1/15/09

• Progressivists: rid politics of corruption; tame the power of the big corporations or "trusts"; inject more liberty into American life; fought against prostitution; appeared in city politics; agree for activist government to right political, economic, and social wrongs by taxing income, regulating industry, protect the environment, and provide social welfare; emerged from young middle class Americans, who were mostly Protetant; felt alientated from society by the immorality and corruption in politics and the gap between the rich and poor
• Social Gospel: philosophy of the progressives; believed social darwinism was wrong; muckrakers began to investigate social conditions; Jacob Riis-NYC slums, How the Other Half Lives, Lincoln Stefans-Baltimore's political corruption
• Popular Magazines: McClounresm Cosmopolitan, Colliers, Lady's Home Journal, The Harper, The Atlantic Monthly; The Jungle was written by Upton Sinclair about the meat-packing industry and its horrible conditions
• Ashcan School: painted realistic scenery of the United States
• Settlement Houses: Jane Adams opens Hullhouse in New York, offering social services, aid to women without jobs, daycare, small savings banks, employment bureaus, taught English,health clinic, social center, entertainment
• Cultural Conservatism; Socialists find things in common with progressives, as do the progressives with the socialists; socialists coming from nondemocratic, noncapitalistic countries; Jane Adams works to reform prostitution and alcohol abuse; WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union) and Anti-Saloon leagure get 16 states to pass prohibition laws and 18th amendment; saloons can be used to cash paychecks, "cafeterias", places for socializing; Mann Act- federal act prohibited transportation of a woman over state lines
• Socialist Politcal Party; "seriously" around until about 1915; took hold in cities; mayors of cities were sometimes socialist; Upton Sinclair was a socialist; government passed Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and the Meat Inspection Act (1906) after investigations into The Jungle's nonfiction base
• Eugene Debbs run for president as a socialist; believed government could control economy; progressives liked him until they found him and socialists to be too radical, the progressives wanted to tames, not control; socialists wanted to eliminate capitalism