Zachary Harriott Professor Berson AMH-2020 October 13 2015 The Progressive Era The Progressive Era was a time in the history where Americans pushed for reform and change in certain aspects of the American life. The party’s main belief that a more responsive government could improve American society if given the chance. These improvements included things like safer working conditions in factories, the prohibition of liquor and the breaking up of big business for a fairer market. Some figureheads of this movement were William McKinley, William Jennings Bryan, Howard Taft, and Teddy Roosevelt. They were the people who pushed for this change. The Progressive Era was also important because in one way or another it affected the whole nation. Everybody …show more content…
There were many sects of this movement that had different goals but they all united under one belief in the power of the government to improve society (citation). One of the great social ills was women’s inequality to men. They were known to have worse working conditions than men and, to add insult to injury, they didn’t have the right to vote. Another one of these ills was Alcoholism. Alcohol was seen as morally wrong in the progressive era because men were drinking away their wages away and became drunkards. The biggest problem though was with the cleanliness of the food people ate. After reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle people started to question where their food was coming from and how it was being made. An inspection order by the president discovered that conditions were on pare or worse than what Sinclair wrote about in his book. The meat houses were often dirty and decrepit while the workers (usually immigrants) were paid little to nothing. When Americans got wind of this news meat sales plummeted in both the U.S. and Europe due to the contamination. Something had to be done. To fix all of these problems Americans would have to give up their beliefs in small government. They would have to allow the government to have a major role in everyone’s