The Progressive Era (1971)

[Music] the old way and the new in the presidential campaign of 1912 woodro Wilson attacked the fat cats he and invented the campaign film to help him win the election but both of his major opponents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft shared his feelings about the trusts personified by the overstuffed [Applause] capitalist gentlemen owing to the crowded conditions of our hospitals due to the number of injured in your Mills an addition must be made at once your contribution in this cause is earnestly [Music] solicited the villain is without charity especially to his own workers [Music] gentlemen we need a million dollars to swing 100,000 votes High tariff boss [Music] in the election of 1912 Wilson and also Roosevelt and Taft attacked the power of the trusts all three were influenced by the Progressive Movement which was battling for reform of the business system in the decades after the Civil War America was undergoing tremendous economic growth and change into an industrial society big business contributed much to the nation's growth but the progressives were outraged by the inequities injustices and Corruption which they felt they discerned in the business system they aimed for Peaceable reform but at times of violent upheaval seemed more likely during a civil war poverty stricken mobs took control of New York City they battled police and militia they burned and looted for 3 Days wearing stolen Brooks Brothers finery they lynched free blacks they were a drunken mob a few years later in the 1877 railroad strikes rioting and looting raged from Baltimore to San Francisco dozens died federal troops ringed the capital an outof Town Guardsman had to put down disturbances in Pittsburgh when the local militia went over to the rioter subsequently the Molly Maguire the Hay Market Affair the Pullman Strike and the Homestead Strike saw coal miners railroad workers and Steel Workers resort to violence to protest conditions the rich and well-born prepared for battle they organized self-defense military groups like The Seventh regiment and built fortresses that they called armories in all of the great cities when the workers Rose in Rebellion the rich felt they would hold out in their armories until the federal troops arrived into this developing confrontation stepped the progressives and the mck waking journalists between 1890 and 1915 they made the establishment aware of the legitimate grievances of the public but they also called the protesters down from the barricades by convincing them that the system could and would meet legitimate demands as they did this the progressives helped change the image of America to conform to the realities of [Music] America first to go was The Agrarian myth through the 19th century Americans thought of themselves as Farmers Hardy yman tilling a green and growing land healthy prosperous and in tune with both nature and the Divide [Music] presence they sent their sons and daughters to one room School houses where they learned all that was necessary the three Rs and stories of Horatio aler any poor boy Thrifty and diligent would Prosper only the dull the drunk and the shiftless would [Music] fail but in the America of 1900 many farmers were failing they worked as hard as ever but while they mil their cows the railroads and Banks mil them the railroads helped hold their crop prices low and the banks set their interest rates High thus in a good year the bank took the farmer's money in a bad year it took his land and so an army of farmers fled to the city not to make a fortune just to make a living the cities of 1900 were booming but they were not exactly as Horatio Alger described them the mck rakers were far more the poverty the filth the corruption of Metropolitan Life were exposed in Muk raker magazines Lincoln stens tore away the hypocrisy which had permitted Americans to imagine their cities as well governed he revealed that many mayors and legislators had little respect for anything but a bribe so Stephens and the mck breakers confronted America's complacent middle class with a harsh reality and with boss tre's classic question what are you going to do about it the middle class seemed to answer nervously nothing much swelled by immigration America's Urban population grew Sevenfold between 1860 and 1910 often packed into foul tenaments some owned by such unlikely slum Lords as Trinity Church and the Aster family they found their playgrounds in garbage strewn streets and their welfare in a Christmas basket from the political boss the death rate in the slums of New York was the highest in the Western World the muck Breakers focused the attention of the American people on the foulness of the slums garbage in the halls and flies everywhere but they were much more effective when they showed the contamination of the meat served on middle class dinner tables Upton Sinclair said that he a booked the jungle at the heart of America but hit it stomach instead horrified Housewives read that deviled ham was made from tripe waste ends of beef potato skins and beef gullets or they discovered that condemned carcasses flesh filled with deadly poisons were taken out of the tanks for Condemned meat and made into sausages the final horror was Sinclair's report that as for the men who work in rooms full of steam they fall into Vats sometimes to be overlooked for days till all but the Bones have gone out to the world is L Sinclair's book because its impact was General had an almost immediate effect president Theodore Roosevelt in 196 successfully pushed through Congress the Pure Food and Drug Act with K's magazine the leading agitator in the drug area fake cancer cures opium Laden drugs and other quack nostrums were brought under Federal Regulation and removed from middle class medicine [Music] chests the slums were the workshops of the poor women and children in their tenaments did peace work often the only source of family income an army of boys filled the streets to sell newspapers or shine shoes condition were equally bad in many factories but the South suffered the worst ravages of child labor in its cotton Mills one of every four workers was under 16 and some were only six Factory workers generally endured long hours at low pay and many worked under hazardous conditions man jerks them round and round and whistles very keen I'll tell you what the factory kids are really treated mean our children they grow up unlearned no time to go to school almost before they have learned to walk they have learned to spin or School coal miners suffered too George bear spokesman for the coal industry proclaimed the rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected not by the agitators but by the Christian men whom God in his infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests in this country under the stewardship of such gentlemen hundreds of miners were killed or aimed in unsafe Minds every year and those who survived few reached the age of 50 unbroken expion the mine Cherry Illinois people were the number of deaths total 262 was a cold November day with a h of rain when a fire broke out in the number two vein a carload of hay caught and started to Scorch and soon the coal mine was a devil's torch some lines were found scribbl deep in slate that told the story of the many men's fate we're all here together in one large Camp dying slowly from effects of black d they were Italian polish Lithuanian in the steel mills William hard charged that production was making steel and killing men in 196 46 men died in the calate plant of us steel hard told of worn out equ M inadequate