Chapter 22 Part 1: The Age of Reform

welcome to chapter 22 part 1 the age of reform the populists have failed we discussed them last chapter they have a lot of issues they wanted to address they formed the political party the populist party but they did not succeed as a political party many of their goals are unfulfilled as the party fades after the 1896 election they did have an impact they will spawn a movement called progressivism now between the populace and the progressive we are beginning the growth of big government the government we have today can kind of trace its way back to first the populist push but the federalists are the ones who believed in a stronger national government so the seeds for a big government actually go back to the federalists the whigs and henry clay furthered the idea the party of lincoln the republican party formed in the 1850s expanded on that concept of the federal role should grow but it's the populace that began to push for a seriously big national government the populist recreated of economic conditions and the perceived political stagnation and because of their protests along with the push by the grange movement we do see some governmental regulations for railroads and a couple other issues we're going to discuss the progressives now the progressives are about reforming big government in a methodical and creative way to protect american consumers populists were concerned with farmers progressives are concerned with consumers the difference between those two is because populists were almost all rural progressives are almost all urban many populists were democrats many progressives are republicans to some extent the progressive movement grows out of the social gospel the idea of protecting the weaker elements of society the poor women and children and after the 1893 panic we had the gold bugs etc reformers are encouraged to make changes the country is recovering things are getting better prosperity is here so the it re this prosperity removes the fears of trying something different we're prosperous so let's try something we've got a sort of a bedrock we can fall back on now one of the lead groups of progressivism are the muck rakers the muckrakers are the first investigative reporters they are in mcclure's magazine the term actually comes from teddy roosevelt the muckrakers are out there exposing all the corruption and graft and just the way the government works for the rich the trust the monopolies teddy roosevelt talked to him instead of saying instead of looking at the junk at the bottom of the stall like the muckraker in pilgrim's progress they should look up and see how good the country is but the investigative reporters like the term the muckrakers because they thought they were indeed in the stalls raking up the muck and exposing it to the light of day so they adopted this term for themselves ida torbell wrote a lot about standard oil and its corruption lincoln stefans wrote a lot about city governments idah wells an african-american woman wrote about the rights and problems of african-americans and especially against the lynching that was going on in the south the muckrakers generally attacked mergers large corporations and trusts now trust as a review is when the shareholders of companies in an industry say four or five railroads four or five shoemakers whatever the industry is several of the companies get together they convey their shares and the authority over their company to a board the board of the trust the board of trustees to manage the companies in exchange for dividend paying certificates the board then manages the companies in trust for the shareholders this is what morgan did a lot of morgan's work were putting together trust to make sure everybody made money it is anti-competitive but as the number of trusts grew the word trust in many people's mind came to mean monopolies now they're not monopolies but it was perceived to be the trust was acting as a monopoly the progressives as they begin to form and understand at this point there is no progressive party for much of the life of the progressive era there is no progressive party but the mindset for progressivism started during grant with a desire to clean up government and for civil service reform populism had fed that realization that reform was needed progressive now is taking over and pushing that reform progressives believe that once the government was reformed it must act on behalf of the people that all levels of government should be responsible to the people part of the mindset of the progressives is the idea that private corporations who provide services to the public were bad because they're profit driven in those days many of the utilities and transportation services were privately owned the trolley systems were privately owned the water system was privately owned the telephone system of course was privately owned the electrical systems were that were installed by edison and tesla were privately owned the progressives believed it would be it would be better if the government provided the desired services because they're not driven by profit so they could have lower rates progressives believe that businessman must be compelled to behave fairly the problem was that the progressive politicians they did not know really how to solve these problems they knew they were problems they weren't quite sure how to solve them now one interesting note is progressives did not generally support the unionism because unionism of the day was radical and the progressives viewed this as an unamerican concept a foreign idea brought in by immigrants progressives did not challenge capitalism and so progressives in a sense although they're interested in reform progressives are not really radical and don't have a lot to do with radicals in general so the first place that they really wanted to look at reforming was cities lincoln stefans have been writing a lot of articles on the corruption in various cities the progressives believed they needed to break up the connection between the special interest groups and the party machines that are running the cities we've talked about the party machines in the previous chapter if the progressives believed that they could break this connection between special