Katherine bentoncohen on the progressive era. Our goal today is to think about what progressivism was, and to think about what i think its core dialectic was. The tension between democracy and efficiency. These were both ideals that people from a Broad Spectrum of political backgrounds believes was important, and they believed they were not incompatible, but you can see ways that they were fundamentally at some tension. Throughout class think about democracy versus efficiency. So the central question for historians of the early 20th century is what is progressivism. A famous article that came in and out 1982 was titled in search of progressivism. They knew it existed but quibbling about what counted, what it started, when it ended. Some people were limited only to the Political Party where it was named and others define it more broadly. For me in this class this is howly define progressivism. In the broadest sense, it was the way a whole generation of americans defined themselves politically and how they addressed the problems of the new century in what i think we can all agree begins to look like modern america. Theyre interested in reforming a messy society that is new in fundamental ways while trying to keep some aspects of the old. Im defining it as lasting as approximately 1890 to 1891. I consulted with my coworker that wrote a phenomenal book. And skied him what he thought, made sure i got rid of any howlers in my lecture, luckily there were none, and this is what he wrote to me and i think this is worth talking about the pains that were all basically on the same page but we argue about the edges. The chronology is always questionable. But in national and state politics, there is no people that we consider progressive in power. If William Jennings bryant had won it would have been different. Of course it depends on what you think mattered most. It is worth noting that many populous became progressives. Some of you already recognize that already, you know, spoiler alert were going to talk about how wilsons new freedom plan included many things that the Populous Party proposed. Also many of them became socialists in places that we dont think of as areas of socialism today. Like texas, oklahoma, and western states. What they do largely agree on is the high mark was in 1912. The election, the fourway election between taft, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the fourth major candidate who was eugene webs. He pull ed 6 of the votes. I think everyone across that spectrum would have defined themselves as a progressive. So again, lets put some more fine notes on our definition of progressivism. It was a commitment to some sort of reform in society. I think too often in u. S. History classes we talk about the federal level of progressivism. I want to tell dwlu it is really starting at the grass roots in cities and states and territori territories. And it was perfectionism. There is no one way of doing things if you consider yourself a progressive, but it is a mood and attitude toward a change in politics, right . That is one in which you think things can be improved. In that sense as i will talk about through the rest of lecture, there is worry and concern. There is also incredible confidence and they can be improved. And again we have the tension between the did democracy. I wrote the first lecture. History changes but not that fast. This is the first year that i would assign the new freedom plan and i could not have invented a document better suited for the themes that i want to stress today, right . What does he compare liberty to . Yall suddenly got shy. An engine. A machine, right . This is perfect for all of you mathy, sciency, this is a perfect met for the machine doesnt work well with friction, right . He wants to reduce the friction. The more efficient the machine is the better. Liberty for the several parts consistent in the best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, he says. And you can see his optimism, even his might i say egoism as a professor. It is humantivit human activiti. He is saying the governments job, quite literally, is to get under the hood and get it reopening right. I love this document so much. We get back to machines, right . Technology, railroads, it is not an accident. It is enormously fascinating to people see the industrial and social components. Here are keywords if you need to come back to them in class. But we will come back to music on thursday. Let me move forward. It is an absolute wide range of things. Efforts, reforms, causes, that people thought of as progressive campaigns in the early 20th century. Conservation movement, which i know some of you are interested in, and certainly ways again, conservation as a kind of efficiency, a way that many have written about the koconservatio movement. Making sure that children who drink milk it is clean and unadulterated. They thought of women in a particular kind of way and well talk more about that on thursday. The expansion of public kindergartens. The expansion of some high schools. Trying to keep out the corruption owners from politics. Not successful, but a worthy effort. Public utility regulation. Those that are a private corporation that is licensed to a municipality or state, or ones that are publicly owned and operated. Regulation of food and drugs. I know many of you took ap history. The fda resonates in this time. The regulation of railroads that is also a kind of opening progressive error. Prohibition, the outlawing of alcohol. Social work. The modern field of social work then as now dominated by women. Antiprostitution and antipornography campaigns. You can see a strong moral element and protective element to this campaign. The campaign for legal Birth Control that was the comstock act. Election reform that i will talk about on the state level in just a few minutes. So okay maybe i put these sort of im making some judgments, i put it at the bottom, but also coercive control of clients. Voter disenfranchisement in the name of clean government, segregation in the south as a sign of efficiency, prohibition. We dont have to get into all of the