American Pageant Chapter 28 APUSH Review (APUSH Period 7 Progressive Era)

[Music] good day aush people today we're taking a look at the Progressive Movement roughly from 1890 to around 1912 this video is going to help you out with pretty much any aush textbook that's how the video lines up to some of the popular ones let's get started the Progressive Movement why does it take place big important concept to understand industrialization urbanization and immigration created significant changes a lot of them good but also some challenges for the United States and the Progressive Movement was an effort to use government power to regulate and improve Society so this

is a whole movement trying to improve Society it is a rejection of the lazir ideology of much of the Gilded Age this idea that the government should not get involved is rejected by many progressive reformers it's important to keep in mind it's not a radical movement they're not looking to overturn or overthrow capitalism they're rejecting radical ideas like socialism and anarchism they want to save and improve capitalism they want to make it more of a just Society who are the progressives this is a complicated question because many of the Progressive Era reformers were middle class

men and women but there's a real diverse group of people the Progressive Movement was not a coherent organized movement everyone working together for common goals so for instance you have Protestant church leaders demanding Temperance or getting people to stop drinking you have politicians regulating monopolies and Trust they're part of the Progressive Movement union leaders addressing the rights of workers women demanding the right to vote African-Americans demanding greater equality all of these are going on during the Progressive Movement and it's really important you understand it's a diverse group of reformers and then finally it's important when

you're studying for APUSH that you compare this to other reform periods back under the age of Jackson Andrew Jackson the populous reforms of the farmers and then later in the 1930s the New Deal so how do you promote reform and that's where the muck rakers come into play mck rakers attempted to expose problems in American society and they write their very often Journal they're writing very sensationalistic stories they want to stir up public demand for Action they want to bring the problem to the attention to of the middle classes they actually get the name from

Theodore Roosevelt he did not mean it as a compliment and there's a whole bunch of examples you're going to come across when you're reading about this time period Ida Tarbell wrote a history of Standard Oil Company published in MC's magazine a popular magazine at the time in which she exposed the kind of business practices U ized by these captains of industry such as John D Rockefeller Jacob Reese is often times considered one of the first muckers with is how the other half lives in which he exposed the horrors of life in the slums of New

York in 1890 Lincoln stepin wrote a book called The Shame of the Cities in 1904 which exposed the corruption in City politics with the political machines and of course the one a lot of people know about up to Sinclair the jungle more on him a little later another key thing about the Progressive Movement is the importance of women in the movement women played an important role in the Progressive Movement and this really gave them an opportunity to break down the idea of the separate spheres which was this idea that A Woman's Place was in the

home you know if you remember after the American Revolution this idea of Republican Motherhood raising young boys mainly to be good citizens women did not have the right to vote and yet during the movement the progressive movement they're playing an active role in causes such as child labor the national child labor committee fought for laws Banning child labor and by 1907 about 2third of all states will have child labor laws put into place you have the national consumers League which was headed by Florence Kelly Kelly remember was very active in the settlement house movement with

Jane Adams and the national consumers League advocated for the rights of women in the workplace LW against child labor and all sorts of other causes a court case you should be aware of is Mother versus Oregon in 1908 the Court ruled that laws protecting women workers that restricted women to 10hour work days were constitutional and the court rules that women deserve and needed special protections as women in the workplace an event that really kind of stimulates a lot of activism amongst women and workers is the Triangle shirt waste fire in 1911 a 10 story building

um in New York a fire breaks out leading to the death of 146 workers um most of them being women and immigrants and this really Sparks reforms and calls for increased safety standards and another reform that we're going to take a look at in just a moment is women in the temperance movement important idea to keep in mind though is women are playing various roles in the Progressive Movement um and one of those which we're going to cover in our next video is the role of the woman's suffrage movement Urban reform was a huge part

of the Progressive Movement if you recall throughout the Gilded Age people have been moving to the cities and this creates all sorts of problems amongst those problems are Urban poverty and the rise of tenements and slums you have political Corruptions and political machines and widespread alcoholism and all sorts of other issues in the cities and we've already seen what Jane Adams and Florence Kelly and others were doing in places like Chicago with the settlement house movement trying to help people like you see in the image get out of urban poverty but you also see a