interests and the city government that real lasting reform would be possible they wanted the progressives that is the politics to return of what they thought it was in their past an idealized past with a more pure form of civic involvement and to do this they felt they had to revive the morale of the citizen what they're pushing for as we will see here going forward is more of a direct popular democracy in the cities one historian pointed out it's an attempt to realize yankee protestant ideals of personal responsibility yankee in this case meaning new england the new england town meetings where everybody got together to talk about everything and the progressive notion of good citizenship was the culmination of this new england yankee idea of political participation without self-interest one of the things the progressives are what they're really trying to do here is take the concept of a political participation in the small rural cities of new england the town meetings the township meetings and expanded into the cities now there's this differential in size that they're kind of ignoring but this is where the foundation is so they want to reform cities they came up with three models one is called the strong mayor so you have you know a city government with a mayor and a city council and they have a strong mayor use the strong mayor format mayor tends to be for medium and small size cities we have if you look at this chart on the right is the weak mayor on the left is the strong mayor you saw the voters elect the mayor who makes the appointments and they elect a city council the weak mayor just elects the city council the city council chooses from its members a mayor who is a figurehead and then the city council appoints the department heads and oversees the city the mayor in many cases serves for two years and then they're gone they cannot serve for more than one term at a time and in many cities they cannot serve until every other position on the city council has been elected mayor so here we have a seven mayor council so in a sense once every 14 years you can be mayor so this definitely limits the impact of the mayor the mayor becomes very weak they cut ribbons they make announcements they attend conferences but they have no power so in this case if the progressives can elect just four people to this city council they can reform the council and have a weak mayor a creation on the weak mayor is the city manager colleges are beginning to turn out administrative people people with some administration uh education and concept of how to run a city so in a weak mayor with a city manager the council is elected by the voters select the weak mayor some people elect the mayor some select the mayor but the city council hires the city manager the city manager hires and fires city employees prepares budgets controls spending and the city manager is responsible for the bids for all the work etc etc etc so this is a way of getting some expertise in running the city the city council probably is not made up of people who know how to run a city in many small to medium-sized cities you have attorneys teachers engineers housewives retirees are elected they don't really know how to run a city they have ideas what the city should do but how do you do it here the city manager is the expertise he brings reports to the city the city acts on them this is the city manager now another form that they came up with the progressives that is not out of mayor and the city council mode is called the commission there are some cities in the south that still use this but not a lot the commission is unique because you don't run to be on the city council you run to be a commissioner of a specific field so you could run to be the commissioner of public works the commissioner of public safety that's police and fire the commissioner of finance and administration the commissioner of utilities in this example here or the commissioner of leisure services think parks and recreations the commission as a whole makes the budget does a lot of the admin work but each commissioner is ultimately only themselves controlling the public excuse me the commissions so the commissioner of public works controls that area and the other commissions have no say in it so if the reformers if this is corrupt the reformers can maybe get together and elect the commissioner of public safety and or the commissioner of utilities and all the rest may be corrupt they can at least begin to reform those areas so the commission system is each commissioner supervises by themselves a specific administrative area of the city so i said most cities don't do this but there are a few in the rural areas that do this having reformed the city the progressives then looked at the concept of the utilities public services versus private services water electric trolley the sprinter the coaster the red trolley in san diego now one of the most famous fights on this concept concerns a valley out in yosemite called hetch hetchy san francisco had a corrupt government the progressives got a hold of it and they wanted to get rid of the water system but they needed a water supply the trouble is all the water supplies on the san francisco peninsula and almost everywhere around it to the north and to the east were owned by private water companies they went looking for where can they get private water they found it in hetch hetchy valley inside yosemite now yosemite was a national park but national parks were just fairly new so no one was quite sure what's allowed what's not allowed so the city wanted to build the dam in hetch hetchy valley a beautiful lake that goes up you cannot boat in the lake you cannot swim in the lake you cannot interact with the lake because this is the water supply for san francisco in 1913 congress authorizes this dam to be built for water for san francisco why because it's a city-owned water company it is not a private owned water company so this allows the progressives to say yes even though it's inside a public park since it's being used for the public good by a public utility they can do this and this water is basically almost unfiltered all the way to san francisco some of the they have some of the cleanest water in the country so this ends up being a fight