Chapter 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt
- Beginning of 1900
o 1/7 foreign born.
o 14 years peace between WWI
§ 13 mil more would come
- Gave rise to “new crusades” the progressives against monopoly, corruption, inefficiency, social injustice.
o Diverse, widely employed.
o “Strengthen the State”
Progressive Roots
- Roots from Greenback Labor Party of 1870s and Populists of 1890s.
o Now laissez faire thought to be insufficient to check social and econ problems.
- Previously politicians targeted “bloated trusts”.
o Henry Demarest Lloyd > Standard Oil Company attacked w/ Wealth Against Commonwealth.
o Thomas Veblen attacked newly rich through The Theory of the Leisure Class.
o JACOB A RIIS, for the New York Sun shocked middle-class Amer. With How the Other Half Lives.
§ Told of diseases in New York slums.
§ Influenced future NYC police commissioner, TR.
o Dreiser through his The Financier and The Titan.
- Critics also from socialists
o Many European immigrants
o Strong movement for state socialism inspired by.
- Also from social gospel promoted progressivism based in Christian teachings.
o Demand better housing for poor.
- Feminists incl. Jane Addams, Lillian Wald – fight for family working conditions.
Raking Muck with the Muckrakers
- Exposure of evils popular among Amer. Publishers.
o Notable = McClure’s, Cosmopolitian, Collier’s and Everybody’s.
o Circulation wars.
o Extensive researchers and pugnacious (aggressive) writers = muckrakers by TR.
§ Annoyed at reporters’ zeal and compared criticizing mags to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress on one who doesn’t see the big picture (?) – rakes manure yet does not see celestial crown overhead.
- Most scandalous exposures published most successfully.
o Lincoln stiffens in articles in McClure’s titled “Shame of the Cities”.
o Told of corruption in big business and municipal gov.
- Ida M. Tarbell told of Standard Oil Company scandals.
- Muckraking magazines went to great pains to check material and verify it.
- Various targets incl. beef trust, “money trust” and railroads.
o Thomas W. Lawson after becoming rich from stock market told of practices of his accomplicies in “Frenzied Finance”
- David G. Phillips in “The Treason of the Senate” charged many senators not controlled by people but by railroads and trusts.
- Some of most effective muckrakers at social evils
o Incl. “white slave” traffic in women, slums, industrial accidents.
o Also of blacks illiteracy, where 90% of blacks still lived in South and 1/3 illiterate.
§ Shown through Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color Line.
o Child abuses told through John Spargo’s The Bitter Cry of the Children.
- Attacked working medicines.
o They sold many quantities of bad drugs through advertisements.
o Attacks reinforced by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley’s “Poison Squad” who performed experiments on himself.
- Muckrakers seeked to right wrongs but not to reform the root cause.
Political Progressivism
- Mainly middle-class men and women who felt wronged by society wrongs.
o Pressure from corps, immigrants, labor unions.
o Two goals: use state power to curb trusts and to stem socialist threat by generally improving common person’s conditions of life.
- Progressives emerged in both major parties.
- First objectives to regain power from “interests”.
o Pushed for direct primary elections to undercut bosses, favored initiative so voters can directly propose legislation themselves, advocated referendum which placed laws for final approval by people, esp of laws that were passed by legis bribed by companies.
o Recall also let voters remove faithless elected officials, esp those bribed by bosses, lobbyists.
- Also seeked to get rid of corruption.
o Passed many corrupt-practice acts
o Limited money candidate could spend on election.
§ Prevented gifts from corporations.
o Secrecy of Australian ballot introduced.
§ Bribery less feasible if bribers didn’t know if they were getting money’s worth.
- Goal also was direct election of US senators
o Popular after exposure to bribery.
o By 1900 Senate = many rich men, called “Miooionaire’s Club”.
§ Listened to bosses rather than people.
o Number of states est. primary elections in which voters expressed preferences for Senate.
§ Local legis. Saw it politically wise to listen to people.
o Soon, Seventeenth Amendment 1913 est. direct election of the Senate.
- Women suffrage powerful support from Poopulists.
o States in West gradually began to give.
o 1910 a decade away from full suffrage.
Progressivism in the Cities and States
- Progressives = most progress in cities.
o Against inefficiency of governments in cities with bosses.
o 1901 appointed expert-staffed commissions to manage urban affairs.
- Others adopted the city-manager system designed to take politics out of municipal admin.
o “Reforms” valued efficiency more than democracy, sometimes took people more from people’s hands.
- Urban reformers attacked slumlords, juvie crime and prostitution.
