1. Strike (labor related) Monopolies Trustbusters
Warm up: Definitions
Unions
Strike (labor related)
Monopolies
Trustbusters

2. 9-5 The Progressive Era

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The Gilded Age and the Progressive Movement
LESSON 5
Big Idea
From the late 1800s through the early 1900s, the Progressive movement addressed problems in American society.
Main Ideas
Progressives pushed for reforms to improve living conditions.
Progressive reforms expanded the voting power of citizens.
Reformers attempted to improve conditions for child laborers.
Unions and reformers took steps to improve safety in the workplace and to limit working hours.
Women fight for temperance and the right to vote
African American reformers challenged discrimination and called for equality.
Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive reforms tried to balance the interests of business, consumers, and laborers.
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4. Background: Life in the Cities
No clean water
Sewage systems
Tenements
Ventilation & fire codes
Tuberculosis & disease
Long work days
Unsafe work conditions
Child Labor

5. Target of Progressivism
Reaction to “extremes” of modern life
Urbanization (living conditions)
Labor conflicts (strikes, working conditions)
Immigration
Environmental issues
Social rights issues and problems

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Progressives Push for Reforms
Main Idea 1
Progressives pushed for reforms to improve living conditions.
Reformers
Progressives were reformers who worked to solve problems caused by rapid industrial and urban growth.
Eliminate causes of crime, disease, and poverty
Ease overcrowding in cities
Advocate for better education
Promote better working conditions and less child labor
Fight corruption in business and government
Muckrakers were journalists who wrote about child labor, racial discrimination, slum housing, and corruption in business.
Influenced voters, causing them to pressure government officials
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Expansion of Voting Power
Main Idea 2
Progressive reforms expanded the voting power of citizens.
Progressives worked to reduce the power of the political machines by:
Ending corrupt ballot practices
Adopting the secret ballot
Adopting the direct primary, which allowed voters to choose party candidates rather than having it done by party bosses
The Seventeenth Amendment allowed Americans to vote directly for U.S. senators.
continued…
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Improving Conditions for Children
Main Idea 3
Reformers attempted to improve conditions for child laborers.
Marie Van Vorst focused attention on the problem of child labor.
Many children worked in industry—in more than 1.75 million children age 15 or younger.
Children as young as seven years old provided cheap labor for manufacturers but brought home only small amounts of money to their families.
Reformers wanted labor laws to protect women and children.
continued…
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Safety and Working Conditions
Main Idea 4
Unions and reformers took steps to improve safety in the workplace and to limit working hours.
Workplace accidents were coming in 1800s and early 1900s.
Some 35,000 Americans were killed industrial accidents in 1900.
About 500,000 suffered injuries in 1900.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire that killed 146 workers, mostly women and girls, led to laws to improve factory safety.
Reformers fought for workers’ compensation laws, which guaranteed a portion of lost wages to workers injured on the job.
In 1902 Maryland became the first state to pass a workers’ compensation law.
continued…
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Main Idea 5: Women fight for temperance and the right to vote
Temperance
Women reformers took up the cause of temperance: avoidance of alcohol consumption.
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union campaigned to restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Radical temperance fighter Carry Nation stormed saloons and smashed bottles with an axe in the 1890s.
Temperance efforts led to the Eighteenth Amendment (1919), banning the production, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
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Women’s Suffrage
Women reformers fought for suffrage, or the right to vote.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1890).
Alice Paul founded the more radical National Woman’s Party (1913).
Used parades and public demonstrations, picketing, and hunger strikes to spread their message
Suffragists won the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment (1919).
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African Americans Challenge Discrimination
Main Idea 6
African American reformers challenged discrimination and called for equality.
Booker T. Washington encouraged African Americans to improve their educational and economic well-being.
Ida B. Wells spoke out against discrimination and drew attention to the lynching of African Americans.
W. E. B. Du Bois attacked discrimination and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They called for economic and educational equality for African Americans.
The National Urban League, founded in 1911, helped African Americans moving from the South to find jobs and housing.
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Roosevelt’s Progressive Reforms
Main Idea 7
Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive reforms tried to balance the interests of business, consumers, and laborers.
Theodore Roosevelt called his reform policy the Square Deal.
Used his policy to help settle the 1902 coal miners’ strike
Threatened to take over the mines unless managers agreed to arbitration, a formal process for settling disputes, with the strikers
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Regulating Big Business
Influenced by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Roosevelt urged Congress to enact meat inspection laws.
Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
Prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transport of mislabeled or contaminated food and drugs
Roosevelt persuaded Congress to regulate railroad shipping rates.
Was the first president to successfully use the 1890 Sherman Trust Act to break up a monopoly (known as trustbusting or trust busters)
The public largely supported this expansion of federal regulatory powers.
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15. Exit Ticket:
What did the Progressive Era accomplish?