Goals Of The Progressive Movement

The “Progressive Movement was an early-20th century reform movement seeking to return control of the government to the people, to restore economic opportunity, and to correct injustices in American life.” (Danzer R54). The Progressive Era marked the end of the “Gilded Ages” and a start of a new era. The Progressive Era started in 1901 in the United States (Fagnilli 26). There were many major reforms in the Progressive Era that altered and advanced American society. Some of these advancements included urban problems such as working conditions, slums, and poverty, political corruption, economic problems, injustice and social issues affecting people, and the morality of Americans (Fagnilli 26). The major goals in the Progressive Era were protecting social welfare, promoting moral

Moral improvement occurred when reformers wanted immigrants and poor city dwellers to uplift themselves by improving their moral behavior (Danzer 513). A women 's group from Cleveland, the Women 's Christian Temperance Union, believed that alcohol undermined morals and led to bad behavior (Fagnilli 29). They believed the way to complete the moral goal was to make the country a “dry” country. Another prohibitionist group was the Anti Saloon League. This group endorsed politicians who supported banning alcohol, and organized state reform to try to ban alcohol. From 1900 -1917 almost half of the United States voted to go “dry” (Fagnilli 29). As saloons closed to cure society’s problems, immigrant tempers arose (Danzer 514). The effort to improve morale in the United States during the Progressive Movement proved to be a failure due to the fact that immigrants would be unhappy if the states went “dry,” and prohibitionist would be unhappy if the country did not become “dry.” While promoting moral improvement proved to be a failure, many efforts were made to reform the economics in the United