How The Gilded Age Was Progressive

PROGRESSIVE ERA THROUGH THE GREAT DEPRESSION
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First Paper
Themes of the progressive era
Introduction
This was an age of social involvement and political progression in the United States between the period of 1890 and 1920s. The main reason for undergoing this process was to purify the government by making efforts to eliminate corruption by revealing the political masters and machines. A large number of citizens supported the movement to ensure the elimination of the political masters that concentrated in public houses. Women’s suffrage was noticeable that was aimed at ensuring purer women’s participation in the field. The movement began at the local levels and grew up to the national levels. Besides the
goal of political purification, the movement had five other themes. In accordance with this, this paper discusses the six main themes of the progressive movement and the reforms that the movement endorsed.
Shift from a gilded age to a progressive era
The gilded age was a period before the push for a progressive age that had a characteristic of an enormous growth mainly in the northern and western parts of the United States.
The gilded age had many problems that made people to push to an era with little or no social and political problems. Some of the problems of the gilded age included; the economic retardation of the southern parts of the States, the African-Americans of the south being denied power to take part in political activities, and racism. The problems prevailed after two nationwide panics affected the growth in this period. The gilded period had two noticeable divisions: the Mugwumps who were extremely rich and had no support from most people because they considered elitists (Kunitz, 1974). The other group was the agrarian laborers who lacked power and their movements could not succeed. In the progressive era, the reformers built a coalition, which combined the Mugwumps and the labor unionists. Because of the combination, the coalition was less focused. There were conflicts in the coalitions that led to compromises, little disagreements, and little solutions to the problems (Jeff,
2010).
Reform movement of the progressive era goals
This was the second theme of the era and had five goals. The first goal was to have a greater democracy to ensure that the government is being ruled by the majority. The second goal was greater efficiency at work that was to be accomplished through embracing scientific procedures at the government and all sectors of the economy. The third goal was a greater regulation or resources. Social justice at the state level to support the poor and the powerless was the fourth goal. The last goal was government activism where people called for the government to have a greater role in all aspects of life (Jeff, 2010).
Republican progressivism
This was under the influence of the then vice president Theodore Roosevelt who stood for reforms. This is because he considered the Congress slow and lattice locked because it was a product of pleasing the parties of the nation. He wanted the power to be taken from the Congress back in the hands of the president as was under the rule of Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt also wanted to break up combinations in the trade restraints (Jeff, 2010).
Does Roosevelt’s apprentice outdo his boss?
Roosevelt chose W. Howard Taft as his successor because he chose to vie for a second elective term. Citizens therefore elected Howard thinking that he would continue with Roosevelt’s policies. Howard was however hesitant in using the government as a leader to people’s economic life. Howard policies and beliefs always opposed those of Roosevelt, which led to economic backwardness and broke people’s trust in him (Jeff, 2010). As a result, people called Roosevelt from retirement.
The progressives battling each other in the 1912 elections
The Republican Party became hurt by Howard’s political hesitations. As a result, the Republicans lost power of the Congress. The progressives therefore called for Roosevelt to challenge Howard in the 1912 elections. The faithful republicans stayed con Howard’s side because they viewed leaving the president’s side to join Roosevelt as radical. This affected the success of the Republican Party and the democrats took a significant advantage through Woodrow Wilson (Jeff, 2010). The 1912 elections marked the highest point of progressivism that saw a democrat become a president and its campaigns had two main candidates who discussed progressivism.
The progressivism of Woodrow Wilson
Wilson had a triple wall of privilege.
The first one was the tariffs that saw him reduce and increase duties on some items and made some items free. The second privilege was banking. This is because Owen believed that it was important to have material reserves that would serve in case of economic depressions. This led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. Owen also had other reforms such as loan acts that enabled farmers to get loans at low rates, compensation of civil servants during their disability periods, an eight hour working day for the civil servants with extra pay in case they worked overtime and laws against child labor (Jeff,
2010).
Key reforms in the progressive era
The progressive era reforms can be grouped into city reforms that mainly focused on the urban areas, which resulted in the restructuring of local administrations by means of commissioner-and-city-manager administration styles. State reforms were also established with the aids of key reformists such as Roosevelt, Lafollette Robert, and Woodrow Wilson that aimed at making state governments more responsive to the needs of the people. There were also federal reforms that were aimed at environmental conservation, health preservation, tightening the previous economic regulations and ensuring safety of all the citizens. The federal reforms were also responsible for the delivery of the needed entrepreneurial reforms (Casewell, 2001).
Conclusion
The progressive era is the period that took the United States through a era of financial and societal change. The period had seen solutions to the problems brought about by the concentration of power in a few hands that could have led to the emergence of the dualistic economy in the United States. Democrats whose political success had been taken over by the republicans after the First World War emerge and take leadership. The presence of an opposition is important because its main activity out of the government is to ensure that the government works towards maintaining the formulated reforms. Without the emergence of this era, there is doubt to whether the problems that existed before could have been solved.

References
Casewell, T. (2001). Progressive era reform. Retrieved from http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/ushisgov/themes/reform/progressive.htm
Jeff, (2010). The Progressive Era, 1900-1916: Six Major themes we will Consider. 25th Retrieved from http://www.littlejohnexplorers.com/jeff/history/progressiveera.PDF
Kunitz, S. J. (1974). Professionalism and Social Control in the Progressive Era: The Case of The Flexner Report. Social Problems, 22(1), 16.