Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt

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Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt

• Chapter 28
• By Jessica Maria Lopez

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Progressive Roots

• The Progressive Movement initiated before the
  first decade of the 20th century.
• They attempted to expose the abuses of business
  and the corruption in politics.
• Their main purpose was to use the government as
  an agency of human welfare.
• They originated from Greenback Labor Party of the
  1870s 1880s and the Populist Party of the 1890s.

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• Writers and Politicians began to pinpoint targets
  for the progressive attack
• 1894 Henry D. Lloyd Wealth Against Common
  Wealth exposed the corruption of monopoly of the
  Standard Oil Company.
• 1899 Thorsten Veblen The Theory of the Leisure
  Class criticizing those who made money out of
  the trusts.

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• Socialist promoted a brand of progressivism base
  on Christian doctrines to get better housing and
  living conditions for the urban poor.
• Feminist entered the fight to improve the lives
  of families that lived and worked in cities with
  bad condition.
• Jane Addams
• Lillian Wald

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Raking Muck with Muckrakers

• 1902 magazines joined in on the bashing of the
  trusts.
• Cosmopolitan
• Colliers
• Everybodys
• President Roosevelt gave them the name of
  Muckrakers he found them annoying.
• Some of their writings became best-selling books

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• These writers exposed the money trusts, the
  railroad barons, and the corrupt amassing of
  American fortunes
• John Spargos The Bitter Cry of the Children
  exposed child labor.
• Ray Stannard Bakers Following the Color Line was
  about the illiteracy of Blacks.
• Ida M. Tarbell against Standard Oil
• Most well-known woman in muckracking movement,
  and a respected business historian.

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• Some of the most effective topics of the
  muckrakers involved immoral white slaves
  traffic in women, the unstable slums and the
  dreadful amount of industrial accidents.
• They believed that in order to cure American
  democracy, was more democracy.

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Political Progressivism

• Progressives were usually middle-class men and
  women who felt squeezed from the big trusts and
  the immigrants that worked for cheap labor.
• Two goals
• To use state power to curb state tursts and to
  stem the socialist threat by generally improving
  the common persons conditions of life and labor

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• 1st objective was to regain the power lost to the
  interests. In order to do that they were in
  favor of
• Initiative so thatvoters could directly
  propose legislation.
• Referendums so that the people could actually
  vote on issues that affected them.
• Recalls would let the voters eliminate previous
  elected officials.

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• 2nd Root-out graft
• Graft is one thing attached to another by
  insertion or implantation so it becomes part of
  it. Transplant.
• Australian ballot was secretly beign intorduced
  in the states to ensure the voter records a
  sincere choice.
• Bribery was less achievable

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• Finally in 1913 17th Amendment established the
  direct election of U.S. senators.
• Feminists received support from progressives
  early 1900s for Woman suffrage (right to vote)
  but did not come yet.

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Progressivism in the Cities and States

• Progressivism gained a lot in the cities
• For example Galveston, TX used expert-staffed
  commissions to manage urban affairs or the
  city-manager system, that was created to take
  politics out of municipal administration.
• Urban reformers took on slumlords, juvenile
  delinquency, and wide-open prostitution.

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• Later on this elevated from cities to state
  level.
• 1901 Wisconsin, Governor Robert M. La Follette
  fought for control from the trusts and returned
  power to the people, leading him up to a
  progressive Republican leader. Other states
  followed
• Oregon and California, which was led by Governor
  Hiram W. Johnson.
• Charles Evans Hughes, governor of New York,
  obtained fame as an investigator of all the
  wrongdoings of gas and insurance companies, and
  coal trusts.

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Progressive Women

• Woman could not vote or hold a position in
  office, but they were still very active in
  regards of family-ill issues.
• Most female progressives related their activities
  as extensions of their traditional roles of wife
  and mother.
• Keeping children out of mills and sweatshops
• Winning pensions for mothers with dependent
  children
• Making sure food products were safe to eat

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• Womens Trade Union League and the National
  Consumers League
• Two new federal agencies in the Department of
  Labor
• The Childrens Bureau (1912)
• The Womens Bureau (1920)

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• The fire in 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist
  Company in New York City, 146, mostly young women
  killed from severe burns, or from jumping off
  from the eight or ninth story.
• New York city legislator passed stronger laws
  regulating the hours and conditions of sweatshops
• 1917 thirty states established workers
  compensation laws, this provided the workers with
  insurance incase of an injury caused by
  industrial accidents.
• Gradual turn into free enterprise

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• Founded by Frances E. Willard Womans Christian
  Temperance Union (WCTU), Anti-Saloon League.
• Formed to go against alchocol (because it was
  related with prostitution and thretened family
  stability).
• 1 million women to make the world homelike
• Lead WCTU into the largest womans organiztion in
  the world.
• In 1919, the 18th Amendment forbade the sale and
  drinking of alcohol.

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TRs Square Deal for Labor

• President Roosevelt was touched by the
  progressive movement and embraced a Square
  Deal, a program with the three Cs
• Control of the corporations
• Consumer protection
• Conservation of natural resources
• 1902 a strike took place in the anthracite coal
  mines of Pennsylvania, 140,000 workers demanded
  20 pay increase and reduction of working hours
  from ten to nine hours.

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• Mine owners did not pay any attention to the
  workers and refused to even negotiate.
• Schools and factories were being shut down, and
  hospitals were suffering the winter cold.
• Desperate, and annoyed, Roosevelt threatened to
  seize the mines and operate them with federal
  troops.
• A compromise decision gave the minors 10
  increase and nine hours of work.
• 1903 Department of Commerce and Labor, which was
  also a part of the Bureau of Corporations
  (breaking the monopoly and making way for the
  trust-busting" era).

