Enrollment in public secondary school went from , to , School funds and the term of public schools also grew. The " Flexner Report " of , sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation , professionalized American medicine by discarding the scores of local small medical schools and focusing national funds, resources, and prestige on larger, professionalized medical schools associated with universities. It established national standards for law schools, which led to the replacement of the old system of young men studying law privately with established lawyers by the new system of accredited law schools associated with universities.
Progressive scholars, based at the emerging research universities such as Harvard , Columbia , Johns Hopkins , Chicago , Michigan , Wisconsin and California , worked to modernize their disciplines. The heyday of the amateur expert gave way to the research professor who published in the new scholarly journals and presses.
Their explicit goal was to professionalize and make "scientific" the social sciences, especially history , [4] economics , [5] and political science. The Progressive Era was one of general prosperity after the Panic of —a severe depression—ended in The Panic of was short and mostly affected financiers. However, Campbell stresses the weak points of the economy in —, linking them to public demands for more Progressive interventions.
The Panic of was followed by a small decline in real wages and increased unemployment, with both trends continuing until World War I. Campbell emphasizes the resulting stress on public finance and the impact on the Wilson administration's policies. The weakened economy and persistent federal deficits led to changes in fiscal policy, including the imposition of federal income taxes on businesses and individuals and the creation of the Federal Reserve System. In the Gilded Age late 19th century the parties were reluctant to involve the federal government too heavily in the private sector, except in the area of railroads and tariffs.
In general, they accepted the concept of laissez-faire , a doctrine opposing government interference in the economy except to maintain law and order. This attitude started to change during the depression of the s when small business, farm, and labor movements began asking the government to intercede on their behalf.
By the start of the 20th century, a middle class had developed that was leery of both the business elite and the radical political movements of farmers and laborers in the Midwest and West. The Progressives argued the need for government regulation of business practices to ensure competition and free enterprise.
Congress enacted a law regulating railroads in the Interstate Commerce Act , and one preventing large firms from controlling a single industry in the Sherman Antitrust Act. These laws were not rigorously enforced, however, until the years between and , when Republican President Theodore Roosevelt — , Democratic President Woodrow Wilson — , and others sympathetic to the views of the Progressives came to power. Many of today's U. Muckrakers were journalists who encouraged readers to demand more regulation of business. Upton Sinclair 's The Jungle was influential and persuaded America about the supposed horrors of the Chicago Union Stock Yards , a giant complex of meat processing plants that developed in the s.
Tarbell wrote a series of articles against Standard Oil , which was perceived to be a monopoly. This affected both the government and the public reformers.
How did WWI change Progressivism?
Attacks by Tarbell and others helped pave the way for public acceptance of the breakup of the company by the Supreme Court in When Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected President with a Democratic Congress in he implemented a series of Progressive policies in economics. In , the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, and a small income tax was imposed on higher incomes. The Democrats lowered tariffs with the Underwood Tariff in , though its effects were overwhelmed by the changes in trade caused by the World War that broke out in Wilson proved especially effective in mobilizing public opinion behind tariff changes by denouncing corporate lobbyists, addressing Congress in person in highly dramatic fashion, and staging an elaborate ceremony when he signed the bill into law.
He managed to convince lawmakers on the issues of money and banking by the creation in of the Federal Reserve System , a complex business-government partnership that to this day dominates the financial world. In , Henry Ford dramatically increased the efficiency of his factories by large-scale use of the moving assembly line, with each worker doing one simple task in the production of automobiles.
Emphasizing efficiency, Ford more than doubled wages and cut hours from 9 a day to 8 , attracting the best workers and sharply reducing labor turnover and absenteeism. His employees could and did buy his cars, and by cutting prices over and over he made the Model T cheap enough for millions of people to buy in the U. Ford's profits soared and his company dominated the world's automobile industry.
Henry Ford became the world-famous prophet of high wages and high profits. Labor unions, especially the American Federation of Labor AFL , grew rapidly in the early 20th century, and had a Progressive agenda as well. After experimenting in the early 20th century with cooperation with business in the National Civic Federation , the AFL turned after to a working political alliance with the Democratic party.
