Progressive Movement (captioned) — Transcript
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- 0:16♪
- 0:35♪ [Patriotic music]
- 0:42♪
- 1:36[Man] In the battle with the slum,
- 1:38we win or we perish.
- 1:41Either wipe out the slum, or it wipes out us.
- 1:45There is no middle way.
- 1:48Jacob Riis, 1902.
- 1:52[Man] There was a common and widespread spirit
- 1:53of revolt among the people,
- 1:56a movement of the new generation toward more democracy.
- 1:58Nearly everyone felt it.
- 2:01Robert La Follette, 1911.
- 2:04[Narrator] Between 1870 and 1920,
- 2:0726 million immigrants came to live in the United States.
- 2:12After 1900, most came from Southern and Eastern Europe
- 2:16and settled mainly in the largest cities.
- 2:19Here, they worked in small sweatshops
- 2:21and giant industrial workplaces
- 2:24which boomed like they never had before.
- 2:30A single company--
- 2:31John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil--
- 2:33controlled 90% of all oil business
- 2:36in the United States.
- 2:39Corporations conspired with each other
- 2:41to keep prices high and wages low,
- 2:44swindling consumers and workers in a single stroke.
- 2:49Violent labor strikes,
- 2:51corporate giants driving smaller operators
- 2:54out of business,
- 2:55cities plagued by crime and poverty...
- 2:58to many Americans, it appeared that industrialization
- 3:02was threatening the future of the nation.
- 3:07What would become of the nation's cities,
- 3:09flooded with new people and new problems?
- 3:13What would become of the nation's gigantic industries,
- 3:16gaining so much steam and power?
- 3:19What would become of the United States itself?
- 3:23These were the enormous questions
- 3:25that progressivism would try to answer.
- 3:41The nation was justly proud of its democratic heritage.
- 3:45But how could democracy survive
- 3:46the grave new challenges of a brave new century?
- 3:51Some of the first answers were provided by women.
- 3:55The most well-known was Jane Addams,
- 3:57who tried to bring the poor and the rich,
- 4:00the immigrant and the native-born together
- 4:02under a single roof.
- 4:04She called it Hull House.
- 4:08Occupying an old building
- 4:09in an immigrant neighborhood of chicago,
- 4:11Addams and her fellow residents
- 4:13provided newcomers with English lessons,
- 4:16employment advice, and child care.
- 4:19Women also pressed for expanded government services
- 4:22which they called municipal housekeeping
- 4:25or, more commonly, progressivism.
- 4:28[Man] progressivism became a word
- 4:30on everyone's lips
- 4:31in the early 20th century,
- 4:34and it meant the quest to make progress,
- 4:37to bring about reforms
- 4:40that would tend to some severe problems
- 4:43that were plaguing American society,
- 4:46that were plaguing American politics,
- 4:48that were plaguing the American economy.
- 4:51So progressivism meant the march for greater progress.
- 4:55[Man] One good example
- 4:57is the child labor reform movement,
- 5:00where a lot of people--
- 5:01a lot of women, especially, and social reformers--
- 5:04got very excited about young children working in factories.
- 5:07in this period, often,
- 5:108-, 10-year-olds worked in factories,
- 5:13sometimes 10, 12 hours a day.
- 5:15[Narrator] Flooding into schools,
- 5:17women demanded medical checkups for students.
- 5:21In city health departments.
- 5:22They promoted water purification
- 5:24and milk inspection.
- 5:26At departments of labor,
- 5:28they reported the illegal employment of children in sweatshops,
- 5:32and at departments of housing,
- 5:34they noted fire-code and crowding violations.
- 5:38Joining hands with a new generation
- 5:40of male reformers,
- 5:42these progressive women saw themselves as the saviors
- 5:44of the United States' wretched urban poor.
- 5:55Often, though, the poor themselves,
- 5:57especially immigrants,
- 5:59wanted no part of progressive reform.
- 6:01Across the nation's cities, for example,
- 6:04progressives helped plan new parks and playgrounds,
- 6:07but immigrants and workers
- 6:09preferred ball fields and sandlots
- 6:11to the lush, landscaped gardens
- 6:13that the reformers had created.
