.
• 1906 Upton Sinclair The Jungle
• Meat Inspection Act of 1906
• Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906

17
Roosevelt and Conservation
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Earth Control

• Americans using up natural resources
• Corporations hungry to exploit resources.
• Conservation and naturalist movement started
  before TR president but weak.
• Desert Land Act of 1877.
• Forest Reserve Act of 1891
• TR gave the movement a huge kick in the pants
• Newlands Act of 1902
• Roosevelt set aside vast tracts of forests to
  prevent logging on it.

19
Roosevelt Emboldens Enemies

• Roosevelt is easily elected in his own right in
  1904.
• TRs big mistake
• announces that he will not run for a Third
  term.
• Makes him a Lame Duck
• Emboldens the conservative wing.

20
Roosevelt Panic Of 1907

• Sharp but short-lived panic on Wall Street in
  1907.
• Stock Exchange fell close to 50 percent from its
  peak the previous year
• The panic may have deepened if not for the
  intervention of financier J. P. Morgan, who
  pledged large sums of his own money, and
  convinced other New York bankers to do the same,
  to shore up the banking system
• Conservatives blame TR.
• Theodore the meddler
• Panic caused by retraction of market liquidity
  by a number of New York City banks
• Aldrich-Vreelant Act
• Established the National Monetary Commission,
  recommended the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. It
  also provided for the issuance of emergency
  currency

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The Rough Rider Thunders Out

• Roosevelt used his political clout to engineer
  nomination of Taft in 1908
• Dems nominate Bryan.
• Progressive platform attacking "government by
  privilege". His campaign slogan, "Shall the
  People Rule?
• Bryan suffered the worst loss in his three
  presidential campaigns,
• Taft wins easily.
• "Vote for Taft now, you can vote for Bryan
  anytime,"
• Socialists manage nearly a half-million votes

22
Contributions of TR

• Enlarged the power and prestige of the presidency
• Began the process of taming capitalism ensuring
  that it would survive rather than being replaced.
• Developed technique of using publicity as a
  political weapon
• Helped shape the progressive movement and to lay
  the ground-work for later liberal reforms
• Opened Americans, eyes to world affairs and
  Americas role and potential influence on world
  events.

23
Taft A Round Peg In A Square Hole

• Taft was initially very popular.
• everybody loves a fat man
• He was quite qualified.
• Did not like controversy
• Poor judge of character

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Nominee William Howard Taft William Jennings Bryan
Party Republican Democratic
Home state Ohio Nebraska
Running mate James S. Sherman John Worth Kern
Electoral vote 321 162
States carried 29 17
Popular vote 7,678,395 6,408,984
Percentage 51.6 43.0
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Taft

• Taft was passive, comfortable with the status quo
  and not a strong leader.
• Poor judge of public opinion
• Foot-in-mouth disease.
• Passive toward Congress

26
Dollar Diplomacy

• "Dollar Diplomacy" to further the economic
  development of less-developed nations of Latin
  America and Asia through American investment in
  their infrastructures. Leads to much investment
  in Caribbean,
• Causes US entanglement in these countries
• US Marines land in Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and
  the Dominican Republic to restore order and to
  protect US investments.
• Continues the distrust of Caribbean and Central
  American countries toward US.
• US Marines stay in Nicaragua for 13 years

27
The United States in the Caribbean
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Taft The Trustbuster

• Taft brought antitrust suits at nearly four times
  the rate of TR. 90 in his 4-year term.
• Sup court breaks up Standard Oil in 1911
• But sets a high bar only unreasonable
  restraints of trade were illegal.
• Created a huge hole in feds anti-trust net.
• Taft also went after US Steel,
• Taft lost the support of antitrust reformers (who
  disliked his conservative rhetoric), of big
  business (which disliked his actions), and of
  Roosevelt, who felt humiliated by his protégé.

29
TR Busts Taft

• TR increasingly annoyed with Taft
• TR expected and wanted Taft to be progressive in
  his mold.
• TR was not ready to leave the stage.
• TR moving from Tafts mentor to his antagonist.
• The progressive wing longed for the return of TR.

30
Taft Splits The Republican Party

• Lower tariff one of the primary progressive aims.
  
• Payne-Aldrich Bill.
• In its essence a compromise bill, had the
  immediate effect of frustrating both proponents
  and opponents of reducing tariffs.
• The debate over the tariff split the Republican
  Party into Progressives
  and Old Guards and
  led the split party to lose the
  1910 congressional
  election

31
Taft Splits The Republican Party

• Gifford Pinchot.
• Pinchot is known for reforming the management and
  development of forests and for advocating the
  conservation of the nation's reserves by planned
  use and renewal.
• Taft fired Pinchot for speaking out against his
  policies and those of the Secretary of the
  Interior
• That episode hastened the split in the Republican
  Party that led to the formation of the
  Progressive Party, of which Pinchot and his
  brother were top leaders.

32
Republican Split

• By 1910 the progressive wing of Republican party
  moving into open revolt
• Taft being pushed into the camp of the
  conservatives.
• Osawatomie, Kansas, speech
• Doctrine of New Nationalism
• He insisted that only a powerful federal
  government could regulate the economy and
  guarantee social justice.

33
The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture

• National Progressive Republican League
  LaFollette at the head.
• TR lets it be known that he will accept a third
  term if nominated by Republicans.
• He seizes the progressive banner.
• Wins a number of the new primaries
• TR is more popular with voters, but doesnt win
  the nomination.
• Roosevelt outraged. What does he do in response?