details, but i want to say that were talking about from clean milk to voter initiatives, right . Kindergarten to higher ed, right . A really wide variety of things. Wilson talks about this in liberty. And you can see in just a random example of clean milk. Because Companies Used chemicals to make it seem like it would last longer. Liberty would say were not going to interfere with regulations for dairies. Right . Efficiency would say maybe our society would work better if they didnt die from adulterated milk. Why these two obsessions with democracy and efficiency. Could they be combatble and where does it come from. I want to talk about the way in which, and we can go back to the slides here. What i want to talk about is the way that what we talk about for progressivism bubbles up more from the crass roots even though it is a thing that is a government by experts. It is a National Movement built from regional movements. So what you have simplified, you know i like geography. The concerns about urbanization, overcrowding, industrialization, right . Political machines, political corruption. You have a great mass of demands for change, concerns, the ride of political figures like roosevelt, and they meet up with the more rural concerns of southern and western populism, right . It may not seem so today where we generalize rural america, a few of you are from more rural plaits, but the midwestern commodity culture was a very different kind. Yet they found enough common cause to unite briefly. Part of it was about the feeling of the rural places being left behind. Part tof was the political and electoral success. In the early 20th century, is that these urban concerns were able to find in some cases common cause with these folks that had been former populous. Particularly around issues like regulates interstate commerce. Regulating railroads, starting to talk about conservation. After 1900, populism and progressivism persevered. They are inspired by social gospel theory. You read an example of that today, right . A rather i dont want to aaggressive, but assertive campaign by those who were dominantly prodistant. They say we cant just think about the after life, we have to also think about the life here on earth. So they talk about what it means to think about jesuss work here and now. So that also inform this is progressive work, right . Wo woodrowwilson coming from an entire family of ministers. They feel a sense of christian mission. This is wedded to the invention of new social science. Disciplines like sociology, political science, economics, history, their first professional associations emerge in this time period. The first ph. D programs that are literally creating experts open up places like johns hop kkins the university of wisconsin, mitigating circumstanc michigan, the giant Research Institutions alongside the old stallworth and prestige institutions and new upstarts like hop kkins and the universi of chicago that are designed to create the graduate programs like europe has. The idea is they are going to produce not just pointy headed professors like me, but also solve social problems. Find the efficient answers, right . Wo Woodrow Wilson has a ph. D before he becomes president of the united states. So whats bothering them and we will review this and you know, i think, what many of these things are. We can talk about fears of new capitalism. Capitalism becomes more and more impersonal, im talking really fast, i want to step back and have you think about that. Think about a 19th century world where your neighbor might have chickens in her yard. Right . To sell eggs, and you know her, right . Her eggs are not rotten, she wont want to rip you off you have a face to face relationship. The farmer that goes to the local grain elevator. Youre not selling at a fixed rate. I think we take for granted global capitalisms impersonal nature. When you get things from amazon prime youre not thinking about who is pulling it off of the warehouse shelf. Like people were used to face to face transaction. This was threatening, right . This was a real change. They fear that the power of huge corporations would ruin democracy. The run away railroad, as i mentioned, was just one example. There was devious methods that were writing long exposes and it reflects the changing in american capitalism and the anxieties those produce in americans. Speaking of anxiety in americans, fear of new americans, im grammigrants. Many americans have deep discomfort with immigration even though many of them are children of immigrants themselves. They constitute an unprecedented wave of new arrivals from 1882 to 1920. Immigrants come in the same time as the progressive era. They represent almost 15 of the American Population, the high t est amount. Before 2007 we were close to getting to that right now. I dont need to tell you what a hot issue immigration is right now, but in that sense from the standpoint of the proportion of the American Population that were immigrants, similar. Different places, though. Theyre from southern and eastern europe. Theyre also often feared in the same ways. They are predominantly catholic or eastern orthodox, or jewish. They seem unassemble. They still believe to be of rural origin. Africanamericans are moving in the great migration, migrating from the rural south to the urban south to the urban north. Close to two million move between the 1890s and 1910. Many are confronted with mixed populations for the first time. The transition of africanamericans to urban life, they are facing segregation in the north as well as the south. Horrible overcrowded conditions. Pitiful public health. Lack of utilities are facing many city residents. And there is a Little Chicken and egg debate among the americans, and this is really a progressive question. And i would not call it environmentalism. And what i mean by that is the belief of shaming ones outcome. Clean milk is a perfect example, right . Urban dellers that dont have their own cow to milk, they will have poor health outcomes. They dont have good nutritious food. Is the problem the poor city dweller . Is it the conditions theyre dealing