- 6:15At schools, meanwhile, working-class Americans
- 6:18resented reform
- 6:19such as mandatory medical inspection of children.
- 6:23When a young boy came home
- 6:25with a note complaining about his body odor,
- 6:27his mother sent her own curt note back--
- 6:30"Teacher, Johnny ain't no rose.
- 6:33Learn him. Don't smell him."
- 6:37Many immigrants also worried that progressive reformers
- 6:39wanted to destroy their ethnic cultures.
- 6:43Pushing for trained teachers, improved testing,
- 6:46and other reforms,
- 6:47the progressives argued that better schools
- 6:49would help Americanize
- 6:51the nation's newest arrivals.
- 6:54[Woman] In forsaking the land of their birth,
- 6:56immigrants forsake customs and traditions of that land.
- 6:59They have an obligation in adopting a new country
- 7:02to adopt the language and customs of that country.
- 7:06Julia Richman, 1905.
- 7:11[Narrator] Nowhere was the clash
- 7:12between progressives and immigrants greater
- 7:14than in the question of alcohol.
- 7:17Since before the civil war,
- 7:18reformers had tried to rid "demon rum"
- 7:21from the nation's lips.
- 7:23In the progressive era, they changed their focus
- 7:26from the liquor itself
- 7:27to the place it was consumed--the saloon.
- 7:31Well, the progressives,
- 7:33usually from upper-class backgrounds,
- 7:36many of them women,
- 7:37thought the saloon was a bad influence on the neighborhood.
- 7:40They saw children going into the saloons
- 7:42to get pails of beer.
- 7:44They saw, sometimes, prostitutes hanging out at the saloons.
- 7:49They saw men hanging out there and spending their money
- 7:50when they thought they should be home.
- 7:53[Woman] People were living in homes
- 7:54that were crowded, damp, and unsanitary.
- 7:57The saloon would be warm and inviting.
- 8:00You could sit around and have camaraderie.
- 8:02For many ethnic communities,
- 8:04the saloon was the place
- 8:05where you got your paycheck cashed.
- 8:08it was where you found out local news
- 8:11or news from home,
- 8:12you found out whether there were jobs available,
- 8:15you made your connection to the local political party
- 8:17so you could have some leverage in elections,
- 8:22and just the sort of basic, neighborhood hangout.
- 8:32[Man] Time and time again,
- 8:34in private and in public,
- 8:36leaders have said they are out for themselves and their own--
- 8:40not for the public, but for me and my friends--
- 8:44not for New York, but for Tammany.
- 8:48[Narrator] Lincoln Steffens was one of the muckrakers--
- 8:50the journalists who exposed the waste and greed
- 8:53of the modern United States.
- 8:55One of the famous investigations
- 8:58was on the U.S. Senate
- 9:00called "The Treason of the Senate,"
- 9:03and the point here was that the senators
- 9:06were so tied to the economic powers
- 9:10that put them in office that they were treasonous
- 9:14to the interest of the United States
- 9:16and to the people of the United States.
- 9:18This article so enraged President Theodore Roosevelt
- 9:21that he gave a speech saying
- 9:23that these journalists are just going around raking muck
- 9:27just for muck's sake,
- 9:30and that's where the term muckraker comes from.
- 9:32[Narrator] Their investigations began in the slums
- 9:34and led upwards to urban political bosses
- 9:38like New York's George Washington Plunkitt.
- 9:41Bosses took bribes for city construction contracts
- 9:45or simply awarded them to their friends.
- 9:48Advance knowledge of a new project
- 9:50could be worth millions.
- 9:54Bosses also provided valuable services to immigrants.
- 9:57When they first arrived in the city,
- 9:59it was the boss who helped them obtain housing.
- 10:03In the winter, the boss provided coal.
- 10:05On Thanksgiving, he warmed hearts with a turkey.
- 10:09In return, all the newcomer had to do
- 10:11was vote for the boss and his party.
- 10:15Later, if he was especially loyal,
- 10:17the boss might give him a job
- 10:19in the police or fire department.
