Monopolies During The Progressive Era

At the beginning of the Progressive Era there were many issues involving the unregulated businesses. Most of the problems involved safety issues that severely injured many workers, but it also involved business created monopolies to maximize their profits which affected the consumers because there was not a competitive price. This is why the American Government should be able to put regulations and laws in place to restrict businesses from unfair treatment of their workers health and safety; also, to limit the possibility of monopolies occurring to protect the consumers of the products. Many businesses now follow these laws and regulations put in place by our government which makes the story of how America was built one of progress not regresion. During the progressive era the factories had no safety regulations. This caused many severe injuries to occur in factories because of horrific working conditions that included terrible air quality, dangerous machines, extreme hours, and extensive labor. In the United States we are lucky that we no longer have sweatshops but in in countries like China, they still exist. A report in two-thousand nine said “approximately one million workers were injured at work and about 20,000 suffered from diseases due to their occupation”(WarOnWant). The American Government has disposed of these severe

Furthermore, the monopolies got rid of the competition so there was no competitive price point. This was not fair for the commoner because the businesses could change the cost of their products and people would have to pay what they charged. The United States has tried to remove all of the monopolies starting with President Theodore Roosevelt. Today there are practically no monopolies in the United States, but in two-thousand four Microsoft was sued for a monopoly of their product Microsoft Word, this was a very rare