The Progressive Era Explained: US History Review

[MUSIC] Hey, guys.

Welcome to a lecture

on the progressive era.

We have 10 minutes to cover the major

concepts for the progressive

era for the US Regents exam.

And remember that's

what these lectures are for.

We don't get really detailed.

We just go over big concepts.

So, progressive, the root of course meaning

progress, is the name given to the era

really kind of beginning around 1900,

that is where the government is going

to kind of end the era

of laissez-faire for a little while.

Remember, "laissez-faire" means hands off.

And we're gonna start to put our hands

down around these problems,

around child labor,

around working conditions,

around the labor problem with unions,

around the environment,

around trust and monopolies killing

competition. And we're

gonna get our hands dirty;

we're gonna get an active government.

So, I guess we should

do a little bit of background.

We only have 10 minutes,

so we kinda have to go quick.

But the roots of progressivism really

start earlier on during the Gilded Age

when we think about groups like

the Populists or

the Knights of Labor, the union,

the Grange, the Progressive Party,

the Socialist Party.

These early risers, I guess, these early

grassroots movement

shows the concept that change begins

from the ground,

that these kind of fire starters that I'll

call them sometimes,

because the fire is eventually gonna rise,

and when it rises high enough,

the government's gonna be [WHOOO] kinda

forced to put its hands down because

of that heat that rises from

below, from the working class,

from the urban centers,

from immigrants, from

sometimes radicals but also,

you know, middle class unions,

and all kinds of people.

So, the roots

of progressivism start earlier.

And we can actually see this concept

of grassroots movements with

vocabulary word called "muckrakers."

I love the word muckrakers.

It sounds kind of like a dirty word,

muckraker,

but you can hear in the word "muck,"

which is dirt and kinda nasty stuff,

and muckraker, you know,

the concept of raking.

So basically, a muckraker is somebody

who digs up dirt

and distributes it to the masses in order

to light those fires underneath them.

Muckrakers can be rap artists.

Muckrakers can be novelists.

Muckrakers can be, you know,

song writers or performers or

whatever really,

magazine writers.

But the concept that we find

in the progressive era, we can kind of see

through, we'll do two or three.

One of them is Upton Sinclair.

Upton Sinclair was a socialist,

who really believed in kind

of overthrowing the capitalist

system, kind of this big idea.

He was really kind of probably a radical

for his time period,

but he decided that he was gonna write

a book,

to expose the working conditions

for the underclass of America,

the proletarian, I guess,

if you're a socialist.

So, he went into the slaughterhouses

of, I think it was Chicago, and

he kind of went in undercover as

a journalist to kind of write this expose

that he would later call "The Jungle,"

about working conditions.

He was thinking that people would be so

upset that they would demand change

for the worker, that they would see this

unfair capitalistic system,

and they would become socialists.

That's not exactly the way that it

happened, but it's still

a muckraking novel because as he wrote

about the working conditions

of the slaughterhouses,

that's what people became interested in.

They became interested in as they wrote it

about, you know, the meat contamination,

about the, you know, unregulated,

you know, working conditions

that their meat came from.

So, when they read about the disease

and the excrement and,

you know, the blood, and

the yuckiness of the process of

slaughtering animals for

your eating pleasure.

That was the fire they felt.

That was the fires that they lit.

They read the muckraker,

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle,"

and they started calling their

congressmen and having rallies and,

you know,

put your hands down

around this problem

of the meatpacking plants.

And through that,

through Teddy Roosevelt

and the Square Deal,

we're gonna get the FDA,

the Food and Drug Administration,

and the Pure Food and Drug Act,

and the Inspection Act, which is

gonna regulate the slaughterhouses.

This is a prime example of muckraking,

grassroots movements, a writer

starting from the bottom,

having his information distributed

and causing these fires to spread,

and then causing the government to stop

that laissez-faire, put its hands down,

sometimes called regulation,

and regulate

the problem with slaughterhouses.

Couple other ones.

