Hey guys, this is Professor Larma here, continuing with part two of the progressive era, roughly from about 1900 to 1917. I want to go ahead and get started with just a recap. I left off talking about women's suffrage, and I want to remind everyone that, again, in progressivism and the progressive era, is a reaction to the problems that were created during the Gilded Age. And this is a time period where big business has gotten so large that the government feels that they have to kind of counterbalance that by becoming large themselves so that they can take on the industries of the United States. And remember, progressivism was...
a set of goals for greater democracy, greater efficiency, greater regulation, and social justice. So with that in mind, let's kind of pick up where we left off with the different types of reform efforts. And one of the reforms that I want to kind of jump into is the reform efforts that were sparked by the book, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. which was a book more about workers and their conditions and the need for social upheaval than it was about anything else. But unfortunately, that's not what Americans thought about when they read this book.
They thought about the conditions that people experienced in the meatpacking industry. They thought about the lack of sanitation and regulation. within American foods. And so Roosevelt read this book in 1906. He immediately orders a federal investigation into the meat industry. And because of his actions, there is going to be the Meat Inspection Act that will set sanitation standards for the meat industry.
Following that, we create the Pure Food and Drug Act in the same year. So we're seeing rapid regulation. Roosevelt, CREATE, and Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in which they're looking at other items such as medicine.
And it says, look, you can't add harmful additives to foods or medications, and you can't falsely advertise drugs when they don't. reach those outcomes. So you can't say, hey, take this tonic and it'll cure your cancer if it doesn't cure your cancer.
Eventually, these laws will lead to a new agency called the Food and Drug Administration, which now look at everything from hair care products, skin care products, foods, and the type of medications. And this you know, is really evident in the time of COVID because the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, is what is going to determine if and when vaccines can be used and how effective they are. So it is relevant to our lives during this time period. Now, in addition to different time of reform efforts, we have...
different types of progressives. And one group that we see really coalesce during this time is African Americans. And we're going to see probably the most influential African American of the day was Booker T. Washington. He was the head of the Tuskegee Institute. He worked with Teddy Roosevelt and he was the first Black American invited to the White House.
And he wrote a piece of a speech called the Atlanta Compromise that gets published, I believe, in 1895. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure that's when he publishes it. And in it, he calls for education for African-Americans with the idea that Black America, once they achieve education, they will naturally. be geared towards economic progress. Now, W.E.B. Du Bois, he completely disagrees with this.
And he doesn't believe that African-Americans have to prove themselves with education before being entitled to economic progress. He demands for equal rights immediately. He is going to lead a movement called the Niagara Movement.
And that group formed in 1906. And eventually it becomes the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of... of Colored People in 1909. Their goal was to abolish segregation and advocate for education in rural areas with the hope that if African Americans are educated, they will too be more apt to participate in the democratic process and therefore have kind of a more equitable experience in the United States. By 1920, the NAACP has 100,000 members, and they are going to use the court system to demand legislation and to challenge legislation in favor of gaining rights for African Americans. Now, Ida B. Wells, she was a famous African American progressive. She creates the Anti-Lynching Society in which she advocates for laws that will end the lynching cultures in the South.
And by that, I mean the mob attacks and killings that included stonings, beatings, and hangings. African-American progress, we can see advance. from 1910 to 1930 through what we call the Great Migration.
Nearly a million Southern Black Americans are going to move to Northern cities. And they move because they are experiencing racial discrimination and violence. They're also experiencing segregation.
Now, that is not to say that they are not going to face segregation in the North. It's just going to be different. Many cotton crops in the South also contribute to the need to move north because they die out by the boll weevil plague that happens that makes the cotton not grow.
And then, therefore, there's not enough cotton to pick, so you don't have any way to make money. So we see African-Americans leave because of that. And then during World War I, there were job opportunities in factories up north.
particularly in places like Chicago and Cleveland and Baltimore. So we're going to see movement more. Now the progressives on a whole are not going to push for racial equality the way that they will push for other reform efforts. And instead of seeing more equity for African Americans, we actually see more lynchings and further segregation of Jim Crow laws in the South. And part of this is because the leadership.