with . Now remember when i talked about how the ideal when we talked about andrew carnegie, and we talked about the fact that this recognition of class difference as a fundamental feature of society was profoundly threatening to many people, and many not coincidental middle and upper class folks rejected permanent class distinctions. And one of the things they worried about, did they worry about the economic inequality . Yes. Did they worry about democracy functioning with those kinds of entrenched and seemingly irreparable differences, right . Would all of these new citizens know how to operate in a democracy . Would they be good citizens . Right . I am going to talk about ro roosevelt, he serves his terms and he says im going to hand the baton to taft. He runs, roosevelt gets super annoyed that taft is conservative. He is frustrated with taft, and he says im going to run against this guy, start a new party, im going to start a new party. Im going to endorse womens suffrage. Im going to ask jane adams to nominate me. So he is in milwaukee wisconsin which is add hotbed of socialism. They invented this wonderful thing that is the picture of progressivism. It is the idea that the Public University should be in the service of the state, right . It should produce experts, answers, solve social problems, and he is in there and an angry saloon keeper, its not hard to find a saloon keeper in milwaukee, tries to assassinate him. His speech is so thick and long that it protects him from the bullet. Here is one of the things he says in the speech. Whatever their social and industrial position to stand together for the most elements of citizenship. Those right thats are in the best republic of ours. Reformers start to look to local and federal government for solutions. Their afraid of Class Division as i mentioned, right . The major strikes starting with 182 1877. The American Railway union and the pullman strike where they emerge as a leader. The early 1900s. A coal strike that roosevelt helps hammer out a deal for. Union membership on 1911 is five times what it had been in 1897. Think about that, right . That was like trust me, this didnt happen. That would be like if since 2004 the union and labor members ultimate applied by five times. New immigrants are creating low way competition, right . They and africanamericans work has strikebreakers fuelling divisions among divisions that are trying to organize. Okay, so 60 years ago, a very famous historian named richard hoffstedder. Okay, he is history famous. He argued 60 years ago that the progressives were worried about status anxiety. That they felt frightened by their place in a changing world. It was a deeply psychological interpretation that reflected the popularity of freudianism. Remember they say they cant help but absorb the moment. We know that he exaggerated. This missed the fact that many catholic, jewish, and more shared the view. But it is a way to think about the phenomenon, right . There is a general insecurity about the state of society and how the problems can be solved. There is a recognition of a fundamental change in the economy. A kind of sobers realization that industrial capitalism is here to stay. At least it was then, not in 2019, right . This is not existential paralyzing fear. This is we have a problem, roll up our sleeves, and solve it. They didnt see those as antithetical ideas, right . So the bottom line is they appealed to someone with something to lose. Including their status in society. Theyre fearful but not hopeless. Right . Maybe that seems like a contradiction. Again what i want to emphasize is that if there is one thing they share it is an norm confidence that social and Economic Conditions can be improved and maybe even solved. And you can see that in wilsons fascination with making this machine of machine of liberty b frictionless as possible. Now, this may reflect a politics professors lack of knowledge about engineering and friction, but nonetheless hes bringing book knowledge to this problem, assuming we can solve the problems of democracy. Ill give you another example. Just put it this way. Woodrow wilson and Theodore Roosevelt are very different kinds of people, and i suspect you all know that, right . But who is more confidence than Theodore Roosevelt . Hes got a big stick. Hes like the kid who never gets picked at recess and reinvents himself as a rancher. He really shows this progressive idealism and confidence, right . And for him, of course, that comes from a position of privilege. Like dont tell Theodore Roosevelt he cant do something, he cant fix this great nation. Right . That is born and bred in him. Women, though, one of my favorite things about teaching the progressive era is that this isnt one of those deals where the famous, history famous said well theres an early stage of womens history called add women and stir, right . Like your pot of history doesnt have any women in it. Throw them in like chocolate chips. Its slightly better but its still the same thing. Right . You cannot understand the progressive era unless you include women from top to bottom. Women were central to this reorganizing of liberty, freedom, democracy and efficiency, right . Im going to bring up clean milk again. Its the wisconsin thing, i think. Well talk about this in much more in detail on thursday. Even beyond womens suffrage, women are involved in prohibition, which were going to end with, right . Theyre attending institutions of Higher Education in unprecedented numbers. Theyre going to graduate school. Theyre getting phds. Of course, this is mostly middle and upper class white women. Middle class and upper class black women as well, though their numbers are much smaller. Theyre much more likely to have careers than white upper and middle class women, partly because their husbands cant often make a living that the family can afford to live on. Women reflect and capitalize on this confidence. Women are confident in the progressive era. They are appearing in public forum. Jane adams is nominating roosevelt as the Progressive Party nominee. They also have confidence in the ability of the government