US History/Contents/Progressive Era
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[edit] Progressivism
Industrialization led to the rise of big businesses at the expense of the worker. Factory laborers faced long hours, low wages, and unsanitary conditions. The large corporations protected themselves by allying with political parties. The parties, in turn, were controlled by party leaders, rather than by the members.
[edit] Local Reform
At the urban level, Progressivism mainly affected municipal government. The system whereby the city is governed by a powerful mayor and a council was replaced by the council-manager or the commission system. Under the council-manager system, the council would pass laws, while the manager would do no more than ensure their execution. The manager was essentially a weak mayor. Under the commission system, the executive would be composed of people who each controlled one area of government. The commission was essentially a multi-member, rather than single-member, executive.
At the state level, several electoral reforms were made. Firstly, the secret ballot was introduced. Prior to the secret ballot, the ballots were colored papers printed by the political parties. Due to the lack of secrecy, bribing or blackmailing voters became common. It was to prevent businessmen or politicians from thus coercing voters that the secret ballot was introduced.
In addition, Progressives sought to combat the power of party leaders over which candidates would be nominated. The direct primary was instituted, under which the voters cast ballots to nominate candidates. Before the primary was introduced, the party leaders or party faithful were the only ones allowed to nominate candidates.
[edit] Labor Reforms
Progressive movement also attempted to give more power over legislation to the general populace. Three practices - the referendum, the initiative, and the recall - were created. The referendum allowed the voters to vote on a bill at an election before it took force as law. The initiative permitted the voters to petition and force the legislature to vote on a certain bill. Finally, the recall permitted voters to remove elected officials from office in the middle of the term.
Reforms relating to labor were also made. Several states abolished the practice of child labor. States also regulated woman labor by setting maximum work hours, especially when an accident at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory resulted in the deaths of more than 100 girls. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of regulated work hours for women in Muller v. Oregon. Finally, some minimum wage provisions were introduced (for men and women.)
[edit] President Theodore Roosevelt
At the national level, Progressivism centered on defeating the power of large businesses. President Theodore Roosevelt, who succeeded to the Presidency when President McKinley was assassinated in 1901, helped the Progressive movement greatly.
In early 1902, anthracite (coal) miners struck, demanding that the mine owners correct abuses of the miners. The miners complained that they had not received a pay raise in over two decades. Furthermore, miners' payments came in the form of scrip. Scrips were essentially coupons for goods from company stores. These stores usually charged unfair prices.
The leader of the mine owners, George F. Baer, suggested that miners had committed an error by failing to trust the mine owners. He declared that the mine owners were good, Christian men who could be trusted more than union leaders.
The owners and the miners refused to negotiate with each other. As autumn approached, many feared that the coal strike would cripple the economy. President Roosevelt intervened by asking the owners and miners to submit to arbitration. The miners accepted, but the owners refused Roosevelt's suggestion. Roosevelt then threatened to use the Army to take over the mines. The owners finally acquiesced; the strike was settled in 1903.
Roosevelt continued his Progressive actions when he revived the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Act sought to prevent companies from combining into trusts and gaining monopolies. A trust is formed when many companies loosely join together under a common board of directors to gain total control of an entire market so that prices can be raised without the threat of competitors. This total control of a market and subsequent price raising is a monopoly. However, until Roosevelt's administration, the Act was rarely enforced. Roosevelt also enforced the Hepburn Act, which allowed the Interstate Commmerce Commission to regulate railroads. The railroads had allied themselves with large businesses, charging higher rates to those business' competitors. Thus, the large businesses would gain even more power. The Hepburn Act prevented railroads from granting reduced rates to businesses. Roosevelt also championed the cause of conservation. He set aside large amounts of land as part of the national park system.
[edit] Conflicts with other Imperialist Nations
Imperialism was yet a common theme in the relations between nations in this era. It should be noted that although the US annexed Hawaii, Japan also had interests in the island and an aggressive foreign policy; Japan had already seized Taiwan from China in 1885 and would annex Korea in 1905. Imperial Germany was another aggressive power. The U.S. and Germany had conflicts over who would control Samoa, in the Pacific, as well as nearly faced a naval war with Germany in 1902 over German plans to seize the customs revenues of Venezuela.
However, under the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States became more open in asserting international power. In 1905, Russia and Japan went to war over control of Korea and China. The Japanese won naval victories over two Russian fleets, in the Battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima. President Roosevelt offered to negotiate peace between the two nations, and in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a peace treaty was signed.
