The Progressive Era and Women’s Suffrage

How Teddy Roosevelt, Jacob Riis, the “Muckrakers” and Emily Davidson

impacted the US

President Roosevelt as a progressive

• Was the police commissioner of NYC beginning in 1895 (fought against crime as well as political corruption “Tammany Hall”)

• While president he became known as the “trust buster”. Trusts were giant companies that controlled a whole industry by buying up all of the other companies that they did business with.

• In reality President Roosevelt was a “trust regulator” as he was not anti-business, he just wanted business in America to be fair. (Remember the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890?) In 1902 TR pushed for the US government to sue a large conglomerate of railroad companies.

What is this cartoonist showing us? Was the cartoonist for or against President Roosevelt?

TR was the first “green” president

• TR was an accomplished ornithologist

• TR loved the outdoors and loved to hunt

• He argued that our natural resources should be preserved and established several new national parks as well as bird and game preserves

TR fights to clean up America’s food!• Muckrakers were writers who researched, wrote and published articles on the problems or

“muck” in society. They focused on things like child labor, political corruption, crime, etc• TR was shocked by what he read in muckraker, Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle (remember

reading parts of this in class?)• He pushed for the Meat Inspection Act(1906) and the Food and Drug Act (1906) (see wiki)

The Muckrakers

• Fought for laws to protect exploited children workers• Brought attention to poor conditions in tenement homes• Attempted to clean up crime and gangs in American cities (the

Social Gospel Movement)• Ida Tarbell (writer), Jacob Riis(photographer) and Upton

Sinclair (writer) • 1911 Triangle Shirt Factory Fire

"In life as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard, don't foul and don't shirk,but hit the line hard".

-Teddy Roosevelt

What does this quote tell you about TR’s views on sports and life?

First president to own a car, first president to ride in an airplane, first president to be submerged in a submarine, first president to invite an African American guest to the White House, first president to travel outside of the US while president and the “Teddy” bear is named for him! (www.nps.gov)

I Was First!

Suffrage• The right to vote was something women in Britain and the US had

been fighting for for sometime• Suffrage started to become a political issue during the abolitionist

movement• Seneca Falls Convention led by Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia

Mott (1848)• Women were first given the right to vote in the western

states…..do you know why?• In Great Britain in 1913, Emily Davidson made the issue famous.• In the US suffragettes embarrassed President Wilson by

protesting outside of the White House, some even chaining themselves to the White House fence

Presidents Taft and Wilson