The decades between 1890 and 1920 constituted a period
of such vital reform activity that historians have dubbed them "the
Progressive era." In this age, millions of Americans organized in
voluntary associations to devise solutions to the myriad problems
created by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration.
Although many of these wildly energetic reformers united in the
Progressive party of 1912--with Theodore Roosevelt as their presidential
candidate--progressivism was not a single movement but a collection of
coalitions agitating for changes that often seemed to contradict each
other. For instance, many progressive reforms aimed to increase
democracy in America. These included women's suffrage, the direct
election of senators, the availability of the referendum, and the right
to recall representatives whose behavior in office did not satisfy their
constituents. On the other hand, many progressives hoped to increase
efficiency in government and believed that they could do so by
diminishing the power of elected officials and installing "experts" in
their stead. This impulse found expression, for example, in progressive
campaigns to hire city managers in the place of elected mayors or city
councils. Government by un elected "experts," of course, undermined
democracy and thus set one set of progressive reforms at odds with
another.
One especially remarkable aspect of progressivism was the full
participation of American women. Denied the vote through most of the
period, women nevertheless exercised what they saw as their rights as
citizens to shape public policy and create public institutions. Acting
through such organizations as the Young Women's Christian Association,
the National Consumers' League, professional associations, and trade
unions, female reformers were at the forefront of the movement against
child labor as well as the women's suffrage campaign. They won minimum
wage and maximum hours laws for women workers, public health programs
for pregnant women and babies, improved educational opportunities for
both children and adults, and an array of social welfare measures at the
local, state, and federal levels. They even succeeded in creating the
Children's Bureau (1912) and the Women's Bureau (1920) in the federal
Department of Labor. All in all, women's activism created a more
intimate relationship between citizens and their government and laid
part of the foundation for the welfare state that would take definitive
shape during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency in the 1930s.
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http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/pwwmh/prog.htm) |