Brandon Duong
Mr. Ready
APUSH 11
17 May 2014
Between 1900 and 1920, the federal government--led by
Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson--and Progressive Era reformers
effectively regulated trusts and industries and strengthened the method of
governance on the local, state, and national levels; however, the effectiveness
of the federal government and Progressive Era reformers were limited by their failure
to effectively provide protection for youth in industries and factories and their
lack of attention directed towards African American civil rights. The
strengthening of the method of governance on both the local and state
levels--meaning the creation of new processes by which officials could be
elected and the promotion of statehouse progressivism--was a response to the
growing influence of city bosses and widespread, yet hidden, corruption within
the government. During this Progressive Era, several movements and pieces of
legislation emerged, most of which were later categorized into three groups
that described their purpose: anti-monopoly, social cohesion, and faith in knowledge.
The spirit of anti-monopoly--meaning the fear of concentrated power and the
urge to limit and disperse authority and wealth--most fittingly described parts
of President Theodore Roosevelt's tenure in which he led efforts to regulate or
break-up trusts at both the state and national level; this impulse effectively
attracted the support of many workers, farmers, and middle-class Americans
throughout the nation. The second Progressive impulse of the era was the belief
in the importance of social cohesion--meaning the belief that individuals are
part of an interconnected and dependent web of social relationships and that
each person's welfare was dependent on the welfare of society holistically.
Finally, the third impulse was a deep faith in knowledge--meaning the belief
that knowledge was extremely important because it was the vehicle by which
society could be made more equitable and humane. However, even though this era was
categorized into three distinct parts, many movements and acts of legislation
exemplified more than one impulse; in fact, many were a blend of the three
impulses.
During the Progressive Era, reformers were successful in
influencing federal regulations and reforms on several trusts and industries (an
example of the anti-monopoly impulse). One paradigm includes the successful
regulation of the meatpacking industry which was spurred by the publication of
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in 1906
that depicted the unsanitary and dangerous conditions the laborers suffered and
experienced on a daily basis. Most likely in response to the wide popularity
and publication of Sinclair's novel, the Neill-Reynolds Report of 1906 was
released, further illustrating the inhumane conditions in the industry and supporting
Sinclair's claims (B). Furthermore, both the publication of the Neill-Reynolds
Report and The Jungle culminated in
the near-immediate creation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act in 1906 which
successfully regulated the meat-packing industry and aided in eliminating many
diseases that were once transmitted through impure meat. The attempt to
regulate industries in the nation was further depicted in the 1907 edition of
the Washington Post which illustrated
how President Theodore Roosevelt successfully reformed "Bad Trusts"--like
J.P. Morgan's Northern Securities Company--and regulated and controlled
"Good Trusts" --like the purchase of Tennessee Coal and Iron Coal by
J.P. Morgan and its merger with Morgan's U.S. Steel in 1907 (A). In regards to
the "Bad Trusts," President Roosevelt, in 1902, ordered the Justice
Department to invoke the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 against the Northern
Securities Company because it had become a domineering railroad monopoly in the
Northwest. Despite some attempts by J.P. Morgan to deter the president,
Roosevelt successfully proceeded with the case, and in 1904, the Supreme Court
ruled that the Northern Securities Company (and the monopoly it had created) had
to be dissolved. In addition to this prime example of Roosevelt's trust
busting, he also effectively filed more than forty additional antitrust
lawsuits during the remainder of his presidency; however, in spite of this,
Roosevelt's critics still argued that the president's actions were limited in
that it did not go far enough nor was it radical enough because many trusts
were allowed to persist and, in some cases, form. For example, with regards to
the "Good Trusts," President Roosevelt--fearing that the nation might
plunge further into a recession (as this attempted purchase was occurring
during the Panic of 1907)--allowed J.P. Morgan (through his U.S. Steel) to
purchase the shares of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in 1907 as a way to
spur the economy; however, Morgan insisted that he receive assurances from the
president that the purchase would not prompt antitrust action, which Roosevelt
eventually agreed upon. Most likely as a result of this purchase, the Panic of
1907 subsided. In addition to the prior Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, President
Woodrow Wilson successfully enacted the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914,--which sought
to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incipiency-- but it was limited
because President Wilson seemed to lose interest in the act and because
conservatives assaulted and weakened the authority of the bill; thus the act was
rendered essentially useless (E). However, in spite of the bill's limitations,
the mere fact that it was successfully enacted was a testament to the influence
of Progressive Era reformers in influencing their representatives in Congress
and in other departments within the federal government.
