Progressivism less and to think about what i think its core dialect guy dialectic was. The tension between democracy and efficiency. These were both ideals that people from a Broad Spectrum of political backgrounds and the progressive era believed were important, and they believed they were not incompatible but you can see in some ways in which they were fundamentally add some tension. Throughout class today, well be thinking about democracy versus efficiency. The central question for this historians of the early at 20 century is what is progressivism . A famous article that came out in 1982 was entitled in search of progressivism, which i think aptly summed up the way historians were rummaging around knowing the progressive era existed but quibbleing about what counted as progressive severe them and who counted and when it started and when it ended. Some people limit only to the Political Party that it was named for. Others to find it much more broadly. For me, in this class, this is how im going to define progressivism. In the broadest sense, progressivism was the way a whole generation of americans defined themselves politically and how they address the problems of the new century and what i think we can all agree, begins to look like modern america. Theyre interested in reforming a messy society that is new in fundamental ways while trying to keep some aspects of the old. Im defining the progressive era as lasting from approximately 1890 through world war one. Before i suggested you all today, i consulted with my colleague michael who many of you know is an expert on populism. He wrote a biography on William Jennings brian. He teaches socialism. He teaches this class as well. I asked him what he thought, make sure i got rid of any haulers in my lecture. Luckily there were none. This is what he wrote to me, and i think this is actually worth kind of talking about the ways that we all basically are on the same page but we sort of argue about the edges. The chronology of the progressive area is always debatable beginning with an 1890 the sherman act and the beginning of chain adams remarkable settlement house in chicago which is called whole house which will talk about on thursday. And national and state politics there were no people considering progressive in power until 1900. If we will define it that way, we will push it up a little bit. If William Jennings brian had won that election in 19 1896 that wouldve been different. Of course, the chronological scope depends on what you think mattered most. It is worth noting, he also pointed out to me, that many populist became progressive and that is something im going to talk to you about. Some of you already recognize that already. Spoiler alert, we will talk about how wilsons new freedom plan included many things that the populist party had proposed in the 1890s, but also many of them actually became socialist and places that we do not think of as bastions of socialism today, like texas and oklahoma, and western states. What historians do largely agree on is that the high mark of the progressive era was in 1912, the election, the four way election between taft, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt who decided to come out of retirement, come back from African Safari and run as the head of the Progressive Party, also known as the bull moose party, as well as the fourth major candidate that year, eugene debs, a socialist whose readings you read today about how he came through the Labor Movement to consider himself a socialist. He pulled 6 of the votes in that 1912 election almost 1 million votes. Everybody across that spectrum would have the find themselves in some sense as a progressive. Again, lets put some more fine notes on our definition a progressive him. Progressivism was a commitment to some sort of reform in society often using local state or federal governmental means. I think too often in u. S. History when we talk about federal level of progressivism, it turns into the discussion of wilson versus roosevelt. I want to tell you that it is really starting at the grassroots in cities and states and territories, moving upward to the federal level. It was a form of perfectionism, by which i mean, the belief that society could be perfected by using proper principles. In this sense, i think it is a mood as much as a method. There is no one way of doing things if you consider yourself a progressive, but it is a kind of mood or attitude toward change and reform and society in politics. That is one in which you believe that things can be improved, and in that sense, as i will talk about through the rest of the lecture, there is some pessimism, worry and concern, that there is also incredible confidence and optimism that society and politics and economics and democracy can be improved and maybe even perfected, and here we have again, that tension between democracy and efficiency. Lets be honest. I wrote the first version of this lecture many many years ago. History changes, but not that fast. I gotta tell you, this is the first year that i have actually assigned a portion of Woodrow Wilsons new freedom plan and i could not have invented a document better suited for the themes that i want to stress today. What does he compare liberty to . You all suddenly got shy. Yes. An engine. A machine. This is perfect for all you matt, science, mechanical oriented people. This is the perfect metaphor. For the way that people think about government and politics in the early 20th century. The machine does not work well with friction. He wants to reduce the friction. The more efficient the machine is, the better. Liberty for the several parts will consist in the best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, he says. You can see his optimism, even his, might i say, egoism as a professor. His optimism, human freedom consists and perfect adjustments of Human Interest and activities and energies. The trouble lies when the machine gets out of order. In other words, he is saying that the governments job quite literally, is to get under the hood and tinker with the machine to get it right. Here we see from the cultural perspective, i love this document so much. We get back to machines, technology, railroads. It is not an accident that efficiency is a concept that becomes an enormously fascinating to people in the early 20th centuries. Efficiency in both its industrial and social components. Here are key words if you need to come back to them in class. I forgot to tell you. I did not start with this because he knew i was going to screw it up so i decided to just scratch that. We will come back to music. Let me move forward and tell you before i get into the