desire during the Progressive Movement to take away power from political bosses by placing Municipal Services Under public control sanitation was a huge problem in the cities and one of the ways they felt they would be able to do this was by municipal government reform such as voters electing the heads of City Department such as fire police and sanitation so that things would be more efficient and less corrupt progressive reformers also focus on state reform you get many Progressive Governors fighting against corporate control of State politics in California you have a governor ham Johnson who took

on the very powerful Southern Pacific Railroad the big guy though is this handsome fellow Governor Robert La fet of Wisconsin and he's going to Pioneer many reforms in the state of Wisconsin and really kind of the reform movements in Wisconsin become known as the Wisconsin IDE and you could see him fighting Bob showing what he's going to do to these big bad businesses um he's going to regulate the public utilities he's going to take on the powerful railroad industry he's going to adopt many tax reforms and a whole bunch of political reforms which are going

to be copied and utilized in other states so let's take a look at the political reforms of the Progressive Movement there was this interest and this idea amongst progressives political reformers they wanted to increase democracy and reduce the control of trust the problem was the power of political machines and trust and money was eroding Americans faith in politics you can see that in this political cartoon in which the trust have taken over the Senate and so here's some of the things that were done in states such as Wisconsin you have the Australian or secret ballot

which allowed voters to mark their choice for office secretly so they would not be intimidated into voting for certain candidates which was often done the direct Primary in which the nomination of candidates placed into the hands of the voters so the voters would actually select who would be the candidate for the party the recall allowed elected politicians they could be removed from office by the voters before their term expired so if they weren't doing a good job or if they were corrupt they can be removed in a special election the initiative allowed voters could introduce

laws and the referendum all ow voters to directly vote on a law and the big amendment that takes place one of the big amendments is the 17th Amendment and this one's important because rather than the state legislator voters would directly vote for US senators so this would bring more democracy into American politics it was felt and remember the populist party advocated for this in the 1890s it becomes reality with the the 17th Amendment there also were some moralistic aspects to the Progressive Movement remember it was a very diverse set of reforms and there was all

sorts of division over the temperance movement those in favor of drinking were known as wet they were against prohibition those who wanted to support Temperance and prohibition the Banning of alcohol legally Banning alcohol were known as dry and there was a growing conflict between those two groups and it really came down to protest native born Americans very often versus Catholic immigrants Catholic immigrants tended to be okay with drinking um especially those so-called new immigrants from Southern and Eastern European countries um very often there was division between rural areas which tended to be much more prot

Temperance prohibition supporters whereas in the cities they're tended to be more of a a support for allowing people to do what they wanted to do there were organizations that were created you have the women's Christian Temperance Union a large Organization of Women advocating for temperance they would encourage their members to take pledges promising not to drink any longer and the big one is in 1895 the anti- saloon League which was the leading Organization advocating for legal prohibition they don't just want you to promise to not drink they want to get a law passed which would

make it illegal to do so and many states started adopting prohibition type laws and of course in 1919 we'll see the 18th Amendment go into place Banning alcohol throughout the country now a big moment in the Progressive Movement comes with the emergence of Theodore Roosevelt as president at the age of 402 years old and once again Roosevelt is a firm believer in an En larg role for the president and he's going to do things very differently and one of those you can see in his labor policy and his relation ship with organized labor and workers

and little kind of memory lane right here remember McKinley during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 sided with corporations Grover Cleveland during the Pullman Strike in 1894 also sided against organized labor and Theodore Roosevelt very very early on in his presidency was faced with a massive strike by the coal miners In 1902 and he actually tries to mediate the labor disp between management and the workers and owners won't compromise so Theodore Roosevelt threatens to take over the mines with federal troops and this is a very big difference than previous presidents especially during the Gilded Age

were very often the federal government was using troops against the workers now Roosevelt himself was not necessarily Mr prol labor union he believed in something what he which he referred to as the square deal and this was his Progressive Era reform program and there's three parts to it the three C's corporations there should be control of Corporations consumers there should be consumer protection and conservation conservation of the environment and the Earth's natural resources so this is part of his Square Deal program for the APUSH exam it's really important you know about Roosevelt's program his Progressive

