View source for Progressive Era

{{Short description|1890s–1920s US political reform movement}}
{{Other uses}}
{{See also|History of the United States (1865–1917)|United States in World War I}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2022}}
{{Infobox historical era
| name      = Progressive Era
| location   = [[United States]]
| start     = 1890s
| end       = 1920s
| image     = Henry Mayer, The Awakening, 1915 Cornell CUL PJM 1176 01 - Restoration.jpg
| alt       =
| caption   = ''The Awakening'': "Votes for Women" in 1915 [[Puck (magazine)|''Puck'' magazine]]
| before    = [[Gilded Age]]<br />[[Greater Reconstruction]]
| including = [[Fourth Party System]]
| after     = [[United States in World War I|World War I]]<br />[[Roaring Twenties]]
| presidents =  [[William McKinley]]<br /> [[Theodore Roosevelt]]<br /> [[William Howard Taft]]<br />[[Woodrow Wilson]] <br />[[Warren G. Harding]] <br />[[Calvin Coolidge]] <br />[[Herbert Hoover]]
| key_events = [[Nadir of American race relations]]<br /> [[United States anti-trust law|Trust-busting]]<br /> [[Women's suffrage in the United States|Women's suffrage]] <br /> [[History of direct democracy in the United States|Initiative and referendum]]<br /> [[Square Deal]]
}}
{{Periods in US history}}
{{Progressivism}}

The '''Progressive Era''' (1890s–1920s)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibition/congress-and-progressive-era|title=Congress and the Progressive Era &#124; U.S. Capitol - Visitor Center|website=www.visitthecapitol.gov|access-date=November 30, 2024|archive-date=November 29, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241129210718/https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibition/congress-and-progressive-era|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://picturethis.museumca.org/timeline/progressive-era-1890-1920s|title=Progressive Era: 1890–1920s &#124; Picture This|website=picturethis.museumca.org|access-date=November 30, 2024|archive-date=October 7, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007122018/https://picturethis.museumca.org/timeline/progressive-era-1890-1920s|url-status=live}}</ref> was a period in the [[United States]]  characterized by multiple social and political [[reform]] efforts.<ref>John D. Buenker, John C. Boosham, and Robert M. Crunden, ''Progressivism'' (1986) pp. 3–21</ref><ref>Arthur S. Link, "What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920s?." ''American Historical Review'' 64.4 (1959): 833–851.</ref> Reformers during this era, known as [[progressivism in the United States|Progressives]], sought to address issues they associated with rapid [[technological and industrial history of the United States|industrialization]], [[urbanization in the United States|urbanization]], [[immigration to the United States|immigration]], and [[corruption in the United States|political corruption]], as well as the concentration of industrial ownership in [[monopoly|monopolies]]. Reformers expressed concern about slums, [[poverty in the United States|poverty]], and labor conditions. Multiple overlapping movements pursued social, political, and economic reforms by advocating changes in governance, [[scientific method]]s, and professionalism; regulating business; [[environmental protection|protecting]] the [[natural environment]]; and seeking to improve urban living and working conditions.<ref name="Auto29-3">{{cite web |title=Progressive Era to New Era |url=https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/overview/ |publisher=Library of Congress |access-date=October 24, 2022 |archive-date=November 16, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231116203809/https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/overview/ |url-status=live }}{{source-attribution}}</ref>

Corrupt and undemocratic [[political machine]]s and their bosses were a major target of progressive reformers. To revitalize democracy, progressives established direct [[Partisan primary|primary election]]s, [[Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|direct election of senators]] (rather than by state legislatures), [[Initiatives and referendums in the United States|initiatives and referendums]],<ref name="Britannica">{{cite web|title=United States History. The Progressive Era Key Facts|url=https://www.britannica.com/summary/The-Progressive-Era-Key-Facts|publisher=Britannica|access-date=October 24, 2022|archive-date=September 5, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240905095800/https://www.britannica.com/summary/The-Progressive-Era-Key-Facts|url-status=live}}</ref> and [[Women's suffrage in the United States|women's suffrage]] which was promoted to advance democracy and bring the presumed moral influence of women into politics.<ref>On purification, see David W. Southern, ''The Malignant Heritage: Yankee Progressives and the Negro Question, 1900–1915'' (1968); Southern, ''The Progressive Era And Race: Reaction And Reform 1900–1917'' (2005); Norman H. Clark, ''Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition'' (1976) p. 170; and [[Aileen Kraditor]], ''The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement: 1890–1920'' (1967). 134–136.</ref> For many progressives, [[Prohibition in the United States|prohibition of alcoholic beverages]]<ref>James H. Timberlake, ''Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920'' (1970) pp. 1–7.</ref> was key to eliminating corruption in politics as well as improving social conditions.

Another target were [[Monopoly|monopolies]], which progressives worked to regulate through [[Competition law|trustbusting]] and [[United States antitrust law|antitrust laws]] with the goal of promoting fair competition. Progressives also advocated new government agencies focused on regulation of industry.<ref>{{cite book|author=Michael Kazin|title=The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political Turn up History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fsWLGcZ7pyAC&pg=PA181|year=2011|publisher=Princeton University Press|page=181|isbn=978-1400839469|display-authors=etal}}</ref> An additional goal of progressives was bringing to bear scientific, medical, and engineering solutions to reform government and education and foster improvements in various fields including medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, and churches. They aimed to professionalize the social sciences, especially history,<ref name="Richard Hofstadter 1968"/> economics,<ref name="ReferenceB"/> and political science<ref name="Barry Karl 1975"/> and improve efficiency with [[scientific management]] or Taylorism.<ref>Lewis L. Gould, ''America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914'' (2000)</ref><ref>[[David B. Tyack]], ''The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education'' (Harvard UP, 1974), p. 39</ref>

Initially, the movement operated chiefly at the local level, but later it expanded to the state and national levels. Progressive leaders were often from the educated middle class, and various progressive reform efforts drew support from lawyers, teachers, physicians, ministers, businesspeople, and the working class.<ref>George Mowry, ''The California Progressives'' (1963) p. 91.</ref>

==Originators of progressive ideals and efforts==
Certain key groups of thinkers, writers, and activists played key roles in creating or building the movements and ideas that came to define the shape of the Progressive Era.

===Popular democracy: Initiative and referendum===
Inspiration for the initiative movement was based on the Swiss experience. New Jersey labor activist James W. Sullivan visited Switzerland in 1888 and wrote a detailed book that became a template for reformers pushing the idea: ''Direct Legislation by the Citizenship Through the Initiative and Referendum'' (1893).<ref>See [https://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3A%28%22Direct%20legislation%20by%20the%20Citizenship%22%29 online copies]</ref>  He suggested that using the initiative would give political power to the working class and reduce the need for strikes.  Sullivan's book was first widely read on the left, as by labor activists, socialists and populists. William U'Ren was an early convert who used it to build the Oregon reform crusade. By 1900, middle-class "progressive" reformers everywhere were studying it.<ref>Richard J. Ellis, "The Opportunist: James W. Sullivan and the Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in the United States." ''American Political Thought'' 11.1 (2022): 1–47.</ref><ref>Ellis (2002) pp. 28–33.</ref>

===Muckraking: exposing corruption===
{{Further|Muckraker|Mass media and American politics}}
[[File:McClure's Christmas 1903 cover.jpg|thumb|left|Christmas 1903 cover of ''McClure's'' features a muckraking exposé of Rockefeller and Standard Oil by Ida Tarbell.]]

Magazines experienced a boost in popularity in 1900, with some attaining circulations in the hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In the beginning of the age of mass media, the rapid expansion of national advertising led the cover price of popular magazines to fall sharply to about 10 cents, lessening the financial barrier to consume them.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Catherine|last1=Cocks|first2=Peter C.|last2=Holloran|first3=Alan|last3=Lessoff|title=The A to Z of the Progressive Era|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rt3243E-Wm0C&pg=PA266|year=2009|publisher=Scarecrow Press|page=266|isbn=978-0810870697}}</ref> Another factor contributing to the dramatic upswing in magazine circulation was the prominent coverage of corruption in politics, local government, and big business, particularly by journalists and writers who became known as [[muckraker]]s''.'' They wrote for popular magazines to expose social and political sins and shortcomings. Relying on their own [[investigative journalism]], muckrakers often worked to expose social ills and corporate and [[Corruption in the United States|political corruption]]. Muckraking magazines, notably ''[[McClure's]]'', took on corporate monopolies and [[political machine]]s while raising public awareness of chronic urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, and [[social issues]] like [[Child labor in the United States|child labor]].<ref>Herbert Shapiro, ed., ''The muckrakers and American society'' (Heath, 1968), contains representative samples as well as academic commentary.</ref> Most of the muckrakers wrote nonfiction, but fictional exposés often had a major impact as well, such as those by [[Upton Sinclair]].<ref>Judson A. Grenier, "Muckraking the muckrakers: Upton Sinclair and his peers." in David R Colburn and Sandra Pozzetta, eds., ''Reform and Reformers in the Progressive Era '' (1983) pp: 71–92.</ref> In his 1906 novel ''[[The Jungle]]'', Sinclair exposed the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions of the meatpacking industry in graphic detail hoping to arouse working class solidarity. He quipped, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident, I hit it in the stomach," as readers demanded and got the [[Federal Meat Inspection Act|Meat Inspection Act]]<ref>The Meat Inspection Act</ref> and the [[Pure Food and Drug Act]].<ref>Arlene F. Kantor, "Upton Sinclair and the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906.: 'I aimed at the public's heart and by accident, I hit it in the stomach'." ''American Journal of Public Health'' 66.12 (1976): 1202–1205.</ref>

The journalists who specialized in exposing waste, corruption, and scandal operated at the state and local level, like [[Ray Stannard Baker]], [[George Creel]], and [[Brand Whitlock]]. Others such as [[Lincoln Steffens]] exposed political corruption in many large cities; [[Ida Tarbell]] is famed for her criticisms of [[John D. Rockefeller]]'s [[Standard Oil Company]]. In 1906, [[David Graham Phillips]] unleashed a blistering indictment of corruption in the US Senate. Roosevelt gave these journalists their nickname when he complained they were not being helpful by raking up too much muck.<ref>Robert Miraldi, ed. ''The Muckrakers: Evangelical Crusaders'' (Praeger, 2000)</ref><ref>Harry H. Stein, "American Muckrakers and Muckraking: The 50-Year Scholarship", ''Journalism Quarterly'', (1979) 56#1 pp. 9–17.</ref>

===Modernization===
{{Further|Efficiency movement}}

The progressives were avid modernizers, with a belief in science and technology as the grand solution to society's flaws. They looked to education as the key to bridging the gap between their present wasteful society and technologically enlightened future society. Characteristics of progressivism included a favorable attitude toward urban–industrial society, belief in mankind's ability to improve the environment and conditions of life, belief in an obligation to intervene in economic and social affairs, a belief in the ability of experts and in the efficiency of government intervention.<ref>John D. Buenker, and Robert M. Crunden. ''Progressivism'' (1986); Maureen Flanagan, ''America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890 – the 1920s'' (2007)</ref><ref>Samuel Haber, ''Efficiency and Uplift Scientific Management in the Progressive Era 1890–1920'' (1964) 656</ref> Scientific management, as promulgated by [[Frederick Winslow Taylor]], became a watchword for industrial efficiency and elimination of waste, with the stopwatch as its symbol.<ref>Daniel Nelson, ''Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management'' (1970).</ref><ref>{{cite book|author1=J.-C. Spender|author2=Hugo Kijne|title=Scientific Management: Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World?|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WcLkBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA63|year=2012|publisher=Springer|page=63|isbn=978-1461314219}}</ref>

===Philanthropy===
The number of rich families climbed exponentially, from 100 or so millionaires in the 1870s to 4,000 in 1892 and 16,000 in 1916. Many subscribed to [[Andrew Carnegie]]'s credo outlined in ''[[The Gospel of Wealth]]'' that said they owed a duty to society that called for philanthropic giving to colleges, hospitals, medical research, libraries, museums, religion, and social betterment.<ref>[[Olivier Zunz]], ''Philanthropy in America: A History'' (2012) ch 1 [https://www.amazon.com/Philanthropy-America-History-Politics-Twentieth/dp/0691128367/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200417135854/https://www.amazon.com/Philanthropy-America-History-Politics-Twentieth/dp/0691128367/ |date=April 17, 2020 }}</ref>

In the early 20th century, American philanthropy matured, with the development of very large, highly visible private foundations created by [[John D. Rockefeller|Rockefeller]] and Carnegie. The largest foundations fostered modern, efficient, business-oriented operations (as opposed to "charity") designed to better society rather than merely enhance the status of the giver. Close ties were built with the local business community, as in the "community chest" movement.<ref>Nikki Mandell, "Allies or Antagonists? Philanthropic Reformers and Business Reformers in the Progressive Era", ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' (2012), 11#1 71–117.</ref> The [[American Red Cross]] was reorganized and professionalized.<ref>Branden Little. "Review of Jones, Marian Moser, ''The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal''" [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=39722 H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews. August 2013, online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150502011856/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=39722 |date=May 2, 2015 }}</ref> Several major foundations aided the blacks in the South and were typically advised by [[Booker T. Washington]]. By contrast, Europe and Asia had few foundations. This allowed both Carnegie and Rockefeller to operate internationally with a powerful effect.<ref>Zunz, p. 42</ref>

===Middle-class values===
[[File:Articles by and photo of Charlotte_Perkins Gilman in 1916.jpg|thumb|[[Charlotte Perkins Gilman]] (pictured) wrote these articles about [[feminism]] for the ''Atlanta Constitution'', published on December 10, 1916.]]

A hallmark group of the Progressive Era, the middle class became the driving force behind much of the thought and reform that took place in this time. The middle class was characterized by their rejection of the individualistic philosophy of the [[Upper ten thousand]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=McGerr |first1=Michael |title=A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |page=65}}</ref> They had a rapidly growing interest in the communication and role between classes, those of which are generally referred to as the upper class, working class, farmers, and themselves.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wiebe |first1=Robert H |title=The Search For Order: 1877–1920 |url=https://archive.org/details/searchfororder1800wieb |url-access=registration |date=1967 |publisher=Hill and Wang |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/searchfororder1800wieb/page/111 111]}}</ref> Along these lines, the founder of [[Hull-House]], [[Jane Addams]], coined the term "association" as a counter to [[Individualism]], with association referring to the search for a relationship between the classes.<ref>{{cite book |last1=McGerr |first1=Michael |title=A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |page=66}}</ref> Additionally, the middle class (most notably women) began to move away from prior [[Victorian era]] domestic values. Divorce rates increased as women preferred to seek education and freedom from the home.<ref>Paul R. Amato, and Shelley Irving, "Historical trends in divorce in the United States." in ''Handbook of divorce and relationship dissolution'' (Psychology Press, 2013) pp. 57–74.</ref>  Victorianism was pushed aside by the rise of progressivism.<ref>{{cite book |last1=McGerr |first1=Michael |title=A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |pages=40–74}}</ref>

===Leaders and activists===

====Politicians====
{{Further|History of the Democratic Party (United States)|History of the Republican Party (United States)}}
[[File:Portrait of Secretary William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, 1913.jpeg|thumb|left|William Jennings Bryan]]

Congressman [[William Jennings Bryan]] was the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Bryan selected Woodrow Wilson as the party candidate in 1912 and became secretary of State. The anti-Bryan conservative Democrats did nominate their candidate in 1904, but otherwise Bryan and Bryan's supporters largely dominated the party from 1896 to 1914. Historian [[David Sarasohn]] evaluated the Democratic party in the Bryan era:<blockquote>Democrats [were] an issue-oriented party (tariff and child labor reform, trust regulation, federal income tax, direct election of senators) and an emerging national coalition (southerners, western Progressives, blue-collar ethnic voters, and liberal intellectuals), most of whom shared a grudging but genuine admiration for their titular leader, William Jennings Bryan. Indeed, it is the Commoner  [Bryan] whose spirit, vision, and yes, political sagacity, pervades the narrative.<ref>Quoting Eugene Tobin in ''Journal of American History'' (1990 p 335) reviewing David Sarasohn, ''The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era'' (1989). This book is [https://archive.org/details/partyofreformdem00sara online here] See also Robert D. Johnston, “Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era: The Politics of Progressive Era Political Historiography.” ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' 1#1 (2002), pp. 68–92;  [http://www.jstor.org/stable/25144286 online]
</ref>  </blockquote>

[[Jim Hogg]], who served as governor of Texas from 1891 to 1895, championed the causes of individuals<ref>[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nUA_AAAAIBAJ&pg=PA9&dq=governor+Hogg+labor+texas&article_id=5420,4559984&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0v62VjIqNAxUwRkEAHUgnD3IQ6AF6BAgEEAM#v=onepage&q=governor%20Hogg%20labor%20texas&f=false Wood County Democrat 17 Aug 1988]</ref> and presided over a series of progressive reform measures during his tenure.<ref>[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Governors_and_the_Progressive_Movement/0ueZDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=As+governor+brough+brought+more+funding+for+education&pg=PA123&printsec=frontcover Governors and the Progressive Movement By David R. Berman, 2019, p. 123-126]</ref><ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001788652&seq=12 General laws of the State of Texas yr.1892]</ref> According to Democrat [[Edward M House]], Texas was "the pioneer of successful progressive legislation," citing Hogg's tenure as the catalyst.<ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3126585&seq=77&q1=progressive+legislation The intimate papers of Colonel House: behind the political curtain 1912-1915 Arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour, 1926, P.35]</ref>

[[File:LaFOLLETTE, ROBERT. SENATOR LOC hec.14955 (3x4 cropped).jpg|thumb|Robert M. La Follette]]
[[Robert M. La Follette]] and [[La Follette family|his family]] were the dominant forces of progressivism in Wisconsin from the late 1890s to the early 1940s.<ref>Nancy C. Unger, ''Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer'' (2003) pp. 1–5.</ref> Starting as a loyal organizational Republican, he broke with the bosses in the late 1890s, built up a network of local organizers loyal to him, and fought for control of the state Republican Party, with mixed success. He failed to win the nomination for governor in 1896 and 1898 before winning the [[1900 Wisconsin gubernatorial election|1900 gubernatorial election]]. As governor of Wisconsin, La Follette compiled a progressive record, implementing primary elections and tax reform. La Follette won re-election in 1902 and 1904. In 1905, the legislature elected him to the United States Senate, where he emerged as a national progressive leader, often clashing with conservatives like Senator [[Nelson Aldrich]]. He initially supported President Taft, but broke with Taft after the latter failed to push a reduction in [[tariffs in United States history|tariff]] rates. He challenged Taft for the Republican presidential nomination in the [[1912 United States presidential election|1912 presidential election]], but his candidacy was overshadowed by Theodore Roosevelt. La Follette's refusal to support Roosevelt, and especially his suicidal ranting speech before media leaders in February 1912, alienated many progressives. La Follette forfeited his stature as a national leader of progressive Republicans, while remaining a power in Wisconsin.<ref name="auto">Nancy C. Unger, "The 'Political Suicide' of Robert M. La Follette: Public Disaster, Private Catharsis" ''Psychohistory Review'' 21#2 (1993) pp. 187–220 [https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=history online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220309192250/https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=history |date=March 9, 2022 }}.</ref> La Follette supported some of President Wilson's policies, but he broke with the president over foreign policy, thereby gaining support from Wisconsin's large German and Scandinavian elements. During World War I, La Follette was the most outspoken opponent of the administration's domestic and international policies.<ref>David P. Thelen, ''Robert M. La Follette and the insurgent spirit'' (1976) pp. 32–144</ref>

With the major parties each nominating conservative candidates in the [[1924 United States presidential election|1924 presidential election]], left-wing groups coalesced behind La Follette's [[third party (United States)|third-party]] candidacy. With the support of the [[Socialist Party of America|Socialist Party]], farmer's groups, labor unions, and others, La Follette was strong in Wisconsin, and to a much lesser extent in the West. He called for government ownership of railroads and electric utilities, cheap credit for farmers, stronger laws to help labor unions, and protections for civil liberties. La Follette won 17% of the popular vote and carried only his home state in the face of a Republican landslide. After his death in 1925 his sons, [[Robert M. La Follette Jr.]] and [[Philip La Follette]], succeeded him as progressive leaders in Wisconsin.<ref>Unger, ''Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer'' (2003) pp. 239–304.</ref>

[[File:Theodore Roosevelt by the Pach Bros (4x5 cropped).jpg|thumb|Theodore Roosevelt]]
President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] was a leader of the Progressive movement, and he championed his "[[Square Deal]]" domestic policies, promising the average citizen fairness, breaking of trusts, regulation of railroads, and pure food and drugs. He made conservation a top priority and established many new [[List of national parks of the United States|national parks]], [[List of U.S. National Forests|forests]], and [[List of National Monuments of the United States|monuments]] intended to preserve the nation's natural resources. In foreign policy, he [[Roosevelt Corollary|focused on Central America]] where he began construction of the [[Panama Canal]]. He expanded the army and sent the [[Great White Fleet]] on a world tour to project the United States naval power around the globe. His successful efforts to broker the end of the [[Russo-Japanese War]] won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize. He avoided controversial tariff and money issues. He was elected to a full term in 1904 and continued to promote progressive policies, some of which were passed in Congress. By 1906, he was moving to the left, advocating some social welfare programs, and criticizing various business practices such as trusts. The leadership of the GOP in Congress moved to the right, as did his protégé President William Howard Taft. Roosevelt broke bitterly with Taft in 1910, and also with Wisconsin's progressive leader [[Robert M. La Follette]]. Taft defeated Roosevelt for the 1912 Republican nomination and Roosevelt set up an entirely new Progressive Party. It called for a "New Nationalism"  with active supervision of corporations, higher taxes, and unemployment and old-age insurance. He supported voting rights for women but was silent on civil rights for blacks, who remained in the regular Republican fold. He lost and his new party collapsed, as conservatism dominated the GOP for decades to come. Biographer William Harbaugh argues:
:: In foreign affairs, Theodore Roosevelt's legacy is judicious support of the national interest and promotion of world stability through the maintenance of a balance of power; creation or strengthening of international agencies, and resort to their use when practicable; and implicit resolve to use military force, if feasible, to foster legitimate American interests. In domestic affairs, it is the use of government to advance the public interest. "If on this new continent", he said, "we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing".<ref>William H. Harbaugh, "Roosevelt, Theodore (27 October 1858 – 06 January 1919)" ''American National Biography'' (1999) [https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0600569 online]</ref>

