Progressive Era Dbq

Progressive Era DBQ

The Progressive Era movement was an attempt to purify American society of many of the corrupted ideals brought about by unregulated industrial growth in the Gilded Age. Although great cities and businesses developed, many Americans were still unhappy with the disparity between the rich and the poor, optimism, and prestige their country had taken hold of. The progressive reform era formed around three presidents and included the struggle for women's suffrage, education, and the temperance movement. Progressivism came with many goals, some of them being: the removal of corruption from government positions, efforts to include more citizens in political processes, and the ideology that government must play a fundamental role in the process of solving social problems and establishing fairness in economic matters.

The success of progressivism can be greatly attributed to the publicity that muckrakers brought about. Muckrakers were writers and photographers who detailed the atrocities of poverty, urban slums, factory conditions, and child labor, food processing and more. Their journalistic dedication helped bring about a change that was taken up by middle class women. An easily distinguished victory is the Sherman Anti-trust act of 1890, now while it was not during the time period of the 1900s to 1920, the impact it had was not truly experienced until the 1900 by individuals who dealt with the bad trusts, and those who took an activist approach and soliciting the idea of trust-busting (doc a). The concept of trust-busting according to the first progressive president Theodore Roosevelt was when the good trusts overrun the bad trusts, as shown in document a, but in the picture The Washington Post used bears to depicted trusts, and by doing that they were sending the underline message that good or bad trusts were dangerous and could only be controlled through aggressive means. Now the muckrakers of the time were doing a very important job, whether they had realized it or not. The publicity in their stories or pictures gives a detailed report on the 99 percent and how they live. The Neill-Reynolds Report described the working environment of meat factory. The floors were described as "in most cases damp and soggy, in dark, ill-ventilated rooms, and the employees were in utter ignorance of cleanliness."(doc B) now if one could ponder on the idea pf that and just imagine if their home were like that, or their jobs, or their schools and we were in a place with soggy floors and an extreme lack of light for at least 8 hours a day not to mention the extended working hours of the time. We, as modern day Americans, simply could not bear it. This exemplifies the importance of muckrakers because not