Progressive Era

Regardless of exactly when it began or ended, a point that scholars have disagreed upon, the Progressive Era was a time of major change in the United States. Some suggest that it began as early as 1890 and that it extended into the 1930s with the election of President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal program, which established social welfare in the United States. Progressivism was propelled by middle- and upper class reformers with a strong sense of social justice, and progressive changes directly impacted politics, economics, education, society, medicine, and the arts. The Progressive movement sought both social and political reform in the United States.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Americans were generally enjoying an improved quality of life. The US population was less concentrated and more spread out throughout the country. Food was both widely available and more affordable, and most Americans had access to health care. To preserve and further these improvements, reformers sought to root out perceived social ills, especially political corruption.

Background

The early years of the Progressive Era saw major advances in education and in the treatment of children. Prior to Progressive reforms, many children worked in mines, mills, and factories for excessively long hours, often in dangerous and unhealthy conditions. Researchers began to focus on child development and published studies that proved the benefits of protecting children, providing them with fresh air and healthy food, and allowing them time to play and develop their creative selves. Reformers such as Alzina Parsons Stevens and Alice Woodbridge gathered evidence that pointed toward the negative impact of children being exposed to toxic substances in factories and that this impact could, in fact, affect families for generations.

In 1886, thanks to pressure from Progressives such as attorney Elbridge T. Gerry, the head of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and pediatrician Abraham Jacobi, head of the New York State Medical Society, New York State passed the first US laws designed to protect child workers and regulate child labor. By 1918, every state had passed compulsory education laws, and many had prohibited child labor. The Children’s Bureau was established in 1912 under the leadership of Julia Lathrop, the first American woman to head a federal agency. Although efforts to pass a Child Labor Amendment failed, the national government outlawed child labor in 1938 with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Progressives were also responsible for initiating environmental awareness in the United States. President Teddy Roosevelt was an enthusiastic conservationist, and he led the movement to establish the United States Forestry Service in 1905. Roosevelt also accelerated the process of breaking up large trusts to increase fair competition in business. When he failed to get the Republican nomination in 1912, he headed up the Progressive Party (Bull Moose) ticket, but both he and William Howard Taft, the Republican nominee, lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

The United States entered World War I in 1917, and the war was over by the following year. That same year, a devastating influenza pandemic spread around the globe, killing 40 million people, including 675,000 Americans. Most influenza victims were adults in their prime, and their loss added to the devastation caused by the war. Despite the outbreak, major gains were being made in medicine. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine was established in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1889, and the Mayo Clinic was founded in 1919 in Rochester, Minnesota. Both institutions helped to set the standards for medical care, treatment, and research.

Overview

Major political reforms took place during the Progressive Era, including ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which in 1913 provided for direct election of senators for the first time. The Constitution had originally placed that responsibility with the House of Representatives. Women won the right to vote with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. State and local governments instituted checks on political corruption with such measures as recalls and referendums. New waves of immigration swelled the population of the United States, heightening the power of the political machines that ran local and state politics in many areas. Progressives often targeted these machines and their bosses. Government jobs that had traditionally been rewards for demonstrating party loyalty were abolished as the idea of trained public administrators and civil servants continued to gain momentum.

As more women attended college and sought careers, female roles also evolved. College-educated women often turned their attention to social work, but the Progressive Era also gave birth to a number of prominent female evangelists such as Alma Bridwell White and Mary Tate who set up schools and established rescue homes. Women also continued to join community, private, and religious clubs in increasing numbers, dedicating themselves to such causes such as temperance and eradicating poverty. Women’s temperance groups were a major force behind ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, which established Prohibition in 1920. With more working mothers, the need for safe and affordable daycare was urgent, and Progressives such as Florence Kelley, Mary Ridgeway, and Laura Spelman Rockefeller led the daycare movement.

After the Civil War, the pace of the Industrial Revolution had accelerated in the United States, and the populations of cities swelled as Americans left farms and small towns to work in mills, plants, and factories. By the end of the 1890s, half of all Americans lived in urban areas. In 1861, the national government had expanded education by setting up land-grant universities. By 1913, most Americans received at least an eighth-grade education. Thus, education became a major means of providing a talent pool for heightened industrialization.

Despite Progressive reforms, poverty was still widespread in large cities, particularly among the immigrant population. A group of middle-and upper-class college-educated women launched the settlement house movement to teach families how to improve life for themselves and their families. The best known of these houses was Hull House in Chicago, where Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, and their friends taught classes in everything from child care to bookbinding. Young children attended kindergarten at Hull House, and older children and teenagers engaged in afterschool activities. Adults were encouraged to take night classes, where they learned English, studied politics, and acquired skills that helped them to find better jobs and housing. In New York, Lillian Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement and advocated for proper training for nurses. Progressives within the settlement house movement lobbied for such reforms as reducing the infant mortality rate, immunizing infants and children against diseases, improving literacy, and providing access to proper sanitation. They were also active in the women’s rights and labor movements, and many of them were pacifists.

Journalists and writers known as "muckrakers" accepted responsibility for educating the public about the need for progressive reforms. Such reformers included photojournalist Jacob Riis,who described tenement slums in How the Other Half Lives (1890), and Lincoln Steffens, an ardent political reformer and author of The Shame of the Cities (1904). In The Jungle (1906), Upton Sinclair described the horrors of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, setting the stage for the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, two major steps in food safety reform.

Bibliography

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Durst, Anne. "Of Women, by Women, and for Women: The Day Nursery Movement in the Progressive-Era United States." Journal of Social History, vol. 39, no. 1, 2005, pp. 141–59.

Gould, Lewis L. America in the Progressive Era. Routledge, 2016.

Inscoe, John C., and Jamil S. Zainaldin. "Progressive Era." New Georgia Encyclopedia, 14 Apr. 2021, www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/progressive-era/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2024.

Marten, James, editor. Children and Youth During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. New York UP, 2014.

Mattson, Kevin. "Doing Democracy: An Exploration of Progressive-Era Reform and Its Legacy for American Politics." National Civic Review, vol. 87, no. 4, 1998, pp. 338–47.

Nackenoff, Carol, and Julie Novkov, editors. Statebuilding from the Outside In: Between Reconstruction and the New Deal. U of Pennsylvania P, 2014.

Perera, Frederica. "Science as an Early Driver of Policy: Child Labor Reform in the Early Progressive Era, 1870–1900." American Journal of Public Health, vol. 104, no. 10, 2014, pp. 1862–71.

Pope-Levison, Priscilla. Building the Old Time Religion: Women Evangelists in the Progressive Era. New York UP, 2014.

Swinth, Kirsten. "The Square Deal: Theodore Roosevelt and the Themes of Progressive Reform." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/square-deal-theodore-roosevelt-and-themes-progressive-reform. Accessed 26 Aug. 2024.