[[File:President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, Harris & Ewing (3x4 cropped b).jpg|thumb|left|Woodrow Wilson]]
[[Woodrow Wilson]] gained a national reputation as governor of New Jersey by defeating the bosses and pushing through a progressive agenda. For a time Wilson identified himself with conservatism, but by the time he became governor of New Jersey Wilson identified himself as a radical.<ref>[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Folly_of_Empire/nrOVkNLHYz8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=A+By+the+time+he+was+elected+governor+of+New+Jersey+in+November+1910,+he+was+identifying+himself+as+a+radical&pg=PA84&printsec=frontcover The Folly of Empire What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson By John B. Judis, 2010, P84]</ref> As president he introduced a comprehensive program of domestic legislation.<ref>John Milton Cooper, Jr., ''Woodrow Wilson'' (2009) pp. 183–184</ref> He had four major domestic priorities: the [[Conservation movement|conservation]] of natural resources, banking reform, [[History of tariffs in the United States|tariff reduction]], and opening access to raw materials by breaking up Western mining trusts.<ref>Cooper (2009), pp. 186–187</ref> Though foreign affairs would unexpectedly dominate his presidency, Wilson's first two years in office largely focused on the implementation of his New Freedom domestic agenda.<ref>Cooper (2009), pp. 212–213, 274</ref> Wilson presided over the passage of his progressive [[The New Freedom|New Freedom]] domestic agenda. His first major priority was the passage of the [[Revenue Act of 1913]], which lowered [[tariff in United States history|tariffs]] and implemented a federal [[Income tax in the United States|income tax]]. Later tax acts implemented a federal [[Estate tax in the United States|estate tax]] and raised the top income tax rate to 77 percent. Wilson also presided over the passage of the [[Federal Reserve Act]], which created a central banking system in the form of the [[Federal Reserve System]]. Two major laws, the [[Federal Trade Commission Act]] and the [[Clayton Antitrust Act]], were passed to regulate business and prevent monopolies.  Wilson did not support civil rights and did not object to accelerating [[segregation in the United States|segregate]] of federal employees. In World War I, he made internationalism a key element of the progressive outlook, as expressed in his [[Fourteen Points]] and the [[League of Nations]]—an ideal called [[Wilsonianism]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Lloyd Ambrosius|title=Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w9tlCwAAQBAJ&pg=PP1|date= 2002|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US|isbn=978-1-4039-7004-6}}</ref><ref>Tony Smith, ''Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today'' (2019).</ref>

In New York Republican Governor [[Charles Evans Hughes]] was known for exposing the insurance industry. During his time in office he promoted a range of reforms. As presidential candidate in 1916 he lost after alienating progressive California voters. As Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, he often sided with [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes]] in upholding popular reforms such as the minimum wage, workmen's compensation, and maximum work hours for women and children. He also wrote several opinions upholding the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce under the [[Commerce Clause]]. His majority opinion in the ''Baltimore and Ohio Railroad v. Interstate Commerce Commission'' upheld the right of the federal government to regulate the hours of railroad workers.<ref name="Shoemaker 2004 63–64">{{harvnb|Shoemaker|2004|pp=63–64}}</ref> His majority opinion in the 1914 [[Houston East & West Texas Railway Co. v. United States|Shreveport Rate Case]] upheld a decision by the [[Interstate Commerce Commission]] to void discriminatory railroad rates imposed by the [[Railroad Commission of Texas]]. The decision established that the federal government could regulate intrastate commerce when it affected interstate commerce, though Hughes avoided directly overruling the 1895 case of ''[[United States v. E. C. Knight Co.]]''<ref>{{harvnb|Henretta|2006|pp=136–137}}</ref>  As Chief Justice of the Supreme Court he took a moderate middle position and upheld key New Deal laws.<ref>{{harvnb|Henretta|2006|pp=115–171}}</ref>

====Activists and Muckrakers ====
{{Further|Muckraker}}

[[Gifford Pinchot]] was an American forester and political activist who served as the first Chief of the [[United States Forest Service]] from 1905 until 1910 and was the [[List of Governors of Pennsylvania|28th Governor of Pennsylvania]], serving from 1923 to 1927, and again from 1931 to 1935. He was a member of the [[United States Republican Party|Republican Party]] for most of his life, though he also joined the [[Progressive Party (United States, 1912)|Progressive Party]] for a brief period. Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal.  Pinchot coined the term [[conservation ethic]] as applied to natural resources. Pinchot's main contribution was his leadership in promoting scientific forestry and emphasizing the controlled, profitable use of forests and other natural resources so they would be of maximum benefit to mankind.<ref name="AmExp">{{Cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/burn/ |title=The Big Burn-Transcript |date=February 3, 2015 |website=American Experience |publisher=PBS |access-date=January 23, 2019 |archive-date=October 6, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211006170818/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/burn/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He was the first to demonstrate the practicality and profitability of managing forests for continuous cropping.  His leadership put the conservation of forests high on America's priority list.<ref>Robert Muccigrosso, ed., ''Research Guide to American Historical Biography'' (1988) 3:1238</ref>

[[Herbert Croly]] was an intellectual leader of the movement as an editor, political philosopher and a co-founder of the magazine ''[[The New Republic]]''. His political philosophy influenced many leading progressives including Theodore Roosevelt, [[Adolph Berle]], as well as his close friends Judge [[Learned Hand]] and Supreme Court Justice [[Felix Frankfurter]].<ref name="Levy">{{cite book |author=D. W. Levy |year=1985 |title=Herbert Croly of the New Republic: the Life and Thought of an American Progressive |url=https://archive.org/details/herbertcrolyofne0000levy |url-access=registration |location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=0-691-04725-1}}</ref> Croly's 1909 book ''[[The Promise of American Life]]'' looked to the constitutional liberalism as espoused by [[Alexander Hamilton]], combined with the radical [[Jeffersonian democracy|democracy]] of [[Thomas Jefferson]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Croly |first1=Herbert |title=The Promise of American Life: Updated Edition |date=2014 |publisher=Princeton University Press |page=237}}</ref> The book influenced contemporaneous progressive thought, shaping the ideas of many intellectuals and political leaders, including then ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. Calling themselves "The New Nationalists", Croly and [[Walter Weyl]] sought to remedy the relatively weak national institutions with a strong federal government. He promoted a strong army and navy and attacked [[Pacifism|pacifists]] who thought democracy at home and peace abroad was best served by keeping America weak.

Croly was one of the founders of [[modern liberalism in the United States]], especially through his books, essays and a highly influential magazine founded in 1914, ''The New Republic''. In his 1914 book ''Progressive Democracy'', Croly rejected the thesis that the liberal tradition in the United States was inhospitable to [[Anti-capitalism|anti-capitalist]] alternatives. He drew from the American past a history of resistance to [[Capitalism|capitalist]] wage relations that was fundamentally liberal, and he reclaimed an idea that progressives had allowed to lapse—that working for wages was a lesser form of liberty. Increasingly skeptical of the capacity of [[Welfare state|social welfare]] legislation to remedy social ills, Croly argued that America's liberal promise could be redeemed only by [[Syndicalism|syndicalist]] reforms involving [[workplace democracy]]. His liberal goals were part of his commitment to [[Republicanism in the United States|American republicanism]].<ref name="O'Leary">{{cite journal |author=Kevin C. O'Leary |year=1994 |title=Herbert Croly and progressive democracy |journal=[[Polity (journal)|Polity]] |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=533–552 |doi=10.2307/3235094 |jstor=3235094|s2cid=147480352 }}</ref>

[[Upton Sinclair]] was an American writer. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]] in 1943. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic [[Muckraker|muck-raking]] novel ''[[The Jungle]]'', which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. [[meatpacking industry]], causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 [[Pure Food and Drug Act]] and the [[Meat Inspection Act]].<ref>{{Citation |title=The Jungle: Upton Sinclair's Roar Is Even Louder to Animal Advocates Today |date=March 10, 2006 |url=http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/the_jungle_roar.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100106223608/http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/the_jungle_roar.html |publisher=Humane Society of the United States |access-date=June 10, 2010 |archive-date=January 6, 2010 |url-status=dead}}</ref> In 1919, he published ''[[The Brass Check]]'', a muck-raking [[Exposé (journalism)|exposé]] of American journalism that publicized the issue of [[yellow journalism]] and the limitations of the "free press" in the United States. Four years after publication of ''The Brass Check'', the first [[code of ethics]] for journalists was created.<ref>{{Citation |title=Press in America |url=http://pressinamerica.pbworks.com/w/page/18360241/Upton%20Sinclair |contribution=Upton Sinclair |publisher=PB works |access-date=October 23, 2019 |archive-date=October 26, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211026165911/http://pressinamerica.pbworks.com/w/page/18360241/Upton%2520Sinclair |url-status=live }}.</ref>

[[Ida Tarbell]], a writer and lecturer, was one of the leading [[muckraker]]s and pioneered [[investigative journalism]].  Tarbell is best known for her 1904 book, ''[[The History of the Standard Oil Company]].'' The work helped turn elite public opinion against the [[Standard Oil]] monopoly.<ref>Steve Weinberg, ''Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil'' (2008). p. xiv.</ref>

[[Lincoln Steffens]] was another investigative journalist and one of the leading [[muckraker]]s. He launched a series of articles in ''[[McClure's]]'', called ''Tweed Days in St. Louis'',<ref>{{Cite book |title=United States History |last1=Newman |first1=John |last2=Schmalbach |first2=John |date=2015 |publisher=Amsco |isbn=978-0-7891-8904-2  |page=434}}</ref> that would later be published together in a book titled ''[[The Shame of the Cities]]''. He is remembered for investigating corruption in [[local government|municipal government]] in American cities and leftist values.

==Federal activity==
On a federal level, progressives in Congress also influenced a number of progressive reforms, with various reform measures introduced that affected areas such as agriculture,<ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x006198619&seq=1 The Democratic text book, 1920 / issued by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Committee, P.415-432]</ref> public health<ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951001536118z&seq=6Theodore Roosevelt's confession of faith before the Progressive national convention, August 6, 1912, P.2]</ref> and working conditions.<ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b565005&seq=1 Democratic campaign book, 1924, issued by the Democratic national committee (and) the Democratic congressional committee, Washington, D. C., P.88-95]</ref> As reflected by [[William Allen White]]:
 
<blockquote>IN THE ELECTION of 1910 Kansas went overwhelmingly progressive Republican. The conservative faction was decisively divided. The same thing happened generally over the country north of the Mason and Dixon line. The progressive Republicans did not have a majority in either house of Congress. But they had a balance of power; amalgamation with a similar but smaller group of progressive Democrats under Bryan’s leadership gave the progressives a working majority upon most measures. They had seen the conservative Democrats and the conservative Republicans united openly, proudly, victoriously to save Speaker Cannon from the ultimate humiliation when his power was taken from him by his progressive partisans. So in the legislatures and the Congress that met in 1911 a strange new thing was revealed in American politics. Party lines were breaking down. A bipartisan party was appearing in legislatures and in the Congress. It was an undeclared third party. But when the new party appeared on the left, the conservative Democrats and the conservative Republicans generally coalesced in legislative bodies on the right. For the most part the right wing coalescents were in the minority. In Congress, on most measures, the leftwing liberals were able to command a majority. They united upon a railroad regulation bill. They united in promoting the income tax constitutional amendment. They united in submitting another amendment providing for the direct election of United States Senators, which was indeed revolutionary. But they were unable to unite in the passage of a tariff bill. Local interests in regional commodity industries like cotton, lumber, copper, wool, and textiles were able to form a conservative alliance which, under the leadership of President Taft in the White House, put through a tariff bill that was an offense to the nation. But otherwise the new party of reform which had grown up in ten years dominated politics in Washington and in the state legislatures north of the Ohio from New England to California.<ref>THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE, THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, NEW YORK, 1946, P.442</ref></blockquote>

==State and local activity==
According to James Wright, the typical progressive agenda at the state level included:

<blockquote>A reduction of corporate influence, open processes of government and politics, equity entrance in taxation, efficiency in government mental operation, and an expanded, albeit limited, state responsibility to the citizens who are most vulnerable and deprived.<ref>James Wright, ''The progressive Yankees: Republican reformers in New Hampshire, 1906–1916'' (1987) p. 179</ref></blockquote>

In the South, prohibition was high on the agenda but controversial. Jim Crow and disenfranchisement of Black voters was even higher on the agenda.<ref>Grantham, 1983, pp. 112–127, 160–177.</ref> In the Western states, [[woman suffrage]] was a success story, but racist anti-Asian sentiment also prevailed.<ref>Richard White, '' "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West'' (1991) p. 355–359, 443–445.</ref>  In the East, every state had a progressive movement, but the conservative forces were usually more powerful.  As an organized grassroots insurgency force the progressive movement was weak in New England. For example, "Massachusetts never caught the  spirit of change which dominated the era, and consequently it  appeared, at best, merely conservative."<ref>Richard M. Abrams,  "A Paradox of Progressivism: Massachusetts on the Eve of Insurgency." ''Political Science Quarterly'' 75.3 (1960): 379-399; quote on pp.389-390.. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2146389 online]</ref> When Theodore Roosevelt became governor of New York in 1898, his progressivism annoyed party leaders. They ended his reelection plans in 1900 by getting him placed on the national ticket as McKinley's running mate for vice president.<ref>G. Wallace Chessman, ''Governor Theodore Roosevelt: The Albany Apprenticeship, 1898-1900'' (Harvard UP, 1965) pp. 281-299.</ref> Belatedly progressivism emerged around 1905 under Governor [[Charles Evans Hughes]].<ref>Richard L McCormick, ''From realignment to reform : political change in New York State 1893-1910'' (1981) p.219. [https://archive.org/details/trent_0112001073595 online]</ref>

===Western states===

====Oregon====
{{Further|Direct Legislation League}}

The Oregon [[Direct Legislation League]] was an organization of political activists founded by [[William S. U'Ren]] in 1898. Oregon was one of the few states where former [[Populist Party (United States)|Populists]] like U'Ren became progressive leaders. U'Ren had been inspired by reading the influential 1893 book ''Direct Legislation Through the Initiative and Referendum'',<ref name=directbook>{{cite book|first=James William|last=Sullivan|title= Direct Legislation Through the Initiative and Referendum|year=1893|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_BlRHHgAACAAJ|publisher=True Nationalist Publishing Company}}</ref> and the group's founding followed in the wake of the 1896 founding of the National Direct Legislation League, which itself had its roots in the Direct Legislation League of [[New Jersey]] and its short-lived predecessor, the People's Power League.<ref name="Schmidt">{{cite book | last = Schmidt | first = David D. | title = Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution | publisher = Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press | year = 1989 | pages = 7, 262}}</ref>

The group led efforts in Oregon to establish an [[Popular initiative|initiative]] and [[referendum]] system, allowing direct legislation by the state's citizens. In 1902, the [[Oregon Legislative Assembly]] approved such a system, which was known at the time as the "[[Oregon System]]".

The group's further efforts led to successful ballot initiatives implementing a [[direct primary]] system in 1904, and allowing citizens to [[Recall election|directly recall]] public officials in 1908.<ref name="OBB Initiative">{{cite web | title = Initiative, Referendum and Recall Introduction | work = Oregon Blue Book | publisher = Salem, Oregon: Oregon Secretary of State | year = 2006 | url = https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Pages/state/elections/history-introduction.aspx | access-date = 2006-12-29 | archive-date = October 24, 2018 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20181024073610/https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Pages/state/elections/history-introduction.aspx | url-status = live }}</ref><ref name="Carey">{{cite book | last = Carey | first = Charles Henry | title = History of Oregon | publisher = Chicago, Illinois: Pioneer Publishing | year = 1922 | pages = 837–838}}</ref>

Democrats who promoted progressive policies included [[George Earle Chamberlain]] (governor 1903–1909 and senator 1909–1921); [[Oswald West]] (governor 1911–1915); and [[Harry Lane]] (senator 1913–1917). The most important Republican was [[Jonathan Bourne Jr. (politician)|Jonathan Bourne Jr.]] (senator 1907–1913 and national leader of progressive causes 1911–1912).<ref>Carlos A. Schwantes, ''The Pacific Northwest: an interpretive history'' (1996) p. 347.</ref>

====California====
California built the most successful grass roots progressive movement in the country by mobilizing independent organizations and largely ignoring the conservative state parties. The system continues strong into the 21st century.<ref>John M. Allswang, ''The initiative and referendum in California, 1898–1998'' (Stanford University Press, 2000) pp. 1–31.</ref> Following the Oregon model, [[John Randolph Haynes]] organized the [[Direct Legislation League]] of California in 1902 to launch the campaign for inclusion of the initiative and referendum in the state's constitution.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=American reformers, 1870–1920: Progressives in Word and Deed|date=2006|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|others=L.|isbn=074252762X|location=Lanham, Md.}}</ref> The League sent questionnaires to prospective candidates to the state legislature to obtain their stance on direct legislation and to make those positions public. It then flooded the state with letters seeking new members, money, and endorsements from organizations like the State Federation of Labor.  As membership grew it worked with other private organizations to petition the state legislature, which was not responsive. In 1902 the League won a state constitutional amendment establishing direct democracy at the local level, and in 1904, it successfully engineered the recall of the first public official.<ref name=":0" />

===South===
Progressivism was strongest in the cities, but the South was rural with few large cities. Nevertheless, statewide progressive movements were organized by Democrats in every Southern state.<ref>Arthur S. Link, "The Progressive Movement in the South, 1870-1914." ''North Carolina Historical Review'' 23.2 (1946): 172-195. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/23515038 online]</ref><ref>Dewey W. Grantham, "The Contours of Southern Progressivism." ''American Historical Review'' 86.5 (1981): 1035–1059 {{JSTOR|1858523}}.</ref>  Furthermore, Southern Democrats in Congress gave strong support to President Wilson's reforms.<ref>Dewey W. Grantham, "Southern congressional leaders and the new freedom, 1913–1917." ''Journal of Southern History'' 13.4 (1947): 439–459 {{JSTOR|2198322}}</ref>

====African American role====
African Americans developed their own version of the Progressive Movement, with two different approaches led in the South by [[Booker T. Washington]] and the Black business community, versus [[W. E. B. Du Bois]] and the [[NAACP]] in the North.<ref>Jimmie Franklin, "Blacks and the Progressive Movement: Emergence of a new synthesis." ''OAH Magazine of History'' 13.3 (1999): 20-23. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/25163288 online]</ref>

The South was a main target of Northern philanthropy designed to fight poverty and disease, and help the black community. [[Booker T. Washington]] of the [[National Negro Business League]] mobilized small black-owned business and secured access to Northern philanthropy. Across the South the [[General Education Board]] (funded by the [[Rockefeller family]]) provided large-scale subsidies for black schools, which otherwise continued to be underfunded.<ref>Joan Malczewski, "Weak state, stronger schools: Northern philanthropy and organizational Change in the Jim Crow South." ''Journal of Southern History'' 75.4 (2009): 963–1000 {{JSTOR|27779120}} (1962) .</ref>  The South was targeted in the 1920s and 1930s by the [[Julius Rosenwald Fund]], which contributed matching funds to local communities for the construction of thousands of schools for African Americans in rural areas throughout the South. Black parents donated land and labor to build improved schools for their children.<ref>Alfred Perkins, ''Edwin Rogers Embree: The Julius Rosenwald Fund, Foundation Philanthropy, and American Race Relations'' (Indiana UP, 2011) pp. 95–132. [https://www.amazon.com/Edwin-Rogers-Embree-Philanthropy-Philanthropic/dp/0253356040/ excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241211121155/https://www.amazon.com/Edwin-Rogers-Embree-Philanthropy-Philanthropic/dp/0253356040/ |date=December 11, 2024 }}</ref>

====North Carolina====
North Carolina took a leadership role in modernizing the south, notably in expansion of public education and the state university system and improvements in transportation, which earned it the nickname "The Good Roads State."<ref>{{cite web |title=Good Roads Campaign {{!}} NCpedia |url=https://www.ncpedia.org/good-roads-campaign |access-date=2024-05-12 |website=www.ncpedia.org |archive-date=May 12, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240512230454/https://www.ncpedia.org/good-roads-campaign |url-status=live }}</ref> State leaders included Governor [[Charles B. Aycock]], who led both the educational and the white supremacy crusades; diplomat [[Walter Hines Page]]; and educator [[Charles Duncan McIver]]. Women were especially active through the [[WCTU]], the Baptist church, overseas missions, local public schools, and in the cause of prohibition, leading North Carolina to become the first southern state to implement statewide [https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/statewide-prohibition prohibition]. Progressives worked to limit child labor in textile mills and supported public health campaigns to eradicate [[hookworm]] and other debilitating diseases.<ref>{{cite book |last=Link |first=William A. |title=The paradox of Southern progressivism, 1880–1930 |date=1996 |publisher=Univ. of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-4589-9 |edition=Nachdr. |series=The Fred. W. Morrison series in Southern studies |location=Chapel Hill}}</ref> While the majority of North Carolininans continued to support traditional gender roles, and state legislators did not ratify the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Nineteenth Amendment]] until 1971, Progressive reformers like [[Gertrude Weil]] and Dr. [[Elizabeth Delia Dixon-Carroll|Elizabeth Delia Dixon Carroll]] lobbied for [[Women's suffrage in the United States|woman suffrage]].