To demonstrate the ability of the United States to project power around the world (unlike Russia), Roosevelt ordered a fleet of U.S. men-o'war to sail around the world. The fleet left the east coast of the U.S. in 1908 and returned in 1909, visting ports in Europe, Australia, and Japan.
[edit] President William Howard Taft
Roosevelt, following the tradition upheld by every reelected president before him, decided not to run for reelection for a third term in 1908. Republicans nominated William Howard Taft as their candidate for the 1908 election, and he easily defeated the Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, supporting the continuation of Roosevelt's progressive programs. Taft was somewhat more cautious and quiet than Roosevelt, and therefore, had less public attention.
Although Taft was less of an attention grabber than Roosevelt, he went far beyond what Roosevelt ever did. Taft used the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law passed in 1890 that made trusts and monopolies illegal, and they had to sue many large and economically damaging corporations. For comparison, Taft won more antitrust lawsuits in four years than Roosevelt won in seven.
Taft also pushed for the passing of the Sixteenth Amendment, which gave the federal government the right to tax citizens' incomes. The purpose of the amendment was to supply the government with cash to replace the revenue generated from tariffs, which progressives hoped that Taft would lower. Taft failed in getting a lower tariff, and in addition, he failed to fight for conservation and environmentalism, and actually weakened some conservation policies to favor business. When Roosevelt came back from an expedition to Africa in 1910, he was disappointed in Taft, and vigorously campaigned for progressive republicans in the congressional elections of 1910.
Because of Roosevelt's enormous popularity, he ran for reelection to a third term in 1912, but he failed to win the nomination for the Republican Party because Taft had connections to influential people in the party. Roosevelt and his supporters broke off from the Republicans and formed the Progressive Party, which later came to be known as the Bull Moose party after Roosevelt declared that he felt "as strong as a bull moose!" The split in the party came to hurt the two candidates, and Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson gathered a 42 percent plurality of the popular votes and 435 out of 531 electoral votes.
[edit] On the Supreme Court
Taft would later become a member of the Supreme Court, making him the only former President to do so. In 1921, when Chief Justice Edward Douglass White died, President Warren G. Harding nominated Taft to take his place, thereby fulfilling Taft's lifelong ambition to become Chief Justice of the United States. Very little opposition existed to the nomination, and the Senate approved him 60-4 in a secret session, but the roll call of the vote has never been made public. He readily took up the position, serving until 1930. As such, he became the only President to serve as Chief Justice, and thus is also the only former President to swear in subsequent Presidents, giving the oath of office to both Calvin Coolidge (in 1925) and Herbert Hoover (in 1929). He remains the only person to have led both the Executive and Judicial branches of the United States government. He considered his time as Chief Justice to be the highest point of his career: he allegedly once remarked, "I don't remember that I ever was President."
[edit] President Woodrow Wilson
Although Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat, he still pushed for progressive reforms. One of the first successes of his administration was the lowering of tariffs, which he accomplished in 1913. Wilson believed that increased foreign competition would spur U.S. based manufacturers to lower prices and improve their goods. That same year, Wilson passed the Federal Reserve Act, which created twelve regional banks that would be run by a central board in the capitol. This system gave the government more control over banking activities. A few years later he wrote: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. -Woodrow Wilson"
Wilson also pushed for governmental control over business. In 1914, a Democratic-controlled Congress established the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate companies that participated in suspected unfair and illegal trade practices. Wilson also supported the Clayton Antitrust Act, which joined the Sherman Antitrust Act as one the government's tools to fight trusts the same year.
By the end of Wilson's First term, progressives had won many victories. The entire movement lost steam, though, as Americans became much more interested in international affairs, especially the war that had broken out in Europe in 1914.
[edit] The Supreme Court and Labor
Upset workers had succeeded in lobbying Congress to pass legislation that improved work conditions. However, the Supreme Court of the United States somewhat limited the range of these acts. In Holden v. Hardy (1896), the Supreme Court ruled that miners' hours must be short because long hours made the job too dangerous. However, in Lochner v. New York laws ruled that bakery workers did not have a job dangerous enough to put restrictions on the free sale of labor. Putting aside this decision, in 1908, the decision in Muller v. Oregon said that women's health must be protected "to preserve the strength and vigor of the race." This did, clearly, protect women's health, but it also locked them into menial jobs.
