Progressive Action

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The first two decades of the 20th century realized dramatic reforms that reshaped American politics and redefined the role that government played in the economy. Presidential power tilted against the corporate "trusts." Congress passed sweeping new regulations of finance and industry. The cities and states adopted health and safety regulations, as well as direct democracy, restrictions on corporate cash in politics, and other good government measures. In this short time, often referred to as the Progressive Era, 4 amendments were added to the federal constitution, including the graduated income tax and women's right to vote.

Historians have stressed different explanations for why this burst of progressive action took place during these years. Past accounts often stressed a shift in the nature of the presidency. The assassination of McKinley in September of 1901 landed his young vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, in the White House.

Roosevelt was a man of energy and activity. With little patience for laissez-faire dogmas, he believed in government action for the public good. He supported restrictions on corporate money in politics. Most famously, his administration initiated a series of spectacular anti-trust cases against Standard Oil and other corporations.

Historians have also emphasized the urban and middle-class nature of Progressive Era reform. This was indeed a time of the expansion of the middle class, with the new economy employing new white-collar professionals as managers, accountants, engineers, and salespersons. This era also witnessed the rise of the city. Between 1870 and 1910, the population of New York had a five-fold increase nearly reaching five million inhabitants, while Chicago grew even faster as it rose to a city of two million.

Muckraking journalists provided a middle-class readership with exposés of immigrant squalor and of corrupt urban political machines. Urban coalitions pushed for municipal reforms to break the corporate grip over streetcars and city hall. In an increasingly urban industrial society, women's clubs, settlement houses, and consumer leagues pressed for food and drug safety, sanitation measures, child labor laws, and other protections for women and children.

Progressive Reformers: Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities, 1904, exposed the link between big businesses and corrupt politicians. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, a 1906 novel which unveiled the unsanitary practices in the meatpacking industry. Jacob Riis in How the Other Half Lives, 1890, photographed the poor conditions of the cities and slums in urban areas. Ida M. Tarbell wrote The Rise of Standard Oil Company, 1904, which exposed the corrupt practices of the Standard Oil Monopoly. Lewis Hine created the photographic display, Child Labor: Girls in Factory, 1908, in which he showed the dangerous conditions children worked in factories. Nellie Bly revealed mental patient abuse at Bellevue Mental Hospital, New York in her newspaper series Ten Days in the Mad House, 1887.
Six images of progressive reformers.

Another perspective stresses the role of radicalism and socialism as engines of Progressive reform. The decade after 1905 was the pinnacle of anti-capitalist and socialist politics in America. The Socialist Party tapped into support from two main constituencies: European immigrants in the big cities, and farmers and laborers in Kansas, Oklahoma, and other former Populist strongholds. In 1912, socialists held some 1,200 public offices in cities and states across the country. But the influence of socialism extended beyond those numbers.

Socialists in Union Square, New York, 1912
Photograph showing a march of socialists in Union Square, New York, 1912.

As the historian Alan Dawley explained: "In both the positive and negative sense, it was true to say: no socialism, no progressivism." In a positive sense, socialists often worked jointly with progressives in municipal reform campaigns, and the efforts of reform-minded socialists often reinforced progressive causes. For example, the socialist author Upton Sinclair wrote the novel The Jungle as an indictment of capitalist exploitation of the workers in the meatpacking industry, but the book also aided middle-class consumer leagues in their efforts to mandate federal food inspections and facilitated the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

At the same time, in a negative sense, progressives often viewed reform as a barrier to radicalism. Roosevelt would explain to his more conservative Republican colleagues that it was opposition to reform that increased "socialist feeling."

The 1912 presidential election provided a unique snapshot of American politics. The Republican Party had split, with incumbent William Taft representing the old guard, and with Roosevelt heading the breakaway Progressive or Bull Moose Party. This allowed Woodrow Wilson, a reform Democrat, to gain a plurality. Eugene Debs received nearly a million votes as the Socialist candidate. Taft, as the only conservative candidate in this four-way race, received merely 23 percent of the vote. Reform was on the national agenda, and this soon produced major changes in the relationship between the economy and the federal government.

The 4 Way Presidential Election of 1912
Pie chart of the 1912 presidential election showing overwhelming support for President Wilson. All 4 candidates: Taft, Roosevelt, Wilson and Debs images shown.

Congress gave the Federal Reserve System (1913) authority to regulate banking and control the currency. The Federal Trade Commission (1914) was empowered to protect consumers and combat anti-competitive practices of corporations. Most importantly, the 16th Amendment (1913) opened the way for the graduated federal income tax. Originally, this was a tax to be placed only on upper incomes. Its purpose was to finance a more active federal government, narrow the gap between rich and poor, and balance private wealth with the public good.

Two other constitutional amendments realized democratic political reforms. The 17th Amendment (1913) ended the old system of choosing US senators in the smoke-filled chambers of state legislatures and established the direct election of senators by popular vote. The other reform would wait until after the First World War. This would be more profound in terms of democracy, however, as women finally won voting rights with the 19th Amendment (1920).

States that Ratified the FOur Progressive Amendments
Four images showing which 36 states first passed the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Amendments.

Significantly, the strongest electoral support for these economic and political reforms did not come from the urban Northeast. Rather it came from the former Populist territory of the midwestern, western, and southern districts. At least in part, as recent scholarship has emphasized, Progressive Era reforms can be understood as the aftershocks of Populism.

It had been the farmer and labor movements of the previous generation that first placed the progressive income tax, corporate and financial regulation, and the direct election of senators on the national political agenda. Populist support for women's voting rights in the 1890s also made former Populist strongholds bases of support for women's suffrage in the 1910s.

Curbside farmers' market in Dubuque, Iowa, ca 1900, Fort Hancock, Texas public school, ca 1900
Two images of a farmers market and a public school group photo.

The role of the South in this process is often misunderstood. Most white Southerners defended the hierarchical system of white supremacy, and in that context they have usually been seen as conservatives. But what is often overlooked is the extent to which white Southerners also accepted the reform agenda of the Progressive Era. They understood, for example, that the federal income tax would benefit the cash-poor South more than any other region.

At the same time, southern congressmen demanded assurances that nothing in Progressive Era reform would disturb southern race relations. One such assurance came with the election of Woodrow Wilson, the first Southerner elected to the White House since before the Civil War. In one of its first acts, the Wilson Administration segregated the Post Office Department and other government offices in Washington.

In August of 1914, European powers launched what became the First World War. It would be nearly three years before the United States would take part. Nonetheless, the outbreak of war in Europe shifted the focus of American political attention, and splintered progressive coalitions. At the turn of the century, the Spanish-American War and the US war in the Philippines had divided reformers between imperialist and anti-imperialist camps. The First World War similarly divided Progressives and proved far more destructive to their cause.

 

However, by the time the war came, Progressive Era reform had already accomplished a great deal. Working class children attended school rather than toiling in mines and mills. Consumers purchased meat and medicines with less fear of contaminants or poison. Victims of industrial accidents received protections under workers' compensation laws. Farmers had better access to credit and markets. Reform had made life in industrializing America at least a small degree less precarious and insecure. While the war interrupted Progressive Era reform, the movement's legacy would be carried deep into the 20th century.