The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era

1. Jacob Riis

   • New York City journalist who published how the "Other Half Lives". He documented his experience with photography and also discussed urban poverty.
     • Working Conditions
       • Many activists were concerned with the working conditions during The Progressive Era activists were primarily concerned with the working conditions of people that faced struggles regarding health and sanitation.
       • Jane Addams
         • Favored cooperation between rich and poor and bosses and workers, whether cooperation was a realistic possibility or not. Limited the hours of work for women and children.
         • Hull House
           • Jane Addams founded the Hull House upon her return to the city of Chicago. Workers for the Hull house provided for their neighbors by running a nursery. The workers also organized social and cultural events for the public. Produced statistics on poverty, disease, and living conditions.
       • Big Business
         • Proposed new problems in the nation of America's legal system such as meatpacking, railroads, telegraph lines, oil, or steel. Individual states naturally regulated industry and commerce.

2. Immigrant Living Conditions

   • As tragedies mounted, living conditions worsened and inequality grew. It quickly became difficult to develop justification for the new modern order.
     • Upton Sinclair
       • Published the novel "The Jungle"; describes dramatizing experiences of a Lithuanian immigrant family who moved to Chicago to work in the stockyards. Expected to reveal the brutal exploitation of various industries,
         • Meat Inspection Act
           • The Meat Inspection Act was sparked by Sinclair's expose in which led the passage to the Meat Inspection Act as well as Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. This could also have been a result in attempt to make changes regarding sanitation and health.
           • Pure Food & Drug Act
             • Passaged was led upon after the committed crimes in a dungeon. Urban consumers enabled unsanitary and unsafe working conditions.

3. 19th Amendment

   • The government or any other government associated power in the nation and its states could not have the ability to deny the right to vote based on gender. Women were mobilized to vote.
   • NAACP
     • Sights were set by Du Bois who first started with the Niagara Movement. His main work with the association lasted from 1909 to 1934 as the editor of "The Crisis". The Crisis was one of Americas leading black publication. He pushed for Civil Rights legislation.
       • Women Right's
         • Women rights involved them becoming leaders in a range of social and political movements in a span of thirty years. Women's worked in variety of reform roles. Along with woman settlements, one of the notable movements for women rights was their right to suffrage.
         • National American Suffrage Association
           • The association was a leading suffrage organization composed largely of middle- and upper-class women. WTUL members viewed the vote as a way to further their economic interests and to foster a new sense of respect for working-class women. The association developed a dual strategy that focused on state voting laws.
           • National Wildlife Refuges
             • Created by Pressure; Key laws and regulations that included the Lacey Act of 1900 ended up banning the shipment of species killed illegally across state lines.
       • Racial Discrimination
         • African Americans were treated unfairly and differently. Compromises were only done in white towns and with mostly white people. Racial discrimination segregated various races from one another.

4. Alice Paul

   • Alice Paul led the Woman's National Party. The party led to the streets in order to demand voting rights. Also included organizing marches and protests that mobilized thousands of women. Beginning in January 1917, National Woman’s Party members also began to picket the White House, an action that led to the arrest and imprisonment of over 150 women.

5. John Muir

   • John Muir was a naturalist, a writer, and the founder of the Sierra Club, which invoked the “God of the Mountains” in his defense of the valley in its supposedly pristine condition. He took a wider view of what people needed as he said that "everybody needs beauty as well as bread".
     • Gifford Pinchot
       • Arguably the father of American forestry and a key player in the federal management of national forests, meanwhile emphasized what he understood to be the purpose of conservation. He was a former governor of Florida and served as first chief of the United States Forest Service.
       • Booker T. Washington
         • Made a tremendous historical impact and left a notable historical legacy and along with Du Bois, they were dominant leaders amongst the African American society.
       • Tuskegee Institute
         • Located in Alabama; Washington envisioned that Tuskegee’s contribution to black life would come through industrial education and vocational training. He believed that such skills would help African Americans accomplish economic independence while developing a sense of self-worth and pride of accomplishment, even while living within the putrid confines of Jim Crow.

6. Environmentalism

   • Addressed more than the management of American public lands, Early twentieth century educational reforms also involved commitment to environmentalism. Reformers addressed issues revolving around urban poor during environmental work

7. William Howard Taft

   • Successor of Theodore Roosevelt after 1908, who firmly believed in court-oriented trust busting and during his four years in office more than doubled the number of monopoly breakups that occurred during Roosevelt’s seven years in office. Taft notably went after Carnegies U.S Steel
   • Theodore Roosevelt
     • A reform-minded Republican who ascended to the presidency after the death of William McKinley in 1901. Roosevelt’s youthful energy and confrontational politics captivated the nation. He was not antibusiness and rather envisioned his presidency as mediator
     • Woodrow Wilson Act
       • Woodrow Wilson passed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913. The act provided the framework for regulating the nation's banks, credit, and money supply. Began to craft his monetary system soon after his election in the early 1900s.
       • Clayton Antitrust Act
         • The act was passed in 1914 and had a goal of adding on to the antitrust law regime.
           • Sherman Antitrust
             • Antitrust Law Act of 1890 in Amerca; the act outlawed monopolistic business practices. Passed under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison