Transcript The Progressive Era - Austin Community College

The Progressive Era
Muckrakers
Industrial Economy
Social Problems
Unions
Spirit of Progressivism (p.656-7)
1) Populist Roots: but more urban, educated
2) Problems: big business, labor, social
welfare, city. Not anti-capitalism
3) Evil lured underneath American life
expose the evil, and reform will follow
4) Good people & good laws will reform U.S.
5) Protestant, small town upbringing
6) “Creative Nostalgia,” conservative
7) Unique: a reform movement during
prosperous times
Muckrakers: 1903-1909
• From Yellow Journalism: reporter clout
• Objective press: not political party papers
• Expose Evil: big business, politics, drugs,
food, consumers, insurance, prostitution
• Samuel McClure
• Ida Tarbell: expose on Standard Oil
– Led to break up of Standard Oil
• Upton Sinclair: The Jungle
– Led to Food & Drug Administration
Industrial Economy:1900-1917
• Prosperity: more inventions, incomes
– Rise, farm prices rise, middle class grows.
• Henry Ford & the Model T (Photo)
– Assembly line, cheap cars for the masses
– Car industry huge impact, roads
• Consolidation: Oligopolies
• White collar class grows, changes
– Middle class culture
• Frederick Taylor: scientific management
• Factory Work
Henry Ford
Assembly Line: 1 car 93 min.
Model T: $850, 15 million sold
Women & Child Labor
• One Third young women worked
• Clerical jobs, discouraged from professions
• Florence Kelly: Child Labor
• Margaret Singer: Birth Control
• Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire (photo)
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire: 1911
African Americans
• Jim Crow Laws, 8/10 blacks rural farmers
• Lynching: 1900-1914 about 1000 lynched
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Niagra Movement: help voting rights,
– Fight Jim Crow laws, legal inequality, poverty
• NAACP 1910: legal advocates for blacks
• Crisis: Du Bois’ magazine for the NAACP
Waco 1916
Oklahoma 1916
Florida 1935
Unions Grow
• 1900 about 1 million union members
• 1920 about 5 million, or 13% of workers
• American Federation of Workers (AFL)
Samuel Gompers, skilled workers, 1.7m
• Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Bill “Big Bill” Haywood, more radical,
– All workers, foreigners, women and blacks
Leisure & Entertainment
• Young pop., more time and money
• Movies: 10 million per week
• Birth of a Nation: D.W. Griffith
• Music: Records, Ragtime, Jazz, Dances
• Baseball, College Football, Boxing
• Vaudeville (photos)
Vaudeville theatre
Ziegfeld’s Follies