preview

The Progressive Reform Movement

Decent Essays
Open Document

The era of progressive reform was short, 1900 to about 1917, but much was accomplished and done in this short time span. Evils like child labor and social ills were thought curable by progressive optimists like John Spargo and Upton Sinclair but the main focus was urban America. The progressive reform movement was a period of awareness where people sought to change the injustices of society for example, Anti-Trust laws, recognition of environmental destruction and conservation of national park land, and improving the American way of life through significant areas of reform like women’s suffrage.

The industrial revolution spawned unimaginable injustices toward the people by capitalists and the United States government. Overpopulation, poor living …show more content…

Progressivism is a political movement and what it caused was rights that everyone deserved. Strikes happened because there were no rights to protect and make employees comfortable in their working environment. Progressive reform on the other hand made it so Capitalists could no longer suppress the problems that they produced. These unimaginable injustices toward the people by capitalists and government is what really sparked the progressive reform movement and lead to things like strikes. Desperation for change became critical in the new progressive era. John Spargo, a progressive muckraker and an active socialist, focused his reform efforts on improving lives of poor children. A quote from a book he wrote in 1908 advocated government controls over the distribution and pasteurization of milk to protect the health of babies and children. What spargo said in this quote was “...plea for action; to waken...dormant and neglected powers and impulses...need to be called into active cooperation in order that evils may be remedied.”(doc 4) Spargo, like many other Americans, wished to fix ills and asked for action to change the way of life for the better. This shows how

Get Access