Confronting Power:

At the turn of the century America was in the midst of a great industrialization that had begun in the civil war. Great concentration of wealth had fallen to a few Americans who turned them into industrial development. These included Rockefeller in oil, Gould, Vanderbilt, Huntington and Stanford in railroads, Carnegie in steel, and so on. Political power at the turn of the century was promised to those who could address the problems of industrialization.

Lifestyles of 1900

In the America of 1900,

Most Americans were still farmers.

Although the frontier was declared closed after the census of 1890, over half of all Americans still lived on the farms and in small towns.
Farmers were caught in a cycle of boom and bust as periods of high prices and prosperity were followed by financial panic, natural disasters, and bankruptcy.
Farmers were implicated in the problems of industrialization because they were dependent on the railroads and industrial development. The railroads were necessary to carry the produce of the farms to market, and the railroads charged exorbitant rates to carry the produce. Industrial development was transforming the farm into a mechanized business. Farmers had to borrow to buy the mechanization and the periods of bust meant that they could not pay back the loans and lost their farms.

Between the farmers and the industrialists was small town America.

The town was the intermediary between the farmer and industrialization. The town contained the services and merchants that now catered to the cash farmer and the banks that loaned them the capital needed on the mechanized farms.
The American middle class lived in these localities.

Cities and industrial growth were clearly the wave of the future.

Massive immigration provided cheap labor to factories. Ellis Island was accepting millions from Eastern and Southern Europe. This immigration was different. It came from a different part of Europe, was primarily Catholic and orthodox rather than Protestant, and flowed into the factories and the cities rather than onto the open land of the West. Americans were worried about this inflow.
The immigrants flowed into crowded communities within the cities. Ethnic ties were strong in these slums. They provided an advanced sense of community, but the conditions they lived in were crowded and dilapidated.

Conditions of the Industrial System

The industrial system was marked by several characteristics that offered challenges to political leaders:

Great disparities of wealth marked the economic life of the industrial cities. The most squalid of slums contained the urban poor mere blocks from opulent mansions in which the wealthy lived like royalty.
Cheap Labor. Immigration and the migration from farms provided a seemingly inexhaustible supply of labor. This made labor a cheap part of industrial production as a result of the laws of supply and demand. To the industrialist, expenditures for safety made no economic sense: an injured or deceased worker was easily replaced by another. Wages could be kept low because there was always another worker willing to work for the lower wage. Attempts by workers to organize to confront the organized wealth of the barons for whom they worked were unsuccessful. Replacement workers were readily available. Hiring these "scabs" as labor called them inevitably led to disasters such as the Homestead Strike and the Pullman Strike in which quasi-military forces were brought in my the barons and workers died.
Exploitation of Customers. In the climate of the times, the industrialists had the power to set prices. Railroads serviced the farmers along their lines, but the farmers needed the railroads to survive. There seemed no limit to the profit that the railroads could extract from the farmer. Furthermore with entire industries controlled by one source, there was no compulsion for quality. Books like The Jungle portrayed the meat packing industry in Chicago and the lack of concern with the safety of food.
Corruption of Government. The concentrated wealth had an outlet in the corrupting of governmental officials. In the late 19th century the United States Senate was owned by the railroads. The wealthy poured money into the campaigns and pockets of key governmental officials who in turn protected their interests. In the large cities, the political machines organized politics not to address community concerns but as a provider of private largesse to those who supported the machine, rich and poor.

Themes in the Rhetoric of the Turn of the Century

During this time, American discourse was filled with several key themes that shaped leadership claims.

The Collapse of the Frontier

The Frontier had been declared closed by the census of 1890
The frontier had been the vision of a growing America. Americans saw their national public task as bringing civilization to the American wilderness. As a result, the collapse was a motivational crisis for the culture. What marked the special mission of Americans?
The westward movement had also been the great American escape. Each generation, when confronting limits on the land available to buy or the opportunities for their livelihood, could move to the frontier and find economic opportunity. What was the answer to limits if the frontier was closed?

Immigration and the American Historical Tie to Northern Europe

The United States was a nation founded and developed by immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. The immigration in its first century as a nation had been from those nations. But by 1900, the immigration that now flowed into the ports of America was from Eastern and Southern Europe.
These immigrants were different. These were Catholics in a Protestant nation. They stayed in the cities rather than moving through to the frontier. Their second generation retained its ethnic identity rather than assimilating into an English-speaking America.
For the immigrants, the public problems were problems of adjusting to a new society while yearning for their homelands.
For the nation as a whole, the public question was whether this immigration was good or bad for those who were already here.

The Meaning of Technology

The time around the turn of the century was a remarkable period of scientific and technological change. Inventions were coming rapidly: electricity, the phonograph, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane.
The factories were churning out the new machines and business, including farming, was increasingly capital intensive, requiring large amounts of cash to mechanize its processes.
The factories were also drawing large population from the farms and small towns into the cities to join the immigrants in mass production.
The meaning of this technology was an important theme for discourse. Some discourse saw this as the newest phase of American progress, saw the new scientific world as the venue for the continual betterment of human life. All problems would be solved by technology.
Other speakers saw the horrors created by the new capital intensive world. Borrowed money, necessary to those seeking to participate in this world, led to their failure. Farmers lost farms; businessmen lost life savings; and small factory owners were forced out of business by the vagaries of the market.

The Conditions of the New Urban Factory World

The huge factories of mass production brought great concentrations of workers to the cities. The large immigration, the displacement from the farms and small towns, and practice of hiring children and women as well as men left a surplus of labor that left each worker commanding low wages.
In the face of low wages, families lived by having all members of the family working in the factories. Children as young as 8 to 12 worked. Wages were hourly and there were few limits on the number of hours that workers were allowed to work.
Even under these conditions, family incomes were low, their housing crowded with multiple families and living conditions poor. Most housing was rental and construction was cheaper than maintenance.
The economics of competition and the surplus of labor left factory owners with disincentive to attend to safety and working conditions in their factories. The result was a dangerous and uncaring work environment.

Disparity of Wealth and Power

The owners of the factories that produced the new material wealth became exceptionally wealthy. Thus, the cities became startling venues of contrast between the incredibly rich and the unspeakably destitute.
Great concentrations of power located in the industrial system. Railroads and industrial barons that offered jobs easily controlled government and the economy. Competition disappeared in power to thwart opportunities.
Was the wealth the reward for successful businessmen? Or was it an abuse? What was the role of public will in controlling this maldistribution of wealth and power? What was the role of government as a location of public will?
America at the turn of the century had to reconcile the disparity with justice or find ways of correcting it. The result was proliferation of "philosophies" such as social Darwinism, the social gospel, populism, and progressivism.

Progressivism

The political movement that grew up to meet this America was the Progressive movement.

The progressive movement grew out of the populist movement of the 1890s, a political movement that united farmers and laborers in opposing the power of large corporations.
Although the Populist Party was initially independent, and then merged with the Democratic Party, by the turn of the century Progressivism was too powerful to be contained in the Democratic Party. Theodore Roosevelt became the Vice Presidential nominee of the Republican Party to bring Progressives into that party.
Progressives supported reforms in many areas. In the economic arena they supported regulation of railroad rates, standard weights and measures, and labor laws. In the political arena they supported direct election of Senators, primary elections, initiative, and referendum. In the social arena they supported assistance for the poor and slum services. In all arenas they envisioned a role for government as a mediating power against the power of wealth.
Important Progressives were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Robert LaFollette.