The Progressive Movement

The Progressive Movement occurred between the years of 1890 to 1920 in a time where there was economic instability, war, and political upheaval. Yet, during this time the United States is becoming a mature nation. The Progressive Movement was an effort to fix some of the problems that the American people had come into during the growth of the industrial period. All throughout this we were making advancements, such as, technology. Some of the advancements were the emergence of cities and cars. This change brought two things with it. The first was new things and the second was the concern and nervousness of the people. People believed that the industrialists were being unfair and greedy. They also felt like the government was corrupt. The Progressive Movement was an effort to fix some of the problems that the American people had come into during the growth of the industrial period. One of the main problems was the high rate of growth in the cities. The cities grew from from 35% to 51%. With the growth of the cities the people experienced more problems. When you have more people together you get more poverty, disease, and crime.
During this time there was a merging of social policy and religion known as the Social Gospel. They believed that saving souls was as important as helping them. Churches then began to move into the cities with most of these being Protestant Churches.
The Progressive’s believed they could solve the people’s problems by joining together. Most Progressive’s were middle class professionals and were heavily gendered which meant that each gender took on different issues. The women dealt with things such as water issues while men dealt with more of the government related issues.
During this time, Teddy Roosevelt named journalists Muckrakers which were actually more of investigative reporters. Muckrakers addressed everything from economic problems, political problems, to social problems. The stories would then be written for magazines like McClure’s and Collins. These magazines were very popular during this time because they were cheap (only $ 0.10 a copy) and were a form of gossip that people enjoyed reading. A few of the things that were wrote about was child labor, industrial accidents, and political corruption. The Muckrakers were not afraid to go against the powerful people. The Muckrakers did not have anything to do with the people in the Social Gospel. One famous Muckraker was Upton Sinclair who wrote “The Jungle” in 1906. Sinclair wanted people to read this and turn towards Socialism but instead people read it to see the details about the nasty meat packing plants.
Another reform involved in the Progressive Movement is the Political Machines which were mostly in Chicago. Political Machines were boards hired to help make things better. They believed that because so many people were coming in that we needed people to help because the people needed more sewers, roads, trash removal, and schools. Instead of doing this with good intentions, the boards were assembled fast which meant no bids were collected and lead to the boards operating on patronage.
I believe that the Progressive Movement could be viewed as a positive influence or a negative influence because there were things that benefited the American people but there were also negative issues that arose from it. Without the Progressive Movement we may not have had some of the advances we have had like technology. Yet, without it we may not have faced some of the problems it has caused like disease.