leagues about what progressivism looks like in this time period. I want to give you a sense of an absolute incredible wide range of things reforms, causes that people thought of as progressive campaigns in the early 20th century. We have got Civil Service reforms. Cleaning up bureaucracy. Conservation movements which i know some of you are particularly interested in and we wont dally there today but certainly you are reading and it emphasizes the ways in which again, conservation as a kind of efficiency in fact is a famous way that many historians have written about the conservation movement. Clean milk campaigns. Making sure that children who drink milk, that their mom purchased from a dairy is clear and unadulterated. Womens suffrage. There is a reason why that where it is secure. They thought of women in a particular kind of way. We will talk about that on thursday. Public education, reinvigorated, since the reconstruction era particularly at the local level, the expansion of public kindergartens, the establishment of some of the first public high schools. Campaign finance reform, trying to keep out those corrupt Railroad Owners from politics. Not successful, but a worthy effort. Public utility regulation. The origin of modern public utility is either private and licensed to a municipality or state, or ones that are actually publicly owned and operated. Regulation of food and drugs. I know many of you took this history. The fda originates and this time period under Theodore Roosevelt. The regulation of railroads which is actually a kind of opening salvo of the progressive era. Municipal ownership of utilities. I talk about that. Temperance, prohibition, the outlying of alcohol. Social work, the modern feed of social work now dominated by women. Anti prostitution and pornography campaigns in the form of what was called the white slavery movement, saving women from what we would call today, sex trafficking, so you can see a strong moral element and protective element to this campaign. The campaign for legal Birth Control which was a constant an act of the late 19th century discussing disseminating any information about Birth Control illegal. Election reforms which well talk about on the state level in just a few minutes. Okay, maybe i put these sort of i am making some judgments. Some of them im seeing as positives because i put at the bottom, but also, core scholes social control. Forced attempts to strip immigrants of their culture in the name of american is a shun. Voter disfranchised mint in the name of clean government. Segregation in the south as a sign of efficiency, prohibition and later, eugenics. I know i went through that really quickly. That is fine. No worries. We dont have to get out to all the details. But i do want to say, we are talking from clean milk to voter initiatives. Were talking from kindergarten to funding from kindergarten to a deeper a wide variety of things. And you can see in the examples ive noted here on the relationship between democracy and efficiency. Wilson talks about this in terms of liberty. That Liberty Works best in an efficient capacity. You can see in a random example of clean milk which was a campaign that many women were campaigning for. Companies adulterated milk with chemicals to make it seem like it would last longer and to keep it white. It poisoned children. Liberty would say we were not going to interfere with regulations for dairies. Efficiency would say, maybe our society would work better if children did not die from adulterated milk. So you can see, that is a one tiny example, but actually something that was very important to the people of the early 20th century. Why these two obsessions with democracy and efficiency . Could these be compatible . Where does it go . What i want to talk about is the way in which, and we can go back to this slide here. I want to talk about the way as we talk about progressivism as a National Movement. It comes to be known as this thing that is kind of a government by experts. It is a National Movement built from regional movements. What you have simplified, i like geography. Midwestern and northeastern urban concerns. The concerns about organization, overcrowding, immigration, industrialization. Political machines, political corruption. You have on the one hand that great mass of demands for change, concerns, the rise of political figures like Theodore Roosevelt. Those meet up with the more world and agrarian concerns with populism. Populism may not seem so today as much to us now is where i think we generalize we are all america. A few of you are from more rural places. The mid western commodity culture was a very different kind of agrarian economy then the souths cotton based share cropping, vestiges of jim crow. They found enough common cause briefly in populism that did not last. But part of it was about this feeling of the world places being left behind. Some of the political electoral success of the progressive era in the early 20th century was that these midwestern and northeastern urban concerns were able to find in some cases common cause with these folks that had been former populist. Particularly around issues like regulating interstate commerce, the railroads, starting to talk about conservation. In fact, after 1900, populism and progressivism basically merged as professor cases common suggested. Populist sexually become progressives except for those who stay more radical and join the socialist party. Intellectually, theyre inspired by gospel theories, a rather i dont want to say aggressive, but assertive campaign by many religious leaders predominantly protestant, that there were some reform jews in this movement as well, who said we need to realize that we cannot be just focus on the after life and the spiritual life. We actually have to think about life here on earth. We talk about what it means to think about jesus as work today here and now. Thats social gospel theory also informs this progressive work which will wilson comes from an entire family of ministers. Most of these folks definitely feel a sense of christian mission. This is wedded to the invention of new social science. Disciplines like sociology, political science, economics, history. Their first professional associations emerge in this time period. The first ph. D. Programs and social sciences are literally creating experts, open at places like johns hopkins, ivy leagues, schools like the university of wisconsin, yay. Michigan. University of california. Giant Public Research institutions alongside old prestige institutions and new upstarts like hopkins and university of chicago, which are designed to create these graduate programs like europe has. The