The Progressive Movement

The Progressive Movement and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1890-1920s

The Progressive movement was a turn-of-the-century political movement interested in furthering social and political reform, curbing political corruption caused by political machines, and limiting the political influence of large corporations. Although many Progressives saw U.S. power in a foreign arena as an opportunity to enact the Progressive domestic agenda overseas, and to improve foreign societies, others were concerned about the adverse effects of U.S. interventions and colonialism. The Progressive movement began with a domestic agenda. Progressives were interested in establishing a more transparent and accountable government which would work to improve U.S. society. These reformers favored such policies as civil service reform, food safety laws, and increased political rights for women and U.S. workers. In the 1890s, the Progressive movement also began to question the power of large businesses and monopolies after a series of journalistic exposés that revealed questionable business practices. Throughout the 1890s, the U.S. Government became increasingly likely to rely on its military and economic power to pursue foreign policy goals. The most prominent action during this period, the Spanish-American War, resulted in U.S. rule of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, as well as increased influence over Cuba. These territories captured in the Spanish-American war had a varied response toward U.S. occupation. In the Philippines, American forces faced armed insurgency, while in Puerto Rico, working-class and Progressive Puerto Ricans saw the United States as a successful counterweight to local sugar industry elites. Many Progressives, including U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, saw no conflict between imperialism and reform at home -to them, both were forms of uplift, reform and improvement, and so they saw in these new colonies an opportunity to further the Progressive agenda around the world. However, especially after the violence of the Philippine-American War, other Progressives became increasingly vocal about their opposition to U.S. foreign intervention and imperialism. Still others argued that foreign ventures would detract from much-needed domestic political and social reforms. Under the leadership of U.S. Senator Robert La Follette, Progressive opposition to foreign intervention further increased under the Dollar Diplomacy policies of Republican President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander Knox. However, Progressives remained mostly interested in domestic issues, and Republican Progressives sometimes hesitated to break party lines on foreign policy, hoping to ensure greater influence on domestic matters within the Republican Party. Similarly, after the election of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, Democratic Progressives also tended to follow Wilson's lead on foreign policy issues, while the partisan reaction against them was led by Republican Progressives. Wilson also faced opposition from John Barrett, Director-General of the Pan-American Union, whom Wilson eventually forced out of office in 1919. President Wilson may have had greater reservations about U.S. foreign intervention in the Americas than President Theodore Roosevelt, but he was willing to intervene in the Mexican Revolution. Concerns about possible German submarine warfare also caused him to order U.S. military interventions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and also led to the purchase of the U.S. Virgin Islands from Denmark. The military occupations incorporated elements of the Progressive program, attempting to establish effective local police forces, reform land laws, build public infrastructure, and increase public access to education. However, these programs were hampered by local opposition to U.S. occupation and U.S. policies that inadvertently proved counterproductive. Where Progressive policies threatened to destabilize U.S. authority, U.S. officials in charge of occupying forces opted for stability rather than authentic Progressive changes. In foreign policy, the Progressive movement also split over the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. Progressive U.S. Senator William Borah led the campaign against ratification, and he would increasingly become the champion of the isolationist movement until his death in 1940. Other Progressives viewed the treaty more favorably. In the 1920s, the Progressive movement began to be supplanted by several different movements. In some cases, such as women's suffrage, Progressive victory caused activists to lose momentum to push for further change. The Progressive wing of the Republican Party was weakened by the party splits of 1912 and 1924, which were attempts to form a third, Progressive party. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party would eventually be subsumed under the broader New Deal coalition of Franklin Roosevelt. Foreign policy matters would increasingly be focused on the buildup to the Second World War, and Progressive issues took a back seat to the interventionist/isolationist split.

Famouse People/Events

Some People who were a big part of the making Chicago were as follows.

