U.S. History 2 - Assignment Essays

https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/

Instructions

Purpose: Understand the views and goals of the two best-known black leaders of the turn-of-the-twentieth century U.S.: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. You will do this by writing an editorial supporting one of the men from a specific historical perspective. This assignment will help you practice the skills of comparison, analyzing evidence, and argumentation, as well as become more familiar with black history and progressivism in the early twentieth century.

Documents for analysis:

Booker T. Washington,

“Atlanta Compromise”

(1895),

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/

W.E.B. DuBois,

“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”

(1903),

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/40

(also, see

the excerpts

that are available in this submodule).

Task:

· First, read both documents carefully, along with pp. 617-619 in the textbook.

· Second, create a persona and perspective from which to write. Some suggestions are:

· a black southern sharecropper.

· a white Atlanta businessman.

· a black, female domestic worker in Atlanta.

· a black 17-year-old living in Harlem.

· Write an editorial (300 word minimum) in support of DuBois OR Washington from your persona to one of the following newspapers:

·
Chicago Defender – the leading black newspaper of the day.

·
Atlanta Journal – Atlanta daily newspaper; championed the “New South”; very conservative on race.

·
Atlanta Independent – black weekly newspaper published in Atlanta.

In your editorial, include

· a brief introduction (2-3 sentences) of your character

· state at least two (2) reasons why you (as your character) support your chosen leader

· and at least one (1) reason you believe the other leader’s ideas are flawed.

· Bring in at least
one direct quote from each primary source.

In other words, you are comparing the two men, but ultimately supporting one over the other as having the best vision for black Americans, ca. 1903.

File submissions: Please submit your file as a DOC.X or PDF file.

Criteria on which you will be graded:

You will be successful in this assignment if you:

· create a plausible persona who is writing the editorial;

· draw on the primary sources to successfully identify two reasons to support one man and one reason not to support the other;

· include a quote from each primary source; and

· convey to the reader a clear understanding of some of the men’s ideological differences.

This activity may use a different grading rubric than what was used in past activities. Be sure to check the grading rubric before starting.

Unit 3 Spalding’s World Baseball Tour.html

The Age of Empire Characters and Key Terms.html

Unit 3: the age of Empire: 1890-1914

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“The Age of Empire”: Characters and Key Terms

Characters

Key Terms

A phrase coined by Rudyard Kipling in the late 1890s, referring to a belief that white westerners have a responsibility to uplift their cultural and intellectual inferiors in non-western regions such as the Philippines and India. This belief rested on racist assumptions of white supremacy. American businesses were heavily involved in Hawaiian sugar production and trade by the mid-nineteenth century. When dynastic and political changes threatened the stability of Hawaii, the U.S. annexed the islands, despite strong local opposition. Spanish-American War (1898) was a conflict between Spain and the U.S. over territory in the Caribbean and Pacific; it was part of a longer Cuban war for independence. The U.S. got involved in 1898 for both humanitarian and selfish reasons, wanting to help the Cuban people be free from despotic Spanish control and to protect American economic interests. Ironically, the most decisive episode of the war took place in the Philippines at the Battle of Manila Bay. A phrase that emerged in the mid-1890s to describe newspaper reporting that focused on sensationalism over facts. It specifically referred to a battle for readership between two New York rival publishers, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Yellow journalism was partly responsible for the U.S. entering the Spanish American War, after sensationalized coverage of the USS Maine explosion in Havana Harbor fanned support for war.The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor February 5, 1898. Proponents of yellow journalism called for war. The Teller Amendment (1898) stipulated that Cuba would not become an American territory after the Spanish American War. Following the terms of this treaty ending the Spanish American war, the U.S. paid Spain $20 million for Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.Anti-Imperialist League formed in June 1898 to oppose U.S. annexation of the Philippines at the end of the Spanish American War. Members argued against annexation for differing reasons. Some believed annexation ran counter to the idea that legitimate government rested on the consent of the governed. Others had more racist motivations, believing that Filipinos would never be able to rise to the standards of American citizenship. Foraker Act (1900) created a civilian government in Puerto Rico to replace the military occupation that had been present since the end of the Spanish American War. The act was highly unpopular among Puerto Ricans.U.S. demanded that Cuba add this amendment to their constitution, as a condition of independence after the Spanish American War. It stipulated, among other things, that the U.S. would be given permanent naval stations in Cuba and, more importantly, if there was internal disorder in Cuba, America could intervene militarily. Secretary of State John Hay penned a series of notes 1899-1900 claiming for the U.S. open access to all Chinese markets, countering the notion of separate spheres of influence claimed by European powers. The Japanese, British, and French endorsed the open door notes, while Russia – and to a lesser extent Germany – resisted them.An anti-foreign movement in China that killed or tried to force out foreign businesses, missionaries, and diplomats. The violence threatened the open door policy articulated by John Hay. An international force put down the rebellion, and negotiations reestablished peaceful relations with the west.Theodore Roosevelt famously stated he believed one should “speak softly and carry a big stick.” When translated to foreign policy, this meant the U.S. could avoid armed conflict, especially in Latin America, by maintaining a strong navy and proclaiming a willingness to use it. Roosevelt showcased America’s naval might in 1907-1909, when the Great White Fleet journeyed around the globe.Seen as Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest foreign policy achievement. Building the canal across the Panamanian isthmus allowed interoceanic trade to proceed much more rapidly and provided a strategic naval advantage. France attempted to build a canal but failed. The U.S. started its efforts in 1904; the canal opened in 1914.Roosevelt Corollary (1904) to the Monroe Doctrine stated that if a Latin American country mismanaged its financial affairs in a way that made it beholden to a European country, the U.S. would step in to pay off debts (and thus make the country beholden to the U.S.).Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) was fought over control of areas in Manchuria and Korea, especially ports. Theodore Roosevelt helped negotiate an end to the war with the Treaty of Portsmouth. Japan emerged as the pre-eminent power in Asia, while Russia ended its imperialist aspirations there. The treaty marks a moment when the U.S. emerged as a significant diplomatic force.term given to U.S. foreign policy under President William Taft and his Secretary of State Philander Knox. They believed that the goal of diplomacy was to create stability and order abroad that would best promote American commercial interests. The region most affected by dollar diplomacy was Latin America and the Caribbean.

Unit 3 The Paradox of Southern Progressivism.html

The Progressive Movement Characters and Key Terms.html

Unit 3: leading the way: the progressive movement, 1890-1920

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“The Progressive Movement”: Characters and Key Terms

Characters

Keep this list of major characters in mind in order to follow the action more easily. Click on each person or Key Term to see his/her/its corresponding description and/or definition. You can also click the “Show All” button to expand all characters and descriptions at once. Muckrakers were journalists who wrote about issues of concerns to progressives. With the goal of motivating their readers to action, they exposed political corruption, challenged the power of corporations, or brought attention to social problems such as poverty. Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant, used photography to bring the problems of urban poverty to the attention of his middle-class audience. His work How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) documented the squalid, crowded conditions in lower-Manhattan tenements and streets.La Follette, a progressive-minded Wisconsin governor (1901-1906), advocated the “Wisconsin idea,” the belief that voters should control government and that educated specialists in areas like law, economics, and social science would make government more efficient. He then served in the U.S. Senate from 1906 until his death in 1925.Hine was a photographer hired by the National Child Labor Committee to document and publicize child labor.Debs was a labor activist turned politician. He was the Socialist Party presidential candidate five times and had his best showing in 1912, the peak of socialist influence in the U.S., when he garnered 6% of the vote.Washington was the most important black leader at the end of the nineteenth century. Born into slavery in 1856, he founded the Tuskegee Institute, emphasizing manual and industrial training. He advocated slow progress for blacks through economic self-improvement rather than lawsuits or agitation, a position embodied in his “Atlanta Compromise” speech of 1895. Du Bois emerged in the early twentieth century as a black leader with a vision much different from Booker T. Washington. Du Bois, born to poor parents in Massachusetts in 1868, attended Fisk and Harvard Universities. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois attacked Washington’s philosophies, arguing that black Americans deserved immediate civil and political rights as well as access to all levels of education. He helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).Roosevelt had a reputation as a trustbuster, and he did go after some large corporations, breaking up, for example, the Northern Securities Company, a railroad holding company. Roosevelt distinguished, however, between “good” trusts and “bad” trusts, believing that large-scale enterprise created efficiencies that could lower costs and be good for the public.

Key Terms

This phrase refers roughly to the period 1890 to 1920. Primarily, progressivism encompassed a collection of responses to the problems emerging from rapid industrialization and urbanization. Progressive movements tended to begin at the grassroots level and gradually gained traction at the state and national level. Although progressivism refers to a disparate collection of impulses and movements, as a whole, it shares certain tendencies and characteristics. Progressives tended to be white and middle-class. They believed in democracy and the government’s power to change society for the better. They had faith in efficiency, expertise, science, and technology. A progressive-era reform in which voters themselves – rather than party insiders – chose which candidate to run for office. Governor Robert La Follette convinced the Wisconsin legislature to institute the first direct primary in the U.S. Initiative, referendum, and recall are all examples of state-level, progressive-era democratic reforms designed to allow the voice of the people to be heard more clearly. The initiative allowed voters to enact legislation by petitioning to have it put on a state-wide ballot. Referendum allowed voters to accept or reject – through the ballot – a piece of legislation, and recall allowed voters to remove a public official from office.Seventeenth Amendment was another effort by progressives toward truer democracy. This amendment, ratified in 1913, allowed voters to vote directly for their Senator, replacing the previous indirect process in which voters chose state legislators who in turn voted for U.S. Senators.Part of the “good government” movement that sought to eradicate corrupt city machines. Pioneered in Galveston, Texas after a 1900 hurricane devastated the city. City commissions were composed of experts, each of whom oversaw a city department.The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, first announced by President Reagan in 1983. Because parts of the defensive system that Reagan advocated would be based in space, the proposed system was dubbed “Star Wars.”Part of the “good government” movement that sought to eradicate corrupt city machines. In this form of government, first adopted by Staunton, Virginia in 1908, an elected city council appoints a non-partisan, highly qualified manager to oversee municipal operations.Pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor, “Taylorism” or scientific management broke factory processes down with an eye to efficiency, so that individual workers performed small, repetitive tasks to create uninterrupted flow of production.Originating in England, Jane Addams and others brought the idea to the United States. Addams founded Hull House in a poor, immigrant neighborhood in Chicago in 1889. Progressives – usually white, middle-class women – lived in settlement houses with the goal of uplifting immigrants through their example.Epitomized the progressive impulse of “public motherhood,” that is white, middle-class women publicly asserting their influence in areas traditionally of concern to women and mothers. Founded in 1904, they worked to raise awareness of child labor, but had limited achievements.A 1911 fire in this factory led to the deaths of 146 workers, mostly young women. The fire catalyzed safety reforms in New York, legislation that became a model for other states.In 1919, the climax of the prohibition movement, this amendment forbade the “manufacture, sale, or transportation” of intoxicating liquors. Progressives believed prohibition would help many of their goals, including moral uplift and efficiency in the workplace and government. Founded in 1905, the IWW advocated a strategy that organized all workers, regardless of skill, race, or gender, into one big industrial union. This stood in contrast to the craft-union approach of the American Federation of Labor, which organized skilled workers by craft.Formed in 1890 from a merger of two suffrage organizations, NAWSA pursued a strategy of pushing for suffrage at the state level, believing this would pressure national leaders to support suffrage as well. It was the most mainstream and nationally visible suffrage organization.A suffrage organization, was founded by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns in 1913. Drawing on the example of British suffragettes, they pursued a more radical strategy than NAWSA by engaging in direct protest to call attention to their cause. After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, the NWP focused on an equal rights amendment to the Constitution.The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, giving women the right to vote. Women’s efforts in World War I as well as ongoing pressure from suffragists helped convince President Woodrow Wilson to support woman suffrage. A phrase used frequently by Theodore Roosevelt and the name historians subsequently gave his domestic program. Broadly, Roosevelt’s Square Deal emphasized compromise between labor and bosses, conservation of public land, control of corporations, and consumer protection.Upton Sinclair, a socialist, wrote this hoping to gain sympathy for the plight of workers. Readers – and President Theodore Roosevelt – were more outraged by unsanitary conditions in the meat industry, which spurred the passage of the Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drug Acts (both 1906).The Forestry Service emerged under Theodore Roosevelt to manage public lands for future use.gave the Interstate Commerce Commission increased power to regulate railroads, outlawing rebates (Elkins) and allowing the ICC to set maximum rates (Hepburn). The Progressive Party was a political party founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 after he became unhappy with the direction of the Republican Party and lost its nomination for president. Roosevelt ran on a platform he called New Nationalism, which called for an expansive government that could its power for the public interest.Democratic presidential nominee Woodrow Wilson’s platform in 1912. He opposed bigness in both government and business, emphasizing small business and fair competition with little government interference. Substantially lowered or eliminated tariffs on imports, while reintroducing a federal income tax.Passed during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, this act removed power over interest rates from the hands of private bankers. The new system created twelve privately owned regional reserve banks regulated by a presidentially appointed Federal Reserve Board. The Board, known informally as the Fed, regulated the interest rate at which reserve banks loaned or distributed money to other banks around the country. This system is still in use today.

Guided Reading Questions for Age of Empire Modern American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914.html

Unit 3: the age of empire

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“The Age of Empire”: Guided Reading Questions

Guided Reading Questions for Chapter 22: The Age of Empire, 1890-1914

What impulses drove American expansionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century?

Why did Americans get involved in Cuba?

What were the results of the Spanish-American War?

Why did the U.S. become involved in China?

What was Theodore Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” foreign policy, and how did it play out in Latin America?

What was “dollar diplomacy,” and why did the U.S. shift to it?

Easy Preparation and Additional Media

Prime yourself further for the reading with the Crash Course video below.

The Progressive Movement Guided Reading Questions.html

Unit 3: the progressive movement

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“The Progressive Movement”: Guided Reading Questions

Guided Reading Questions for Chapter 21: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920

Why did Progressivism emerge when it did, and what were its primary goals?

What were the main features of Progressivism?

How and why did Progressivism attempt to expand democracy and make government more efficient?

What were the concerns of social-justice Progressives? How did they propose to solve these problems?

What did Progressivism offer women and black Americans?

What were the agendas of the three Progressive presidents, and how successful were they?

Easy Preparation and Additional Media

Prime yourself further for the reading with the Crash Course video below.

Revised Units/Unit 3/Unit 3 Advance Organizer.html

Unit 3: Reform and Expansion at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Unit 3 Advance Organizer

Introduction

In this unit, you will learn about reform at home and expansion abroad in the period surrounding the turn of the twentieth century,

The era’s rapid urban industrialization gave rise to new problems or problems on a larger scale. White, middle-class, progressive reformers responded to these problems in a variety of ways. They passed work safety laws, founded settlement houses, and created better housing. Reformers also tried to reign in the worst excesses of big business and tackled issues in the political apparatus, striving to achieve efficiency in government and a fuller expression of democracy. Furthermore, during the Progressive Era, reformers began to acknowledge that not just the individual but larger social and economic structures needed to be reformed, marking a significant shift in understanding social change.

At the same time, a growing number of people began to look abroad for opportunities to expand American markets and influence. Although we tend to think of the 1890s as the onset of American imperialism, persistent expansionism marked the first century of American independence. By expansionism, I mean the kind of growth that brought California and Oregon into the American system. Jefferson’s Louisiana purchase in 1803 and the mid-nineteenth-century pursuit of manifest destiny spread the U.S. across North America, until the U.S. census declared the frontier closed in 1890. In the 1890s, the U.S. began a more vigorous pursuit of overseas influence, acquiring a number of territories in the Spanish American War, which led to vigorous debate about the proper role of the U.S. in international affairs.

These two phenomena – progressivism and imperialism – are more similar than one might think at first glance. Industrialization was a catalyst for both. Urban industrialization created many of the problems to which progressives responded, while also generating a surplus of goods that needed markets. Furthermore, both phenomena rested on ideas of racial and ethnic hierarchy. Just as white, middle-class progressives believed they knew the best way to solve the problems of their “lessers” the urban poor, the racist ideology of the “white man’s burden” underpinned imperialism. Finally, while both progressivism and imperialism marked significant departures from past American practices, they set the stage for even more dramatic change in the twentieth century.

Unit 3 Unit Objectives

By the end of this unit, you will be able to:

Analyze progressivism as a response to urban industrialization.

Describe the key characteristics and goals of progressivism.

Explain how progressivism marked a departure from previous efforts at reform.

Explain how and why the United States became more active in imperialism in this period.

Analyze and interpret historical political cartoons.

Compare and contrast differing historical visions for black uplift in the period.

Task Organizer

The Progressive Movement Module

Start by taking the Self-Assessment to test your knowledge on the period. These self-assessments aren’t graded, so you can take it as many times as you like to help you review important information.

Follow up by reviewing the
The Progressive Movement: Characters and Key Terms and the questions and resources in the
The Progressive Movement: Guided Reading Questions page.

