Compare And Contrast The Populist Movement

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The populist movement organized in St. Louis in 1892 led by the chief organizer Ignatius Donnelly was designed by the common people to assist the common people. The progressist and the populist are similar in only a few ways that I can determine but their differences are vast. The start of both of these movements seem to define how different they are in structure with the one starting from within poverty seeking a resolution to level the playing field and the other defining poverty as a lack of education. The direct election of senators is one of the ways in which they are similar. Both identified issues that needed to change and both identified that the government needed to be used as a tool in order to effect this change but had different …show more content…

Some of these issues were remove the corruption and undue influence, include more people within the political process, a conviction that the government must play a pivotal role to fix social problems and economic factors. The progressivist movement began as a social movement but began to push more into the political sector. The problems that this era faced such as poverty, greed or racism could be combated by providing a good education a good and efficient workplace, and a safe environment. This social group were mainly college educated and lived mainly within the city limits and identified that the government could be used as a tool in order to push their agenda. Freedom redefined as the fulfillment of human capabilities. "All that progressives ask or desire," wrote Woodrow Wilson, "is permission -- in an era when development, evolution, is a scientific word -- to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine." Wanted the peoples will to be translated more into the governments system but what they received was a democracy that took power from the local elected Senators. Successes of the progressivist movement include the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act but progressives never saw complete eye to eye on the specific ways of dealing with their