to solve social problems. They share with progressive era men this idea, wait for it, that bureaucracy is a good thing. They believe in bureaucracy. In fact, they want more of it. Wilsons proposal to make liberty more efficient is through bureaucracy. They dont think thats a paradox. They believe in Good Government, right . Okay. That brings me to the last big picture point i want to make. Progressives are not radicals. Its important to recognize that progressivism was a form im sorry, was a set of reform movements, not radical movements, right . In fact, in a certain sense, progressivism was actually conservative, in the sense that progressives wanted to perfect something they think already expected, right . They were ultimately optimists and perfectionists who believed you could Perfect Society with enough planning and careful organization, right . We can see that many progressives saw progressivism as a way to stem radicalism, right . To cut increasingly popular radical movements off at the needs by decreasing their need by solving the obvious social problems that socialists, anarchists and communists were beginning to name and address, right . So, roosevelt and wilson, although they disagree on many things, are saying lets regulate, not have a revolution, right . We recognize that railroads are a problem. We recognize that workers probably need an eighthour day. We dont think that we have to give out the whole thing to cynicallists. We think we can tinker at the margins and fix this thing. Right . Eugene depps is a socialist, he runs five times for president. In 1908, he runs from prison, where he has been jailed because of actions to do with the strike he was involved in, and inflammatory statements he supposedly made. But even he, hes not staging a revolution. Hes running for president. Hes part of the system, too. An opponent from imperialism, who was an important voice. He said this about Theodore Roosevelt. He said that Theodore Roosevelts brilliance was indifferentiating that species of anarchism which we popularly term bolshevism from that normal progress called liberalism. So i guess in morpd terms we would call this a liberal not a radical, right . Im not sure im prepared to call roosevelt a liberal. That might be albert beverages view. You see the analogy there. By making capitalism safer for the individual and less m monopolistic, the appeals of radicals like anarchists, socialists, who were increasingly popular in this period would be diminished. That was the goal, right . The progressive era contains such a wide range of different movements and causes, it would be impossible to discuss even a portion of them. This is one of the most studied eras in American History, precisely because its so complex and internally contradictory. So today what i want to do is just offer you a couple of examples of what i would call economic and political progressivism. And im going to emphasize the way that political progressivism comes out of municipalities and states first and then im going to end with prohibition, because i think prohibition really is emblet attic. Its in some ways the quintessential progressive reform. Its an excellent bridge to talking about women and immigrants on thursday, right . It involves both of them in important ways. And i think its also the quintessential progressive reform that weve forgotten about, because its so deeply unfashionable, right . As i speak to college students, as ive referenced milwaukee several times. Right . So it wasnt popular, ill tell you that. So i want to rehabilitate no, that might be too big of a task. I want to shed light on its. Lets talk about political progressivis progressivism. The two i want to talk about in particular, the two laws that i think, excuse me, exemplify the movement that begin progressivism is the sherman antitrust act and the commerce act. Okay. These both come out of the populist movement, right . They reflect an antimonopoly tradition. We havent talked a lot about antimonopolyism. I mentioned it briefly when i talked about populists, but i think its fair to say that in the late 19th century, monopoly was one of the central concerns of the american people. And it touched on many of the things i mentioned to you, the fact that some people have an unfair advantage over others. The diminishing of the importance and power of the individual, right . And the increasingly abstract nature of industrial capitalism, right . Monopoly offended 19th century americans in a way that was deeply fundamental, because they saw themselves as a nation of individualism and that individualism was central to freedom and democracy. Right . And so while we might say, oh, that was freedom of business or what have you, they saw monopoly not just in the increasing combinations of American Business, but in the political power that those folks had, even in things like the vice trade. This campaign against what i call white slavery, sex trafficking. The reformers, most of whom were sort of municipal republican politicians and women reformers, the reformers most active in this movement believed there was a vice monopoly, a secret kabal whisking women unwilling across International Lines for this International Sex syndicate. The reality is that it was not as organized as they thought. But i think its very, very telling that they, when they saw a problem, they feared monopoly, right . And thats where the kind of general ability in a nonpartisan way to address trusts come from. Trusts dont go away, right . Anybody who studies American Business now knows that its bigger than ever, but this effort to dismantle what people saw as unfair business combinations comes out of that antimonopoly tradition. Okay. So, the real kind of landmark example or piece of legislation is interstate commerce act, which passes in 1887. This comes out of many state attempts to regulate railroads. You all emily and i talked about it. You did a terrific job talking about plussey v. Ferguson. We wish we had more time to talk about it. Theres so much more to say. Its not an accident this happened on a railroad. In that case it was a state law that plussey