about conservation versus preservation although preservation for john muir would have put hiking trails and hotels and a road in versus preservation today which is don't touch it so this is just an example of how progressives view natural resources now having tried to reform cities the progressives realize that most cities get their power and authority from the states so to effectively reform cities they have to reform the states one of the main figures in this movement of reforming is robert this is fighting bob that's what he was called fighting bob lafollette mayor of wisconsin he did so much in wisconsin it became known as the laboratory of democracy now remember we are a republic and so between the populace and the progressives what are we looking at in some ways we're looking at adding democratic elements to a republic three of those that lafollette introduces in wisconsin is initiative referendum and direct primary in california we have initiative and referendum initiative is where the citizens collect signatures to put an issue on the ballot we decide we want to lower the sales tax the legislative body won't do it somebody goes out and collects enough signatures and it's put on the ballot as a proposition that's initiative referendum is when the state puts something on the ballot for the citizens to vote on they're referring to the people this coming november there's going to be a ballot proposition that's a referendum the state wants to change the tax code under prop 13. it's called the split role decision we can you can look it up come november there'll be a lot of fighting about that but that's a referendum the state put something on the ballot for the people to vote on initiative and referendum direct primary was a reform on how candidates were chosen lafollette and other progressives said part of the problem is corrupt special interests are choosing the candidates first parties chose candidates some states had conventions to choose candidates lafallette said no let the people choose the candidate see here's that direct democracy so you have a primary you have democrats vote for a democratic candidate for the congressional district and republicans vote for the republican candidate for the special district and that's a direct primary then they run off in november of course california has what's called a jungle primary to cut off one party from the other party and in many many statewide issues you don't have a republican candidate you only have a democratic candidate because it's called the top two whoever gets whichever top two people get to vote those two run off in november but it is a primary they started the first real example was in wisconsin under lafallette he also used state commissions instead of having the legislature who could be bribed we would have commissions control things on the statewide level he used them because this was important in his day to oversee railroad regulation inside the state tax assessment conservation highway construction in california we have the public utilities commission so if san diego gas and electric wants to raise rates they have to go to the public utilities commission and ask for a rate hike and public utilities commission holds public hearings on whether or not the people want it to have happen and then the public commission can vote yes or no or halfway in between the problem with the commissions is to get knowledgeable people on how to reform a particular industry you have to pull people from that industry so the public utilities commissions a lot of times have people from the electrical and gas industries who leave the public utilities commission and go right back to the electric and gas industries now this is all wisconsin oregon used recall oregon put recall in recall r-e-c-a-l-l is where the people via petitions can vote out an office holder we did this with governor great davis mostly it's used to throw out school board people that the parents are upset with or the union is upset with you get enough signatures and you can recall an elected official you cannot do this against senators or congressmen they're elected via the constitutional rules but on statewide in the states that have this you can recall any elected statewide county or city or special board candidate all you need is get enough signatures there's a formula and you have a special election they cannot run to keep their job the people have to vote yes or no that's recall oregon put it in but la used it first there are women progressives the women progressives were very active one of the places they got involved is in child labor laws in various states pushing to limit the number of hours a child could work raising the age limit when they can go to work from 10 to 12 to 14 to 16 what have you how many hours a week because school is becoming more and more important they want the kids to be educated so they need to stay in school so mandatory school age affects how many hours you could work you could work but school is more important so they keep limiting the number of hours you can work that's why to to work as a high school student you have to get a permit a work permit i think at 15 don't quote me on that one and there's a limited number of hours you're supposed to be able to work because we want students to go to school progressives also were fine nationally in the mueller v oregon the problem with women working it's not a problem with women or working is the problem the fact that most women work go home and have to do the laundry and cook dinner and shop take care of the kids and a lot of jobs were making women work 12 hours oregon passed a rule that fought to limit the number of hours a woman could work in a day now this law would never be passed today but in those days they were thinking that women were weaker women had to go home take care of the family so oregon said that women could only work 10 hours a day a mueller a business owner filed suit claiming the women had the right to work 12 hours if they wanted to it goes to the supreme court in the supreme court interestingly enough cited with oregon citing the public good into the national american women's suffrage association and made their main objective to get women the right to vote but instead of pushing