idea is that they will produce not just pointy headed professors like me, but experts that are going to go out and solve social problems, financers, find the efficient answer. Woodrow wilson has a ph. D. From johns hopkins. He is the president of princeton be coat before he becomes the governor of new jersey and the president of the United States. What is bothering them and we will review this. I think you know what many of these things are. We can talk about a few of the motivations in terms of fears fears of new capitalism. As Companies Grow larger and larger and capitalism becomes more and more impersonal im talking really fast. I will step back and have you think about that. Think about a 19th century world where your neighbor might have chickens in her yard. Few cells eggs and you know her. Her eggs are not going to be rotten because she does not want to rip you off because you have the face to face relationship. Or you are a farmer that goes to the local grain elevator. You know that our parade are. You are not selling at a fixed rate across hundreds of miles on the Southern Pacific Railroad where you have to pay a certain rate and cannot go to negotiate or know who your seller is. We take for granted global capitalisms and personal nature, when you will get things from amazon prime. You are not thinking about who is pulling it off the warehouse shelf and putting it in a box and putting that label on and sending it to you. Like people are used to face to face transactions. This was threatening. It was a real change. They feared that the outsize power of huge corporations would ruin democracy. The Runaway Railroad industry as i mentioned was just one example. The journalists were revealing devious methods Like Companies have standard oil, writing along exposes and popular magazines and this reflected both the real changes that are happening in american capitalism as well as the end sides that those produced in americans. Speaking of inciting in americans, fear of new americans, that is fear of new immigrants. Well talk about the son much more details in the coming weeks. The cities are filling with people. Many americans have deep discomfort about immigration, even though many of them are the children of immigrants themselves. New immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe constitute an unprecedented wave of new arrivals from about 1882 to 1920. 18 to 24 million new immigrants come to the United States and this exact same time period we are calling the progressive era. I did speak, they represent almost 15 of the American Population a figure we have never exceeded. We came very close and 2007 before the recession, but those are sort of parallels. Immigration is a hot issue right now. The numbers are way down from a decade ago. But in that sense, from the standpoint of the proportion of the American Population who are immigrants, similar. Different places. They are also often feared in the same way. They are predominantly catholic or eastern orthodox or jewish. They seem unassailable. They are very poor. They tend to congregate in urban places in a country that Still Believes itself to be a rural origin African Americans are starting to move in what will become the great migration. Migrating like ida b. Wells did from the urban south to the urban north. Close to 2 million African Americans room from the south to north between 1890s and 1910. Many Northern Lights are confronted with mixed population for the first time. The transitional from African Americans to urban life is difficult. They are predominantly rural people, not used to city life, facing segregation and the north as well as the south. Horrible overcrowded conditions. Pitiful public health. Lack of utilities like safe water, sewer and electric face many city residents. There is a little bit of a chicken and egg debate. Among more privileged americans. Are these new immigrants and African Americans from the south the cause of the poor conditions, or are the poor conditions thats producing the inequalities that are evident for all americans to see . This is really kind of an essential question in the progressive era, which eventually, in spite of all the prejudice, i would argue comes to what we could call, and it wont be what you think it is, environmentalism. What i mean by that is the belief that winds environment shapes their outcome. If you can improve the environment, you will improve the quality of americans. I dont know why im on clean milk today. That would be a perfect example. Urban dwellers who do not have their own cow to milk, to have fresh clean milk from the farm and have to buy milk, they will have Poor Health Outcomes if they do not have good, nutritious food. Is the problem the poor sweetie city dweller or is the problem the conditions that they are dealing with. Remember what i talked about how the ideal when we talked about Andrew Carney guy and andrew cart rockefeller, we talked about the fact that this recognition of class difference as a fundamental future of American Society was profoundly threatening to many people and many upper class folks rejected that there would be permanent class distinctions in the u. S. And one of the things they worried about they worry about the economic inequality, yes . But they worried about whether democracy could function with those kinds of entrenched, seemingly irreparable differences. They worried about the state of democracy. With all of these new citizens know how to operate in a democracy . Would they be good citizens . Im going to use the example of president roosevelt, the month before the 1912 election so i could clarify for you. He is not currently president yet. He ascends to the presidency with mckinleys assassination. He serves out his terms and then he says, well, i will hand the baton to taft who had been his Vice President. Taft runs, serves one term from 1908 to 1912. Roosevelt gets super annoyed that taft is far more conservative. Theodore roosevelt wants to move faster on progressive maneuvers. He is frustrated with taft, so he says, screw it, i will run against the sky that i anointed to be the next president. I will start a new party. Im going to start a new party and endorse women suffrage and ask jane adams, the most famous women in america, if you do not know who she is yet look her up. Im going to ask her to nominate at the nominating convention. Hes in milwaukee wisconsin which is the hometown of my husband. A hotbed of socialism, republican, progressive politics. Wisconsin is where the law fall its come from. The university of wisconsin is invented this wonderful thing called the wisconsin idea which is the picture of progressivism. It is the idea