The alliance was especially important in the larger industrial cities. The unions wanted restrictions on judges who intervened in labor disputes, usually on the side of the employer. They finally achieved that goal with the Norris—La Guardia Act of By the turn of the century, more and more small businesses were getting fed up with the way that they were treated compared to the bigger businesses. It seemed that the "Upper Ten" were turning a blind-eye to the smaller businesses, cutting corners where ever they could to make more profit.
The big businesses would soon find out that the smaller businesses were starting to gain ground over them, so they became unsettled as described; "Constant pressure from the public, labor organizations, small business interests, and federal and state governments forced the corporate giants to engage in a balancing act.
The big businesses would soon find out that in order to succeed they would have to band together with the smaller businesses to be successful, kind of a "Yin and Yang" effect. The influx of immigration grew steadily after , with most new arrivals being unskilled workers from eastern and southern Europe. These immigrants were able to find work in the steel mills, slaughterhouses, and construction crews of the emergent mill towns and industrial cities of the late 19th century.
The outbreak of World War I in halted most transcontinental immigration, only after did the flow of immigrants resume. Starting in the s, the labor unions aggressively promoted restrictions on immigration, especially restrictions on Chinese, Japanese and Korean immigrants. As a result, many large corporations were opposed to immigration restrictions. By the early s a consensus had been reached that the total influx of immigration had to be restricted, and a series of laws in the s accomplished that purpose.
During World War I, the Progressives strongly promoted Americanization programs, designed to modernize the recent immigrants and turn them into model American citizens, while diminishing loyalties to the old country.
- The Face Of Trespass;
- Witness Systematic Theology Volume 3;
- Labor and the Mine Wars in West Virginia and Colorado!
Wilson used a similar moralistic tone when dealing with Mexico. In , while revolutionaries took control of the government, Wilson judged them to be immoral, and refused to acknowledge the in-place government on that reason alone. In the s typically historians saw the Progressive Era as a prelude to the New Deal and dated it from when Roosevelt became president to the start of World War I in or Much less settled is the question of when the era ended.
Some historians who emphasize civil liberties decry their suppression during World War I and do not consider the war as rooted in Progressive policy. The Senate voted 82—6 in favor; the House agreed, — Some historians see the so-called "war to end all wars" as a globalized expression of the American Progressive movement, with Wilson's support for a League of Nations as its climax. The politics of the s was unfriendly toward the labor unions and liberal crusaders against business, so many if not most historians who emphasize those themes write off the decade.
Urban cosmopolitan scholars recoiled at the moralism of prohibition, the intolerance of the nativists and the KKK, and on those grounds denounced the era. Richard Hofstadter , for example, in wrote that prohibition, "was a pseudo-reform, a pinched, parochial substitute for reform" that "was carried about America by the rural-evangelical virus". Link emphasized, the Progressives did not simply roll over and play dead.
Palmer, pointing to leaders like George Norris , says, "It is worth noting that progressivism, whilst temporarily losing the political initiative, remained popular in many western states and made its presence felt in Washington during both the Harding and Coolidge presidencies. While some Progressive leaders became reactionaries, that usually happened in the s, not in the s, as exemplified by William Randolph Hearst , [] Herbert Hoover , Al Smith and Henry Ford.
Following the period rapid social change saw a worker's uprising turn to a full scale revolution in Russia in taken over by Bolsheviks along anarchist bombings of by foreigners encroached a large fear over many citizens of a possible Bolshevism revolt to overthrow values which the United States holds up to mainly capitalism. It saw persecutions of many ideals of the progressive era seeing raids, arrests, and persecutions taken place. Such as the period saw supporters such as worker unions, socialist, and others faced similar prosecutions.
Along these convicted were foreigners, African Americans, Jews, Catholics, etc. The US government was also affected both legally and internally as of January saw 6, arrests of persecutions along changes in government policies where the government in acted censorship in the media and suppressing opinion on the matter going as far to use physical assaults or legal arrests having certain civil liberties stripped.