Following the [[Wilmington massacre]], North Carolina imposed strict legal segregation and rewrote its constitution in order to [[Disfranchisement|disfranchise]] Black men through poll taxes and literacy tests. In the Black community, [[Charlotte Hawkins Brown]] built the [[Palmer Memorial Institute]] to provide a liberal arts education to Black children and promote excellence and leadership. Brown worked with [[Booker T. Washington]] (in his role with the [[National Negro Business League]]), who provided ideas and access to Northern philanthropy.<ref>William A. Link, ''North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State'' (2009) pp. 285–313.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Gilmore |first=Glenda Elizabeth |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1052404500 |title=Gender and Jim Crow: women and the politics of White supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 |date=2019 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-1-4696-5188-0 |edition=Second |series=Gender & American culture |location=Chapel Hill |oclc=on1052404500}}</ref>

===Midwest===
Apart from Wisconsin, the Midwestern states were about average in supporting Progressive reforms. Ohio took the lead in municipal reform.

The negative effects of industrialization triggered the political movement of progressivism, which aimed to address its negative consequences through social reform and government regulation. [[Jane Addams]] and [[Ellen Gates Starr]] pioneered the settlement house outreach to newly arrived immigrants by establishing [[Hull House]] in Chicago in 1889. Settlement houses provided social services and played an active role in civic life, helping immigrants prepare for naturalization and campaigning for regulation and services from city government.<ref>Allen F. Davis, "The social workers and the progressive party, 1912–1916." ''American Historical Review'' 69.3 (1964): 671–688 {{JSTOR|1845783}}.</ref> Midwestern mayors—especially [[Hazen S. Pingree]] and [[Tom L. Johnson]], led early reforms against boss-dominated municipal politics, while [[Samuel M. Jones]] advocated public ownership of local utilities. [[Robert M. La Follette]], the most famous leader of Midwestern progressivism, began his career by winning election against his state's Republican party in 1900. The machine was temporarily defeated, allowing reformers to launch the "[[Wisconsin idea]]" of expanded democracy. This idea included major reforms such as direct primaries, campaign finance, civil service, anti-lobbying laws, state income and inheritance taxes, child labor restrictions, pure food, and workmen's compensation laws. La Follette promoted government regulation of railroads, public utilities, factories, and banks. Although La Follette lost influence in the national party in 1912, the Wisconsin reforms became a model for national progressivism.<ref>Michael Kazin, ed. ''The concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American political history'' (2011) pp. 347–348.</ref>

====Wisconsin====
Wisconsin from 1900 to the late 1930s was a regional and national model for innovation and organization in the progressive movement. The direct primary made it possible to mobilize voters against the previously dominant political machines. The first factors involved the [[La Follette family]] going back and forth between trying to control of the Republican Party and if frustrated trying third-party activity especially in 1924 and the 1930s. Secondly the [[Wisconsin idea]], of intellectuals and planners based at the University of Wisconsin shaping government policy. LaFollette started as a traditional Republican in the 1890s, where he fought against populism and other radical movements. He broke decisively with the state Republican leadership, and took control of the party by 1900, all the time quarreling endlessly with ex-allies.<ref>Nancy C. Unger, ''Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer'' (U of North Carolina Press, 2003) pp. 1–5.</ref>

The Democrats were a minor conservative factor in Wisconsin. The Socialists, with a strong German and union base in Milwaukee, joined the progressives in statewide politics. Senator [[Robert M. La Follette]] tried to use his national reputation to challenge President Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912. However, as soon as Roosevelt declared his candidacy, most of La Follette's supporters switched away. La Follette supported many of his Wilson's domestic programs in Congress. However he strongly opposed Wilson's foreign policy, and mobilized the large German and Scandinavian elements which demanded neutrality in the World War I.  He finally ran [[Progressive Party (United States, 1924–1934)|an independent campaign for president]] in 1924 that appealed to the German Americans, labor unions, socialists, and more radical reformers. He won 1/6 of the national vote, but carried only his home state. After his death in 1925 his two sons took over the party. They serve terms as governor and senator and set up a third party in the state. The third party fell apart in the 1930s, and totally collapsed by 1946.

The [[Wisconsin Idea]] was the commitment of the [[University of Wisconsin System#Former University of Wisconsin|University of Wisconsin]] under President [[Charles R. Van Hise]], with LaFollette support, to use the university's powerful intellectual resources to develop practical progressive reforms for the state and indeed for the nation.<ref>John D. Buenker, ''The History of Wisconsin, vol. IV: The Progressive Era 1893–1914'' (1998) pp. 569–573.{{ISBN?}}</ref>

Between 1901 and 1911, Progressive Republicans in Wisconsin created the nation's first comprehensive statewide [[Partisan primary|primary election]] system,<ref>{{cite book|title=The American direct primary: party institutionalization and transformation in the North |last=Ware|first=Alan|year=2002|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|location=Cambridge, England|isbn=978-0-521-81492-8|page=118}}</ref> the first effective [[workers' compensation|workplace injury compensation]] law,<ref>{{cite web|last=Ranney|first=Joseph|title=Wisconsin's Legal History: Law and the Progressive Era, Part 3: Reforming the Workplace|url=http://www.wisbar.org/AM/TemplateRedirect.cfm?template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35854|access-date=March 13, 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120918150059/http://www.wisbar.org/AM/TemplateRedirect.cfm?template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35854|archive-date=September 18, 2012}}</ref> and the first state [[income tax]],<ref>{{cite journal|last=Stark|first=John|title=The Establishment of Wisconsin's Income Tax|journal=Wisconsin Magazine of History|volume=71|issue=1|date=Autumn 1987|pages=27–45|url=http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/wmh/id/36669|archive-date=February 2, 2017|access-date=October 27, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202080527/http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/wmh/id/36669|url-status=live}}</ref> making taxation proportional to actual earnings. The key leaders were [[Robert M. La Follette]] and (in 1910) Governor [[Francis E. McGovern]]. However, in 1912 McGovern supported Roosevelt for president and LaFollette was outraged. He made sure the next legislature defeated the governor's programs, and that McGovern was defeated in his bid for the Senate in 1914. The Progressive movement split into hostile factions. Some was based on personalities—especially La Follette's style of violent personal attacks against other Progressives, and some was based on who should pay, with the division between farmers (who paid property taxes) and the urban element (which paid income taxes). This disarray enabled the conservatives (called "Stalwarts") to elect [[Emanuel Philipp]] as  governor in 1914. The Stalwart counterattack said the Progressives were too haughty, too beholden to experts, too eager to regulate, and too expensive. Economy and budget cutting was their formula.<ref>Robert C. Nesbit, ''Wisconsin: A History'' (1973) pp. 430–436.</ref>

The progressive [[Wisconsin Idea]] promoted the use of the University of Wisconsin faculty as intellectual resources for state government, and as guides for local government. It promoted expansion of the university through the [[UW-Extension]] system to reach all the state's farming communities.<ref>{{cite book|last=Stark|first=Jack|chapter=The Wisconsin Idea: The University's Service to the State|title=The State of Wisconsin Blue Book, 1995–1996|location=Madison|publisher=Legislative Reference Bureau|year=1995|pages=101–179|oclc=33902087}}</ref> University economics professors [[John R. Commons]] and Harold Groves enabled Wisconsin to create the first [[unemployment benefits|unemployment compensation]] program in the United States in 1932.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Nelson|first=Daniel|title=The Origins of Unemployment Insurance in Wisconsin|journal=Wisconsin Magazine of History|volume=51|issue=2|date=Winter 1967–1968|pages=109–121|url=http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/wmh/id/31447|archive-date=February 2, 2017|access-date=October 27, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202080531/http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/wmh/id/31447|url-status=live}}</ref> Other [[Wisconsin Idea]] scholars at the university generated the plan that became the New Deal's [[Social Security Act]] of 1935, with Wisconsin expert [[Arthur J. Altmeyer]] playing the key role.<ref>Arthur J. Altmeyer, "The Wisconsin Idea and Social Security." ''Wisconsin Magazine of History'' (1958) 42#1: 19–25.</ref> The Stalwarts counterattacked by arguing if the university became embedded in the state, then its internal affairs became fair game, especially the faculty preference for advanced research over undergraduate teaching.<ref>Nesbit, ''Wisconsin'' (1973) pp. 436–440.</ref> The Stalwarts controlled the Regents, and their interference in academic freedom outraged the faculty.  Historian [[Frederick Jackson Turner]], the most famous professor, quit and went to Harvard.<ref>Merle Curti and Vernon Carstensen, ''The University of Wisconsin: A History, 1848–1925'' (Vol. 2, 1949) pp. 67–68, 102.</ref><ref>Allan G. Bogue, ''Frederick Jackson Turner'' (1998) pp. 254–258.</ref>

====Illinois====
Chicago was a hotbed for reform, led by the [[Hull House]] circle. Philosopher [[John Dewey]] and [[Ella Flagg Young]] at the University of Chicago's Laboratory School influenced educational philosophy and practice nationwide. The collaboration between Dewey and Hull House residents shaped progressive education reforms that were adopted in other parts of the country.<ref>Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, "Experimenting with education: John Dewey and Ella Flagg Young at the University of Chicago." ''American Journal of Education'' 104.3 (1996): 171-185. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1085640 online]</ref>

[[Florence Kelley]] worked at Hull House from 1891 to 1899 and was appointed Illinois's first chief factory inspector in 1893. She used this position to expose abusive working conditions, especially for children, and successfully lobbied for the creation of the federal [[Bureau of Labor Statistics]].<ref>Sandra D. Harmon, "Florence Kelley in Illinois." ''Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society'' 74.3 (1981): 162-178. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/40191574 online]</ref>

[[Ida B. Wells]] moved to Chicago in 1895 and became a leading civil rights journalist and anti-lynching activist. She founded the Illinois Negro Women's Club and the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, worked as a probation officer, and helped establish the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) in 1910.<ref>Hollie Pich, "Various, Beautiful, and Terrible: The Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, ''Australasian Journal of American Studies'' 34#2 (2015), pp. 59–74. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/44779734 online]</ref>

=====Jane Addams=====
[[Jane Addams]] was an American [[Settlement movement|settlement]] activist, reformer, social worker,<ref>Franklin, D. (1986). Mary Richmond and Jane Addams: From Moral Certainty to Rational Inquiry in Social Work Practice. ''[[Social Service Review]]'', 504–525.</ref><ref>Chambers, C. (1986). Women in the Creation of the Profession of Social Work. ''Social Service Review'', 60 (1), 1–33.</ref> [[sociologist]],<ref>Deegan, M. J. (1988). ''Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–1918''. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.</ref> [[public administrator]],<ref>[[Patricia M. Shields|Shields, Patricia M.]] (2017). Jane Addams: Pioneer in American Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration. In, P. Shields Editor, ''Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration'' pp. 43–68. {{ISBN|978-3-319-50646-3}}</ref><ref>Stivers, C. (2009). A Civic Machinery for Democratic Expression: Jane Addams on Public Administration. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chielewski, ''Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy'' (pp. 87–97). Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.</ref> and author. She was a notable figure in the history of social work and [[women's suffrage in the United States]] and an advocate of [[world peace]].<ref>[[Patricia M. Shields|Shields, Patricia M.]] (2017). Jane Addams: Peace Activist and Peace Theorist In, P. Shields Editor, ''Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration'' pp. 31–42. {{ISBN|978-3-319-50646-3}}</ref> She co-founded Chicago's [[Hull House]], one of America's most famous settlement houses. In 1920, she was a co-founder for the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://acluva.org/11229/celebrating-womens-history-month-the-fight-for-womens-rights-and-the-aclu/ |title=Celebrating Women's History Month: The Fight for Women's Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU |work=American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia |date=March 28, 2013 |publisher=ACLU Virginia |access-date=October 23, 2019 |archive-date=May 12, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160512223602/https://acluva.org/11229/celebrating-womens-history-month-the-fight-for-womens-rights-and-the-aclu/ |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]], and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://socialwork.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.001.0001/acrefore-9780199975839-e-623 |title=Social Work Profession: History |last=Stuart |first=Paul H. |website=Social Work – National Assoc. of Social Workers Press |year=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.013.623 |isbn=978-0-19-997583-9 |access-date=June 13, 2013 |archive-date=November 9, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141109225953/http://socialwork.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.001.0001/acrefore-9780199975839-e-623 |url-status=live }}</ref> Maurice Hamington considered her a radical [[Pragmatism|pragmatist]] and the first woman "public philosopher" in the United States.<ref>Maurice Hamington, "Jane Addams" in ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (2010) portrays her as a radical pragmatist and the first woman "public philosopher" in United States history.</ref> In the 1930s, she was the best-known female public figure in the United States.<ref name=":1">{{cite book |title=Encyclopedia of the City |last=Caves |first=R. W. |publisher=Routledge |year=2004 |pages=8}}</ref>

====Kansas====
State leaders in reform included editor [[William Allen White]], who reached a national audience, and Governor [[Walter R. Stubbs]]. According to Gene Clanton's study of Kansas, populism and progressivism have a few similarities but different bases of support. Both opposed corruption and trusts. Populism emerged earlier and came out of the farm community. It was radically egalitarian in favor of the disadvantaged classes. It was weak in the towns and cities except in labor unions. Progressivism, on the other hand, was a later movement. It emerged after the 1890s from the urban business and professional communities. Most of its activists had opposed populism. It was elitist, and emphasized education and expertise. Its goals were to enhance efficiency, reduce waste, and enlarge the opportunities for upward social mobility. However, some former Populists changed their emphasis after 1900 and supported progressive reforms.<ref>Gene Clanton, "Populism, Progressivism, and Equality: The Kansas Paradigm" ''Agricultural History'' (1977) 51#3 pp.&nbsp;559–581.</ref>

====Ohio====
Ohio was distinctive for municipal reform in the major cities, especially Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton. The middle class lived in leafy neighborhoods in the city and took the trolley to work in downtown offices. The working class saved money by walking to their factory jobs; municipal reformers appealed to the middle-class vote, by attacking the high fares and mediocre service of privately owned transit companies. They often proposed city ownership of the transit lines, but the homeowners were reluctant to save a penny on fares by paying more dollars in property taxes <ref>John C. Teaford, ''Cities of the heartland: the rise and fall of the industrial Midwest'' (1993) pp. 111–121.</ref>

[[Dayton, Ohio]], was under the reform leadership of [[John Henry Patterson (NCR owner)|John Patterson]], the hard-charging chief executive of [[NCR Corporation|National Cash Register]] company. He appealed to the businessman with the gospel of efficiency in municipal affairs, run by non-partisan experts like himself. He wanted a city manager form of government in which outside experts would bring efficiency while elected officials would have little direct power, and bribery would not prevail. When the city council balked at his proposals, he threatened to move the National Cash Register factories to another city, and they fell in line. A massive flood in Dayton in 1913 killed 400 people and caused $100&nbsp;million in property damage. Patterson took charge of the relief work and demonstrated in person the sort of business leaders he proposed. Dayton adopted his policies; by 1920, 177 American cities had followed suit and adopted city manager governments.<ref>Teaford, ''Cities of the Heartland'' (1993) pp. 121–123.</ref><ref>Judith Sealander, ''Grand plans Business progressivism and social change in Ohio's Miami Valley, 1890–1929'' (2014) [https://archive.org/details/grandplansbusine0000seal/page/n8/mode/2up online].</ref>

====Iowa====
Iowa had a mixed record. The spirit of progressivism emerged in the 1890s, peaked in the 1900s, and decayed after 1917.<ref>Leland L. Sage, ''A History of Iowa'' (1974) pp. 216–248.</ref> Under the guidance of Governor (1902–1908) and Senator (1908–1926) [[Albert B. Cummins|Albert Baird Cummins]] the "Iowa Idea" played a role in state and national reform. A leading Republican, Cummins fought to break up monopolies. His Iowa successes included establishing the direct primary to allow voters to select candidates instead of bosses; outlawing free railroad passes for politicians; imposing a two-cents-per-mile railway maximum passenger fare; imposing pure food and drug laws; and abolishing corporate campaign contributions. He tried, without success, to lower the high protective tariff in Washington.<ref>Thomas J. Bray, "The Cummins Leadership" ''Annals of Iowa'' (1954) 32#4 pp. 241–296. [https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/article/id/10452/ online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221202042221/https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/article/id/10452/ |date=December 2, 2022 }}</ref><ref>Ralph Mills Sayre. "Albert Baird Cummins and the progressive movement in Iowa" . PhD dissertation. Columbia University, 1958. [[ProQuest]] Dissertations Publishing, 1958. 5802602.</ref>

Women put [[women's suffrage]] on the state agenda. It was led by local chapters of the [[Woman's Christian Temperance Union]], whose main goal was to impose prohibition. In keeping with the general reform mood of the latter 1860s and 1870s, the issue first received serious consideration when both houses of the General Assembly passed a women's suffrage amendment to the state constitution in 1870. Two years later, however, when the legislature had to consider the amendment again before it could be submitted to the general electorate. It was defeated because interest had waned, and strong opposition had developed especially in the [[German Americans|German-American]] community, which feared women would impose prohibition. Finally, in 1920, Iowa got woman suffrage with the rest of the country by the 19th amendment to the federal Constitution.<ref>Sage, ''A History of Iowa'' (1974) p. 255.</ref>

==Key ideas and issues==
[[File:Monopoly brothers supported by the little consumer 1912.jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|Monopoly brothers—Politically powerful trusts created high prices all carried by hapless little consumer 1912; by Thomas Powers]]

According to historian Nancy Cohen:<ref>
Nancy Cohen, ''The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914'' (U of North Carolina Press, 2001) p.5.</ref> <blockquote> During the Progressive Era . . . the minimal state of an earlier liberalism was abandoned in favor of one with the power to intervene in the market and to promote social welfare. The progressives' new liberalism, most historians conclude, was fundamentally reformist; it sought to use state power to regulate the capitalist economy and to improve the living conditions and "security" of the citizenry, without abolishing private property or revolutionizing liberal democratic political institutions.</blockquote>

===Antitrust===
{{Main|History of United States antitrust law}}

Standard Oil, with its near monopoly on refining oil, was widely hated.  Many newspapers reprinted attacks from a flagship Democratic newspaper, ''The New York World'', which made this trust a special target. There were legal efforts to curtail the oil monopoly in the Midwest and South. Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky and Kansas took the lead in 1904–1905, followed by Arkansas, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia. The results were mixed. Federal action finally won out in 1911, splitting Standard Oil into 33 companies. The 33 seldom competed with each other. The federal decision together with the [[Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914]] and the creation that year of the [[Federal Trade Commission]] largely de-escalated the antitrust rhetoric among progressives.<ref>Hidy and Hidy, pp. 683, 708–718.</ref><ref>Bruce Bringhurst. ''Antitrust and the Oil Monopoly: The Standard Oil Cases, 1890–1911'' (1976).</ref> The new framework after 1914 had little or no impact on the direction and magnitude of merger activity.<ref>Carl Eis, "The 1919–1930 Merger Movement In American Industry" ''Journal of Law & Economics'' (1969) 12#2 pp. 267–296.</ref>

===Primaries===
{{Main|Partisan primary}}

By 1890, the secret ballot was widely adopted by the states for elections, which was non-controversial and resulted in the elimination of purchased votes since the purchaser couldn't determine how the voter cast their vote. Despite this change, the candidates were still selected by party conventions. In the 1890s, the South witnessed a decrease in the possibility of Republican or Populist or coalition victories in most elections, with the Democratic Party gaining full control over all statewide Southern elections. To prevent factionalism within the Democratic Party, Southern states began implementing primaries. However, candidates who competed in the primaries and lost were prohibited from running as independents in the fall election. Louisiana was the first state to introduce primaries in 1892, and by 1907, eleven Southern and border states had implemented statewide primaries.<ref>J. Morgan Kousser, ''The shaping of southern politics: Suffrage restriction and the establishment of the one-party south, 1880–1910'' (Yale University Press, 1974).{{ISBN?}}</ref>

In the North, Robert LaFollette introduced the primary in Wisconsin in 1904. Most Northern states followed suit, with reformers proclaiming grass roots democracy. The party leaders and bosses also wanted direct primaries to minimize the risk of sore losers running as independents.<ref>John D. Buenker and Edward R. Kantowicz, ''Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890–1920'' (1988) pp. 380–381.</ref><ref>Peter H. Argersinger, "Electoral Processes." in ''Encyclopedia of American Political History'' (1984) 2: 489–512.</ref>

When candidates for office were selected by the party caucus (meetings open to the public) or by statewide party conventions of elected delegates, the public lost a major opportunity to shape policy. The progressive solution was the "open" primary by which any citizen could vote, or the "closed" primary limited to party members. In the early 20th century most states adopted the system for local and state races—but only 14 used it for delegates to the national presidential nominating conventions. The biggest battles came in New York state, where the conservatives fought  hard for years against several governors until the primary was finally adopted in 1913.<ref>H. Feldman, "The Direct Primary in New York State" ''American Political Science Review'' (1917) 11#3 pp. 494–518 {{JSTOR|1944250}}</ref><ref>Robert F. Wesser, ''Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and Reform in New York, 1905–1910'' (Cornell UP, 2009) pp. 252–301. {{ISBN?}}</ref>

