During The Progressive Era

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The progressive era brought about great changes in the early 1900s. Corruption in business, the government, and society was brought to light. Big business owners were getting richer, workers were getting poorer, and beneath the surface of the United States there was a rising tension. Work conditions were brutal, child laborers filled factories, and over half the population of the country was denied the right to vote. Muckrakers - journalists who aspired to reveal corruption for what it was - and others sparked the conception of progressivism, a push for social progress. While most of the aforementioned problems were addressed, by far the most important accomplishment of progressivism was women’s suffrage. How could a country truly make progress when half its population couldn’t vote? Most of the reforms during the progressive era centered around ending corruption, whether it involved the land or industry. During this era, many of the issues brought on by industrialization were addressed, but there was one issue rooted much deeper - women’s rights. Women had been treated as lesser for …show more content…
Most of these problems were self-inflicted, and the result of industrialization. Child labor was one of these issues. “The boys working in the breaker are bent double, with little chance to relax; the air at times is dense with coal-dust, which penetrates so far into the passages of the lungs that for long periods after the boy leaves the breaker, he continues to cough up the black coal dust” (Hine). The children working in the coal mines were forced into brutal conditions which led to illness and, in many cases, death. As more information about these conditions was brought to light, more citizens advocating for imposing stricter regulations or outright ending child labor. This was not accomplished until after the progressive era ended, but progressivism set the process in