Analyze the goals and methods of the Progressive movement, including muckrakers, reforms of business and government, and the expansion of democracy through constitutional amendments (Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies, US History Standard 2: Western Expansion to Progressivism).

What this topic is asking

The Gilded Age created enormous problems, monopolies, corruption, slums, and dangerous work, and after 1900 a broad reform movement set out to fix them. Standard 2 (Western Expansion to Progressivism) wants you to analyze the goals of the Progressive movement, the methods it used (muckraking journalism, new laws, political reform), and how it expanded democracy. Because LEAP is source based, expect a muckraker excerpt, a reform-era cartoon, or a chart of new laws as the document you read.

The goals of Progressivism

Progressives shared a basic conviction: the free market and machine politics had produced abuses that government should correct. Their broad goals were:

• Regulate big business to curb monopolies and protect consumers and workers.
• Clean up government by ending the corruption of political machines and special interests.
• Expand democracy so that ordinary citizens, not bosses, controlled their government.
• Improve society through reforms on health, safety, working conditions, and (for some) temperance.

Progressives came from both parties and from many groups, journalists, ministers, women's clubs, and middle-class professionals, which is why the movement was so broad.

The muckrakers

The muckrakers were the engine of Progressive change because they turned hidden abuses into public outrage. Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle exposed the filthy meatpacking industry; Ida Tarbell documented Standard Oil's ruthless tactics; Jacob Riis photographed the slums (see immigration and urbanization). Their work shows the LEAP pattern of cause and effect: an exposé creates pressure, and pressure produces a law.

Reforming business and government

The reforms attacked the Gilded Age's two great problems.

• Business. Progressives pushed antitrust action against monopolies and won consumer-protection laws. The most famous, sparked directly by The Jungle, were the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, both passed in 1906.
• Government. Reformers attacked political machines and patronage with the secret ballot and civil-service rules that hired officials by merit rather than connections.

Expanding democracy

The Progressives made government more directly answerable to voters in two ways.

At the state level, they introduced three tools of direct democracy:

• The initiative lets voters propose a law directly.
• The referendum lets voters approve or reject a law.
• The recall lets voters remove an elected official before the end of the term.

At the national level, four constitutional amendments expanded democracy and reform:

The limits of Progressivism

LEAP rewards a balanced judgment. Progressivism permanently expanded government's role and democracy, but it had real limits: it largely excluded African Americans (many Progressives accepted or ignored segregation), Prohibition proved unworkable and was later repealed, and the movement often reflected a middle-class desire for order as much as justice. A strong answer credits the achievements and names the blind spots.