Volume 14 , Issue 37

Populism & Progressivism

The 1890's and early 1900's saw the establishment of the Populist and Progressive movements. Both were based on the people's dissatisfaction with government and its inability to deal effectively in addressing the problems of the day.

Populism during the 1880's, farmers believed that industrialists and bankers controlled both the republicans and the democrats within the government. Western farmers formed the Populist Party. They initiated a program in 1882 in Omaha, Nebraska. They sought free and limited coinage of silver and graduated income tax so the wealthy pay more than the poor; sought government ownership of railroad, telephone and telegraph systems; wanted the government to get more involved in the economy and wanted to stop laissez faire; aimed for a secret ballot and direct election.

Progressivism was a movement to improve American life by taking advantage of democracy. Progressives were optimistic and forward-looking; against restoring the rule of America, more for accepting industrialization and urbanization; wanted to correct evils of industrialization but were pro-machinery.

One historian defined Progressivism as the "political movement that addresses ideas, impulses, and issues stemming from modernization of American society. Emerging at the end of the 19th century, it established much of the tone of American politics throughout the first half of the century."

The following is a timeline of Populism and Progressivism in America:

• 1869 - Wyoming passes the first law in the United States giving women the right to vote.
• 1871 - Yellowstone Park is created. Pressed by a growing agitation for the conservation of the badly exploited natural resources of the country, Congress begins to reverse its wholesale giveaway programs and creates the park as a public preserve in Wyoming.
• 1873 - Grasshopper plagues have devastated western farms. Droughts have exacerbated the harsh conditions under which farmers struggle for survival. In debt to banks and merchants for seed, tools, and machinery, the farmers' dream of an independent life is dissipating.
• 1873 - The Comstock Law bans obscene articles, including information about birth control, from the mail.
• 1874 - The Women's Christian Temperance Union is formed.
• 1876 - The first amendment relating to prohibition is proposed by Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire.
• 1876 - Frederick Law Olmsted completes the Central Park in New York City.
• 1878 - The Women's Suffrage Amendment is introduced into Congress.
• 1878 - Felix Adler founds the Workingman's School.
• 1879 - Henry George analyzes the problems of urbanizing America in Progress and Poverty.
• 1880 - The National Farmers' Alliance is formed. The farmers' plight has taken on catastrophic proportions in the face of high tariffs, flood and drought, unfair railroad rates and high interest on loans and mortgages.
• 1881 - Kansas is the first state to prohibit the sale of liquor.
• 1881 - President Hayes, whose wife is nicknamed Lemonade Lucy because she serves no alcohol in the White House, decrees that no alcoholic beverages are to be sold at military posts.
• 1881 - James Garfield is inaugurated president, and Chester A. Arthur becomes vice president.
• 1881 - James Garfield is assassinated by a madman named Charles Guiteau.
• 1881 - Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is founded by Booker T. Washington. At Tuskegee Washington advocates an education limited to vocational skills, and from this base,Washington rises to national prominence.
• 1885 - The American Economic Association is established. A number of young economists have become disillusioned with the premises standing behind the philosophy of laissez-faire. The organization is the first economic group to argue that the state must contribute actively in the way of "positive aid" to the just progress of its citizens. These economists contend that unless concerted efforts are made to prevent further degradation of the new class of workers, the American dream will turn into a nightmare of class warfare. Woodrow Wilson and Henry Adams are among the 186 founding members.
• 1887 - The Interstate Commerce Act is passed by Congress and signed into law. A five man commission is created to see that rates are just and "reasonable;" to forbid double-tiered rates for long and short hauls on freight carriers; to stop discriminatory rates between competitive and non-competitive localities and to stop the practice of pooling.
• 1887 - Edward Bellamy promotes the idea of socialist utopia in Looking Backward
• 1887 - The Dawes Severalty Act is passed by Congress. It provides for 160 acres to be given individually to each Indian family.
• 1888 - Congress establishes a Department of Labor.
• 1888 - Benjamin Harrison is elected president of the United States, and Levi Morton becomes vice president.
• 1889 - Jane Addams opens Hull House in Chicago.
• 1889 - Frederick Winslow Taylor develops his principles of scientific management. His book, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) is widely read by managers.
• 1890 - The National Women's Suffrage Association and the American Women's Suffrage Association, both formed in 1869, merge to consolidate the women's suffrage movement.
• 1890 - Sherman Anti-trust Act is passed. It makes illegal "every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations."
• 1890 - Wyoming enters the Union as the first state to have women's suffrage.
• 1890 - Yosemite Park is created by an act of Congress.
• 1890 - The Southern Farmers Alliance, the Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association, and the Colored Farmers' Alliance meet in Ocala, Florida, to see if there is some way to take joint action on their respective grievances. Racial barriers are too strong in the South and nothing comes of the meeting.
• 1890 - Jacob Riis publishes How the Other Half Lives.
• 1891 - The Populist Party is formed at the national level in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• 1892 - The Populist Party, also known as the People's Party, holds its first national convention in Omaha, Nebraska. James B. Weaver is nominated as the party's candidate for president, and the party issues forth its platform: Their important demands include government ownership of railroads, free coinage of silver, a graduated income tax, an eight hour day, the popular election of senators, the secret ballot, government ownership of telegraphs and telephones, and government-owned warehouses.
• 1893 President Cleveland is inaugurated for a second term.