Read
Chapter 21 The Progressive Movement. Using the “Characters and Key Terms” list and guided reading questions, take notes as you read to help you prepare for the quiz.

The Interpreting Political Cartons Discussion

Read Chapter 22 and the
Interpreting Political Cartoons page, making sure to listen to the interpretation of the cartoon featured there.

Based on the first letter of last name, analyze the cartoon provided using the guidelines provided in the
Unit 3 Discussion: U.S. Imperialism through Political Cartoons. Upload your analysis and explanation paragraphs and respond substantially to at least two of your peers about cartoons that you yourself did not analyze.

The Age of Empire Module

Follow up by reviewing the and the questions and resources in the page.

Read
Chapter 22 Age of Empire; Foreign Policy. Using the “Characters and Key Terms” list and guided reading questions, take notes as you read to help you prepare for the quiz.

The Editorial Assignment

Read the documents and/or excerpts provided of DuBois and Washington’s writings, taking notes on what you might want to write about.

Create a persona and write a 300-400 word editorial from their point of view supporting either DuBois or Washington to one of the newspapers listed in the
Unit 3 Editorial Assignment. Include the bulleted elements listed and submit your editorial by the due date.

Take the Unit 3 Quiz

Take the
Unit 3 Quiz – you can only take it once, so prepare by reviewing your notes, the Key Terms and Characters, and the Guided Reading Questions for each of the chapters.

7-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-jungles-featured-photo

Revised Units/Unit 3/PastedImage_y9sr4te3aniooq6sx5wchhdrwi6kuj4g001328620982

CHAPTER 22

Age of Empire: American Foreign
Policy, 1890-1914

Figure 22.1 This poster advertises a minstrel show wherein an actor playing Theodore Roosevelt reenacts his
leadership of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War and illustrates the American public’s zeal for tales of
American expansionist glory.

Chapter Outline

22.1 Turner, Mahan, and the Roots of Empire

22.2 The Spanish-American War and Overseas Empire

22.3 Economic Imperialism in East Asia

22.4 Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” Foreign Policy

22.5 Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy”

Introduction

As he approached the rostrum to speak before historians gathered in Chicago in 1893, Frederick Jackson
Turner appeared nervous. He was presenting a conclusion that would alarm all who believed that
westward expansion had fostered the nation’s principles of democracy. His conclusion: The frontier—the
encounter between European traditions and the native wilderness—had played a fundamental role in
shaping American character, but the American frontier no longer existed. Turner’s statement raised
questions. How would Americans maintain their unique political culture and innovative spirit in the
absence of the frontier? How would the nation expand its economy if it could no longer expand its
territory?

Later historians would see Turner’s Frontier Thesis as deeply flawed, a gross mischaracterization of
the West. But the young historian’s work greatly influenced politicians and thinkers of the day. Like a
muckraker, Turner exposed the problem; others found a solution by seeking out new frontiers in the
creation of an American empire. The above advertisement for a theater reenactment of the Spanish-
American War (Figure 22.1) shows the American appetite for expansion. Many Americans felt that it was
time for their nation to offer its own brand of international leadership and dominance as an alternative to
the land-grabbing empires of Europe.

Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914 633

22.1 Turner, Mahan, and the Roots of Empire

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain the evolution of American interest in foreign affairs from the end of the Civil

War through the early 1890s
• Identify the contributions of Frederick Jackson Turner and Alfred Thayer Mahan to the

conscious creation of an American empire

During the time of Reconstruction, the U.S. government showed no significant initiative in foreign affairs.
Western expansion and the goal of Manifest Destiny still held the country’s attention, and American
missionaries proselytized as far abroad as China, India, the Korean Peninsula, and Africa, but
reconstruction efforts took up most of the nation’s resources. As the century came to a close, however,
a variety of factors, from the closing of the American frontier to the country’s increased industrial
production, led the United States to look beyond its borders. Countries in Europe were building their
empires through global power and trade, and the United States did not want to be left behind.

AMERICA’S LIMITED BUT AGGRESSIVE PUSH OUTWARD

On the eve of the Civil War, the country lacked the means to establish a strong position in international
diplomacy. As of 1865, the U.S. State Department had barely sixty employees and no ambassadors
representing American interests abroad. Instead, only two dozen American foreign ministers were located
in key countries, and those often gained their positions not through diplomatic skills or expertise in foreign
affairs but through bribes. Further limiting American potential for foreign impact was the fact that a strong
international presence required a strong military—specifically a navy—which the United States, after the
Civil War, was in no position to maintain. Additionally, as late as 1890, with the U.S. Navy significantly
reduced in size, a majority of vessels were classified as “Old Navy,” meaning a mixture of iron hulled and
wholly wooden ships. While the navy had introduced the first all-steel, triple-hulled steam engine vessels
seven years earlier, they had only thirteen of them in operation by 1890.

Figure 22.2

634 Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914

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Despite such widespread isolationist impulses and the sheer inability to maintain a strong international
position, the United States moved ahead sporadically with a modest foreign policy agenda in the three
decades following the Civil War. Secretary of State William Seward, who held that position from 1861
through 1869, sought to extend American political and commercial influence in both Asia and Latin
America. He pursued these goals through a variety of actions. A treaty with Nicaragua set the early course
for the future construction of a canal across Central America. He also pushed through the annexation of the
Midway Islands in the Pacific Ocean, which subsequently opened a more stable route to Asian markets. In
frequent conversations with President Lincoln, among others, Seward openly spoke of his desire to obtain
British Columbia, the Hawaiian Islands, portions of the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other territories.
He explained his motives to a Boston audience in 1867, when he professed his intention to give the United
States “control of the world.”

Most notably, in 1867, Seward obtained the Alaskan Territory from Russia for a purchase price of $7.2
million. Fearing future loss of the territory through military conflict, as well as desiring to create challenges
for Great Britain (which they had fought in the Crimean War), Russia had happily accepted the American
purchase offer. In the United States, several newspaper editors openly questioned the purchase and
labeled it “Seward’s Folly” (Figure 22.3). They highlighted the lack of Americans to populate the vast
region and lamented the challenges in attempting to govern the native peoples in that territory. Only
if gold were to be found, the editors decried, would the secretive purchase be justified. That is exactly
what happened. Seward’s purchase added an enormous territory to the country—nearly 600,000 square
miles—and also gave the United States access to the rich mineral resources of the region, including the
gold that trigged the Klondike Gold Rush at the close of the century. As was the case elsewhere in the
American borderlands, Alaska’s industrial development wreaked havoc on the region’s indigenous and
Russian cultures.

Figure 22.3 Although mocked in the press at the time as “Seward’s Folly,” Secretary of State William Seward’s
acquisition of Alaska from Russia was a strategic boon to the United States.

Seward’s successor as Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, held the position from 1869 through 1877. Fish
spent much of his time settling international disputes involving American interests, including claims that
British assistance to the Confederates prolonged the Civil War for about two years. In these so-called
Alabama claims, a U.S. senator charged that the Confederacy won a number of crucial battles with the
help of one British cruiser and demanded $2 billion in British reparations. Alternatively, the United States
would settle for the rights to Canada. A joint commission representing both countries eventually settled
on a British payment of $15 million to the United States. In the negotiations, Fish also suggested adding
the Dominican Republic as a territorial possession with a path towards statehood, as well as discussing
the construction of a transoceanic canal with Columbia. Although neither negotiation ended in the desired
result, they both expressed Fish’s intent to cautiously build an American empire without creating any
unnecessary military entanglements in the wake of the Civil War.

Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914 635

BUSINESS, RELIGIOUS, AND SOCIAL INTERESTS SET THE STAGE FOR EMPIRE

While the United States slowly pushed outward and sought to absorb the borderlands (and the indigenous
cultures that lived there), the country was also changing how it functioned. As a new industrial United
States began to emerge in the 1870s, economic interests began to lead the country toward a more
expansionist foreign policy. By forging new and stronger ties overseas, the United States would gain access
to international markets for export, as well as better deals on the raw materials needed domestically. The
concerns raised by the economic depression of the early 1890s further convinced business owners that they
needed to tap into new markets, even at the risk of foreign entanglements.

As a result of these growing economic pressures, American exports to other nations skyrocketed in the
years following the Civil War, from $234 million in 1865 to $605 million in 1875. By 1898, on the eve of
the Spanish-American War, American exports had reached a height of $1.3 billion annually. Imports over
the same period also increased substantially, from $238 million in 1865 to $616 million in 1898. Such an
increased investment in overseas markets in turn strengthened Americans’ interest in foreign affairs.

Businesses were not the only ones seeking to expand. Religious leaders and Progressive reformers joined
businesses in their growing interest in American expansion, as both sought to increase the democratic
and Christian influences of the United States abroad. Imperialism and Progressivism were compatible in
the minds of many reformers who thought the Progressive impulses for democracy at home translated
overseas as well. Editors of such magazines as Century, Outlook, and Harper’s supported an imperialistic
stance as the democratic responsibility of the United States. Several Protestant faiths formed missionary
societies in the years after the Civil War, seeking to expand their reach, particularly in Asia. Influenced
by such works as Reverend Josiah Strong’s Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885),
missionaries sought to spread the gospel throughout the country and abroad. Led by the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, among several other organizations, missionaries conflated
Christian ethics with American virtues, and began to spread both gospels with zeal. This was particularly
true among women missionaries, who composed over 60 percent of the overall missionary force. By 1870,
missionaries abroad spent as much time advocating for the American version of a modern civilization as
they did teaching the Bible.

Social reformers of the early Progressive Era also performed work abroad that mirrored the missionaries.
Many were influenced by recent scholarship on race-based intelligence and embraced the implications
of social Darwinist theory that alleged inferior races were destined to poverty on account of their lower
evolutionary status. While certainly not all reformers espoused a racist view of intelligence and
civilization, many of these reformers believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was mentally superior to others
and owed the presumed less evolved populations their stewardship and social uplift—a service the British
writer Rudyard Kipling termed “the white man’s burden.”

By trying to help people in less industrialized countries achieve a higher standard of living and a better
understanding of the principles of democracy, reformers hoped to contribute to a noble cause, but their
approach suffered from the same paternalism that hampered Progressive reforms at home. Whether
reformers and missionaries worked with native communities in the borderlands such as New Mexico; in
the inner cities, like the Salvation Army; or overseas, their approaches had much in common. Their good
intentions and willingness to work in difficult conditions shone through in the letters and articles they
wrote from the field. Often in their writing, it was clear that they felt divinely empowered to change the
lives of other, less fortunate, and presumably, less enlightened, people. Whether oversees or in the urban
slums, they benefitted from the same passions but expressed the same paternalism.

636 Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914

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MY STORY

Lottie Moon, Missionary
Lottie Moon was a Southern Baptist missionary who spent more than forty years living and working in
China. She began in 1873 when she joined her sister in China as a missionary, teaching in a school
for Chinese women. Her true passion, however, was to evangelize and minister, and she undertook a
campaign to urge the Southern Baptist missionaries to allow women to work beyond the classroom.
Her letter campaign back to the head of the Mission Board provided a vivid picture of life in China and
exhorted the Southern Baptist women to give more generously of their money and their time. Her letters
appeared frequently in religious publications, and it was her suggestion—that the week before Christmas
be established as a time to donate to foreign missions—that led to the annual Christmas giving tradition.
Lottie’s rhetoric caught on, and still today, the annual Christmas offering is done in her name.

We had the best possible voyage over the water—good weather, no headwinds, scarcely any
rolling or pitching—in short, all that reasonable people could ask. . . . I spent a week here last
fall and of course feel very natural to be here again. I do so love the East and eastern life!
Japan fascinated my heart and fancy four years ago, but now I honestly believe I love China
the best, and actually, which is stranger still, like the Chinese best.
—Charlotte “Lottie” Moon, 1877

Lottie remained in China through famines, the Boxer Rebellion, and other hardships. She fought against
foot binding, a cultural tradition where girls’ feet were tightly bound to keep them from growing, and
shared her personal food and money when those around her were suffering. But her primary goal was
to evangelize her Christian beliefs to the people in China. She won the right to minister and personally
converted hundreds of Chinese to Christianity. Lottie’s combination of moral certainty and selfless service
was emblematic of the missionary zeal of the early American empire.

TURNER, MAHAN, AND THE PLAN FOR EMPIRE

The initial work of businesses, missionaries, and reformers set the stage by the early 1890s for advocates of
an expanded foreign policy and a vision of an American empire. Following decades of an official stance of
isolationism combined with relatively weak presidents who lacked the popular mandate or congressional
support to undertake substantial overseas commitments, a new cadre of American leaders—many of
whom were too young to fully comprehend the damage inflicted by the Civil War—assumed leadership
roles. Eager to be tested in international conflict, these new leaders hoped to prove America’s might on
a global stage. The Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, was one of these leaders who
sought to expand American influence globally, and he advocated for the expansion of the U.S. Navy,
which at the turn of the century was the only weapons system suitable for securing overseas expansion.

Turner (Figure 22.4) and naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan were instrumental in the country’s move
toward foreign expansion, and writer Brooks Adams further dramatized the consequences of the nation’s
loss of its frontier in his The Law of Civilization and Decay in 1895. As mentioned in the chapter opening,
Turner announced his Frontier Thesis—that American democracy was largely formed by the American
frontier—at the Chicago World’s Colombian Exposition. He noted that “for nearly three centuries the
dominant fact in American life has been expansion.” He continued: “American energy will continually
demand a wider field for its exercise.”

Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914 637

Figure 22.4 Historian Fredrick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis stated explicitly that the existence of the western
frontier forged the very basis of the American identity.

Although there was no more room for these forces to proceed domestically, they would continue to find
an outlet on the international stage. Turner concluded that “the demands for a vigorous foreign policy,
for an interoceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon our seas, and for the extension of American
influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries are indications that the forces [of expansion] will
continue.” Such policies would permit Americans to find new markets. Also mindful of the mitigating
influence of a frontier—in terms of easing pressure from increased immigration and population expansion
in the eastern and midwestern United States—he encouraged new outlets for further population growth,
whether as lands for further American settlement or to accommodate more immigrants. Turner’s thesis
was enormously influential at the time but has subsequently been widely criticized by historians.
Specifically, the thesis underscores the pervasive racism and disregard for the indigenous communities,
cultures, and individuals in the American borderlands and beyond.

Explore the controversy associated with Turner’s

Frontier Thesis

(http://ushistoryscene.com/article/legacy-of-conquest/) at U.S. History Scene.

While Turner provided the idea for an empire, Mahan provided the more practical guide. In his 1890 work,
The Influence of Seapower upon History, he suggested three strategies that would assist the United States in
both constructing and maintaining an empire. First, noting the sad state of the U.S. Navy, he called for the
government to build a stronger, more powerful version. Second, he suggested establishing a network of
naval bases to fuel this expanding fleet. Seward’s previous acquisition of the Midway Islands served this
purpose by providing an essential naval coaling station, which was vital, as the limited reach of steamships
and their dependence on coal made naval coaling stations imperative for increasing the navy’s geographic
reach. Future acquisitions in the Pacific and Caribbean increased this naval supply network (Figure 22.5).
Finally, Mahan urged the future construction of a canal across the isthmus of Central America, which

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The Legacy of Conquest

would decrease by two-thirds the time and power required to move the new navy from the Pacific to the
Atlantic oceans. Heeding Mahan’s advice, the government moved quickly, passing the Naval Act of 1890,
which set production levels for a new, modern fleet. By 1898, the government had succeeded in increasing
the size of the U.S. Navy to an active fleet of 160 vessels, of which 114 were newly built of steel. In addition,
the fleet now included six battleships, compared to zero in the previous decade. As a naval power, the
country catapulted to the third strongest in world rankings by military experts, trailing only Spain and
Great Britain.

Figure 22.5 American imperial acquisitions as of the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Note how the
spread of island acquisitions across the Pacific Ocean fulfills Alfred Mahan’s call for more naval bases in order to
support a larger and more effective U.S. Navy rather than mere territorial expansion.

The United States also began to expand its influence to other Pacific Islands, most notably Samoa and
Hawaii. With regard to the latter, American businessmen were most interested in the lucrative sugar
industry that lay at the heart of the Hawaiian Islands’ economy. By 1890, through a series of reciprocal
trade agreements, Hawaiians exported nearly all of their sugar production to the United States, tariff-
free. When Queen Liliuokalani tapped into a strong anti-American resentment among native Hawaiians
over the economic and political power of exploitative American sugar companies between 1891 and 1893,
worried businessmen worked with the American minister to Hawaii, John Stevens, to stage a quick, armed
revolt to counter her efforts and seize the islands as an American protectorate (Figure 22.6). Following five
more years of political wrangling, the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898, during the Spanish-American
War.

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Figure 22.6 Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii (a) was unhappy with the one-sided trade agreement Hawaii held with the
United States (b), but protests were squashed by an American-armed revolt.

