One example of Progressive reform was the rise of the city-manager system, in which salaried, professional engineers ran the day-to-day affairs of city governments under guidelines established by elected city councils. After in-depth surveys, local and even state governments were reorganized to reduce the number of officials and to eliminate overlapping areas of authority among departments.
City governments also were reorganized to reduce the power of local ward bosses and to increase the powers of the city council. Early Progressive thinkers, such as John Dewey and Lester Ward, placed a universal and comprehensive system of education at the top of the Progressive agenda, reasoning that if a democracy were to be successful, the general public needed to be educated.
Progressives advocated to expand and improve public and private education at all levels. Modernization of society, they believed, necessitated the compulsory education of all children, even if parents objected.
Progressives turned to educational researchers to evaluate the reform agenda by measuring numerous aspects of education, which later led to standardized testing. Child-labor laws were designed to prohibit children from entering the workforce before a certain age, further compelling children into the public schools.
Many educational reforms and innovations generated during this period continued to influence debates and initiatives in American education for the remainder of the twentieth century. Many Progressives hoped that by regulating large corporations, they could liberate human energies from the restrictions imposed by industrial capitalism.
Yet the Progressive movement was divided over which of the following solutions should be used to regulate corporations:. Pro-labor Progressives such as Samuel Gompers argued that industrial monopolies were unnatural economic institutions that suppressed the competition necessary for progress and improvement. Progressives such as Benjamin Parke DeWitt argued that in a modern economy, large corporations and even monopolies were both inevitable and desirable. With their massive resources and economies of scale, large corporations offered the United States advantages that smaller companies could not offer.
Yet, these large corporations might abuse their great power. The federal government should allow these companies to exist but regulate them for the public interest. The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early twentieth century United States and Canada.
The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as excessive wealth, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war.
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Social Gospel leaders were predominantly associated with the liberal wing of the Progressive movement, and most were theologically liberal, although they were typically conservative when it came to their views on social issues. Important Social Gospel leaders include Richard T. In the United States prior to World War I, the Social Gospel was the religious wing of the Progressive movement, which had the aim of combating injustice, suffering, and poverty in society.
Denver, Colorado, was a center of Social Gospel activism. He established a free dispensary for medical emergencies, an employment bureau for job seekers, a summer camp for children, night schools for extended learning, and English language classes.
His middle-class congregation encouraged Reed to move on when he became a Socialist, and he organized a nondenominational church. The Baptist minister Jim Goodhart set up an employment bureau, and provided food and lodging for tramps and hobos at the mission he ran. He became city chaplain and director of public welfare of Denver in The Reverend Mark A.
With 10, members, his church was the largest Presbyterian Church in the country, and he was selected the national moderator in Matthews was the most influential clergymen in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the most active Social Gospellers in America. The South had its own version of the Social Gospel that focused especially on prohibition. Other reforms included outlawing public swearing, boxing, dogfights, and similar affronts to their moral sensibilities.
The Social Gospel affected much of Protestant America. In , the Salvation Army denomination arrived in America. Although its theology was based on ideals expressed during the Second Great Awakening, it also focused on poverty and social improvement. The s and early s witnessed a profound social and political reaction to the excesses and corruption of the Gilded Age. Journalists and other writers began bringing social issues to the attention of the American public. The muckrakers appeared at a moment when journalism was undergoing changes in style and practice.
In response to the exaggerated facts and sensationalism of yellow journalism, objective journalism, as exemplified by The New York Times under Adolph Ochs after , reported facts with the intention of being impartial and a newspaper of record. The growth of wire services also had contributed to the spread of the objective reporting style. Muckraking publishers, such as Samuel S. In contrast with objective reporting, muckrakers saw themselves primarily as reformers and were politically engaged.
Journalists of the previous eras were not linked to a single political, populist movement, whereas the muckrakers were associated with Progressive reforms. Muckrakers continued some of the investigative exposures and sensational traditions of yellow journalism, but instead wrote to change society. Julius Chambers of the New York Tribune is considered by many to be the original muckraker.
His intent was to obtain information about the alleged abuse of inmates. The publication of articles and accounts of the experience in the Tribune led to the release of 12 patients who were not mentally ill, to a reorganization of the staff and administration of the institution, and eventually, to a change in the lunacy laws.
From this point onward, Chambers was frequently invited to speak about the rights of the mentally ill and the need for proper facilities for their accommodation, care, and treatment. Children : Jacob Riis documented the hard life encountered by many immigrants and the poor in the city. Journalists began to respond to the excesses of the Gilded Age toward the end of the period. Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, muckraker, and social documentary photographer. Barnett an early leader in the civil-rights movement.
Wells was a skilled, persuasive rhetorician who traveled internationally on lecture tours. She wrote an article that suggested that despite the myth that white women were sexually at risk for attacks by black men, most liaisons between black men and white women were consensual.
Early efforts in urban reform were driven by poor conditions exposed by tragedies such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25, , was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City and resulted in the fourth-highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U. The fire caused the deaths of garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths.
Because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits—a common practice at the time to prevent pilferage and unauthorized breaks—many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped to the streets below from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. It was largely spontaneous, sparked by a short walkout of workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, involving only about 20 percent of the workforce.
That, however, only prompted the rest of the workers to seek help from the union. The firm locked out its employees when it learned what was happening. The news of the strike spread quickly to all of the New York garment workers. At a series of mass meetings, after the leading figures of the American labor movement spoke in general terms about the need for solidarity and preparedness, Clara Lemlich rose to speak about the conditions she and other women worked under.
She demanded an end to talk and called for a strike of the entire industry. Approximately 20, out of the 32, workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out during the next two days.
The union also became more involved in electoral politics, in part as a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The fire had various effects on the community. The Settlement House movement was a reform that intended for the rich and the poor to live together in interdependent communities. The Settlement House movement was a reformist social movement that began in the s and peaked around the s in England and the United States. Its objective was to get the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community.
Rockefeller and J. Morgan amassed spectacular fortunes and engaged in the most conspicuous of consumptions. Protected from foreign competition by high tariffs, American industrialists colluded to drive competitors out of business by creating monopolies and trusts in which groups of companies were controlled by single corporate boards. Political corruption ran amok during the Gilded Age as corporations bribed politicians to ensure government policies favored big businesses over workers. As the rich grew richer during the Gilded Age, the poor grew poorer.
A meeting held by the Granges, a populist farmer's association organized in the western United States, c. Many Gilded Age workers toiled in dangerous jobs for low pay. Industrial strikes occurred with greater frequency—and greater violence—following the Great Railroad Strike of During the s alone, there were nearly 10, labor strikes and lockouts.
The belief that big businesses had too much power in the United States led to a backlash. Nena Jolidon Croak of Pierce County was elected on the Progressive ticket and introduced the first House bill of the session, seeking a minimum wage for women workers. The only other woman in the House that year, Frances Axtell, was a Whatcom County Republican who focused her efforts on public safety. It took another decade for a woman to win election to the state Senate.
Reba Hurn was already a pathbreaker as the first women to join the Washington State Bar and although she staunchly refused to be labeled a crusader, she quietly worked for reform of lawmaking and the penal system in the state.
Members of this group lobbied the Legislature and encouraged women to educate themselves about their political rights and duties.
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