Thursday 1/15/09

sorry this took so long to post

• Progressivism = reform movement

- Progressivism emerged first and most strongly among young, mainly Protestant, middle-class Americans who felt alienated from their society: they abondoned the expected path that involved becoming ministers, missionaries, or serving their church in some other way, but never lost their zeal for righting moral wrongs and for uplifting the human spirit ->They became "ministers of reform," upset by the immorality and corruption in American politics, and by the gap that separated the rich and the poor.

- Progressives wanted to rid politics of corruption, tame power of the "trusts," and in process, inject more liberty into American life; fought against prostitution, gambling, drinking, and other forms of vice

- 1st appeared in city politics- agree that there is a need for an activist government to right political, economic, and social wrongs by taxing income, regulating industry, protect consumers from fraud, empowering workers, safeguarding environment, and providing social welfare

• Muckrackers: investigative journalists committed to exposing corruption

- Well- known: Jacob Riis-looked at the living conditions in the New York City slums (How the Other Half Lives); Ida Tarbell-revealed the shady practices by which John D. Rockefeller had transofrmed his Standard Oil Company into a monoply; Lincoln Steffens-unraveled the webs of bribery and corruption that were strangling local governments in the nation's great cities

- Magazines = popular: Upton Sinclair gets The Jungle known through magazine

- Ashcan school: a group of painters who sought to create a distinctly American and "realist" style

- Settlement houses- established by middle-class reformers, intended to help the largely immigrant poor cope with the harsh conditions of city life

- Jane Addams: founder of settlement house movement; Hull House-nation's first settlement house

- Socialism=transfer of control over industry from a few industrialists to the laboring masses -> impossible for wealthy elites to control society

- Socialist Party of America=political force during first 16 years of the century

• Municipal Reform-many corporations used their monopoly power to charge exorbitant fares and rates that they won from bribing political machine officials

- Progressives worked for reforms that would strip machines of power: City Commission Plan-municipal power shifted from the mayor and his aldermen to 5 city commissioners, each responsible for a different department of city government; City Manager Plan- a "chief executive," appointed by the commissioners, would curtail rivalries between commissioners and ensure that no ouside influences interfered with the expert, businesslike management of the city

• Political Reform in the states: progressives introduced reforms designed to undermine the power of party bosses, restore sovereignty to "the people," and encourage, honest, talented individuals to enter politics

- direct primary: a mechanism that enabled voters to choose party candidates; 17th Amendment (1912) allows citizens to vote for senators

- initiative: allowed reformers to put before voters in general elections legislation that state legislatures had yet to approve

- referendum: gave voters the right in general elections to repeal an unpopular act that a state legislature had passed

- recall: a device that allowed voters to remove from office any public servant who had betrayed his trust

- Australian (secret) ballot: required voters to vote in private; required the government, rather than political parties, to pring the ballots and supervise the voting

- Personal registration laws: allowed prospective voters to register to vote only if they appeared at a designated government office with proper identification

• Disfranchisement: progressives promoted election laws expressly designed to keep noncitizen immigrants from voting; Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization made it more difficult to become a citizen

- South: any citizen who failed a reading test, could not sign his name, did not own a minimum amoung of property, or could not pay a poll tax, lost his right to vote -> National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): interracial political organization that made black equality its primary goal

• Woman Suffrage: success in sparesly populated western states because of the conviction that women's supposedly gentler and more nurturing nature would tame and civilize the rawness of the frontier; 19th Amendment (1920)

*Many Progressive Era suffragists were little troubled by racial discrimination and injustice- believed that Americans of color lacked moral strength and thus did not deserve the franchise

by: Natalie I.