Corruption In The Progressive Era

Removing the corruption from within the government was a top priority for Progressive Presidents and activists. Due to the great gap between the upper and lower classes in America, this also led to trust busting during this period, the breakout of outrageously wealthy trust organizations such as General Electric. Many laws were passed during this period to enforce these ideas, such as the Federal Farm act of 1916, the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, and the Meat Inspection Act. The first similarity between the two periods is the ten year overlap at the end of the 19th century. These were both periods of great advancements in the United States, but otherwise they stood for very different principles. The primary difference between the two period
lies in corruption. The Gilded Age is known as a time of widespread political corruption and political machines. For example, the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant was marked with unprecedented corruption featuring scandals and cheap economic tactics. The Progressive era was a time during which the governments top priority was cleansing corruption. Eventually the pervasive insecurity of the original Gilded Age inspired a major period of reform known as the Progressive Era. Many of the solutions earlier advanced by workers and farmers were adopted by middle-class activists and reform-minded leaders within business and government, all of them anxious to correct what they saw as troubling inequities in America's economic and political order.