Ch 19 Flashcards
(23 cards)
Henry George
- CA journalist; troubled by the railway strike of 1877
- published Progress and Poverty
- said that there were benefits from industrialization by the result was that from all parts of the civilized world come complaints of want and suffering and anxiety in the working class
- proposed the single tax movement
the single tax movement
- 100% tax on any increase in the value of land or rents on land
- this would reduce the value and cost of land→ allow workers to turn to farming, which would create a labor shortage that inevitably raises wages and improve factory conditions
- Henry George
John Dewey
- goal= wider philosophical response to industrialism
- went to John Hopkins to study philosophy and taught at U of Michigan
- invited to go to U of Chicago (Chicago= center of social reform)
- had a hard time getting there→ most of nation’s rail lines were down due to the Pullman strike
- traveling amidst a nationwide strike was informative/exciting
- didn’t like Social Darwinism
- believed that wise ppl could and should intervene in the economy to make it more just
Social Darwinism
- the fittest and wealthiest survive/lead and the weak and poor deserve their fate and gov action is unable to alter this
- supporters= William Graham Sumner
- Herbert Spencer
Joseph Pulitzer
- wrote the New York Evening World→ made the largest circulation paper in the country with several innovations (banner headlines, comic strips, investigative journals)
- did an expose of the speculative adventices of the managers of Equitable Life Assurance Society (gambling the ppls money)
muckraking journalists
- journalism exposing economic, social, and political evils
- name comes from Roosevelt for its raking of muck from the bottom of society
- Henry Demarest Lloyd
- Roosevelt thought these reporters found problems but not solutions
- played a key role in the Progressive movement
- Ray Stannard Baker’s report on the striker’s coal miners
- Upton Sinclair took a job in a slaughterhouse to do a report on the meatpacking industry (bad working conditions, inhumane treatment)
Tammany Hall
- NYC’s Democratic Party organization, dating before Civil War, that evolved into a powerful political machine after 1860, using patronage and bribes to maintain control of the city administration
- William M Tweed= robbed NYC of $45 mill
initiative
-procedure in which citizens can introduce a subject for legislation through a petition signed by a certain number of votes
referendum
-submission of a law, proposed or already in effect, to a direct popular vote for approval or rejection
recall
-process of removing an official from office by popular vote, usually after using petitions to call for such a vote
Robert Wagner
- went to DC; sponsored leg to create Social Security system
- Wagner Act= gave labor unions the right to bargain effectively-most important piece of labor legislation enacted in the U.S. in the 1900s
Jane Addams
- believed that all good has to be in all of society before it can be held secure by any one person
- Hull House= model for settlement houses
- When she realized young women strikers were in danger of losing their company housing, Hull House launched a cooperative women’s boarding house
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
- were determined to make temperance-abstinence from liquor-the key moral and political issue of the decade
- the WCTU empowered a generation of women who had been taught ladylike behavior meant quietly taking care of home and family and leaving politics to men
- Frances E WIllard= president
- right for women to vote
Social Gospel
- based on the idea that improving society was both the right thing for religious people to do, and indeed, God’s will
- application of religious ethics to industrial conditions and thereby alleviating poverty, slums, and labor exploitation
Theodore Roosevelt
-Pres after McKinley was assassinated
-as governor of NY he wanted to end corruption, tax the street railways, provide for industrial safety
-so Teddy became POTUS and he filed to break up Northern Securities Company
-focused on conservation of nature
-
Sherman Antitrust Act
- the first federal antitrust measure, passed in 1890; sought to promote economic competition by prohibiting business combinations in restraint of trade or commerce
- was basically a dead end after it passed
Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
- a law of 1883 that reformed the spoils system by prohibiting govt workers from making political contributions and by creating the Civil Service Commission to oversee their appointment on the basis of merit rather than politics
- only covered about 10% of federal employees and none at the state or local level
William Howard Taft
- pres after Roosevelt
- Taft called Congress into a special session in early 1909 to lower the nation’s tariff rates (but vetoed the actual bill)
- Taft decreed an 8-hour workday for employees of the government and advocated the 16th Amendment to ensure that federal income taxes could be collected
- fired Gifford Pinchot
- Payne Aldrich Tariff
New Freedom
- give people the greatest freedom by supply breaking up the great trusts and fostering competition at every level
- Woodrow Wilson’s platform for change
Federal Trade Commission
-mandate to limit the growth and power of monopolies
Wilson supported effective child labor legislation later in his term
18th amendment
- defined which “intoxicating liquors” were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition (e.g., for medical and religious purposes).
19th amendment
-granted American women the right to vote
Election of 1912
– 3 candidates (Bull Moose Party)
- Roosevelt wants to beat Taft
- Woodrow Wilson