- 10:23They served their neighbors.
- 10:25In return, the neighbors voted for them.
- 10:27But the progressives got angry at the bosses,
- 10:29thinking that they were corrupt,
- 10:32thinking that they took money unfairly,
- 10:35so they had many campaigns
- 10:37to try to defeat the bosses
- 10:39and put in a more democratic system.
- 10:42In general, they failed.
- 10:43The bosses were so strong in most places
- 10:46that progressives failed to oust them,
- 10:49but it led to attempts to reform the city
- 10:53and, in many cases, to pass state laws
- 10:56about how elections should be handled and so forth.
- 10:59[Narrator] To free voters from boss control,
- 11:02progressives introduced the secret ballot.
- 11:05Voting had traditionally taken place in public,
- 11:08so the boss knew how you voted.
- 11:11That way he knew whom to reward and whom to punish.
- 11:14Under the new system, he could never tell.
- 11:18Reformers also won new voter registration laws
- 11:21to prevent bosses from stuffing ballot boxes
- 11:24with invented names
- 11:26or paying people to vote multiple times.
- 11:29And reformers won stronger civil service laws,
- 11:33requiring cities to award police, fire, and teaching jobs
- 11:36according to merit.
- 11:39No longer could the boss simply hire his supporters.
- 11:43Job seekers would now be screened by tests
- 11:46to measure how well they would perform.
- 11:57[Man] Mr. Vanderbilt, sir,
- 11:59does your railroad serve the public interest?
- 12:01[Vanderbilt] The public be damned.
- 12:03Of course we like to do everything possible for the benefit of humanity,
- 12:06but first, we see that we are benefiting ourselves.
- 12:12[Narrator] With as much passion
- 12:13as they fought urban bosses,
- 12:15muckrakers also attacked the nation's great corporations,
- 12:19or trusts.
- 12:20[Nell Irvin Painter] Now, if you have a trust--
- 12:23a large business working in one sector of the economy--
- 12:27and if you control enough of that economy,
- 12:30then you can raise prices.
- 12:32This is why people wanted to bust trusts--
- 12:36because prices were going up.
- 12:38One way to do that was to break up big companies.
- 12:46[Narrator] Ida Tarbell's exposé of the Standard Oil Company
- 12:46showed how its president, John D. Rockefeller,
- 12:48gobbled up smaller companies.
- 12:51Other muckrakers focused on the companies' mistreatment of workers,
- 12:55especially children.
- 12:57[Man] Crouched over the chutes,
- 12:58the boys sit hour after hour.
- 13:00Most of them become deformed
- 13:02and bent-backed like old men.
- 13:04Cut, broken or crushed fingers are common.
- 13:07sometimes, there's a worse accident.
- 13:09A terrific shriek is heard
- 13:11and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery
- 13:14or disappears in the chute to be picked out later,
- 13:16smothered and dead.
- 13:19John Spargo, 1906.
- 13:22[Narrator] Upton Sinclair published a novel called "The Jungle."
- 13:26Set in the gritty meat-packing yards of Chicago,
- 13:29it exposed the gruesome filth
- 13:31within one of the United States'
- 13:33fastest-growing industries.
- 13:35"Meat was on the floor in the dirt and sawdust
- 13:38"Where workers had tramped and spit.
- 13:41"Thousands of rats raced about.
- 13:44"Packers would put poisoned bread out for them,
- 13:46"And then rats, bread, meat
- 13:49would go into the hoppers together."
- 13:53[Narrator] Like urban bosses, the reformers said,
- 13:55these companies put private profit over public good.
- 14:00In the late 19th and early 20th century,
- 14:02large numbers of workers were not unionized,
- 14:04did not have representation,
- 14:06could not bargain with their employers.
- 14:09If they were in a workspace that was dangerous
- 14:12and they went to their boss and they said,
- 14:14"I'm worried about this staircase
- 14:16"because every time I go up and down the staircase,
- 14:19"This stair waggles,
- 14:20and I'm afraid I'll fall and break my head,"
- 14:23and the employer could just say, "Bye. You're fired."