- Progressivism also in state level, where WI governor Robert M. La Follette most militant of progressive Repub leaders.
o Took considerable control from corporations and returned it to people.
o But also regulated public utilities, so took some of the power back to himself.
- Other states took to regulate railroads and trusts, chiefly through public utilities commissions.
- Hiram W. Johnson Repub governor of Cali helped break power of Southern Pacific Railroad on Cali politics.
o But like La Follette, set up a political machine of his own.
- Charles Evans Hughes Repub governor of New york attacked gas and insurance companies and coal trusts.
Progressive Women
- Women couldn’t vote or hold public office, so settlement houses offered side door to public life.
o Exposed women to flaws of Amer. Cities.
o Gave them skills to address those evils.
- Women’s club movement = broader entryway for middle-class women.
- Literary clubs = educated women meet, improve themselves.
- Many of clubs set aside improvement for current issues.
o Defended their activities as an extension not rejection of traditional roles of wife.
o Often drawn to moral and “maternal” issues incl. child labor and tenements.
- Voice through organizationsn incl. Women’s Trade Union League and National Consumers League and through new federal agencies the Children’s Bureau and Women’s Bureau
o Both in Dep of Labor.
- Factory reform and temperance campaign
o Florence Kelley who came form Jane Addam’s Hull House was IL’s first chief factory inspetor and one of nation’s leading advocates for improved factory conditions.
§ Led the newly formed National Consumers League
· Made female consumers pressure for laws safeguarding women and children in workplace.
§ Victory through Muller v. Oregon which attorney Louis D. Brandeis won in making Supreme Court accept the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers.
· Now seems as discriminatory as it closed many male jobs to women, but at the time was great.
§ Afforded employers total control over workplace.
- Amer welfare state from female activism.
o Focused on protecting women and children than granting benefits to everyone.
- Failures in campaign.
o Lochner v. New York invalidated New York law est. 10 hour day for bakers.
o Later Court would uphold ten-hour law for factory workers.
- Laws useless if not enforced, shown through Triangle Shirtwaist Company incident where violations of fire code killed many women workers.
o Later NY legislature = stronger laws regulating hours and conditions of sweatshops.
- Other states soon followed by providing insurance to workers injured in accidents.
o Replaced unregulated free enterprise.
- Corner saloons by focused attacks.
o Growth of saloons – 1900 NY and San Francisco had one saloon for every 200 people.
o Blamed as the cause of red light district problems.
- Antiliquor support from Woman’s Christian Temperance Union founded by Frances E. Willard.
o Was the world’s largest organization of women in the world.
o Ally in Anti-Saloon League.
- Some states passed “dry laws” which controlled, restricted, abolished.
o Big cities generally “wet” due to immigrants.
o But by 1914, nearly ½ of population = dry territory
o ¾ total area had outlawed saloons.
- Then temporarily prevented by Eighteenth Amendment.
TR’s Square Deal for Labor
- TR also feared that “public interest” subdued by indifference.
o Demanded a Square Deal for capital, labor, and public.
o Embraced on the “3 Cs”
§ Control of corporations
§ Consumer protection
§ Conservation of natural resources.
- Tested I strike of Pennsylvania mines.
o Strikers demanded a lot
o Unsympathetic mine owners confident that public would react against miners and refuse to negotiate.
§ Millionaire George E. Baer wrote that workers would only be cared for by the men who God bestowed upon the property of control (the barons).
o When strike continued, Roosevelt threatened to seize mines and operate w/ federal troops.
o FIRST TIME THREAT TO USE FED AGAINST CAPITAL.
§ Workers also got 10% pay boost, 9 hour workday.
- Aware of capital and labor conflict, created Department of Commerce and Labor.
o Later split into two.
o Important arm was the Bureau of Corporations which could probe businesses in interstate commerce.
o Very useful for “trust-busing”
TR Corrals and the Corporations
- Previously Interstate Commerce Commission failed.
o Barons could appeal to commission’s decisions on rates to fed courts, could stall for ten years.
- Began effective admin through Elkin’s Act
o Focused on rebate evil.
o Heavy fines could now be placed on both railroads that gave rebates and shippers that accepted them.
- Hepburn Act severely restricted free passes (which prob of bribery).
- Commission was given strength when it was authorized,
o Stipulated maximum rates and nullified existing rates.
- Trusts also the focus of progressive era.
o Believed railroad trusts had “good trusts” and “bad trusts”.
- First trust busting against Northern Securities Company
o Held by JP Morgan and built by James J. Hill.
o Seeked monopoly in Northwest.
- When TR attacked, railroad appealed to Supreme Court which upeld TR’s antitrust suit.
o Northern Securities decision angered big businesses, dissolved the company.
