The Ram's Horn, 4 April 1896 PROGRESSIVISM Who? 1.Rising middle class of urban professionals 2.Agrarians 3.Social reformers What? 1.Good government 2.End corrupt politics 3.Improve rural life 4.Curtail the influence of large corporations 5."Purify" society 6.Reform: prison, education, welfare, suffrage How? 1.Efficient bureaucracy 2.Public education

Texas progressivism differed from previous reform movements 1.Unlike Radical Reconstruction it was an indigenous movement. 2.Unlike Populism, it operated within the Democrat party. 3.In era where suffrage was being restricted. All progressives considered recent immigrants and uneducated Americans as a threat to the middle class. "Consequently, they saw no clash between social control and social reform."

1.Agreed with national progressives in the need for social control 2.Differed from national progressives in aiming for a democratic society for whites only 3.Texas progressives were tied to older agrarian solutions "Within these self-imposed limitations, Texas progressivism succeeded" "Texas progressivism carried an inherent anti- eastern bias...." Southern and Texas Progressivism

Joseph D. Sayers ( ) S.W.T. Lanham ( )

In 1902, Texas voters approved of a poll tax that disenfranchised many poor whites and blacks and further limited the possible third- party challenges to Democratic hegemony. The Texas legislature passed many Jim Crow laws, mandating, for example, segregated railroad facilities. Soon Texas, like many southern states, had erected an elaborate legal code that racially segregated public and private facilities. p. 240.

General Alexander W. Terrell The 1905 Terrell Election Law of election reform did the following: 1.Establish a system of primary elections 2.Official secret ballot 3.Deadlines for the payment of the poll tax 4.Primary election on the fourth Saturday in July 5.Filed statements of campaign expenses The 1905 Terrell Election Law, proposed by senior statesman Alexander W. Terrell, attempted to eliminate election fraud and bring some uniformity into the process of selecting candidates by establishing a modern system of primary elections. pp

Texas progressive goals 1.Electoral reforms 2.Reforms to benefit labor unions 3.Tax reforms 4.Regulation of insurance and banking 5.Antitrust actions Impact of electoral reforms: 1.Disenfranchised most black voters 2.Disenfranchised many poor whites (Historians have estimated that only between 15,000 and 40,000 of 160,000 black males over the age of twenty-one in Texas managed to retain the right to vote in the 1920s.) "Progressives were confident that eliminating such 'unsavory' elements from politics would go far to clean up he system.“ (p. 283.)

Turnout in Presidential Elections: Texas, the South, and the Nation, SOURCE: texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/.../ slide1.html Impact of electoral reforms: 1.Disenfranchised most black voters 2.Disenfranchised many poor whites (Historians have estimated that only between 15,000 and 40,000 of 160,000 black males over the age of twenty-one in Texas managed to retain the right to vote in the 1920s.)

Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey

Governor Thomas Campbell ( )

Governor Oscar Branch Colquitt ( ) Colquitt favored local option in the matter of prohibition, ran as a conservative and aligned himself with the “wet” forces, who opposed statewide prohibition. * Colquitt sent part of the Texas National Guard to Brownsville to deter feared attacks by Mexican troops. The governor condemned President Wilson’s policies toward Mexico as weak and urged the president to intervene more directly in the Mexican Revolution. (p. 288.) * “Colquitte’s other principal irritant was that he had inherited a tax system with too low a tax base. The governor thus faced a state deficit of $1 million. Meanwhile, the new state institutions, public education, prison reform, and bureaucracies in a developing Texas demanded new revenue.” (p. 288.)

Educational reforms Progressives wanted better schools to serve their children and to attract new industry. Despite Texas's relative poverty, between 1890 and 1920 illiteracy dropped to 8.3 percent, the lowest in the South. Reformers wanted standardization in books, courses, requirements, and administration. Two types of schools Common schools: rural, administered by trustees, boundaries could change year-by-year. Most had one building, often one-room schools with a single teacher. Independent school districts: towns, school boards

Annie Webb Blanton was the first woman president of the Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA) and the first woman to hold statewide office, superintendent of public instruction ( ), organized the “Better Schools Campaign,” which in 1920 helped secure the passage of a constitutional amendment permitting districts to raise school taxes above the original constitutional restrictions. (p. 290) Annie Webb Blanton

THE IMPACT OF PROGRESSIVISM ON EDUCATION Possibly, the major impact of progressivism on education was not an improved teaching staff, but rather a change in philosophy. Progressive educators believed the classroom should be an environment to stimulate individual learning that would be relevant to the child's life. "Progressive reformers maintained that schools had a responsibility for the improvement of the social order." "Progressives accepted as axiomatic the Jeffersonian proposition that mass education produced a more responsible citizenry.“ (p. 292.)

James E. Ferguson, Governor of Texas ( ).

Governor William P. Hobby ( ) Hobby advocated both woman’s suffrage and prohibition.

“The prohibition movement both gained sustenance from and nourished the women’s movement. In a period when women were considered keepers of morality and culture, prohibition furnished an issue that allowed them political participation in a reform crusade that did not violate their male-ordained societal role. Moreover, prohibition linked all reformers together. Progressives saw alcohol as a corrupter of democratic society and its sale as a moral evil.” (p. 306) PROHIBITION IN TEXAS

The presence in the antiprohibition movement of ethnic minorities, Germans and Mexicans in particular, buttressed the identification of dry forces as upholders of Anglo-Saxon democracy. (p. 306)

Governor Pat Neff ( )

THE DECLINE IN AMERICAN MORALS? The general failure of prohibition enforcement brought home to many Texas what they defined as a decline in American morals. The rapidly increasing urbanization seemed to blur what were once clear moral and community values. Migration to the city disrupted the neighborhoods of rural America and, coupled with more and better transportation facilities, broke up the extended family. Historians have cited the urban growth of the United States as creating tensions between rural and urban Americans. The anxiety emanated not only from the countryside, but also from developing southern cities filled with recent foreign immigrants. The anticity focus of rural Texans resulted from their perception of urban areas as hotbeds of disloyal foreigners, religious modernism, illegal speakeasies, organized crime, morally suspicious “New Women,” and corrupting modern music. These tensions were further abetted by the post-World War I Red Scare and reinforced by the progressive drive for social control. (p. 310)

The Ku Klux Klan The Klan professed as its goals the preservation of patriotism, the purity of women, white supremacy, and law and order. It oppsed radicals, Catholics, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, the wearing by women of short skirts, the consumption of “demon rum,” and continued foreign immigration. By 1922, the organization had 700,000 members and by 1925, possibly as many as 5 million. (p. 311)

A group of men dressed in full Klan regalia march down the street at night with torches, crosses and flags. A crowd of people line the street to watch. Source: &st=TX&s=119

Governor Miriam Ferguson ( )

Governor Dan Moody ( )