William Butler Ogden-
In 1835, Ogden traveled to Chicago to look over land bought by his brother-in-law, Charles Butler, for $100,000. Ogden informed Butler that he had "been guilty of the grossest folly. There is no such value in the land and won't be for a generation."[2] Despite that, Ogden recovered the $100,000 by selling off one-third of the property that Butler had purchased. This experience helped change his impression of the city. During his term as Chicago's first mayor, 1837–1838, the land rush that had brought him to the Midwest collapsed, but Ogden managed to help the city weather the storm by pledging personal funds and arranging for the city council to issue unsecured scrip.Ogden designed the first swing bridge over the Chicago River[3] and donated the land for Rush Medical Center. Ogden was a leading promoter and investor in the Illinois and Michigan Canal, then switched his loyalty to railroads. Throughout his later life, Ogden was heavily involved in the building several railroads. "In 1847, Ogden announced a plan to build a railway out of Chicago, but no capital was forthcoming. Eastern investors were wary of Chicago's reputation for irrational boosterism, and Chicagoans did not want to divert traffic from their profitable canal works. So Ogden and his partner J. Young Scammon solicited subscriptions from the farmers and small businessmen whose land lay adjacent to the proposed rail. Farmer's wives used the money they earned from selling eggs to buy shares of stock on a monthly payment plan. By 1848, Ogden and Scammon had raised $350,000—enough to begin laying track. The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was profitable from the start and eventually extended out to Wisconsin, bringing grain from the Great Plains into the city. As president of Union Pacific, Ogden extended the reach of Chicago's rail lines to the West coast." In 1853, the Chicago Land Company, of which Ogden was a trustee, purchased land at a bend in the Chicago River and began to cut a channel, formally known as North Branch Canal, but also referred to as Ogden's Canal.[5] The resulting island is now known as Goose Island.

George Pullman-
Between 1859 and 1863, he spent time as a gold broker near Golden, Colorado where he raised money and met a future business associate, Hannibal Kimball. He then developed a railroad sleeping car, the Pullman sleeper, or "palace car." These were designed after the packet boats that traveled the Erie Canal of his youth in Albion. The first one was finished in 1864. By arranging to have the body of President Abraham Lincoln carried from Washington, D.C. to Springfield on a sleeper, he received national attention and the orders began to pour in. The sleeping cars proved successful despite the fact that the sleeper cost more than five times the price of a regular railway car. Pullman's Palace Cars, marketed as "luxury for the middle class." In 1867 introduced his first hotel on wheels, the President, a sleeper with an attached kitchen and dining car. The food rivaled the best restaurants of the day and the service was impeccable. A year later in 1868, he launched the Delmonico, the world's first sleeping car devoted to fine cuisine. The Delmonico menu was prepared by chefs from New York's famed Delmonico's Restaurant. Both the President and the Delmonico and subsequent Pullman sleeping cars offered first-rate service which was provided by recently-freed former house slaves who served as porters, waiters, chambermaids, entertainers, and valets all rolled into one person. Pullman believed that if his sleeper cars were to be successful, he needed to provide a wide variety of services to travelers: collecting tickets, selling berths, dispatching wires, fetching sandwiches, mending torn trousers, converting day coaches into sleepers, etc. Pullman believed that the former house slaves of the plantation south had the right combination of training and acquiescence to serve the businessmen that would patronize his "Palace Cars." Pullman became the biggest single employer of African Americans in post-Civil War America. In 1869 Pullman bought out the Detroit Car and Manufacturing Company. He bought the patents and business of his eastern competitor, the Central Transportation Company in 1870. In the spring of 1871, George Pullman, Andrew Carnegie, and others bailed out the financially troubled Union Pacific and were placed onto its board of directors. By 1875 the Pullman firm owned $100,000 worth of patents, had 700 cars in operation, and had several hundred thousand dollars in the bank.

International Workers' Day-
Approximately 700,000 people at a May Day concert in Rome. May Day can refer to various labour celebrations conducted on May 1 that commemorate the fight for the eight hour day. May Day in this regard is called International Workers' Day, or Labour Day. The idea for a "workers holiday" began in Australia in 1856. With the idea having spread around the world, the choice of May 1st became a commemoration by the Second International for the people involved in the 1886 Hay market affair.
The Hay market affair occurred during the course of a three-day general strike in Chicago, Illinois that involved common laborers, artisans, merchants, and immigrants.[9] Following an incident in which police opened fire and killed four strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant, a rally was called for the following day at Hay market Square. The event remained peaceful, yet towards the end of the rally, as police moved in to disperse the event, an unknown assailant threw a bomb into the crowd of police. The bomb and resulting police riot left at least a dozen people dead, including seven policemen.A sensational show trial ensued in which eight defendants were openly tried for their political beliefs, and not necessarily for any involvement in the bombing.[11] The trial lead to the eventual public hanging of four anarchists.[12] The Hay market incident was a source of outrage from people around the globe. In the following years, memory of the "Hay market martyrs" was remembered with various May Day job actions and demonstrations. As such, May Day has become an international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labour movement. Although May Day received its inspiration from the United States, the U.S. Congress designated May 1 as Loyalty Day in 1958 due to the day's appropriation by the Soviet Union. Alternatively, Labor Day traditionally occurs on the first Monday in September in the United States. People often use May Day as a day for political protest, such as the million people who demonstrated against far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, or as a day for protest against government actions, such as pro-immigrant rallies across the United States.