was challenging. But many states, especially states like nebraska tried to pass laws and the Supreme Court overruled those laws, overturned them, saying railroads engage in interstate commerce and any regulation of them has to be at the federal level. So Congress Finally responds and passes the interstate commerce act, which is really a watershed moment because it means that the federal government, for the first time, is turning toward what we would now call a regulatory state. Right . And the interstate Commerce Commission becomes a model for this hybrid of executive and legislative, and Judicial Branch in a commission. What do i mean by that . The interstate commerce act created a fiveperson commission to regulate railroads. This commission was thus removed from some of the winds of politics that the legislative branch might be, for example, right . So these are appointed positions that can decide things like railroad ways, decide railroad disputes. This is a branch of executive power we now think is normal but was really a turning point. It had many weaknesses. It couldnt proactively regulate. It relied on lawsuits to bring action. Had you to have a wherewithal to bring a suit to the icc if you wanted to challenge something which obviously favored big business over small. Railroad attorneys, who i mentioned were the First Corporate tern attorneys in the united states, could tie up these cases for years, but even if the icc in its early years was weak, it created, right, this precedent for this dominant form of regulatory government, the independent appointed commission. I bet you can think of a bunch of independent appointed commissions. I wrote a book about one. You might have thought, for example, the 9 11 commission, right, which in some ways is the most recent and famous example of a precedent set by the icc. Ill give you an example of how in the weeds the icc could get, though. I literally found this out two weeks ago. I went to a workshop on jewish genealogy. I googled my great grandfathers name and found out he was involved in a case that he and his Business Partner took to the interstate Commerce Commission in, i want to say, 1919, in which you want to talk about small potatoes. They had an argument with the topeka, atkinson railroad. They owned a company that sold secondhand scrap iron and metal. These are not titans of industry. They sued the railroad over what they thought was an unfair rate for used beer bottles. They went to the icc and they said this railroad is charging us too much for these truckloads of used beer bottles that we bought, and they won the case. And they got a refund of like 127 from the railroad for their multiple carloads of used beer bottles. I actually didnt know that when i started talking to you guys about populism in the railroad. I literally just found this out. But its a perfect example of, whoa, the federal government is regulating this guys used beer bottle purchase for a junkyard. Thats the precedent for the sherman antitrust act. Theres monopoly, oil, tobacco, steal, sugar industries. Weve talked about a lot of those. The situation grows worse with the series saying legally speaking, a corporation is a person under the 14th amendment. It means that corporations cannot be denied life, liberty or property without due process of the law and this invalidates many of the state monopoly laws as i mentioned to you. In response, Congress Passes the sherman antitrust act. It makes any, quote, restraint of trade or commerce in interstate commerce illegal. Not unlike the ica, its enforced with fines and lawsuits. Although these are suits that can be brought by public district attorneys. Its used against clear monopolies and cartels. That is, secret agreements that engage in rate fixing. This is the kind of thing, although it was an icc matter because of the railroad, that my great grandfather would have complained about. He would have said the southern pacific and topeka atchinson, they fix rates. You could call that a cartel or secret agreement. Its supposed to outlaw that. Its not effective against holding companies. Theyre not able to prosecute these sort of Shell Companies that own a bunch of different companies, but its in this context, right . How many of you have heard of Theodore Roosevelt as the trust buster . Yeah, he was kind of famous, right . He comes down in history as the trust buster during this presidency beginning in 1902 you probably also heard, this is an old song in history classes, he was not all that antitrust. There were plenty of corporate bearance that he liked. He supported the sherman antitrust act as a good tool to attack what he called bad trusts, right . He used this tool, and this is indicative, right, of sort of the power and danger of these new executive power tools, if you will. Used the sherman antitrust act to create a Regulatory Commission to pursue corporations that he thought were using bad or unfair methods. In his inaugural address, roosevelt made a powerful plea for the right of the federal government to intervene in unfair practices and curb capitalist abuses. In practice, antitrust laws could definitely backfire, at least from the standpoint of the people who had first championed them because just as the 14th amendment could protect corporations as persons, antitrust laws could be used against things like farmers coops and labor unions. You could use the sherman antitrust act to go after one of these farmers cooperatives that populistminded farmers created so they could negotiate for better rates and better prices for their commodities, right . Well, that was a trust sometimes in the eyes of the law, right . Similarly, if a Labor Union Organized a boycott, the target of their boycott could go to the sherman could go and argue that this is that this was a violation of the sherman antitrust act. But again this theme, right . This is reform, not revolution. Roosevelt wants to make the market safer for individuals, not dismantle it. Okay. So those are some examples of economic reform with, which respect to this question of monopoly, were also seen as political reforms, right . These were