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Crash Course 27 - Progressive Era

Added Jan 28, 2017 •

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material that roughly corresponds to BTP chapters 18 and 19

Show Transcript

hi I'm John Green this is Crash Course u.s. history and today we're going to talk about progressives no standing progressives yes turn up to talking about like tons of misogyny and 1/2 high contrast images of pizza because if so can get behind that was on a black screen make Tumblr and therefore JLo gift sets possible so that some things are some of the solutions that progressives came up with to deal with issues of inequality and Injustice don't seem terribly receive today and also it kind of overlapped with the Gilded Age and Progressive implies like progress presumably progress toward freedom and Justice which is hard to argue about an where is involved one of the great restrictions of freedom in American history prohibition so maybe we shouldn't call it the Progressive Era doll the intro show me the Gilded Age with the period when American industrial capitalism into its own in people like Mark Twain begin to criticize its Associated problems than the Progressive Era with the age in which people actually tried to solve those problems through individual in faction political system the population of the US was growing economic power with becoming ever more concentrated and son when is Progressive's responded to this by opening up political participation and sometimes by trying to restrict the vote to thing is Broad participatory democracy doesn't always ineffective government he said sounding like the Chinese National Communist Party government for the people and wanting to have government that's like governing how to define the Progressive Era and also our era concerned with the social problems that revolved around industrial capitalist society and most of these problems hungry but some of the responses were companies in later corporations had a problem that have been around since the 1880s they needed to keep costs down and profits high in a competitive market and one of the best ways to do this was to keep wages low hours long and conditions appalling your basic house elf situation just getting out 18th century people started feel like these large monopolistic industrial combinations the so-called trust were exerting too much power over people's lives thrill attempts to deal with these trust issues the Sherman Antitrust Act but overall the federal government wasn't were most Progressive changes were made freaking a form of Journalism in reporters would find some mucking rake it's a circulation magazines realize they could make money by publishing expose as of industrial in political abuse so they did I bet it involves in luck  the rules here are simple I guess the author of the mystery document on either correct or I get shocked that a man what's a scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms and all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid one by one of The Butchers and floor the beef boners and Tremors and all those who used knives you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb time and time again the base of it had been last two it was a mere lump of Flesh against which the man Preston knife to hold it they would have no nails they had warned them off pulling hides wow I am hyper aware of and grateful for my thumb's they are just in excellent shape I am so glad stand that I am not a boner at one of the meat packing factories written about in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair no shock for me can you board to get the phrase beef boner into this show and you finally did it congratulations just a little bit of trivia the jungle was the first book I ever read that made me so that's a review I don't know if it's positive but there you go anyway at the time readers to the Jungle were more outraged by descriptions of rotten meat than by the treatment of meat packing workers jungle led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 pretty cool for Upton Sinclair which officially declared Hazel and Augustus the nation's OTP where's the photography for documentation was face-to-face with the more than 2 million turn on the age of 15 working for wages and Hines photos help bring about laws that limited child labor even more important than the writing and photographs and magazines when it came to improving conditions for workers Twitter Twitter what is this without Twitter workers had to organize into unions to get Corp patients to reduce hours and raise their pay Henry Ford pay his workers an average of $5 per date unheard of at the time and Danica three times that and still they wine workers would be better able to afford the model T's that they were making it indeed Ford's annual output Rose from 34000 Cars to 730000 cars between 1910 1916 and the price of a Model T dropped from $700 to $316 Factory any names his child Edsel also like most employers at the turn of the century he was violently anti-union another Union grew up to advocate for rights for a larger swath of the workforce especially the immigrants who dominated unskilled labor the industrial workers of the world they're also known as the wobblies they were founded in 1905 to advocate for quote every wage worker no matter what his religion Fatherland or trade and not as the name lovely just those fans of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey in Revolution but some following the ideas of Henry George worried that economic progress could produce a dangerous unequal distribution of wealth that can only be cured by taxes progressives were influenced by Simon W Patton who prophesied the industrialization would bring about a new civilization were everyone would benefit from the abundance and all the Leisure Time that all new waiver saving devices could bring by the birth of a man society machines are vacuum cleaners automobiles record players I mean in 1850 almost everyone listen to music wash their clothes in nearly the same way that people didn't 10,000 years ago and then boom and for many progressives this consumer culture to quote our old friend loner became the foundation for a new understanding of Freedom as access to the Cornucopia of goods made available by modern capitalism connected Goods with freedom using Liberty as a brand name or a fixing the Statue of Liberty to a product by the way crash course is made exclusively in the plain States of America the greatest nation on Earth ever that's a lot of course but you're allowed to advertise what are the stop the music many progressives were concerned in industrial capitalism with its exploitation of Labor and concentration of wealth was limiting rather than increasing freedom but depending on how you define freedom of course they referred to as the waiver property put the factory for destroyed autonomy Scientific Management advocated by efficiency expert