===Government reform===
Disturbed by the waste, inefficiency, stubbornness, corruption, and injustices of the [[Gilded Age]], the Progressives were committed to changing and reforming every aspect of the state, society and economy. Significant changes enacted at the national levels included the imposition of an [[income tax]] with the [[Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Sixteenth Amendment]], direct election of [[United States Senate|Senators]] with the [[Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Seventeenth Amendment]], [[Prohibition in the United States|prohibition of alcohol]] with the [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Eighteenth Amendment]], election reforms to stop corruption and fraud, and [[women's suffrage]] through the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Nineteenth Amendment]] to the U.S. Constitution.<ref>David E. Kyvig, ''Explicit and authentic acts: amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776–1995'' (Kansas UP, 1996) pp. 208–214; Hedwig Richter: [https://www.academia.edu/25338056/_TRANSNATIONAL_REFORM_AND_DEMOCRACY_ELECTION_REFORMS_IN_NEW_YORK_CITY_AND_BERLIN_AROUND_1900_in_Journal_of_the_Gilded_Age_and_Progressive_Era_15_2016_149-175 "Transnational Reform and Democracy: Election Reforms in New York City and Berlin Around 1900"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190713073401/https://www.academia.edu/25338056/_TRANSNATIONAL_REFORM_AND_DEMOCRACY_ELECTION_REFORMS_IN_NEW_YORK_CITY_AND_BERLIN_AROUND_1900_in_Journal_of_the_Gilded_Age_and_Progressive_Era_15_2016_149-175 |date=July 13, 2019 }}, in: ''[[Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era]]'' 15 (2016), 149–175</ref>

A main objective of the Progressive Era movement was to eliminate corruption within the government. They also made it a point to focus on family, education, and many other important aspects that still are enforced today. The most important political leaders during this time were Theodore Roosevelt and Robert M. La Follette. Key Democratic leaders were [[William Jennings Bryan]], [[Woodrow Wilson]], and [[Al Smith]].<ref name="The Progressive Era">{{cite web |title=The Progressive Era |url=http://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-progressive-era/ |website=Boundless US History |access-date=February 13, 2019}}</ref>

This movement targeted the regulations of huge monopolies and corporations. This was done through antitrust laws to promote equal competition among every business. This was done through the [[Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890|Sherman Act of 1890]], the [[Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914|Clayton Act of 1914]], and the [[Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914]].<ref name="The Progressive Era"/>

====City manager====
At the local level the new [[city manager]] system was designed by progressives to increase efficiency and reduce partisanship and avoid the bribery of elected local officials. Kansas was a leader, where it was promoted in the press, led by Henry J. Allen of the ''Wichita Beacon'', and pushed through by Governor [[Arthur Capper]]. Eventually 52 Kansas cities used the system.<ref>H. Edward Flentje, "The Political Roots of City Managers in Kansas" ''Kansas History'' (1984) 7#2 pp. 139–158.</ref>

===Family roles===
[[File:Lindsey ben.jpg|thumb|Colorado judge [[Ben Lindsey (jurist)|Ben Lindsey]], a pioneer in the establishment of juvenile court systems]]

By the late 19th century, urban and rural governments had systems in place for welfare to the poor and incapacitated. Progressives argued these needs deserved a higher priority.<ref>Gwendoline Alphonso, "Hearth and Soul: Economics and Culture in Partisan Conceptions of the Family in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920", ''Studies in American Political Development'', Oct 2010, Vol. 24 Issue 2, pp. 206–232.</ref> Local [[mothers' pensions|public assistance programs]] were reformed to try to keep families together.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Leff|first=Mark H.|date=1973|title=Consensus for Reform: The Mothers'-Pension Movement in the Progressive Era|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30021515|journal=[[Social Service Review]]|volume=47|issue=3|pages=397–417|doi=10.1086/643020|jstor=30021515|s2cid=154238579|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Inspired by crusading Judge [[Ben Lindsey (jurist)|Ben Lindsey]] of Denver, cities established juvenile courts to deal with disruptive teenagers without sending them to adult prisons.<ref>D'Ann Campbell, "Judge Ben Lindsey and the Juvenile Court Movement, 1901–1904", ''Arizona and the West'', (1976) 18#1 pp. 5–20.</ref><ref>James Marten, ed. ''Children and Youth during the Gilded Page and Progressive Era'' (2014)</ref>

===Pure food, drugs, and water===
The purity of food, milk, and drinking water became a high priority in the cities. At the state and national levels new food and drug laws strengthened urban efforts to guarantee the safety of the [[food system]]. The 1906 federal [[Pure Food and Drug Act]], which was pushed by drug companies and providers of medical services, removed from the market patent medicines that had never been scientifically tested.<ref>Marc T. Law, "The Origins of State Pure Food Regulation", ''Journal of Economic History'', Dec 2003, Vol. 63 Issue 4, pp. 1103–1131.</ref>

With the decrease in standard working hours, urban families had more leisure time. Many spent this leisure time at movie theaters. Progressives advocated censorship of motion pictures as it was believed that patrons (especially children) viewing movies in dark, unclean, potentially unsafe theaters, might be negatively influenced in witnessing actors portraying crimes, violence, and sexually suggestive situations. Progressives across the country influenced municipal governments of large urban cities, to build numerous parks where it was believed that leisure time for children and families could be spent in a healthy, wholesome environment, thereby fostering good morals and citizenship.<ref>Black, Gregory D. ''Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies''. Cambridge University Press 1994{{ISBN?}}</ref>

===Public health===

====Social hygiene movement====
{{Further|American Sexual Health Association}}

The [[social hygiene movement]] brought together different groups that were concerned with venereal disease, prostitution, society's moral standards, and family life. The primary objective was to enhance public health and promote social morality, specifically in matters concerning sexuality and reproductive health.<ref>Erin Wuebker, "Social Hygiene in America" (Gale, 2020) [https://www.gale.com/binaries/content/assets/gale-us-en/campaigns/archives-explored/essays/phma_essay_wuebker1_final.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230401124933/https://www.gale.com/binaries/content/assets/gale-us-en/campaigns/archives-explored/essays/phma_essay_wuebker1_final.pdf |date=April 1, 2023 }}.</ref> The movement targeted prostitution or "white slavery" and aimed to eliminate it by criminalizing it and enforcing stricter penalties for those involved in the sex trade.<ref>Mara L. Keire, "The vice trust: A reinterpretation of the white slavery scare in the United States, 1907–1917." ''Journal of Social History'' 35.1 (2001): 5–41 [https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/10/article/17946/summary excerpt]</ref> When the US entered the war a high priority was to end prostitution in proximity to military installations. The result was a permanent closing of red light districts in major cities.<ref>Allen F. Davis, "Welfare, Reform and World War I." ''American Quarterly'' 19.3 (1967): 516–533 {{JSTOR|2711070}}.</ref><ref>Michael Imber, "The First World War, sex education, and the American Social Hygiene Association's campaign against venereal disease." ''Journal of educational administration and history'' 16.1 (1984): 47–56.</ref>

Besides public health, the social hygiene movement also aimed to uphold moral purity and family values. The [[Women's Christian Temperance Union]] (WCTU) and the [[Young Men's Christian Association]] (YMCA) were among the leading groups that encouraged abstinence and discouraged premarital sex. They also advocated for more stringent censorship of literature and entertainment deemed morally unacceptable.<ref>On international work for social hygiene see Lou Antolihao, et al. ''Spreading Protestant Modernity: Global Perspectives on the Social Work of the YMCA and YWCA, 1889–1970'' (University of Hawaii Press, 2020).</ref> While the social hygiene movement achieved considerable  success in promoting public health and morality, its approach of criminalizing prostitution and promoting abstinence failed to address the underlying causes of these issues, such as poverty, economic inequality, and gender inequality. Moreover, its strict moral standards often marginalized groups such as immigrants and African Americans. Nonetheless, the movement genuinely sought to promote public health and social morality and to create a more stable and ordered society.<ref>Christina Simmons, "African Americans and sexual victorianism in the social hygiene movement, 1910–40." ''Journal of the History of Sexuality'' 4.1 (1993): 51–75 {{JSTOR|3704179}}.</ref>

==Social welfare==

Various social services were also expanded during the course of the Progressive Era. Milk codes were drawn up in most cities, while milk depots were set up. As noted by one study, these depots "sold milk at cost or provided it free of charge for needy persons." Progress was made in tackling slum housing, while city governments established a wide range of services. These included free school meals for poor school children, free dental and medical examinations for school children, day nurseries, baby clinics, and public playgrounds.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015002133125&seq=9|title=Laissez faire and the general-welfare state; a study of conflict in American thought, 1865-1901|website=HathiTrust|access-date=November 30, 2024|archive-date=July 26, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240726211105/https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015002133125&seq=9|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Mothers' pensions]] were also set up in various states; designed to help widows in need.

In 1894 and 1895, Mayor of Detroit [[Hazen S. Pingree]] set up what became known as the Potato Patch plan, which was aimed at helping unemployed individuals in those years. This involved vacant lots in the suburbs being used in parcels upon which, as noted by one study, “potatoes and garden truck were planted and cultivated by needy families under the supervision of a committee, funds being raised by subscriptions and the use of the land permitted by its owners.” Many other cities went on to adopt Detroit’s plan.<ref>[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000468209&seq=9  THIRD PARTY MOVEMENTS SINCE THE CIVIL WAR WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO IOWA A STUDY IN SOCIAL POLITICS BY FRED E. HAYNES, 1916, P.409]</ref>

==Labor policy and unions==
[[File:Hine - Indiana glassworks night scene, 1908 1.JPG|thumb|Glass works in Indiana, from a 1908 photograph by [[Lewis Hine]]]]

There were many dramatic changes in the condition of American workers from 1915 to 2015.<ref>See Carol Boyd Leon, "The life of American workers in 1915," ''Monthly Labor Review'' (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2016) comparison in many aspects with 2015. {{doi|10.21916/mlr.2016.5}}</ref>

Labor unions, especially those affiliated with the [[American Federation of Labor]] (AFL), grew rapidly in the early 20th century, and had a progressive agenda as well. After experimenting in the early 20th century with cooperation with business in the [[National Civic Federation]], the AFL turned after 1906 to a working political alliance with the Democratic Party. The alliance was especially important in the larger industrial cities. The unions wanted restrictions on judges who intervened in labor disputes, usually on the side of the employer. They finally achieved that goal with the [[Norris–La Guardia Act]] of 1932.<ref>[[Julie Greene]], ''Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881–1917'' (1998)</ref>

President Taft signed the March 4, 1913, bill (the last day of his presidency), establishing the Department of Labor as a [[Cabinet of the United States|Cabinet]]-level department, replacing the previous [[Department of Commerce and Labor]]. [[William Bauchop Wilson|William B. Wilson]] was appointed as the first Secretary of Labor on March 5, 1913, by President Wilson.<ref>[[William Bauchop Wilson]]</ref> In October 1919, Secretary Wilson chaired the first meeting of the [[International Labour Organization]] even though the U.S. was not yet a member.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.iga.ucdavis.edu/Research/All-UC/conferences/2006-fall/Jensen.pdf |title=Iga.ucdavis.edu |access-date=October 23, 2019 |archive-date=March 5, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305100345/http://www.iga.ucdavis.edu/Research/All-UC/conferences/2006-fall/Jensen.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In September 1916, the [[Federal Employees' Compensation Act]] introduced benefits to workers who are injured or contract illnesses in the workplace. The act established an agency responsible for federal workers' compensation, which was transferred to the Labor Department in the 1940s and has become known as the [[Office of Workers' Compensation Programs]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1991/09/art1full.pdf|title=Bls.gov|access-date=October 23, 2019|archive-date=September 23, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923212738/http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1991/09/art1full.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

Several other laws aimed at helping working people were passed during the course of the Progressive Era.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015019180952&seq=5|title=Growth of labor law in the United States|website=HathiTrust}}</ref><ref>[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Political_Development_of_American_De/4-gEEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=progressive+era+usury+laws+farmers&pg=PA103&printsec=frontcover The Political Development of American Debt Relief By Emily Zackin, Chloe N. Thurston, 2024, p. 103]</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000503230|title=American labor legislation review.|date=January 18, 1911|pages=32 volumes|via=Hathi Trust|archive-date=December 4, 2024|access-date=December 3, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241204081628/https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000503230|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/labor-legislation-1912-32-3905?browse=1910s|title=Labor Legislation of 1912-32|series=A Policymaker's Perspective on the U.S. Economy |date=December 13, 1912|via=fraser.stlouisfed.org|archive-date=December 6, 2024|access-date=December 3, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241206183017/https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/labor-legislation-1912-32-3905?browse=1910s|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Women==
{{Main|History of women in the United States#Progressive era: 1900–1940}}
[[File:1912 Ohio women Headquarters.jpg|thumb|In 1912, women's suffrage headquarters reached out to men in Cleveland, Ohio.]]

Across the nation, middle-class women organized on behalf of [[social reform]]s during the Progressive Era. Using the language of [[Social housekeeping|municipal housekeeping]] women were able to push such reforms as prohibition, women's suffrage, child-saving, and public health.

Middle-class women formed local clubs, which after 1890 were coordinated by the [[General Federation of Women's Clubs]] (GFWC). Historian Paige Meltzer puts the GFWC in the context of the [[Progressivism in the United States|Progressive Movement]], arguing that its policies:

<blockquote>built on Progressive-era strategies of municipal housekeeping. During the Progressive era, female activists used traditional constructions of womanhood, which imagined all women as mothers and homemakers, to justify their entrance into community affairs: as "municipal housekeepers," they would clean up politics, cities, and see after the health and well-being of their neighbors. Donning the mantle of motherhood, female activists methodically investigated their community's needs and used their "maternal" expertise to lobby, create, and secure a place for themselves in an emerging state welfare bureaucracy, best illustrated perhaps by clubwoman [[Julia Lathrop]]'s leadership in the [[United States Children's Bureau|Children's Bureau]]. As part of this tradition of maternal activism, the Progressive-era General Federation supported a range of causes from the pure food and drug administration to public health care for mothers and children, to a ban on child labor, each of which looked to the state to help implement their vision of social justice.<ref>Paige Meltzer, "The Pulse and Conscience of America" The General Federation and Women's Citizenship, 1945–1960," ''Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies'' (2009), Vol. 30 Issue 3, pp. 52–76. [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/frontiers/v030/30.3.meltzer.html online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304130424/http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=%2Fjournals%2Ffrontiers%2Fv030%2F30.3.meltzer.html |date=March 4, 2016 }}</ref></blockquote>

Some activists demanded change, and questioned the old thinking regarding marriage and sexuality. They craved more sexual freedom following the sexually repressive and restrictive Victorian era.<ref name="simmons">{{cite book|title=Making marriage modern: Women's sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II|last=Simmons|first=Christina|date=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0199874033|edition=1st paperback|location=Oxford|oclc=773370033}}</ref> Dating became a new way of courting during the Progressive Era and moved youth into a more romantic way of viewing marriage and relationships.<ref name="simmons"/> Within more engagements and marriages, both parties would exchange love notes as a way to express their sexual feelings. The divide between aggressive passionate love associated usually with men and a women's more spiritual romantic love became apparent in the middle class as women were judged on how they should be respected based on how they expressed these feelings.<ref name="simmons"/> So, frequently women expressed passionless emotions towards love as a way to establish status among men in the middle class.<ref name="simmons"/>

===Women's suffrage===
{{Main|National American Woman Suffrage Association}}

The [[National American Woman Suffrage Association]] (NAWSA) was an American women's rights organization formed in May 1890 as a unification of the [[National Woman Suffrage Association]] (NWSA) and the [[American Woman Suffrage Association]] (AWSA). The NAWSA set up hundreds of smaller local and state groups, with the goal of passing [[Women's suffrage|woman suffrage]] legislation at the state and local level. The NAWSA was the largest and most important suffrage organization in the United States, and was the primary promoter of women's right to vote. [[Carrie Chapman Catt]] was the key leader in the early 20th century. Like AWSA and NWSA before it, the NAWSA pushed for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's voting rights, and was instrumental in winning the ratification of the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] in 1920.<ref>Eleanor Flexner, ''Century of Struggle'' (1959), pp. 208–217.</ref><ref>Corrine M. McConnaughy, ''The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment'' (2013).</ref> A breakaway group, the [[National Woman's Party]], tightly controlled by [[Alice Paul]], used [[civil disobedience]] to gain publicity and force passage of suffrage. Paul's members chained themselves to the White House fence to get arrested, then went on hunger strikes to gain publicity. While the British suffragettes stopped their protests in 1914 and supported the British war effort, Paul began her campaign in 1917 and was widely criticized for ignoring the war and attracting radical anti-war elements.<ref>Nancy F. Cott, ''The Grounding of Modern Feminism'' (1989) pp. 51–82</ref>

A lesser-known feminist movement in the progressive era was the self-defense movement. According to Wendy Rouse, feminists sought to raise awareness about the sexual harassment and violence that women faced on the street, at work, and in the home. They wanted to inspire a sense of physical and personal empowerment through training in active self-defense.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rouse |first=Wendy L. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/989726274 |title=Her own hero: the origins of the women's self-defense movement |date=2017 |isbn=978-1-4798-7276-3 |publisher=New York University Press |location=New York |oclc=989726274}}</ref>

==Civil rights==
===African Americans and race relations===
{{Main|Civil rights movement (1896–1954)|National Urban League|NAACP}}

Across the South, black communities developed their own Progressive reform projects.<ref>John Dittmer, ''Black Georgia in the Progressive era, 1900–1920'' (1980).</ref><ref>David W. Southern, ''The Progressive Era and Race: Reaction and Reform, 1900–1917'' (2005)</ref> Typical projects involved upgrading schools, modernizing church operations, expanding business opportunities, fighting for a larger share of state budgets, and engaging in legal action to secure equal rights.<ref>Angela Jones, ''African American Civil Rights: Early Activism and the Niagara Movement'' (2011) [https://www.questia.com/library/120085334/african-american-civil-rights-early-activism-and online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160624130905/https://www.questia.com/library/120085334/african-american-civil-rights-early-activism-and |date=June 24, 2016 }}</ref> Reform projects were especially notable in rural areas, where the great majority of Southern blacks lived.<ref>Debra Reid, "Rural African Americans and Progressive Reform", ''Agricultural History'' (2000) 74#2 pp. 322–341 on Texas.</ref>

Rural blacks were heavily affected by environmental issues, in which they developed their own traditions and priorities.<ref>Dianne D. Glave, "'A Garden so Brilliant With Colors, so Original in its Design': Rural African American Women, Gardening, Progressive Reform, and the Foundation of an African American Environmental Perspective." ''Environmental History'' 8#3 (2003): 395–411.</ref><ref>Dianne D. Glave and Mark Stoll, eds., ''To Love the Wind and the Rain': African Americans and Environmental History''. (2006).</ref> [[George Washington Carver]] (1860–1943) was a leader in promoting environmentalism, and was well known for his research projects, particularly those involving agriculture.<ref>Mark D. Hersey, ''My Work Is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver'' (2011) [https://www.questia.com/library/120080065/my-work-is-that-of-conservation-an-environmental online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201023133222/https://www.questia.com/library/120080065/my-work-is-that-of-conservation-an-environmental |date=October 23, 2020 }}</ref>

Although there were some achievements that improved conditions for African Americans and other non-white minorities, the Progressive Era was still in the midst of the [[nadir of American race relations]]. While white Progressives in principle believed in improving conditions for minority groups, there were wide differences in how this was to be achieved. Some, such as [[Lillian Wald]], fought to alleviate the plight of poor African Americans. Many, though, were concerned with enforcing, not eradicating, racial segregation. In particular, the mixing of black and white pleasure-seekers in "black-and-tan" clubs troubled Progressive reformers.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Keire|first=Mara L.|year=2001|title=The Vice Trust: A Reinterpretation of the White Slavery Scare in the United States, 1907–1917|journal=Journal of Social History|volume=35|pages=5–41|doi=10.1353/jsh.2001.0089|s2cid=144256136}}</ref> The Progressive ideology espoused by many of the era attempted to correct societal problems created by racial integration following the Civil War by segregating the races and allowing each group to achieve its own potential; most Progressives saw racial integration as a problem to be solved, rather than a goal to be achieved.<ref>{{cite book | title=Racial Encounter: The Social Psychology of Contact and Desegregation |author1=Durrheim, Kevin |author2=Dixon, John | year=2005 | publisher=Routledge | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5jR5kd11CUMC | pages=134–135| isbn=978-1135648398 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title=Tar Heel Politics 2000 | author=Luebke, Paul | year=2000 | publisher=The University of North Carolina Press | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S9D7f9NQ1L0C | page=134| isbn=978-0807889329 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America|last=Noel|first=Hans|year=2014|publisher=Cambridge University Press| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SRHrAQAAQBAJ|page=147|isbn=978-1107038318}}</ref> As white Progressives sought to help the white working class, clean up politics, and improve the cities, the country instated the system of racial segregation known as [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Strange Career of Jim Crow|last=Woodward|first=C. Vann|year=1945}}</ref>

Legal historian Herbert Hovenkap argues that while many early progressives inherited the racism of Jim Crow, as they began to innovate their own ideas, they would embrace [[behaviorism]], [[cultural relativism]], and [[marginalism]], which stress environmental influences on humans rather than biological inheritance. He states that ultimately Progressives "were responsible for bringing [[scientific racism]] to an end".<ref>Hovenkamp, H. 2017 [http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2767&context=faculty_scholarship The Progressives: Racism and Public Law] Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, 59 Ariz. L. Rev. 947</ref>

