WARMUP

 What does the word ‘progressive’ mean?

 What changes are we going to see during
the Progressive Era?
 What were the problems of the Gilded
Age?
 How can they be fixed?
1890-1920
 Disparity of wealth
 Workers rights
 Working conditions
 Wages, hours, child labor, danger, etc.
 Poverty in cities – Tenements, poor sanitation
 Racial discrimination – Immigrants & African
Americans
 Corruption in Social Justice
 Immigrants, Women, African Americans, Children
Progressive Era
 Occurred in reaction to the extreme corruption, workplace
conditions, and injustice of the Gilded Age

 Popular Presidents of the Progressive Era include Teddy

Roosevelt & Woodrow Wilson
 Progressivism

Movement based on the idea that new

ideas and honest, efficient government
could bring about social justice
 Progressive Beliefs
 Move away from laissez faire with government
regulating industry
 Make US government responsive to the
people (voting)
 Limit power of the political bosses.
 Improve worker’s rights, conditions for poor
and immigrants
 Clean up the cities
 End segregation and Jim Crow
 Areas to Reform
Social Justice
Political Democracy
Economic Equality
Conservation
 Social Justice
Improve working
conditions in industry,
regulate unfair
business practices,
eliminate child labor,
help immigrants and
the poor
 Political Democracy
Give the government
back to the people, get
more people voting and
end corruption with
political machines.
 Economic Justice
•Fairness and opportunity in
the work world, regulate
unfair trusts and bring about
changes in labor.
•Demonstrate to the
common people that U.S.
Government is in charge and
not the industrialists.
 CONSERVATION
Preserve natural
resources and the
environment
 Populists vs Progressives

Populists---rural
Progressives---cities
Populists were poor and uneducated
Progressives were middle-class and educated.
Populists were considered too radical
Progressives stayed politically mainstream.
Populists initially failed
Progressives had more success
 What is a muckraker?

Writer/journalist who exposes the problems

of society in order to bring about reform
Muckrakers
 Lincoln Steffens
(magazine editor)
 The Shame of the Cities
 Political corruption in
Philadelphia
 Link between big business
and crooked politicians
 Jacob Riis
(photographer,
NY Evening Sun)
 How the Other
Half Lives
 Poor living conditions
in tenements
Muckrakers
 Ida Tarbell
 The History of Standard Oil
 Robber baron business
practices of Rockefeller
 Described the firms cutthroat
methods of eliminating
competition.

 John Spargo
 The Bitter Cry of the Children
 Child Labor

 Also, Lewis Hine

 Lewis Hine was a school teacher
turned muckraker during the
Progressive era.
 In 1908, Hine became a photographer who
was interested in exposing the ills of society.
 From 1908-1912, he targeted the abuses of
child labor in American Industry.
 He produced a photo essay on child labor in
1909
Muckrakers

Frank Norris
The Octopus
Unfair business practices of the Southern Pacific
Railroad
Muckrakers

 Upton Sinclair
 The Jungle
 Working conditions for
immigrants; unsanitary
conditions in
meat-packing plants

 Frances E.W. Harper

 Iola Leroy
 Struggles of African Americans
Who are the Progressives?
 In addition to Muckrakers, they were also Religious Groups

 1. Preaching of the "social gospel."

 2. Create acts of god, churches should work to improve

conditions for workers and the poor.

 3. Religious organizations like the YMCA,YWCA,

concentrated efforts on helping newcomers adjust to life in
the big cities. Investigates slum conditions, provided food and
clothing and set up settlement houses.
Who are the Progressives?
 Radical Groups
 1. Socialist Party
 a. Organized in 1901 by labor leaders including Eugene
V. Debs.

 b. Wanted govt. takeover of some big businesses, laws

regulating business as well as a minimum wage and laws
setting the length of the work week to 40 hours.
 Segregation

What increased segregation?

Jim Crow Laws (1876-1965)

 Legalized segregation

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

 “Separate but equal”
How did African Americans face discrimination in voting?
15th Amendment
Poll Tax
Literacy Tests
Grandfather Clauses

How?
Southern states evade 15th Amend.
Required money to vote
Must pass a test to vote
If your ancestors could vote prior to 1866, then so could you

How did these discriminate African Americans?

 Opposing
Discrimination

Booker T. Washington
 Hard work
 “Pull yourself up by your
bootstraps”
 Tuskegee Institute, vocational education

W.E.B. DuBois
 Disagreed with Washington
 Wanted blacks to demand
full equality
 Founded in 1909
 Springfield, Illinois
 Founded by W.E.B.
DuBois, Ida B. Wells,
Florence Kelly, and
other progressive
reformers
  The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific
practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of
Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln.
 Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of
white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison
Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling
and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial
justice.
 Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E.
B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call,
which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.

source naacp.org
 The NAACP's principal objective is to ensure
the political, educational, social and
economic equality of minority group citizens
of United States and eliminate race prejudice.
The NAACP seeks to remove all barriers of
racial discrimination through the democratic
processes.

 This group helps pave the way for continued

work towards civil rights for African
Americans.
Tuskegee Institute
Who opposed
discrimination, and how?

Ida B. Wells
Worked to stop lynching
National
Association of
Colored Women
“Brave men do not gather
by thousands to torture
and murder a single
individual, so gagged and
bound he cannot make
http://withoutsanctuary.org/ma even feeble resistance or
in.html defense.”
1. What were the goals of Progressives during this
era?
2. Name three key problems facing the nation
during this time period.
3. What is a muckraker and what do they have to do
with the Progressive Era?
4. Name two significant muckrakers and the
issues they exposed.