American Yawp Ch 20 Book Notes PDF

lOMoARcPSD|51855979 American Yawp Ch 20 Book Notes The United States: 1877 To Present (Stevenson University) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Downloaded by Amanda Comstock (amandacomstock8...

lOMoARcPSD|51855979 American Yawp Ch 20 Book Notes The United States: 1877 To Present (Stevenson University) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|51855979 Chapter 20 – The Progressive Era 1. Introduction a. Swift Changes in our industrial system caused equally swift changes in our religious, political, and social structures b. Problems associated with the Gilded Age i. Rice of unprecedented fortunes and unprecedented poverty ii. Controversies over imperialism iii. Urban Squalor iv. A near-war between capital and labor v. Loosening social mores vi. Unsanitary food production vii. The onrush of foreign immigration viii. Environmental destruction ix. The outbreak of political radicalism c. Dissatisfaction with new trends in American society spurred the Progressive Era i. Reformers 1. Sought to clean up politics 2. Black Americans continued their long struggle for civil rights 3. Women demanded the vote with more intensity while also demanding a more equal role in society at large 4. Workers demanded higher wages and safer working conditions 5. Union recognition that would guarantee these rights 2. Mobilizing For Reform a. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911) i. Doors had been chained to prevent employees from taking unauthorized breaks 1. Managers who held the keys saved themselves but left 200 women behind ii. Women lined the rooftop of 10 story building and jumped iii. 71 Workers were injured and 146 had died iv. A year before the Triangle workers went on strike 1. Asked for better safety precautions and safer working conditions a. The company called in the city police to break up the strike v. Convinced many Americans of the need to reform 1. Politicians, journalists, novelists, religious leaders, and activits all got involved b. Magazines in mass-circulation and Books were Reformers looked to inform the nation of its poor and many corruptions of the new industrial order i. Exposed business practices, poverty, and corruption 1. This aroused public demands for reform ii. Journalists shared popular perceptions of Gilded Age injustice 1. Jacob Riis - “How the Other Half Lives” Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|51855979 a. Described the qualor he saw and documented it with photography after living in the city slums 2. Upton Sinclair - “The Jungle” a. Major impact exposed the entire process of industrialized food production iii. Edward Bellamy’s 1888 - “ Looking Backward” 1. A vision of reformed society that enthralled readers, inspired hundreds of Bellamy clubs, and pushed many young readers onto the road to reform c. Preachers and Theologians too pushed the Reform i. Charles Sheldon Published “In his steps” (1896) ii. Many Americans asked, “What would Jesus do?” 1. Sheldon’s novel was a success not only b/c of the plot but also connecting with a new movement transforming American religion and social gospel iii. Social gospel emerged within Protestant Christianity at the end of the nineteenth century 1. Emphasized Christians to be concerned for the salvation of society and not simply individual souls iv. Walter Rauschenbusch 1. Pastor of a German Baptist church in the Hell's Kitchen Section of New York City a. Confronted rampant crime and stark poverty 2. Believed that every Christian, whether they were a businessperson, a politician, or a stay-at-home parent should ask themselves what they could enact the kingdom of God on Earth d. Social gospel had its blind spots i. Often ignored the plight of women ii. Silent of the plight of African Americans, Native Americans and other oppressed minority groups e. Also inspired future activists including Martin Luther King Jr 3. Women’s Movements a. Women’s Clubs i. National women’s club federation (1890s) ii. General Federation of Women’s Clubs (formed in New York City in 1890) iii. The National Association of Colored Women (organized in Washington, D.C in 1896) 1. Dominated by both upper-middle-class, educated, northern women iv. Few of these organizations were biracial ‘ 1. Rising American prejudice led many white female activists to ban inclusion of their African American sisters b. Other women worked thorugh churches and moral reform organizations c. Carrie A. Nation i. Imposing women who belived she worked God’s will Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|51855979 ii. “Hatchetation” - Nation took a hatchet and broke bottles and bars at the luxurious Carey Hotel 1. Women followed in Nation’s footsteps working with more reputable organizations iii. Founded a chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) 1. Founded in 1874 as a modest temperance organization devoted to combating the evils of drunkenness a. WCTU called alcohol a “home wrecker” d. Jane Addams i. Was an idealist Addams sought the means to make the world a better place ii. After returning from Europe, and seeing English settlement homes, she founded the Hull House in Chicago with Ellen Gates Starr (1889) 1. House workers provided for their neighbors a. running a nursery and a kindergarten b. Administering classes for parents and clubs for children c. organizing social and cultural events for the community 2. Florence Kelley convinced Addams to move into the realm of social reform a. Exposed conditions in local sweatshops b. Advocated for the organization of workers iii. 1912 she became the first woman to give a nominating speech at a major party convention iv. Advocacy grew beyond domestic concerns 1. Worked with the Anti-Imperialist league during the Spanish-American War a. Began to see militarism as a drain on resources better spent on social reform e. Suffragists – argued that women’s votes were necessary to clean up politics and combat social evils i. Suffragists in the south and some outside argued that whites women's votes were necessary to maintain white supremacy f. The National American Suffrage Association developed a dual strategy that focused on the passage of state voting rights laws and on the ratification of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution i. January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson declared his support of the women's suffrage amendment ii. Two years later the nineteenth amendment would be ratified 1. Women from all walks of life were now mobilized to vote 4. Targeting the Trusts a. Herbert Croly – believed that wealth inequality eroded democracy and reformers had to win back for the people the power usurped by the moneyed trusts b. Trusts - In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a trust was a monopoly or cartel associated with the large corporations of the Gilded age and progressive era Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|51855979 i. They would enter into agreements or consolidations to exercise exclusive control over a specific product or industry under the control of a single entity 1. Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company were both trusts a. Carnegie used vertical integration – controlling every phase of business i. Raw materials, transportation, manufacturing, distribution b. Rockefeller adhered to horizontal integration strategies by buying out competing refineries c. Between 1897 and 1904 over 4,000 companies were consolidated down to 257 corporate firms d. Problems arose for the American legal system i. 1870 many states passed laws to check the growing power of vast new corporations 1. Midwest farms formed a new network of organizations that were part political pressure group, part social club, and part mutual aid society 2. Pushed for Granger laws a. Regulated railroads and other new companies ii. 1877 the supreme court upheld these laws in a series of rulings 1. Munn v. Illinois and Stone v. Wisconsin a. Railroads and other companies of such size necessarily affected the public interest and could thus be regulated by individual states b. In Munn the court declared, “Property does become clothed with a public interest when used in a manner to make it a of public consequence and affect the community at large. When therefore, one devoted his property to use in which the public has an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good, to the extent of the interest he thus created” 2. Later rulling conceded the federal government could constitutionally regulate interstate commerce and the new national businesses operating it a. In 1887 congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act – this established the Interstate Commerce Commission to stop discriminatory and predatory pricing practices b. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 – aimed to limit anticompetitive practices, such as those institutionalized in cartels and monopolistic corporations i. Stated “trust...or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce...is declared to be illegal” and those “who monopolize...any part of trade or commerce...shall be deemed guilty” Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|51855979 ii. Declared not all monopolies were illegal, only those that “unreasonably” stifled free trade e. Aggression against the trusts – and the progressive vogue for “trust busting” - took on a new meaning under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt i. He viewed the presidency as a mediator between opposing forces such as between labor unions and corporate executives ii. Roosevelt pushed for antitrust legislations and regulations, arguing that the courts could not be relied on to break up the trusts iii. Believed there were good and bad trusts, necessary monopolies and corrupt ones 1. First Target was the “Nothern Securities Company” – a holding trust in which several wealthy bankers used to hold controlling shares in all the major railroad companies a. Led to the signing of the Hepburn Act - allowing the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate best practices and set reasonable rates for the railroads iv. Trust busting and the handling of monopolies dominated the election of 1912 1. Roosevelt left the republican party forming the Progressive party a. Adopted a New Nationalism program, which once again emphasized the regulations of already existing corporations or the expansion of federal power over the economy 2. Woodrow Wilson – Democratic Party Nominee a. Emphasized in his New Freedom agenda neither trust busting nor federal regulations but rather small-business incentives so that individual companies could increase their competitive chances b. After winning the election he neared to Roosevelt’s position by signing the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 i. This act substantially enhanced the Sherman Act, specifically regulating mergers and price discrimination and protecting labor’s access to collective bargaining and related strategies of picketing, boycotting, and protesting v. While the three presidents pushed the development and enforcement of antitrust law, their commitments were uneven, and trust busting itself manifested the political pressure put on politicians by the workers, farmers, and progressive writers who strongly drew attention to the ramifications of trusts and corporate capital on the lives of everyday Americans 5. Progressive Environmentalism a. Environmental destruction wrought by industrial capitalism was unparalleled in human history b. Reformers embraced environmental protections i. Two approaches preservation and conservation Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|51855979 1. Tension arose during a debate over a proposed dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley in California a. Revolved around the provision of water for San Francisco b. Debate revealed two distinct positions on the value of the valley and on the purpose of public lands i. John Muir 1. Naturalist, writer and founder if the Seirra club – invoked the “god of the mountains” in defense of the valley in its supposedly pristine condition ii. Gifford Pinchot – father of American forestry 1. Key player in the federal management of national forests a. Emphasized – to take every part of the land and its resources and put it to that use in which it will serve the most people 2. In Hetch Hetchy conservation won out 3. Conservationist polices often benefited the nation’s financial interests a. Many states instituted game laws to regulate hunting and protect wildlife, but laws could be unbalanced 4. Enviormentalism addresses more than the management of American public lands a. Settlement house workers i. Jane Addams, Florence Kelley b. Activists concerned with working conditions i. Dr. Alice Hamilton c. Early 20th century educational reforms included a commitment to enviormentalism at the elementary level i. Led by Bailey and Anna Botsford Comstock d. Lacey act of 1900 – banning the shipment of species killed illegally across state lines 6. Jim Crow and African American Life a. The south had become the nation’s racial vanguard i. Leaders in Both the North and South embraced and proclaimed the reunion of the sections on the basis of white supremacy b. How to accomplish disfranchisement i. African Americans hoping to vote in Mississippi would have to jump through a series of hurdles designed with the explicit purpose of excluding them from political power 1. First state to establish pole tax 2. It stripped suffrage from those convicted of petty crimes most common among the state’s African Americans 3. Then required voters to pass a literacy test Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|51855979 ii. Between 1895 and 1908 rest of the states in the South approved new constitutions including these disenfranchisement tools c. Segregation was built on fiction – that there could be a white south socially and culturally distinct from African Americans d. Booker T Washington i. Slave in his early life ii. Graduated from Hampton University iii. Became a leading spokesperson for black Americans at the turn of the 20 th century 1. Praised as a race leader and pilloried as an accommodationist to Americas unjust racial hierarchy iv. Advocated for incremental change for longer-term gain e. W.E.B. Du Bois i. Became America’s foremost intellectual leaders on questions of social justice by producing scholarship that underscored the humanity of African Americans ii. Confrontational voice boldly targetded white supremacy f. Both made a tremendous historical impact and left a notable historical legacy Downloaded by Amanda Comstock ([email protected])