- 14:28And if something happened--
- 14:30say that worker decided to keep the job,
- 14:32to go up and down the staircase,
- 14:34and one day, the stair broke,
- 14:36the worker fell and broke an arm, couldn't work.
- 14:40What do they get? Nothing.
- 14:42So one progressive reform, if you will,
- 14:45was workers' compensation,
- 14:48and workers' compensation means that a worker
- 14:51will get some money
- 14:52either from the state or from the corporation if injured.
- 14:57[Narrator] Unable to make businesses
- 14:59treat their workers with greater fairness,
- 15:01progressives turned to state and local governments.
- 15:05They won new laws to regulate what railroads
- 15:08and other big companies could charge.
- 15:11They placed restrictions on lobbying
- 15:13and campaign donations by corporations,
- 15:15which had often bribed state legislators.
- 15:19But what if a trust did business
- 15:21in many states?
- 15:23Companies like Standard Oil
- 15:25had operations all over the country.
- 15:28To control these gigantic industries,
- 15:31progressives had to turn to the federal government.
- 15:35In the White House, they found a supporter
- 15:38in the youngest man
- 15:39to ever occupy the nation's highest office.
- 15:42An asthmatic child, frail and sickly,
- 15:45Theodore Roosevelt developed into an avid writer,
- 15:48a skilled hunter,
- 15:50and a symbol of everything that was manly
- 15:52about the United States.
- 15:55Whether leading Rough Riders
- 15:57up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War
- 16:00or leading his presidential cabinet
- 16:02on trail rides through Rock Creek Park,
- 16:04Teddy Roosevelt cut a figure
- 16:06that was literally larger than life.
- 16:10[Man] He wore a tall black hat
- 16:11and he strode along with the physical power of a landslide.
- 16:15Never before or since have i been so much impressed
- 16:18by physical impact of a human being.
- 16:21--Hutchins Hapgood.
- 16:23[Narrator] As president,
- 16:25Roosevelt boasted that he would bust America's trusts
- 16:28just like he had killed Spaniards during the war.
- 16:32But Teddy's trust-busting was more talk than action.
- 16:36Instead of dividing trusts into smaller companies,
- 16:40Roosevelt tried to regulate them.
- 16:44To address the meat-packing horrors that Upton Sinclair described,
- 16:47Roosevelt signed the Meat Inspection Act,
- 16:50which required refrigeration and other health precautions.
- 16:55To control the sale of harmful patent medicines,
- 16:58He backed the Pure Food & Drug Act,
- 17:01which banned false labeling on packages.
- 17:04And to conserve the nation's dwindling forests,
- 17:07Roosevelt placed millions of acres under federal management.
- 17:12But who, exactly, would administer these new laws
- 17:15and protect the public's interests?
- 17:17In case after case, the answer was the same--
- 17:20a federal agency or department.
- 17:23The Meat Inspection Act authorized a branch
- 17:25of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
- 17:28to examine meat packing.
- 17:30The Pure Food & Drug Act created the Food and Drug Administration
- 17:34to approve new drugs for sale.
- 17:38The new national forests were administered by a Bureau of Forestry,
- 17:42which would evolve into the United States Forest Service.
- 17:46[Man] Governors of the several states and gentlemen,
- 17:50the occasion for this meeting lies in the fact
- 17:53that the natural resources of our country
- 17:55are in danger of exhaustion
- 17:58if we permit the old, wasteful methods of exploiting them longer, to continue.
- 18:03As a people, we have a right and duty
- 18:05to protect ourselves and our children
- 18:08against the wasteful development of our natural resources.
- 18:11President Theodore Roosevelt,
- 18:14National Conservation Congress, 1908.
- 18:19[Narrator] Fighting big business,
- 18:20progressivism helped create big government
- 18:23and cemented the marriage between them both.
- 18:26The federal government had largely been responsible
- 18:29for taxes on imports and exports
- 18:31and for having an army.
- 18:35It had not been responsible for making sure
- 18:37that if people got hurt on the job,
- 18:40that they could get some kind of care.