The United States had similar strategic interests in the Samoan Islands of the South Pacific, most notably,
access to the naval refueling station at Pago Pago where American merchant vessels as well as naval ships
could take on food, fuel, and supplies. In 1899, in an effort to mitigate other foreign interests and still
protect their own, the United States joined Great Britain and Germany in a three-party protectorate over
the islands, which assured American access to the strategic ports located there.

22.2 The Spanish-American War and Overseas Empire

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain the origins and events of the Spanish-American War
• Analyze the different American opinions on empire at the conclusion of the Spanish-

American War
• Describe how the Spanish-American War intersected with other American expansions

to solidify the nation’s new position as an empire

The Spanish-American War was the first significant international military conflict for the United States
since its war against Mexico in 1846; it came to represent a critical milestone in the country’s development
as an empire. Ostensibly about the rights of Cuban rebels to fight for freedom from Spain, the war had, for
the United States at least, a far greater importance in the country’s desire to expand its global reach.

The Spanish-American War was notable not only because the United States succeeded in seizing territory
from another empire, but also because it caused the global community to recognize that the United States
was a formidable military power. In what Secretary of State John Hay called “a splendid little war,” the
United States significantly altered the balance of world power, just as the twentieth century began to
unfold (Figure 22.7).

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Figure 22.7 Whereas Americans thought of the Spanish colonial regime in Cuba as a typical example of European
imperialism, this 1896 Spanish cartoon depicts the United States as a land-grabbing empire. The caption, written in
Catalan, states “Keep the island so it won’t get lost.”

THE CHALLENGE OF DECLARING WAR

Despite its name, the Spanish-American War had less to do with the foreign affairs between the United
States and Spain than Spanish control over Cuba. Spain had dominated Central and South America
since the late fifteenth century. But, by 1890, the only Spanish colonies that had not yet acquired their
independence were Cuba and Puerto Rico. On several occasions prior to the war, Cuban independence
fighters in the “Cuba Libre” movement had attempted unsuccessfully to end Spanish control of their lands.
In 1895, a similar revolt for independence erupted in Cuba; again, Spanish forces under the command
of General Valeriano Weyler repressed the insurrection. Particularly notorious was their policy of re-
concentration in which Spanish troops forced rebels from the countryside into military-controlled camps
in the cities, where many died from harsh conditions.

As with previous uprisings, Americans were largely sympathetic to the Cuban rebels’ cause, especially
as the Spanish response was notably brutal. Evoking the same rhetoric of independence with which they
fought the British during the American Revolution, several people quickly rallied to the Cuban fight
for freedom. Shippers and other businessmen, particularly in the sugar industry, supported American
intervention to safeguard their own interests in the region. Likewise, the “Cuba Libre” movement founded
by José Martí, who quickly established offices in New York and Florida, further stirred American interest
in the liberation cause. The difference in this uprising, however, was that supporters saw in the renewed
U.S. Navy a force that could be a strong ally for Cuba. Additionally, the late 1890s saw the height of yellow
journalism, in which newspapers such as the New York Journal, led by William Randolph Hearst, and the
New York World, published by Joseph Pulitzer, competed for readership with sensationalistic stories. These
publishers, and many others who printed news stories for maximum drama and effect, knew that war
would provide sensational copy.

However, even as sensationalist news stories fanned the public’s desire to try out their new navy while
supporting freedom, one key figure remained unmoved. President William McKinley, despite
commanding a new, powerful navy, also recognized that the new fleet—and soldiers—were untested.
Preparing for a reelection bid in 1900, McKinley did not see a potential war with Spain, acknowledged to
be the most powerful naval force in the world, as a good bet. McKinley did publicly admonish Spain for its
actions against the rebels, and urged Spain to find a peaceful solution in Cuba, but he remained resistant
to public pressure for American military intervention.

McKinley’s reticence to involve the United States changed in February 1898. He had ordered one of

Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914 641

the newest navy battleships, the USS Maine, to drop anchor off the coast of Cuba in order to observe
the situation, and to prepare to evacuate American citizens from Cuba if necessary. Just days after it
arrived, on February 15, an explosion destroyed the Maine, killing over 250 American sailors (Figure 22.8).
Immediately, yellow journalists jumped on the headline that the explosion was the result of a Spanish
attack, and that all Americans should rally to war. The newspaper battle cry quickly emerged, “Remember
the Maine!” Recent examinations of the evidence of that time have led many historians to conclude that
the explosion was likely an accident due to the storage of gun powder close to the very hot boilers. But in
1898, without ready evidence, the newspapers called for a war that would sell papers, and the American
public rallied behind the cry.

Figure 22.8 Although later reports would suggest the explosion was due to loose gunpowder onboard the ship, the
press treated the explosion of the USS Maine as high drama. Note the lower headline citing that the ship was
destroyed by a mine, despite the lack of evidence.

Visit Office of the Historian to understand different perspectives on the role of yellow
journalism (https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism) in
the Spanish-American War.

McKinley made one final effort to avoid war, when late in March, he called on Spain to end its policy
of concentrating the native population in military camps in Cuba, and to formally declare Cuba’s
independence. Spain refused, leaving McKinley little choice but to request a declaration of war from
Congress. Congress received McKinley’s war message, and on April 19, 1898, they officially recognized

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https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism

Cuba’s independence and authorized McKinley to use military force to remove Spain from the island.
Equally important, Congress passed the Teller Amendment to the resolution, which stated that the United
States would not annex Cuba following the war, appeasing those who opposed expansionism.

WAR: BRIEF AND DECISIVE

The Spanish-American War lasted approximately ten weeks, and the outcome was clear: The United States
triumphed in its goal of helping liberate Cuba from Spanish control. Despite the positive result, the conflict
did present significant challenges to the United States military. Although the new navy was powerful,
the ships were, as McKinley feared, largely untested. Similarly untested were the American soldiers. The
country had fewer than thirty thousand soldiers and sailors, many of whom were unprepared to do
battle with a formidable opponent. But volunteers sought to make up the difference. Over one million
American men—many lacking a uniform and coming equipped with their own guns—quickly answered
McKinley’s call for able-bodied men. Nearly ten thousand African American men also volunteered for
service, despite the segregated conditions and additional hardships they faced, including violent uprisings
at a few American bases before they departed for Cuba. The government, although grateful for the
volunteer effort, was still unprepared to feed and supply such a force, and many suffered malnutrition and
malaria for their sacrifice.

To the surprise of the Spanish forces who saw the conflict as a clear war over Cuba, American military
strategists prepared for it as a war for empire. More so than simply the liberation of Cuba and the
protection of American interests in the Caribbean, military strategists sought to further Mahan’s vision of
additional naval bases in the Pacific Ocean, reaching as far as mainland Asia. Such a strategy would also
benefit American industrialists who sought to expand their markets into China. Just before leaving his post
for volunteer service as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. cavalry, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore
Roosevelt ordered navy ships to attack the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, another island chain under
Spanish control. As a result, the first significant military confrontation took place not in Cuba but halfway
around the world in the Philippines. Commodore George Dewey led the U.S. Navy in a decisive victory,
sinking all of the Spanish ships while taking almost no American losses. Within a month, the U.S. Army
landed a force to take the islands from Spain, which it succeeded in doing by mid-August 1899.

The victory in Cuba took a little longer. In June, seventeen thousand American troops landed in Cuba.
Although they initially met with little Spanish resistance, by early July, fierce battles ensued near the
Spanish stronghold in Santiago. Most famously, Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders, an all-
volunteer cavalry unit made up of adventure-seeking college graduates, and veterans and cowboys from
the Southwest, in a charge up Kettle Hill, next to San Juan Hill, which resulted in American forces
surrounding Santiago. The victories of the Rough Riders are the best known part of the battles, but in fact,
several African American regiments, made up of veteran soldiers, were instrumental to their success. The
Spanish fleet made a last-ditch effort to escape to the sea but ran into an American naval blockade that
resulted in total destruction, with every Spanish vessel sunk. Lacking any naval support, Spain quickly
lost control of Puerto Rico as well, offering virtually no resistance to advancing American forces. By the
end of July, the fighting had ended and the war was over. Despite its short duration and limited number
of casualties—fewer than 350 soldiers died in combat, about 1,600 were wounded, while almost 3,000 men
died from disease—the war carried enormous significance for Americans who celebrated the victory as a
reconciliation between North and South.

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DEFINING “AMERICAN”

“Smoked Yankees”: Black Soldiers in the Spanish-American
War
The most popular image of the Spanish-American War is of Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough
Riders, charging up San Juan Hill. But less well known is that the Rough Riders struggled mightily in
several battles and would have sustained far more serious casualties, if not for the experienced black
veterans—over twenty-five hundred of them—who joined them in battle (Figure 22.9). These soldiers,
who had been fighting the Indian wars on the American frontier for many years, were instrumental in the
U.S. victory in Cuba.

Figure 22.9 The decision to fight or not was debated in the black community, as some felt they owed
little to a country that still granted them citizenship in name only, while others believed that proving their
patriotism would enhance their opportunities. (credit: Library of Congress)

The choice to serve in the Spanish-American War was not a simple one. Within the black community,
many spoke out both for and against involvement in the war. Many black Americans felt that because
they were not offered the true rights of citizenship it was not their burden to volunteer for war. Others,
in contrast, argued that participation in the war offered an opportunity for black Americans to prove
themselves to the rest of the country. While their presence was welcomed by the military which
desperately needed experienced soldiers, the black regiments suffered racism and harsh treatment while
training in the southern states before shipping off to battle.

Once in Cuba, however, the “Smoked Yankees,” as the Cubans called the black American soldiers,
fought side-by-side with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, providing crucial tactical support to some of the most
important battles of the war. After the Battle of San Juan, five black soldiers received the Medal of Honor
and twenty-five others were awarded a certificate of merit. One reporter wrote that “if it had not been for
the Negro cavalry, the Rough Riders would have been exterminated.” He went on to state that, having
grown up in the South, he had never been fond of black people before witnessing the battle. For some of
the soldiers, their recognition made the sacrifice worthwhile. Others, however, struggled with American
oppression of Cubans and Puerto Ricans, feeling kinship with the black residents of these countries now
under American rule.

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ESTABLISHING PEACE AND CREATING AN EMPIRE

As the war closed, Spanish and American diplomats made arrangements for a peace conference in Paris.
They met in October 1898, with the Spanish government committed to regaining control of the Philippines,
which they felt were unjustly taken in a war that was solely about Cuban independence. While the Teller
Amendment ensured freedom for Cuba, President McKinley was reluctant to relinquish the strategically
useful prize of the Philippines. He certainly did not want to give the islands back to Spain, nor did he
want another European power to step in to seize them. Neither the Spanish nor the Americans considered
giving the islands their independence, since, with the pervasive racism and cultural stereotyping of the
day, they believed the Filipino people were not capable of governing themselves. William Howard Taft,
the first American governor-general to oversee the administration of the new U.S. possession, accurately
captured American sentiments with his frequent reference to Filipinos as “our little brown brothers.”

As the peace negotiations unfolded, Spain agreed to recognize Cuba’s independence, as well as recognize
American control of Puerto Rico and Guam. McKinley insisted that the United States maintain control
over the Philippines as an annexation, in return for a $20 million payment to Spain. Although Spain was
reluctant, they were in no position militarily to deny the American demand. The two sides finalized the
Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. With it came the international recognition that there was a new
American empire that included the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The American press quickly
glorified the nation’s new reach, as expressed in the cartoon below, depicting the glory of the American
eagle reaching from the Philippines to the Caribbean (Figure 22.10).

Figure 22.10 This cartoon from the Philadelphia Press, showed the reach of the new American empire, from Puerto
Rico to the Philippines.

Domestically, the country was neither unified in their support of the treaty nor in the idea of the United
States building an empire at all. Many prominent Americans, including Jane Addams, former President
Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, and Samuel Gompers, felt strongly that the country
should not be pursuing an empire, and, in 1898, they formed the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose
this expansionism. The reasons for their opposition were varied: Some felt that empire building went
against the principles of democracy and freedom upon which the country was founded, some worried
about competition from foreign workers, and some held the xenophobic viewpoint that the assimilation
of other races would hurt the country. Regardless of their reasons, the group, taken together, presented
a formidable challenge. As foreign treaties require a two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate to pass, the
Anti-Imperialist League’s pressure led them to a clear split, with the possibility of defeat of the treaty
seeming imminent. Less than a week before the scheduled vote, however, news of a Filipino uprising
against American forces reached the United States. Undecided senators were convinced of the need to
maintain an American presence in the region and preempt the intervention of another European power,
and the Senate formally ratified the treaty on February 6, 1899.

Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914 645

The newly formed American empire was not immediately secure, as Filipino rebels, led by Emilio
Aguinaldo (Figure 22.11), fought back against American forces stationed there. The Filipinos’ war for
independence lasted three years, with over four thousand American and twenty thousand Filipino
combatant deaths; the civilian death toll is estimated as high as 250,000. Finally, in 1901, President
McKinley appointed William Howard Taft as the civil governor of the Philippines in an effort to disengage
the American military from direct confrontations with the Filipino people. Under Taft’s leadership,
Americans built a new transportation infrastructure, hospitals, and schools, hoping to win over the local
population. The rebels quickly lost influence, and Aguinaldo was captured by American forces and forced
to swear allegiance to the United States. The Taft Commission, as it became known, continued to introduce
reforms to modernize and improve daily life for the country despite pockets of resistance that continued
to fight through the spring of 1902. Much of the commission’s rule centered on legislative reforms to local
government structure and national agencies, with the commission offering appointments to resistance
leaders in exchange for their support. The Philippines continued under American rule until they became
self-governing in 1946.

Figure 22.11 Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo was captured after three years of fighting with U.S. troops. He is
seen here boarding the USS Vicksburg after taking an oath of loyalty to the United States in 1901.

After the conclusion of the Spanish-American War and the successful passage of the peace treaty with
Spain, the United States continued to acquire other territories. Seeking an expanded international presence,
as well as control of maritime routes and naval stations, the United States grew to include Hawaii, which
was granted territorial status in 1900, and Alaska, which, although purchased from Russia decades earlier,
only became a recognized territory in 1912. In both cases, their status as territories granted U.S. citizenship
to their residents. The Foraker Act of 1900 established Puerto Rico as an American territory with its own
civil government. It was not until 1917 that Puerto Ricans were granted American citizenship. Guam and
Samoa, which had been taken as part of the war, remained under the control of the U.S. Navy. Cuba,
which after the war was technically a free country, adopted a constitution based on the U.S. Constitution.
While the Teller Amendment had prohibited the United States from annexing the country, a subsequent
amendment, the Platt Amendment, secured the right of the United States to interfere in Cuban affairs if
threats to a stable government emerged. The Platt Amendment also guaranteed the United States its own
naval and coaling station on the island’s southern Guantanamo Bay and prohibited Cuba from making
treaties with other countries that might eventually threaten their independence. While Cuba remained
an independent nation on paper, in all practicality the United States governed Cuba’s foreign policy and
economic agreements.

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Explore the resources at U.S. History Scene to better understand the long and
involved history of Hawaii (http://ushistoryscene.com/article/aloha-hawaii/) with
respect to its intersection with the United States.

22.3 Economic Imperialism in East Asia

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain how economic power helped to expand America’s empire in China
• Describe how the foreign partitioning of China in the last decade of the nineteenth

century influenced American policy

While American forays into empire building began with military action, the country concurrently grew its
scope and influence through other methods as well. In particular, the United States used its economic and
industrial capacity to add to its empire, as can be seen in a study of the China market and the “Open Door
notes” discussed below.

WHY CHINA?

Since the days of Christopher Columbus’s westward journey to seek a new route to the East Indies
(essentially India and China, but loosely defined as all of Southeast Asia), many westerners have dreamt
of the elusive “China Market.” With the defeat of the Spanish navy in the Atlantic and Pacific, and
specifically with the addition of the Philippines as a base for American ports and coaling stations, the
United States was ready to try and make the myth a reality. Although China originally accounted for only
a small percentage of American foreign trade, captains of American industry dreamed of a vast market
of Asian customers desperate for manufactured goods they could not yet produce in large quantities for
themselves.

American businesses were not alone in seeing the opportunities. Other countries—including Japan, Russia,
Great Britain, France, and Germany—also hoped to make inroads in China. Previous treaties between
Great Britain and China in 1842 and 1844 during the Opium Wars, when the British Empire militarily
coerced the Chinese empire to accept the import of Indian opium in exchange for its tea, had forced an
“open door” policy on China, in which all foreign nations had free and equal access to Chinese ports. This
was at a time when Great Britain maintained the strongest economic relationship with China; however,
other western nations used the new arrangement to send Christian missionaries, who began to work
across inland China. Following the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 over China’s claims to Korea, western
countries hoped to exercise even greater influence in the region. By 1897, Germany had obtained exclusive
mining rights in northern coastal China as reparations for the murder of two German missionaries. In
1898, Russia obtained permission to build a railroad across northeastern Manchuria. One by one, each
country carved out their own sphere of influence, where they could control markets through tariffs and
transportation, and thus ensure their share of the Chinese market.

