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Class Date: April 8th, 9:30am
Location: Your couch! See your weekly e-mail for Zoom link!
How Progressive?
How Progressive?
This week we’re looking at the Progressive Era, but the side that we don’t talk about too much. While the era gave us much in the way of food safety, labor safety, and even an effective curtailment of child labor, there were darker parts of the moment. But before we get there, let’s look at some background of the time:
1870 - John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil
Rockefeller utilized the idea of horizontal integration, meaning his company controlled the manufacture and processing of almost all oil production, processing, marketing, and transportation. At one point, Standard Oil controlled 90% of the nation’s refineries and pipelines. They even built their own oil barrels as a company. This consolidation and control helped kickstart industrialization and the Gilded Age.
To see an 11 minute overview of John D. Rockefeller and his life, check out this video here:
1877 - The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
The first major strike in the United States among laborers. Crossing multiple states, this strike and violence spread across states and led governors in 10 states to mobilize 60,000 militia members to break the strike and re-open rail traffic. Unfortunately, this strike helped to create conditions for violence against laborers in the 1880s and 90s. To read an overview of the strike and its impacts, check out this article from the Library of Congress: https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/july/great-railroad-strike-1877
1886 - Samuel Gompers founds the American Federation of Labor
A variety of small craft unions united under the leadership of Samuel Gompers to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL gave each of the more 100 unions in the organization ‘exclusive jurisdiction’ over a craft. They did not engage in national political issues, but focused on collective bargaining for wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions.
1881 - Tuskegee University founded
The beginning of this Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) can actually be credited to Lewis Adams, a formerly enslaved man, who never received a day of formal education, though he could read and write. W.F. Foster was running for Alabama Senate reelection and asked Adams to help him with the support of the Black community. Instead of asking for money, Adams asked that Foster help establish an educational institution for the Black population. To read more about this and how they recruited Booker T. Washington to teach at the Institute, click here:
https://www.tuskegee.edu/about-us/history-and-mission
1890s - Yellow journalism becomes popular
The term comes from a popular comic called “Hogan’s Alley” which featured a character dressed in yellow named ‘the yellow kid’. The term came to mean writing sensational stories for the sake of selling papers. William Randoph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer used drama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of their newspapers.
1890 - Sherman Antitrust Act passed
The Sherman Antitrust Act was the first Congressional move to limit businesses in forming monopolies through trusts. Many Americans were growing concerned about companies like Standard Oil, who were dominating the marketplace and stifling competition. While large business owners were growing rich, workers were struggling with poor working conditions and limited pay.
December 29, 1890 - Wounded Knee Massacre
Despite the Ft. Laramie Treaty years before that promised peace between Native Nations and the United States, the U.S. Calvary fired on scores of gathered Lakota people at Wounded Knee. The massacre effectively ended organized resistance to U.S. encroachment on Native Lands and showed other Native Nations that treaties with the United States were not reliable.
For a 3 minute overview of the massacre, watch a video here: https://youtu.be/UJ-cUsUg_J0
May 1894 - Pullman Strike begins
At its peak, approximately a quarter million workers were on strike. Ultimately, the federal government intervened to put down the strike, violently. The strike represents a major turning point in labor relations in the United States. To read an overview of the strike and its significance, click here: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/blog/on-this-day-the-pullman-strike-changes-labor-law
1892 - Muir establishes the Sierra Club
After successfully campaigning for the protection of Yosemite, John Muir turned his focus to protecting more natural spaces from the fast pace of industrialization and expansion. He established the Sierra Club to advocate for natural spaces. However, Muir’s advocacy for preservation wasn’t necessarily for all to enjoy. Very much a product of his time, Muir saw many, including indigenous peoples and African Americans, as not worthy of having access to natural spaces or their ancestral homelands. To read about how the Sierra Club is grappling with the racist origins of some of its work, check out this Smithsonian article here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sierra-club-grapples-founder-john-muirs-racism-180975404/
May 1894 - Pullman Strike begins
At its peak, approximately a quarter million workers were on strike. Ultimately, the federal government intervened to put down the strike, violently. The strike represents a major turning point in labor relations in the United States. To read an overview of the strike and its significance, click here: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/blog/on-this-day-the-pullman-strike-changes-labor-law
1897 - The first subway
The first underground public transportation in North America opens in Boston, Massachusetts. To read more about it, click here: https://historyofmassachusetts.org/boston-first-subway-america/
1899 - Newsies strike in New York
Highlighting the issues surrounding child labor, children working for Pulitzer and Hearst organized a newsboy strike. To see a musical dramatization of the strike, you can catch the movie ‘Newsies’ on Disney+. (My sisters and I watched the movie constantly as kids and I still sing the songs occasionally!)