With Wilson coming into the presidency in 1912, he is going to completely support segregation, Plessy versus Ferguson, separate but equal. He is going to allow for segregated offices. He's the president who watched the birth of a nation about the KKK and said it was such a great piece of history. And so if the leadership is showing, you know, lack of racial progress is acting in a racist manner, it is definitely going to be okay for lower individuals to continue their racist behaviors.
Now, white America on a whole is going to react negatively to any African-American progress at the turn of the century. And by the end of the Progressive Era, we actually see a resurgence of a, quote, new KKK. So this is not the post-Civil War KKK.
This is going to be a new post-World War I KKK that we're going to see that's going to not only attack Black people, but also attack Jewish people and other faiths and people who are not. actively supporting capitalism and democracy. So people who are socialists, people who are against government involvement.
the KKK will target them too. Now, in the North, we will see both de jure and de facto segregation. De jure is legalized segregation.
So the redlining that prevented people from moving into different neighborhoods and said, hey, Black people, you can live in this neighborhood, but you can't live in that neighborhood. That is de jure legalized segregation. But then you also had de facto, which is, well, we say we hire everyone, but in fact, only that factory hires black people. This factory only hires white people.
That is de facto. So it's by tradition. And the North is going to become very complacent by allowing segregation to continue to expand and grow de facto by tradition. whereas the South is very blatant in their de jure, their legalized segregation, the North is going to be very complicit with their de facto or by tradition segregation.
So here we have some images, you wonder why it was called the Niagara Movement, here we have the Falls and that was the origins for the NAACP, you have Booker T Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois which again is founded in 1909. And here we have Ida B. Wells, who famously spoke out against lynchings. When we look at the Great Migration, we can see that we are seeing massive movement of African Americans out of the main sort of cotton belt into the middle. other areas. All right, so let's talk about Roosevelt. Roosevelt, you know, he took over for McKinley when McKinley is assassinated in 1901. He is overwhelmingly re-elected in 1904. People like him.
They like his style. So his agenda becomes to keep doing what he's doing, and this becomes known as a square deal for all. And pretty much he says, hey, Americans need to understand that for America to succeed, we've got to control the corporations. We've got to have consumer protection, make sure that people's goods and services are safe. We've got to have conservation of natural resources.
Those were all part of the square deal. Now, in particular, when it comes to conservation. you see that Teddy Roosevelt takes the lead and he tries to create millions, or he does set aside millions of acres to create national forests and wilderness areas.
And he is going to be responsible for basically setting aside the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park as conservation locales and eventually those will turn into preservations. So here's his election map and you can see, I mean, he won handily 56 percent in the popular vote, 71 percent of the electoral vote. And remember the South won't vote Republican because of the Civil War.
So where did he lose the South? Why? Because they won't vote Republican. They could have liked him, but they wouldn't vote Republican.
So during this time period at the turn of the century, we start to see the rise of socialism. And the Socialist Party is more radical than the progressives because they do want to see a overhaul of. the ownership of items. So they want the government to compete with the industries.
So they want the government and the people to publicly own railroads, utilities, and industries like oil and steel. They want that to be what we would call subsidized, which means that the government has control, the people can vote, and those utility groups and those companies would be publicly owned. Now, why would that be important? Because then if people don't like the way that they're being run, it can be changed by the people. It's not private ownership.
You know, a private company can pretty much, you know, discriminate against who they want or set their prices however they want. A publicly owned company is very different. And so the socialists of America wanted. to have certain things available to all Americans, and that includes railroads and utilities and oil and steel. Eugene V. Debs, he is going to become a socialist while he is jailed for the Pullman strike, and he is going to become the leader of the socialist political party, and he runs for president five times.
And he is going to advocate and be supported by the IWW or the Industrial Workers of the World, where they were known as the Wobblies, where they were advocating for all for one, that everyone is contributing to the greater good of society. Therefore, everyone should control the profits and the results of industry. This is even at the time, a pretty radical labor union.
