The Progressive Era (loosely defined as the period between the 1890’s and 1920’s) was a political, social and religious movement that sought to cure many perceived social ills, such as child labor, spousal and child abuse and neglect, poverty, crime, political corruption and inebriation, among others. It also sought to apply a “scientific” approach toward curing those ills, as well as applying scientific principles to industry, medicine, the social sciences and economics, among other fields of endeavor (Gould).
The end of the nineteenth century saw the rapid growth of industry and industrial power in the United States. The wealth of the nation was in the hands of a few as a result of continuous mergers and buyouts, reducing competition. This power was built upon the backs of the American laborer, who worked long hours for poor pay in grim, unsanitary, unhealthy conditions, without benefit of workers’ compensation insurance or unions. Women and children were often forced to work to make ends meet and were especially vulnerable. Urbanization also appeared, with the highest percentage of the nation’s population living in cities than ever before and with a huge influx of immigrants.
These concerns gave rise to the Progressive movement (embodied to some extent by several political parties of the same name), the philosophy of which was that government intervention was needed to counteract social ills. This ran counter to the traditional American philosophy that individual rights could best be protected by minimizing government involvement. The movement was also championed the causes of women’s rights, safe food and temperance. Strangely, the movement did not enthusiastically embrace blacks, Native Americans or some of the new immigrant groups (Davis).
The Progressives’ crusade for social reform had a mixed record. It led to the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, providing for the direct election of United States senators and the Nineteenth Amendment, providing women with the right to vote. However, as a result of various pieces of legislation which lowered foreign tariffs in an attempt to increase competition with large domestic corporations, revenue losses led to the ratification of the odious Sixteenth Amendment, providing for a Federal income tax that is still with us today. It also led to the ill-conceived and much maligned Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the manufacture, sale and transport of alcoholic beverages. This Amendment succeeded only in increasing the popularity of alcohol consumption and providing great sources of revenue for organized crime. This amendment met its timely death in 1933 with the enactment of the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition (Timberlake).
Some of the advances made during the Progressive Era were not so much the result of the efforts of reformers as they were due to public outcry. For example, the “muckraker” Upton Sinclair’s gruesome portrayal of the plight of the poor immigrant worker, The Jungle, caused such public disgust at its portrayal of the meatpacking industry that the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was passed soon after. Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell similarly raised public awareness (Gould).
Many of the pieces of legislation enacted by Progressives to combat child labor, such as the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, were eviscerated and declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. However, public resistance to child labor and local efforts saw the reduction of the child labor force by one-half between 1910 and 1920. By the 1930’s, virtually every state severely limited child labor (Davis).
The efforts to increase the strength of labor unions were ironically thwarted by judicial interpretation of many antitrust measures enacted by Progressives to tame big business. The courts used these same laws to declare many union activities as illegal restraint of trade. This was somewhat corrected by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, which exempted many union activities from antitrust legislation. Still, the American Federation of Labor had gained much strength on the basis of workers’ own efforts before this legislation was enacted (Gould).
Minimum wage and working condition laws with met similar judicial resistance. As late as 1923, the Supreme Court declared the District of Columbia’s minimum wage and child labor laws unconstitutional as unpermitted interference with interstate commerce. The tragic Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York City in 1911, in which over 140 female workers were trapped on the upper floors of the burning building that housed their workplace after the employer had locked the exits, did more to arouse public outrage at the working woman’s plight than all the government involvement championed by the Progressives. This outrage mobilized Alfred E. Smith and Robert Wagner, members of the Tammany Hall Democratic political machine in New York City that was despised by Progressives, to pass local laws that protected such workers (Gould).
In summary, the Progressives had a mixed record. Some of the changes brought about in the Progressive Era may have been as much the result of grass-roots support and public outrage as of the government involvement espoused by Progressives. That Era has left us, however, with one certain, lasting legacy: Big Government.
Works Cited
Davis, Kay. “Photography and Social Reform.” University of Virginia. Web. 28 Feb.
Gould, Lewis. America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1914. New York: Longman
Publishing, 2001. Print.
Timberlake, Stephen. Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900-1920.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Print.