What historians have identified as "business progressivism", with its emphasis on efficiency and typified by Henry Ford and Herbert Hoover [] reached an apogee in the s. Wik, for example, argues that Ford's "views on technology and the mechanization of rural America were generally enlightened, progressive, and often far ahead of his times. Tindall stresses the continuing importance of the Progressive movement in the South in the s involving increased democracy, efficient government, corporate regulation, social justice, and governmental public service. Historians of women and of youth emphasize the strength of the Progressive impulse in the s.
Paul Fass, speaking of youth, says "Progressivism as an angle of vision, as an optimistic approach to social problems, was very much alive. By a block of progressive Republicans in the Senate who were urging Hoover to take more vigorous action to fight the depression. Norris of Nebraska, Robert M. Cutting of New Mexico. While these western Republicans could stir up issues, they could rarely forge a majority, since they were too individualistic and did not form a unified caucus. They remain staunch isolationists deeply opposed to any involvement in Europe.
Outside the Senate, however, a strong majority of the surviving Progressives from the s had become conservative opponents of New Deal economic planning. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Progressive Era disambiguation. Economic development Broad measures Economic growth Empirical evidence Direct democracy Freedom of movement Human enhancement Idea of Progress Industrialisation Linear history Modernity Philosophical progress Philosophy of progress Progressive education in Latin America Progressive rationalism Reform movement Social organization Social progress List of countries Scientific progress Social change Sustainable design Ecological engineering Self-determination Scientific management Scientific method Sustainable development Technological change Techno-progressivism Welfare Women's suffrage.
Muckrakers and Mass media and American politics. National American Woman Suffrage Association. Theodore Roosevelt —; left , William Howard Taft —; center and Woodrow Wilson —; right were the main progressive U. Presidents; their administrations saw intense social and political change in American society.
Eugenics in the United States. Burnham, and Robert M. Timberlake, Prohibition and the progressive movement, — pp 1—7. Southern, The Malignant Heritage: Reaction And Reform — ; Norman H. Clark, Deliver Us from Evil: Tyack , The One Best System: Kyvig, Explicit and authentic acts: Constitution, — Kansas UP, pp. The Search For Order: The A to Z of the Progressive Era.
Grenier, "Muckraking the muckrakers: Upton Sinclair and his peers. Stein, "American Muckrakers and Muckraking: The Year Scholarship," Journalism Quarterly, 56 1 pp. Buenker, and Robert M. Progressivism ; Maureen Flanagan, America Reformed: Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management Spender; Hugo Kijne Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World? A Journal of Women Studies , Vol. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism pp. Archived from the original on 11 February Retrieved 27 November Holli, Reform in Detroit: Pingree and Urban Politics Tobin, "The Progressive as Single Taxer: Bowers, "Country-Life Reform, — Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, — Faulkner, The Decline of Laissez Faire, — pp.
- Navigation menu.
- File history.
- Progressivism and World War I.
- I Can..How Targeted Goals Can Enhance Music Education (Music Program Leaders Book 2).
- The Thirty-Third Marriage of Donia Nour!
- File usage on Commons.
- Where the Green Jobs Are: Green Jobs & Careers in the DC Metro Area.
There were political reforms including the referendum, recall, initiative, and the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment. There were reforms in the workplace with the passage of child labor laws and workplace safety laws. However, once we joined World War I, there were far fewer progressive reforms made. We needed to focus on helping the Allied Powers win the war.
File:Progressivism and After, The tandjfoods.com - Wikimedia Commons
Thus, much of our attention turned to military matters and getting troops prepared for the war. We also had to provide supplies for our military and for the Allies. During the war, there were attempts to limit our freedom of expression at home. The Espionage Act punished people for anti-war activities.
The Sedition Act made public opposition to the war illegal. There also was more intolerance and dislike of anything German and of German Americans. So the answer to your question would be that World War I essentially ended Progressivism. These loans totaled 2. Yet, cutting ties with Britain would be seen as an unneutral act in favor of Germany. Under international law, Britain could buy contraband and noncontraband from neutral countries. Two days later she died. The President and his advisors felt his principles stood a better chance of acceptance if Britian won the war.
