1. Chapter 4
Labor and Progressivism

2. 4.1 WORKERS AND LABOR
UNIONS

3. Conditions of the Workers
• Nations' economy becoming more industrialized
• Growth of urban areas
• Increase in immigration
• Working conditions:
• Long working hours
• Low wages
• Dangerous working conditions
• No social security or unemployment

4. • Child Labor
• very common
• Children as young as 5 have to work for their families
survival
• No education and no childhood
• Would never make it above the poverty level

5. The Unions
• Labor Unions – arose because of the working
conditions
• Organization of workers formed to protect interests of
its members
• Craft unions – skilled workers who practiced a
specific craft
• Trade unions – less skilled workers

6. • The Knights of Labor
• Formed to create one union of factory workers,
farmers, shopkeepers, and office workers
• Included African Americans
• Supported Reforms:
• Equal pay for equal work
• Eight-hour work day
• End child labor
• declined and disappeared in 1890’s

7. • The American Federation of Labor
• Craft union lead by Samuel Gompers
• Issues: working hours, wages, working conditions
• Used strikes and boycotts
• Believed in Collective Bargaining
• Negotiate as a group not an individual
• Forced closed shop workplaces
• Employers had to hire only union members

8. • Eugene Debs
• one of most influential union leaders in history
• Organized American Railway Union
• Lead the Pullman strike
• Ran for president several times as American Socialist
Party

9. Employer Response to Unions
• Hated unions
• Forced employees to sigh contracts saying they
won’t join unions
• Some places unions workers on blacklists (list of
workers employers would refuse to hire)
• Lockouts – not allow employees to return to
work
• During strikes, employers would hire scabs –
replacement worker

10. • Employers worked with government when it
came to unions
• Government would grant companies injunctions
– court order that forbade strikes because law
violation or threatened public interests
• if all else failed employers would use violence or
intimidation to deal with labor issues

11. Strikes and Confrontations
• The Great Strike
• Railroad workers strike because of wage cuts
• Violence throughout the Midwest and eastern U.S.
• President sends federal troops to put down protest
• Showed employers that they could appeal to federal
government for help
• Haymarket Riot
• Seven police officers killed during protest
• turned public opinion against unions
• Saw them as anarchies and violent

12. • The Homestead Strike
• Among steel workers at Carnegie Steel
• Carnegie was in Europe when is workers when on
strike because of his partner Henry Frick
• Frick hired a private police force the Pinkertons
• Shootout left several dead or wounded
• The Pullman Strike
• Pullman fired three labor representatives
• Closed plant down
• American Railway Union and Eugene Debs boycott
Pullman cars
• Court injunction against the union set a precedence for
owners appealing to government to end strikes

13. 4.2 PROGRESSIVISM

14. Progressive Era
• Era in which both government and citizens called
for reform in business, politics, and society as a
whole
• Some enjoyed wealth and prosperity
• Immigrants and poor stilled live and work under
harsh conditions

15. Muckrakers
• Writers who exposed abuse in government and
big business
• Theodore Roosevelt gave them their names
• Muckrakers:
• Lincoln Steffens – political corruption
• Ida Tarbell – abuse of Standard Oil
• Upton Sinclair – The Jungle
• Uncovered the truth about U.S. meat packing
industry
• Lead to the creation of meat inspection programs

16. Social Reformers
• Jacob Riis – drew attention to terrible living
conditions in tenement
• Jane Addams – opened Hull House in Chicago
• Center which poor immigrants and workers could get
help
• Launch pad into investigations into economic,
political, and social conditions
• Help lay the foundation for future settlement houses

17. The Temperance Movement
• Movement to limit and then eliminate alcohol
• 1919 Congress ratified the 18th Amendment
• Prohibited the making, selling, or transporting of any
alcoholic beverage in the U.S.
• Later referred to as “Prohibition”
• Failure/Was repealed by the 21st Amendment

18. Women’s Suffrage
• Women’s Suffrage Movement
• Women’s right to vote
• Early movement at Seneca Falls Convention 1848
• Susan B. Anthony most recognized
• Established the North American Women’s Suffrage
Association
• 1920 Congress passed the 19th Amendment