Meanwhile, as Roosevelt and to a lesser extent, his two
successors were focused on regulating and reforming trusts and industries,
state and local governments were influenced by Progressive Era reformers into combating
the influence and strength of the city bosses by creating new forms of
governance--which included the commission plan and the city manager plan--and
promoting statehouse progressivism. The commission plan--by which an elected,
non-partisan commission replaced the mayor and council of a city--was adopted
by Des Moines, Iowa in 1907 and Galveston, Texas. The city manager plan--by
which an outside expert was selected by officials to take charge of the local government--was
thought to be an optimal alternative to the current political structure because
the city manager would presumably remain untainted by the corrupting influence
of city bosses and party organizations. Overall, by the end of the era, about
400 cities were operating under the commission plan, and another 45 cities
employed the city manager plan, thus emphasizing the widespread impact
Progressive Era reformers had on the local and state levels of government. In
addition to these two new plans of governance, some cities made the election of
mayors nonpartisan so that the parties and the city bosses could not influence
nor choose the candidates; meanwhile, other cities decided to move the
elections of mayors to off-years in which there was no presidential or
congressional race in order to reduce the influence of the large voter turnouts
the party organizations and city bosses managed to consistently produce.
Moreover, progressive era reformers tried to make city councilors run at large
in order to further limit the influence of city bosses, and also, these
reformers attempted to strengthen the authority of the mayor at the expense of
the city council on the assumption that they were more likely to succeed in
winning over a single, sympathetic mayor than they were in winning control of
an entire council. Some mayors that effectively challenged city bosses and, to
a limited extent, party organizations included Tom Johnson and Newton D. Baker
of Cleveland, Hazen Pingree of Detroit, and Samuel Jones of Toledo. In
addition, mayors were not the only ones to effectively challenge party
organizations, city bosses, and industries; governors of states also took part
in reforming state politics and in enacting progressive reforms. For example,
some of these governors included Governor Charles Evans Hughes of New York, who
exploited progressive sentiment in his state to create a commission to regulate
public utilities, Governor Hiram Johnson of California, who limited the
political influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad, Governor Woodrow Wilson
of New Jersey, who used his executive authority to win reforms designed to end
New Jersey's infamous title of the "mother of trusts," and most
importantly, Governor Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, who helped turn his
state into a "laboratory of progressivism" by promoting direct
primaries, initiatives, and referendums, by passing laws to regulate the
workplace and provide compensation for laborers injured on the job, by
instituting graduated taxes on inherited fortunes, and by doubling state levies
on railroads and other corporate interests. Furthermore, Progressive reformers
were successful in increasing the authority of the electorate and decreasing
the influence of the city bosses by promoting several new reforms which
included the initiative,--which allowed reformers to circumvent state
legislators by submitting new legislation directly to the voters in general
elections--the referendum,--which provided a new method by which actions of the
legislature could be returned to the electorate for approval--the direct
primary,--which was an attempt by reformers to remove the selection of
candidates away from the city bosses and give it to the people (though in the
South, it was altered into an effort to limit black voting)--and the
recall--which gave voters the right to remove a public official from office at
a special election that would be called upon after a sufficient number of
people had signed a petition. Holistically, by 1918, more than twenty state
governments had enacted one or either of the initiative and the referendum. Similarly,
by 1915, every single state in the nation had instituted primary elections for
at least some offices; this widespread adoption was most likely spurred by a
1912 speech by President Theodore Roosevelt in which Roosevelt persuasively argued
in favor of the creation of direct primaries (D). However, in contrast to the
aforementioned methods, the recall encountered more strenuous and widespread
opposition (in part because the proposal seemed quite radical at the time), but
in spite of this, a few states, like California, adopted it. Overall, as a
result of the implementation of these methods, the once-domineering influence
of the city bosses began to decline, and soon after, voter turnout for local,
congressional, and presidential elections began to decline as the common
people--namely immigrants as they were most often targeted by city bosses,
party organizations, and industries--were no longer pressured into voting for
certain candidates (J). Finally, Progressive reformers--in this case, mainly
women--under the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) led by
Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt gained increasing strength and
membership--the NAWSA had over two million members by 1917--because it began to
justify women's suffrage in safer, less radial and less militant ways as
compared to other women's suffrage associations like Alice Paul's National
Woman's Party (founded in 1916); in fact, supporters of the movement began to
argue that by granting women suffrage, the separate, domestic sphere in which
women resided would be left alone, and that the fact that women occupied this
distinct sphere was beneficial in that women--because of their caring and
soothing role as mothers, wives, and homemakers--allowed them to make
potentially important contributions to politics (especially regarding decisions
on war). A core argument in favor of women's suffrage was that if blacks,
immigrants (like the "poor Germans" that were described in the 1918 photograph in the National
Archives), and other base groups had access to franchise, then it was a matter
not only of justice but of common sense to allow educated, well-born women
(likely middle to upper middle class) to vote (H). Triumphs of this suffrage
movement began in 1910 when Washington became the first state in fourteen years
to extend suffrage to women; soon after, California in 1911 and four other
western states in 1912 extended suffrage to women as well. This wave of democratic
expansion soon reached east of the Mississippi River when Illinois became the
first state on the eastern shore to grant suffrage to women; also, in 1917 and
1918, New York and Michigan, respectively, gave women the right to vote. In
all, this movement was successful in that by 1919, thirty-nine states had
granted women the right to vote in some elections; moreover fifteen states
allowed full participation by women in the election process. Finally, in 1920,
women reformers helped win the ratification of the 19th Amendment which
guaranteed political rights (like the right to vote) to women throughout the
nation. As a result of this massive influx
voters, Congress attempted to appease the demands of women--even though by
1920, the Progressive movement was already disintegrating--by passing the
Shepard Towner Maternity and Infancy Act in1921--which provided funds for
supporting the health of women and infants--and the Cable Act of 1922--which granted
women the rights of U.S. citizenship independent of their husbands status.
