Progressivism in the 1890s

The late 19th century was a period of increased industrialization, urbanization, and immigration in America. These economic and social changes resulted in inequities and, at their worst, evils that produced tensions within American society. Between 1889 and World War I, a large number of middle-class, college-educated Americans were aware that for many the “promise” of America was not realized, and they embraced the ideas that became known as progressivism. They shared in the belief that a new response was needed to address the economic and social problems facing American society in the late 19th century. Far from having a hard-and-fast program, progressivism was a diverse collection of reform movements, each aimed at renovating or restoring American society, its institutions, and its values.

The influx of new immigrants into the United States as well as a general rural-to-urban population trend during the 1880s and 1890s placed a great burden on the nation’s major cities. Overcrowded tenements, poor sanitation, and inadequate health services made many immigrant communities unhealthy places to live. In the 1890s the settlement house movement, begun in the United States by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, the cofounders of Hull-House (1889), was at the vanguard of progressive reform aimed at bettering the lives of the nation’s immigrant populations. The settlement-house workers were mostly college-educated, middle-class women who provided immigrants with medical services, citizenship courses, counseling or vocational training, emergency relief, assistance in finding employment, and lessons in cooking, hygiene, and English. These services were designed not only to improve the immigrants’ living conditions but also to provide them with the means necessary to assimilate into American society and become participating citizens. In addition, Alfred Tredway White, with his model tenement HOUSING in Brooklyn, and Jacob Riis, with his reporting on slum conditions, began a housing reform movement.

Another aspect of the progressivism of the 1890s was moral reform. The crusades against prostitution and alcohol consumption reached a new level of intensity in the 1890s. Those involved in the anti-prostitution and Prohibition movements were a diverse group of business leaders, politicians, social workers, feminists, and the clergy. Prostitution was seen as a product of the increased poverty found in many of the nation’s overcrowded cities, but the demand for it owed much to the large percentage of young men among immigrants. Prostitution was connected to drunkenness and the saloon culture that perpetuated it. Other problems connected to it were unemployment, industrial inefficiency, a large number of work-related accidents, violence, health problems, urban poverty, and political corruption. To combat these related evils, progressives advocated the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.

Progressives in the 1890s also advocated political reform on all levels of government. Progressive reformers grew despondent over what seemed to them a government system controlled by corrupt bosses and party hacks that used politics to enrich themselves at the expense of the public. On the local and state levels, progressives led efforts to reform the structure of municipal government, increase accountability of city officials, reduce transit fares, obtain government regulation of public utilities, and implement the secret ballot. They also argued for the right of citizens to initiate legislation as well as nominate and recall judges. At the national level, the progressives supported antitrust laws, federal conservation measures, lower tariffs, a federal graduated income tax, woman suffrage, the direct election of U. S. senators, and a reform of the national banking system that would eventually lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

See also Internal Revenue taxes; Prohibition Party; tariff issue.

Further reading: Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914 (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984); Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans in the Progressive Era (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998); Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1983).

—Phillip Papas