nationally they began to push on a state-by-state basis because the states do have some say in who gets to vote the constitution did not forbid women voting so the national american women's suffrage association realized if they could get a state government to approve then they could vote in state areas it's a national election but you're registered by state california may allow women to vote in 1911. the first place is to allow women to vote by the way were the territories of wyoming and montana and they did it for a selfish reason there weren't that many women proportionally to men in those two territories and they thought if they gave women the right to vote more women would move to the territories more women did move but not a whole lot california as i said in 1911 and many of the western states followed suit the holdout was back east up near new england and down south but finally in 1919 congress sends out an amendment authorizing women the right to vote it is approved and ratified and women vote nationally in all states of the 1920 election this was a progressive idea now the supreme court most of the time fought or decided against progressives they believed it was too much change in the constitution that these were not powers the framers wanted the national government to have and they kept shooting down a lot of the progressive ideas just like the populace so one way around that of course is through congressional amendments sent to the state in 1913 congress sends out to the states and it is ratified an income tax supreme court had always ruled income taxes were unconstitutional i know lincoln had one in the civil war but before the war was over shortly thereafter supreme court made it invalid uh just just so you know by the way this was done by the democrats so as you file income taxes and you get upset with that remember the democrats are the one who put who put it through congress out to the states that's the 16th amendment the 17th amendment is the direct election of senators before this the con the constitution said senators were chosen by state legislatures but now they are to be chosen by the people i point these two out because the populist wanted both these points and never got them the progressives push it and get it so these two amendments of course plus the women's right to vote are the ones that fulfill the populist desire for these goals and of course many states begin shifting to direct primaries nowadays in one form or another almost all states have primaries they may not have presidential primaries uh there's party controlled primaries there's the california jungle primary you know nevada has primaries for its statewide offices and congressional offices but it has a uh what do they call it they don't have a primary it's a caucus for the president so primaries are used in different ways in almost all the states this is the end now of part one of this chapter and we'll finish this up and then go to part two

welcome to chapter 22 part 1 the age of reform the populists have failed we discussed them last chapter they have a lot of issues they wanted to address they formed the political party the populist party but they did not succeed as a political party many of their goals are unfulfilled as the party fades after the 1896 election they did have an impact they will spawn a movement called progressivism now between the populace and the progressive we are beginning the growth of big government the government we have today can kind of trace its way back to first the populist push but the federalists are the ones who believed in a stronger national government so the seeds for a big government actually go back to the federalists the whigs and henry clay furthered the idea the party of lincoln the republican party formed in the 1850s expanded on that concept of the federal role should grow but it&#39;s the populace that began to push for a seriously big national government the populist recreated of economic conditions and the perceived political stagnation and because of their protests along with the push by the grange movement we do see some governmental regulations for railroads and a couple other issues we&#39;re going to discuss the progressives now the progressives are about reforming big government in a methodical and creative way to protect american consumers populists were concerned with farmers progressives are concerned with consumers the difference between those two is because populists were almost all rural progressives are almost all urban many populists were democrats many progressives are republicans to some extent the progressive movement grows out of the social gospel the idea of protecting the weaker elements of society the poor women and children and after the 1893 panic we had the gold bugs etc reformers are encouraged to make changes the country is recovering things are getting better prosperity is here so the it re this prosperity removes the fears of trying something different we&#39;re prosperous so let&#39;s try something we&#39;ve got a sort of a bedrock we can fall back on now one of the lead groups of progressivism are the muck rakers the muckrakers are the first investigative reporters they are in mcclure&#39;s magazine the term actually comes from teddy roosevelt the muckrakers are out there exposing all the corruption and graft and just the way the government works for the rich the trust the monopolies teddy roosevelt talked to him instead of saying instead of looking at the junk at the bottom of the stall like the muckraker in pilgrim&#39;s progress they should look up and see how good the country is but the investigative reporters like the term the muckrakers because they thought they were indeed in the stalls raking up the muck and exposing it to the light of day so they adopted this term for themselves ida torbell wrote a lot about standard oil and its corruption lincoln stefans wrote a lot about city governments idah wells an african-american woman wrote about the rights and problems of african-americans and especially against the lynching that was going on in the south the muckrakers generally attacked mergers large corporations and trusts now trust as a review is when the shareholders of companies in an industry say four or five railroads