that the university, the Public University should be in the service of the state. It will produce experts, answers, resolve social problems. He is in milwaukee. This is a place he thinks he can get a lot of republican and progressive votes. He is giving a Campaign Speech and an angry saloon keeper its not hard to find a saloon keeper in milwaukee, tries to assassinate him. His speech is so thick and so long that protects him from the bullet and he is like oh i am fine and gives the speech. Heres one of the things he says in the speech. Friends what we progressive are trying to do is trying to enroll rich or poor, or whatever the social or industrial position, to stand together for the most elementary rights of good citizenship. Those elementary rights which are the foundation of good citizenship in this Great Republic of ours. Eventually reformers begin to look to local and federal government for solutions. They are afraid of Class Division as i mentioned. The major strikes starting with 1877 and the great uprising and the railroad strike. 18 eighties, the market massacre. 1890s, American Railway union and opponent strike. Eugene depths emerges as a leader. Early 1900s a coal strike that theater roosevelt tries to hammer out in agreement too Many Americans as i mentioned to see the United States dividing into two camps, labor and capital. Labor organizing is accelerating. Union membership in 1911 on the eve of this 1912 election is five times what it had been in 1897. Think about that. That would be like, trust me this is not happen. It would be like if since 2004, the number of Labor Union Members multiplied by five times. New immigrants are creating low wage labor competition. There is no minimum wage. They and African Americans often work the strike feeling divisions among Industrial Workers who are trying to organize it. Manufacturers and employers openly try to pin when immigrant group against one another so they cannot organize. Or African Americans against whites as we talked about in mill work in the south. 60 years ago, a very famous historian named richard have steadier my husband actually knows who is. But whenever i say this, he says history famous . Or famous famous . He is history famous. He argued 60 years ago that the progressives were worried about status anxiety. Basically, that they were middle and upper class who felt frightened by their place in a changing world. It was a deeply psychological interpretation that reflected the popularity a freud unionism at the time. Remember, we talked about historiography cant help but absorb the moment in which its created. We know he exaggerated and the sense that these folks were as much optimistic as they were and anxious about status. Most miss the facts that many catholics and jewish and working class immigrants organizers shared many of the same goals as progressives. But having said that i think it is still useful to think about the phenomenon of progressivism. On one hand there is a general insecurity about the state of society and about how the social problems could be solved. There is this recognition of a fundamental change in the economy. A kind of sobering unionization that industrial capitalism is here to stay. At least the 1912. Also, this kind of optimism of, we can do something about this. This is an existential paralyzing fear. This is, we have got a problem, lets roll up our sleeve and get some doctoral degrees and solve it. By the way, they did not see that isnt that that it will. The bottom line is that progressive reform appealed to those who had something to lose, including their status and society. Airfield full but not hopeless. Maybe that seems like a contradiction, but again, what i want to emphasize as if there is one thing they shared, it is this enormous confidence that social and Economic Conditions could be improved, maybe even solved. You can see that in wilsons fascination with making this machine of liberty be as frictionless as possible. This may reflect a politics professors lack of knowledge about engineering and friction, nevertheless is bringing book knowledge to this problem, assuming we can solve the problems of democracy. I will give you another example. Put it this way, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt are very different kinds of people. I suspect you all know that. But who is more confident then Theodore Roosevelt . He has got a big stick. There is nothing that will stop him. He runs right over his Vice President that he anointed to be president. He starts a new Political Party. He is the kid that never gets picked at recess, and then he reinvents himself as a south dakota ranch or. He is very confident. He really shows this progressive idealism and confidence. For him of course, that comes from a position of dont tell Theodore Roosevelt he cannot do something. That is born and bred in him. Women though one of my favorite things about teaching the progressive era is that this isnt one of these deals where the famous history famous womens history professor said, there is an early stage of womens history called add women and stir. It is your pot of history, it doesnt have any women in it so just throw them in like chocolate chips. Its still the same thing. You cannot understand the progressive era unless you include women from top to bottom. Women were central to this reorganizing of liberty freedom, democracy and efficiency. You know im going to bring up clean milk again. I think it is the wisconsin thing. It is not the man its the women. This is the height of the womens suffrage movement. Well talk about it on thursday. Even beyond women suffrage. Women are involved in prohibition, which we will end with. They are attending higher institutions of Higher Education and unprecedented numbers. They are going to graduate school. They are getting phds. This is mostly middle and upper class white women. Middle class and upper class black women as well, although their numbers are smaller. They are actually more likely to have careers then white middle and upper class women, partly because their husbands cant often make a living that the family can afford to live on. Women reflect and capitalize on this confidence. Women are confident in the progressive era. They believe they have the power to make change. They are appearing in public for us. Jane adams is nominating roosevelt as the Progressive Party nominee they also have confidence in the ability of the government to solve social problems. They share with progressive man this idea that bureaucracy is a good thing. They believe in bureaucracy, in fact they want more of it. Wilsons proposal to make liberty more efficient is through bureaucracy they do