Progressives focused on three areas of reform: -easing the suffering of the urban poor -improving unfair and dangerous working conditions - reforming government at the national, state, and local levels

 Urban white native-born middle class, esp. white-collar professionals like engineers.  Intellectuals, journalists, educators.  Working class reformers, often from immigrant backgrounds.

 Investigative journalists played a crucial role in exposing political corruption and corporate wrongdoing.  Teddy Roosevelt disparagingly called these journalists “muckrakers,” but the name stuck as a badge of honor.

 Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives (1890) – the book showed the hard life immigrants experienced in the tenement housing in New York City.

 In 1890 Jacob Riis ( ) published “How the Other Half Lives,” including his photograph of children sleeping on the streets of New York. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.

 Upton Sinclair The Jungle (1906). Wanted to show the horrific working conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry, but was read because of the graphic description of terribly unsanitary food production.

 Roosevelt ordered Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson to investigate packing house conditions, and his report of gruesome practices shocked Congress into action. The Meat Inspection Act (1906)required federal government inspection of meat shipped across state lines. The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) outlawed food and drugs containing harmful ingredients, and required that containers carry ingredient labels.

 Lincoln Steffens The Shame of the Cities Exposed corruption of boss politics.

 Ida M. Tarbell History of the Standard Oil Company Corporate ruthlessness of America’s most powerful monopoly.

 Jane Addams – founded settlement houses to help the immigrants and the poor.

Thomas Nast, Artist of 'Harper's Weekly,'" Harper's Weekly, August 26, 1871,p. 804 Nast's drawings were instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed, the powerful Tammany Hall leader. Boss Tweed Tammany Hall

 Progressive reforms began in the cities, with the various campaigns to eliminate the corruption of machine politics.  In a number of cities in the 1890s, bosses were replaced with city managers or other forms of “expert” government.  Regulation of urban utilities (water, gas, electricity). Some even advocated public ownership.  However, municipal reforms were limited. Shift towards the state and federal level.

 Progressives wanted fairer elections and to make politicians more accountable to voters.  Proposed a direct primary, or an election in which voters choose candidates to run in a general election, which most states adopted.  Backed the Seventeenth Amendment, which gave voters, not state legislatures, the power to elect their U.S. senators.  Some measures Progressives fought for include Direct primary: voters select a party’s candidate for public office 17th Amendment: voters elect their senators directly secret ballot: people vote privately without fear of coercion initiative: allows citizens to propose new laws referendum: allows citizens to vote on a proposed or existing law recall: allows voters to remove an elected official from office

Prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States.

Social  Some believed women were too frail to handle the turmoil of polling places on Election Day.  Some believed voting would interfere with a woman’s duties at home or destroy families.  Some claimed that women did not have the education or experience to be competent voters.  Others believed that most women did not want to vote, and that it was unfair for suffragists to force the vote on unwilling women. Economic  The liquor industry feared that giving the women the vote would lead to Prohibition.  As women became active in other reform movements, such as food and drug safety and child labor, business owners feared women would vote for regulations that would drive up costs. Religious  Churches and clergy members preached that marriage was a sacred bond and the entire family was represented by the husband’s vote.