deeply connected in peoples minds, right . That making the world safer for individuals in industrial capitalism was analogous to the ways that progressives wanted the individual to retain their power in increasingly large and abstract democracy, okay . So let me turn to some political reforms. It means bringing political decisions straight to the people rather than to intermediaries like political machines and state legislatures. Here is an example with political reform that we see the very direct influence of the populists on the progressive era, right . The populists who believe that farmers who were the salt of the earth, the bedrock of the nation had lost political power, right . They wanted to see power returned to the individuals. Okay. So, progressive reformers really hated political machines. Someone take a stab at what a political machine is. Im sure many of you studied this in class, yeah. Its like a collective. Good. Basically powerful, usually men, and they kind of choose who they want to sort of run the city and whatnot. They get people elected through intimidation tactics and voting and whatnot. Those are the bosses, right, and the machine note the analogy with the machine, right . Theyre literally called machines. Im telling you, people were really into machines in the late 19th century, right . Absolutely. So its this group of powerful, basically, rainmakers, right, kingpins who offer a kind of quid pro quo for voters, who then become the kog cogs in the machine, right . Ill make sure you get a free turkey for thanksgiving if you vote for my candidate, right . Ill build a big, big courthouse that goes 100 times over budget, but ill make sure you and your cousin get jobs on it, right . Most political machines were democratic. The most famous was tammy hall in new york city. There were absolutely some republican political machines at the municipal level that depended on the city and the situation. Reformers saw political machines as hopelessly corrupt, right . This idea of a direct quid pro quo enraged them, right . Defenders said, actually this was the defense one of the defenses of tammany hall. Actually we take all these irish immigrants, fresh off the boat. Theyve never had democracy, right . Theyve never had a full belly. We show them what it means to be an american citizen. We show them how the voting process works. We get them involved. We get them jobs. We get them to the battles, right . Were teaching them about the american political system, right . The reformers say thats shenanigans. Its not the goal of politics to have this direct quid pro quo. Were supposed to have Good Government. Its supposed to be about these abstract ideals. And so you start to see these attacks that are increasingly effective on the political machines. And this is often a fairly regional activity. On the federal level, it comes in the version of the act of 1883, which creates Civil Service reform, right . Instead of us just filling the federal bureaucracy, which by the way in 1883 is quite small, right . Instead of filling it with a bunch of political hacks that you did a favor for them or they gave you a bunch of money and you have to get a job, they have to pass the Civil Service exam, right, to show that they are objectively qualified for the job. You can imagine that these exams could be very discriminatory, right, in the same way you hear about s. A. T. S, racial and class discrimination, right . They might ask for a kind of book learning or pass a Civil Service exam to have some kind of job that doesnt require that kind of knowledge, right . So many immigrants and working classes resented this process. Thats the federal version which, in fairness, is a reaction to the assassination of president James Garfield by a deranged office seeker, a guy seeking a job who is mentally ill and shoots him, and this is one of the political responses. But on the municipal and state level, there are other efforts as well. The australian ballot, the secret ballot. This is meant to curb political machine influence. Then if you vote secret ly, if o one knows what your vote is, you dont owe the political boss anything, right . In the era when you went to go vote if the local sloon and there was one box for the democrats and one box for the republicans, right, if your political boss saw you put your ballot in the wrong box, you were out a turkey at thanksgiving, right . But more seriously, probably a job. Atlarge elections, eliminating war government. Machine system was based on a coalition of powerful neighborhood or war bosses, right . Many urban reformers campaigned for atlarge election. So rather than, like in washington, d. C. , we have eight wards, right . And each of them have members of the city council. Atlarge elections eliminated those wards. Whats one of the consequences of eliminating ward elections in a diverse city . Yes . [ inaudible ] you dont have a smaller constituency that you address. Whats the demographic realities of that as well . Who is from yeah . [ inaudible ] wealthier people probably dominate. Who else . Lets say you have a city thats majority white, but three wards are predominantly immigrant. If you eliminate wards yes . Minorities go unrepresented. Thats exactly right. So the idea was for example, ill use chicago as an example in the 18th century. A hive of machine politics, right . Chicago is renowned for the corruption at City Government, right, in this time period especially. But i will say this. Chicago city council had africanamerican eldermen at the turn of the century. Why . Because it had ward politics that elected their own eldermen. That was sort of the two sides to that story. Atlarge elections vastly reduced immigrant participation. This became a huge issue in the civil rights movement, and many cities that had atlarge elections switched back to or established ward elections for the first time. Another example of taking power from the people to make democracy more efficient was City Government. A lot of this happens on the municipal level. City governments that have a city manager or commissionstyle gochlt these are much more common in the