Era policies and let's take a look at them first corporations trust busting Roosevelt looked at things like the Sherman Antitrust Act remember that was passed in 1890 and he realized it was relatively ineffective at reducing the power of Corporations and Trust remember in fact it was often times used against labor unions Roosevelt's going to change this he's going to break up the Northern Securities company a railroad Monopoly with tremendous power in fact Roosevelt his actions are upheld by the Supreme cour Court in 1904 and he is going to be very famously known for his trust

busting um during his presidency he's going to bring on antitrust action against 40 corporations and Roosevelt distinguished between good and bad trust and good trust were trusts that were efficient and brought lower prices to Consumers they weren't harmful to the economy and bad trust were harmful because they crushed competition and they hurt consumers by dominating and fixing prices and throughout his presidency he's going to increase the power of the federal government with regard to business another example of this is Roosevelt will also sink to increase the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission remember that was

intended to regulate railroad rates across state lines it was also relatively weak throughout much of the Gilded Age couple of examples of how that power is increased you see that in the Elkin Act of 1903 it increased the penalties for rate rebates that railroad companies would try to get away with and the heern Act of 1906 gave the ICC the power to set maximum rates for the railroad companies so big idea here is Roosevelt is using the power of the federal government the presidency to control and regulate corporations and strengthening previous laws such as the

Sherman Antitrust Act and the Interstate Commerce Act the other C the second one is consumer protections remember uh at this time it's a Laz Fair attitude with the economy and there are relatively few protections for consumers it was very common for food to be bad and people to get ill or die from it and medicine and other items to be mislabeled Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle was intended Upton Sinclair was a muckraker and his intention was to increased support for socialism and workers rights by writing this book about the life for a worker in the

Chicago Stockyards what ends up happening though is the public focuses on the unsanitary nature of the meat industry that Sinclair writes about and there's a huge outcry with regard to the conditions of the meat in this Factory that Sinclair writes about there's a lot of public pressure for Theodore Roosevelt to act and as a result of cl's muck raking Activity The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 is passed which basically says the federal government would regulate and inspect the meat industry and you see the federal government employee checking that good old tasty carneia s out another

significant law for Consumer Protection is the Pure Food and Drug Act passed the same year and this creates the FDA the Food and Drug Administration and the FDA protected the public against the manufactur sale and transportation of mislabeled Food and Drugs so people the public would have a right to know what's in the food and the drugs that they're purchasing so next time you eat your hot Cheetos you know exactly how you're killing yourself the third C is conservation and this is Roosevelt's big win domestically it's important to keep in mind the issue of conservation

did not register as a national issue people weren't talking about the environment as a big pressing problem and there were some groups such as the Sierra Club which was you know founded in 1892 John Mir was a significant part of that movement advocating for the environment but Roosevelt and working together there he is with John Meir is going to use the power of the government to protect the environment Roosevelt's going to use the Forest Reserve Act which was passed in 1891 to protect 150 million Acres of federal land and the Newland Reclamation Act of 1902

money from sale of public lands could be used for irrigation projects in the west so you have this kind of conservation and protection of the Earth's natural resources and if you take a look at that map right there you can see some of the areas protected by Roosevelt one important thing to keep in mind is the contrast those two words conservation versus preservation conservation is the plan regulated use of the environment whereas preservationist which is what John Mir was was leaving nature alone just to be preserved in its natural state and there was a big

battle over the hch hetchy project near San Francisco in which preservationists lost in the hetchy project the dam was built altering the physical environment of that region Roosevelt serves until 1908 and he decides that he's going to honor the pr president of George Washington and he's not going to seek a third term even though he could have and he hands over kind of the Republican Party leadership to the big guy over 300 PB there's his bathtub William Howard Taff and ta is going to continue some of the progressive policies of Roosevelt he's actually going to

break up more trust than Roosevelt little fun fact there most people think Roosevelt trustbuster ta broke more of them and he's going to continue some of conservationist policies as well and when it comes to foreign policy Taff differs from Roosevelt's big stick foreign policy and he favor something called Dollar Diplomacy in which he encouraged businesses to invest money private financial investments in areas of strategic concerns of the United States and the idea would be that this would lead to Greater stability and would promote us interest without using Force however when the election of 1912 comes

up Roosevelt and Taff are going to be running against each other but we're going to save that for another day another time thank you for watching if the video helped you out click like have questions post a comment peace