Their motto was an injury to one is an injury to all. Therefore, everyone needed to be treated equitably. And they are going to have famous leaders such as Mother Jones, Mary Mother Jones. And all of these people are going to advocate for more control by the working class.
However, the progressives, as I said, they were pragmatic and this seemed idealistic. And so they were weary of embracing socialism. They did, however, like the idea of public ownership of utilities like water, gas, sewage, etc. They liked the idea of an eight-hour workday. And they liked the idea of employee pensions that would be paid out by the company, which meant when they retired.
there would be money given so that people can continue to have a standard of living after they no longer were working. This was great until the companies no longer had money. And then what do you do with that?
And so that's where we get into Social Security and whatnot. So Teddy Roosevelt could have run again. And. 1908, but he wanted to stick by tradition.
And so he chose William Taft to be his protege. And Taft wins very easily because the Republicans are very popular. Taft continues Teddy's platform of trust busting, so breaking up monopolies.
He files 90 antitrust cases. including the one against the Standard Oil Company in 1911. Teddy Roosevelt was upset by this because he felt that the Standard Oil and the U.S. steel companies were good trusts, and so he didn't want to see them broken up. Taft also continues Roosevelt's conservation measures, and he adds national forest reserves. He pushes for a graduated income tax.
And if you remember my acronym, Taxes, Senators, Alcohol, Women, taxes was the first progressive amendment. So it was a federal income tax. It was only on the very, very wealthy.
The top 5% of Americans had to pay an income tax. Now, over time, that grows into basically all Americans have to pay an income tax. The Republicans, though.
they're going to split because, you know, Taft is seen, as you can see from this picture, as basically, you know, continuing to follow along with Roosevelt's plans and, you know, Taft's policies are like a child between him and Roosevelt and just a continuation. Roosevelt actually thought he wasn't going far enough and so he, as a progressive, is going to stop supporting the Republican Party because he thinks Taft is too much aligned with the businesses. And because Taft refused to support the limited power on Congress, particularly conservatives, he is seen as sort of a traitor to the Republican ideology, to the progressive ideology.
And in the 1910 midterms, Taft does support very conservative Republicans over those who are progressives. And that's kind of the last straw. And the progressives say, we need to leave.
the Republicans aren't the party for. So again, we have some pictures. Now there is a story that Taft got stuck in the White House bathtub.
There just seemed to be a lot of evidence to support that. But he was a big man. He was probably about 300, 350 pounds. And he did enjoy a nice bath.
So he actually ordered this gigantic bathtub in multiple houses that he lived in. He liked to have a big bath. So I don't, I've never seen any evidence that he got stuck in the bathtub. But a lot of people use it as an anecdote because he was big and because we have this picture of his bathtub with four people sitting in it that went into the White House. So maybe that's where it came from.
Now, fast forward to 1912. We're in it. for a rough, rough election. Because despite the fact that Teddy Roosevelt won the primaries, the Republican Party picks half as their candidate. So Teddy gets really mad. You know, Peter Roosevelt is furious that he was not picked as the Republican candidate.
So he says, forget this. I'm starting a new party. a progressive party.
It was known as the Bull Moose Party. And he runs on a platform of new nationalists. And this new nationalism is this idea of growing sort of a conscientious, big government that will have some socialist elements and he'll have good trust, etc. The Democrats run a New Jersey governor, a guy named Bill Clinton. Woodrow Wilson, who was once a history professor.
He had only had two years in politics, and he's much more conservative, and he wants to run on this idea of new freedom. The socialists run Eugene Debs. He makes a decent running for a minor party, but ultimately, the Bull Moose Party is going to split the Republicans.
And Teddy Roosevelt is going to be shot while giving a speech. And as a result, because the Republicans split, the Democrats win. Why is it significant?
I cannot reiterate. Third party candidates are disruptive. They rarely ever win, but they do divide.
usually one of the major political parties, and allow for the other to then become victorious. And we'll see this. We've seen it before. We'll see this again.
I always talk about the 1992 election. You can see that it's kind of all over the place, but Wilson definitely wins overwhelmingly. Teddy Roosevelt wins in certain places where he already had a following. And because Wilson was a Democrat, he's going to win himself, too. I love some of these political cartoons because you have, like, the Republican Convention, which the elephants being torn apart.