- 18:42It had not been responsible for making sure that food was safe to eat.
- 18:46That was a national-level reform.
- 18:49These were new ideas,
- 18:51that the government should be involved in those issues.
- 18:56[Narrator] The progressives also turned
- 18:58to the federal government
- 18:59to manage the nation's diminishing share
- 19:01of natural resources.
- 19:03By 1900, the government had sold or given away
- 19:07most publicly owned lands in the western part of the country.
- 19:11Claiming to speak for the larger interests
- 19:13of society and future generations,
- 19:17Roosevelt added more than 100 million acres
- 19:19to the national forest system
- 19:22and prosecuted hundreds of violators
- 19:24of public land laws,
- 19:26recovering millions of acres,
- 19:27which were placed under federal management.
- 19:31Roosevelt's objective was to conserve national resources
- 19:34for future use.
- 19:43Theodore Roosevelt's hand-picked successor
- 19:45in the White House, William Howard Taft,
- 19:47broke up more trusts than trustbusting Teddy.
- 19:52Roosevelt was outraged.
- 19:54Trusts, he believed, were here to stay.
- 19:57The president's job
- 19:58was to make them fairer, not smaller.
- 20:01So in 1911, Roosevelt announced his bid
- 20:04to recapture the presidency.
- 20:06Since Taft had a lock-hold
- 20:08on Roosevelt's old republican party,
- 20:11Teddy ran under a new banner--
- 20:13the progressive party.
- 20:15[Roosevelt] No effort should be made
- 20:16to destroy a big corporation
- 20:18merely because it is big,
- 20:21but all business should be carefully supervised,
- 20:24regulated, and controlled by governmental authority.
- 20:27[Narrator] Although it was a three-way election,
- 20:30the real race was between Theodore Roosevelt
- 20:32and the democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson,
- 20:36the reform governor of New Jersey.
- 20:39A former college professor,
- 20:40Wilson seemed cold and distant
- 20:43to most people who met him.
- 20:45[Man] His handshake felt like
- 20:47a 10-cent pickled mackerel in brown paper--
- 20:49irresponsive and lifeless.
- 20:51He is a spare, ascetic, repressed creature,
- 20:54a kind of frozen flame of righteous intelligence.
- 20:57William Allen White, 1912.
- 21:01[Narrator] In his 1912 campaign,
- 21:03Wilson proposed not merely to regulate the trusts,
- 21:07but to rid the country of them, once and for all.
- 21:10[Wilson] Mr. Roosevelt did not anywhere condemn the great corporations.
- 21:15All that is proposed to do is to take them under control and regulation.
- 21:20Shall we try to get the grip of monopoly away from our lives, or shall we not?
- 21:26Shall we say monopoly is inevitable, that all we can do is to regulate it?
- 21:32Then there is no hope for the people of the United States.
- 21:36[Narrator] Calling his platform "the New Freedom,"
- 21:38Wilson promised to free the United States from the trusts
- 21:42and restore an economy of small shops and factories.
- 21:46Roosevelt, Wilson's opponent, called his program "the New Nationalism,"
- 21:51since it accepted large corporations
- 21:53but tried to make them work in the national interest.
- 21:57So the 1912 presidential election offered Americans
- 22:00two very different visions of their country.
- 22:04They voted for the man who promised to bring back
- 22:06the world of small business-- the corner grocer, not the giant corporation.
- 22:13Woodrow Wilson proved to be a very effective president,
- 22:16but he never did deliver on his promise to bust the trusts.
- 22:21He did win passage of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act,
- 22:25which limited the size of trusts,
- 22:27but he also signed into law the Federal Reserve Act,
- 22:30which created a national banking system.
- 22:33Rather than breaking up big banks,
- 22:35the new federal reserve system linked them into a centrally-controlled
- 22:39network of unprecedented size and power.
- 22:48[Man] Any passerby can enter and use public lavatories in government buildings,
- 22:51while citizens of color who do the work of the government are excluded.
- 22:57As equal citizens, we are entitled to freedom from discrimination.
- 23:02Have you "a New Freedom" for white Americans
- 23:04and a new slavery for Afro-American fellow citizens?