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TR Corrals the Corporations

• The Interstate Commerce Commission created in
  1887 did not succeed. So Congress passed the
  Elkins Act in 1903, this fined railroads that
  gave rebates and the shippers that accepted them.
  
• Hepburn Act, 1906 restricted the free passes of
  the railroad.

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• Roosevelt believed that there were good trusts
  and bad trusts, so he did not want to go
  smashing all of the businesses. For example the
  Northern Securities Company, which was organized
  by J.P. Morgan and James J. Hill.
• 1904, the Supreme Court upheld Roosevelts
  antitrust suit and told the Northern Securities
  to vanish, this made Wall Street really mad but
  helped Roosevelts image.

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• Roosevelt cracked down on over 40 trusts, and he
  helped remove the beef, sugar, fertilizer, and
  harvester trusts, but in reality, he wasnt as
  great of a trustbuster as he might seem to be.
• His intentions were not to take down the good
  trusts, but the trusts that did fall under
  Rooseveltss regulations fell symbolically, so
  that other trusts would reform themselves.
• Roosevelts successor, William Howard Taft, took
  down more trusts.
• 1911 when Taft tried to crack down on U.S. Steel,
  a company that had personally been allowed by
  Roosevelt to absorb the Tennessee Coal and Iron
  Company, the reaction from Roosevelt was
  explosive.

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Caring for the Consumer

• A lot of the meat companies were preparing meat
  in very unsanitary ways and the Europeans were
  complaining about the exported meat that they
  bought from the U.S.
• In 1906, the Meat Inspection Act was passed,
  which decreed that the preparation of meat
  shipped over state lines would be subject to
  federal inspection from corral to can. Canned
  food is something that the Americans desperately
  needed.
• Pure Food and, Drug Act initiated to prevent the
  misuse and mislabeling of foods and anything
  related to pharmacy.

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Earth Control

• Desert Land act of 1877- under which federal
  government sold arid land cheaply.
• The act that was successful was the Forest
  Reserve Act of 1891which allowed to set aside
  public forest as national parks and other
  reserves. 46 million acres of land were preserved
  due to this.
• Roosevelt as well as pinchot loved natural
  resources and helped initiate conservation
  projects.

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• Another act that was created was the Newlands act
  of 1902 that initiated projects for western
  states.
• By 1900 a quarter of the nations natural
  timberlands remained so Roos. Set aside 125
  millions acres. Big accomplishment during his
  presidency.
• The book of Jack Londons call and the boy scouts
  of America were created due to disappearance of
  the national frontier.

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The Roosevelt Panic of 1907

• TR was elected president but he denied it since
  he had served two terms by then.
• There was a panic in Wall Street where the
  financial flurry frightened runs on banks,
  suicides, and criminal indictments against
  speculators in 1907.
• TR was found in the middle but he got out and
  the panic died.
• In 1908 the Aldrich- Vreeland act which led to
  Federal Reserve act of 1913.

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The Rough Rider Thunders Out

• In 1908 campaign William Howard Taft was elected
  as the successor of TR where he was hoping that
  Taft would follow his policies.
• Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan.
• TR went on a lion hunt while Taft was in charge.
• He helped many Americans have healthy adult
  lives, and ensured that new trusts would fit in
  capitalism.
• TR protected against socialism and opened the
  eyes of Americans to see that they share the
  world with other nations. So it couldnt be
  isolationist.

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Traft A Round Peg in a Square Hole

• Everybody loves a fat man.
• Taft was a mild progressive, and a sensitive to
  criticism and not liberal as TR.
• People were inspired since he graduated 2nd in
  his class at Yale.

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The Dollar Goes Abroad as Diplomat

• Taft urged Americans to invest in a policy called
  the dollar diplomacy and called out to the Wall
  Street to sluice their dollars to foreign areas.
• They wanted to go to the far east where the
  Panamal canal was so they went to Japan and
  Russians who controlled the railroads of
  province.
• Taft had a secretary of state- Knox who sent a
  group of Americans, and foreign bankers to try to
  buy railroads and turn them to china.
• Japan and Russia denied.

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Taft the Trustbuster

• Taft brought 90 suits against the trust during
  the four years in office.
• In 1911 the supreme court ordered the dissolution
  of the mighty standard oil company.
• Also Taft decided to press an antitrust suit
  against the U.S steel corp.
• He now became TRs antagonist.

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Taft Splits the Republican Party

• Two issues split the rep. party the tariff and
  the conservation of lands.
• Taft passed a reductive bill led by senator
  Aldrich, then later the Payne-Aldrich bill was
  passed and Taft signed it betraying his campaign
  promises.
• It was drawn from the west and it outraged many
  people.
• Taft called it the best bill ever passed.

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• Taft tried to control the mineral resources by
  establishing the Bureau of mines, but all he did
  was mess up and fire Pinchot the chief of the
  agriculture depart. People were infuriated.
• By spring of 1910 the Republican Party was split
  wide open.
• The democrats emerged with a landslide in the
  house.

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The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture

• In 1911 the National Progressive Republican
  League with La Follete being the leader
• TR tried coming back to the rep. party to make
  things better but all he won was being the
  candidate on the progressive party ticket.
• He was pushing La Follete
• Roosevelt tasted the bitter cup of defeat but was
  on fire to lead a third party crusade.

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