Alarmed by the pace at which foreign powers further divided China into pseudo-territories, and worried
that they had no significant piece for themselves, the United States government intervened. In contrast to

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Hawaii

European nations, however, American businesses wanted the whole market, not just a share of it. They
wanted to do business in China with no artificially constructed spheres or boundaries to limit the extent
of their trade, but without the territorial entanglements or legislative responsibilities that anti-imperialists
opposed. With the blessing and assistance of Secretary of State John Hay, several American businessmen
created the American Asiatic Association in 1896 to pursue greater trade opportunities in China.

THE OPEN DOOR NOTES

In 1899, Secretary of State Hay made a bold move to acquire China’s vast markets for American access
by introducing Open Door notes, a series of circular notes that Hay himself drafted as an expression
of U.S. interests in the region and sent to the other competing powers (Figure 22.12). These notes, if
agreed to by the other five nations maintaining spheres of influences in China, would erase all spheres and
essentially open all doors to free trade, with no special tariffs or transportation controls that would give
unfair advantages to one country over another. Specifically, the notes required that all countries agree to
maintain free access to all treaty ports in China, to pay railroad charges and harbor fees (with no special
access), and that only China would be permitted to collect any taxes on trade within its borders. While
on paper, the Open Door notes would offer equal access to all, the reality was that it greatly favored the
United States. Free trade in China would give American businesses the ultimate advantage, as American
companies were producing higher-quality goods than other countries, and were doing so more efficiently
and less expensively. The “open doors” would flood the Chinese market with American goods, virtually
squeezing other countries out of the market.

Figure 22.12 This political cartoon shows Uncle Sam standing on a map of China, while Europe’s imperialist nations
(from left to right: Germany, Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and France) try to cut out their “sphere of influence.”

Although the foreign ministers of the other five nations sent half-hearted replies on behalf of their
respective governments, with some outright denying the viability of the notes, Hay proclaimed them the
new official policy on China, and American goods were unleashed throughout the nation. China was quite
welcoming of the notes, as they also stressed the U.S. commitment to preserving the Chinese government
and territorial integrity.

The notes were invoked barely a year later, when a group of Chinese insurgents, the Righteous and
Harmonious Fists—also known as the Boxer Rebellion (1899)—fought to expel all western nations and
their influences from China (Figure 22.13). The United States, along with Great Britain and Germany, sent
over two thousand troops to withstand the rebellion. The troops signified American commitment to the

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territorial integrity of China, albeit one flooded with American products. Despite subsequent efforts, by
Japan in particular, to undermine Chinese authority in 1915 and again during the Manchurian crisis of
1931, the United States remained resolute in defense of the open door principles through World War II.
Only when China turned to communism in 1949 following an intense civil war did the principle become
relatively meaningless. However, for nearly half a century, U.S. military involvement and a continued
relationship with the Chinese government cemented their roles as preferred trading partners, illustrating
how the country used economic power, as well as military might, to grow its empire.

Figure 22.13 The Boxer Rebellion in China sought to expel all western influences, including Christian missionaries
and trade partners. The Chinese government appreciated the American, British, and German troops that helped
suppress the rebellion.

Browse the U.S. State Department’s Milestones: 1899—1913
(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/haychina) to learn more about Secretary of State John
Hay and the strategy and thinking behind the Open Door notes.

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http://openstaxcollege.org/l/haychina

22.4 Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” Foreign Policy

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain the meaning of “big stick” foreign policy
• Describe Theodore Roosevelt’s use of the “big stick” to construct the Panama Canal
• Explain the role of the United States in ending the Russo-Japanese War

While President McKinley ushered in the era of the American empire through military strength and
economic coercion, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, established a new foreign policy approach,
allegedly based on a favorite African proverb, “speak softly, and carry a big stick, and you will go far”
(Figure 22.14). At the crux of his foreign policy was a thinly veiled threat. Roosevelt believed that in
light of the country’s recent military successes, it was unnecessary to use force to achieve foreign policy
goals, so long as the military could threaten force. This rationale also rested on the young president’s
philosophy, which he termed the “strenuous life,” and that prized challenges overseas as opportunities to
instill American men with the resolve and vigor they allegedly had once acquired in the Trans-Mississippi
West.

Figure 22.14 Roosevelt was often depicted in cartoons wielding his “big stick” and pushing the U.S. foreign agenda,
often through the power of the U.S. Navy.

Roosevelt believed that while the coercive power wielded by the United States could be harmful in the
wrong hands, the Western Hemisphere’s best interests were also the best interests of the United States. He
felt, in short, that the United States had the right and the obligation to be the policeman of the hemisphere.
This belief, and his strategy of “speaking softly and carrying a big stick,” shaped much of Roosevelt’s
foreign policy.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PANAMA CANAL

As early as the mid-sixteenth century, interest in a canal across the Central American isthmus began to
take root, primarily out of trade interests. The subsequent discovery of gold in California in 1848 further
spurred interest in connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and led to the construction of the Panama
Railway, which began operations in 1855. Several attempts by France to construct a canal between 1881
and 1894 failed due to a combination of financial crises and health hazards, including malaria and yellow
fever, which led to the deaths of thousands of French workers.

Upon becoming president in 1901, Roosevelt was determined to succeed where others had failed.

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Following the advice that Mahan set forth in his book The Influence of Seapower upon History, he sought
to achieve the construction of a canal across Central America, primarily for military reasons associated
with empire, but also for international trade considerations. The most strategic point for the construction
was across the fifty-mile isthmus of Panama, which, at the turn of the century, was part of the nation
of Colombia. Roosevelt negotiated with the government of Colombia, sometimes threatening to take
the project away and build through Nicaragua, until Colombia agreed to a treaty that would grant
the United States a lease on the land across Panama in exchange for a payment of $10 million and an
additional $250,000 annual rental fee. The matter was far from settled, however. The Colombian people
were outraged over the loss of their land to the United States, and saw the payment as far too low.
Influenced by the public outcry, the Colombian Senate rejected the treaty and informed Roosevelt there
would be no canal.

Undaunted, Roosevelt chose to now wield the “big stick.” In comments to journalists, he made it clear
that the United States would strongly support the Panamanian people should they choose to revolt
against Colombia and form their own nation. In November 1903, he even sent American battleships to
the coast of Colombia, ostensibly for practice maneuvers, as the Panamanian revolution unfolded. The
warships effectively blocked Colombia from moving additional troops into the region to quell the growing
Panamanian uprising. Within a week, Roosevelt immediately recognized the new country of Panama,
welcoming them to the world community and offering them the same terms—$10 million plus the annual
$250,000 rental fee—he had previously offered Colombia. Following the successful revolution, Panama
became an American protectorate, and remained so until 1939.

Once the Panamanian victory was secured, with American support, construction on the canal began in
May 1904. For the first year of operations, the United States worked primarily to build adequate housing,
cafeterias, warehouses, machine shops, and other elements of infrastructure that previous French efforts
had failed to consider. Most importantly, the introduction of fumigation systems and mosquito nets
following Dr. Walter Reed’s discovery of the role of mosquitoes in the spread of malaria and yellow fever
reduced the death rate and restored the fledgling morale among workers and American-born supervisors.
At the same time, a new wave of American engineers planned for the construction of the canal. Even
though they decided to build a lock-system rather than a sea-level canal, workers still had to excavate
over 170 million cubic yards of earth with the use of over one hundred new rail-mounted steam shovels
(Figure 22.15). Excited by the work, Roosevelt became the first sitting U.S. president to conduct an official
international trip. He traveled to Panama where he visited the construction site, taking a turn at the steam
shovel and removing dirt. The canal opened in 1914, permanently changing world trade and military
defense patterns.

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Figure 22.15 Recurring landslides made the excavation of the Culebra Cut one of the most technically challenging
elements in the construction of the Panama Canal.

This timeline of the Panama Canal (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
americanexperience/features/panama-canal-creating-canal/) illustrates the efforts
involved in both the French and U.S. canal projects.

THE ROOSEVELT COROLLARY

With the construction of the canal now underway, Roosevelt next wanted to send a clear message to the
rest of the world—and in particular to his European counterparts—that the colonization of the Western
Hemisphere had now ended, and their interference in the countries there would no longer be tolerated.
At the same time, he sent a message to his counterparts in Central and South America, should the United
States see problems erupt in the region, that it would intervene in order to maintain peace and stability
throughout the hemisphere.

Roosevelt articulated this seeming double standard in a 1904 address before Congress, in a speech that
became known as the Roosevelt Corollary. The Roosevelt Corollary was based on the original Monroe
Doctrine of the early nineteenth century, which warned European nations of the consequences of their
interference in the Caribbean. In this addition, Roosevelt states that the United States would use military
force “as an international police power” to correct any “chronic wrongdoing” by any Latin American
nation that might threaten stability in the region. Unlike the Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed an
American policy of noninterference with its neighbors’ affairs, the Roosevelt Corollary loudly proclaimed
the right and obligation of the United States to involve itself whenever necessary.

Roosevelt immediately began to put the new corollary to work. He used it to establish protectorates over
Cuba and Panama, as well as to direct the United States to manage the Dominican Republic’s custom
service revenues. Despite growing resentment from neighboring countries over American intervention
in their internal affairs, as well as European concerns from afar, knowledge of Roosevelt’s previous

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actions in Colombia concerning acquisition of land upon which to build the Panama Canal left many
fearful of American reprisals should they resist. Eventually, Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin
Roosevelt softened American rhetoric regarding U.S. domination of the Western Hemisphere, with the
latter proclaiming a new “Good Neighbor Policy” that renounced American intervention in other nations’
affairs. However, subsequent presidents would continue to reference aspects of the

Roosevelt Corollary

to justify American involvement in Haiti, Nicaragua, and other nations throughout the twentieth century.
The map below (Figure 22.16) shows the widespread effects of Roosevelt’s policies throughout Latin
America.

Figure 22.16 From underwriting a revolution in Panama with the goal of building a canal to putting troops in Cuba,
Roosevelt vastly increased the U.S. impact in Latin America.

DEFINING “AMERICAN”

The Roosevelt Corollary and Its Impact
In 1904, Roosevelt put the United States in the role of the “police power” of the Western Hemisphere and
set a course for the U.S. relationship with Central and Latin America that played out over the next several
decades. He did so with the Roosevelt Corollary, in which he stated:

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards
the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save as such are for their welfare. All that
this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any
country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. . .
. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of
civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, require intervention by some civilized nation,
and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine
may force the United States, however, reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”

In the twenty years after he made this statement, the United States would use military force in Latin
America over a dozen times. The Roosevelt Corollary was used as a rationale for American involvement
in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Haiti, and other Latin American countries, straining relations
between Central America and its dominant neighbor to the north throughout the twentieth century.

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AMERICAN INTERVENTION IN THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

Although he supported the Open Door notes as an excellent economic policy in China, Roosevelt lamented
the fact that the United States had no strong military presence in the region to enforce it. Clearly, without
a military presence there, he could not as easily use his “big stick” threat credibly to achieve his foreign
policy goals. As a result, when conflicts did arise on the other side of the Pacific, Roosevelt adopted a
policy of maintaining a balance of power among the nations there. This was particularly evident when the
Russo-Japanese War erupted in 1904.

In 1904, angered by the massing of Russian troops along the Manchurian border, and the threat it
represented to the region, Japan launched a surprise naval attack upon the Russian fleet. Initially,
Roosevelt supported the Japanese position. However, when the Japanese fleet quickly achieved victory
after victory, Roosevelt grew concerned over the growth of Japanese influence in the region and the
continued threat that it represented to China and American access to those markets (Figure 22.17).
Wishing to maintain the aforementioned balance of power, in 1905, Roosevelt arranged for diplomats
from both nations to attend a secret peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The resultant
negotiations secured peace in the region, with Japan gaining control over Korea, several former Russian
bases in Manchuria, and the southern half of Sakhalin Island. These negotiations also garnered the Nobel
Peace Prize for Roosevelt, the first American to receive the award.

Figure 22.17 Japan’s defense against Russia was supported by President Roosevelt, but when Japan’s ongoing
victories put the United States’ own Asian interests at risk, he stepped in.

When Japan later exercised its authority over its gains by forcing American business interests out of
Manchuria in 1906–1907, Roosevelt felt he needed to invoke his “big stick” foreign policy, even though the
distance was great. He did so by sending the U.S. Great White Fleet on maneuvers in the western Pacific
Ocean as a show of force from December 1907 through February 1909. Publicly described as a goodwill
tour, the message to the Japanese government regarding American interests was equally clear. Subsequent
negotiations reinforced the Open Door policy throughout China and the rest of Asia. Roosevelt had, by
both the judicious use of the “big stick” and his strategy of maintaining a balance of power, kept U.S.
interests in Asia well protected.

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Browse the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/
RooseveltIcon) to follow Theodore Roosevelt from Rough Rider to president and
beyond.

22.5 Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy”

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain how William Howard Taft used American economic power to protect the

nation’s interests in its new empire

When William Howard Taft became president in 1909, he chose to adapt Roosevelt’s foreign policy
philosophy to one that reflected American economic power at the time. In what became known as “dollar
diplomacy,” Taft announced his decision to “substitute dollars for bullets” in an effort to use foreign policy
to secure markets and opportunities for American businessmen (Figure 22.18). Not unlike Roosevelt’s
threat of force, Taft used the threat of American economic clout to coerce countries into agreements to
benefit the United States.

Figure 22.18 Although William Howard Taft was Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor to the presidency, he
was less inclined to use Roosevelt’s “big stick,” choosing instead to use the economic might of the United States to
influence foreign affairs.

Of key interest to Taft was the debt that several Central American nations still owed to various countries in
Europe. Fearing that the debt holders might use the monies owed as leverage to use military intervention
in the Western Hemisphere, Taft moved quickly to pay off these debts with U.S. dollars. Of course,
this move made the Central American countries indebted to the United States, a situation that not all

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http://openstaxcollege.org/l/RooseveltIcon

nations wanted. When a Central American nation resisted this arrangement, however, Taft responded with
military force to achieve the objective. This occurred in Nicaragua when the country refused to accept
American loans to pay off its debt to Great Britain. Taft sent a warship with marines to the region to
pressure the government to agree. Similarly, when Mexico considered the idea of allowing a Japanese
corporation to gain significant land and economic advantages in its country, Taft urged Congress to pass
the Lodge Corollary, an addendum to the Roosevelt Corollary, stating that no foreign corporation—other
than American ones—could obtain strategic lands in the Western Hemisphere.

In Asia, Taft’s policies also followed those of Theodore Roosevelt. He attempted to bolster China’s ability
to withstand Japanese interference and thereby maintain a balance of power in the region. Initially, he
experienced tremendous success in working with the Chinese government to further develop the railroad
industry in that country through arranging international financing. However, efforts to expand the Open
Door policy deeper into Manchuria met with resistance from Russia and Japan, exposing the limits of
the American government’s influence and knowledge about the intricacies of diplomacy. As a result, he
reorganized the U.S. State Department to create geographical divisions (such as the Far East Division, the
Latin American Division, etc.) in order to develop greater foreign policy expertise in each area.

Taft’s policies, although not as based on military aggression as his predecessors, did create difficulties
for the United States, both at the time and in the future. Central America’s indebtedness would create
economic concerns for decades to come, as well as foster nationalist movements in countries resentful
of American’s interference. In Asia, Taft’s efforts to mediate between China and Japan served only to
heighten tensions between Japan and the United States. Furthermore, it did not succeed in creating a
balance of power, as Japan’s reaction was to further consolidate its power and reach throughout the region.

As Taft’s presidency came to a close in early 1913, the United States was firmly entrenched on its
path towards empire. The world perceived the United States as the predominant power of the Western
Hemisphere—a perception that few nations would challenge until the Soviet Union during the Cold War
era. Likewise, the United States had clearly marked its interests in Asia, although it was still searching for
an adequate approach to guard and foster them. The development of an American empire had introduced
with it several new approaches to American foreign policy, from military intervention to economic
coercion to the mere threat of force.

The playing field would change one year later in 1914 when the United States witnessed the unfolding
of World War I, or “the Great War.” A new president would attempt to adopt a new approach to
diplomacy—one that was well-intentioned but at times impractical. Despite Woodrow Wilson’s best
efforts to the contrary, the United States would be drawn into the conflict and subsequently attempt to
reshape the world order as a result.

Read this brief biography of President Taft (https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/
presidents/williamhowardtaft) to understand his foreign policy in the context of his
presidency.

