Similarities Between Roosevelt And The Progressive Era

Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. He is known as the most successful president during the Progressive Era. As the leader of the Republican party he founded the Progressive party. Being appointed President following the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, he made sure to gain America’s trust by reinforcing the fact that he was not going to take any drastic measures. This was not hard for him to achieve since he was the first President of his time to receive a Medal of Honor for his heroism during the Spanish-American War, along with being award the Noble Peace Prize for his efforts in ending the Russo-Japanese War. His Primary concerns during the ERA included

These fixes came in way of individual and group actions, as the economy changed in America, the progressives were hard at work responding to the change in political system. A book titled “The Jungle” led to President Roosevelt’s creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. It wasn’t enough to have words that described the conditions in which people worked in, so a photographer name Louis Hines, began taking pictures. The photographs that Hines took, led to American being face to face with over two million children under 15 working in mines for wages. Workers began organizing unions to get corporations to raise their wages, ultimately leading to employers opening their eyes to the fact that a great way to mitigate the problems associated with industrialism is to pay their workers more (Mayhew, 1998). Employers like Henry Ford paid his workers $5 a week, a wage that was unforeseen during this time. However, his thought process was that his workers should be able to afford the Model T’s they were producing. Luckily for him for foresight was correct, the annual sale of the Model T rose over 100K cars annually along with the cost of the car dropping from $700 to around $320. By 1915Americans were purchasing a variety of different devices, these included washing machines, vacuum cleaners, record players and automobiles. While the country was making such headway in the industrial world, there were still groups of Americans that were being excluded from reaping the benefits of the “new found” wealth or the