File:Progressivism and After, The Masses.jpg
Wilsonianism—the cluster of ideas Wilson espoused—consisted of traditional American principles and an evolving ideology of internationalism whose central tenet was that the U. Empires would be dismantled to allow self-determination. He wanted also free-market nonexploitative capitalism. His critics said he violated his own principles by forcing them on others. All agreed, however, that these principles best served America best.
In this way, idealism and realism were married. He also articulated American exceptionalism. Blended with pragmatism, he wanted to bring American progressive thought to the world, even if it meant using military intervention. Therefore, it is impossible to say that America was ever neutral. Americans got caught in the Allied-Central Power crossfires.
British naval policy was designed to sever neutral trade with Germany in order to cripple the German economy. They also harassed neutral ships by seizing cargoes and defined a broad list of contraband. That prohibited neutrals from shipping to Germany. Furthermore, to counter German u-boats, the British flouted international law by arming their merchant ships and flying neutral flags.
Wilson frequently protested British violations but London deftly defused American criticism by paying for confiscated cargoes and German provocations made British behavior appear less offensive. Germans frustrated by the British actions looked to victory at sea with submarines.
In Fed, , German declared a war zone around the British Isles. All enemy ships there would be sunk. Neutral vessels were told t stay out so not to be mistaken and sunk. Neutral citizens were asked to stay off Allies ships. Nevertheless, the Germans began to sink vessels. Wilson complained arguing that law said that attacking ships had to warn merchant or passenger ship before attacking to allow passenders to get on lifeboats. These laws predated submarines and the Germans complained that surfacing would deny U-boats the element of surprise and for their easy destruction flimsy.
The naval crisis would become life and death. Over the next few months the U-boats sank ship after ship. In May , the swift, luxurious British passenger liner Lusitania left NY carrying twelve hundred passengers and a cargo of food and contraband, including 4. Before her departure, the newspapers printed an unusual announcement from the German embassy that travelers on British vessels were warned that Allied ships were liable for destruction. Few passengers paid attention. On Mat 7, off the irish coast, submarine U unleashed torpedoes at the vessel.
The ship sank quickly, taking 1, people, Americans included. Despite its cargo, Wilson said that it was a brutal assault on innocent people. But he ruled out a military response. Of State, William Jennings Bryan advised that Americans be prohibited from travel on belligerent ships. The president rejected his counsel, insisting on the right of Americans to sail on any ship and demanding that Germany cease its inhumane submarine warfare.
Germany, seeking to avoid war with the U. But in mid-august, another British vessel, the Arabic , was sunk and two Americans were killed. It raised the debate on what to do, particularly that only three Americans died on American ships but on belligerent ships. Relations on both sides were becoming more strained at three more Americans were injured in a U-boat attack of the coast of France with Wilson threatening to sever tied with Berlin and with the British over their constriction of American trade with the Central Powers and their treatment of the Irish.
- Help Me, Lord! Im Internet Dating!?
- Hard Ride (Gay Briefs).
- Progressive Era?
As the United States became more entangled in the Great War, many Americans urged Wilson to keep the nation out of conflict. In late , some pacifist progressives organized an antiwar coalition, the American Union Against Militarism. Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford spent money in these organizations promoting peace. In addition, socialists like Deb lent their voice to the peace talk. The various messages of these antiwar advocates were that war drained a nation of its youth, resources, and impulse for reform; that it fostered a repressive spirit at home; that it violated Christian morality; and that wartime barons reaped huge benefits at the expense of the people.
These people wanted America to stay out of war at all costs and even Wilson ran on a peace platform hoping to convince the European countries at war to reach a peace without victory. In early Feb, , Germany launched unrestricted submarine warfare. All vessels would attack if sighted in the declared war zone. The bold decision represented a calculated risk that submarines would impede U. Wilson quickly broke diplomatic relations with Berlin. The German challenge to American neutral rights and economic interests were soon followed by a threat to U. British intelligence intercepted, decoded, and passed to American officials a telegram from the German foreign Security Arthur Zimmerman to the German minister in Mexico.