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Anti-Imperialist League

dollar diplomacy

Frontier Thesis

Open Door notes

Roosevelt Corollary

Rough Riders

Seward’s Folly

sphere of influence

yellow journalism

Key Terms

a group of diverse and prominent Americans who banded together in 1898 to
protest the idea of American empire building

Taft’s foreign policy, which involved using American economic power to push for
favorable foreign policies

an idea proposed by Fredrick Jackson Turner, which stated that the encounter of
European traditions and a native wilderness was integral to the development of

American democracy, individualism, and innovative character

the circular notes sent by Secretary of State Hay claiming that there should be “open
doors” in China, allowing all countries equal and total access to all markets, ports, and

railroads without any special considerations from the Chinese authorities; while ostensibly leveling the
playing field, this strategy greatly benefited the United States

a statement by Theodore Roosevelt that the United States would use military force
to act as an international police power and correct any chronic wrongdoing by any

Latin American nation threatening the stability of the region

Theodore Roosevelt’s cavalry unit, which fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American
War

the pejorative name given by the press to Secretary of State Seward’s acquisition of
Alaska in 1867

the goal of foreign countries such as Japan, Russia, France, and Germany to carve
out an area of the Chinese market that they could exploit through tariff and

transportation agreements

sensationalist newspapers who sought to manufacture news stories in order to sell
more papers

Summary
22.1 Turner, Mahan, and the Roots of Empire
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, after the Civil War, the United States pivoted from a
profoundly isolationist approach to a distinct zeal for American expansion. The nation’s earlier
isolationism originated from the deep scars left by the Civil War and its need to recover both economically
and mentally from that event. But as the industrial revolution changed the way the country worked
and the American West reached its farthest point, American attitudes toward foreign expansion shifted.
Businesses sought new markets to export their factory-built goods, oil, and tobacco products, as well as
generous trade agreements to secure access to raw materials. Early social reformers saw opportunities to
spread Christian gospel and the benefits of American life to those in less developed nations. With the
rhetoric of Fredrick J. Turner and the strategies of Alfred Mahan underpinning the desire for expansion
abroad, the country moved quickly to ready itself for the creation of an American empire.

22.2 The Spanish-American War and Overseas Empire
In the wake of the Civil War, American economic growth combined with the efforts of Evangelist
missionaries to push for greater international influence and overseas presence. By confronting Spain over
its imperial rule in Cuba, the United States took control of valuable territories in Central America and the

Chapter 22 | Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914 657

Pacific. For the United States, the first step toward becoming an empire was a decisive military one. By
engaging with Spain, the United States was able to gain valuable territories in Latin America and Asia, as
well as send a message to other global powers. The untested U.S. Navy proved superior to the Spanish
fleet, and the military strategists who planned the war in the broader context of empire caught the Spanish
by surprise. The annexation of the former Spanish colonies of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines,
combined with the acquisition of Hawaii, Samoa, and Wake Island, positioned the United States as the
predominant world power in the South Pacific and the Caribbean. While some prominent figures in the
United States vehemently disagreed with the idea of American empire building, their concerns were
overruled by an American public—and a government—that understood American power overseas as a
form of prestige, prosperity, and progress.

22.3 Economic Imperialism in East Asia
The United States shifted from isolationism to empire building with its involvement—and victory—in the
Spanish-American War. But at the same time, the country sought to expand its reach through another
powerful tool: its economic clout. The Industrial Revolution gave American businesses an edge in
delivering high-quality products at lowered costs, and the pursuit of an “open door” policy with China
opened new markets to American goods. This trade agreement allowed the United States to continue to
build power through economic advantage.

22.4 Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” Foreign Policy
When Roosevelt succeeded McKinley as president, he implemented a key strategy for building an
American empire: the threat, rather than the outright use, of military force. McKinley had engaged the
U.S. military in several successful skirmishes and then used the country’s superior industrial power to
negotiate beneficial foreign trade agreements. Roosevelt, with his “big stick” policy, was able to keep
the United States out of military conflicts by employing the legitimate threat of force. Nonetheless, as
negotiations with Japan illustrated, the maintenance of an empire was fraught with complexity. Changing
alliances, shifting economic needs, and power politics all meant that the United States would need to tread
carefully to maintain its status as a world power.

22.5 Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy”
All around the globe, Taft sought to use U.S. economic might as a lever in foreign policy. He relied less
on military action, or the threat of such action, than McKinley or Roosevelt before him; however, he both
threatened and used military force when economic coercion proved unsuccessful, as it did in his bid to
pay off Central America’s debts with U.S. dollars. In Asia, Taft tried to continue to support the balance of
power, but his efforts backfired and alienated Japan. Increasing tensions between the United States and
Japan would finally explode nearly thirty years later, with the outbreak of World War II.

Review Questions
1. Why did the United States express limited
interest in overseas expansion in the 1860s and
1870s?

A. fear of attacks on their borders
B. post-Civil War reconstruction
C. the Anti-Imperialist League
D. Manifest Destiny

2. Which of the following did Mahan not believe
was needed to build an American empire?

A. a navy
B. military bases around the world
C. the reopening of the American frontier
D. a canal through Central America

3. Why were the Midway Islands important to
American expansion?

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4. Which is not one of the reasons the Anti-
Imperial League gave for opposing the creation of
an American empire?

A. fear of competition from foreign workers
B. fear that the United States would suffer a

foreign invasion
C. concerns about the integration of other

races
D. concerns that empire building ran counter

to American democratic principles

5. What was the role of the Taft Commission?

6. What challenges did the U.S. military have to
overcome in the Spanish-American War? What
accounted for the nation’s eventual victory?

7. How did Hay’s suggestion of an open door
policy in China benefit the United States over
other nations?

A. The United States produced goods of better
quality and lower cost than other countries.

B. The United States enjoyed a historically
stronger relationship with the Chinese
government.

C. The United States was the only nation
granted permission to collect taxes on the
goods it traded within China’s borders.

D. The United States controlled more foreign
ports than other countries.

8. How did the Boxer Rebellion strengthen
American ties with China?

A. The United States supported the rebels and
gained their support.

B. The United States provided troops to fight
the rebels.

C. The United States sent arms and financial
support to the Chinese government.

D. The United States thwarted attempts by
Great Britain and Germany to fortify the
rebels.

9. How does the “Open Door notes” episode
represent a new, nonmilitary tactic in the
expansion of the American empire?

10. How did Colombia react to the United States’
proposal to construct a canal through Central
America?

A. They preferred to build such a canal
themselves.

B. They preferred that no canal be built at all.
C. They agreed to sell land to the United States

to build the canal, but in a less
advantageous location than the
Panamanians.

D. They felt that Roosevelt’s deal offered too
little money.

11. With the Roosevelt Corollary, Roosevelt
sought to establish ________.

A. the consequences for any European nation
that involved itself in Latin American
affairs

B. the right of the United States to involve
itself in Latin American affairs whenever
necessary

C. the idea that Latin America was free and
independent from foreign intervention

D. the need for further colonization efforts in
the Western Hemisphere

12. Compare Roosevelt’s foreign policy in Latin
America and Asia. Why did he employ these
different methods?

13. Why did some Central American nations
object to Taft’s paying off their debt to Europe
with U.S. dollars?

A. because American currency wasn’t worth
as much as local currencies

B. because they felt it gave the United States
too much leverage

C. because they were forced to give land
grants to the United States in return

D. because they wanted Asian countries to pay
off their debts instead

14. What two countries were engaged in a
negotiation that the Lodge Corollary disallowed?

A. Mexico and Japan
B. Nicaragua and France
C. Colombia and Japan
D. Mexico and Spain

15. What problems did Taft’s foreign policy
create for the United States?

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Critical Thinking Questions
16. Describe the United States’ movement from isolationism to expansion-mindedness in the final decades
of the nineteenth century. What ideas and philosophies underpinned this transformation?

17. What specific forces or interests transformed the relationship between the United States and the rest
of the world between 1865 and 1890?

18. How did Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” differ from Roosevelt’s “big stick” policy? Was one approach more
or less successful than the other? How so?

19. What economic and political conditions had to exist for Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” to be effective?

20. What factors conspired to propel the United States to emerge as a military and economic powerhouse
prior to World War II?

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Chapter 22. Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, 1890-1914

22.1. Turner, Mahan, and the Roots of Empire*

22.2. The Spanish-American War and Overseas Empire*

22.3. Economic Imperialism in East Asia*

22.4. Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” Foreign Policy*

22.5. Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy”*

Glossary

CHAPTER 21

Leading the Way: The Progressive
Movement, 1890-1920

Figure 21.1 The western states were the first to allow women the right to vote, a freedom that grew out of the less
deeply entrenched gendered spheres in the region. This illustration, from 1915, shows a suffragist holding a torch
over the western states and inviting the beckoning women from the rest of the country to join her.

Chapter Outline

21.1 The Origins of the Progressive Spirit in America

21.2 Progressivism at the Grassroots Level

21.3 New Voices for Women and African Americans

21.4 Progressivism in the White

House

Introduction

Women’s suffrage was one of many causes that emerged in the Progressive Era, as Americans confronted
the numerous challenges of the late nineteenth century. Starting in the late 1800s, women increasingly were
working outside the home—a task almost always done for money, not empowerment—as well as pursuing
higher education, both at universities that were beginning to allow women to enroll and at female-only
schools. Often, it was educated middle-class women with more time and resources that took up causes
such as child labor and family health. As more women led new organizations or institutions, such as the
settlement houses, they grew to have a greater voice on issues of social change. By the turn of the century, a
strong movement had formed to advocate for a woman’s right to vote. For three decades, suffragist groups
pushed for legislation to give women the right to vote in every state. As the illustration above shows
(Figure 21.1), the western states were the first to grant women the right to vote; it would not be until 1920
that the nation would extend that right to all women.

Chapter 21 | Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920 601

21.1 The Origins of the Progressive Spirit in America

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the role that muckrakers played in catalyzing the Progressive Era
• Explain the main features of

Progressivism

The Progressive Era was a time of wide-ranging causes and varied movements, where activists and
reformers from diverse backgrounds and with very different agendas pursued their goals of a better
America. These reformers were reacting to the challenges that faced the country at the end of the
nineteenth century: rapid urban sprawl, immigration, corruption, industrial working conditions, the
growth of large corporations, women’s rights, and surging anti-black violence and white supremacy in
the South. Investigative journalists of the day uncovered social inequality and encouraged Americans to
take action. The campaigns of the Progressives were often grassroots in their origin. While different causes
shared some underlying elements, each movement largely focused on its own goals, be it the right of
women to vote, the removal of alcohol from communities, or the desire for a more democratic voting
process.

THE MUCKRAKERS

A group of journalists and writers collectively known as muckrakers provided an important spark
that ignited the Progressive movement. Unlike the “yellow journalists” who were interested only in
sensationalized articles designed to sell newspapers, muckrakers exposed problems in American society
and urged the public to identify solutions. Whether those problems were associated with corrupt machine
politics, poor working conditions in factories, or the questionable living conditions of the working class
(among others), muckrakers shined a light on the problem and provoked outraged responses from
Americans. President Theodore Roosevelt knew many of these investigative journalists well and
considered himself a Progressive. Yet, unhappy with the way they forced agendas into national politics,
he was the one who first gave them the disparaging nickname “muckrakers,” invoking an ill-spirited

Figure 21.2

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character obsessed with filth from The Pilgrim’s Progress, a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan.

Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, these Progressive journalists sought to expose
critical social problems and exhort the public to take action. In his book, How the Other Half Lives (1890),
journalist and photographer Jacob Riis used photojournalism to capture the dismal and dangerous living
conditions in working-class tenements in New York City (Figure 21.3). Ida Tarbell, perhaps the most
well-known female muckraker, wrote a series of articles on the dangers of John D. Rockefeller’s powerful
monopoly, Standard Oil. Her articles followed Henry Demarest Lloyd’s book, Wealth Against
Commonwealth, published in 1894, which examined the excesses of Standard Oil. Other writers, like Lincoln
Steffens, explored corruption in city politics, or, like Ray Standard Baker, researched unsafe working
conditions and low pay in the coal mines.

Figure 21.3 Jacob Riis’s images of New York City slums in the late nineteenth century, such as this 1890
photograph of children sleeping in Mulberry Street, exposed Americans all over the country to the living conditions of
the urban poor.

The work of the muckrakers not only revealed serious problems in American society, but also agitated,
often successfully, for change. Their articles, in magazines such as McClure’s, as well as books garnered
attention for issues such as child labor, anti-trust, big business break-ups, and health and safety.
Progressive activists took up these causes and lobbied for legislation to address some of the ills troubling
industrial America.

To learn more about one of the most influential muckrakers of the late nineteenth
century, peruse the photographs, writings, and more at the Ida M. Tarbell archives
(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/tarbell) that are housed at Tarbell’s alma mater,
Allegheny College, where she matriculated in 1876 as the only woman in her class.

THE FEATURES OF PROGRESSIVISM

Muckrakers drew public attention to some of the most glaring inequities and scandals that grew out of
the social ills of the Gilded Age and the hands-off approach of the federal government since the end

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of Reconstruction. These writers by and large addressed a white, middle-class and elite, native-born
audience, even though Progressive movements and organizations involved a diverse range of Americans.
What united these Progressives beyond their different backgrounds and causes was a set of uniting
principles, however. Most strove for a perfection of democracy, which required the expansion of suffrage
to worthy citizens and the restriction of political participation for those considered “unfit” on account of
health, education, or race. Progressives also agreed that democracy had to be balanced with an emphasis
on efficiency, a reliance on science and technology, and deference to the expertise of professionals. They
repudiated party politics but looked to government to regulate the modern market economy. And they
saw themselves as the agents of social justice and reform, as well as the stewards and guides of workers
and the urban poor. Often, reformers’ convictions and faith in their own expertise led them to dismiss the
voices of the very people they sought to help.

The expressions of these Progressive principles developed at the grassroots level. It was not until Theodore
Roosevelt unexpectedly became president in 1901 that the federal government would engage in
Progressive reforms. Before then, Progressivism was work done by the people, for the people. What knit
Progressives together was the feeling that the country was moving at a dangerous pace in a dangerous
direction and required the efforts of everyday Americans to help put it back on track.

21.2 Progressivism at the Grassroots Level

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify specific examples of grassroots Progressivism relating to the spread of

democracy, efficiency in government, and social justice
• Describe the more radical movements associated with the Progressive Era

A wide variety of causes fell under the Progressive label. For example, Wisconsin’s Robert M. (“Fighting
Bob”) La Follette, one of the most Progressive politicians of his day, fought hard to curb the power of
special interests in politics and reform the democratic process at state and local levels. Others sought out
safer working conditions for factory workers. Different groups prioritized banning the sale of alcohol,
which, they believed, was the root of much of the trouble for the working poor. No matter what the
cause, Progressive campaigns often started with issues brought to the public’s attention by muckraking
journalists.

EXPANDING DEMOCRACY

One of the key ideals that Progressives considered vital to the growth and health of the country was the
concept of a perfected democracy. They felt, quite simply, that Americans needed to exert more control
over their government. This shift, they believed, would ultimately lead to a system of government that
was better able to address the needs of its citizens. Grassroots Progressives pushed forward their agenda
of direct democracy through the passage of three state-level reforms.

The first law involved the creation of the direct primary. Prior to this time, the only people who had a
hand in selecting candidates for elections were delegates at conventions. Direct primaries allowed party
members to vote directly for a candidate, with the nomination going to the one with the most votes. This
was the beginning of the current system of holding a primary election before a general election. South
Carolina adopted this system for statewide elections in 1896; in 1901, Florida became the first state to use
the direct primary in nominations for the presidency. It is the method currently used in three-quarters of
U.S. states.

Another series of reforms pushed forward by Progressives that sought to sidestep the power of special
interests in state legislatures and restore the democratic political process were three election

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innovations—the initiative, referendum, and recall. The first permitted voters to enact legislation by
petitioning to place an idea, or initiative, on the ballot. In 1898, South Dakota became the first state to allow
initiatives to appear on a ballot. By 1920, twenty states had adopted the procedure. The second innovation
allowed voters to counteract legislation by holding a referendum—that is, putting an existing law on the
ballot for voters to either affirm or reject. Currently twenty-four states allow some form of initiative and
referendum. The third element of this direct democracy agenda was the recall. The recall permitted citizens
to remove a public official from office through a process of petition and vote, similar to the initiative and
referendum. While this measure was not as widely adopted as the others, Oregon, in 1910, became the
first state to allow recalls. By 1920, twelve states had adopted this tool. It has only been used successfully
a handful of times on the statewide level, for example, to remove the governor of North Dakota in 1921,
and, more recently, the governor of California in 2003.

Progressives also pushed for democratic reform that affected the federal government. In an effort to
achieve a fairer representation of state constituencies in the U.S. Congress, they lobbied for approval of
the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which mandated the direct election of U.S. senators.
The Seventeenth Amendment replaced the previous system of having state legislatures choose senators.
William Jennings Bryan, the 1896 Democratic presidential candidate who received significant support
from the Populist Party, was among the leading Progressives who championed this cause.