- 23:07God forbid!
- 23:10William Monroe Trotter, 1914.
- 23:12[Narrator] The same man who declared "a New Freedom" for the United States
- 23:17ordered the segregation of Black Americans in federal buildings.
- 23:22Back in 1896, the Supreme Court had upheld the "separate but equal" laws of the American South
- 23:28in a case called Plessy vs. Ferguson.
- 23:31In the years that followed, racial segregation hardened throughout the South.
- 23:36Across the nation, the signs of segregation appeared over hotels,
- 23:41theaters, and water fountains.
- 23:43Worst of all, this era also witnessed a new,
- 23:46vicious outbreak of violence against Black Americans.
- 23:51Between 1885 and 1907,
- 23:53more Americans were lynched in the United States than legally executed.
- 23:59The vast majority of the victims were black.
- 24:03One of the underlying issues that made racism
- 24:07violent and dangerous
- 24:09in the early 20th century was that
- 24:11most black people were powerless.
- 24:14So in the early 20th century,
- 24:16even though there was a great migration
- 24:19of black southerners into the north and into the east,
- 24:22about 90% of black people still lived in the South.
- 24:26In the South, almost none could vote.
- 24:30They lived in a situation of segregation,
- 24:34which meant separation,
- 24:37but it also meant separate and terribly unequal.
- 24:43As segregation and violence spread,
- 24:45Black Americans began a sharp debate about how they should respond.
- 24:50On one side, stood Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute.
- 24:56On the other stood W.E.B. Du Bois,
- 24:59a Harvard-educated historian and journalist.
- 25:03Born in 1856 to slave parents,
- 25:06Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee in 1881
- 25:11to help blacks learn useful trades.
- 25:14Instead of pushing for immediate equality, Washington said,
- 25:18blacks should develop vocational skills.
- 25:22[Man] To those of my race who underestimate the importance
- 25:26of friendly relations with the southern white man,
- 25:29I would say, cast down your bucket where you are.
- 25:34There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
- 25:40In all things that are purely social, the races can be separate as the fingers,
- 25:45Yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
- 25:51--Booker T. Washington.
- 25:53[Narrator] Where Washington counseled patience and gradual uplift
- 25:57through hard work and black self-help,
- 25:59W.E.B. Du Bois demanded immediate and equal rights
- 26:03for African Americans in schools, housing, and employment.
- 26:08[Man] Mr. Washington insists on thrift and self-respect,
- 26:12but at the same time counsels silent submission to civic inferiority.
- 26:17Is it possible that nine million men can make progress in economic lines
- 26:22if they are deprived of political rights?
- 26:26By every peaceful method, we must strive for the rights
- 26:29which the sons of the fathers would fain forget--
- 26:33"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
- 26:38W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903.
- 26:44[Narrator] Other Americans lost their rights
- 26:46because of the content of their opinions
- 26:49rather than the color of their skins.
- 26:52One major target of persecution were the Socialists
- 26:55who believed that American workers,
- 26:58not their bosses should own the nation's industries.
- 27:03Socialist Party candidates won offices
- 27:06in over 300 cities,
- 27:08including Milwaukee and San Fransisco.
- 27:10In the 1912 presidential election,
- 27:13socialist candidate Eugene Debs won almost
- 27:15a million votes.
- 27:18To Debs, the Wilson-Roosevelt dispute over the size of American corporations
- 27:22made no sense.
- 27:24All that mattered was who owned them.
- 27:27[Eugene Debs] The republican, democratic, and progressive parties all stand for
- 27:31private ownership of the productive machinery used by workers.
- 27:35The Socialist Party is the one party which stands squarely for the abolition
- 27:40of industrial slavery.
- 27:42Eugene Victor Debs, 1912.
- 27:45[Narrator] This message struck fear into the hearts of the nations law enforcement
- 27:50authorities, who tried to silence the socialists by jailing them.
- 27:55Debs himself will be arrested and sentenced to federal prison for opposing
- 27:59the United States entry into World War I.
- 28:05Another group persecuted because of their opinions were
- 28:08the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies.