==Key political reform efforts==

===Democracy===
{{Further|Initiatives and referendums in the United States|Primary election|Short ballot}}

Many progressives sought to enable the citizenry to rule more directly and circumvent machines, bosses and professional politicians. The institution of the initiative and referendums made it possible to pass laws without the involvement of the legislature, while the recall allowed for the removal of corrupt or under-performing officials, and the direct primary let people democratically nominate candidates, avoiding the professionally dominated conventions. Thanks to the efforts of Oregon State Representative [[William Simon U'Ren|William S. U'Ren]] and his [[Direct Legislation League]], voters in Oregon overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure in 1902 that created the [[Popular initiative|initiative]] and [[referendum]] processes for citizens to directly introduce or approve proposed laws or amendments to the state constitution, making Oregon the first state to adopt such a system. U'Ren also helped in the passage of an amendment in 1908 that gave voters power to [[Recall election|recall]] elected officials, and would go on to establish, at the state level, popular election of [[United States Senate|US Senators]] and the first [[presidential primary]] in the United States. In 1911, California governor [[Hiram Johnson]] established the [[Direct democracy in Oregon|Oregon System]] of "Initiative, Referendum, and Recall" in his state, viewing them as good influences for citizen participation against the historic influence of large corporations on state lawmakers.<ref>John M. Allswang, ''The initiative and referendum in California, 1898–1998'', (2000) ch 1.</ref> These Progressive reforms were soon replicated in other states, including [[Idaho]], [[Washington (state)|Washington]], and [[Wisconsin]], and today roughly half of US states have initiative, referendum and recall provisions in their state constitutions.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.iandrinstitute.org/statewide_i&r.htm | publisher = State Initiative & Referendum Institute at USC | title = State Initiative and Referendum Summary | access-date = November 27, 2006 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160211180917/http://www.iandrinstitute.org/statewide_i%26r.htm | archive-date = February 11, 2016}}</ref>

The Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, requiring that all senators be elected by the people (they were formerly appointed by state legislatures). The main motivation was to reduce the power of political bosses, who controlled the Senate seats by virtue of their control of state legislatures. The result, according to political scientist [[Henry Jones Ford]], was that the United States Senate had become a "Diet of party lords, wielding their power without scruple or restraint, on behalf of those particular interests" that put them in office.<ref>Christopher Hoebeke, ''The road to mass democracy: original intent and the Seventeenth Amendment'' (1995) p. 18</ref>

Reformers also sought to streamline government through the introduction of the [[short ballot]]. By reducing the number of elected officials and consolidating their power in singular officials like a governor they hoped to increase accountability and clarity in government. Woodrow Wilson was at one point the President of the National Short Ballot Organization.<ref>{{cite book|publisher=National Short Ballot Association|url=http://archive.org/details/shortballotinvis00nati|title=The short ballot and the 'Invisible Government'|first=Elihu|last=Root|date=1900|location=New York|via=Robarts – University of Toronto}}</ref>

====Direct primary====
The direct primary became important at the state level starting in the 1890s and at the local level in the 1900s. However, presidential nominations depended chiefly on state party conventions until 1972.<ref>Karen M. Kaufmann,  et al., "A Promise Fulfilled? Open Primaries and Representation," ''Journal of Politics'' 65#2 (2003): 457–476. {{JSTOR|3449815}}</ref>

The first primary elections came in the Democratic Party in the South starting in Louisiana in 1892. By 1897, in 11 Southern and border states, the Democratic Party held primaries to select candidates. Unlike the final election run by government officials, primaries are run by party officials, making it easy to discriminate against black voters in the era of Jim Crow. The US Supreme Court declared the [[white primary]] unconstitutional in ''[[Smith v. Allwright]]'' in 1944.<ref>Michael J. Klarman, "The White Primary Rulings: A Case Study in the Consequences of Supreme Court Decisionmaking". ''Florida State University Law Review'' (2001). 29#1: 55–107 [https://ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1625&context=lr online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221225212950/https://ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1625&context=lr |date=December 25, 2022 }}.</ref>

Insurgent Midwestern Republicans began promoting primaries starting in 1890 with [[Robert M. La Follette]] of Wisconsin. He crusaded against Stalwart party bosses of the state Republican Party, and won voter approval in a referendum in 1904.<ref>Irvine L. Lenroot, ''Wisconsin Magazine of History'' 26#2 (1942), pp. 219–221. {{JSTOR|4631524}}</ref> While La Follette always won his primary, that was not necessarily the case with other progressives. For example, his son [[Robert M. La Follette Jr.|Bob La Follette]] lost his Senate seat in the 1946 primary to [[Joseph McCarthy]], a much more energetic candidate.<ref>Robert C. Nesbit, ''Wisconsin: A History'' (1973) 412–415, 528. {{ISBN?}}</ref>

In New Jersey, on the other hand, the party leaders introduced the primary in every county by 1902. Their goal was to keep the various factions united for the fall campaign and minimize ticket-splitting.<ref>Reynolds, ''Testing Democracy'' pp. 130–133.</ref>

The Northeast was laggard in adopting the direct primary, with Connecticut and Rhode Island the last states to sign up. The Massachusetts Democratic Party were gravely weakened by the primary system.<ref>Duane Lockard, ''New England State Politics'' (1959) pp. 124–125.</ref> New York Republican Governor [[Charles Evans Hughes]] made a primary law his top goal in 1909 and failed.<ref>Richard McCormick, (1981) pp. 243–217.</ref><ref>Robert F. Wesser, ''Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and Reform in New York, 1905–1910'' (Cornell UP, 2009) pp. 252–301.</ref>

===Urbanization and municipal reform===
{{Further|American urban history#Progressive era: 1890s–1920s}}

A coalition of middle-class reform-oriented voters, academic experts, and reformers hostile to the political machines started forming in the 1890s and introduced a series of reforms in urban America, designed to reduce waste, inefficiency and corruption, by introducing scientific methods, compulsory education and administrative innovations.

The pace was set in [[History of Detroit|Detroit, Michigan]], where Republican mayor [[Hazen S. Pingree]] first put together the reform coalition as mayor 1889–1897.<ref>Melvin G. Holli, ''Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics'' (1969).</ref> Many cities set up municipal reference bureaus to study the budgets and administrative structures of local governments.

Progressive mayors took the lead in many key cities,<ref>Kenneth Finegold, "Traditional Reform, Municipal Populism, and Progressivism", ''Urban Affairs Review'', (1995) 31#1 pp. 20–42.</ref> such as [[Cleveland]], Ohio (especially Mayor [[Tom L. Johnson|Tom Johnson]]); [[Toledo, Ohio]];<ref>Arthur E. DeMatteo, "The Progressive As Elitist: 'Golden Rule' Jones and the Toledo Charter Reform Campaign of 1901", ''Northwest Ohio Quarterly'', (1997) 69#1 pp. 8–30.</ref> Jersey City, New Jersey;<ref>Eugene M. Tobin, "The Progressive as Single Taxer: Mark Fagan and the Jersey City Experience, 1900–1917", ''American Journal of Economics & Sociology'', (1974) 33#3 pp. 287–298.</ref> Los Angeles;<ref>Martin J. Schiesl, "Progressive Reform in Los Angeles under Mayor Alexander, 1909–1913", ''California Historical Quarterly'', (1975) 534#1, pp. 37–56.</ref> [[Memphis, Tennessee]];<ref>G. Wayne Dowdy, "'A Business Government by a Business Man': E. H. Crump as a Progressive Mayor, 1910–1915", ''Tennessee Historical Quarterly'', (2001) 60#3 3, pp. 162–175.</ref> [[Louisville, Kentucky]];<ref>William E. Ellis, "Robert Worth Bingham and Louisville Progressivism, 1905–1910", ''Filson Club History Quarterly'', (1980) 54#2 pp. 169–195.</ref> and many other cities, especially in the western states. In [[History of Illinois|Illinois]], Governor [[Frank Lowden]] undertook a major reorganization of state government.<ref>William Thomas Hutchinson, ''Lowden of Illinois: the life of Frank O. Lowden'' (1957) vol 2</ref> In Wisconsin, the stronghold of [[Robert M. La Follette|Robert La Follette]], the [[Wisconsin Idea]] used the state university as a major source of ideas and expertise.<ref>{{cite web|title=Progressivism and the Wisconsin Idea|url=http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-036/?action=more_essay|publisher=[[Wisconsin Historical Society]]|year=2008|access-date=February 7, 2008|archive-date=April 2, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402132020/http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-036/?action=more_essay|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Gary Plan for efficient public schools====
{{Main|Gary Plan}}

The [[Gary Plan]] was much discussed method of building a highly efficient public school system.<ref>Ronald K. Goodenow, "Educating the Masses and Reforming the City: Another Look at the Gary Plan" ''Teachers College Record'' (1982) 83#3 pp. 467–473.</ref>  It was in part inspired by the educational ideas of philosopher [[John Dewey]].  It was designed by School Superintendent [[William Wirt (educator)|William Wirt]] in 1907 and implemented in the newly built steel mill city of [[Gary, Indiana]]. Reformers tried to copy it across the country.  Wirt later [[History of education in New York City#Conflict over the Gary Plan|promoted it in New York City.]]  In New York City it was strongly opposed by unions and local political forces and was reversed in 1917. By 1929 over 200 cities in 41 states adopted variations of the plan. Ronald Cohen states that the Gary Plan was popular because it merged Progressive commitments to:

<blockquote>paedagogical and economic efficiency, growth and centralization of administration, an expanded curriculum, introduction of measurement and testing, greater public use of school facilities, a child-centered approach, and heightened concern about using the schools to properly socialize children.<ref>Ronald D. Cohen, "The Gary Schools and Progressive Education in the 1920's" (1975) [https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED104755 online]</ref> </blockquote>

====Cities during the Progressive Era====
In the early 1900s, the United States entered a period of peace, prosperity, and progress. In the nation's growing cities, factory output grew, small businesses flourished, and incomes rose. As the promise of jobs and higher wages attracted more and more people into the cities, the US began to shift to a nation of city dwellers. By 1900, 30 million people, or 30 percent of the total population, lived in cities.<ref name="AutoPK-166">{{cite web |title=Cities During the Progressive Era {{!}} Progressive Era to New Era, 1900–1929 {{!}} U.S. History Primary Source Timeline {{!}} Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress {{!}} Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/cities-during-progressive-era/ |access-date=2024-06-28 |website=Library of Congress |archive-date=July 3, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240703172129/https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/cities-during-progressive-era/ |url-status=live }}{{source-attribution}}</ref>

The mass migration of people into the cities enriched some people but caused severe problems for others. For the emerging middle class, benefiting from growing incomes and increases in leisure time, the expanding city offered many advantages. Department stores, chain stores, and shopping centers emerged to meet the growing demand for material goods. Parks, amusement parks, and baseball stadiums were built to meet aesthetic and recreational needs. Transportation systems improved, as did the general infrastructure, better meeting the increased needs of the middle and upper class city dwellers.<ref name="AutoPK-166"/>

Thousands of poor people also lived in the cities. Lured by the promise of prosperity, many rural families and immigrants from throughout the world arrived in the cities to work in the factories. It is estimated that by 1904 one in three people living in the cities was close to starving to death. For many of the urban poor, living in the city resulted in a decreased quality of life. With few city services to rely upon, the working class lived daily with overcrowding, inadequate water facilities, unpaved streets, and disease. Lagging far behind the middle class, working class wages provided little more than subsistence living and few, if any, opportunities for movement out of the city slums.<ref name="AutoPK-166"/>

=====Business progressivism in 1920s=====
What historians have identified as "business progressivism", with its emphasis on efficiency and typified by Henry Ford and Herbert Hoover reached an apogee in the 1920s. Wik, for example, argues that Ford's "views on technology and the mechanization of rural America were generally enlightened, progressive, and often far ahead of his times."

Tindall stresses the continuing importance of the progressive movement in the South in the 1920s involving increased democracy, efficient government, corporate regulation, social justice, and governmental public service. William Link finds political Progressivism dominant in most of the South in the 1920s. Likewise it was influential in the Midwest.

Historians of women and of youth emphasize the strength of the progressive impulse in the 1920s. Women consolidated their gains after the success of the suffrage movement, and moved into causes such as world peace, good government, maternal care (the Sheppard–Towner Act of 1921), and local support for education and public health. The work was not nearly as dramatic as the suffrage crusade, but women voted and operated quietly and effectively. Paul Fass, speaking of youth, says "Progressivism as an angle of vision, as an optimistic approach to social problems, was very much alive." International influences that sparked many reform ideas likewise continued into the 1920s, as American ideas of modernity began to influence Europe.

By 1930, a block of progressive Republicans in the Senate were urging Hoover to take more vigorous action to fight the depression. There were about a dozen members of this group, including William Borah of Idaho, George W. Norris of Nebraska, Robert M. La Follette Jr. of Wisconsin, Gerald Nye of North Dakota, Hiram Johnson of California and Bronson M. Cutting of New Mexico. While these western Republicans could stir up issues, they could rarely forge a majority, since they were too individualistic and did not form a unified caucus. Hoover himself had sharply moved to the right, and paid little attention to their liberal ideas. By 1932, this group was moving toward support for Roosevelt's New Deal. They remained staunch isolationists deeply opposed to any involvement in Europe. Outside the Senate, however, a strong majority of the surviving Progressives from the 1910s had become conservative opponents of New Deal economic planning.

====Automobiles in the Progressive and New Eras====
[[File:Automobiles and the Progressive Era.jpg|thumb|1923 Ford roadster]]

Sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd conducted a major study of American society during the 1920s. In 1929, they published their research in a book titled ''Middletown''. "Middletown" was the name used to disguise Muncie, Indiana, the actual place where they conducted their research. One of their findings was that the automobile had transformed the lives of people living in Middletown and, by extension, virtually everywhere else in the United States.<ref name="Auto0Z-167">{{cite web |title=Automobiles in the Progressive and New Eras {{!}} Progressive Era to New Era, 1900–1929 {{!}} U.S. History Primary Source Timeline {{!}} Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress {{!}} Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/automobiles-in-progressive-and-new-eras/ |access-date=2024-06-28 |website=Library of Congress |archive-date=June 28, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240628004640/https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/automobiles-in-progressive-and-new-eras/ |url-status=live }}{{source-attribution}}</ref>

More specifically, the Lynds found that the automobile had such effects as the following: (1) family budgets had changed dramatically; (2) ministers complained that people drove their cars rather than going to church; (3) parents were concerned that their boys and girls were spending too much time together "motoring"; and (4) the car had revolutionized the way people spent their free time.<ref name="Auto0Z-167"/>

These primary sources also indicate the impact of the automobile on Americans' lives. Some of those effects were seen as positive; others were much more troubling.<ref name="Auto0Z-167"/>

===Rural reform===
{{Further|Country life movement}}

As late as 1920, half the population lived in rural areas. They experienced their own progressive reforms, typically with the explicit goal of upgrading country life.<ref>William L. Bowers, "Country-Life Reform, 1900–1920: A Neglected Aspect of Progressive Era History." ''Agricultural History'' 45#3 (1971): 211–21. {{JSTOR|3741982}}</ref> By 1910, most farmers subscribed to a farm newspaper, where editors promoted efficiency as applied to farming.<ref>Stuart W. Shulman, "The Progressive Era Farm Press", ''Journalism History'' (1999) 25#1 pp. 27–36.</ref> Special efforts were made to reach the rural South and remote areas, such as the mountains of [[Appalachia]] and the [[Ozarks]].<ref>William A. Link, ''A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870–1920'' (1986).</ref>

====Good roads====
{{Main|Good Roads Movement}}

The most urgent need was better transportation. The railroad system was virtually complete; the need was for much better roads. The traditional method of putting the burden on maintaining roads on local landowners was increasingly inadequate. New York State took the lead in 1898, and by 1916 the old system had been discarded in every area. Demands grew for local and state government to take charge. With the coming of the automobile after 1910, urgent efforts were made to upgrade and modernize dirt roads designed for horse-drawn wagon traffic. The American Association for Highway Improvement was organized in 1910. Funding came from automobile registration, and taxes on motor fuels, as well as state aid. In 1916, federal aid was first made available to improve post-roads, and promote general commerce. Congress appropriated $75 million over a five-year period, with the Secretary of Agriculture in charge through the [[Bureau of Public Roads]], in cooperation with the state highway departments. There were 2.4 million miles of rural dirt rural roads in 1914; 100,000 miles had been improved with grading and gravel, and 3000 miles were given high quality surfacing. The rapidly increasing speed of automobiles, and especially trucks, made maintenance and repair a high priority. Concrete was first used in 1933, and expanded until it became the dominant surfacing material in the 1930s.<ref>Harold U. Faulkner, ''The Decline of Laissez Faire, 1897–1917'' (1951) pp. 233–236.</ref><ref>Charles Lee Dearing, ''American highway policy'' (1942).</ref> The South had fewer cars and trucks and much less money, but it worked through highly visible demonstration projects like the "[[Dixie Highway]]."<ref>Tammy Ingram, ''Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the Modern South, 1900–1930'' (2014).</ref>

====Rural schools====
Rural schools were often poorly funded, one room operations. Typically, classes were taught by young local women before they married, with only occasional supervision by county superintendents. The progressive solution was modernization through consolidation, with the result of children attending modern schools. There they would be taught by full-time professional teachers who had graduated from the states' teachers colleges, were certified, and were monitored by the county superintendents. Farmers complained at the expense, and also at the loss of control over local affairs, but in state after state the consolidation process went forward.<ref>David R. Reynolds, ''There goes the neighborhood: Rural school consolidation at the grass roots in early twentieth-century Iowa'' (University of Iowa Press, 2002).</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Danbom|first=David B.|title=Rural Education Reform and the Country Life Movement, 1900–1920|journal=Agricultural History|date=April 1979|volume=53|issue=2|pages=464–466|jstor=3742421}}</ref>

Numerous other programs were aimed at rural youth, including [[4-H]] clubs,<ref>Ellen Natasha Thompson, "The Changing Needs of Our Youth Today: The Response of 4-H to Social and Economic Transformations in Twentieth-century North Carolina." (PhD Diss. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2012). [http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Thompson_uncg_0154D_11047.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160418062228/http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Thompson_uncg_0154D_11047.pdf |date=April 18, 2016 }}</ref> Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. County fairs not only gave prizes for the most productive agricultural practices, they also demonstrated those practices to an attentive rural audience. Programs for new mothers included maternity care and training in baby care.<ref>Marilyn Irvin Holt, ''Linoleum, Better Babies, and the Modern Farm Woman, 1890–1930'' (1995).</ref>

===Conservation of natural resources ===
[[File:Progressive Era-Yosemite Valley California.jpg|thumb|right|266px|Yosemite Valley, California]]

In the mid to late 19th century, natural resources were heavily exploited, especially in the West. Land speculators and developers took over large tracts of forests and grazing land. Acreage important to waterpower was seized by private concerns. Mining companies practiced improper and wasteful mining practices. Assuming a seemingly inexhaustible supply of natural resources, Americans developed a "tradition of waste."<ref name="AutoYL-177">{{Cite web |title=Conservation in the Progressive Era {{!}} Progressive Era to New Era, 1900–1929 {{!}} U.S. History Primary Source Timeline {{!}} Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress {{!}} Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/conservation-in-progressive-era/ |access-date=2024-06-28 |website=Library of Congress |archive-date=May 28, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240528150907/https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era-to-new-era-1900-1929/conservation-in-progressive-era/ |url-status=live }}{{source-attribution}}</ref>

Alarmed by the public's casual attitude toward natural resources as well as the exploitation of natural resources for private gain, conservationists called for federal supervision of the nation's resources and the preservation of those resources for future generations. In [[Theodore Roosevelt]], the conservationists found an energetic leader. Conservation of the nation's resources, putting an end to wasteful uses of raw materials, and the reclamation of large areas of neglected land have been identified as some of the major achievements of the Roosevelt era.<ref name="AutoYL-177"/>

Roosevelt's concern for the environment was influenced by American naturalists, such as [[John Muir]], and by his own political appointees, especially [[Gifford Pinchot]], Chief of Forestry. Working in concert with many individuals and organizations, the Roosevelt administration was responsible for the following: the Newlands Act of 1902, which funded irrigation projects from the proceeds of the sale of federal lands in the West; the appointment of the Inland Waterways Commission in 1907 to study the relation of rivers, soil, forest, waterpower development, and water transportation; and the National Conservation Commission of 1909, which was charged with drawing up long-range plans for preserving national resources. Along with a vocal group of conservationists, the Roosevelt administration created an environmental conservation movement whose words and actions continue to be heard and felt throughout the US today.<ref name="AutoYL-177"/>

===Modern versus traditional conflicts===
The movement's attempts at introducing urban reforms to rural America often met resistance from traditionalists who saw the country-lifers as aggressive modernizers who were condescending and out of touch with rural life. The traditionalists said many of their reforms were unnecessary and not worth the trouble of implementing. Rural residents also disagreed with the notion that farms needed to improve their efficiency, as they saw this goal as serving urban interests more than rural ones. The social conservatism of many rural residents also led them to resist attempts for change led by outsiders. Most important, the traditionalists did not want to become modern, and did not want their children inculcated with alien modern values through comprehensive schools that were remote from local control.<ref>Danbom 1979, p. 473.</ref><ref>Richard Jensen and Mark Friedberger, "Education and Social Structure: An Historical Study of Iowa, 1870–1930" (Chicago: Newberry Library, 1976, [http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED125982 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161022011530/http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED125982 |date=October 22, 2016 }}).</ref> The most successful reforms came from the farmers who pursued agricultural extension, as their proposed changes were consistent with existing modernizing trends toward more efficiency and more profit in agriculture.

