Main Goals of The Progressive Movement

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In the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century the Progressive Era was moving to reshape America. Progressivism was a political movement that encouraged the exposure of corruption in America in order to reshape it for the better. This time period became known for the social and political changes that took place as a result of the progressives. Progressivism ruled the country, changing the way Americans lived and the way politics affected them. One of the main goals of the progressive movement was to use democracy to regulate the government by exposing the corruption of government officials. Another area in which the progressives moved for change was business. In the late nineteenth century many large businesses were corrupt, forming monopolies and large trusts that allowed them to bypass the law and rake in obscene amounts of money. This money making included the poor treatment and even worse payment of the workers who toiled day in and day out to make the trusts’ money. The Progressive Era brought attention to the corruption of these large monopolies and with the exposure came laws to bring these trusts under control. The Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 was passed in an attempt to break up large, corrupt trusts. Bringing down these corrupt money making machines became known as trust busting, and was a large part of president Teddy Roosevelt’s career. Trust busting was a big part of the progressive movement and it was for the most part successful, bringing down trusts such as the large railroad tycoon Northern Securities. The Progressives were not only targeting trusts at the time however. They were also targeting social problems such as poverty and unsafe working conditions. People who exposed these things to the publ...

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...go Tribune, May 21, 2006, accessed May 15, 2014,http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/0605210414_1_upton-sinclair-trust-free/3.

Holbrook, Stewart. The Age of the Moguls. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1953.

Reed, Lawrence. “Ideas and Consequences: Of Meat and Myth.” The Freeman, 1994. Accessed April 23, 2014.

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. NY: Doubleday&Company, 1906.

Sinclair, Upton. “What Life Means to Me.” Cosmopolitan, 1906.

“Upton Sinclair's the Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry.” Constitutional Rights Foundation 24, no. 1 (2008): 1. Accessed May 15, 2014. http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-b-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-muckraking-the-meat-packing-industry.html.

Whorton James, review of Pure Food: Securing the Pure Food and Drug Acts of 1906, by
James Young, Book Reviews-Isis, 1995, 586-88

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