The progressive era was a time of great change, the way people thought and what they did began to change quickly. Industry and business also changed a great deal in this era, with the many new inventions and strong businessmen things where rapidly changing.
The progressive era lasted about 40 years, from 1879-1920. In 1879 Tomas Edison invented the electric light, I guess you could say he just lit the way for may other inventions that people made during this time period.
The progressives where middle class people that where mostly composed of young people who wanted things to change, they believed that educating people was the best way to overcome a problem. They formed volunteer organizations that people would come to and they would educate them on what they thought the problem was with something. Some of the organizations I found where: (American Bar Association, U.S Chamber of Commerce, National Association for the advancement of Colored People, and many others. I think that they did this to increase the awareness of a problem and try to fight that problem with strength in numbers and educations, both are very strong weapons when tackling a problem.
Muckraking was another way people got their point across, they would find out all the information that they could on a person and they would basically, just drag their good name thought the mud, telling the people about, the things that they might not know, the corrupt things and bad deals and kickbacks those types of things. A well known muckraker would be Ida Tarbell, She dragged John D. Rockefellers name thought the mud, exposing bad trust and how he was a ruthless business man, Another muckraker was Upton Sinclair, He wrote a book, to show the American people how bad, the food was, and how disgusting it was, a famous quote of his was "I aimed for the peoples hearts and I hit them right in the stomach", making reference to how gross the book really was.
Teddy Roosevelt was a