Using the documents and your knowledge of the time period, analyze the causes of the decline of the Progressive Era.

DOCUMENT A 

19^th Amendment, August 18, 1920

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

DOCUMENT B
Source:  Woodrow Wilson’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1913

At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves. We had not forgotten our morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy which was meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with an eye single to the standards of justice and fair play, and remembered it with pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great.

We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration.

DOCUMENT C
Source:  "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, 1906

There were cattle which had been fed on "whiskey malt" the refuse of the breweries and they had become what the men called "steerly" which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would burst and splash foul smelling stuff into your face; and when a man’s sleeves were smeared with blood, and his hands steeped in it, how was he ever to wipe his face, or to clear his eyes so that he could see? It was stuff such as this that made the "embalmed beef" that had killed several times as many United States soldiers as the bullets of the Spaniards; only the army beef, besides, was not fresh canned, it was old stuff that had been lying for years in the cellars.

These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poison bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one-there were things that went into the sausage in comparison in which a poison rat was a tidbit.

DOCUMENT D
Espionage Act, May 16, 1918

SEC. 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, or say do anything except by way of bona fide and not disloyal advice to an investor . . . with intent to obstruct the sale by the United States of bonds . . . or the making of loans by or to the United States, or whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause. . . or incite. . . insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct. . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag. . .or suggest doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both....

DOCUMENT E
Rheta Childe Dorr on The Role of American Women, 1910.

Women have ceased to exist as a subsidiary class in the community. They are no longer wholly dependent, economically, intellectually, and spiritually, on a ruling class of men. They look on life with the eyes of reasoning adults, where once they regarded it as trusting children. Women now form a new social group, separate, and to a degree homogeneous. Already they have evolved a group opinion and a group ideal.

Women, since society became an organized body, have been engaged in the rearing, as well as the bearing of children. They have cared for the sick, ministered to the aged, and given to the poor.

Women, when they emerged from the seclusion of their homes and began to mingle in the world procession, when they were thrown in their own financial responsibility, found themselves willy-nilly in the ranks of the producers, the wage earners. When, in a word, women began to think, they naturally thought in human terms. They couldn’t have thought otherwise if they had tried.

I hope that I shall not be suspected of ascribing to women any ingrained or fundamental moral superiority to men. Women are not better than men. The mantle of moral superiority forced upon them as a substitute for intellectual equality they accepted, because they could not help themselves. They dropped it as soon as the substitute was no longer necessary.

DOCUMENT F
Ray Stannard Baker on The Condition of the Negro. February, 1905.

The mob began to gather. At first it was an absurd, ineffectual crowd, made up largely of lawless boys…

So the mob came finally, and cracked the door of the jail with a railroad rail. Steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.

They murdered the Negro in cold blood in the jail doorway…Easy people imagine that, having hanged a Negro, the mob goes quietly about its business…but once released, the spirit of anarchy spreads and spreads, not subsiding until it has accomplished its full measure of evil.

DOCUMENT G
John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children, 1906.

The textile industries rank first in the enslavement of children. I have seen hundreds of children, who did not appear to be more than nine of ten years of age, at work in the mills, by night as well as by day.

There are more than 80,000 children employed in the textile industries of the United States. Amongst them were several from eight to eleven years of age, and I remember one little girl who was not quite eleven telling me with pride that she had "worked two years and never missed a day."

DOCUMENT H
Eyewitness at the Triangle by William G. Shepard (March 25, 1911)

They were jammed in the windows. No one was lucky enough to be able to jump, it seemed. But, one by one, the jams broke. Down came the bodies in a shower, burning, smoking--flaming bodies, with disheveled hair trailing upward. They fought each other to die by jumping instead of by fire.

The floods of water form the fireman’s hose that ran into the gutter were actually stained red with blood. I looked upon the heap of dead bodies and I remembered these girls were the shirtwaist makers. I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. These dead bodies were the answer.

DOCUMENT I
Source:  "The New Diplomacy,"  Puck Magazine, 1904

Essay

The progressive movement was an optimistic social movement at the beginning of the 20^th century that focused on improving the quality of life for millions of Americans. The movement dealt with many social issues including women’s suffrage and the working conditions of the common laborer. Due to the success of the movement and changes politically, the Progressive Era, as it is now called, faded away, yet left its mark on society.

