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18 The Rise of Progressivismf " !,,t"€.

Getting the ldeaThe hallmark of the Progressive Fra (1890-1920) was political andsocial reform. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, businesseswere largely unregulated and profrts for the owners were enormous.but the workers had little share in the wealth for which their Iaborwas responsible. As the middle class grew in size and economic security,more and more of its members became aware of the plight of theirimmigrant and blue-collar neighbors.

Unequal Distribution of WealthIn 1-900, the Carnegie Steel Company made a profit of $40 million. Andrew Carnegie's personalshareamountedto$25million, or630/o of thetotal.Thefollowingyear, hesoldhiscompanyfor$250 million to a group headed by banker J. P, Morgan, who went on to make it the nucleus ofthe United States Steel Corporation. From his humble beginnings in Scotland, Carnegie hadbecome the richest man in the world.

In 1889, Carnegie wrote an essay entitled "The Gospel of Wealth," in which he set forth hisphilosophy that people who accumulate great riches should use their surplus wealth for "theimprovement of mankind." After selling his steel company, Carnegie did in fact contribute greatlyto philanthropic causes, notably colleges, universities, libraries, and scientific research. lt wasthe rare small American town that did not boast a "Carnegie public library," and Carnegie Hall inNew York City provided not only a superb concert auditorium but several floors of very low-rentstudios for working artists and musicians.

On one level, Carnegie's rags-to-riches story strikes a deeplyAmerican chord. Hls hard work,keen insight, and good luck were exactly the qualities celebrated by the American novelistHoratio Alger (1832-1899). Alger's young heroes usually began in poverty, and succeededbecause of their perseverance, courage, and opportunism. Alger's message was always thesame: with hard work and determination, any American lad could make something of himself.

Yet there was more than one side to the story of capitalism. In 1873, popular writer Mark Twain,whose given name is Samuel Clemens, of Missouri published a novel called Ihe Gilded Age:ATale of Today. The book satirized capitalistgreed run rampant. Twain's title was anything butflattering: by "gilded," he meant a shallow veneer or surface that covered up the poverty andcorruption that abounded in the United States. The phrase also struck a chord in the Americanpsyche. Even today, the term Gilded Age is used to signify the post-Reconstruction United Statesin the late nineteentfl century. The phrase connotes widespread excesses and the abuse ofindustrial and governmental power. Thus, it did not escape the notice of the newspapers that thesame Andrew Carnegie who had preached the "gospel of wealth" found it convenient in 1892 to

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Lesson 18: The Rise of Progressivism

The expansive gap between the wealthy and the poor: a mansion in Newport (left) and a slum in New

York City (right)

vacation in Scotland while his plant manager, Henry Clay Frick, broke the steelworkers' union in

Homestead, Pennsylvania, with specially hired armed guards. After the strike ended, Frick and

Carnegie forced all employees to sign individual contracts. The potential for collectivebargaining-by which unionized workers negotiate as a group with their employer-wentunrealized for decades in the Homestead steel mills.

Greed, contempt, extravagance, and corruption were often attributed to the capitalists of theGilded Age. For example, Cornelius Vanderbilt is said to have once remarked, "Lawl What do I

care about law? H'ain't I got power?" In an era when farmers found it difficult to pay their billsdue to the decline in prices for such crops as cotton and wheat, it is said there was an elegantdinner party at a mansion in Newport, Rhode lsland, inviting guests to dig into a sandpile withsilver shovels for rubies and diamonds. lt wouldn't be surprising to discover that railroad tycoonJay Gould bought a yacht worth half a million dollars; banker J. P. Morgan rode in a $100,000private railroad car; the "captains of industry," as they were called, slept in beds worth $25,000or more. In 1899, social critic Thorstein Veblen would use the phrase "conspicuousconsumption" to describe the lifestyle of wealthy Americans.

Collis P. Huntingdon was an owner and one of four financiers of the Central Pacific Railroad. He

was said to have budgeted half a million dollars annually for bribes between 1875 and 1885.When questioned, Huntington explained mildly, "lf you have to pay money to have the right thingdone, it is only just and fairto do it." More and more, the nation's most prominent capitalistswere viewed scornfully as robber barons who led extravagant lifestyles at the expense of ordinaryworkers, immigrants, and racial and ethnic minorities.

An enormous gap existed between the very wealthy and the poor. In 1890, the top 1% of thepopulation owned more than 25% of the nation's assets; the top 10% owned 7O%. During thelatter half of the nineteenth century, however, there was considerable growth in the middle class.The expansion of industry led to growth in the numbers of managerial positions, which meantthere were more clerical and other office jobs available to those who, with their high-schooleducations and genteel backgrounds, would not consider earning a living in a "blue-collar" job.Professional positions in such fields as law, medicine, and engineering also multiplied. Thewhite-collar workforce expanded from about 5% of the total labor pool in 1870 to I-to/o (of a

much larger total) in l-900.