not think that is a paradox. They believe and Good Government. That brings me to the last big picture point i want to make. Progressives are not radicals. It is important to recognize that progressivism was a form. It was a set of reformed movements, not radical movements. In a certain sense, progressivism was actually conservative in the sense that progressives wanted to perfect something they think already existed. They were ultimately optimists and perfectionists who believed that you could Perfect Society with enough planning and organization. We can see that many progressives saw progressivism as a way to stem rattle it kill isnt. To cut increasingly popular radical movements off at the knees by decreasing their need by solving the obvious social problems that socialists, anarchists and communists were beginning to name and address. Roosevelt and wilson, although they disagree on many things, are saying lets regulate, not have a red dilution. We recognize that railroads our problem. We recognize that workers need and theyre eight hour day. We do not think that we have to give up the whole thing to anarchists we think we can tinker at the margins and fix this thing. Even eugene depths. He is a socialist he runs five times for president. In 19 away he runs from prison. He has been jailed because of actions to do with the strike he was involved in. Inflammatory statements he supposedly made. But even he is not staging a revolution. Hes running for president. Even that, that is not he is not bombing people. He is part of the system as well. I brought up senator beverage from indiana, the proponent of imperialism who was an important voice for roosevelt in the senate when roosevelt was president. He said this about theater roosevelt. He said theater vote roosevelts brilliance was and differentiating that species of an orchids in which we popularly turnbull chauvinism, so isolating bolsheviks them or radicalism from that form of normal progress called liberalism. I guess in modern terms we would call this a liberal not a radical. Im not sure im prepared to call roosevelt a liberal. That might be i think you see the analogy there. By making capitalism safer for the individual if im making urban life cleaner, safer, more organized, the appeal of radicals that anarchists, socialists who were increasingly powerful and popular in this period, would be diminished. That was the goal. The progressive era contains such a wide range of different movements and causes, it would be impossible to discuss even a portion of them. This is one of the most studied areas in American History because it is so complex and internally contradictory. Today, what i want to do is just offer you a couple of examples of what i would call economic and political progressivism and i will emphasize the way the political progressivism comes out of municipalities and states first. Then i will end with prohibition, because i think prohibition really is emblematic, in some ways the quintessential progressive reform. It is an excellent bridge to talking about women in immigrants on thursday. And involves both of them in important ways. I think those are the quintessential progressive reform that we have forgotten about because it is so deeply unfashionable. As i speak to college students. I referenced milwaukee several times. It was not popular there, i tell you that. I want to resuscitate the sensuality to the progressive era. I think it sheds light on sorts of the pros and cons of the progressive causes. Lets talk about economic and political progressivism. The two, i want to talk about in particular, the two laws that i think exemplify the antitrust movement with begins economic and progressivism. In the sherman antitrust act. These both come out of the populist movement and reflect and anti monopoly tradition. We have not talked a lot about anti monopoly of some. I mentioned it briefly when i talked about populism but i think it is fair to say that in the late 19th century, monopoly was one of the central concerns of the american people. It touched on many things ive already mentioned. The idea that some people have an unfair advantage over others. The diminishing of the importance and power of the individual. The increasingly abstract nature of industrial capitalism. Monopoly offended 19th century americans in a way that was deeply fundamental because they saw themselves as a nation of individualism, and that individual is and was central to freedom and democracy. While we might say, oh that was freedom of business or what have you, they saw monopoly not just in the increasing combinations of American Business, but in the political power that those folks had. Even in things like the vice trades. This campaign against what i call white slavery. Sex trafficking. The reformers, most were you disciplined republican politicians and women reformers, they were active in this movement and believed there was a vice monopoly. They sought some sort of secretive cabal that was organizing white slavery around the world. We asking women unwilling across International Lines for this International Sex syndicate. The reality is it wouldnt not as organized as they thought. It was very telling, that when they saw a problem, they feared monopoly. That is where the kind of general ability in a non partisan way, to address trust. Trusts do not go away and anybody who studies American Business now know is that it is bigger than ever, but this effort to dismantle what people saw as unfair business combinations comes out of that anti monopoly tradition. The really kind of landmark example, or piece of legislation is interstate commerce act which passes in 1887. This comes out of many state attempts to regulate railroads. You all did a terrific job talking about ferguson last week. We both wish we had much more time to talk about it. There is so much more to say. In my section, we talked about that it was not an accident that happened on the railroad. In that case, it was a state law. Plessi was challenging. The Supreme Court overruled those laws and overturned them saying, railroads engaged in interstate commerce and any regulation of them has to be at the federal level. Congress finally response and passes interstate commerce act, which is really a watershed moment. It means that the federal government for the first time is turning toward what we would now call a regulatory state. Interstate Commerce Commission becomes a model for this hybrid of executive and legislative and Judicial Branch and of commission. What do i mean by that . The interstate commerce act created a five Person Commission to regulate railroads. This commission was thus removed from some of the winds