Furthermore, the federal government--led by Presidents
Roosevelt (in office 1901-1909), Wilson (in office 1913-1921), and to a lesser
extent, Taft (in office 1909-1913)--effectively approved and produced numerous,
radical, and progressive measures. Some of the successful measures promoted by
President Roosevelt included the square deal of 1904,--in which Roosevelt acted
as an arbiter in an anthracite coal strike between miners and management--the
Hepburn Railroad Regulation Act of 1906,--which sought to restore some
regulatory authority over the industries to the government--the Pure Food and
Drug Act of 1906,--which restricted the sale of dangerous or ineffective
medicines--the Meat Inspection Act of 1906,--which helped eliminate many
diseases once transmitted in impure meat--the establishment of the National
Forest system, and the National Reclamation Act of 1902--which provided federal
funds for the construction of dams, reservoirs, and canals in the West. However,
on a more limited note, during the Taft administration, only one truly significant
progressive measure succeeded in being passed: the Children's Bureau (established
1912) which focused on developing policies for the protection of children; the chief
of the Children's Bureau ended up being Julia Lathrop, an associate of Jane
Addams (who was renowned for her role in establishing the Hull House in Chicago
in1889). Finally, under Wilson's New Freedom, progressive measures like the
Underwood-Simmons Tariff of 1913,--which substantially lowered the protective
tariff and as a result, was able to introduce real foreign competition into
American markets which in turn helped to break up the influence and authority
of trusts--a new graduated income tax,--which the recently adopted Sixteenth
Amendment to the Constitution now permitted and which imposed a one percent tax
on individuals and corporations earning more than four thousand dollars a year,
with rates ranging up to six percent on incomes over five hundred thousand dollars
annually--the Federal Reserve Act of 1913,--which created twelve regional Federal
Reserve banks, each of which would hold a certain percentage of the assets of
their members in reserve, allowed those banks to use these reserves to support
loans to private banks at an interest the Federal Reserve system would set, and
permitted the banks to issue Federal Reserve notes that quickly became the
nation's medium of trade--and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1912--which
created a regulatory agency that would help businesses determine in advance
whether their actions would be deemed acceptable by the government. Overall,
all of these measures stood in stark contrast to the belief of Herbert Croly
who, in his 1914 publication of the New
Republic, incorrectly argued that President Wilson had failed in his
attempt to produce effective progressive reform (F).
Unfortunately, the federal government and the Progressive
Era reformers were limited in their level of success because both created ineffective
legislation for the protection of youth. On the one hand, reformers had some
success in creating safeguards for youth. In fact, clubwomen--meaning those
women who joined influential women's clubs like the General Federation of
Women's Clubs (formed in 1892) and the National Association of Colored
Women--effectively pressured Congress into establishing the Children's
Bureau--an extension of the Labor Department--in 1912 that was focused
primarily on developing policies to protect children. Furthermore, the effort
to protect youth in industries and factories was not confined to one portion of
the population; as a matter of fact, some labor groups, like the Union Labor
Party, successfully pressured California to pass a child labor law in 1913.
However, most of these laws ended up being ineffective later on because some corporations
often ignored these regulations and because during World War I (1914-1918) many
children were forced into labor so as to remediate the widespread labor
shortages that rapidly became a growing problem once many able-bodied and
skilled men joined or were drafted into the war; as such, many children were
forced into working long hours in dangerous conditions as necessities like
guns, ammo, food, and other supplies needed to be made, created, or built in a
fairly short amount of time in order to sufficiently arm and feed the American
troops. Moreover, even when the federal government--namely President
Wilson--attempted to pass child labor laws, these laws proved to be ineffective
and powerless. For example, in 1916, President Wilson supported the
Keating-Owen Act that would have regulated child labor,--meaning that the
measure would have prohibited the shipment of goods produced by underage
children across state lines--but soon after it was passed by Congress, the
Supreme Court struck down the measure. The court case that described the debate
over child labor restrictions was Hammer v.