midwest, south and west for this reason. Their City Governments are newer. Many of these places were established, incorporated during the progressive era, right . We talk about people being born digital now. They were born progressive. Okay . The quintessential example here is our trust guy. You knew i was going to do this out of order. The quintessential example was galveston, texas, in 1900, devastating hurricane killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people, literally wiped out the city council and mayor. Reformers said, with well, this is sad, but its also a great opportunity. We can try out this newfangled idea that reformers have of Commission Government where we actually just have this commission, a board of appointed commissioners that act like a city manager and run the city. They eliminated africanamerican eldermen. So in 1900, galveston creates the first Commission Government with hundreds of towns in the south and the west following. Almost half of american towns and cities today have a commissioner or city manager government. So a city manager government is a model in which you may have an elected mayor, but theyre called a weak mayor. Not to their face. Its a weak mayor system, right, where they have limited powers in the daytoday functioning, and the City Government is done by an appointed, paid city manager. The west, as i mentioned, was a laboratory for these reforms. Because the west is literally building its towns and states during this period, right . Arizona, new mexico and oklahoma are territories at the beginning of the progressive era. And the west uses atlarge elections, parttime mayor commission and city manager models. Ill give you an example of how this works. I love this example. Its a great civics lesson. My High School Government teacher taught at my high school for 35 years. He was an alum. He was also the mayor. He taught the zero to fifth hour and skipped his prep, because he had a halftime job as mayor. The city manager ran the city. His fulltime job was teaching High School Government. And then in the afternoons he went to city hall and he was the mayor. And he could do that, because it was a city manager system. It also was nonpartisan elections. This was another progressive reform. You can see how that also can potentially eliminate the power of ward politics, right . It cant organize around Party Elections and choosing primary nominees, right . The idea is that Good Government is Good Government. It shouldnt matter what party, right . Many of these towns had nonpartisan elections. He went on to become a member of congress. Its a very mr. Smith goes to washington story. A set of methods to bring voting to the people, and that was a set of efforts, again, which predominated in the west and still do. The Initiative Referendum and we call. We have people from california. Maybe some from colorado. Anyone want to take a stab at what the initial referendum and recall are . Im not sure but i am from colorado. Recalling is [ inaudible ] referendum is not an initiative but something voted on by the people and put into law and initiative is something brought by the people. You got it. Your colorado High School Government teachers would be so pleased. Youre exactly right. Im glad youre from colorado, an exemplar of this model. The idea is that you run around, get x signatures from so many voters, get it on the next ballot. The public votes for it, up or down, right . This is a classic direct democracy, right . You dont see the authority of passing a new law to the legislature. You literally let the voters decide. Right . Referendum is Legislature Passes a law. Its unpopular or theyre nervous about it. They pitch it back to the people to give it a yay or nay. Same thing. Recall election only some states have this, right . It is the ability to recall an elected official in rare cases i gave this example, arizona, you can even recall judges. It almost never happens. Im not sure its ever happened actually. Recall is that the people have a way to discipline indirect democracy, right . If someone is not representing the peoples interests, they can recall them, right . So the intention was that these things would bring politics closer to the people. The evidence over a century is that probably in some cases the opposite has happened, right, that these kinds of elections are especially vulnerable to special interests and large campaigns that can sway the outcome, right . Did not turn out exactly as the reformers had wished. Okay. I want to present to you, as i promised that i would, that the south, that jim crow was a jim crow as progressivism can fit into this model, although it may seem strapg to do so. Moving through the early 19th century, you can see how it represented the triumph. We can call them what they were. White supremacists who valued Efficient Government over democratic government. Right . Remember how they saw reinstruction. They saw it as corruption, right, fueled by uneducated, unprepared voters, new voters, formerly inslaved people, right . Rather than saying lets make better citizens of our citizenry, they said, lets remove those citizens from the voting population. In this case, jim crow was the ultimate example of Good Government and efficiency. This is southern leaders talking, not me. If we make sure people are litter rate, so theyre responsible and upstanding, right, if they come from a tradition of upright, Good Government and their grandfathers could vote notice how race is lurking but not vocalized then well have a more Efficient Government. Right . And more efficient system. You couldnt get a more naked example of efficiency winning over democracy. And at least in my class, i know we talked briefly about how many more white voters were disenfranchised in the state of louisiana after jim crow went into effect. This wasnt true in every Southern State but in louisiana that was profoundly dominated by a small elite, they did not view that as an accident, right . That was fine to eliminate poor white voters along with black voters in the jim crow era. To them that was better efficiency and democracy. Okay. Weve