of politics that the legislative branch might be for example. These are appointed positions that can decide things like railroad rates. Railroad disputes. This is an expansion of executive power that we now think as normal, that was really a turning point. It had many weaknesses. It could not proactively regulate. It relied on assist to bring actions. You had to if you wanted to challenge something, it favored big businesses over small. Railroad attorneys were the First Corporate attorneys of the United States, they could tie up these cases for years. Even if the icc in its early years was weak, it created this precedent for this dominant form of regulatory government. Independent appointed commission. I bet you can think of many appointed commissions. I wrote a book about one. You might have thought for example, the 9 11 commission, which is in some ways the most recent and famous example of a precedent sent by the icc. I will give you an example of how in the weeds the icc can get. I just found out two weeks ago. I went to a workshop on jewish genealogy, and i did not even use genealogy i googled my great grandfathers name and found out that he was involved in a case that he and his Business Partners took to the interstate Commerce Commission in 1919. You want to talk about small potatoes . They had an argument with says the topeka at johnson in santa fe railroad. They were jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. They own the company that sold secondhand scrap iron and metal. They were not titans of industry. They sued the railroad over what they thought was an unfair rate for used beer bottles. They went to the icc and said, this railroad is charging us too much for these truckloads of used beer bottles that we bought. They won the case and got a refund of like 127 dollars from the railroads for their multiple carloads of used beer bottles. I actually did not even know that when i started talking to guys about populism and the railroad but its a perfect example of wow, the federal government is regulating these guys used beer bottle purchases for junk dealers in el paso texas. That is the president for the sherman anti act. There is monopoly in oil, tobacco, steel, sugar industries. Situation grows worse with a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 18 eighties saying legally speaking, a corporation is a person under the 14th amendment. It means that corporations cannot be denied. Life liberty or property without due process of the law and this invalidates many of the state monopoly laws as i mentioned to you. In response, Congress Passes the sherman antitrust act. It makes any quote, restraint of trade or commerce in interstate commerce illegal. Not unlike the i see a, it is enforced with fines and lawsuits. Although these are suits that could be brought by public district attorneys. It is used against clear monopolies and cartels, that is secret agreements that engage in rate fixing, so this is actually the kind of thing all the way was an icc matter because of the railroad that my great grandfather wouldve complained about. He wouldve said you know what, the southern pacific and topeka atkinson, they fixed rates they dont have a choice. You could call that a cartel or a secret agreement. . You at and. All in his integral address, roosevelt made a powerful plea for the right of the federal government to intervene and unfair practices and cabalistic uses. Classic example of reform not revolution. In practice, Anti Trust Laws could definitely backfire at least from the standpoint of the people who had first championed them, because just as the 14th amendment could protect corporations as persons, Anti Trust Laws could be used against things like farmers collapse and labor unions. You could use the sherman antitrust act to go after one of these farmers cooperatives that populist minded farmers created so that they could negotiate for better rates and better prices for their commodities. Well, that was a trust, sometimes in the eyes of the law. Similarly, if a Labor Union Organized a boycott, the target of their boycott could go to and argue that this was a violation of the sherman antitrust act. Again, the theme of reform and not revolution. Roosevelt wants to make the markets safer individuals and not dismantle it. Okay. Those are some examples of economic reform which with respect to this question of monopoly, we also seen as political reforms. These were deeply connected in peoples minds. Making the world a safer for individuals and industrial capitalism was analogous to the ways that progressives wanted an individual to retain their power in an increasingly large and abstract democracy. Okay. Let me turn to some political reforms. So progressives champion a bunch of reforms that are aimed at creating direct democracy. What does that mean . It means bringing political decisions straight to the people rather to intermediaries like state legislatures and political machines. Here is an example with political reform we see the direct influence of the populists on the progressive era. The populists who believed that farmers who are the bedrock of the nation had lost political power. They wanted to see power return to individuals. So progressive reformers really hated political machines. Someone take a stab at what a political machine is. Im sure many of you have studied this in class. A collective of basically powerful usually men who kind of choose who they want to run the city. They do it through intimidation tactics. Those are the bosses. Theyre called machines. People are into machines in the late 19th century. It is this group of powerful king pins who offer a kind of quid pro quo for voters who then become the cox in the machine. I will make sure you get a free turkey on thanksgiving if you vote for my candidate. I will build a big court house that goes 100 times over budget but i will make sure you and your cousins get jobs on it. Most political machines were democratic. The most famous was tammy hall in new york city. There were absolutely some republican political machines. Reformers saw political machines as hopelessly corrupt. This idea of a sort of direct quid pro quo enraged them. Defenders said actually, this was the defense, they said actually we take all these new immigrants, irish immigrants fresh off the boat who have never had democracy or a full belly. They have been in the age of european feudalism. We show them what it means to be an american citizen. We show them how the voting process works. We get them involved, we get them jobs, we get them to the ballots. We are teaching them about the american political system. The reformers say that is shenanigans. It