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The Progressives Confront Industrial...
Summary
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The social-improvement impulse so prevalent in American history hit such an apex in the decades around the turn of the century that the time is called the Progressive Era. Social progressives, mostly from the middle class and reflecting its values, included groups working for child- and women's-labor laws, women's suffrage, school reform, and the elimination of vice at home in saloons, brothels, and movie houses. One of the mouthpieces for the progressive movement was the muckraking journalists such as Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. Progressive ideology also informed the labor movement of the time and had important effects on government. At the local level, progressive reformers called for government efficiency and an end to municipal corruption. They gained a national voice in Theodore Roosevelt, who worked for conservation, the regulation of trusts, and pure-food and -drug legislation. Interestingly, though, progressivism was a very white movement which slighted the problems of black Americans— who reacted to their situation with militancy, as did W. E. B. Du Bois, or with calls for accommodation as expressed by Booker T. Washington. Both William H. Taft and Woodrow Wilson carried on Roosevelt's progressivism in the executive office, with Taft prosecuting the trusts and Wilson introducing a graduated income tax and creating the Federal Reserve system. Wilson did however temper his progressivism by rejecting legislation on child labor and women's suffrage, and by enforcing segregation in several federal agencies.
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