The minister promised to the Mexican government help in regaining all land lost in the Mexican War in and the addition of some western states if they joined in a military alliance against the U. He hoped to keep the Americans busy on their side of the world.
Business, Banking, and National Politics
American officials took this message seriously because Mexican-American relations had not been good. The Mexican Revolution, a bloody civil war with strong anti-American overtones, threatened U. Wilson had twice ordered American troops onto Mexican soil. In the midst of the debate, he released the telegram to the public.
Congress still saw his asking as a blank check to start war and they filibustered. He proceeded to arm despite this but the action came too late as some American ships were sunk. On April 2, the president stepped in front of Congress to ask for a declaration of war.
He called for the Americans to protect democracy in the world. Congress quickly declared war against Germany by a vote of to 50 in the House and 82 to 6 in the Senate. Wilson declared that America go to war for principle, for morality, for reform, for honor, for commerce, and for security. He said the reason that forced American involvement was the U-Boat. Critics like Bryan and La Follette saw Americans descent into war through Wilson strict reading of international law, his politics as unneutral.
They lost the debate however. Americans felt that the Germans needed to be checked for an open and orderly world in which American principles and interests could be safe. In the broadest sense, America went to war to reform world politics, not to destroy Germany. Wilson was convinced that America could not claim a place at the peace table unless they entered the war. In the end, he decided for war to gain an American-fashioned peace based on Wilsonian principles. Taking up arms and Winning the war: When broke out in Europe, Wilson took steps to prepare the army.
He had the National Defense Act passed in , which provided for increases in the army and National Guard. The Navy Act also began to boost up the navy. The government accomplished this by passing the Revenue Act of placing higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. To raise an army after the declaration, Congress in May passed the Selective Service Act, requiring all males of ages between 20 and 30 later 18 and 45 to register. The draft would prepare an army but also impose democratic principles.
By June 5, more than 9. Approximately 3 million evaded draft registration. Most were never discovered. Hundreds of thousand also decided to enlist, rather than be drafted. Never enough weapons to go around, so some trained without them. Many were ignorant of why they were fighting so U. Army officials also tried to rid the soldiers of vice speaking out about saloons and sex. Jim Crowism existed with many politicians opposing the draft of blacks. The NAACP and Du Bois urged blacks to join the fight in the hope that the war would make the world safe for democracy but also blur the color line at home.
Instead blacks experienced discrimination every step they took. Segregated camp facilities, discouraged blacks from being officers, assigned blacks to menial positions. Constantly harassed, African-American troops in Houston retaliated killing fourteen whites. This had produced a military stalemate and ghastly casualties. Little was ever gained. At the Battle of the Somme in the British and French suffered , dead or wounded to earn square miles; the German lost , men. The influx of American men and material decided the outcome of the war.
With both sides exhausted, America tipped the balance to the Allies. Americans did not actually engage in much combat until after the lull of fighting in the winter if The Germans launched a major offensive in March knocking Russia out of the war The Russian Revolution contributed and shifted troops to France. After this costly victory, the AEF adapted to the change in warfare. They also quickly experienced the horrors of war and many suffered shell shock. Helping these men were 10, Red Cross nurses and literary figures such as Hemingway served as ambulance drivers.
The Army responded with education and even court martial to stop the problem. Allied victory in the 2 nd Battle of the Marne in July seemed to turn the tide against the German. In Sept, French and American forces took St. Mihiel and the Allies began the massive Meuse-Argonne offensive. More than 1 million Americans joined British and French troops in weeks of fierce combat made all the more difficult by cold, rainy weather.
For Germany, its ground war was in shambles, its troops and cities mutinous, and its aliies Turkey and Austria dropping out, peace was imperative. The Germans accepted an armistice on Nov. The belligerents counted awesome casualties. For the surviving doughboys, the army years were memorable, a turning point in their lives. They shed some of their parochialism, their localism. President Wilson welcomed the armistice, not only because it ended the bloodshed but because it was signed on his terms. The Allies initially balked but Wilson scared them into acceptance by threatening a separate peace with Germany.