is not the goal of politics to have this direct quid pro quo. We are supposed to have Good Government. Its supposed to be about these abstract ideals. You see these attacks that are increasingly effective on political machines. This is often a fairly regional activity. On the federal level it comes in the version of the pendleton act of 19 1883. It creates Civil Service reform. Instead of filling the federal bureaucracy which in 1883 is quite small, instead of filling them in with hacks, they have to pass the Civil Service exam to show they are objectively qualified for the job. You can imagine that these exams could be very discriminatory in the same way you hear about a sats and Racial Discrimination and in class discrimination. Asking for things that were not necessary to be a railway clerk. Pass a Civil Service exam that does not require for a job that does not require that knowledge. For many immigrants and working class, they resented this process. That is the federal version which in fairness is a reaction to the assassination of president James Garfield by the drenched office seeker. A guy who was seeking a job and who is mentally ill and who shoots him. This is one of the political responses. On municipal and state levels, there were other efforts as well. The australian battle it, the secret ballot. This is meant to curb political machine influence because if you vote secretly, you do not really owe the political boss anything. In the era when you went to vote at a local saloon and there was one box for the republicans and one box for the democrats. If your political boss so you put your ballot in the wrong box you were out of a turkey on thanksgiving. More seriously probably a job. At large elections, eliminating more endeavor mid, the machine system was based on a coalition of powerful bosses. Many urban reformers campaigned for at large elections. Rather, like in washington d. C. Where we have eight wards, at large elections they eliminated those different wards to eliminate that small political favor. What is one of the consequences of eliminating the ward elections in a diverse city . Yes . You do not have a smaller constituency that you address. What are some demographic realities of that is well . Wealthier people will probably dominate. Who else . Lets say we have a city that is majority white but three awards are pretty dominantly immigrant. If you eliminate wards. Yes . Thats exactly right. The idea was. Lets use chicago as an example. A hive of machine politics. Chicago is renowned for corruption in city government. At this time period especially. Chicago city council had African American alderman at the turn of the century. The southside had elected its own alderman. That would not have been the case with outward politics. Thats sort of the two sides to that story. At large elections vastly reduced immigrant participation. This became a huge issue in the civil rights movement. Many cities that had at large elections switched back or established ward elections for the first time. Another example of taking power from the people to make democracy more efficient. City governments by experts. A lot of this happens on the municipal level. This is city governments that have a city manager or Commission Style government. These are more common in the midwest, south and west for this reason, their city governments are newark. Many of these places were established in incorporated during the progressive era. We talk about people being born digital now. They were born progressive. The quintessential example you knew i was doing this out of order. The quintessential example is Galveston Texas in 1900. Devastating hurricane killed between six and 12,000 people. Literally wiped out the city council and mayor. Reformers said this is sad but its also a great opportunity. We can try out this new idea that reformers have of commissioned government where we actually just have this commission. Aboard of appointed commissioners that acts like a city manager and run the city. They eliminated African American alderman by changing this political system. They appointed experts to run the commission. So 1900 galveston creates the First Commission government with hundreds of towns in the south and west following. Almost half of american towns and cities today have a commissioner or city manager government. So a city manager government is a model in which you may have an elected mayor but they are called a weak mayor. Not to their face, it is a weak mayor system where they have limited powers in the day today functioning of the city. It is done by an elected appointeds city commissioner. Because the west is literally building its towns and states during this period. Arizona, new mexico and oklahoma art territories at the beginning of the progressive era. The west uses at large elections and commissioner city models. My home town of tempe arizona has a city manager that was incorporated during the progressive era. My High School Government teacher taught at my high school for 30 years. He was an alumni and also the mayor. He taught the zero to fifth hour and skipped his prep because he had a halftime job as prep. The city manager ran the city. His fulltime job was teaching and in the afternoon he ran a city. It was also nonpartisan elections. This was another progressive reform. You can see how that also can potentially eliminate the power of politics. It cannot organize around Party Elections and choosing primary nominees. The idea is that Good Government is Good Government, it should not matter what party. Many of these towns had nonpartisan elections. He went on to become a member of congress. Its a very mr. Smith goes to washington story. One of the most popular and controversial Progressive Political reforms was a set of methods to bring voting to the people. That was a set of efforts which predominant did in the west and still do. The Initiative Referendum and recall. Im sure we have people from california here and maybe some from colorado. Anyone want to guess with the Initiative Referendum and recall are . Yes . Im from colorado. Recalling is to get an elected official out of office by voting. That is exactly right. Youve got it. Im glad that you are from colorado which is an exemplar of this model. You run around and get ballot signatures from his many voters and get it on the next ballot. You vote, the public votes for it. This is a classic direct democracy. You dont send the authority of passing a new law to the legislature, you let the voters decide. A referendum is Legislature Passes a law, it is unpopular or theyre nervous about it and they pitch it back to the people to give it a yes or no. Same thing, pretty