four or five shoemakers whatever the industry is several of the companies get together they convey their shares and the authority over their company to a board the board of the trust the board of trustees to manage the companies in exchange for dividend paying certificates the board then manages the companies in trust for the shareholders this is what morgan did a lot of morgan&#39;s work were putting together trust to make sure everybody made money it is anti-competitive but as the number of trusts grew the word trust in many people&#39;s mind came to mean monopolies now they&#39;re not monopolies but it was perceived to be the trust was acting as a monopoly the progressives as they begin to form and understand at this point there is no progressive party for much of the life of the progressive era there is no progressive party but the mindset for progressivism started during grant with a desire to clean up government and for civil service reform populism had fed that realization that reform was needed progressive now is taking over and pushing that reform progressives believe that once the government was reformed it must act on behalf of the people that all levels of government should be responsible to the people part of the mindset of the progressives is the idea that private corporations who provide services to the public were bad because they&#39;re profit driven in those days many of the utilities and transportation services were privately owned the trolley systems were privately owned the water system was privately owned the telephone system of course was privately owned the electrical systems were that were installed by edison and tesla were privately owned the progressives believed it would be it would be better if the government provided the desired services because they&#39;re not driven by profit so they could have lower rates progressives believe that businessman must be compelled to behave fairly the problem was that the progressive politicians they did not know really how to solve these problems they knew they were problems they weren&#39;t quite sure how to solve them now one interesting note is progressives did not generally support the unionism because unionism of the day was radical and the progressives viewed this as an unamerican concept a foreign idea brought in by immigrants progressives did not challenge capitalism and so progressives in a sense although they&#39;re interested in reform progressives are not really radical and don&#39;t have a lot to do with radicals in general so the first place that they really wanted to look at reforming was cities lincoln stefans have been writing a lot of articles on the corruption in various cities the progressives believed they needed to break up the connection between the special interest groups and the party machines that are running the cities we&#39;ve talked about the party machines in the previous chapter if the progressives believed that they could break this connection between special interests and the city government that real lasting reform would be possible they wanted the progressives that is the politics to return of what they thought it was in their past an idealized past with a more pure form of civic involvement and to do this they felt they had to revive the morale of the citizen what they&#39;re pushing for as we will see here going forward is more of a direct popular democracy in the cities one historian pointed out it&#39;s an attempt to realize yankee protestant ideals of personal responsibility yankee in this case meaning new england the new england town meetings where everybody got together to talk about everything and the progressive notion of good citizenship was the culmination of this new england yankee idea of political participation without self-interest one of the things the progressives are what they&#39;re really trying to do here is take the concept of a political participation in the small rural cities of new england the town meetings the township meetings and expanded into the cities now there&#39;s this differential in size that they&#39;re kind of ignoring but this is where the foundation is so they want to reform cities they came up with three models one is called the strong mayor so you have you know a city government with a mayor and a city council and they have a strong mayor use the strong mayor format mayor tends to be for medium and small size cities we have if you look at this chart on the right is the weak mayor on the left is the strong mayor you saw the voters elect the mayor who makes the appointments and they elect a city council the weak mayor just elects the city council the city council chooses from its members a mayor who is a figurehead and then the city council appoints the department heads and oversees the city the mayor in many cases serves for two years and then they&#39;re gone they cannot serve for more than one term at a time and in many cities they cannot serve until every other position on the city council has been elected mayor so here we have a seven mayor council so in a sense once every 14 years you can be mayor so this definitely limits the impact of the mayor the mayor becomes very weak they cut ribbons they make announcements they attend conferences but they have no power so in this case if the progressives can elect just four people to this city council they can reform the council and have a weak mayor a creation on the weak mayor is the city manager colleges are beginning to turn out administrative people people with some administration uh education and concept of how to run a city so in a weak mayor with a city manager the council is elected by the voters select the weak mayor some people elect the mayor some select the mayor but the city council hires the city manager the city manager hires and fires city employees prepares budgets controls spending and the city manager is responsible for the bids for all the work etc etc etc so this is a way of getting some expertise in running the city the city council probably is not made up of people who know how to run a city in many small to medium-sized cities you have attorneys teachers engineers housewives retirees are elected they don&#39;t really know how to run a city they have ideas what the city should do