Frederick W Taylor required rules and Supervision in where to heightened worker productivity bathroom breaks that's why 45 minute periods punctuated by factory-style Bells knows that this atmosphere is not particularly conducive to a sense of Freedom that is a little bit confusing because going into work or exploitation was part of the Progressive Movement so was taylorism itself because it was an application of research observation and expertise to the vexing problems how to increase productivity let me see some scientific experts is another Hallmark of the Progressive Era one that usually found its expression in politics American progressives like their counterparts in the green sections of not America sort Government Solutions to social problem we're over. It's minimum wage unemployment insurance and old age pension laws idea that government action could address the problems and insecurities that characterized the modern industrial World also became prominent in the United States what could enhance rather than threaten people's freedom with something new in America progressives pushing for social legislation intended to have more success at the state and local level especially in cities which established public control over gas and water and raise taxes to pay for transportation and public school where is federally the biggest success was like prohibition which piano open anyway local collectivist investment sounds like socialism it kind of is by 1912 the Socialist Party had 150,000 members and had elected score who's of local officials like Milwaukee Maryville Sydell summer Urban progressives even push to get rid of traditional democratic forms altogether a number of cities were run by commissions of Arthur city managers who would be chosen on the basis of some demonstrated expertise or credential rather than their ability to hand out turkeys at Christmas or find jobs for nephews sister's cousin Progressive editor Walter Whitman are good for applying modern scientific expertise to solve social problems in his 1914 book of drift and Mastery writing that sing trained experts quote could be trusted more fully than ordinary citizens to solve America's deep social problems this tension between government by experts and increase your Democratic participation is one of the major contradictions of the Progressive Era the Seventeenth Amendment allowed for senators to be elected directly by the people rather than by state legislatures any states adopted primaries to nominate candidates again taking power away from political parties and putting it in the hands of Voters some states particularly Western ones like California did aspects of even more direct democracy the initiative which allowed voters to put issues on the ballot and the referendum which allows them to vote on laws directly and less than you think more democracy is always good I present you with California progressives wanted actual policy made by experts who knew what was best for the people not the people themselves play primaries in direct elections of senators it's hard to argue that the progressive era was a good moment for Democratic participation since many progressives were only in favor of voting in so where is it was done by white middle-class Protestant voters people to register to vote voter registration was supposedly intended to limit fraud and the power of political machines. Me if any of this sound familiar but it actually just suppress voting early voting gradually declined from 80% male Americans voting in the 1890s to the point where today only about 50% of eligible Americans vote in presidential elections even bigger blow to democracy during the Progressive Era came with the Jim Crow laws passed by legislators in southern states which legally segregated the South end of African-Americans the 15th Amendment made it illegal to deny the right to vote based on race color or previous condition of servitude but said nothing about the ability to read so many Southern States instituted literacy requirements other states added poll taxes requiring people to pay to vote which effectively disenfranchised large number of African American people who were proportionately poor the Supreme Court didn't help in 1896 it made one of its most famous bad decisions Quest versus Ferguson ruling that segregation in public shows in Homer Plessy case of railroad car did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection Clause as long as look at sets of everything 2 sets of equal quality of everything would get really expensive so Southern States didn't actually do it black Schools public restrooms public Transportation opportunities the list goes on and on would definitely be separate and definitely not equal thanks of course both for taylorism and against it both for government by experts and for direct democracy in the Progressive Era Jim Crow laws were being passed there were many attempts to prove the volumes of African-Americans with Booker T Washington vocational education and Washington urge Southern black people to emphasize skills that could make them successful in the Contemporary economy idea was that they would earn the respect of white people by demonstrating our usefulness and everyone would come to respect each other through the recognition of mutual dependence while continuing to live in separate social spheres Washington's accommodationist Stan was not shared by all African Americans w e b Dubois advocated for full civil and political rights for black people and helped to found the n-double-acp which African Americans to fight turn brights through quote persistent manly agitation who's the we face today particularly concerning immigration and economic Justice and they use some of the same methods that we use today organization journalistic exposure and psychoactive is now we may use Tumblr or tea party forms but the same concerns motivate us to work together and just as today many of their efforts were not successful the inherent difficulty in trying to mobilize very different interests in a pluralistic nation in some way their platforms would have been better suited to an America that was West diverse complex but it was that very diversity and complexity that gave Ron's and still gives rise to the urge toward progress in the first place thanks for watching crash course is produced and directed by Stan Miller our script supervisor is Meredith Danko the associate producer is Danica Johnson the show was written by my high school history teacher roll my Rosie on a Rojas and myself and I 16 is thought Cafe every week There's new caption for the lives you can suggest captions and comments where you can also like it and if you're watching the credits you probably do make sure you're subscribed and as we say in my hometown don't forget to be awesome  I was more dramatic than

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Crash Course 27 - Progressive Era

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