EXPERTISE AND EFFICIENCY

In addition to making government more directly accountable to the voters, Progressives also fought to rid
politics of inefficiency, waste, and corruption. Progressives in large cities were particularly frustrated with
the corruption and favoritism of machine politics, which wasted enormous sums of taxpayer money and
ultimately stalled the progress of cities for the sake of entrenched politicians, like the notorious Democratic
Party Boss William Tweed in New York’s Tammany Hall. Progressives sought to change this corrupt
system and had success in places like Galveston, Texas, where, in 1901, they pushed the city to adopt
a commission system. A hurricane the previous year (Figure 21.4) had led to the collapse of the old
city government, which had proved incapable of leading the city through the natural disaster. The storm
claimed over eight thousand lives—the highest death toll from a natural disaster in the history of the
country—and afterwards, the community had no faith that the existing government could rebuild. The
commission system involved the election of a number of commissioners, each responsible for one specific
operation of the city, with titles like water commissioner, fire commissioner, police commissioner, and so
on. With no single political “boss” in charge, the prevalence of graft and corruption greatly decreased. The
commissioner system is widely used in modern cities throughout the United States.

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Figure 21.4 The 1900 hurricane in Galveston, Texas, claimed more lives than any other natural disaster in American
history. In its wake, fearing that the existing corrupt and inefficient government was not up to the job of rebuilding, the
remaining residents of the town adopted the commission system of local government.

Another model of municipal government reform took shape in Staunton, Virginia, in 1908, where the
citizens switched to the city manager form of government. Designed to avoid the corruption inherent
in political machines, the city manager system separated the daily operations of the city from both the
electoral process and political parties. In this system, citizens elected city councilors who would pass laws
and handle all legislative issues. However, their first job was to hire a city manager to deal with the daily
management operation of the city. This person, unlike the politicians, was an engineer or businessman
who understood the practical elements of city operations and oversaw city workers. Currently, over thirty-
seven hundred cities have adopted the city manager system, including some of the largest cities in the
country, such as Austin, Dallas, and Phoenix.

At the state level, perhaps the greatest advocate of Progressive government was Robert La Follette (Figure
21.5). During his time as governor, from 1901 through 1906, La Follette introduced the Wisconsin Idea,
wherein he hired experts to research and advise him in drafting legislation to improve conditions in
his state. “Fighting Bob” supported numerous Progressive ideas while governor: He signed into law the
first workman’s compensation system, approved a minimum wage law, developed a progressive tax law,
adopted the direct election of U.S. senators before the subsequent constitutional amendment made it
mandatory, and advocated for women’s suffrage. La Follette subsequently served as a popular U.S. senator
from Wisconsin from 1906 through 1925, and ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1924.

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Figure 21.5 An energetic speaker and tireless Progressive, Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette turned the
state of Wisconsin into a flagship for democratic reform.

Read how Robert La Follette’s legacy (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/follette) still
inspires progressives in Wisconsin.

Many Progressive reformers were also committed to the principle of efficiency in business as well as in
government. The growth of large corporations at the time fostered the emergence of a class of professional
managers. Fredrick Winslow Taylor, arguably the first American management consultant, laid out his
argument of increased industrial efficiency through improvements in human productivity in his book
The Principles of Scientific Management (1911). Through time-motion studies and the principles of
standardization, Taylor sought to place workers in the most efficient positions of the industrial process.
Management, he argued, should determine the work routine, leaving workers to simply execute the task
at hand. The image below (Figure 21.6) shows a machinist in a factory where Taylor had consulted; he is
alone and focused solely on his job. Progressive in its emphasis on efficiency, the use of science, and the
reliance on experts, Taylorism, as scientific management became known, was not widely popular among
workers who resented managerial authority and the loss of autonomy over their work. Many workers
went on strikes in response, although some favored Taylor’s methods, since their pay was directly linked
to the productivity increases that his methods achieved and since increased efficiency allowed companies
to charge consumers lower prices.

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Figure 21.6 This machinist works alone in a factory that adopted Taylorism, the scientific time management principle
that sought to bring ultimate efficiency to factories. Many workers found the focus on repetitive tasks to be
dehumanizing and unpleasant.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Progressives’ work towards social justice took many forms. In some cases, it was focused on those
who suffered due to pervasive inequality, such as African Americans, other ethnic groups, and women.
In others, the goal was to help those who were in desperate need due to circumstance, such as poor
immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who often suffered severe discrimination, the working
poor, and those with ill health. Women were in the vanguard of social justice reform. Jane Addams, Lillian
Wald, and Ellen Gates Starr, for example, led the settlement house movement of the 1880s (discussed in
a previous chapter). Their work to provide social services, education, and health care to working-class
women and their children was among the earliest Progressive grassroots efforts in the country.

Building on the successes of the settlement houses, social justice reformers took on other, related
challenges. The National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), formed in 1904, urged the passage of labor
legislation to ban child labor in the industrial sector. In 1900, U.S. census records indicated that one out of
every six children between the ages of five and ten were working, a 50-percent increase over the previous
decade. If the sheer numbers alone were not enough to spur action, the fact that managers paid child
workers noticeably less for their labor gave additional fuel to the NCLC’s efforts to radically curtail child
labor. The committee employed photographer Lewis Hine to engage in a decade-long pictorial campaign
to educate Americans on the plight of children working in factories (Figure 21.7).

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Figure 21.7 As part of the National Child Labor Committee’s campaign to raise awareness about the plight of child
laborers, Lewis Hine photographed dozens of children in factories around the country, including Addie Card (a), a
twelve-year-old spinner working in a mill in Vermont in 1910, and these young boys working at Bibb Mill No. 1 in
Macon, Georgia in 1909 (b). Working ten- to twelve-hour shifts, children often worked large machines where they
could reach into gaps and remove lint and other debris, a practice that caused plenty of injuries. (credit a/b:
modification of work by Library of Congress)

Although low-wage industries fiercely opposed any federal restriction on child labor, the NCLC did
succeed in 1912, urging President William Howard Taft to sign into law the creation of the U.S. Children’s
Bureau. As a branch of the Department of Labor, the bureau worked closely with the NCLC to bring
greater awareness to the issue of child labor. In 1916, the pressure from the NCLC and the general public
resulted in the passage of the Keating-Owen Act, which prohibited the interstate trade of any goods
produced with child labor. Although the U.S. Supreme Court later declared the law unconstitutional,
Keating-Owen reflected a significant shift in the public perception of child labor. Finally, in 1938, the
passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act signaled the victory of supporters of Keating-Owen. This new law
outlawed the interstate trade of any products produced by children under the age of sixteen.

Florence Kelley, a Progressive supporter of the NCLC, championed other social justice causes as well. As
the first general secretary of the National Consumers League, which was founded in 1899 by Jane Addams
and others, Kelley led one of the original battles to try and secure safety in factory working conditions. She
particularly opposed sweatshop labor and urged the passage of an eight-hour-workday law in order to
specifically protect women in the workplace. Kelley’s efforts were initially met with strong resistance from
factory owners who exploited women’s labor and were unwilling to give up the long hours and low wages
they paid in order to offer the cheapest possible product to consumers. But in 1911, a tragedy turned the
tide of public opinion in favor of Kelley’s cause. On March 25 of that year, a fire broke out at the Triangle
Shirtwaist Company on the eighth floor of the Asch building in New York City, resulting in the deaths of
146 garment workers, most of them young, immigrant women (Figure 21.8). Management had previously
blockaded doors and fire escapes in an effort to control workers and keep out union organizers; in the
blaze, many died due to the crush of bodies trying to evacuate the building. Others died when they fell off
the flimsy fire escape or jumped to their deaths to escape the flames. This tragedy provided the National
Consumers League with the moral argument to convince politicians of the need to pass workplace safety
laws and codes.

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Figure 21.8 On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Despite the
efforts of firefighters, 146 workers died in the fire, mostly because the owners had trapped them on the sweatshop
floors.

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MY STORY

William Shepherd on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was a painful wake-up call to a country that was largely
ignoring issues of poor working conditions and worker health and safety. While this fire was far from the
only instance of worker death, the sheer number of people killed—almost one hundred fifty—and the fact
they were all young women, made a strong impression. Furthering the power of this tragedy was the
first-hand account shared by William Shepherd, a United Press reporter who was on the scene, giving
his eyewitness account over a telephone. His account appeared, just two days later, in the Milwaukee
Journal, and word of the tragedy spread from there. Public outrage over their deaths was enough to give
the National Consumers League the power it needed to push politicians to get involved.

I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound—a
more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body
on a stone sidewalk.
Thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead.Sixty-two thud-deads. I call them that, because
the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was
plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.
The first ten thud-deads shocked me. I looked up—saw that there were scores of girls at the
windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces. Somehow I knew that
they, too, must come down. . . .
A policeman later went about with tags, which he fastened with wires to the wrists of the dead
girls, numbering each with a lead pencil, and I saw him fasten tag no. 54 to the wrist of a girl
who wore an engagement ring. A fireman who came downstairs from the building told me that
there were at least fifty bodies in the big room on the seventh floor. Another fireman told me
that more girls had jumped down an air shaft in the rear of the building. I went back there, into
the narrow court, and saw a heap of dead girls. . . .
The floods of water from the firemen’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.

What do you think about William Shepherd’s description? What effect do you think it had on newspaper
readers in the Midwest?

Another cause that garnered support from a key group of Progressives was the prohibition of liquor.
This crusade, which gained followers through the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and
the Anti-Saloon League, directly linked Progressivism with morality and Christian reform initiatives, and
saw in alcohol both a moral vice and a practical concern, as workingmen spent their wages on liquor
and saloons, often turning violent towards each other or their families at home. The WCTU and Anti-
Saloon League moved the efforts to eliminate the sale of alcohol from a bar-to-bar public opinion campaign
to one of city-to-city and state-by-state votes (Figure 21.9). Through local option votes and subsequent
statewide initiatives and referendums, the Anti-Saloon League succeeded in urging 40 percent of the
nation’s counties to “go dry” by 1906, and a full dozen states to do the same by 1909. Their political
pressure culminated in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1919,
which prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages nationwide.

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Figure 21.9 This John R. Chapin illustration shows the women of the temperance movement holding an open-air
prayer meeting outside an Ohio saloon. (credit: Library of Congress)

RADICAL PROGRESSIVES

The Progressive Era also witnessed a wave of radicalism, with leaders who believed that America was
beyond reform and that only a complete revolution of sorts would bring about the necessary changes.
The radicals had early roots in the labor and political movements of the mid-nineteenth century but
soon grew to feel that the more moderate Progressive ideals were inadequate. Conversely, one reason
mainstream why Progressives felt the need to succeed on issues of social inequity was because radicals
offered remedies that middle-class Americans considered far more dangerous. The two most prominent
radical movements to emerge at the beginning of the century were the Socialist Party of America (SPA),
founded in 1901, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), founded in 1905, whose emphasis on
worker empowerment deviated from the more paternalistic approach of Progressive reformers.

Labor leader Eugene Debs, disenchanted with the failures of the labor movement, was a founding member
and prominent leader of the SPA (Figure 21.10). Advocating for change via the ballot box, the SPA sought
to elect Socialists to positions at the local, state, and federal levels in order to initiate change from within.
Between 1901 and 1918, the SPA enjoyed tremendous success, electing over seventy Socialist mayors, over
thirty state legislators, and two U.S. congressmen, Victor Berger from Wisconsin and Meyer London from
New York. Debs himself ran for president as the SPA candidate in five elections between 1900 and 1920,
twice earning nearly one million votes.

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Figure 21.10 This image of Eugene Debs speaking to a crowd in Canton, Ohio, in 1918, illustrates the passion and
intensity that made him such a compelling figure to the more radical Progressives.

As had been true for the Populist and Progressive movements, the radical movement suffered numerous
fissures. Although Debs established a tenuous relationship with Samuel Gompers and the American
Federation of Labor, some within the Socialist Party favored a more radical political stance than Debs’s
craft union structure. As a result, William “Big Bill” Haywood formed the more radical IWW, or Wobblies,
in 1905. Although he remained an active member of the Socialist Party until 1919, Haywood appreciated
the outcry of the more radical arm of the party that desired an industrial union approach to labor
organization. The IWW advocated for direct action and, in particular, the general strike, as the most
effective revolutionary method to overthrow the capitalist system. By 1912, the Wobblies had played a
significant role in a number of major strikes, including the Paterson Silk Strike, the Lawrence Textile
Strike, and the Mesabi Range Iron Strike. The government viewed the Wobblies as a significant threat,
and in a response far greater than their actions warranted, targeted them with arrests, tar-and-featherings,
shootings, and lynchings.

Both the Socialist Party and the IWW reflected elements of the Progressive desire for democracy and social
justice. The difference was simply that for this small but vocal minority in the United States, the corruption
of government at all levels meant that the desire for a better life required a different approach. What they
sought mirrored the work of all grassroots Progressives, differing only in degree and strategy.

21.3 New Voices for Women and African Americans

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Understand the origins and growth of the women’s rights movement
• Identify the different strands of the early African American civil rights movement

The Progressive drive for a more perfect democracy and social justice also fostered the growth of two
new movements that attacked the oldest and most long-standing betrayals of the American promise of
equal opportunity and citizenship—the disfranchisement of women and civil rights for African Americans.
African Americans across the nation identified an agenda for civil rights and economic opportunity during
the Progressive Era, but they disagreed strongly on how to meet these goals in the face of universal
discrimination and disfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence in the South. And beginning in the

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late nineteenth century, the women’s movement cultivated a cadre of new leaders, national organizations,
and competing rationales for women’s rights—especially the right to vote.

LEADERS EMERGE IN THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Women like Jane Addams and Florence Kelley were instrumental in the early Progressive settlement house
movement, and female leaders dominated organizations such as the WCTU and the Anti-Saloon League.
From these earlier efforts came new leaders who, in their turn, focused their efforts on the key goal of the
Progressive Era as it pertained to women: the right to vote.

Women had first formulated their demand for the right to vote in the Declaration of Sentiments at a
convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and saw their first opportunity of securing suffrage during
Reconstruction when legislators—driven by racial animosity—sought to enfranchise women to counter the
votes of black men following the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. By 1900, the western frontier
states of Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming had already responded to women’s movements with the
right to vote in state and local elections, regardless of gender. They conceded to the suffragists’ demands,
partly in order to attract more women to these male-dominated regions. But women’s lives in the West also
rarely fit with the nineteenth-century ideology of “separate spheres” that had legitimized the exclusion of
women from the rough-and-tumble party competitions of public politics. In 1890, the National American
Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) organized several hundred state and local chapters to urge the
passage of a federal amendment to guarantee a woman’s right to vote. Its leaders, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony, were veterans of the women’s suffrage movement and had formulated the first
demand for the right to vote at Seneca Falls in 1848 (Figure 21.11). Under the subsequent leadership
of Carrie Chapman Catt, beginning in 1900, the group decided to make suffrage its first priority. Soon,
its membership began to grow. Using modern marketing efforts like celebrity endorsements to attract
a younger audience, the NAWSA became a significant political pressure group for the passage of an
amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Figure 21.11 Women suffragists in Ohio sought to educate and convince men that they should support a woman’s
rights to vote. As the feature below on the backlash against suffragists illustrates, it was a far from simple task.

For some in the NAWSA, however, the pace of change was too slow. Frustrated with the lack of response
by state and national legislators, Alice Paul, who joined the organization in 1912, sought to expand the
scope of the organization as well as to adopt more direct protest tactics to draw greater media attention.
When others in the group were unwilling to move in her direction, Paul split from the NAWSA to
create the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, later renamed the National Woman’s Party, in 1913.
Known as the Silent Sentinels (Figure 21.12), Paul and her group picketed outside the White House
for nearly two years, starting in 1917. In the latter stages of their protests, many women, including
Paul, were arrested and thrown in jail, where they staged a hunger strike as self-proclaimed political

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prisoners. Prison guards ultimately force-fed Paul to keep her alive. At a time—during World War
I—when women volunteered as army nurses, worked in vital defense industries, and supported Wilson’s
campaign to “make the world safe for democracy,” the scandalous mistreatment of Paul embarrassed
President Woodrow Wilson. Enlightened to the injustice toward all American women, he changed his
position in support of a woman’s constitutional right to vote.

Figure 21.12 Alice Paul and her Silent Sentinels picketed outside the White House for almost two years, and, when
arrested, went on hunger strike until they were force-fed in order to save their lives.

While Catt and Paul used different strategies, their combined efforts brought enough pressure to bear for
Congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibited voter discrimination on the basis of sex,
during a special session in the summer of 1919. Subsequently, the required thirty-six states approved its
adoption, with Tennessee doing so in August of 1920, in time for that year’s presidential election.

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DEFINING “AMERICAN”

The Anti-Suffragist Movement
The early suffragists may have believed that the right to vote was a universal one, but they faced waves of
discrimination and ridicule from both men and women. The image below (Figure 21.13) shows one of the
organizations pushing back against the suffragist movement, but much of the anti-suffrage campaign was
carried out through ridiculing postcards and signs that showed suffragists as sexually wanton, grasping,
irresponsible, or impossibly ugly. Men in anti-suffragist posters were depicted as henpecked, crouching
to clean the floor, while their suffragist wives marched out the door to campaign for the vote. They also
showed cartoons of women gambling, drinking, and smoking cigars, that is, taking on men’s vices, once
they gained voting rights.