1902-1904 - Ida Tarbell published “The History of the Standard Oil Company”
Ida Tarbell was a famed investigative journalist, known as a ‘muckraker’, who often wrote about unethical business practices. She studied John D. Rockefeller and his creation of Standard Oil Company for years before publishing about the aggressive techniques he employed to create a giant monopoly. McClure’s Magazine published the work in 19 installments and it caught national attention.
1906 - The Jungle is published
Another muckraker, Upton Sinclair exposed food safety practices (or lack thereof) in the meat processing industry. His descriptions of rotten and contaminated meat shocked the American public and prompted new federal legislation on food safety.
March 25, 1911 - The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is one of the most infamous industrial accidents in history. Located on the 8th-10th floors of the Asch building in Manhattan. The sweatshop employed teenaged immigrant girls, most of whom did not speak English, working elbow to elbow at sewing machines for 12 hours a day, every day. The building had 4 elevators up to the factory floors, but only 1 of them was working in 1911. There were 2 stairways to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent theft and the other only opened inward. There was a small fire escape, but it was so narrow it would have taken hours to empty the factory of people. The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had a suspicious history of their factories burning down in off hours for fire insurance. They refused to install sprinklers or other fire safety measures, possibly because they might need to burn their factory again.
On March 25th, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers in the factory. The fire started in a rag bin and found ready fuel in oil soaked fabric (sewing machines were regularly oiled to keep them running smoothly). The manager couldn’t use the fire hose to put out the flames because the valve was rusted shut and the hose was rotted. The only working elevator broke after only 4 trips (holding 12 people each). In total, after the fire burned for 18 minutes, 146 people, most of them teenaged workers, died in the fire.
The horror of the fire would spurn a wave of reforms.
1913 - Federal Segregation begins
President Woodrow Wilson, newly inaugurated, began implementing a policy of racial segregation across the federal government. A Southerner himself, he had appointed several segregationists to his Cabinet and they were eager to separate employees along racial lines. This action would prove to have far reaching consequences, especially on the economic development of the Black community. To read more about this program and these effects, click here: https://theconversation.com/segregation-policies-in-federal-government-in-early-20th-century-harmed-blacks-for-decades-145669
That is where our timeline leaves us for this week! Check below for additional reading resources!
Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading
To read more about this period, here are some great books to get you started:
The Progressive Era: Reform and Regulation by Logan Marlowe
In the heart of the Progressive Era, America transformed from a nation grappling with internal challenges into a burgeoning world power, reshaping its identity on the global stage. This short story invites young readers to explore this pivotal time in history, where reformers championed social justice, labor rights, and women's suffrage. As they dive into the narrative, children will meet inspiring figures like Jane Addams, who founded Hull House to support immigrants, and Theodore Roosevelt, who tackled monopolies and championed conservation efforts.
As America emerged as a world power, the story highlights key events such as the Spanish-American War, which marked a turning point in U.S. foreign policy. Readers will learn how this conflict not only showcased America's military strength but also sparked debates about imperialism and the nation's role in global affairs. This exploration of history is not just about dates and events; it’s about understanding the values and decisions that shaped a nation.
This educational journey through the Progressive Era serves as a foundation for understanding the complexities of American history and the importance of being informed citizens. With each turn of the page, young readers will discover that history is not just a series of events; it’s a tapestry of stories waiting to be told, and they are now part of that ongoing narrative.
Not on My Watch by Brittany Canasi
Hope has been taught that the best place for a woman is home. Yet, her aspirations lead her elsewhere - to her father's watch factory. But when she discovers something horrific happening, she must make a choice that could change everything. Includes historical background information on the Industrial Revolution. Paired to the nonfiction title America Enters the Industrial Revolution.
For adults:
Class Book Recommendation
The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman (a novel)
In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement—when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin—in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for listeners of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.
When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year-old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.
Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.”
After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena faces impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.
The Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, & American Economics in the Progressive Era by Thomas C. Leonard
The pivotal and troubling role of progressive-era economics in the shaping of modern American liberalism
In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal role in establishing minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws, workmen's compensation, antitrust regulation, and other hallmarks of the regulatory welfare state. But even as they offered uplift to some, economic progressives advocated exclusion for others, and did both in the name of progress. Leonard meticulously reconstructs the influence of Darwinism, racial science, and eugenics on scholars and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing a reform community deeply ambivalent about America's poor. Illiberal Reformers shows that the intellectual champions of the regulatory welfare state proposed using it not to help those they portrayed as hereditary inferiors but to exclude them.
Works Cited
Works Cited
https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/tutorials/antebellum-newspapers-introduction/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/newsboys-strike/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-Federation-of-Labor-Congress-of-Industrial-Organizations
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hull-House
https://connecticuthistory.org/ida-tarbell-the-woman-who-took-on-standard-oil/
https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/timeline
https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/children-dammed-st-francis-dam-disaster/
https://www.infoplease.com/history/world/1800-1899-ad-world-history
https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/revwartimeline.html
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