1. Topic: Evaluating the Progressive Movement: National, State and Local Reforms

2. Background of Progressivism
Reaction to the excesses of Industrialization and Urbanization
Populist roots
Improve society
Fix Capitalism
Promote democratic participation
Women’s suffrage
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
Methods:
Government power to reform and regulate
Rational, scientific methods
Education
Media (Muckrakers)
NOT Socialism!!!

3. Progressives confront the problem
“There is hardly an office from US senator down to Alderman to which a business man has not been elected; yet politics remains corrupt…the businessman has failed in government as he has in citizenship. Why? Because politics is business. That’s what’s the matter with everything!”.
Lincoln Steffens Shame of the Cities (1904)

4. The “Muckrakers” Reporters, writers, social commentators
Corrupt Politics
Steffens Shame of the Cities
Criticizing Trusts
Ida Tarbell
Ray Stannard Baker
Dreiser The Financier and The Titan
Slums
Riis How the Other Half Lives
Lewis Hine

5. Riis and Hine

6. Reforming Politics
Leading Progressive reformers: Robert La Follette (Wisconsin), Hiram Johnson (California)
State and local reforms goal: increased popular participation
National Political Reforms
Muller v. Oregon
Primary System
16th Amendment (1913)
17th Amendment (1913)
18th Amendment (1919)
19th Amendment (1920)
Local and State
Political Reforms
Initiative
Referendum
Recall

7. 3…2…1 3: Choose and describe 3 of the best reform ideas
2 Identify 2 Muckrakers and their relation to the movement
1. Look back to the “do now”. What do you think of that statement now?