safety precautions and poor Medical Care a lug breaks off a pot a crane operator spills molten metal on a worker not until the screams die does the crane operator Newton Allen recognize his brother AA March 1911 46 workers mostly young girls died in a fire at the Triangle shirt waste Factory in New York the fire doors were locked to keep the girls from wasting time in the lady's room trapped dozens of the girls leaped nine floors to their deaths as others perished in The Inferno and the whole world watched employer benevolence had been dealt a shattering blow politicians Republican and Democrat alike often owed their allegiance to financial and Industrial moguls in the larger cities the machines were frequently dominated by Irish Catholic Democrats the bosses even as they grew Rich from graft did some things to alleviate the suffering of their faithful backers there were city jobs a kind word in the court the inevitable Christmas basket still the politicians knew who possessed the real power often their Chief function was to serve as an intermediary between the trusts from whom they received graft and the worker immigrant whose lot they ameliorated in return for his vote Tam Hall was the classic political machine the outward Pola the night parade the colorful saans who controlled it did little to conceal its rampant corruption the muck Breakers denounced and caricatured it but only rarely did they elect reform tickets in the end the voters turned to Tavon from the master politicians like boss kroer to the policeman on the beat down to the lowest inspector of weights and measures each man had his own Graft in New York the political motto was wam wam get the wam Tam Republican bosses made no bones about representing the trusts chony Dew was the personal representative of William velt he and Nelson W Aldrich ruled the Senate until the progressives forced the direct election of senators in the lower House Uncle Joe Cannon a rural Illinois Congressman was the speaker he fought all change so stubbornly that in 1910 Insurgent Republicans rebelled limited his power and enacted some Progressive measures the mck rakers believed that the trusts owned many politicians the railroads the worst offenders James J Hill Edward H Harman JP Morgan and Jacob shiff were seen as rapacious and greedy exploiting their workers and extorting unjust profits from their customers the farmers and the ranchers Frank Norris the novelist called them the octopus farmers and Ranchers have been seized in the tentacles of this octopus extortionist who makes them pay Freight rates imposed like a Yol of iron the railroads have been the worst offenders but by 1900 other trusts which mastered whole industries were equally grinding the mother of the trusts was the Standard Oil Company Ida tarbell's history of the company reported on the avarice and Corruption of John D Rockefeller Rockefeller was later to become a leading philanthropist but in building Standard Oil Ida TBO char he bought legislator whole cut prices and used unscrupulous business practices to destroy competitors gaining control of the oil business he became the richest man of any of the Barons of this Gilded Age seldom has anyone Liv better than a wealthy capitalist of this era he was close to being totally free free to Stage million dooll parties while farmers were losing their land while children worked in the factories while women burned in the Triangle fire while the railroads rolled while the oil gushed while immigrants festered in their slums the rich grew richer and richer so comes the revolution comrade no comes the election of 1912 in 1912 all three presidential candidates were progressives Theodore Roosevelt had been president in 1902 he had forced the coal mine owners to settle with the union he had stopped Hill and Harman when they tried to monopolize the Western Railroads he accepted trusts as inevitable but insisted the federal government regulate them he denounced Woodrow Wilson's call for the limitations of federal power as the shest way to allow the employer to work his employees to death Mr Wilson speak today means merely the Liberty of the factory owner who Clow his operative into some crazy death trap on a to floor where fire start the slaughter is in Roosevelt was running as a progressive against the incumbent William Howard Taft but Taft too ran as Progressive he claimed accurately that he had carried out more legal actions against the trust than Roosevelt ever had take up the abuses in the good old anglosaxon way adjust our statutory remedies to the fitness of the thing place our confidence in the public servants who show themselves alive to public needs and courageous and energetic enough to prosecute the offenders to convict which brings us back to the beginning Woodrow Wilson's campaign film starring everybody's favorite villain the fat capitalist by 1912 the mck rers had done their work well our villain carried on his back the accumulated sins of a thousand trusts he carried with him the stench of the tenaments the nameless miners who had been killed in his M shafts the hordes of farmers who had been dispossessed by his sheriffs the anguished children who had collapsed at his looms the army of politicians who were on his payroll he was behind it all if he could be regulated by law the world would be a better and a happier place and so Teddy Roosevelt said let the federal government control him and William Howard Taft replied yes but I can control them better than Teddy Roosevelt ever did and wood Wilson added he's too fat too big let us break him up into a thousand smaller businessmen send me your dollars and I will bring forth the progressive world for Wilson too preached the progressive lithany and that theight labor of women and children is abnormal and should be prohibited we hold that the employment of women over 48 hours per week is abnormal and should be forgiven behold the seven day working week is abnormal behold that one day of rest and seven should be provided by law Woodrow Wilson was elected president in 1912 Taft and Roosevelt had split the Republican vote allowing Wilson to win with barely 40% he embarked on a moderately Progressive course enacting a stronger antitrust law setting up the Federal Reserve System and other agencies to improve Banking and control business practices he also implemented the federal income tax and enacted a child labor law later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court as well as other measures to improve the condition of labor but the first world war and its aftermath erupted the progressive Crusade leaving most of his program unrealized the Great Depression of the 1930s created another revolutionary situation it was then that the New Deal turned much of the progressive program into law finally gaining for the federal government the power to set minimum wages maximum hours and abolish child labor for 30 years the new Beal reforms helped hold the country together even through another War the nation seemed prosperous but new problems were building much of America's attention was diverted overseas at home once again the barriers gow up for Angry Young radicals the villain of the military industrial complex and its agent the cop students of blacks shout angry slogans and talk about Revolution blacks burn sections of cities loot shops and demand the right to determine their own future public leaders call for Law and Order and fumble with a Welter of measures for reform again the question is debated is Revolution the answer or is the American system still capable of meeting legitimate demands for change [Music] [Applause] [Music]