The Progressive era and its li

The Progressive Era and its limitations

In this essay I am going to first show the sources of progressivism. Then I will analyze and describe various reforms. Following I will get into the limitations of these reforms for certain groups of people. I want to show that even though the progressive era had been full of significant reforms with good intentions, it had its limitations as far as poor people, minorities and immigrants were concerned. I believe that this progressive era did bring many great and beneficial reforms but it did not always help the poorest and the minorities.

The study of the emergence of modern America begins with the Progressive era which included the nations most vibrant set of reform ideas and campaigns since the 1830s-40s. Various aspects triggered the Progressive Reform Era. Industrialization, with all its increase in productivity and the number of consumer goods, was one of these aspects. It created unemployment and labor unrest, wasteful use of national resources and abuses of corporate power. The growing cities magnified problems of poverty, disease, crime and corruption. Influx of immigrants and rise of new managerial class upset traditional class alignments. On top of all of these probl

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

They did not recognize the minorities as full citizens and they couldn’t get many of the jobs available to the whites. The socialists were frustrated workers who promised to destroy capitalism. Election reforms brought direct democracy to voters. They did get some help in the form of money from the government which the land owner was supposed to distribute to them but it happened often enough that he kept it for himself. The reforms that did help the white skilled middle class did not help the ones that needed it the most, the poorest and the minorities and immigrants. This, of course, made it even harder for the poor and unskilled and minorities to even get close to an employment opportunity. These Progressive reformers were composed of several different groups: new middle class composed of young professionals, Muckraking journalists, political reformers and socialists.

The first reforms took place in the cities in the form of improving the delivery of basic services, such as transportation, water and electricity. They had a strong faith in progress and the ability of educated people to overcome problems. Also, many of these unions were determined to protect the jobs of their members, even at the expense of other workers. The result of these reforms and labor unions was that it made the situation very hard for the poor and minorities, even harder than before the reforms and that is a huge limitation of the Progressive era, it left out the poorest in some cases out of the benefits of the reforms. The unions succeeded in increasing wages and improving the working conditions, and by the end of World War I they had made the eight-hour day the norm in industry. City commissions replaced mayors and city councils in some areas. For example, Charlotte Perkins Gilman attacked the male monopoly on opportunity and declared that domesticity was an absolute value for American women.

Another problems were with the reforms regarding the labor unions.

Approximate Word count = 1364
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.