- 28:12Like the Socialists,
- 28:14the Wobblies thought that the laborers, not corporate kingpins
- 28:18should own the nations factories.
- 28:20But where Socialists preferred to work through the polls,
- 28:23the I.W.W. called for strikes and sabotage against big businesses.
- 28:30So businessmen organized groups of vigilantes to harass and intimidate Wobblies.
- 28:35Wobblies were beaten, branded,
- 28:37and forced to kiss the American flag on their knees.
- 28:41Some were even shot and killed.
- 28:44Like Eugene Debs,
- 28:46hundreds of Wobblies would be hauled off to prison
- 28:49during the First World War.
- 28:56Back before the turn of the century,
- 28:58Jane Addams and her settlement house movement
- 29:00helped usher in the era of progressive reform.
- 29:04Suffragists, like Carrie Chapman Catt,
- 29:06would help bring the era to a close
- 29:09by finally winning women's right to vote.
- 29:12The suffragists argued for the ballot as a way to ensure the progressive triumph.
- 29:17If women had the vote, they claimed, the bosses would fall.
- 29:21Saloons would disappear, and the United States of America
- 29:24would be an altogether better place.
- 29:27[Jane Addams] Public spirited women who wish to use the ballot
- 29:30do not wish to do the work of men.
- 29:32They simply want an opportunity to do their own work
- 29:35and to take care of those affairs which naturally,
- 29:38and historically, belong to women.
- 29:40May we not fairly say that American women need the vote in order to preserve the home?
- 29:46Jane Addams, 1910.
- 29:48[Narrator] Yet, suffragists also embraced the dark underside of progressivism:
- 29:53racial and ethnic bigotry.
- 29:55Many women argued for the vote in racist terms,
- 29:59promising that the female ballot
- 30:01would help keep white protestants in charge.
- 30:04[Olivia Brown] There are three times as many American-born women
- 30:08as the whole foreign population.
- 30:10So the votes of women will be the only means of overcoming
- 30:14this foreign influence and maintaining our free institutions.
- 30:19We are in danger of Catholic domination.
- 30:22There is no possible safety unless women are given the suffrage.
- 30:27Olivia Brown, 1889.
- 30:30[Belle Kearney] Of all the women in the South who can read and write,
- 30:33ten out of every eleven are white.
- 30:35The enfranchisement of women would ensure immediate,
- 30:38and durable white supremacy.
- 30:41Belle Kearney, 1903.
- 30:46[Narrator] Racial prejudices also helped push through a new constitutional
- 30:51amendment to ban the sell of alcohol.
- 30:53Prohibition swept the South
- 30:55when false rumors of drunken, rampaging blacks
- 30:58enveloped the region.
- 31:04The countries entrance into the First World War in 1917
- 31:08pushed prohibition over the top.
- 31:11The grain used to make alcohol was needed for the war effort
- 31:15and drinking was becoming, not merely unwise but un-American,
- 31:20since the German enemy consumed alcohol.
- 31:25World War I would spell the end of progressive reform.
- 31:29Trust-busting came to a complete halt as corporations formed huge cartels
- 31:35to arm and equipped the nations soldiers.
- 31:38The war also brought a new cycle of prejudice and violence against minorities
- 31:43as race riots flared across U.S. cities
- 31:46and thousands of immigrants were arrested or deported.
- 31:51The progressives still had unanswered questions.
- 31:55How would the United States regulate its enormous industrial corporations?
- 32:00How would it integrate its diverse racial and ethnic groups?
- 32:06How would it fulfill the democratic ideals
- 32:09upon which the nation was founded?
- 32:13Since the American Revolution,
- 32:15waves of reformers had called upon the nation
- 32:18to renew these ideals.
- 32:21Before the Civil War,
- 32:22they fought to eliminate slavery, drunkenness, and poverty.
- 32:27The progressives picked up this reform spirit,
- 32:30which would reappear during the 1930s, and again in the 1960s.
- 32:36Behind all of these movements
- 32:38lay the distinctive American faith that
- 32:41"We can remake the world."
- 32:49♪
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