I guess one of the big concepts that

we talked about earlier in the industrial

age was the idea of monopolies, trusts,

pools, corporations that were controlling

the economy because of their ability

to kill the magic word, starts with a C,

sounds like comp-comp-comp-competition,

therefore driving up prices and also,

you know, controlling workers' lives.

So, Frank Norris, another muck raker,

wrote a book called "The Octopus."

And The Octopus,

kind of this concept in my head is

of a giant trust railroad trust

with, you know,

the hub of the octopus

and the tentacles being the railroads,

and this beast that was really controlling

farmers' lives,

that was destroying farmers' lives through

its, you know, controlling,

you know, railroad prices.

So, what this led to,

specifically it led

to the Hepburn Act, which is

gonna regulate railroad prices.

This is another kind of Square Deal,

Teddy Roosevelt law,

but the bigger concept is that we're

gonna start to break up these trusts.

We talked about

the Sherman Anti Trust Act.

I don't have my baseball bat.

I guess I can use this.

But the concept

of the Sherman Anti Trust Act is that now

we have the power,

Teddy Roosevelt does,

to swing this puppy at these giant

monopolies and trusts

and break them up

in order to create competition through

smaller businesses or more businesses.

So the Sherman Antitrust Act is big.

And let's kinda get to the gritty

here and really talk about,

Teddy Roosevelt.

I really should talk about state reform.

State reform comes first.

It's really important that we understand

that there's levels of reform.

It's not like a messiah comes

and just changes everything.

That change begins

at that grassroots we saw through

the populous, the Grange,

the progressives, the socialists,

and now through individuals,

muckrakers like Upton Sinclair

and Frank Norris, "The Octopus."

So, states usually are what

we call sometimes the

experiments of democracy

because they try out things first.

So, with the Wisconsin idea,

which began in Wisconsin

by Governor Bob La Follette,

really started out some of these

democratic reforms first,

this concept of the government enabling

democracy, the government

regulating and putting its hands down

to spread democracy and be an enabler

of it rather than just a observer of it.

So, there's a few vocabulary words

on the regions that are associated

with the Wisconsin idea.

One of them is "initiatives."

initiatives are easy to remember because

you can think of the root of initiative

being to initiate, and initiative is when

people initiate

a law, where you write a law

and then that law goes onto a ballot

and it's directly put into action.

So, it's kind of bypassing

the lawmaking process, giving you power.

"Referendums" is another word

that sometimes is on the test.

California uses referendums,

where you refer a law to be passed.

It's kind of the same

concept of initiatives.

Recall Arnold Schwarzenegger became

governor of California because the people

of California have the ability to recall

their governor,

and they did that to the former governor,

Governor Davis, when they felt as though

he was raising their taxes too much.

So, they kinda pulled him out of office

and forced a special election.

I'm thinking there's another one,

"primaries."

Primaries are where now parties are

going to be controlled by the people.

So, when

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ran

in the primary,

it was Democrats who decided who was

gonna be their choice for president.

This began in Wisconsin.

Before that, some fat guy with a cigar

in the back room, "Joe, you're the guy."

You know, then you get

graft, and you get greed.

We're spreading democracy.

So, we have state reforms,

the Wisconsin idea, initiatives,

referendums, recall,

and the direct primary.

We have about a minute now to talk

about Teddy Roosevelt.

And Teddy Roosevelt, of course,

is really our first progressive president.

He was a Republican, and he is the kind of,

you know, first guy who's really gonna put

his hands down around

some of these problems.

And we've already talked a little bit

about some of the things that he did,

but he's called the Trust Buster.

Again,

you grab that Sherman Anti Trust Act,

he swang this thing, you know, 30, 40,

50 times, breaking up what he saw as kind

of, you know, strangling monopolies

and trusts that were killing competition.

Teddy Roosevelt was a believer

in collective bargaining.

He kind of legalized unions in a sense,

and made it kind of a fair level playing

field between the worker

and the owner.

He believed in the

environment and conservation.

He began the National Park

Reclamation Act

and kind of had the government take over

and preserve using its power

to have national parks and such.

The Hepburn Act regulating railroads.

I'm running out of time.

The progressive era, progress about 1900,

and we're done guys, I gotta go.

See you later.