• 1895 - U.S. v. E.C. Knight Co. The Supreme Court finds that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is applicable only to monopolies involved in interstate trade. Ruling that a sugar combine is beyond the law, the Court draws a fine line between manufacturing and commerce. This ruling temporarily renders the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which had been designed to regulate all forms of trusts, useless.
• 1896 - William Jennings Bryan gives his "Cross of Gold" speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He wins the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.
• 1896 - McKinley wins the presidential election. Garret Hobart is vice president.
• 1896 - John Dewey's laboratory school for testing and practice of new educational theory opens at University of Chicago 1898 Holden v. Hardy. The Supreme Court upholds the validity of the Utah statute which limits daily working hours in mining industries to eight.
• 1900 - McKinley wins a second term as president. Theodore Roosevelt is vice president.
• 1900 - Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is published.
• 1901 - President McKinley is shot by Anarchist Leon Czolgosz as he attends a reception in Buffalo. He dies a week later of his wounds.
• 1901 - Under the leadership of John Mitchell, 140,000 United Mine workers go on strike that lasts through spring and summer. In October, President Roosevelt summons both sides to the White House to reach a settlement. A commission of arbitration is formed to investigate the miners' grievances and will make recommendations as to which demands should be met. Roosevelt's assertion of the federal government as the arbitrator of such disputes becomes known as the defining aspect of his "Square Deal" policies.
• 1902 - Publication of Ida Tarbell's muckraking exposé, The History of the Standard Oil Company. Along with other such publications as Frank Norris' The Octopus, Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of the Cities, journalists will have a direct impact on the course of political action.
• 1902 - The special commission set up by Roosevelt to settle the Anthracite coal strike recommends shorter hours, a 10 percent wage increase, and an "open shop."
• 1903 - Wisconsin is the first state to adopt direct primary elections.
• 1903 - The Elkins Act is passed by Congress. The act declares illegal all rebates on published freight rates.
• 1903 - W.E.B. DuBois publishes Souls of Black Folk.
• 1904 - Northern Securities Co. v. U. S. The Supreme Court finds that the company violates the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This is the first case that Roosevelt has undertaken in his campaign to bring big business within the restraint of law.
• 1904 - Theodore Roosevelt is elected president. Charles W. Fairbanks becomes vice president.
• 1905 - Lochner v. New York. The Supreme Court finds unconstitutional a state law which limits maximum working hours for bakers. The Court holds that such a law interferes with the right to free contract and is an improper use of police powers.
• 1905 - The Niagara Movement is inaugurated, advocating integration and equal opportunity for African Americans
• 1906 - The Hepburn Act is passed by Congress with Roosevelt's strong endorsement. It gives teeth to the Interstate Commerce Act by permitting regulation of rates charged by railroads.
• 1906 - Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act are passed by Congress, largely due to the of Upton Sinclair's muckraking book, The Jungle.
• 1908 - William Howard Taft is elected president, and James S. Sherman is vice president.
• 1908 - Muller v. Oregon. The Supreme Court rules that an Oregon law instituting the maximum hours a woman can work is constitutional and denies that it curtails the liberty of contract.
• 1909 - The Payne-Aldrich Tariff is passed by Congress with no disapproval from Taft, a president generally known for his endorsement of Progressive legislation.
• 1909 - The NAACP is founded by W.E.B. DuBois.
• 1910 - The Mann-Elkins Act is passed by Congress. It increases the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission and extends the Commission's jurisdiction to include telegraph and telephone companies.
• 1910 - The Mann Act is passed by Congress. Known as the "white slave traffic act," it prohibits the transportation of women across state lines for immoral purposes.
• 1911 - Senator Robert La Follette helps to found the National Progressive Republican League to protect more responsive government at all levels. The new League advocates the initiative, referendum, and recall; direct primaries; and more Progressive legislation in general. Later this year, La Follette is the party's nominee for president.
• 1911 - A Children's Bureau is formed within the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate means for the greater protection of maternal and infant health.
• 1912 - Roosevelt's followers form the "Bull Moose" Party, draining remaining liberal elements from the Republican Party.
• 1912 - Woodrow Wilson is elected president, and Thomas R. Marshall becomes vice president.
• 1913 - The 16th Amendment to the Constitution is adopted by the nation, providing the necessary legal basis for a graduated income tax.
• 1913 - The Underwood Tariff Act is passed, under the encouragement of Wilson. The tariff is lowered for the first time since the Civil War, in order to "abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privilege or of any kind of artificial advantage." Congress will enact the graduated income tax to make up the difference in revenues.
• 1913 - The Owen-Glass Federal Reserve Act is passed. It creates 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, and all national banks are forced to join the system. A Federal Reserve Board is created to manage the new network.
• 1913 - Henry Ford enacts the $5 a day plan when many laborer are not making not much more a week.
• 1914 - The Clayton Anti-Trust Act is passed by Congress. It is a victory for labor, as it exempts unions from anti-trust laws, and it makes strikes, picketing, and boycotting legal.
• 1916 - Woodrow Wilson is reelected for a second term. Thomas Marshall is vice president.
• 1916 - Margaret Sanger forms the New York Birth Control League.
• 1916 - The Keating-Owen Act, limiting child labor, is passed by Congress, but the Supreme Court declares the Act unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918).
• 1919 - The 18th Amendment to the Constitution is passed, instituting the Prohibition of alcohol. The Volstead Act will be passed to enforce Prohibition.
• 1920 - The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women suffrage, is enacted.
• 1921 - The Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act is passed, helping to fund maternity and pediatric clinics.

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