The Impact Of Progressivism In The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era was from 1900-1920 and in that era a social movement for social reform began as what is known as Progressivism. In this essay I will describe what Progressivism is and how and why it changed American Politics and society in the early twentieth century. While describing what progressivism is and how it changed American Politics and society, my main focus will also be on the progressives and the different problems that they wanted to reform, and also on progressive President “Teddy” Theodore Roosevelt. The Progressive movement’s main goals were to limit the power of big businesses; expand democracy, which includes black and immigrant civil rights, and women’s suffrage; and to strengthen social justice. To help in the process

While empowering women was the main goal at first, it later became about fixing society. There were many problems that the progressives wanted to reform in the 1900’s, one of them being poverty. The progressives believed that no children should be starving and on the street, and that they would do whatever it took to make sure that happened. While poverty was a main concern, the progressives were also trying to reform poor working conditions. They wanted the government to pass a law that guaranteed a safe working environment, and they believed that children were not safe working below a certain age. With that being said, they got a child labor law passed that restricted all children 14 and under from working. The progressives did these things because they cared about society and were motivated by their Christian beliefs. The progressives and their movement altogether was a strong attempt to fix everything in society. Almost anything that you could think of, the progressives had a problem with, but it was only for the sake of protecting the society. Progressives also believed that alcohol was a big problem that led to violent events so they wanted a law passed that moderated people’s intake. While none of these completely describe how progressivism changed American politics and society, there was some good that came out of all of this and helped the cause, and the

Roosevelt believed that a president should take a more active role on economics, society, and politics, and with that being said he morphed the progressive era into the government level. Roosevelt created something called a square deal that he offered American businesses and labor, and corporations and their business workers. In the square deal that Roosevelt created, he promised to use the government as a tool to protect people from big businesses. This was a perfect idea for him as a progressive president because the progressives were against big businesses and advocated for the workers. During Roosevelt’s time as president he wanted to make sure that he stayed involved and helped fix whatever problems had been going during his time in office. He started something known as trust-busting which basically was a series of investigative committees that went in and looked for illegal or unethical ties between different businesses. His main goal was to break up these trusts and he became known as the trust buster. Roosevelt also believed that railroads favored big businesses but would raise prices for individual farmers and such, so he tried establishing some rules that railroads had to follow to stop this from happening. These rules among with the others I discussed, make up the square deal. Roosevelt