===Constitutional change===
The Progressives fixed some of their reforms into law by adding amendments 16, 17, 18, and 19 to the [[Constitution of the United States]]. The [[Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|16th amendment]] made an income tax legal (this required an amendment due to Article One, Section 9 of the Constitution, which required that direct taxes be laid on the States in proportion to their population as determined by the decennial census). The Progressives also made strides in attempts to reduce political corruption through the [[Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|17th amendment]] (direct election of U.S. Senators). The most radical and controversial amendment came during the anti-German craze of [[World War I]] that helped the Progressives and others push through their plan for [[Prohibition in the United States|prohibition]] through the [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|18th amendment]] (once the Progressives fell out of power the [[Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution|21st amendment]] repealed the 18th in 1933). The ratification of the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|19th amendment]] in 1920, which recognized [[women's suffrage]] was the last amendment during the progressive era.<ref>David E. Kyvig, ''Explicit and authentic acts: amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776–1995'' (1996)</ref> Another significant constitutional change that began during the progressive era was the [[incorporation of the Bill of Rights]] so that those rights would apply to the states. In 1920, Benjamin Gitlow was convicted under the [[Espionage Act of 1917]] and [[Gitlow v. New York|the case]] went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the justices decided that the First Amendment applied to the states as well as the federal government. Prior to that time, the [[United States Bill of Rights|Bill of Rights]] was considered to apply only to the federal government, not the states.

==National policy==

===National economic policy===
[[File:Woodrow Wilson Priming the Prosperity Pump, 1914 political cartoon by Berryman.jpg|thumb|President [[Woodrow Wilson]] used tariff, currency, and antitrust laws to prime the pump and get the economy working.]]

The Progressive Era was one of general prosperity after the [[Panic of 1893]]—a severe depression—ended in 1897. The [[Panic of 1907]] was short and mostly affected financiers. However, Campbell (2005) stresses the weak points of the economy in 1907–1914, linking them to public demands for more Progressive interventions. The Panic of 1907 was followed by a small decline in real wages and increased unemployment, with both trends continuing until World War I. Campbell emphasizes the resulting stress on public finance and the impact on the Wilson administration's policies. The weakened economy and persistent federal deficits led to changes in fiscal policy, including the imposition of federal income taxes on businesses and individuals and the creation of the Federal Reserve System.<ref>Ballard Campbell, "Economic Causes of Progressivism," ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'', Jan 2005, Vol. 4 Issue 1, pp. 7–22</ref> Government agencies were also transformed in an effort to improve administrative efficiency.<ref name="Harold U. Faulkner 1951">Harold U. Faulkner, ''The Decline of Laissez Faire, 1897–1917'' (1951)</ref>

In the [[Gilded Age]] (late 19th century), the parties were reluctant to involve the federal government too heavily in the private sector, except in the area of railroads and tariffs. In general, they accepted the concept of [[laissez-faire]], a doctrine opposing government interference in the economy except to maintain law and order. This attitude started to change during the [[Panic of 1893|depression of the 1890s]] when small business, farm, and labor movements began asking the government to intercede on their behalf.<ref name="Harold U. Faulkner 1951"/>

By the start of the 20th century, a middle class had developed that was weary of both the business elite and the radical political movements of farmers and laborers in the Midwest and West. The progressives argued the need for government regulation of business practices to ensure competition and free enterprise. Congress enacted a law regulating railroads in 1887 (the [[Interstate Commerce Act]]), and one preventing large firms from controlling a single industry in 1890 (the [[Sherman Antitrust Act]]). These laws were not rigorously enforced, however, until the years between 1900 and 1920, when Republican President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] (1901–1909), Democratic President [[Woodrow Wilson]] (1913–1921), and others sympathetic to the views of the Progressives came to power. Many of today's US regulatory agencies were created during these years, including the [[Interstate Commerce Commission]] and the [[Federal Trade Commission]]. [[Muckrakers]] were journalists who encouraged readers to demand more regulation of business. Upton Sinclair's ''[[The Jungle]]'' (1906) was influential and persuaded America about the supposed horrors of the Chicago [[Union Stock Yards]], a giant complex of meat processing plants that developed in the 1870s. The federal government responded to Sinclair's book and the Neill–Reynolds Report with the new regulatory [[Food and Drug Administration]]. Ida Tarbell wrote a series of articles against [[Standard Oil]], which was perceived to be a monopoly. This affected both the government and the public reformers. Attacks by Tarbell and others helped pave the way for public acceptance of the breakup of the company by the Supreme Court in 1911.<ref name="Harold U. Faulkner 1951"/>

When Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected president with a Democratic Congress in 1912 he implemented a series of Progressive policies in economics. In 1913, the [[Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Sixteenth Amendment]] was ratified, and a small [[income tax]] was imposed on higher incomes. The Democrats lowered tariffs with the [[Revenue Act of 1913|Underwood Tariff]] in 1913, though its effects were overwhelmed by the changes in trade caused by the World War that broke out in 1914. Wilson proved especially effective in mobilizing public opinion behind tariff changes by denouncing corporate lobbyists, addressing Congress in person in highly dramatic fashion, and staging an elaborate ceremony when he signed the bill into law.<ref>Vincent W. Howard, "Woodrow Wilson, The Press, and Presidential Leadership: Another Look at the Passage of the Underwood Tariff, 1913", ''CR: The Centennial Review'', 1980, Vol. 24 Issue 2, pp. 167–14{{page needed|date=April 2022}}<!-- What is the proper page range? -->.</ref> Wilson helped end the long battles over the trusts with the [[Clayton Antitrust Act]] of 1914. He managed to convince lawmakers on the issues of money and banking by the creation in 1913 of the [[Federal Reserve System]], a complex business–government partnership that to this day dominates the financial world.<ref>Arthur S. Link, ''Woodrow Wilson and the progressive Era, 1910–1917'' (1954) pp. 25–80</ref>

====Antitrust under Roosevelt and Taft====
{{Main|History of United States antitrust law}}

Roosevelt's antitrust record over eight years included 18 civil cases and 26 criminal antitrust cases resulting in 22 convictions and 22 acquittals. Taft's four years had 54 civil and 36 criminal suits and Taft's prosecutor secured 55 convictions and 35 acquittals. Taft's cases included many leading firms in major sectors: Standard Oil; American Tobacco; United States Steel; Aluminum Company of America; International Harvester; National Cash Register; Westinghouse; General Electric; Kodak; Dupont; Union Pacific railroad; and Southern Pacific railroad. It also included trusts or combinations in beef, lumber, wine, turpentine, wallpaper, licorice, thread, and watches.<ref>James C German Jr "The Taft administration and the Sherman Antitrust Act", ''Mid-America'' 52.3 1972 pp. 172–186 [[172–173]].</ref> The targets even included operations run by Taft's personal friends, such as Ohio-based National Cash Register. The media gave extensive exposure, especially to cases against Standard Oil and American Tobacco, which reached directly tens of millions of consumers. Taft's attorney general [[George W. Wickersham]] personally supervised the most important cases against Standard Oil and American Tobacco. He argued to the Supreme Court that trusts should be dissolved into their constituent parts, arguing they were artificial creations and did not achieve their positions through normal business methods and hence were guilty of violating the Sherman act. The government brief argued that dismemberment would correct this inequity and would force and restore normal competition. The Court agreed in 1911 and ordered the Justice Department to draw up complete reorganization plans in six months. Wickersham and his staff, all expert lawyers, were not experts in business management. The hurriedly created over thirty new corporations to replace Standard, plus several in tobacco.<ref>German, p. 177.</ref><ref>George W. Wickersham, "Recent Interpretation of the Sherman Act." ''Michigan Law Review'' (1911) 10#1: 1–25. {{JSTOR|1276100pdf}}</ref>

After reorganizations prices to consumers went up, as the replacement firms lost the size efficiency of the trust. Wickersham discovered that trust busting meant higher prices for consumers. He told Taft, "the disintegrated companies of both the oil and tobacco trust are spending many times what was formerly spent by anyone in advertising in the newspapers."<ref>Wickersham to Taft August 23, 1912 in Record, p. 179.</ref>  Wickersham realized the problem but Taft never did. He insisted that antitrust lawsuits continue to the end; 16 new cases were launched in the last 2 months of the Taft administration.<ref>Record, p. 186.</ref>

==Immigration policy==
The influx of [[Immigration to the United States|immigration]] grew steadily after 1896, with most new arrivals being unskilled workers from southern and eastern Europe. These immigrants were able to find work in the steel mills, slaughterhouses, and construction crews of the mill towns and industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Many went to rural mining districts. Few went to the South. Many intended to stay a few years, save up their wages by living frugally, and return to the homeland with enough cash to buy a small farm. However, Jewish immigrants were all permanent.
[[File:Immigrants' landing, Ellis Island-Progressive Era LOC.jpg|thumb|Immigrants landing on Ellis Island during the Progressive Era]]
The influx ended abruptly in August 1914 as World War I halted almost all civilian movement to and from Europe. Starting in the 1880s, the labor unions aggressively promoted restrictions on immigration, especially restrictions on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants.<ref>[[Robert D. Parmet]], ''Labor and immigration in industrial America'' (1987) p. 146</ref> In combination with the racist attitudes of the time, there was a fear that large numbers of unskilled, low-paid workers would defeat the union's efforts to raise wages through collective bargaining.<ref>Gwendolyn Mink, ''Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party and State, 1875–1920'' (1990)</ref> In addition, rural Protestants distrusted the urban Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, and on those grounds opposed immigration.<ref>Daniel J. Tichenor, ''Dividing lines: the politics of immigration control in America'' (2002) p. 71</ref> On the other hand, the rapid growth of industry called for a greater and expanding labor pool that could not be met by natural birth rates. As a result, many large corporations were opposed to immigration restrictions. By the early 1920s, a consensus had been reached that the total influx of immigration had to be restricted, and a series of laws in the 1920s accomplished that purpose.<ref>[[Claudia Goldin]], "The Political Economy of Immigration Restriction in the United States, 1890 to 1921", in Goldin, ''The regulated economy'' (1994) ch 7.</ref> A handful of eugenics advocates were also involved in immigration restriction for their own pseudo-scientific reasons.<ref>Thomas C. Leonard, [http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf "Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150325122005/http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf |date=March 25, 2015 }} ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'', (2005) 19(4): 207–224</ref> Immigration restriction continued to be a national policy until after World War II.

During World War I, the Progressives strongly promoted [[Americanization (immigration)|Americanization]] programs, designed to modernize the recent immigrants and turn them into model American citizens, while diminishing loyalties to the old country.<ref>James R. Barrett, "Americanization from the Bottom, Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the American Working Class, 1880–1930", ''Journal of American History'' 79 (December 1992): 996–1020. {{JSTOR|2080796}}.</ref> These programs often operated through the public school system, which expanded dramatically.<ref>Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson, ''Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908–1929'' (2009)</ref>

The [[Immigration Act of 1924]], or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act, was a federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. It also authorized the creation of the country's first formal border control service, the [[United States Border Patrol|US Border Patrol]], and established a "consular control system" that allowed entry only to those who first obtained a [[Travel visa|visa]] from a US consulate abroad.

==Foreign policy==
[[File:Annexation Here to Stay.jpg|thumb|Newspaper reporting the [[Newlands Resolution|annexation]] of the [[Republic of Hawaii]] in 1898]]

Progressives looked to legal [[Arbitration#History|arbitration]] as an alternative to warfare. The two leading proponents were Taft, a constitutional lawyer who later became Chief Justice, and Democratic leader William Jennings Bryan. Taft's political base was the conservative business community which largely supported peace movements before 1914. The businessmen believed that economic rivalries were cause of war, and that extensive trade led to an interdependent world that would make war a very expensive and useless anachronism. One early success came in the Newfoundland fisheries dispute between the United States and Britain in 1910. In 1911, Taft's diplomats signed wide-ranging arbitration treaties with France and Britain. However he was defeated by former President Theodore Roosevelt, who had broken with his protégé Taft in 1910. They were dueling for control of the Republican Party and Roosevelt encouraged the Senate to impose amendments that significantly weakened the treaties. On the one hand, Roosevelt was acting to sabotage Taft's campaign promises.<ref>E. James Hindman, "The General Arbitration Treaties of William Howard Taft." ''Historian'' 36.1 (1973): 52–65. {{JSTOR|24443896}}</ref> At a deeper level, Roosevelt truly believed that arbitration was a naive solution and the great issues had to be decided by warfare. Roosevelt's approach incorporated a near-mystical faith of the ennobling nature of war. It endorsed jingoistic nationalism as opposed to the businessmen's calculation of profit and national interest.<ref>{{cite journal |jstor = 1894200|title = Taft, Roosevelt, and the Arbitration Treaties of 1911|journal = The Journal of American History|volume = 53|issue = 2|pages = 279–298|last1 = Campbell|first1 = John P.|year = 1966|doi = 10.2307/1894200}}</ref>

Foreign policy in the Progressive Era was often marked by a tone of moral supremacy. Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan both saw themselves as "Missionaries of Democracy", with the deliberate religious overtone. Historian [[Arthur S. Link]] says they felt they were, "Inspired by the confidence that they knew better how to promote the peace and well-being of other countries than did the leaders of those countries themselves."<ref>{{cite book|author=Arthur S. Link|title=Wilson, Volume II: The New Freedom|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4xfWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA278|year=1956|page=278|publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1400875825}}</ref> Similar ideas and language had already been used previously in the [[Monroe Doctrine]], wherein Roosevelt claimed that the United States could serve as the police of the world, using its power to end unrest and wrongdoing on the western hemisphere. Using this moralistic approach, Roosevelt argued for intervention with Cuba to help it to become a "just and stable civilization", by way of the [[Platt Amendment]]. Wilson used a similar moralistic tone when dealing with Mexico. In 1913, while revolutionaries took control of the government, Wilson judged them to be immoral, and refused to acknowledge the in-place government on that reason alone.<ref>{{cite book|title=America reformed : Progressives and progressivisms, 1890s–1920s|last=Flanagan|first= Maureen A.|date=2007|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0195172195|location=New York|oclc=63179060}}</ref>

===Keeping and modernizing the Philippines===
[[File:Well, I hardly know which to take first! 5-28-1898.JPG|thumb|A cartoon of [[Uncle Sam]] seated in restaurant looking at the bill of fare containing "Cuba steak", "Porto Rico pig", the "Philippine Islands", and the "Sandwich Islands" (Hawaii)]]

The [[Philippines]] was acquired in 1899, after victory in the [[Spanish–American War]]. It was the largest colonial acquisition by the United States in an era when the world powers were seizing colonies in Africa and Asia. While anti-imperialist sentiments had been prevalent in the United States since the 1850s, the acquisition of the Philippines sparked an intense debate. Anti-imperialists insisted that keeping the islands was "un-American" and unwise.<ref>{{cite book|jstor=j.ctt1nqbjc|title=Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903|last=Miller|first=Stuart Creighton|date=1982|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0300030815}}</ref>

The Philippines was a major target for the progressive reformers. A 1907 report to Secretary of War Taft provided a summary of what the American civil administration had achieved. It included, in addition to the rapid building of a public school system based on English teaching, and boasted about such modernizing achievements as:

<blockquote>steel and concrete wharves at the newly renovated [[Port of Manila]]; dredging the [[Pasig River|River Pasig]]; streamlining of the Insular Government; accurate, intelligible accounting; the construction of a telegraph and cable communications network; the establishment of a postal savings bank; large-scale road- and bridge-building; impartial and incorrupt policing; well-financed civil engineering; the conservation of old Spanish architecture; large public parks; a bidding process for the right to build railways; Corporation law; and a coastal and geological survey.<ref>Andrew Roberts, ''A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900'' (2008), p. 26.</ref></blockquote>

In 1903, the American reformers in the Philippines passed two major land acts designed to turn landless peasants into owners of their farms. By 1905, the law was clearly a failure. Reformers such as Taft believed landownership would turn unruly agrarians into loyal subjects. The social structure in rural Philippines was highly traditional and highly unequal. Drastic changes in land ownership posed a major challenge to local elites, who would not accept it, nor would their peasant clients. The American reformers blamed peasant resistance to landownership for the law's failure and argued that large plantations and sharecropping was the Philippines' best path to development.<ref>Theresa Ventura, "From Small Farms to Progressive Plantations: The Trajectory of Land Reform in the American Colonial Philippines, 1900–1916." ''Agricultural History'' 90#4 (2016): 459–483. {{JSTOR|10.3098/ah.2016.090.4.459}}</ref>

Elite Filipina women played a major role in the reform movement, especially on health issues. They specialized on such urgent needs as infant care and maternal and child health, the distribution of pure milk and teaching new mothers about children's health. The most prominent organizations were the La Protección de la Infancia, and the National Federation of Women's Clubs.<ref>Mina Roces, "Filipino Elite Women and Public Health in the American Colonial Era, 1906–1940." Women's ''History Review'' 26#3 (2017): 477–502.</ref>

===Peace movement===
{{Main|Peace movement#World War I}}

Although the Progressive Era was characterized by public support for [[World War I]] under Woodrow Wilson, there was also a substantial [[Opposition to World War I|opposition to the war]]. [[Jane Addams]] was the most prominent leader.

==Societal reforms==

===Rhetoric of righteousness===
Mainline Protestant denominations adopted the [[Social Gospel]]. The goal was to establish a more perfect society on earth in preparation for Christ's Second Coming.  More generally the Social Gospel impulse was base on righteousness, typified by the wide influence of theologian [[Walter Rauschenbusch]].<ref>Paul M. Minus, ''Walter Rauschenbusch: America Reformer'' (1988) pp. x, 175–176.(</ref><ref>Ronald Cedric  et al. ''The Social Gospel: Religion and reform in changing America'' (Temple UP, 1976).</ref> The Presbyterians described the goal in 1910 by proclaiming:

<blockquote>The great ends of the church are the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.<ref>Jack B. Rogers and Robert E. Blade, "The Great Ends of the Church: Two Perspectives". ''Journal of Presbyterian History'' (1998). 76#3: 181–186.</ref></blockquote>

Many progressive leaders used the rhetoric of righteousness to motivate their Protestant supporters. Indeed, Richard Hofstadter argued that progressivism was, "a phase in the history of the Protestant conscience,  a latter-day Protestant revival."<ref>Richard Hofstadter, ''The Age of Reform'' (1955) p. 152.</ref> Wilson and Bryan were moralistic and very religious; Roosevelt and La Follette were moralistic and not very religious.<ref>Patricia O'Toole, ''The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and The World He Made'' (2018) pp. xv–xvii.</ref><ref>Michael Kazin, ''A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan'' (2006) pp xiii–xvi.</ref><ref>Nancy C. Unger, ''Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer'' (2003).</ref>

Roosevelt's rhetoric was characterized by an intense moralism of personal righteousness.<ref>Leroy G. Dorsey, "Preaching Morality in Modern America: Theodore Roosevelt's Rhetorical Progressivism." in ''Rhetoric and Reform in the Progressive Era, A Rhetorical History of the United States: Significant Moments in American Public Discourse'', ed. J. Michael Hogan, (Michigan State University Press, 2003), vol 6, pp. 49–83.</ref><ref>Joshua D. Hawley, ''Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness'' (2008), p. xvii. [https://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Joshua-David-Hawley/dp/0300120109 excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326033023/https://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Joshua-David-Hawley/dp/0300120109 |date=March 26, 2023 }}. [[Josh Hawley]]in 2019 became a Republican senator with intense moralistic rhetoric.</ref><ref>See also ''The Independent'' (Feb. 6, 1908) [https://books.google.com/books?id=RjAPAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22justified+by+the+advocacy+of+a+system+of+morality%22&pg=PA275 p. 274 online]</ref>  The tone was typified by his denunciation of "predatory wealth" in a message he sent Congress in January 1908 calling for passage of new labor laws:

<blockquote>Predatory wealth—of the wealth accumulated on a giant scale by all forms of iniquity, ranging from the oppression of wageworkers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing out competition, and to defrauding the public by stock jobbing and the manipulation of securities. Certain wealthy men of this stamp, whose conduct should be abhorrent to every man of ordinarily decent conscience, and who commit the hideous wrong of teaching our young men that phenomenal business success must ordinarily be based on dishonesty, have during the last few months made it apparent that they have banded together to work for a reaction. Their endeavor is to overthrow and discredit all who honestly administer the law, to prevent any additional legislation which would check and restrain them, and to secure if possible a freedom from all restraint which will permit every unscrupulous wrongdoer to do what he wishes unchecked provided he has enough money....The methods by which the Standard Oil people and those engaged in the other combinations of which I have spoken above have achieved great fortunes can only be justified by the advocacy of a system of morality which would also justify every form of criminality on the part of a labor union, and every form of violence, corruption, and fraud, from murder to bribery and ballot box stuffing in politics.<ref>"Special message to Congress, January 31, 1908," in Elting E. Morison, ed., ''The  Letters of Theodore Roosevelt'' (Harvard UP, 1952) vol 5 pp. 1580, 1587; see online version at [https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-workers-compensation UC Santa Barbara, "The American Presidency Project"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221204233647/https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-workers-compensation |date=December 4, 2022 }}</ref> </blockquote>

