The Progressive Era and Reforms

Tammany Hall

Cleaning up Corruption

As a result of political machines like Tammany Hall, many Americans began demanding political reforms, calling for changes in civil service or the government job system. They disliked the spoils system, which gave jobs to winning candidates' supporters.

By the late 1800s government corruption was so widespread that reformers demanded that only qualified people be given government jobs.

Cleaning up Corruption

Reform Successes

Voting Reforms

Reformers favored the Seventeenth Amendment, which allowed Americans to vote directly for U.S. senators (previously elected by state legislatures), which passed in 1913.

Other reforms allowed voters to take action against corrupt politicians through a recall, or removal from office before the end of their term.

Voting Reforms

Improving Working Conditions

Working Reforms

Progressives focused on protecting children in factories and fought for child labor laws. During the early 1900s, reformers finally succeeded in getting some laws passed to ease the conditions of child laborers, or to ban products made from child labor. Still, many parents ignored child labor laws so their children could continue contributing to the family income.

Progressives also fought to ensure workers' safety, limit working hours, and protect workers' rights. After the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, laws began to be passed to improve factory safety standards, and workers' compensation - which guaranteed a portion of lost wages to workers injured on the job.

Rights for Women and Minorities

New educational opportunities drew more women into the Progressive movement. In the late 1800s, women began attending women's colleges, such as Smith College and Vassar College. Many women graduates entered fields such as social work and teaching. They found it more difficult to enter professions which were dominated by men such as law or medicine. Denied access to such professions, women put their education to use by becoming active in reform movements such as temperance, women's suffrage, child welfare, and political reform.

The Temperance Movement

In the mid-1800s many female reformers blamed problems such as family violence and criminal behavior on alcohol consumption. As a result, many groups took up the cause of temperance, or avoidance of alcohol.

In 1874, reformers from many different backgrounds formed the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which fought for local and state laws that would restrict the sale of alcohol. Under the leadership of Frances Willard, the organization started 10,000 branches. More than 1,000 saloons were forced to shut down as a result of their efforts.

In 1919, many years of temperance efforts led to the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment which banned the production, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages throughout the U.S. - AKA the Prohibition Amendment.

Women's Suffrage

Women reformers also fought for suffrage, or the right to vote. Many people at this time opposed giving women the vote, afraid women voters would support causes such as anti-corruption, minimum wage, child labor laws. Other people believed that women should only be homemakers and mothers and not politically active citizens.

In spite of opposition, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890 demanding an equal voice.

National Woman's Party

In 1913 Alice Paul founded the National Woman's Party (NWP). The NWP used parades, public demonstrations, picketing, hunger strikes, and other means to draw attention to the suffrage cause - many of these demonstrations for equality led to arrests, police brutality, and force feeding in prison.

The Nineteenth Amendment

Suffragists finally succeeded in gaining the vote. In 1919 the U.S. Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, granting American women the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified by the states the following year, making it a law.

African Americans Challenge Discrimination

White reformers often overlooked issues such as racial discrimination and segregation. African American reformers like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois took the lead in addressing these problems through education and protest.

Ida B. Wells wrote articles about the unequal education available to African American children. In her Memphis newspaper Free Speech, Wells also drew attention to the lynching of African Americans. During lynchings people were murdered by mobs as a form of hate crime meant to keep the status quo and promote adherence to Jim Crow culture. More than 3,000 African Americans were lynched between 1885 and 1915.

NAACP and the National Urban League

In 1909 Du Bois and other reformers founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization that called for economic and educational equality of African Americans.

In 1915, it won the important case of Guinn v. United States, which made grandfather clauses illegal (the Jim Crow voting law which prohibited a person voting unless their grandfathers had been allowed to vote).

Another important organization, the National Urban League was formed in 1911 and focused on helping African Americans move from the South to northern cities by find jobs and housing. The League also addressed problems such as health, sanitation, and education.

Regulating Business and the Pure Food and Drug Act

Roosevelt made regulating big business a top goal of his administration. Muckrakers helped build support for this regulation. The public was shocked, for instance, after reading Upton Sinclair's description of the meatpacking industry in The Jungle. Roosevelt opened an investigation and later convinced Congress to pass a meat inspection law.

In 1906 Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which prohibits the manufacture, sale, and transport of mislabeled or contaminated food and drugs. Roosevelt was also the first president to successfully use the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act to break up the railroad monopoly in the U.S. and persuade Congress to regulate shipping rates.

Regulating Business and the Pure Food and Drug Act

Taft and the "Bull Moose Party"

Although Taft was Roosevelt's Secretary of War, he thought Roosevelt had claimed more power than a president was constitutionally allowed. When William Taft became president he chose to move more cautiously toward reform and regulation. This upset Roosevelt and other progressives who eventually formed the Progressive Party, or the "Bull Moose Party" (because Roosevelt claimed it was as strong a a moose) to push against the policies of Taft and the Republicans.

William Howard Taft

Woodrow Wilson

In his inaugural address, Wilson spoke of the terrible social conditions under which many working-class Americans lived. "We have been proud of our industrial achievements," he said, "but we have not hitherto [yet] stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost." Passing reforms for tariff revision and banking were his top priority.

Wilson backed the Underwood Tariff Act of 1913, which lowered tariffs. He addressed banking reform with the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. This law created a national banking system called the Federal Reserve to regulate the economy.

Wilson also pushed to regulate business with the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 to strengthen federal laws against monopolies.