Middle-Class Progressive Reforms During The Progressive Era

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During the Progressive Era, the perception of bringing reforms to a national level are showed by the successes that it had by implementing Acts that no longer helped big industries, instead, the middle-class focus to help the working class. Many middle-class progressive reformers were motivated by personal indignation, this feeling was expressed by journalists called muckrakers, this writers, unlike journalist who merely reported events, fed the public taste for scandal and sensation by investigating and attacking social, economic, and public wrongs. Well-known muckraking efforts included Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”(novel that attacked the meat packing industry), Ida Tarbell’s “The History of the Standard Oil Company”(documenting Rockefellers tactics against rivals that got in its way) and Jacob Riis’s “How the Other Half lives”(documenting the squalid living conditions in New York …show more content…
In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, who had a very different view of conservation by which he wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, while Roosevelt generally favored conservation with carefully managed development, but at the end both work for the conservation of natural resources in the U.S. When William Howard Taft took the presidency after Roosevelt, who recommended him, he most prominent contribution to politics was the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 in which he extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate the telecommunications industry, and designated telephone, telegraph and wireless companies as common carriers. After Taft, Woodrow Wilson won the presidency and with that his system of “New Nationalism” which was similar to the “square deal” by Roosevelt both would not destroy big business, but establish regulatory commission, experts who protect the citizen interest and ensure concentrated economic