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NORTH CAROLINA EOC COACH, U.S. HISTORY. GRADE 11

Along with the growth of the middle class went something of a change in its nature. Due tothe growth of big business and industry, the percentage of people who could afford to ownproperty on which they might earn a living decreased notably. In 1-900, 46.5 percent of thepopulation owned their own houses. Many of those lived on farms, and lived on propertyowned by previous generations. More and more, the middle class was becoming a class thatworked for others, rather than being self-employed, small-business owners as they had beena hundred years earlier. These trends in the middle class, though, were less dramatic than theremarkably uneven distribution of income and wealth.

Emergence of Social GospelThe Progressive Era began when comfortable members of the middle class began to recognizethe enormous gap between the social status of the wealthy and the poor. Middle-class NewYorkers or Bostonians on their way to work could not avoid seeing that their cities were sufferingfrom overcrowding, crime, and corruption. Conditions in the workplace were often unfair anddangerous. Trusts and monopolies dominated big business. The Progressives adopted anapproach called the Social Gaspelmovement. According to this philosophy, people had a moralobligation to help those in need. Unlike animals, who naturally abandoned those who were notstrong enough to contribute to or keep up with the pack or herd, people could strengthen oneanother if they chose to do so.

Progressive reformers often used books, magazines, and newspapers to promote their causes.The muckrakers offer some outstanding examples. Theodore Roosevelt was the first to refer toinvestigative journalists as "muckrakers." He named them after a character in John Bunyan'sseventeenth-century classic Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan's Muckraker is so occupied with rakingfilth on earth that he never looks up to heaven. Roosevelt used the term in an unflatteringsense, but many investigative journalists of the day were passionately convinced that the onlyway to inform and influence public opinion was to publish their findings in as graphic detail asoossible.

Magazine editor and reporter Lincoln Steffens focused his attention municipal corruption in citiessuch as St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Cincinnati. Steffens' reports were publishedin McCture'smagazine, which developed into the leading muckraker periodical. In 1-904, Steffens collectedhis articles and published them in book form, under the title The Shame of the Cities. Fellow-muckraker lda Tarbellfocused on big business, especially on the Standard Oil trust led by JohnD. Rockefeller. Tarbell's articles, which exposed Rockefeller's illegal and unfair businesspractices, also ran in McClure's. Her book, History of the Standard Oit Company, also publishedin 1904, is now regarded as a classic of investigative journalism. Tarbell's expos6 was theleading cause of the breakup of the Standard Oil trust in L91_1_.

What some see as the most sensational muckraking document of all was published in theform of a novel. Upton Sinclair painstakingly researched the labor abuses, appalling workplaceconditions, and health hazards of the meatpacking industry in Chicago. In 1906, he published a

brutally vivid account of the Chicago stockyards entitled The Jungle. Sinclair's realism blurred theline between fiction and nonfiction. Although his characters were imaginary, the conditions hedescribed were all too real. Meat-eating readers were horrified at Sinclair's descriptions ofworkers sweeping up everything on the floors, including dead rats and rat droppings, and addingit to the bins of sausage. Sinclair made it clear that management was to blame; the owner careoonly about how many pounds of sausage were produced, not about what went into them.Workers had no choice but to turn a blind eye to factory conditions, or be fired. The Jungte hadan immediate impact on public policy, leading to the passage of the first Pure Food and Drug Act

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Lesson 18: The Rise of Progressivism

and eventually to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration. Meanwhile,

photojournalist Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives, with its sympathetic but realistic

photos of the New York City slums and their immigrant inhabitants'

ln L9!I, a disastrous factory accident proved that the muckrakers were ri$ht about the value

of publicity. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupied the upper floors on a building in New

York City's Greenwich Village, and employed nearly 500 seamstresses, mainly Jewish and ltalian

immigrants, some as young as fourteen, to make women's blouses. When a'fire broke out late

one afternoon, the seamstresses panicked. One rusty fire escape that the owners had never

bothered to maintain in good order broke under their weight, sending them plummeting several

stories to their deaths. Fire doors that would have allowed them to escape down the stairwells

were locked. The owners later explained that the doors were kept locked so that the girls could

not slio out for unauthorized breaks. More than 145 women fell, jumped, or were burned to death.

In the wake of this tragedy, reformers lobbied energetically for improvement in workplace safety

regulations. State labor departments were established, and accident insurance programs were

started. ln L9L2, Massachusetts passed a minimum wage law, and eight other states followed

the next year. This was only one instance of positive accomplishment by the Progressives'

Women jumped from the ninth floor and roof to escape the frre at the Triangle

Shirtwaist Company.

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Guided Reading Questions/ Lesson 18: The Rise of Progressivism

Name___________________________

1. Identify and explain the “Gospel of Wealth” and who wrote it. 2. In 1890 how much of the country’s assets were owned by the top 1% and the top 10%?

3. How was the strike in Homestead Pennsylvania broke up and what was the result once the strike was finished?

4. What were progressive reformers called by President Roosevelt? 5. Where did Lincoln Steffens focus his efforts in Progressive Reform? 6. Where did Ida Tarbell focus her efforts in Progressive Reform? 7. What topic did the published book of Upton Sinclair cover? 8. What took place at the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory? 9. What did President Roosevelt become know as, because of his efforts of breaking up monopolies? 10. By the passing of the 17th

Amendment, this gave citizens more of what?