OK. And elephants just kind of hobble it along because it doesn't really have a platform. And then over here you have the Bull Moose. And.
you have the latest arrival at the political zoo with the kind of busted up elephant and the donkey who are looking at what can Teddy Roosevelt and his progressive Bull News Party do. And someone's saying, look, this is just a zoo. So as I said, Wilson wins. He is the first Southerner to be president since. Zachary Taylor.
Since Zachary Taylor. That's how long it's been since they've had a southern president. He attacks the triple wave of privilege, trusts, tariffs, and banks. He creates the Federal Reserve Act, in which we have 12 national banks that are going to be run by a Federal Reserve Board that is going to regulate the fiscal policy and the money supply.
So all your money, if you pull it out. of your wallet right now, you will see that there is one of the 12 banks seals on your money, which tells you where that, you know, dollar, $5, $10, $20 bill came from. We had no monetary fiscal policy prior to the Federal Reserve in 1913. This fundamentally changes and regulates our economy. We look to the Federal Reserve now to tell us how the economy is. When the economy is good, they're going to tighten the money.
When the economy is bad, they're going to loosen the money and allow more to flow. It can tell us whether or not we're doing well or bad, poorly economically speaking. Additionally, he's going to go after the trust, and he creates the Clayton Antitrust Act.
which is going to strengthen and make it easier to go after these monopolies. He's going to create the Federal Trade Commission, which is going to investigate unfair trade practices in every industry except transportation and banking. And this is going to be a problem because we really needed it in banking, probably what led to the Great Depression. He is going to pass the Child Labor Act, the Keating-Owen Act. in which children couldn't be allowed to work under the age of 14. I cannot tell you how important it was for the federal government to get involved in trying to curtail the power of these industrialists, of these big businesses.
And their really only ace in the pocket was to break them up. as a trust. Now, in November of 1914, Wilson announced that the new freedom had been achieved.
He said it was a time of healing because of, because a time of just healing. This statement, of course, stunned a lot of progressives. They said, what are you talking about?
No, it's not over. We have a lot more to do, a lot more work to do. Now, why did he make this move? Why did he start retreating?
from progressive ideology? Well, a war breaks out in 1914 in Europe, and our focus is now going to be to kind of see what's going on and see who we're going to side with, because we could have sided with anyone. We'll talk about that in another lecture. He needs conservative Southern support to get re-elected, so he doesn't want to upset them, so he's going to back off progressive ideology. And the Republicans seem to be gaining more momentum whenever they attacked his progressive programs.
So he's going to abandon them. Now, he runs for reelection and wins, spoiler alert, in 1916 on the following platform. He wants a federal farm loan act to help farms get more land and get.
better farming equipment so they can grow more food because it looks like we're going to need to help some European countries. He intervenes in strikes on behalf of the workers. He attempts to ban child labor.
He increases the income tax on the rich, and he hesitantly supports women's suffrage. So the progressive actions he does are kind of... done partially and mostly because he's trying to get reelected.
So he gets reelected in 1916 and the following year the United States gets into World War I. So with World War I, we honestly can see progressive era just petering out. But it is important that you understand the impact of the progressive era. We're going to end. With four, yes.
Four amendments to our Constitution, the 16th Amendment, the 17th Amendment, the 18th Amendment, and the 19th Amendment. Taxes, senators, alcohol, women. Our income tax amendment, our direct election of senators, we prohibit alcohol, and we give women voting rights. The progressive era, while not fixing very many things because it's pragmatic, okay, it's making efforts. It's...
helps to level the playing field between the rich and poor. It does not fix the playing field. It helps.
It puts measures in. It makes America more fair, more honest, and more efficient. So it did achieve some of its goals, though not all of them. And like I said, it probably would have continued, but we got into World War I. and our attention is going to change our focus.
So that's the progressive era. Hopefully you learned a lot. I know it was kind of a longer lecture series than I had planned.
If you have questions, as always, please don't hesitate to email me. Have a great day.