Figure 21.13 The anti-suffrage group used ridicule and embarrassment to try and sway the public
away from supporting a woman’s right to vote.

Other anti-suffragists believed that women could better influence the country from outside the realm
of party politics, through their clubs, petitions, and churches. Many women also opposed women’s
suffrage because they thought the dirty world of politics was a morass to which ladies should not be
exposed. The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage formed in 1911; around the country,
state representatives used the organization’s speakers, funds, and literature to promote the anti-suffragist
cause. As the link below illustrates, the suffragists endured much prejudice and backlash in their push for
equal rights.

Browse this collection of anti-suffragist cartoons (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/
postcard) to see examples of the stereotypes and fear-mongering that the anti-
suffragist campaign promoted.

Click and Explore

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LEADERS EMERGE IN THE EARLY CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Racial mob violence against African Americans permeated much of the “New South”—and, to a lesser
extent, the West, where Mexican Americans and other immigrant groups also suffered severe
discrimination and violence—by the late nineteenth century. The Ku Klux Klan and a system of Jim Crow
laws governed much of the South (discussed in a previous chapter). White middle-class reformers were
appalled at the violence of race relations in the nation but typically shared the belief in racial characteristics
and the superiority of Anglo-Saxon whites over African Americans, Asians, “ethnic” Europeans, Indians,
and Latin American populations. Southern reformers considered segregation a Progressive solution to
racial violence; across the nation, educated middle-class Americans enthusiastically followed the work of
eugenicists who identified virtually all human behavior as inheritable traits and issued awards at county
fairs to families and individuals for their “racial fitness.” It was against this tide that African American
leaders developed their own voice in the Progressive Era, working along diverse paths to improve the lives
and conditions of African Americans throughout the country.

Born into slavery in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington became an influential African American leader
at the outset of the Progressive Era. In 1881, he became the first principal for the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute in Alabama, a position he held until he died in 1915. Tuskegee was an all-black “normal
school”—an old term for a teachers’ college—teaching African Americans a curriculum geared towards
practical skills such as cooking, farming, and housekeeping. Graduates would often then travel through
the South, teaching new farming and industrial techniques to rural communities. Washington extolled
the school’s graduates to focus on the black community’s self-improvement and prove that they were
productive members of society even in freedom—something white Americans throughout the nation had
always doubted.

In a speech delivered at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, which was meant
to promote the economy of a “New South,” Washington proposed what came to be known as the Atlanta
Compromise (Figure 21.14). Speaking to a racially mixed audience, Washington called upon African
Americans to work diligently for their own uplift and prosperity rather than preoccupy themselves with
political and civil rights. Their success and hard work, he implied, would eventually convince southern
whites to grant these rights. Not surprisingly, most whites liked Washington’s model of race relations,
since it placed the burden of change on blacks and required nothing of them. Wealthy industrialists
such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller provided funding for many of Washington’s self-help
programs, as did Sears, Roebuck & Co. co-founder Julius Rosenwald, and Washington was the first African
American invited to the White House by President Roosevelt in 1901. At the same time, his message also
appealed to many in the black community, and some attribute this widespread popularity to his consistent
message that social and economic growth, even within a segregated society, would do more for African
Americans than an all-out agitation for equal rights on all fronts.

Chapter 21 | Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920 617

Figure 21.14 In Booker T. Washington’s speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, he
urged his audience to “cast down your bucket where you are” and make friends with the people around them.

Visit George Mason University’s History Matters website for the text and audio of
Booker T. Washington’s famous Atlanta Compromise (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/
booker) speech.

Yet, many African Americans disagreed with Washington’s approach. Much in the same manner that
Alice Paul felt the pace of the struggle for women’s rights was moving too slowly under the NAWSA,
some within the African American community felt that immediate agitation for the rights guaranteed
under the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, established during the immediate aftermath
of the Civil War, was necessary. In 1905, a group of prominent civil rights leaders, led by W. E. B. Du
Bois, met in a small hotel on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls—where segregation laws did not bar
them from hotel accommodations—to discuss what immediate steps were needed for equal rights (Figure
21.15). Du Bois, a professor at the all-black Atlanta University and the first African American with a
doctorate from Harvard, emerged as the prominent spokesperson for what would later be dubbed the
Niagara Movement. By 1905, he had grown wary of Booker T. Washington’s calls for African Americans
to accommodate white racism and focus solely on self-improvement. Du Bois, and others alongside him,
wished to carve a more direct path towards equality that drew on the political leadership and litigation
skills of the black, educated elite, which he termed the “talented tenth.”

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Figure 21.15 This photo of the Niagara Movement shows W. E. B. Du Bois seated in the second row, center, in the
white hat. The proud and self-confident postures of this group stood in marked contrast to the humility that Booker T.
Washington urged of blacks.

At the meeting, Du Bois led the others in drafting the “Declaration of Principles,” which called for
immediate political, economic, and social equality for African Americans. These rights included universal
suffrage, compulsory education, and the elimination of the convict lease system in which tens of thousands
of blacks had endured slavery-like conditions in southern road construction, mines, prisons, and penal
farms since the end of Reconstruction. Within a year, Niagara chapters had sprung up in twenty-one states
across the country. By 1908, internal fights over the role of women in the fight for African American equal
rights lessened the interest in the Niagara Movement. But the movement laid the groundwork for the
creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909.
Du Bois served as the influential director of publications for the NAACP from its inception until 1933. As
the editor of the journal The Crisis, Du Bois had a platform to express his views on a variety of issues facing
African Americans in the later Progressive Era, as well as during World War I and its aftermath.

In both Washington and Du Bois, African Americans found leaders to push forward the fight for their
place in the new century, each with a very different strategy. Both men cultivated ground for a new
generation of African American spokespeople and leaders who would then pave the road to the modern
civil rights movement after World War II.

21.4 Progressivism in the White House

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Explain the key features of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal”
• Explain the key features of William Howard Taft’s Progressive agenda
• Identify the main pieces of legislation that Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” agenda

comprised

Progressive groups made tremendous strides on issues involving democracy, efficiency, and social justice.
But they found that their grassroots approach was ill-equipped to push back against the most powerful
beneficiaries of growing inequality, economic concentration, and corruption—big business. In their fight
against the trusts, Progressives needed the leadership of the federal government, and they found it in

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Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, through an accident of history.

In 1900, a sound economic recovery, a unifying victory in the Spanish-American War, and the annexation
of the Philippines had helped President William McKinley secure his reelection with the first solid popular
majority since 1872. His new vice president was former New York Governor and Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt. But when an assassin shot and killed President McKinley in 1901 (Figure
21.16) at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, Theodore Roosevelt unexpectedly became
the youngest president in the nation’s history. More importantly, it ushered in a new era of progressive
national politics and changed the role of the presidency for the twentieth century.

Figure 21.16 President William McKinley’s assassination (a) at the hands of an anarchist made Theodore Roosevelt
(b) the country’s youngest president.

BUSTING THE TRUSTS

Roosevelt’s early career showed him to be a dynamic leader with a Progressive agenda. Many Republican
Party leaders disliked Roosevelt’s Progressive ideas and popular appeal and hoped to end his career with
a nomination to the vice presidency—long considered a dead end in politics. When an assassin’s bullet
toppled this scheme, Mark Hanna, a prominent Republican senator and party leader, lamented, “Now
look! That damned cowboy is now president!”

As the new president, however, Roosevelt moved cautiously with his agenda while he finished out
McKinley’s term. Roosevelt kept much of McKinley’s cabinet intact, and his initial message to Congress
gave only one overriding Progressive goal for his presidency: to eliminate business trusts. In the three
years prior to Roosevelt’s presidency, the nation had witnessed a wave of mergers and the creation of
mega-corporations. To counter this trend, Roosevelt created the Department of Commerce and Labor in
1903, which included the Bureau of Corporations, whose job it was to investigate trusts. He also asked
the Department of Justice to resume prosecutions under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Intended to
empower federal prosecutors to ban monopolies as conspiracies against interstate trade, the law had run
afoul of a conservative Supreme Court.

In 1902, Roosevelt launched his administration’s first antitrust suit against the Northern Securities Trust
Company, which included powerful businessmen, like John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan, and
controlled many of the large midwestern railroads. The suit wound through the judicial system, all the
way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1904, the highest court in the land ultimately affirmed the ruling
to break up the trust in a narrow five-to-four vote. For Roosevelt, that was enough of a mandate;
he immediately moved against other corporations as well, including the American Tobacco Company
and—most significantly—Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company.

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Although Roosevelt enjoyed the nickname “the Trustbuster,” he did not consider all trusts dangerous
to the public welfare. The “good trusts,” Roosevelt reasoned, used their power in the marketplace and
economies of scale to deliver goods and services to customers more cheaply. For example, he allowed
Morgan’s U.S. Steel Corporation to continue its operations and let it take over smaller steel companies. At
the same time, Roosevelt used the presidency as a “bully pulpit” to publicly denounce “bad trusts”—those
corporations that exploited their market positions for short-term gains—before he ordered prosecutions by
the Justice Department. In total, Roosevelt initiated over two dozen successful anti-trust suits, more than
any president before him.

Roosevelt also showed in other contexts that he dared to face the power of corporations. When an
anthracite coal strike gripped the nation for much of the year in 1902, Roosevelt directly intervened in the
dispute and invited both sides to the White House to negotiate a deal that included minor wage increases
and a slight improvement in working hours. For Roosevelt, his intervention in the matter symbolized
his belief that the federal government should adopt a more proactive role and serve as a steward of all
Americans (Figure 21.17). This stood in contrast to his predecessors, who had time and again bolstered
industrialists in their fight against workers’ rights with the deployment of federal troops.

Figure 21.17 This cartoon shows President Roosevelt disciplining coal barons like J. P. Morgan, threatening to beat
them with a stick labeled “Federal Authority.” It illustrates Roosevelt’s new approach to business.

THE SQUARE DEAL

Roosevelt won his second term in 1904 with an overwhelming 57 percent of the popular vote. After the
election, he moved quickly to enact his own brand of Progressivism, which he called a Square Deal for
the American people. Early in his second term, Roosevelt read muckraker Upton Sinclair’s 1905 novel and
exposé on the meatpacking industry, The Jungle. Although Roosevelt initially questioned the book due
to Sinclair’s professed Socialist leanings, a subsequent presidential commission investigated the industry
and corroborated the deplorable conditions under which Chicago’s meatpackers processed meats for
American consumers. Alarmed by the results and under pressure from an outraged public disgusted with
the revelations, Roosevelt moved quickly to protect public health. He urged the passage of two laws to
do so. The first, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, established a system of government inspection for meat
products, including grading the meat based on its quality. This standard was also used for imported
meats. The second was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which required labels on all food and
drug products that clearly stated the materials in the product. The law also prohibited any “adulterated”

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products, a measure aimed at some specific, unhealthy food preservatives. For Sinclair, this outcome
was a disappointment nonetheless, since he had sought to draw attention to the plight of workers in the
slaughterhouses, not the poor quality of the meat products. “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident
I hit it in the stomach,” he concluded with frustration.

Another key element of Roosevelt’s Progressivism was the protection of public land (Figure 21.18).
Roosevelt was a longtime outdoorsman, with an interest that went back to his childhood and college
days, as well as his time cattle ranching in the West, and he chose to appoint his good friend Gifford
Pinchot as the country’s first chief of the newly created U.S. Forestry Service. Under Pinchot’s supervision,
the department carved out several nature habitats on federal land in order to preserve the nation’s
environmental beauty and protect it from development or commercial use. Apart from national parks like
Oregon’s Crater Lake or Colorado’s Mesa Verde, and monuments designed for preservation, Roosevelt
conserved public land for regulated use for future generations. To this day, the 150 national forests created
under Roosevelt’s stewardship carry the slogan “land of many uses.” In all, Roosevelt established eighteen
national monuments, fifty-one federal bird preserves, five national parks, and over one hundred fifty
national forests, which amounted to about 230 million acres of public land.

Figure 21.18 Theodore Roosevelt’s interest in the protection of public lands was encouraged by conservationists
such as John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, with whom he toured Yosemite National Park in California, ca. 1906.

In his second term in office, Roosevelt signed legislation on Progressive issues such as factory inspections,
child labor, and business regulation. He urged the passage of the Elkins Act of 1903 and the Hepburn
Act of 1906, both of which strengthened the position of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate
railroad prices. These laws also extended the Commission’s authority to regulate interstate transportation
on bridges, ferries, and even oil pipelines.

As the 1908 election approached, Roosevelt was at the height of popularity among the American public,
if not among the big businesses and conservative leaders of his own Republican Party. Nonetheless, he
promised on the night of his reelection in 1904 that he would not seek a third term. Roosevelt stepped
aside as the election approached, but he did hand-pick a successor—Secretary of War and former Governor
General of the Philippines William Howard Taft of Ohio—a personal friend who, he assured the American
public, would continue the path of the “Square Deal” (Figure 21.19). With such a ringing endorsement,
Taft easily won the 1908 presidential election, defeating three-time Democratic presidential nominee
William Jennings Bryan, whose ideas on taxes and corporate regulations reminded voters of the more far-
reaching Populist platforms of Bryan’s past candidacies.

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Figure 21.19 This photograph (a) of Theodore Roosevelt (left) and his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft
(right) just before Taft’s inauguration in 1909, was echoed in a Puck magazine cartoon (b) where “cowboy” Roosevelt
hands off his “Policies” baby to “nurse-maid” Taft. Taft was seen, initially at least, as being a president who would
continue Roosevelt’s same policies.

Explore the Theodore Roosevelt Center (http://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/
Learn-About-TR/) at Dickinson State University for a wealth of information on
Theodore Roosevelt, including details of his early life before the presidency and
transcripts from several of his speeches.

THE TAFT PRESIDENCY

Although six feet tall and nearly 340 pounds, as Roosevelt’s successor, Taft had big shoes to fill. The public
expected much from Roosevelt’s hand-picked replacement, as did Roosevelt himself, who kept a watchful
eye over Taft’s presidency.

The new president’s background suggested he would be a strong administrator. He had previously served
as the governor of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War, had a distinguished judicial
career, and served as Roosevelt’s Secretary of War from 1904 to 1908. Republican leaders, however, were
anxious to reestablish tighter control over the party after Roosevelt’s departure, and they left Taft little
room to maneuver. He stayed the course of his predecessor by signing the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910,
which extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission over telephones and telegraphs.
Additionally, during his tenure, Congress proposed constitutional amendments to authorize a federal
income tax and mandate the direct election of U.S. senators. But even though Taft initiated twice as many
antitrust suits against big business as Roosevelt, he lacked the political negotiating skills and focus on the
public good of his predecessor, who felt betrayed when Taft took J.P. Morgan’s U.S. Steel Corporation to
court over an acquisition that Roosevelt had promised Morgan would not result in a prosecution.

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Political infighting within his own party exposed the limitations of Taft’s presidential authority, especially
on the issue of protective tariffs. When House Republicans passed a measure to significantly reduce tariffs
on several imported goods, Taft endorsed the Senate version, later known as the Payne-Aldrich Act of
1909, which raised tariff rates on over eight hundred products in the original bill. Taft also angered
Progressives in his own party when he created the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1912, viewed by many as
an attempt to offset the growing influence of the labor union movement at the time. The rift between Taft
and his party’s Progressives widened when the president supported conservative party candidates for the
1910 House and Senate elections.

Taft’s biggest political blunder came in the area of land conservation. In 1909, Taft’s Secretary of the
Interior, Richard Ballinger, approved the sale of millions of acres of federal land to a company for which
he had previously worked over Gifford Pinchot’s objections. Pinchot publicly criticized the secretary for
violating the principle of conservation and for his conflict of interest—a charge that in the public debate
also reflected on the president. Taft fired Pinchot, a move that widened the gap between him and the
former president. Upon his return from Africa, Roosevelt appeared primed to attack. He referred to the
sitting president as a “fathead” and a “puzzlewit,” and announced his intention to “throw my hat in the
ring for the 1912 presidential election.”

THE 1912 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Although not as flamboyant or outwardly progressive as Roosevelt, Taft’s organizational skills and
generally solid performance as president aligned with the party leadership’s concerns over another
Roosevelt presidency and secured for him the Republican Party’s nomination. Angry over this snub, in
1912, Roosevelt and the other Progressive Republicans bolted from the Republican Party and formed the
Progressive Party. His popularity had him hoping to win the presidential race as a third-party candidate.
When he survived an assassination attempt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in October 1912—the assassin’s
bullet hit his eyeglass case and only injured him superficially—he turned the near-death experience into
a political opportunity. Insisting upon delivering the speech before seeking medical attention, he told the
crowd, “It takes more than a bullet to kill a bull moose!” The moniker stuck, and Roosevelt’s Progressive
Party would be known as the Bull Moose Party for the remainder of the campaign (Figure 21.20).

Figure 21.20 Theodore Roosevelt, now running as the Progressive Party, or Bull Moose Party, candidate, created
an unprecedented moment in the country’s history, where a former president was running against both an incumbent
president and a future president.