===Prohibition===
{{Main|Prohibition in the United States}}

[[Prohibition]] was the outlawing of the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol. Throughout the Progressive Era, it remained one of the prominent causes associated with progressivism at the local, state and national level, though support across the full breadth of Progressives was mixed. It pitted the minority urban Catholic population against the larger rural Protestant element,<ref>Ira M. Wasserman, "Status politics and economic class interests: The 1918 prohibition referendum in California." ''Sociological Quarterly'' 31.3 (1990): 475–484.</ref> Progressivism's rise in the rural communities was aided by the general increase in public consciousness of social issues of the [[temperance movement]], which achieved national success with the passage of the 18th Amendment by Congress in late 1917, and the ratification by three-fourths of the states in 1919. Prohibition was backed by the Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Scandinavian Lutherans, and other evangelical churches.<ref>John D. Buenker, "An American kulturkampf: The birth pangs of cultural pluralism." ''Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform'' (1973) pp. 163–197.</ref><ref>Ira M. Wasserman, "Prohibition and ethnocultural conflict: The Missouri prohibition referendum of 1918." ''Social Science Quarterly'' 70.4 (1989): 886–901.</ref> In the South, especially in Texas, prohibition was a top priority of the Protestant progressives.<ref>Lewis L. Gould, "Progressives and prohibitionists: Texas Democratic politics, 1911–1921." The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 75.1 (1971): 5–18.</ref><ref>Joe Locke, "Making the Bible Belt: Preachers, Prohibition, and the Politicization of Southern Religion, 1877–1918" (PhD dissertation, Rice University, 2012).</ref> Activists were mobilized by the highly effective [[Anti-Saloon League]].<ref>K. Austin Kerr, ''Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League'' (1985).</ref>

In 1907, Georgia and Alabama were the first states to go dry followed by Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee in the following years. In 1913, Congress passed the [[Webb–Kenyon Act]], which forbade the transport of liquor into dry states. By 1917, two-thirds of the states had some form of prohibition laws and roughly three-quarters of the population lived in dry areas. In 1913, the Anti-Saloon League first publicly appealed for a prohibition amendment. In August 1917, the Lever [[Food and Fuel Control Act]] banned production of distilled spirits for the duration of the war. The War Prohibition Act (November 1918) forbade the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages (more than 2.75% alcohol content) until the end of demobilization. In late 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment; it was ratified in 1919 and took effect in January 1920. It prohibited the manufacturing, sale or transport of intoxicating beverages within the United States, as well as import and export. The [[Volstead Act]] (1919) defined intoxicating as having alcohol content greater than 0.5% and established the procedures for federal enforcement of the Act. The states were at liberty to enforce prohibition or not, and most did not try.<ref name="David">David E. Kyvig'', Repealing National Prohibition'' (2000)</ref> Consumer demand, however, led to a variety of illegal sources for alcohol, especially illegal distilleries and smuggling. Prohibition also brought a rise to [[organized crime]], which was able to profit off the sales of illegal alcohol.<ref>Johnson, Earl. 1962. "Organized Crime: Challenge to the American." 'MJournal of Criminal Law and Criminology'm 53 (4): 399–425.</ref> The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933, with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment, thanks to a well-organized repeal campaign led by Catholics (who stressed personal liberty) and businessmen (who stressed the lost tax revenue).<ref name="David" />

===Education===
{{Main|Progressive education}}

The reform of public schools was one of the prime concerns of the middle class during this period. The number of schools in the nation increased dramatically. The voice of the Progressive Education Movement in America was [[John Dewey]], a professor at the [[University of Chicago]] (1896–1904) and [[Teachers College, Columbia University]] (1904-1930). He argued, in books such as ''The Child and the Curriculum'' and ''Schools of Tomorrow'', that, in addition to teaching academic content, schools should teach everyday skills and promote democratic participation. A higher level of education also gained popularity. By 1930, 12% of 18- to 21-year-olds were attending college, compared to 3% in 1890.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Reese |first1=William |title=The Origins of Progressive Education |journal=History of Education Quarterly |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=1–24 |jstor=369477 |year=2001 |doi=10.1111/j.1748-5959.2001.tb00072.x |s2cid=143244952 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=A Brief Overview of Progressive Education. |url=https://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/articles/proged.html |access-date=February 8, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Mintz |first1=Steven |title=Statistics: Education in America, 1860–1950 |url=https://www.gilderlehrman.org/content/statistics-education-america-1860-1950 |website=History Now |access-date=February 8, 2019 |archive-date=February 9, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190209180041/https://www.gilderlehrman.org/content/statistics-education-america-1860-1950 |url-status=live }}</ref>

====Women in home economics====
{{Main|Home economics#United States}}

A new field of study, the art and science of homemaking, emerged in an effort to feminize women's education in the United States. Home economics emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in response to the many changes occurring both at the level of material culture and practices and in the more abstract realm of gender ideology and thinking about the home. As the industrial revolution took hold of the American economy and as mass production, alienation, and urbanization appeared to be unstoppable trends, Americans looked for solutions that could soften the effects of change without slowing down the engines of progress.<ref>Megan J. Elias, "No place like home: A survey of American home economics history." ''History Compass'' 9.1 (2011): 97-105. [https://www.academia.edu/download/82055746/j.1478-0542.2010.00752.x20220312-3219-gmfvym.pdf online]</ref><ref>Danielle Dreilinger, ''The secret history of home economics: How trailblazing women harnessed the power of home and changed the way we live'' (Norton, 2021) [https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vgYDEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT11&dq=%22History+of+home+economics%22&ots=KOt4yZrXLL&sig=ZxqwMTYWjk5bcSwdPprm2LssVdM online]</ref><ref>Rima D. Apple, and Joyce Coleman, "'As Members of the Social Whole': A History of Social Reform as a Focus of Home Economics, 1895–1940." ''Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal 32.2'' (2003): 104-126.</ref><ref>Sarah Stage, and Virginia Bramble Vincenti, eds. ''Rethinking home economics: Women and the history of a profession'' (Cornell University Press, 1997) [https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o_jL-Uf1s1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=%22History+of+home+economics%22&ots=_9UuxKv6WL&sig=ts4VCRUWcWNC8YqBSh8102EbfKo online].</ref>

Advocates argued that homemaking, as a profession, required education and training for the development of an efficient and systematic domestic practice. The curriculum aimed to cover a variety of topics, including teaching a standardized ways of gardening, child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, performing household maintenance, and doctoring. Such scientific management applied to the domestic sphere was presented as a solution to the dilemma black middle-class women faced in terms of searching for meaning and fulfillment in their role of housekeeping. The feminist perspective, by pushing for this type of education, intended to explain that women had separate but equally important responsibilities in life with men that required proper training.<ref>{{cite book|last=Powers|first=Jane B.|title=The Girl Question: Vocational Training for Young Women in the Progressive Era|date=1992|publisher=Routledge|location=Washington, D.C|pages=12–16}}</ref>

====Child labor and schooling====
{{Main|Child labor in the United States}}
[[File:Pennsylvania breaker boys 1911.jpg|thumb|[[Breaker boy]]s sort coal in an anthracite coal breaker near South [[Pittston, Pennsylvania]], 1911]]

There was a concern towards working class children being taken out of school to be put straight to work. Progressives around the country put up campaigns to push for an improvement in public education and to make education mandatory.<ref>Hugh D. Hindman, ''Child labor: an American history'' (M. E. Sharpe, 2002) [https://archive.org/details/childlaborameric0000hind online].</ref> There were some less successful attempts in the South, where educational levels were far lower.<ref>William A. Link, ''The Paradox of Southern Progressivism 1880–1930'' (1992) p. 170.</ref> The Southern Education Board came together to publicize the importance of reform. However, many rejected the reform. Farmers and workers relied heavily on their children to work and help the family's income. Immigrants were not for reform either, fearing that such a thing would Americanize their children.

Enrollment for children (age 5 to 19) in school rose from 51 percent to 59 between 1900 and 1909. Enrollment in public secondary school went from 519,000 to 841,000. School funds and the term of public schools also grew.<ref>{{cite book |last1=McGerr |first1=Michael |title=A Fierce Discontent: The Rise And Fall Of The Progressive Movement In America, 1870–1920 |date=2003 |publisher=New York:Free Press |location=New York |pages=107–110}}</ref>

===Medicine and law===
The ''[[Flexner Report]]'' of 1910, sponsored by the [[Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching|Carnegie Foundation]], professionalized American medicine by discarding the scores of local small medical schools and focusing national funds, resources, and prestige on larger, professionalized medical schools associated with universities.<ref>Abraham Flexner, ''Flexner Report on Medical Education in the United States and Canada 1910'' (new edition 1960)</ref><ref>Lawrence Friedman and Mark McGarvie, ''Charity, philanthropy, and civility in American history'' (2003) p. 231</ref> Prominent leaders included the [[William James Mayo|Mayo Brothers]] whose [[Mayo Clinic]] in [[Rochester, Minnesota|Rochester]], Minnesota, became world-famous for innovative surgery.<ref>W. Bruce Fye, "The Origins and Evolution of the Mayo Clinic from 1864 to 1939: A Minnesota Family Practice Becomes an International 'Medical Mecca'", ''Bulletin of the History of Medicine'' Volume 84, Number 3, Fall 2010 pp. 323–357 in [[Project MUSE]]</ref>

In the legal profession, the [[American Bar Association]] set up in 1900 the [[Association of American Law Schools]] (AALS). It established national standards for law schools, which led to the replacement of the old system of young men studying law privately with established lawyers by the new system of accredited law schools associated with universities.<ref>Steven J. Diner, ''A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era'' (1998) p. 186</ref>

===Social sciences===
Progressive scholars, based at the emerging research universities such as [[Harvard]], [[Columbia University|Columbia]], [[Johns Hopkins University|Johns Hopkins]], [[University of Chicago|Chicago]], [[University of Michigan|Michigan]], [[University of Wisconsin|Wisconsin]], and [[University of California, Berkeley|California]], worked to modernize their disciplines. The heyday of the amateur expert gave way to the research professor who published in the new scholarly journals and presses. Their explicit goal was to professionalize and make "scientific" the social sciences, especially history,<ref name="Richard Hofstadter 1968">Richard Hofstadter, ''The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington'' (1968)</ref> economics,<ref name="ReferenceB">Joseph Dorfman, ''The economic mind in American civilization, 1918–1933'' vol 3, 1969</ref> and [[political science]].<ref name="Barry Karl 1975">Barry Karl, ''Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics'' (1975)</ref> Professionalization meant creating new career tracks in the universities, with hiring and promotion dependent on meeting international models of scholarship.

===Military===
The [[Commission on Training Camp Activities]] sought to "socialize and Americanize" troops, especially native-born and foreign-born men, to meet the expected level of societal standards and integrate them into American culture. The ideology of the Commission was characterized by that of the Progressive Era, which strived against prostitution, alcoholism, social diseases, and poor sanitary conditions in major cities. The CTCA attempted to eradicate these problems from military training camps.<ref>{{cite web |title=Moral Uplifting |url=https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/moral-uplifting.html |access-date=2022-11-12 |website=The U.S. World War One Centennial Commission |archive-date=November 12, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221112171942/https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/moral-uplifting.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Bristow |first=Nancy K. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=acBnoFF1ZnkC |title=Making Men Moral: Social Engineering During the Great War |date=1997 |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-0-8147-8623-9 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Allen |first1=Edward Frank |url=https://archive.org/details/keepingourfighte00alleiala/mode/2up?view=theater |title=Keeping our fighters fit for war and after |last2=Fosdick |first2=Raymond B. |publisher=The Century Co., New York |year=1918}}</ref>

===Eugenics===
{{Main|Eugenics in the United States}}

Some progressives sponsored [[eugenics]] as a solution to excessively large or underperforming families, hoping that birth control would enable parents to focus their resources on fewer, better children.<ref name="Thomas C. Leonard">Leonard, Thomas C. (2005) [http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf "Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150325122005/http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf |date=March 25, 2015 }}, ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'', 19(4): 207–224</ref> Progressive leaders like [[Herbert Croly]] and [[Walter Lippmann]] indicated their classically liberal concern over the danger posed to the individual by the practice of eugenics.<ref>Nancy Cohen, ''The reconstruction of American liberalism, 1865–1914'' (2002) p. 243</ref> Catholics strongly opposed birth control proposals such as eugenics.<ref>Celeste Michelle Condit, ''The meanings of the gene: public debates about human heredity'' (1999) p. 51</ref>

==Decline==
{{Further|First Red Scare|Seattle General Strike|Palmer Raids}}

In the 1940s, historians typically saw the Progressive Era as a prelude to the [[New Deal]] and dated it from 1901 (when Roosevelt became president) to the start of World War I in 1914 or 1917.<ref>Eric Goldman, ''Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform'' (1952)</ref> Historians have moved back in time emphasizing the Progressive reformers at the municipal<ref>Melvin G. Holli, ''Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics'' (1969)</ref> and state<ref>David P. Thelen, ''The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885–1900'' (1972)</ref> levels in the 1890s. The Progressive political crusades were overshadowed in 1919 by violent confrontations with Bolsheviks (Communists), anarchists and violent strikes. The crusading element of progressivism thus largely ended, apart from prohibition, although business-oriented efficiency efforts continued.<ref>Kevin C. Murphy, ''Uphill all the way: The fortunes of progressivism, 1919–1929'' (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2013; [[ProQuest]] Dissertations Publishing, 2013. 3552093.) [https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8M04CK9/download online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221223132524/https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8M04CK9/download |date=December 23, 2022 }}.</ref> In 1919, Theodore Roosevelt died and Wilson's health collapsed, leaving a void in top leadership. The major new face was [[Herbert Hoover]].<ref>Barry C. Edwards, "Putting Hoover on the Map: Was the 31st President a Progressive?" ''Congress & the Presidency'' 41#1 (2014).</ref>

Much less settled is the question of when the era ended. Some historians who emphasize civil liberties decry their suppression during 1917–1919 and do not consider the war as rooted in Progressive policy.<ref>Paul L. Murphy, "World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States" (1979)</ref> A strong anti-war movement headed by noted Progressives including [[Jane Addams]], was suppressed by the [[Preparedness Movement]] and Wilson's 1916 re-election, a victory largely enabled by his campaign slogan, "He kept us out of the war."<ref>Jane Addams, ''Bread and Peace in Time of War'' (1922)</ref> The slogan was no longer accurate by April 6 of the following year, when Wilson surprised much of the Progressive base that twice elected him and asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Some historians see the so-called "war to end all wars" as a globalized expression of the American Progressive movement, with Wilson's support for a League of Nations as its climax.<ref>John Milton Cooper, ''Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations'' (2010)</ref>

The politics of the 1920s was unfriendly toward the labor unions and liberal crusaders against business, so many if not most historians who emphasize those themes write off the decade. Urban cosmopolitan scholars recoiled at the moralism of prohibition, the intolerance of the nativists and the KKK, and on those grounds denounced the era. [[Richard Hofstadter]], for example, in 1955 wrote that prohibition, "was a pseudo-reform, a pinched, parochial substitute for reform" that "was carried about America by the rural–evangelical virus".<ref>Richard Hofstadter, ''The Age of Reform'' (1955) p. 287</ref> However, as [[Arthur S. Link]] emphasized, the Progressives did not simply roll over and play dead.<ref>Arthur S. Link, "What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920s?", ''American Historical Review'' Vol. 64, No. 4 (Jul. 1959), pp. 833–851 {{JSTOR|1905118}}.</ref> Link's argument for continuity through the 1920s stimulated a historiography that found Progressivism to be a potent force. Palmer, pointing to leaders like [[George W. Norris|George Norris]], says, "progressivism, while temporarily losing the political initiative, remained popular in many western states and made its presence felt in Washington during both the Harding and Coolidge presidencies."<ref>Niall A. Palmer, ''The Twenties in America: Politics and History'' (2006) p. 176</ref> Gerster and Cords argue that, "Since progressivism was a 'spirit' or an 'enthusiasm' rather than an easily definable force with common goals, it seems more accurate to argue that it produced a climate for reform which lasted well into the 1920s, if not beyond."<ref>Patrick Gerster and Nicholas Cords, ''Myth in American History'' (1977) p. 203</ref> Some social historians have posited that the KKK may in fact fit into the Progressive agenda, if Klansmen are portrayed as "ordinary white Protestants" primarily interested in purification of the system, which had long been a core Progressive goal.<ref>Stanley Coben, "Ordinary white Protestants: The KKK of the 1920s," ''Journal of Social History'', (1994) 28#1 pp. 155–165</ref>

==Notable progressive leaders==
{{columns-list|colwidth=30em|
* [[Jane Addams]], social reformer
* [[Susan B. Anthony]], suffragist
* [[Eleanor Baldwin]], journalist
* [[Robert P. Bass]], politician
* [[Charles A. Beard]], historian and political scientist
* [[Albert J. Beveridge]], politician, biographer
* [[Louis Brandeis]], Supreme Court justice
* [[William Jennings Bryan]], presidential candidate in 1896, 1900, and 1908; Secretary of State
* [[John Burke (North Dakota politician)|John Burke]], politician
* [[Lucy Burns]], suffragist
* [[Andrew Carnegie]], steel magnate, philanthropist
* [[Carrie Chapman Catt]], suffragist
* [[James M. Cox]], politician, presidential candidate in 1920
* [[Herbert Croly]], journalist
* [[Clarence Darrow]], lawyer
* [[Eugene V. Debs]], five-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party
* [[John Dewey]], philosopher
* [[W. E. B. Du Bois]], African American leader, scholar
* [[Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne]], politician
* [[Irving Fisher]], economist
* [[Abraham Flexner]], educator
* [[Henry George]], journalist and political economist
* [[Charlotte Perkins Gilman]], feminist
* [[Susan Glaspell]], playwright, novelist
* [[Martin H. Glynn]], politician
* [[Madison Grant]], lawyer, writer, zoologist
* [[Lewis Hine]], photographer
* [[Herbert Hoover]], Secretary of Commerce, president
* [[Charles Evans Hughes]], politician, presidential candidate in 1916
* [[William James]], philosopher
* [[Hiram Johnson]], politician, vice-presidential candidate in 1912
* [[Mary Harris Jones|Mary Harris "Mother" Jones]], union activist
* [[Samuel M. Jones]], politician, reformer
* [[Florence Kelley]], child advocate
* [[Robert M. La Follette]], politician, presidential candidate in 1924
* [[Fiorello LaGuardia]], Mayor of New York City
* [[Walter Lippmann]], journalist
* [[Fayette Avery McKenzie]], sociologist
* [[J. Howard Moore]], zoologist, philosopher, educator, and social reformer
* [[John R. Mott]], YMCA leader
* [[Alice Paul]], suffragist
* [[Frances Perkins]], Secretary of Labor in 1930s
* [[George Walbridge Perkins]], leading banker and organizer of Progressive Party in 1912
* [[Ulrich B. Phillips]], historian of South
* [[Amos Pinchot]], a leader of the Progressive Party of 1912
* [[Gifford Pinchot]], conservationist
* [[Walter Rauschenbusch]], theologian of [[Social Gospel]]
* [[Jacob Riis]], journalist, photographer, urban reformer
* [[John D. Rockefeller Jr.]], philanthropist
* [[Theodore Roosevelt]], president
* [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], president
* [[Elihu Root]], politician
* [[Maria Sanford]], reformer
* [[Margaret Sanger]], birth control activist
* [[Anna Howard Shaw]], suffragist
* [[Upton Sinclair]], novelist, journalist
* [[Albion Small]], sociologist
* [[Al Smith]], politician, presidential candidate in 1928
* [[Ellen Gates Starr]], sociologist
* [[Lincoln Steffens]], journalist
* [[Henry Stimson]], Secretary of War for Taft and FDR; and secretary of state for Harding
* [[William Howard Taft]], Secretary of War, president, chief justice
* [[Ida Tarbell]], journalist
* [[Frederick Jackson Turner]], historian
* [[Mary van Kleeck]], social scientist
* [[Thorstein Veblen]], economist
* [[Robert F. Wagner]], politician
* [[Lester Frank Ward]], sociologist
* [[Ida B. Wells]], African American leader, educator
* [[Burton Kendall Wheeler]], politician
* [[William Allen White]], journalist
* [[Woodrow Wilson]], president
}}

==See also==
* [[Progressivism in the United States]]
* [[Child labor in the United States]]
* [[History of direct democracy in the United States]]
** [[John Randolph Haynes#Direct Democracy League|Direct Democracy League for initiative and referendum in California]]
* [[Liberal government, 1905–1915]], comparable trends in Great Britain
* {{annotated link|Belle Époque}}
* {{annotated link|Competition law}}, and antitrust

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Sources==
* {{cite journal |last=Henretta |first=James A. |title=Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America |journal=University of Illinois Law and History Review |date=2006 |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=115–171 |doi=10.1017/S0738248000002285 |jstor=27641353 |s2cid=145114078 }}
* {{cite book |last=Shoemaker |first=Rebecca S. |title=The White Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy |date=2004 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=9781576079737 }}

==Further reading==
[[File:AT&T as grasping octopus 1907.gif|thumb|300px|[[History of AT&T|AT&T]] the telephone monopoly as a grasping octopus taking control of entire cities out West. from ''Telephony'' (April 1907) p. 235.]]

