Progressive Era Dbq

AP United States History

DBQ

Progressive Era

Evaluate the effectiveness of Progressive Era reformers in bringing about reform at the national level in the period 1900-1920

The policies put through during the Era of Reconstruction was the era of which shown the complete corruptness of the United States. The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1900s to the 1920s. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were eliminating problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and corruption in government. The people that brought up these problems in a radical way were reformers. Despite their radical tendancies, reformers were actually very valuable during the Progressive era becoming very effective in putting their cause in the spotlight.

The start of the Progressive Era was the end of the Reconstructive era. Along with this came the Trusts in business. Monopolies became higher due to the loose Acts that were pasts. Like the Clayton antitrust act of 1914 which was part of Wilsons new freedoms. This was simply an extension of the Sherman antitrust act of 1890. The problem with the Sherman antitrust act however, was the fact whenever put in to action in court. The court normally sided with business. However, that didn’t stop Roosevelt. He brought out reform but, was only breaking some of the trusts of the most “bad trusts”. Taft (Roosevelts successor) broke more trusts including the Standard Oil Trust. Reformers were spectacularly effective in Roosevelts time. They decided between good and bad trusts and helped enforce and codify that the role of the federal government is to police corporations. (Doc 1,4)

Coming out of the Reconstruction Era left scars on Labor as well. Coming into the Progressive era; Per the Neill- Reynolds Report, 1906, we saw terrible working conditions. Some workers fell ill, etc. An essay known as “the jungle” exposed the terrible working conditions and the effects of the working conditions on the people who got the finished products, like food which drastically improved through the confirmation of “the jungle” and the Meat