Transcript Progressive Era

Civilisation des Etats-Unis 10b:
Progressive Era
Prof. Sämi LUDWIG
Progressive Era
→ reaction to Gilded Age
Progressivists inherit 1892 Populist party platform
• 1% owns 7/8th of wealth
• 60 hours week
• civic-minded Americans
• college-educated
• against child labor, work accidents
Christian Socialism (Walter Rauschenbach)
• Salvation Army
Prohibition
(18th amendment 1920 to 21st amendment 1933)
Walter Rauschenbach
“Muckrakers” (TR’s term)
- Ida Tarbell‘s History of the Standard Oil Company
- David Graham Phillips The Treason of the Senate
- Lincoln Stephens The Shame of the Cities (1904)
Municipal reform movements
• from negative to positive government
• ant. FDR?
• Robert M. la Follette
- governor of Wisconsin
- “Wisconsin Idea”
Theodore Roosevelt
• sickly child
• West
• Governor of New York
1901 McKinley killed
TR becomes youngest president ever (age 41)
• 1902 invokes Sherman Antitrust Act against
J.P. Morgan’s Northern Securities Company
(“railroad holding”) → doesn’t act “like a gentleman”
1902 United Mine Workers’ Strike
“why, they can’t even speak English.”
• parties invited to White House
• president as negotiator
• recognition of U.M.W.
1904 full program of reform vs. “Old Guard”
• 1906 Hepburn Act (railroads)
• 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act
• 1906 Meat Inspection Amendment
L: Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle (1906)
“I’m pizened”
1905 Forest Service
• 150’000’000 acres of national forest
• selective cutting
• National Monuments, later: National Parks,
e.g. “Muir Woods”: save redwood trees
• conservation movements,
e.g. John Muir’s “Sierra Club”
invites Booker T. Washington to White House
• vs. lynching
NAM: National Association of Manufacturers
• “open shop” vs. “closed shop”
Charles W. Eliot calls strikebreaker
“a very good type of modern hero.”
• private police forces
Pinkerton guards
Lochner vs. New York (1905)
• maximum hours law for bakers unconstitutional
• interferes with right to free contract
1908 Howard Taft elected
because of TR promise
• hunting in Africa, Teddy Bear
• 1910 returns
• “New Nationalism”
- increased cost of living, tariff fiasco
- “giveaway” of Alaska mining to Guggenheims
- Taft’s reputation as “anti-conservationist”
1910 G.O.P. falls apart, loses election
• 1912 TR’s “Bull Moose” party
1912 Woodrow Wilson elected (Democrat)
• President of Princeton
• Governor of NJ
“New Freedom”:
• competition
• reform to states and municipalities
Louis D. Brandeis
• first Jew in Supreme Court
• 12 Federal Reserve Banks