The next eight points specified the evacuation of foreign troops from Russia, Belgium, and France and appealed for self-determination for nations in Europe. For Wilson the fourteenth point was the most important—the mechanism for achieving all the others, to create the League of Nations. Having won the war, the resolute Wilson set out to win peace and build a stable world order in accordance with American principles. War on the Homefront: During the war, government and big business worked very closely in order to produce enough for the country. As a consequence, big business became much bigger.
Further, government became bigger as new agencies were created to maintain order and production. For example, as strikes threatened the telephone and telegram compansies, the federal government seized and ran them. The largest of these superagencies was the War Industrial Board WIB and it was designed as a clearing-house to coordinate the national economy, the WIB made purchases, allocated supplies, and fixed prices at levels that business requested. It also standardized goods to save material. The performance was mized for organizations like this with massive increases in production like in steel and the failed arrival of quotas like in coal through a bloated bureaucracy.
Organized labor sought a partnership with the government as well but its gains were far less spectacular. Labor gained through the full-employment wartime economy with increased earnings. Yet, the higher cost of living through inflation brought little improvement to economic condition. For unions, the war seemed to offer opportunities for recognition and better pay. He and others were awarded positions to work labor disputes and forbade strikes and lockouts.
Expert Answers
Union membership climbed from 2. In the 19 moth war, six thousand strikes expressed work discount. Although it was a moderate gain of women in the labor force, it was the move into male dominated realms that was significant. As white women took these opportunities, black women took old white women positions.
Overall, most women stayed in female orientated jobs though. Women participated in the war effort in other ways. As volunteers, they prepared nurses in the Red Cross. This patriotic work helped push 19 th Amendment. This period also saw southern blacks migrate to northern cities to work in industry. All told, about a half-million moved to the North.
Most were male—young, unmarried, and skilled or semiskilled. Provided an escape for low wages, sharecropping, tenancy, crop liens, debt peonage, floods, lynchings, and political disenfranchisement. But new opportunity did not erase racism. Lynchings actually increased during the war and the Klan was reborn in the mid-teens. Between and , blacks were lynched, some in military uniform. Riots occurred in northern cities when many blacks returned. Some Americans concluded social reform was needed at home before it could be done abroad. For blacks, the war, one for democracy, had changed little at home.
Trampling on Civil Liberties: As a result, an official and unofficial campaign to silence dissenters began. Civil liberties were trampled. All who opposed the war were targets of abuse. The committee urged the press to practice self-censorship and encourage people to spy on their neighbors. The Sedition Act made it unlawfully to obstruct the sale of war bond sand to use disloyal or abusive language against the government, Constitution, and flag. With a loose interpretation, the Justice Department went about arresting people.
Eugene Debs was arrested for giving a speech extolling socialism and criticizing Wilson. Receiving a ten year sentence in , he was released in Informal mobs also formed to attack those who protested. The government did not provide protection and the Supreme Court even defended the constitutionality of these acts.
In war, 1 st Amendment could be restricted Many agreed in the end that the Wilson administration compiled one of the worst civil liberties records in American history. It was greatly a response to pro-Bolshevik dissenters. When the new Russian government made peace with Germany in early under Lenin, Americans grew angry with the closing of the eastern front. Many lashed out at American radicals labeling all red. Wilson went as far to send troops to Russia under false pretensions to attempt to crush the infant Bolshevik government.
He also participated in blockades of Russian ports in order to create riots against the Russian government. He also refused to recognize the Bolshevik government. At the Paris Peace conference, Russia was denied a seat. These interventions in civil-war-torn Russia, troops did not leave Siberia until spring , immediately embittered Washington-Moscow relations—legacy that would persist deep into the 20 th century.
At home, the Wilson Administration moved against radicals and other imprecisely defined Bolsheviks or Communists. The creation of the Comintern made matters worse. A rash of labor strikes in sparked the Red Scare. All told, 4 million laborers jolted the nation.
Strike leaders were considered radicals and were arrested. Then never drew great numbers but they did frighten the public. The American Legion also formed to counteract these radical actions. Mitchell Palmer also insisted on American conformity. To stamp out the radical fire, Palmer created a new Bureau of Investigation and appointed J. Edgar Hoover to run it.