but how do you do it here the city manager is the expertise he brings reports to the city the city acts on them this is the city manager now another form that they came up with the progressives that is not out of mayor and the city council mode is called the commission there are some cities in the south that still use this but not a lot the commission is unique because you don&#39;t run to be on the city council you run to be a commissioner of a specific field so you could run to be the commissioner of public works the commissioner of public safety that&#39;s police and fire the commissioner of finance and administration the commissioner of utilities in this example here or the commissioner of leisure services think parks and recreations the commission as a whole makes the budget does a lot of the admin work but each commissioner is ultimately only themselves controlling the public excuse me the commissions so the commissioner of public works controls that area and the other commissions have no say in it so if the reformers if this is corrupt the reformers can maybe get together and elect the commissioner of public safety and or the commissioner of utilities and all the rest may be corrupt they can at least begin to reform those areas so the commission system is each commissioner supervises by themselves a specific administrative area of the city so i said most cities don&#39;t do this but there are a few in the rural areas that do this having reformed the city the progressives then looked at the concept of the utilities public services versus private services water electric trolley the sprinter the coaster the red trolley in san diego now one of the most famous fights on this concept concerns a valley out in yosemite called hetch hetchy san francisco had a corrupt government the progressives got a hold of it and they wanted to get rid of the water system but they needed a water supply the trouble is all the water supplies on the san francisco peninsula and almost everywhere around it to the north and to the east were owned by private water companies they went looking for where can they get private water they found it in hetch hetchy valley inside yosemite now yosemite was a national park but national parks were just fairly new so no one was quite sure what&#39;s allowed what&#39;s not allowed so the city wanted to build the dam in hetch hetchy valley a beautiful lake that goes up you cannot boat in the lake you cannot swim in the lake you cannot interact with the lake because this is the water supply for san francisco in 1913 congress authorizes this dam to be built for water for san francisco why because it&#39;s a city-owned water company it is not a private owned water company so this allows the progressives to say yes even though it&#39;s inside a public park since it&#39;s being used for the public good by a public utility they can do this and this water is basically almost unfiltered all the way to san francisco some of the they have some of the cleanest water in the country so this ends up being a fight about conservation versus preservation although preservation for john muir would have put hiking trails and hotels and a road in versus preservation today which is don&#39;t touch it so this is just an example of how progressives view natural resources now having tried to reform cities the progressives realize that most cities get their power and authority from the states so to effectively reform cities they have to reform the states one of the main figures in this movement of reforming is robert this is fighting bob that&#39;s what he was called fighting bob lafollette mayor of wisconsin he did so much in wisconsin it became known as the laboratory of democracy now remember we are a republic and so between the populace and the progressives what are we looking at in some ways we&#39;re looking at adding democratic elements to a republic three of those that lafollette introduces in wisconsin is initiative referendum and direct primary in california we have initiative and referendum initiative is where the citizens collect signatures to put an issue on the ballot we decide we want to lower the sales tax the legislative body won&#39;t do it somebody goes out and collects enough signatures and it&#39;s put on the ballot as a proposition that&#39;s initiative referendum is when the state puts something on the ballot for the citizens to vote on they&#39;re referring to the people this coming november there&#39;s going to be a ballot proposition that&#39;s a referendum the state wants to change the tax code under prop 13. it&#39;s called the split role decision we can you can look it up come november there&#39;ll be a lot of fighting about that but that&#39;s a referendum the state put something on the ballot for the people to vote on initiative and referendum direct primary was a reform on how candidates were chosen lafollette and other progressives said part of the problem is corrupt special interests are choosing the candidates first parties chose candidates some states had conventions to choose candidates lafallette said no let the people choose the candidate see here&#39;s that direct democracy so you have a primary you have democrats vote for a democratic candidate for the congressional district and republicans vote for the republican candidate for the special district and that&#39;s a direct primary then they run off in november of course california has what&#39;s called a jungle primary to cut off one party from the other party and in many many statewide issues you don&#39;t have a republican candidate you only have a democratic candidate because it&#39;s called the top two whoever gets whichever top two people get to vote those two run off in november but it is a primary they started the first real example was in wisconsin under lafallette he also used state commissions instead of having the legislature who could be bribed we would have commissions control things on the statewide level he used them because this was important in his day to oversee railroad regulation inside the state tax assessment conservation highway construction in california we have the public utilities commission so if san diego gas and electric wants to raise rates they have to go to the public utilities