The Democrats realized that a split Republican Party gave them a good chance of regaining the White
House for the first time since 1896. They found their candidate in the Progressive governor of New

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Jersey, Woodrow Wilson. A former history professor and president at Princeton University, Wilson had an
academic demeanor that appealed to many Progressive reformers. Many Democrats also viewed Wilson
as a Washington outsider who had made far fewer political enemies than Roosevelt and Taft.

Taft never truly campaigned for the post, did not deliver a single speech, and did not seem like a
serious contender. In their campaigns, Roosevelt and Wilson formulated competing Progressive platforms.
Wilson described his more moderate approach as one of New Freedom, which stood for a smaller federal
government to protect public interests from the evils associated with big businesses and banks. Roosevelt
campaigned on the promise of New Nationalism, a charge that he said required a vigorous and powerful
federal government to protect public interests. He sought to capitalize on the stewardship approach that
he had made famous during his previous administration.

Wilson won the 1912 election with over six million votes, with four million votes going to Roosevelt and
three and one-half million for Taft. The internal split among Republicans not only cost them the White
House but control of the Senate as well—and Democrats had already won a House majority in 1910.
Wilson won the presidency with just 42 percent of the popular vote, which meant that he would have to
sway a large number of voters should he have any aspirations for a second term.

Chapter 21 | Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920 625

DEFINING “AMERICAN”

The Unprecedented Election of

1912

In his 2002 article on the 1912 election, historian Sidney M. Milkis writes,

The Progressive Party’s “compromise” with public opinion in the United States points to its
legacy for American politics and government. Arguably, the failure of the 1912 experiment and
the Progressive Party’s demise underscore the incoherence of the Progressive movement.
Nevertheless, it was neither the Democrats, nor the Republicans, nor the Socialists who set
the tone of the 1912 campaign. It was the Progressives. Beyond the 1912 election, their
program of political and social reform has been an enduring feature of American political
discourse and electoral struggle. The Progressive Party forged a path of reform that left both
social democracy and conservatism—Taft’s constitutional sobriety—behind. Similarly, T.R.’s
celebrity, and the popularity of the Progressive doctrine of the people’s right to rule, tended
to subordinate the more populist to the more plebiscitary schemes in the platform, such as
the initiative, the referendum, and the direct primary, which exalted not the “grass roots”
but mass opinion. Indeed, in the wake of the excitement aroused by the Progressive Party,
Wilson, whose New Freedom campaign was far more sympathetic to the decentralized state
of courts and parties than T.R.’s, felt compelled, as president, to govern as a New Nationalist
Progressive.

It is interesting to think of how this most unusual election—one with three major candidates that pitted a
former president against an incumbent and a major party contender—related to the larger Progressive
movement. The cartoon below is only one of many cartoons of that era that sought to point out the
differences between the candidates (Figure 21.21). While Roosevelt and the Progressive Party ultimately
lost the election, they required the dialogue of the campaign to remain on the goals of Progressivism,
particularly around more direct democracy and business regulation. The American public responded with
fervor to Roosevelt’s campaign, partly because of his immense popularity, but partly also because he
espoused a kind of direct democracy that gave people a voice in federal politics. Although Wilson and his
New Freedom platform won the election, his presidency undertook a more activist role than his campaign
suggested. The American public had made clear that, no matter who sat in the White House, they were
seeking a more progressive America.

Figure 21.21 This cartoon, from the 1912 election, parodies how the voters might perceive the three
major candidates. As can be seen, Taft was never a serious contender.

WILSON’S NEW FREEDOM

When Wilson took office in March 1913, he immediately met with Congress to outline his

New Freedom

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agenda for how progressive interests could be best preserved. His plan was simple: regulate the banks
and big businesses, and lower tariff rates to increase international trade, increasing competition in the
interest of consumers. Wilson took the unusual step of calling a special session of Congress in April 1913 to
tackle the tariff question, which resulted in the Revenue Act of 1913, also known as the Underwood Tariff
Act. This legislation lowered tariff rates across the board by approximately 15 percent and completely
eliminated tariffs on several imports, including steel, iron ore, woolen products, and farm tools. To offset
the potential loss of federal revenue, this new law reinstituted the federal income tax, which followed the
ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment. This first income tax required married couples who earned $4000
or more, and single people who earned $3000 or more, to pay a 1-percent, graduated income tax, with the
tax rate getting progressively higher for those who earned more.

Late in 1913, Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act to regulate the banking industry and establish a
federal banking system (Figure 21.22). Designed to remove power over interest rates from the hands of
private bankers, the new system created twelve privately owned regional reserve banks regulated by a
presidentially appointed Federal Reserve Board. The Board, known informally as the Fed, regulated the
interest rate at which reserve banks loaned or distributed money to other banks around the country. Thus,
when economic times were challenging, such as during a recession, the Fed could lower this “discount
rate” and encourage more borrowing, which put more currency in circulation for people to spend or
invest. Conversely, the Fed could curb inflationary trends with interest hikes that discouraged borrowing.
This system is still the basis for the country’s modern banking model.

Figure 21.22 With the creation of the Federal Reserve Board, President Wilson set the stage for the modern
banking system (a). This restructuring of the American financial system, which included the authorization of a federal
income tax, was supported in large part by an influential Republican senator from Rhode Island, Nelson Aldrich (b),
co-author of the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909.

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The history of the Federal Reserve Act (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Fedreserve)
is explored in The Washington Post, reflecting back on the act one hundred years later.

In early 1914, Wilson completed his New Freedom agenda with the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act.
This law expanded the power of the original Sherman Antitrust Act in order to allow the investigation
and dismantling of more monopolies. The new act also took on the “interlocking directorates”—competing
companies that still operated together in a form of oligopoly or conspiracy to restrain trade. His New
Freedom agenda complete, Wilson turned his attention to foreign affairs, as war was quickly
encompassing Europe.

THE FINAL VESTIGES OF PROGRESSIVISM

As the 1916 election approached, Wilson’s focus on foreign affairs, as well as the natural effect of his
small government agenda, left the 60 percent of the American public who had not voted for him the first
time disinclined to change their minds and keep him in office. Realizing this, Wilson began a flurry of
new Progressive reforms that impressed the voting public and ultimately proved to be the last wave of
the Progressive Era. Some of the important measures that Wilson undertook to pass included the Federal
Farm Act, which provided oversight of low-interest loans to millions of farmers in need of debt relief;
the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, which, although later deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme
Court, prohibited the interstate distribution of products by child workers under the age of fourteen;
and the Adamson Act, which put in place the first federally mandated eight-hour workday for railroad
workers.

Wilson also gained significant support from Jewish voters with his 1916 appointment of the first Jewish
U.S. Supreme Court justice, Louis D. Brandeis. Popular among social justice Progressives, Brandeis went
on to become one of the most renowned justices on the court for his defense of freedom of speech and
right to privacy issues. Finally, Wilson gained the support of many working-class voters with his defense
of labor and union rights during a violent coal strike in Ludlow, Colorado, as well as his actions to forestall
a potential railroad strike with the passage of the aforementioned Adamson Act.

Wilson’s actions in 1916 proved enough, but barely. In a close presidential election, he secured a second
term by defeating former New York governor Charles Evans Hughes by a scant twenty-three electoral
votes, and less than 600,000 popular votes. Influential states like Minnesota and New Hampshire were
decided by less than four hundred votes.

Despite the fact that he ran for reelection with the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of the War,” Wilson could not
avoid the reach of World War I much longer. For Wilson and the American public, the Progressive Era
was rapidly winding down. Although a few Progressive achievements were still to come in the areas of
women’s suffrage and prohibition, the country would soon be gripped by the war that Wilson had tried to
avoid during his first term in office. When he took the oath for his second term, on March 4, 1917, Wilson
was barely five weeks away from leading the United States in declaring war on Germany, a move that
would put an end to the Progressive Era.

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Atlanta Compromise

direct primary

initiative

muckrakers

NAACP

New Freedom

New Nationalism

Niagara Movement

Progressive Party

Progressivism

recall

referendum

Silent Sentinels

Square Deal

Taylorism

Wisconsin Idea

Key Terms

Booker T. Washington’s speech, given at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, where he
urged African Americans to work hard and get along with others in their white

communities, so as to earn the goodwill of the country

a political reform that allowed for the nomination of candidates through a direct vote by
party members, rather than by the choice of delegates at conventions; in the South, this

strengthened all-white solidarity within the Democratic Party

a proposed law, or initiative, placed on the ballot by public petition

investigative journalists and authors who wrote about social ills, from child labor to the
corrupt business practices of big businesses, and urged the public to take action

the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization
formed in 1909 by an interracial coalition including W. E. B. Du Bois and Florence Kelley

Woodrow Wilson’s campaign platform for the 1912 election that called for a small federal
government to protect public interests from the evils associated with bad businesses

Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 campaign platform, which called for a powerful federal
government to protect the American public

a campaign led by W. E. B. Du Bois and other prominent African American
reformers that departed from Booker T. Washington’s model of accommodation and

advocated for a “Declaration of Principles” that called for immediate political, social, and economic
equality for African Americans

a political party started by Roosevelt and other Progressive Republicans who were
unhappy with Taft and wanted Roosevelt to run for a nonconsecutive third term in

1912

a broad movement between 1896 and 1916 led by white, middle-class professionals for
legal, scientific, managerial, and institutional solutions to the ills of urbanization,

industrialization, and corruption

to remove a public official from office by virtue of a petition and vote process

a process that allows voters to counteract legislation by putting an existing law on the ballot
for voters to either affirm or reject

women protesters who picketed the White House for years to protest for women’s right
to vote; they went on a hunger strike after their arrest, and their force-feeding became a

national scandal

Theodore Roosevelt’s name for the kind of involved, hands-on government he felt the
country needed

a system named for Fredrick Winslow Taylor, aimed at improving factory efficiency rates
through the principle of standardization; Taylor’s model limited workers to repetitive tasks,

reducing human contact and opportunities to think or collaborate

a political system created by Robert La Follette, governor of Wisconsin, that embodied
many progressive ideals; La Follette hired experts to advise him on improving

Chapter 21 | Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920 629

Wobblies

conditions in his state

a nickname for the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical Progressive group that grew out
of the earlier labor movement and desired an industrial union model of labor organization

Summary
21.1 The Origins of the Progressive Spirit in America
In its first decade, the Progressive Era was a grassroots effort that ushered in reforms at state and
local levels. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Progressive endeavors captured the
attention of the federal government. The challenges of the late nineteenth century were manifold: fast-
growing cities that were ill-equipped to house the working poor, hands-off politicians shackled into
impotence by their system of political favors, and rural Americans struggling to keep their farms afloat.
The muckraking journalists of the era published books and articles highlighting the social inequities of
the day and extolling everyday Americans to help find solutions. Educated, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon
Protestants dominated the movement, but Progressives were not a homogenous group: The movement
counted African Americans, both women and men, and urban as well as rural dwellers among its ranks.
Progressive causes ranged from anti-liquor campaigns to fair pay. Together, Progressives sought to
advance the spread of democracy, improve efficiency in government and industry, and promote social
justice.

21.2 Progressivism at the Grassroots Level
Progressive campaigns stretched from the hurricane-ruined townships of Texas to the slums of New York,
from the factory floor to the saloon door. But what tied together these disparate causes and groups was the
belief that the country was in dire need of reform, and that answers were to be found within the activism
and expertise of predominantly middle-class Americans on behalf of troubled communities. Some efforts,
such as the National Child Labor Committee, pushed for federal legislation; however, most Progressive
initiatives took place at the state and local levels, as Progressives sought to harness public support to place
pressure on politicians.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a more radical, revolutionary breed of Progressivism began to
evolve. While these radical Progressives generally shared the goals of their more mainstream counterparts,
their strategies differed significantly. Mainstream Progressives and many middle-class Americans feared
groups such as the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, which emphasized
workers’ empowerment and direct action.

21.3 New Voices for Women and African Americans
The Progressive commitment to promoting democracy and social justice created an environment within
which the movements for women’s and African American rights grew and flourished. Emergent leaders
such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Paul spread the
cause of woman suffrage, drawing in other activists and making the case for a constitutional amendment
ensuring a woman’s right to vote. African Americans—guided by leaders such as Booker T. Washington
and W. E. B. Du Bois—strove for civil rights and economic opportunity, although their philosophies
and strategies differed significantly. In the women’s and civil rights movements alike, activists both
advanced their own causes and paved the way for later efforts aimed at expanding equal opportunity and
citizenship.

21.4 Progressivism in the White House
Theodore Roosevelt became president only by historical accident, but his activism in the executive branch

630 Chapter 21 | Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920

This OpenStax book is available for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3

spoke to the Progressive spirit in the nation and transformed the president’s office for the twentieth
century. The courage he displayed in his confrontation of big business and willingness to side with
workers in capital-labor disputes, as well as his commitment to the preservation of federal lands, set an
agenda his successors had to match. Like Roosevelt, William Howard Taft pushed antitrust rulings and
expanded federal oversight of interstate commerce. But estrangement from his predecessor and mentor
left Taft in a difficult position for reelection. Roosevelt’s third-party challenge as a Progressive split the
Republican vote and handed Woodrow Wilson the presidency in 1912.

A Progressive like his predecessors, Wilson was also a political creature who understood the need to do
more in order to ensure his reelection. He, too, sought to limit the power of big businesses and stabilize the
economy, and he ushered in a wave of Progressive legislation that grassroots Progressives had long called
for. The nation’s entanglement in World War I, however, soon shunted the Progressive goals of democracy,
efficiency, regulation, and social justice to the back burner. The nation’s new priorities included national
security and making the world “safe for democracy.”

Review Questions
1. Ida Tarbell wrote publicly about

A. the need for better housing in rural
America

B. the sinister business practices of Standard
Oil

C. the need for a national temperance
movement

D. the women’s suffrage cause in the
American West

2. Which of the following was not a key area of
focus for the Progressives?

A. land reform
B. democracy
C. business regulation
D. social justice

3. How did muckrakers help initiate the
Progressive Era?

4. What system did the direct primary replace?
A. candidate selection by secret ballots
B. candidate selection by machine bosses
C. candidate selection by convention delegates
D. an indirect primary

5. Which of the following is not an example of
social justice Progressivism?

A. anti-liquor campaigns
B. referendums
C. workplace safety initiatives
D. improvements in education

6. Which of the following was not a feature of
Booker T. Washington’s strategy to improve the
lives of African Americans?

A. self-help
B. accommodating/tolerating white racism
C. immediate protests for equal rights
D. learning new trades/skills

7. Who were the “Silent Sentinels”?
A. a group of progressive African Americans

who drafted the Declaration of Principles
B. anti-suffrage women
C. an offshoot of the Industrial Workers of the

World
D. suffragists who protested outside the White

House

8. Describe the philosophy and strategies of the
Niagara Movement. How did it differ from
Washington’s way of thinking?

9. How did Roosevelt intercede in the Anthracite
Coal Strike of 1902?

A. He invited strikers and workers to the
White House.

B. He urged the owners to negotiate a deal.
C. He threatened to send in the army to work

the mines.
D. He ordered the National Guard to protect

the strikers.

Chapter 21 | Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920 631

10. Which of the following was a key Progressive
item passed by Taft?

A. the Pure Food and Drug Act
B. the U.S. Forestry Service
C. the Mann-Elkins Act
D. the Payne-Aldrich Act

11. Which of the following was not an outcome of
the Underwood Tariff Act?

A. It reduced tariffs 15 percent across all
imports.

B. It eliminated tariffs for steel.
C. It eliminated tariffs for iron ore.
D. It established a federal banking system to

oversee tariffs.

12. Explain the fundamental differences between
Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” and Wilson’s
“New Freedom.”

13. Why did Wilson’s “New Freedom” agenda
come in two distinct phases (1913 and 1916)?

Critical Thinking Questions
14. Which of the primary features of grassroots Progressivism was the most essential to the continued
growth and success of the reformist movement? Why?

15. Describe the multiple groups and leaders that emerged in the fight for the Progressive agenda,
including women’s rights, African American rights, and workers’ rights. How were the philosophies,
agendas, strategies, and approaches of these leaders and organizations similar and different? What made
it difficult for all Progressive activists to present a united front?

16. How did President Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” epitomize the notion that the federal
government should serve as a steward protecting the public’s interests?

17. How did the goals and reform agenda of the Progressive Era manifest themselves during the
presidential administrations of Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson?

18. What vestiges of Progressivism can we see in our modern lives—politically, economically, and
socially? Which of our present-day political processes, laws, institutions, and attitudes have roots in this
era? Why have they had such staying power?

632 Chapter 21 | Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920

This OpenStax book is available for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3

Chapter 21. Leading the Way: The Progressive Movement, 1890-1920

21.1. The Origins of the Progressive Spirit in America*

21.2. Progressivism at the Grassroots Level*

21.3. New Voices for Women and African Americans*

21.4. Progressivism in the White House*

Glossary

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