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During The Progressive Era

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From protests going on today to the foundation of our nation, when Americans do not like something, they act. The Progressive Era, following the aptly named Gilded Age, was riddled with problems in two main areas: urban life, and working conditions. While during the Progressive Era efforts in these sectors differed greatly in how they aimed to help, both shared a common goal legal reform and bringing the American people to a greater level of equality. First, the way urban life reformers and work condition reforms approached their respective issues was very different. While urban reformers used knowledge to gain power and eventually legislation they wanted, labor reformers had the strength in numbers to use brute force to get their way. …show more content…

But, publication of articles related to such topics were outlawed by the Comstock Act, which deemed the issues inappropriate and vulgar. Regardless, Sanger refused to stop publishing articles that educated women across the country. Sanger also wrote about social issues, such as how a husband should be kind to his wife, although this aspect of her writing was not nearly was popular as that on the feminine health. The social reform for women’s rights was dominated by Jane Addams and her Hull House in Chicago. Here, she offered classes and resources for women to learn skills necessary earn the right to work, and a daycare service so that a working mother does not have to worry about her children. Through Education, women fought for their rights. On the other hand, labor unions took a different approach as they made change mainly through strikes. The first main example of this is the Knights of Labor, who used strikes against massively influential people like Jay Gould to get their way. One of their main demands, whcih was meet, was an eight hour work day. But, the Knights were succeeded by a more successful group, the American …show more content…

In the short term, both reform efforts wanted legal protections. Women like Sanger and Addams encouraged those they educated to use their knowledge to make a change in the system bigger than educating one woman. Sanger asked for legislation that raised the age of consent and fought human trafficking, and Addams asked women to demand equal pay and overall better conditions for working women and children. Both knew that a legal change would allow for their education based efforts to be all the more successful. Similarly, labor unions knew it would be better if laws mandated every industry and company met certain standards, as they would not have to strike against company, allowing them to strike less and work more. But, more long term, both efforts just wanted equality. Women wanted to rights that men have had for as long as our nation has had men, and workers merely wanted to move up the social ladder. Both of these movements were never going to happen on their own, so action had to be

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