19. Theodore Roosevelt
• Became the youngest man to be inaugurated
president
• Progressive president who pushed for reform
• Felt many monopolies were harmful
• Competitive, strong willed, energetic
• Social Darwinist

20. • Coal Mine Strike 1902
• Roosevelt called both sides to White House
• Used arbitration (a third impartial judgment on a
dispute)
• Breaking up Trusts
• Brought suit against Northern Securities Company
for violating the Sherman Anti-trust Act
• Raised as a reformer; went after other trusts

21. William Howard Taft, Woodrow
Wilson, and The Election of 1912
• Roosevelt hand picked his friend Taft to run for
president
• Taft won
• Was not the reformer Roosevelt was but did change
some issues
• Mann-Elkins Act – expanded the power of the
Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate
telephone and telegraph rates
• Brought down more trusts than Roosevelt

22. • Taft could not gain full support of Progressives in the
Republican party
• Party split in 1912 election
• Taft – Republican Party
• Roosevelt – Progressive Party/Bull Moose Party
• Woodrow Wilson – Democrat Party
Split the
Republican
vote
Won the election

23. • Wilson opposed both big business and big
government
• Federal Reserve Act – established a federal
reserve to oversee banking in the U.S.; gave
government greater control over money
circulation and prevent bank failures
• Clayton Antitrust Act – made strikes, peaceful
picketing, and boycotting legal
• Government can no longer use antitrust laws to up
down strikes or break up unions

24. Constitutional Amendments
During the Progressive Period
Sixteenth Amendment (1913)
Seventeenth Amendment (1913)
Eighteenth Amendment (1919)
Nineteenth Amendment (1920)

25. Reforms in State Government
• Referendum – allowing citizens to vote directly
on proposed laws and policies
• Initiative – allowing for citizens of the state to
force a vote on a particular issue
• Recall – holding special elections to remove
corrupt officials from office before their terms
have expired
• Secret Ballot – allowing individuals to vote
secretly removing fear if voting against certain
candidates

26. 4.3 AFRICAN AMERICANS OF
THE PROGRESSIVE PERIOD

27. Disenfranchisement of
African Americas
• After Civil War, African Americas faces racism
and discrimination
• Disenfranchisement – deny a certain group of
people the right to vote
• 14th Amendment – gave AA citizenship
• 15th Amendment – gave AA the right to vote

28. • States did not follow the 15th Amendment
• Ways states stopped AA from voting:
• Literacy tests – had to prove you can read before
voting; AA had not formal education so they could not
read
• Poll tax – citizens of that state to pay a special tax to
vote; AA too poor to pay
• Grandfather Clause
• Allowed for poor and illiterate whites to still be able to
vote
• Anyone who votes in past elections or ancestors who
voted were exempt from the above laws

29. Segregation
• Segregation – separation of races
• De jure segregation – separation based on law
• Plessy v. Ferguson – Homer Plessy was jailed for
stilling in an all whites section of a railway car. He
sued. Supreme Court said that segregation was legal
as long as the separate facilities and services were
equal. – “separate but equal”
• De facto segregation – not by law; evolved due to
economic and social factors
• More evident in the North

30. • Jim Crow Laws – laws that established racism
• Meant that blacks were segregated from schools,
restaurants, hospitals, public transpiration
• Great Migration – period when thousands of AA left the
south in search of industrial jobs created by the war

31. Booker T. Washington
• Former slave
• Founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
• Train AA in a trade to they can achieve economies
freedom and escape the oppression suffered by
uneducated blacks
• If AA excelled in trades requiring manual labor,
whites would eventually treat them as equals
• “Atlanta Compromise”

32. W.E.B. Du Bois
• First black Ph.D. graduate from Harvard
• Disagreed with Booker T. Washington
• Argued blacks should pursue occupations in the
humanities and in white-collar fields
• Blacks must be politically and socially active to gain
equality
• Help fund National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

33. Ida Wells-Barnett
• Fearless advocate of civil rights movement
• One of the important AA women of her day
• Campaigned against the railway cars, participated
in women’s suffrage parades, helped form
NAACP, fought against lynching

34. Marcus Garvey
• Born Jamaican
• Important figure during Progressive Era
• “Back to Africa” movement
• Blacks leaving the U.S. to find a homeland in Africa
• Never came about
• Helped give since of pride AA never felt before