Dagenhart (1918) which ruled that child labor was strictly internal and as
such were restricted to single states; thus, Congress, who used the interstate
commerce clause of the Constitution as justification for their restrictions,
became powerless in providing protections to children in industries (G). In
addition, in regards to the horrendous working conditions in the factories and
other industries, many factories were unsafe and unhealthy and were susceptible
to frequent and severe industrial accidents--especially for children who were
often curious and poorly educated and, as such, did not completely know how the
machines operated. In fact, even when workers--children and adults alike--would
get injured on the job, compensation to the victims, either from the
corporation themselves or the government, was usually limited until many states
throughout the nation began passing workmen's compensation laws in the early
twentieth century, but even these laws were rarely enforced and utilized. This
lack of education on the behalf of children which hindered their ability to
work at full capacity and at full speed was acknowledged by Jane Addams in The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909)
in which she argued that the public was so fascinated and focused on the wonders
of machinery that they often ignored the conditions for and the treatment of
children in these factories and that recreation was needed in order to protect
the spirit of youth (C). In publishing her novel, Addams' argument became a
prelude to the increasingly important role of education in the lives of
American youth that began after World War I and the Progressive Era (1890-1920).
As a matter of fact, high school attendance throughout the nation more than
doubled during the 1920s and enrollment in colleges and universities increased
threefold between 1900 and 1930 (but most significantly after World War I).
Furthermore, as a result of the growing demand for workers with specialized
training, especially during World War I, attendance in trade and vocational
schools increased; similarly, public schools, to combat this severe lack of specialized
workers, began to offer classes centered on modern technical skills like
engineering, management, and economics.
Another limitation of the efforts by the federal
government and the Progressive Era reformers to provide social cohesion was
that both failed to effectively support African American civil rights. During the
late nineteenth century, a large portion of the African American community
embraced the ideas of Booker T. Washington who outlined his philosophy in the Atlanta
Compromise (1895). One of these ideas proposed that African Americans strive
for immediate self-improvement through specialized, preferably industrial,
education rather than widespread, radical social change; another was the belief
that African Americans, in order to win the respect of the white population, should
adopt the habits of thrift and personal cleanliness and adopt the standards of
the white middle class. However, by the twentieth century, a new philosophy emerged
that challenged the beliefs of Booker T. Washington and the status quo of race
relations. The primary advocate of this new philosophy was W.E.B. Du Bois. In
fact, in his novel, The Souls of the
Black Folk (1903), Du Bois openly attacked the philosophy of Washington by
accusing him (Washington) of encouraging--rather than discouraging--white
efforts to impose segregation and of limiting--rather than aiding--the
aspirations of the African (or black) race. In further contrast to Washington
who argued that African Americans should be content with improving themselves
first and foremost, Du Bois argued that African Americans, holistically, should
accept nothing less than a full university education, should aspire to join the
professional ranks, and should fight for their civil liberties. To galvanize and
rally support for his philosophy, Du Bois and his supporters met at Niagara
Falls in Canada in 1905 and launched the Niagara Movement; four years later, at
a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, the Niagara Movement merged with
sympathetic white progressives to form the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) of which Du Bois became its director of publicity and
research and which led the drive for equal and civil rights by utilizing
lawsuits in the federal courts. Within a decade, the NAACP had won some
important victories in the Supreme Court; some of these successful court cases
included Guinn v. United States (1915)--which
definitively ruled that the grandfather clause (a statute that denied the right
to vote to any citizen whose ancestors had not been enfranchised in 1860) in an
Oklahoma law was unconstitutional--and Buchanan
v. Worley (1917)--which struck down a law in Louisville, Kentucky that had
once required residential segregation. However, other than these few, local and
state victories, the NAACP and W.E.B. Du Bois were not always successful in
promoting civil rights for African Americans. As a matter of fact, following
World War I, despite the active participation of numerous African Americans in
the war, many were still restricted from even the most basic of civil rights;
by choosing to loyally fight for their country, many African Americans were
hoping to convince the American public that they were deserving of equal and
civil rights, but upon returning home, they found that their position in the
white-dominated society remained, for the most part, more or less the same as when
they had first left it. This feeling of utter and complete disbelief was captured
by W.E.B. Du Bois in his May 1919 publication of The Crisis which argued that African Americans had done everything
they could to persuade the American public to extend equal and civil rights to
them, but only returned to a "shameful land" that still "represent[ed]
and gloat[ed] in lynching, disenfranchisement, caste, brutality, and devilish
insult" (I).
Ultimately, the federal government and the progressive
era reformers were successful in creating restrictions and limitations on
corporations and in promoting reforms on all levels of the government; however,
their efforts were hindered by the deficiency of effective child protection
laws and their failure to acknowledge African Americans' calls for equal and
civil rights.
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