made it almost to the end. And im going to finish on time. I know. Its hard to believe. Its a good thing its recorded for posterity. Talking about the south is a good place to mention the quintessential progressive reform, prohibition. Prohibition was the National Really interNational Movement to eliminate alcohol as a part of peoples regular lives. Why, you might ask, did anyone want prohibition, much less get it ratified as an amendment to the constitution . Why do people want prohibition, and who wanted it . Yes . Husbands would go out to the sloons and then abandon them and their children and spend all the familys money on alcohol. It was causing women a lot of problems. Yes. And ill show you a clip of that next week. Yes. Thats true. And it sounds like an exaggeration, and it sounds like a spoof, and it sounds like a parody. In fact, theres wonderful early 20th century Motion Pictures that are, indeed, spoofs of this. Theyre very sexist, right . Theyre also a little funny. Of women tearing up sloons and men having to take care of babies because women have become political organizers and men sneaking drinks while theyre babysitting their children. Ha, ha, very funny. But it was rooted in a very real social problem. People drank far more even than they do today. Alcoholism was a serious problem, right . People missed work because of it. They lost jobs. They spent their incomes on it. Domestic violence was rampant, often fueled by alcohol abuse, right . It was, in a very real way, a kind of antecedent to me too movement, this was in one sense one population of the prohibition was that it would improve womens and childrens lives. Right . Francis willard who was the famous president , famous, famous, woman leader, one woman, singular, white middleclass woman, of the wcau adopted advocacy for womens suffrage after getting involved in the prohibition movement, right . Because she saw it as a tool for social reform, right . Well talk about this more, but theres two camps in the womans suffrage campaign, right . The camp that dated all the way to 1848 and declaration of sentiments and susan b. Anthonys early version where they said, we should have the right to vote because we are equal, we are scitizens and it our natural right. Right . And where we talked about this, there were some women who practiced disobedience of the 14th amendment and tried to go vote and says it covers me. Im going to go do it. That evolves to women are special and more righteous and more morally pure, which fits in perfectly this is a genius tactic, right . It fits in perfectly with progressive era reforms saying we will clean up government. We will make it more efficient, because we are not corrupt. Right . And its folks who are advocating that, they say some nasty things that well talk about on thursday. But like Frances Willard theyre saying its not so much that i think i should have the vote because women and men are equal, though i think Frances Willard would have said that, we need to make these necessary changes in society, right . She saw prohibition of just one of all kinds of reforms to cure social ills of the 20th century. Thats why her motto was do everything. For her and for millions of women who come to support the vote and men, too, right . Theres a reason Theodore Roosevelt supports womens suffrage. They see the womens vote as an instrument of change in as much change as itself. They assume, by the way, that women will vote differently than men will, which they turn out to be mostly wrong about in the early period. Im not talking about the 21st century. Okay. So weve talked about one major motivation for prohibition. Whats another . Antiimmigrant sentiment . Exactly. The maiden protestants, many of them dont allow drinking. Most of them dont drink or dont drink publicly. They associate political corruption, debotchery, poverty, urbanization with mostly catholic, eastern orthodox, immigrants and heavy drinking. Sloon cultursaloon culture, rig . So many people rightfully see this as a campaign against immigrants as well. Ive chosen to end with prohibition for two reasons, right . You already guessed what they were. The first was that it was often targeted against immigrants. The second was that it was a movement that was not female only but whose success and size is unimaginable without participation in leadership. And in this sense, as i mentioned at the beginning of class, its indicative of the progressive era in general. And why i always say that women belong in history, they are essential to understanding the progressive era. So on thursday, we will turn to more details about immigration and womens lives in the early 20th century. Thanks. Every saturday night, American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is . And raise your hand if you ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial, before this class. The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. So were going to talk about both of these sides of this story here, right . The tools, the techniques of slave owner power and well also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan3, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. And lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Tonight on American History tv, beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern from our lectures in history series, university of nevada las vegas professor Michael Greene teaches a class on Abraham Lincoln and the 1860 president ial election. Watch American History tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan3. Watch cspans dailys daily response to the coronavirus pandemic with briefings from the white house, congress and governors from across the country. Plus join in on the conversation on our live callin program, washington journal. If you missed any of our live coverage watch any time on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Up next on lectures in history, karen markoe of the State University of the new York Maritime College teaches a class on the 1920s, talking about politics, prohibition, and organized crime, as well as popular music and sports during that