- TR big stick also on other giant monopolies – over 40 legal proceedings.
o 1905 Supreme Court declared beef trust illegal and monopolists in sugar, fertilizer, etc fell.
- TR did not consider trust-bustingt sound econ policy
o Real purpose was to show that government controlled the country, not the big businesses.
o After trustbusting, monopolies were more “tame”than before.
o Successor Taft would bust more trusts than TR did.
Caring for the Consumer
- 1906 big meatpackers shut out of some European markets due to contaminated American meat.
o Same time Amer consumers wanted safer canned products.
- Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle which was intended for showing plight of workers in canning factories, but instead showed the disgusting unsanitary nature of food products.
o President influenced and made special investigating commission.
- Passed the Meat Inspection Act.
o Preparation of meat shipped over state lines be subject to federal inspection from corral to can.
o Largest packers accepted as way to put other competitors out of business.
- Also was Pure Food and Drug Act designed to prevent adulteration and mislabeling of foods and medicines.
Earth Control
- Amer. Generally wasteful with domains.
o Western ranchers eager to accelerate destructive process to build up country.
- First weak step Desert Land Act
o Fed gov sold arid land cheaply on condition that purchaser irrigate land within 3 years.
- Forest Reserve Act authorized pres to set aside public forests as national parks and reserves.
o 46 mil acres of trees preserved.
- Carey Act distributed federal land to states on condition that it be irrigated and settled.
- TR prominent conservationist.
o Gifford Pinchot also dedicated conservationist and head of Division of Forestry.
- TR responsible for Newlands Act of 1902.
o Washington authorized to collect money from sale of public lands in western states.
o To use these funds for development of irrigation projects.
§ Settlers rapaid cost of reclamation from now-productive soil.
o Money = revolving fund to finance more enterprises like that.
- Roosevelt Dam constructed dedicated to TR.
o Dozens of dams then built on every major western river in following decades.
- TR preserved nation’s shrinking forests.
o 1900 only ¼ of timberlands remained.
§ Most destruction of forest lands from Maine to Michigan.
o Set aside 125 million acres in federal reserves
§ 3 times saved by predecdessors.
o Earmarked millions of acres of coal deposits, water resources useful for irrigation.
- B/c concerned about disappearance of frontier as it was source of individualism and national identity.
o Through Call of the Wild urbanites made Boy Scouts of America
§ Largest youth organization.
o Sierra Club dedicated to preserving wildness of western landscape.
- Preservation fail when federal gov allowed San Francisco to build a dam for municipal water supply.
o Hetch Hetchy controversy = deep division among conservationists.
§ John Muir believed that valley should be a “temple” of nature that shouldn’t be touched by humanity.
§ Others incl. Gifford Pinchot thought that “wilderness was waste”
· Wanted to use wilderness intelligently, saw that they battled against those who damaged nature due to commercial interests, and preservationists who wanted to hug trees.
o TR developed “multiple-use resource management”
§ Sought to combine recreation, sustained-yield logging, watershed protection and summer stock grazing on same land.
- Westerners at first resisted fed management of natural resources.
o But learned to take advantage of Forest Service and Bureau of Reclamation.
o Largest ranches and timber helped fed conservation, shouldered person enterprises aside.
The “Roosevelt Panic” of 1907
- Roosevelt elected president in 1904
o Republican bosses considered him dangerous as his second term called for more regulation of corps.
o But 1904 announced he wouldn’t run for 3rd term, so people not that scared.
- Economic panic 1907
o Financial world hastened to blame Roosevelt, blamed his attacks on industry.
o Panic of 1907 led to long-overdue fiscal reforms.
§ Had a currency shortage, so led way for more elastic medium of exchange.
o Hard-pressed banks unable to increase volume of money in circulation and well-off reserves reluctant to lend to suffering competitors.
- Congress passes Aldrich Vreeland Act which authorized national banks to issue emergency currency backed by collateral.
o Would soon lead to Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
The Rough Rider Thunders Out
- Still popular 1908, but felt bound by previous promise.
o Supported a successor who would carry out TR’s policies: William Howard Taft.
§ Secretary of war, mild progressive.
- TR used control of party machinery to get Taft’s nomination.
o Democrats nominated twice-beaten William Jennings Bryan.
- Majority of population chose stability w/ TR-endorsed Taft.
o Third party Socialists – Eugene V. Debts managed small portion.
- TR left with enthusiasm and perpetual youthfulness.
o Political lighteningrod to protect capitalists against socialism.
o Middle road b/w individualism and collectivism.
§ And preservation and predators of nature.
- Accomplishments:
o Greatly enlarged power and prestige of president office.
§ Big stick of publicity.
0 comments:
Post a Comment