commission and ask for a rate hike and public utilities commission holds public hearings on whether or not the people want it to have happen and then the public commission can vote yes or no or halfway in between the problem with the commissions is to get knowledgeable people on how to reform a particular industry you have to pull people from that industry so the public utilities commissions a lot of times have people from the electrical and gas industries who leave the public utilities commission and go right back to the electric and gas industries now this is all wisconsin oregon used recall oregon put recall in recall r-e-c-a-l-l is where the people via petitions can vote out an office holder we did this with governor great davis mostly it&#39;s used to throw out school board people that the parents are upset with or the union is upset with you get enough signatures and you can recall an elected official you cannot do this against senators or congressmen they&#39;re elected via the constitutional rules but on statewide in the states that have this you can recall any elected statewide county or city or special board candidate all you need is get enough signatures there&#39;s a formula and you have a special election they cannot run to keep their job the people have to vote yes or no that&#39;s recall oregon put it in but la used it first there are women progressives the women progressives were very active one of the places they got involved is in child labor laws in various states pushing to limit the number of hours a child could work raising the age limit when they can go to work from 10 to 12 to 14 to 16 what have you how many hours a week because school is becoming more and more important they want the kids to be educated so they need to stay in school so mandatory school age affects how many hours you could work you could work but school is more important so they keep limiting the number of hours you can work that&#39;s why to to work as a high school student you have to get a permit a work permit i think at 15 don&#39;t quote me on that one and there&#39;s a limited number of hours you&#39;re supposed to be able to work because we want students to go to school progressives also were fine nationally in the mueller v oregon the problem with women working it&#39;s not a problem with women or working is the problem the fact that most women work go home and have to do the laundry and cook dinner and shop take care of the kids and a lot of jobs were making women work 12 hours oregon passed a rule that fought to limit the number of hours a woman could work in a day now this law would never be passed today but in those days they were thinking that women were weaker women had to go home take care of the family so oregon said that women could only work 10 hours a day a mueller a business owner filed suit claiming the women had the right to work 12 hours if they wanted to it goes to the supreme court in the supreme court interestingly enough cited with oregon citing the public good into the national american women&#39;s suffrage association and made their main objective to get women the right to vote but instead of pushing nationally they began to push on a state-by-state basis because the states do have some say in who gets to vote the constitution did not forbid women voting so the national american women&#39;s suffrage association realized if they could get a state government to approve then they could vote in state areas it&#39;s a national election but you&#39;re registered by state california may allow women to vote in 1911. the first place is to allow women to vote by the way were the territories of wyoming and montana and they did it for a selfish reason there weren&#39;t that many women proportionally to men in those two territories and they thought if they gave women the right to vote more women would move to the territories more women did move but not a whole lot california as i said in 1911 and many of the western states followed suit the holdout was back east up near new england and down south but finally in 1919 congress sends out an amendment authorizing women the right to vote it is approved and ratified and women vote nationally in all states of the 1920 election this was a progressive idea now the supreme court most of the time fought or decided against progressives they believed it was too much change in the constitution that these were not powers the framers wanted the national government to have and they kept shooting down a lot of the progressive ideas just like the populace so one way around that of course is through congressional amendments sent to the state in 1913 congress sends out to the states and it is ratified an income tax supreme court had always ruled income taxes were unconstitutional i know lincoln had one in the civil war but before the war was over shortly thereafter supreme court made it invalid uh just just so you know by the way this was done by the democrats so as you file income taxes and you get upset with that remember the democrats are the one who put who put it through congress out to the states that&#39;s the 16th amendment the 17th amendment is the direct election of senators before this the con the constitution said senators were chosen by state legislatures but now they are to be chosen by the people i point these two out because the populist wanted both these points and never got them the progressives push it and get it so these two amendments of course plus the women&#39;s right to vote are the ones that fulfill the populist desire for these goals and of course many states begin shifting to direct primaries nowadays in one form or another almost all states have primaries they may not have presidential primaries uh there&#39;s party controlled primaries there&#39;s the california jungle primary you know nevada has primaries for its statewide offices and congressional offices but it has a uh what do they call it they don&#39;t have a primary it&#39;s a caucus for the president so primaries are used in different ways in almost all the states this is the end now of part one of this chapter and we&#39;ll finish this up and then go to part two

Transcript for:Chapter 22 Part 1: The Age of Reform

Transcript for:
Chapter 22 Part 1: The Age of Reform