direct democracy. Recall election, only some states have this, it is the ability to recall an elected official. In rare cases, in arizona you can even recall judges which almost never happens. I dont think it has ever happened actually. In any case, the recall is a way that the people have a way to discipline in direct democracy. If someone is not representing the peoples interest they can recall them. The intention was that these things would bring politics closer to the people. We all the evidence over century is that probably in some cases the opposite has happened. That these kinds of elections are especially vulnerable to special interests and large campaigns that can sway the outcome. It did not turn out exactly as the reformers had wished. I want to present to you as i promised that i would, that the south, that jim crow as progressivism can fit into this model. It might seem strange to say so. You might see the way in which those state constitutions starting with the mississippi plant of 1890 and moving through the late 19th century. They represented the triumph of White Supremacists who valued Efficient Government over democratic government. Right . Remember how they saw reconstruction. They saw it as corruption fueled by an educated and unprepared voters. New voters. Formerly enslaved people. Rather than saying lets make better citizens of our citizenry, they said lets remove those citizens from the voting population. In this sense, jim crow was in some sense the ultimate expression of government inefficiency. This is southern leaders talking, not me, if we make sure people are illiterate and paid their taxes. They are responsible and upstanding. If they come from a tradition of upright Good Government and their grandfathers could vote. Notice how race is lurking but not vocalized. Then we will have a more Efficient Government. A more efficient system. You could not get a more naked example of efficiency winning over democracy. And my class, we talk briefly about how poor white voters were disenfranchised in the state of louisiana after jim crow went into effect. Not in every Southern State but louisiana which was profoundly dominated by a small elite, they did not view that as an accident. That was fine to eliminated poor white voters without long with poor black voters in the jim crow era. To them it was efficient democracy. Weve almost made it to the end and i will finish on time. It is hard to believe, i know. Its a good thing it is recorded for posterity. Talking about the south is a good place to mention the quintessential progressive reform, prohibition. Prohibition was the national, really international, movement to eliminate alcohol as a part of peoples regular lives. Why you might ask . Why did anyone want prohibition much less getting it ratified as an amendment to the constitution . Why did people want probation and who wanted it . Husbands would go out to the salutes and abandon their family and spend all of their money. It cost families a lot of problems. Yes. I will show a clip of that next week. Its true. It sounds like an exaggeration and a parody. There is some wonderful early 20th century Motion Pictures that are spoofs of this and very sexist. They are also a little funny. Of women turning up solutions and men having to take care of babies because women have become political organizers. Men sneaking drinks while babysitting their children. It was rooted in a real social problem. People drank far more than the even do today. Alcoholism was a serious problem. People missed work because of it. They lost jobs. They spent their incomes on it. Domestic violence was rampant. Often fueled by alcohol abuse. It was in a very real way and antecedent to me to movements. This was in one sense one portion of the population of prohibition was that it would improve women and childrens lives. Francis willard who is the famous leader of the womens christian temperance union. She adopted advocacy for womens suffrage after getting involved in the probation movement because she saw it as a tool for social reform. We will talk about this more but there is two camps and the womens suffrage campaign. The camp that dated all the way back to 1848 and the declaration of sentiments. The early version where they said we should have the right to vote because we are equal and citizens and it is our natural right. There were some women who practiced civil disobedience after the 14th amendment and try to go vote. That involves two women are special and more righteous and more morally pure which fits in perfectly. This is a genius tactic. It fits in perfectly with progressive era reform. Saying we will clean up government, make it more efficient because we are not corrupt. It is folks who are advocating that who say some nasty things. Like Francis Willard they are saying, it is not so much that i think that i should have the vote because women and men are equal. So i think Francis Willard shouldve set wouldve said that. She thinks we need to make necessary changes to society. She saw prohibition as just one of all kinds of reforms to cure social ills in the 20th century. That is why her motto was do everything. For her and millions of other women who come to support the vote, men as well. Theres a reason why Theodore Roosevelt endorses womens suffrage. They see the womens vote as an instrument for change as much of a change in itself. They assume that women will vote differently than men will. They turn out to be mostly wrong in the early period, not the 21st century. We have talked about one major motivation for prohibition. Whats another . The native born protestants, many of them do not allow drinking in their religions. They do not drink or do not drink publicly. But they associate political corruption, debauchery, poverty, organization with catholic, eastern orthodox immigrants and heavy drinking. Saloon culture. So many people rightfully see this as a campaign. I have chosen to end with prohibition for two reasons. The first is that it was often targeted against immigrants, the second is because it was a movement that was not female only but whose success and size is unimaginable without win its participation and leadership. It is indicative of the progressive era in general. While i always say women belong in history they are essential to understanding the progressive era. On thursday we will turn to more details about immigration and womens lives in the early 20th century. Thanks. Up next on lectures and history. University of nevada las vegas professor Michael Green talked about Abraham Lincoln and the 1860 president ial election. He describes the Political Climate of the price of a war era. The background