Progressivism In The United States

The hinge of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s coincided, in the United States, with numerous social changes of great significance. The eminently agrarian society that had always been turned urban and industrial. The farmers stopped being those producers of the first wave, who cleared the land to speculate with it, or those of the second wave, who made it fertile. They were growers who acquired machines and produced on a growing scale. Companies also grew to unknown sizes. Railway companies, oil producers, steel producers, car manufacturers, pharmaceutical and chemical companies formed large corporations orchestrated by banks, which took time in their own process of nationalization and concentration. These companies and a myriad of new businesses attracted the cities to the children of the farmers, and to a new population. The natural growth did not satisfy the shortage of labor. There came, in new waves, workers from half the world; of zones different from those of the first migrations. They came with new ideas, strange to the political tradition of the United States. And they raised new problems. Also emerged a new social class, that of professionals, who held positions of responsibility in companies, or institutions. Its importance grew faster than the economy itself.
The problems were understood from the traditions of the

An immediate criticism of the pretensions of progressivism is that, if more authority was granted to the federal government, the chances of politicians and businesspeople conspiring to favor their interests behind the backs of the public, and generally against it, were much more significant. This difficulty was solved with the pretension that, somehow, those who made these decisions would be good men. In front of the great names of all known, the captains of the industry, who were also the thieving barons, was the figure of the man of good