===Overviews===
* {{cite encyclopedia|last=Adelstein|first=Richard|editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy|editor-link=Ronald Hamowy|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism|chapter=Progressive Era|chapter-url=https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/libertarianism/n246.xml|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC|year=2008|publisher=[[SAGE Publishing|Sage]]; [[Cato Institute]]|location= Thousand Oaks, CA <!-- |doi= 10.4135/9781412965811.n246 -->|isbn=978-1412965804 <!-- |oclc=750831024| lccn = 2008009151 -->|pages=398–400}}
* Baker, Paula. "Politics in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era." in ''The Oxford Handbook of American Political History'' (Oxford UP, 2020) pp.&nbsp;115–134.
* Buenker, John D., John Chynoweth Burnham, and Robert Morse Crunden. ''Progressivism'' (Schenkman Books, 1977). [https://archive.org/details/progressivism00buenrich online]
* Buenker, John D., and Edward R. Kantowicz, eds. ''Historical dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890–1920'' (Greenwood, 1988). [https://archive.org/details/historicaldictio0000buen online]
* Cocks, Catherine, Peter C. Holloran and Alan Lessoff. ''Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era'' (2009)
* Diner, Steven J. ''A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era'' (1998)
* Flanagan, Maureen. ''America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s–1920s'' (2007)
* Gould, Lewis L. ''America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1914'' (2000)
* Gould Lewis L. ed., ''The Progressive Era'' (1974)
* Hays, Samuel P. ''The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914'' (1957),
* [[Richard Hofstadter|Hofstadter, Richard]], ''[[The Age of Reform]]'' (1954), Pulitzer Prize [https://archive.org/details/ageofreformfrom000hofs/page/n7/mode/2up online]; a highly influential interopretation
* Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency:  The Values of American Politics, 1885–1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, ''Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000'' (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp.&nbsp;149–180; [http://www.uic.edu/~rjensen/rj0025.htm online version]
* Johnston, Robert D. "Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era: The Politics of Progressive Era Political Historiography" ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Er'' 1#1 (2002), pp.&nbsp;68–92 online also [https://hist75300gape.commons.gc.cuny.edu/files/2016/06/Johnston-Re-Democratizing-the-Progressive-Era.pdf online here]
* Johnston, Robert D. "Influential Works About the Gilded Age and Progressive Era." in ''A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' (2017): 437–449. [https://www.biknotes.com/_files/ugd/b8b6dc_99238c77921f42d2b3849abc17d33840.pdf#page=449 online]
* [[David M. Kennedy (historian)|Kennedy, David M]]. ed., ''Progressivism: The Critical Issues'' (1971), readings
* Kloppenberg, James T. ''Uncertain victory: social democracy and progressivism in European and American thought, 1870–1920'' 1986 [https://web.archive.org/web/20000707012840/http://www.historyebook.org/ online at ACLS e-books]
* [[Christopher Lasch|Lasch, Christopher]]. ''[[The True and Only Heaven|The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics]]'' (1991)
* Lears, T. J. Jackson. ''Rebirth of a Nation: The Remaking of Modern America, 1877–1920'' (2009) [https://archive.org/details/rebirthofnationm00lear online]
* [[William Leuchtenburg|Leuchtenburg, William E.]] "Progressivism and Imperialism: The Progressive Movement and American Foreign Policy, 1898–1916," ''[[The Mississippi Valley Historical Review]]'', 39#3 (1952), pp.&nbsp;483–504. {{JSTOR|1895006}}
* Link, William A. '' The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880–1930'' (1992) [https://archive.org/details/paradoxofsouther0000link online]
* Mann, Arthur. ed., ''The Progressive Era'' (1975) excerpts from scholars and from primary sources [https://archive.org/details/progressiveerama02edmann online]
* McGerr, Michael. ''A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920'' (2003)
* McNeese, Tim, with Richard Jensen. ''The Gilded Age and Progressivism: 1891–1913'' (Chelsea House, 2010) for middle schools
* Milkis, Sidney M., and Jerome M. Mileur. ''Progressivism and the New Democracy'' (1999), essays by scholars
* Mowry, George. ''The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900–1912.'' (1954) scholarly survey of era [https://archive.org/details/TheEraOfTheodoreRoosevelt online]
* Piott, Steven L. '' American Reformers, 1870–1920: Progressives in Word and Deed'' (2006); examines 12 leading activists 
* Piott, Steven L. ''Giving Voters a Voice: The Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in America'' (2003) [https://archive.org/details/givingvotersvoic00piot_0 online]
* Postell, Joseph W. and Johnathan O'Neill, eds. ''Toward an American Conservatism: Constitutional Conservatism during the Progressive Era'' (2013)
* Rodgers, Daniel T.  ''Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age'' (2000). stresses links with Europe [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb00064.0001.001 online edition]
* Rothbard, Murray. ''The Progressive Era'' (2017), libertarian economics; strong on voters
* Solty, Ingar. "Social Imperialism as Trasformismo: A Political Economy Case Study on the Progressive Era, the Federal Reserve Act, and the U.S.'s Entry into World War One, 1890–1917", in M. Lakitsch, Ed., ''Bellicose Entanglements 1914: The Great War as a Global War'' (LIT, 2015), pp.&nbsp;91–121.
* Thelen, David P. "Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism", ''Journal of American History'' 56 (1969), 323–341. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1908127 online]
* [[Robert Wiebe|Wiebe, Robert]]. ''The Search For Order, 1877–1920'' (1967). [https://archive.org/details/searchfororder180000wieb online]

===Progressivism after 1917===
* Chambers, Clarke. '' Seedtime of Reform: American Social Service and Social Action, 1918–1933'' (U of Minnesota Press, 1963)
* Dawley, Alan. ''Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution'' (2003)  [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Changing_the_World/Z2OYDwAAQBAJ?hl=en online]
* Glad, Paul W. "Progressives and the Business Culture of the 1920s", ''Journal of American History'', 53#1 (1966), pp.&nbsp;75–89. {{JSTOR|1893931}}
* Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency:  The Values of American Politics, 1885–1930", in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, ''Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000'' (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp.&nbsp;149–180; [http://www.uic.edu/~rjensen/rj0025.htm online version]
* Lemons, J. Stanley. "The Sheppard–Towner act: Progressivism in the 1920s." ''Journal of American History'' 55.4 (1969): 776–786.
* Levy, David W., and Bruce Allen Murphy. "Preserving the Progressive Spirit in a Conservative Time: The Joint Reform Efforts of Justice Brandeis and Professor Frankfurter, 1916–1933." ''Michigan Law Review'' 78 (1979): 1252+
* Link, Arthur. "What happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920s?" ''American Historical Review'' 64#4 (1959), 833–851. {{JSTOR|1905118}}
* Link, William A. '' The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880–1930'' (1992) [https://archive.org/details/paradoxofsouther0000link online]
* Murphy, Kevin C. ''Uphill all the way: The fortunes of progressivism, 1919–1929'' (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2013; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2013. 3552093.)
* Putnam, Jackson K. "The Persistence of Progressivism in the 1920's: The Case of California." ''Pacific Historical Review'' 35#4 (1966), pp.&nbsp;395–411. {{doi|10.2307/3636975}}
* Young, Jeremy C. ''The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870–1940'' (2017)  [https://archive.org/details/ageofcharismalea0000youn online]
* Zieger, Robert H. "Labor, Progressivism, and Herbert Hoover in the 1920's." ''Wisconsin Magazine of History'' (1975): 196–208. {{JSTOR|4634968}}

===Presidential politics===
* [[Howard K. Beale|Beale Howard K.]] ''Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power.'' (1956). [https://archive.org/details/theodoreroosevel00beal online]
* Brands, H. W. ''T.R. : the last romantic'' (1997), scholarly biography
* Clements, Kendrick A. ''The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson'' (1992). [https://archive.org/details/presidencyofwood00clem online]
* Coletta, Paolo. ''The Presidency of William Howard Taft'' (1990). [https://archive.org/details/presidencyofwill0000cole/page/n7/mode/2up online]
* Collin, Richard H. "Symbiosis versus Hegemony: New Directions in the Foreign Relations Historiography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft." ''Diplomatic History'' 19.3 (1995): 473–497. {{JSTOR|24912399}}
* [[Cooper, John Milton]] ''The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.'' (1983).  a dual biography; [https://archive.org/details/warriorpries00coop online]
* Cooper, John Milton ''Woodrow Wilson: A Biography'' (2009), a standard scholarly biography 
* Dalton, Kathleen. "Changing interpretations of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive era." in Christopher M. Nichols and Nancy C. Unger, eds ''A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' (2017): 296–307.{{ISBN?}}
* Edwards, Barry C. "Putting Hoover on the Map: Was the 31st President a Progressive." (1975). ''Congress & the Presidency'' 41#1 (2014) pp.&nbsp;49–83
* Gould, Lewis L. ''The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt'' (1991). a major scholarly study; [https://archive.org/details/presidencyoftheo0000goul/page/n4/mode/1up online]
* Harbaugh, William Henry. ''Power and Responsibility The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt'' (1961), a standard scholarly biography emphasizing politics. [https://archive.org/details/powerandresponsi012652mbp online free]
* Harrison, Robert. ''Congress, Progressive Reform, and the New American State'' (2004).
* [[Richard Hofstadter|Hofstadter, Richard]]. ''The American Political Tradition'' (1948), ch. 8–9–10.[https://archive.org/details/americanpolitica0000unse_e7a0 online]
* {{cite book|last=Kolko|first=Gabriel|author-link=Gabriel Kolko|title=The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916|location=New York|publisher=[[Free Press (publisher)|The Free Press]]|year=1963}}
* Link, Arthur S. ''Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917'' (1972) a standard political history of the era. [https://archive.org/details/woodrowwilsonand007665mbp/page/n8/mode/1up online]
* Lurie, Jonathan. ''William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative'' (2011)  [https://archive.org/details/williamhowardtaf0000luri online]
* [[Edmund Morris (writer)|Morris, Edmund]] ''Theodore Rex''. (2001), biography of T. Roosevelt covers 1901–1909
* Moreno, Paul D. ''The American State from the Civil War to the New Deal: The Twilight of Constitutionalism and the Triumph of Progressivism'' (Cambridge UP, 2013).
* Mowry, George E. ''Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement''. (1946). [https://archive.org/details/theodoreroosevel00mowr online]
* Murphy, William B. "The National Progressive Republican League and the Elusive Quest for Progressive Unity." ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' 8.4 (2009): 515–543; it promoted La Follette in 1912.
* Pestritto, R. J. ''Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism.'' (2005). Attacks Wilson.
* Rothbard, Murray N. ''The Progressive Era'' (2017), libertarian interpretation.
* Sanders, Elizabeth. ''Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers and the American State, 1877–1917'' (1999). [https://archive.org/details/rootsofreformfar0000sand online]
* Sarasohn, David. ''The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era'' (UP of Mississippi, 1989). [https://archive.org/details/partyofreformdem00sara/page/n5/mode/2up online]

===State and local===
* Abrams, Richard M. ''Conservatism in a Progressive Era: Massachusetts Politics 1900–1912''. (Harvard UP, 1964) [https://archive.org/details/conservatisminpr0000abra online]
* Berman, David R. ''Governors and the Progressive Movement'' (University Press of Colorado, 2019)
* Buenker, John D. ''Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform'' (1973).
* Buenker, John D. ''The History of Wisconsin, Vol. 4: The Progressive Era, 1893–1914'' (1998).
* Buenker, John D., and Edward R. Kantowicz, eds. ''Historical dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890–1920'' (Greenwood, 1988).  coverage of states and major cities.
* Cherny, Robert W. ''Populism, Progressivism, and the Transformation of Nebraska Politics, 1885–1915'' (1981)
* Chrislock, Carl H. ''The Progressive Era in Minnesota, 1899–1918'' (1971)
* Connolly, James J. ''The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900–1925'' (Harvard UP, 1998).
* Ebner, Michael H., and Eugene M. Tobin, eds. ''The Age of Urban Reform: New Perspectives on the Progressive Era'' (1977){{ISBN?}}
* Folsom, Burton W. "Tinkerers, tipplers, and traitors: ethnicity and democratic reform in Nebraska during the Progressive era." ''Pacific Historical Review'' 50.1 (1981): 53–75. {{JSTOR|3639338}}
* Gould, Lewis L. ''Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era'' (1973){{ISBN?}}
* Grantham, Dewey W. "The Contours of Southern Progressivism." ''American Historical Review'' 86.5 (1981): 1035–1059.
* Grantham, Dewey W. ''Southern progressivism: The reconciliation of progress and tradition'' (U of Tennessee Press, 1983), a major scholarly history; covers every state and all major reforms.{{ISBN?}}
* Griffith, Ernest S. ''A history of American city government: the progressive years and their aftermath 1900–1920'' (Praeger, 1974), a major scholarly history covering every state.{{ISBN?}}
* Huthmacher, J. Joseph. "Urban Liberalism and the Age of Reform" ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 49 (1962): 231–241, {{JSTOR|1888628}}; emphasis on urban, ethnic, working class support for reform
* Johnston, Robert D. ''The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon'' (2003)
* La Forte, Robert Sherman. ''Leaders of Reform: Progressive Republicans in Kansas, 1900–1916'' (1974) [https://archive.org/details/leadersofreformp0000lafo online]
* Liazos, Ariane. ''Reforming the City: The Contested Origins of Urban Government, 1890–1930'' (Columbia University Press, 2020) excerpt, a major scholarly survey
* Link, Arthur S. ''Wilson: The Road to the White House'' vol 1 (1947) pp.&nbsp;93–308 on New Jersey politics. [https://archive.org/details/wilsonroadtowhit00link online]
* Link, William A. ''The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880–1930'' (1992), a major scholarly study
* Laugen, R. Todd. ''The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900–1930'' (UP Colorado)
* Lubove, Roy. ''The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City, 1890–1917'' (1974). [https://archive.org/details/progressivesslum0000lubo_v5x9 online]
* Lubove, Roy. ''Twentieth Century Pittsburgh Volume 1: Government, Business, and Environmental Change'' (1995) [https://archive.org/details/twentiethcentury0000lubo/page/n7/mode/2up online]
* McCormick, Richard L. ''From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893–1910 '' (Cornell UP, 1981).
* Maxwell, Robert S. ''La Follette and the Rise of the Progressives in Wisconsin''. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1956.
* Miller, Worth Robert. "Building a Progressive Coalition in Texas: The Populist–Reform Democrat Rapprochement, 1900–1907." ''Journal of Southern History'' 52.2 (1986): 163–182. {{JSTOR|2209666}}
* Mowry, George E. ''The California Progressives'' (1951), focus on leadership
** Mowry, George E. "The California Progressive and His Rationale: A Study in Middle Class Politics." ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 36#2 (1949), pp.&nbsp;239–50. {{doi|10.2307/1891178}}
* Noble, Ransom E. ''New Jersey Progressivism Before Wilson''. Princeton UP, 1946) {{ISBN?}}
* Olin, Spencer C. ''California's Prodigal Sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911–1917'' (U California Press, 1968).
* Pegram, Thomas R. ''Partisans and Progressives: Private Interest and Public Policy in Illinois, 1870–1922'' (U of Illinois Press, 1992){{ISBN?}}
* Piott, Steven L. ''Holy Joe: Joseph W. Folk and the Missouri Idea'' (U Missouri Press, 1997).
* Recchiuti, John Louis. ''Civic Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New York City'' (2007).
* Reynolds, John F. ''Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform in New Jersey,  1880–1920'' (1988).
* Richter, Hedwig. "Transnational Reform and Democracy: Election Reforms in New York City and Berlin Around 19001." ''The Journal Of The Gilded Age And Progressive Era'' 15.2 (2016): 149–175. [https://www.academia.edu/25338056/_TRANSNATIONAL_REFORM_AND_DEMOCRACY_ELECTION_REFORMS_IN_NEW_YORK_CITY_AND_BERLIN_AROUND_1900_in_Journal_of_the_Gilded_Age_and_Progressive_Era_15_2016_149_175?email_work_card=thumbnail online]
* Sealander, Judith. ''Grand plans: business progressivism and social change in Ohio's Miami Valley, 1890–1929'' (1988) [https://archive.org/details/grandplansbusine0000seal online]
* Starr, Kevin. ''Inventing the dream: California through the progressive era'' (Oxford UP, 1986).
* Thelen, David. ''The New Citizenship, Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885–1900'' (1972)
* Wallace, Mike. ''Greater Gotham: A history of New York City from 1898 to 1919'' (Oxford UP, 2017).
* Warner, Hoyt Landon. ''Progressivism in Ohio 1897–1917'' (1964) [https://journals.psu.edu/wph/article/download/2774/2606 online review]
* Wesser, Robert F. ''Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and Reform in New York, 1905–1910'' (Cornell UP, 1967).
* Wesser, Robert F. ''A response to progressivism : the Democratic Party and New York politics, 1902–1918'' (1986) [https://archive.org/details/responsetoprogre00wess online]
* Wright, James. ''The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire, 1906–1916'' (1987) [https://archive.org/details/progressiveyanke0000wrig/page/n6/mode/1up online]

===Gender, race, ethnicity, class, and religion===
* Abell, Aaron I. ''American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice, 1865–1950'' (1960).
* Bruce, Kyle and Chris Nyland. "Scientific Management, Institutionalism, and Business Stabilization: 1903–1923" ''Journal of Economic Issues'', Vol. 35, 2001. {{JSTOR|4227725}}
* Campbell, Barbara Kuhn.  "Prominent Women in the Progressive Era: A Study of Life Histories" (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1976. 7700270.
* Frankel, Noralee and Nancy S. Dye, eds. ''Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era'' (1991).
* Galambos, Louis. ''The public image of big business in America, 1880–1940: a quantitative study in social change'' (JHU Press, 2019).
* Hahn, Steven. ''A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration'' (2003).
* Holdren, Nate. ''Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era'' (Cambridge UP, 2020) [https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/282077732/Mawdsley_Review_of_Holdren_AAV.pdf online review of this book]
* Kazin, Michael. ''Barons of labor: The San Francisco building trades and union power in the progressive era'' (U of Illinois Press, 1989).
* Lederhendler, Eli. ''Jewish immigrants and American capitalism, 1880–1920: from caste to class'' (Cambridge UP, 2009) [https://www.academia.edu/download/81738748/9780521730235_frontmatter.pdf online].
* Leon, Carol Boyd. [[doi:10.21916/mlr.2016.5|"The life of American workers in 1915,"]] ''Monthly Labor Review'' (Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2016) comparison in many aspects with 2015.
* Montgomery, David. ''The Fall of the House of Labor: The workplace, the state, and American labor activism, 1865–1925'' (1987).
* Muncy, Robyn. ''Creating A Feminine Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935'' (1991).
* Nichols, Shaun S. [[doi:10.1215/15476715-8114745|"Harmonious Insurrections: "Labor Progressivism" and Working-Class Power in Washington State]], 1886–1919." ''Labor'' 17.2 (2020): 47–72.
* Pearson, Chad. "Twentieth century US labor history: Pedagogy, politics, and controversies Part 1." ''History Compass'' 15.12 (2017): e12433.
** [[doi:10.1111/hic3.12433|"Twentieth century US labor history: Pedagogy, politics, and controversies Part 2."]] ''History Compass'' 16.8 (2018): e12479. {{doi|10.1111/hic3.12479}}
* Stromquist, Shelton. ''Reinventing 'The People': The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism'', (U. of Illinois Press, 2006). {{ISBN|0-252-07269-3}}. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/30031513 online review]
* Wiebe, Robert. "Business Disunity and the Progressive Movement, 1901–1914", ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'', 44#4 (1958), pp.&nbsp;664–685. {{JSTOR|1886602}}

===Primary sources===

* De Witt, Benjamin Parke. ''The progressive movement: A non-partisan comprehensive discussion of current tendencies in American politics'' (1915) [https://archive.org/details/progressivemove00dewi/page/n2/mode/1up online]
* Fink, Leon, ed. ''Major Problems in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' (1993) primary sources and scholarly essays.
* Groman, George L.  ed. ''Political Literature of the Progressive Era'' (Michigan State UP, 1967)
* Eisenach, Eldon J. ed. ''The Social and Political Thought of American Progressivism'' (Hackett, 2006)
* Pease, Otis, ed. ''The Progressive Years: The Spirit and Achievement of American Reform'' (1962)
* Pestritto, Ronald J., and William J. Atto, eds. ''American Progressivism: A Reader'' (2008)
* Resek, Carl, ed. ''The Progressives'' (1967)
* Wilson, Woodrow. ''A Crossroads Of Freedom The 1912 Speeches Of Woodrow Wilson'' (1956) [https://archive.org/details/crossroadsoffree007728mbp online]

====Campaign textbooks====
These pamphlets from 100 to 500 pages contain official platforms, arguments, biographies, speeches and statistics, all designed to help local party speakers.
* Democratic Party Congressional Committee. ''Democratic campaign book: Congressional Election 1906'' (1906), used in every state.[https://archive.org/details/democraticcamp00demo/page/n6/mode/1up online]
** National Democratic Congressional Committee. ''Democratic campaign book: Congressional Election 1910'' (1910), used in every state. [https://archive.org/details/democraticcampai00demouoft online]
** Democratic Party (Ohio). State Executive Committee. ''Ohio Democratic Campaign Text-book, 1914'' (1914); [https://archive.org/details/ohiodemocraticca00demo online]
* Republican National Committee. ''Republican campaign text-book, 1912'' (1912), 416 [https://archive.org/details/uscampaigntext0repurich online]
** [https://archive.org/details/republicanc00repu 1908 Republican campaign text-book online]
** Republican Congressional Committee. ''Republican text-book for the congressional campaign, 1910'' (1910) [https://archive.org/details/1910campaignte00repurich online]
** [https://archive.org/details/washingtontext00repurich 1916 Republican campaign text-book online]
* Social-Democratic party. ''Milwaukee municipal campaign book 1912'' (1912)

==External links==
* [http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraid=11&smtid=1 ''Digital History'' "Overview of the Progressive Era" a short scholarly summary ]

{{US history}}
{{Theodore Roosevelt}}
{{William Howard Taft}}
{{Woodrow Wilson}}

[[Category:American political philosophy]]
[[Category:Eras of United States history]]
[[Category:Progressivism in the United States|*]]
[[Category:Progressive Era in the United States| ]]
[[Category:Social ethics]]