The Progressive movement not only stressed individual improvement, but also the improvement of society as a whole. Distinct journalists, called Muckrakers, who were committed to exposing scandal, corruption, and injustice to public view, played an important role in the improvement of society. The best known of these included Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair. Ida Tarbell wrote an influential study on the Standard Oil Trust. Upton Sinclair described the harsh reality of the way food was processed. In his book, The Jungle, Sinclair outraged the public by bringing to their attention the disgustingly unsanitary conditions in which meat was processed (Doc. C). This eventually led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906.

Women also saw an improvement to their situation through such organizations as the General Federation of Woman's Clubs and the Women's Trade Union League. They not only improved their position in the community, but also pushed the ideal of women's suffrage, which became a reality with the ratification of the 19^th Amendment (Doc. A). Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Anna Howard Shaw, Francis Willard, and Charlotte Perkins Gillman were examples of the "New Woman" of the Progressive movement. They not only pushed for women's right, they also pushed for better working conditions after the events that took place in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. "I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. These dead bodies were the answer." (Doc H) This push for better conditions in the workplace not only affected the conditions of the women, but also the conditions of children. John Spargo, writer of the Bitter Cry of the Children, remembered "one little girl who was not quite eleven telling me with pride that she had worked two years and never missed a day." (Doc. G) This shows the injustice that young children faced in the workplace. Despite the appearance of great success during the Progressive Era, this movement was gradually coming to a halt as events began turning the nation’s attention elsewhere.

The Progressive Era allowed for much reform for many overlooked organizations of previous years, but still some were left out. As Wilson pointed out, the Progressive Era "made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have the chance to look out for themselves." (Doc. B) Despite what appeared to be great triumphs for the Progressive movement, the reality was that most act’s flaws were supposed to benefit women and children, and not only that but the nation’s economy, in reality did little. Women began to realize that the only way they would be able to achieve the things that they had worked so hard to try to obtain would be to no longer look to the government for help, but to handle things on their own. "They are no longer wholly dependent, economically, intellectually, and spiritually, on a ruling class of men." (Doc. E) With this realization behind them women began to push not only for temperance, but with a special emphasis on suffrage which they finally obtained in 1920 with the passage of the 19^th Amendment, which signaled the end of the Progressive Era. Not only women, but blacks also realized that the government was doing little for their benefit. The blacks began to feel that there was no way to face the persecution they were facing such as the Chicago Race Riots of 1919, unless they did it on their own. This accounted for the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance during the final years of the Progressive Era when blacks began to celebrate their heritage. (Doc. F) As said by Langston Hughes, "I am Negro -and beautiful." With the realization that the government was no longer helping with the improvement of the individual, individuals began pushing towards their goals on their own. This caused a lack of support for the Progressive movement, which was one of the major reasons for its decline and eventual disappearance.

One of the major causes of the decline of the Progressive Era was the effect of World War I. The United States had entered the war in 1917 with an optimistic view of the world. During the Progressive Era over one million people had entered the nation, but by the end of WWI immigration had dropped a significant amount to only 1,276,000 during 1916-1920. One of these causes was an immigration restriction in 1917. The act called for a literacy test of immigrants before they entered the country. President Wilson had vetoed it, but it passed anyway. A similar act was proposed in 1913 and 1915; but the Progressive views had knocked them down. Some of the biggest causes for the decline came from the Ku Klux Klan, Red Scare, and the anti-German hysteria. Another effect of WWI was that on foreign policy. Before the war, the nation was a nation involved in the other nations of the world, or internationalism. This was led by President Theodore Roosevelt, who had installed his own Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, made the Great White Fleet, and enforced his "Big Stick." (Doc I). After WWI the nation started turning inward. The nation had passed many laws condemning opposition to the war effort. One of these acts was the Espionage Act of 1917 which says. "Whoever...shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution...shall be punished by a fine... or imprisonment" (Doc D). This was caused by the Red Scare and threat of spies from other countries. The nation turned inward from allowing many immigrants to enter the country and to allow the nation to help with foreign policy. The effects of World War I caused the nation to enter a period of isolationism, which completed the decline of the Progressive Era.

Despite the many successes the Progressive Era had it failed to accomplish all the goals it set out to achieve. The momentum declined as the nations attention turned as other issues surfaced. These issues created a sense of disillusionment with the ideas the Progressive Era established. Though Progressivism was intensely optimistic it wasn’t realistic.