The Worlds Fair

The Worlds Fair was held in honor of Christopher Columbus's Trip to the United States, 400 years ago. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self-image, and American industrial optimism. The Chicago Columbian Exposition was, in large part, designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted. It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux Arts principles of design, namely, European Classical Architecture principles based on symmetry and balance. The exposition covered more than 600 acres (2.4 km2), featuring nearly 200 new buildings of classical architecture, canals and lagoons, and people and cultures from around the world. Over 27 million people (equivalent to about half the U.S. population) attended the exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world fairs, and it became a symbol of the emerging American Exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom. The exposition covered more than 600 acres (2.4 km2), featuring nearly 200 new buildings of classical architecture, canals and lagoons, and people and cultures from around the world. Over 27 million people (equivalent to about half the U.S. population) attended the exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world fairs, and it became a symbol of the emerging American Exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom.

The Bomb, Fair & Fire

The Worlds Fair
Costing over a half billion in today's dollars and covering 686 acres, the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and Fair in Chicago was a grand sight to its 27 million visitors--a planned layout of large, classically-inspired buildings (what we now call the "Beaux Arts" style) all built on the same scale and all painted white--hence, the nickname of "The White City." And within and around those white buildings was the most amazing display of 65,000 exhibits depicting (to quote the Exposition promoters) "all of the highest and best achievements of modern civilization; all that was strange, beautiful, artistic, and inspiring; a vast and wonderful university of the arts and sciences, teaching a noble lesson in history, art, science, discovery and invention, designed to stimulate the youth of this and future generations to greater and more heroic endeavor" That wasn't just advertising hype as far as many fairgoers were concerned. "Sell the cook stove if necessary and come. You must see this fair," exclaimed the writer Hamlin Garland in a letter to his parents back in Dakota (source). Western writer Owen Wister was nearly stuck dumb with admiration: "Before I had walked for two minutes, a bewilderment at the gloriousness of everything seized me ... until my mind was dazzled to a stand still" (source). Even Theodore Dreiser, the naturalistic writer of Chicago's urban realities, was overcome with idealistic awe: "... America, especially in the Middle West, must have opened [its] eyes as I did mine at the sight of this realized dream of beauty, this splendid picture of the world's own hope for itself" Others viewed the 1893 Exposition as a celebration of the new consumer society ushering in the Twentieth Century: "This last great fair of the 19th century, nominally honoring Columbus' voyages of 400 years prior, actually celebrated America's transformation from a society of farms and owner-operated businesses at the start of the 1800s to the industrialized, corporate-controlled urban society evident by the 1890s. For the exposition, Dvorak wrote his New World Symphony and Scott Joplin wrote his ragtime. Inspired by its 'White City,' L. Frank Baum wrote about an Emerald City in his Wizard of Oz. The exposition ushered in a new age of consumerism with introduction of brand names -- Cream of Wheat, Shredded Wheat, Pabst Beer, Aunt Jemina's syrup and Juicy Fruit gum-- destined to become as much a part of Americana as the Ferris Wheel, carbonated soda and hamburger, which also were popularized at the fair."

