PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT

While Americans were venturing abroad, they were also taking a fresh look at social problems at home. Although the economy was booming and prosperity was spreading, up to half of all industrial workers still lived in poverty - and many of those workers were women and children. New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco could now boast impressive museums, universities, public libraries - and crowded slums. Before 1900, the prevailing economic dogma had been laissez-faire - the idea that government should interfere with business as little as possible. After 1900, the fashionable ideology was "Progressivism" - a movement to reform society and individuals through government action.

Social workers now went into the slums to set up settlement houses, which provided health services and recreational facilities for the poor. Prohibitionists demanded an end to the sale of liquor - partly to prevent the suffering that alcoholic workers could inflict on their spouses and children. In the cities, reform politicians fought corruption, regulated public transportation, built municipally owned utilities and reduced taxes through more efficient government. Many states passed laws restricting child labor, protecting women workers, limiting work hours and providing workmen's compensation. Women agitated for the right to vote, and by 1914 several states had granted that right.

President Theodore Roosevelt strengthened federal regulation of the railroads and enforced the Antitrust Act against several large corporations, including the Standard Oil Company. In 1902, Roosevelt ended a coal strike by threatening to send in troops - not against the workers, but against uncooperative mine owners. This was a turning point in American industrial policy: no longer would the government automatically side with management in labor disputes. The Roosevelt administration also promoted conservation. Vast reserves of forest land, coal, oil, minerals and water were saved for future generations. The Progressive Movement was primarily a movement of economists, sociologists, technicians and civil servants-social engineers who believed that scientific and cost-efficient solutions could be found to all political problems.

Some Americans favored more radical ideologies. The Socialist party, under Eugene V. Debs, advocated a peaceful, gradual, democratic transition to a state-run economy. Socialism has never had much appeal in the United States, where economic debates have generally concentrated on the question of whether and to what extent, the government should regulate private enterprise.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 782