The Fire
The fire started at about 9 p.m. on Sunday, October 8, in or around a small shed that bordered the alley behind 137 DeKoven Street. The traditional account of the origin of the fire is that it was started by a cow kicking over a lantern in the barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O'Leary. Michael Ahern, the Chicago Republican reporter who created the cow story, admitted in 1893 that he had made it up because he thought it would make colorful copy. The fire's spread was aided by the city's overuse of wood for building, a drought prior to the fire, and strong winds from the southwest that carried flying embers toward the heart of the city. The city also made fatal errors by not reacting soon enough and citizens were apparently unconcerned when it began. The firefighters were also exhausted from fighting a fire that happened the day before. Once the fire had ended, the smoldering remains were still too hot for a survey of the damage to be completed for days. Eventually it was determined that the fire destroyed an area about four miles (6 km) long and averaging 3/4 mile (1 km) wide, encompassing more than 2,000 acres (8 km²). Destroyed were more than 73 miles (120 km) of roads, 120 miles (190 km) of sidewalk, 2,000 lampposts, 17,500 buildings, and $222 million in property—about a third of the city's valuation. Of the 300,000 inhabitants, 90,000 were left homeless. Between two and three million books were destroyed from private library collections The fire was said by The Chicago Daily Tribune to have been so fierce that it surpassed the damage done by Napoleon's siege of Moscow in 1812.[8] Remarkably, some buildings did survive the fire, such as the then-new Chicago Water Tower, which remains today as an unofficial memorial to the fire's destructive power. It was one of just five public buildings and one ordinary bungalow spared by the flames within the disaster zone. The O'Leary home and Holy Family Church, the Roman Catholic congregation of the O'Leary family, were both saved by shifts in the wind direction that kept them outside the burnt district. After the fire, 125 bodies were recovered. Final estimates of the fatalities ranged from 200–300, considered a small number for such a large fire. In later years, other disasters in the city would claim more lives: at least 600 died in the Iroquois Theater Fire in 1903; and, in 1915, 835 died in the sinking of the Eastland excursion boat in the Chicago River. Yet the Great Chicago Fire remains Chicago's most well-known disaster, for the magnitude of the destruction and the city's recovery and growth. Almost immediately, reform began in the city's fire standards, spurred along by the efforts of leading insurance executives and fire prevention reformers such as Arthur C. Ducat and others. Chicago emerged from the fire with one of the country's leading fire fighting forces. Land speculators, such as Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, and business owners quickly set about rebuilding the city. Donations of money, food, clothing and furnishings arrived quickly from across the nation. The first load of lumber for rebuilding was delivered the day the last burning building was extinguished. Only 22 years later, Chicago hosted more than 21 million visitors during the World's Columbian Exposition. Another example of Chicago's rebirth from the Great Fire ashes is the now famed Palmer House hotel. The original building burned to the ground in the fire just 13 days after its grand opening. Without hesitating, Potter Palmer secured a loan and rebuilt the hotel in a lot across the street from the original, proclaiming it to be "The World's First Fireproof Building". In 1956, the remaining structures on the original O'Leary property were torn down for construction of the Chicago Fire Academy, a training facility for Chicago firefighters located at 558 W. DeKoven Street. A bronze sculpture of stylized flames entitled Pillar of Fire by sculptor Egon Weiner was erected on the point of origin in 1961.

Chicago Industries!

Meatpacking, steel, lumber, and the stockyards were the earlier and booming industries in the early days of Chicago. they all were started in the earlier days of Chicago, in the the late 1700's through the mid to late 1800's. they were the earliest form on any industry started in Chicago and anywhere around the United States.

The First settlers Of chicago

Louis Jolliet, a Canadian explorer and the French-born Jesuit Jacques Marquette were the first Europeans to discover the Chicago area in 1673 1673 - First Europeans discover Chicago area. The first permanent settlement was founded in 1781 by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an African American from Santo Domingo. The location at the mouth of the Chicago river was chosen for its strategic value for a trading post as the river connected the Lake with the Mississippi river. Later the area at the mouth of the Chicago river was occupied by a military base, Fort Dearborn. The Fort was regularly atacked by Native Americans, until Chief Black Hawk was defeated in 1832. One year later, Chicago was officially incorporated as a town and four years later, when the population reached 4170, as a city. Its name was derived from the native indian's word describing the area. With the arrival of the railroads, the city of Chicago really started to boom reaching a population of 300,000 in 1870. One year later, disaster struck with the Great Chicago Fire laying the city in ashes. The fire destroyed about 17450 buildings, but the Chicagoans quickly started to rebuild the city. Just 6 weeks after the fire, construction of more than 300 buildings had already begun. And in 1893 Chicago had recovered well enough to host the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, commemorating the discovery by Columbus of America 400 years ago. The foundations of todays Chicago were laid out by some of the leading architects reconstructing the city after the Great Fire.Daniel Burnham designed the first visionary urban plan for a city, the 1909 Chicago plan. It was nicknamed 'Paris on the Prairie' and included wide boulevards and parks. At the end of the 19th century the land prices had risen dramatically, which lead to the construction of higher buildings. In 1885, William Le Baron Jenney built what is known as the first skyscraper in the world : the Home Insurance Building. Demolished in 1931, it was 55 meters tall and included 9 stories, later extended to 11. It was built with a load-carrying structural frame, which would be the basic structure for all later skyscrapers. This building marks the start of Chicago as a pioneering architectural city. Many famous architects like Louis Sullivan and later Mies van der Rohe would set new standards for urban architecture in Chicago.