The Progressive Era

As progressivism expanded throughout American cities and towns, there was the need to create a solution due to the highly prevalent political and economic issues. However, the solution to the problem was not apparent because of the corruption deep within the system in the national and state governments. For a resolution to the many problems present in the country, the progressive era was the response of different groups to the problems present. Progressivism focused on promoting new ideas with a new wave of industrialization, social reforms, and laws. The most prevalent change that occurred in this time period was the introduction of a new idea: democracy. Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or through elected members
Progressive leaders advocated reforms with a variety of goals. First, introduced was the urban reforms and ______ towards the corrupt leaders and political system. Others, focused on the involvement of government in solving social problems and fairness in the economy (The Progressive Era). Although, initial leaders of the movement were able to spark the movement, they could not successfully solve the deep rooted problems. The most important change occurred a bit later when William McKinley was elected as the 25th president in the election of 1897, and made changes in the state and national governments. He was followed by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09) and William Howard Taft (1909–13) who carried McKinley’s legacy of progressivism when he was assassinated in
Although the reformers of this movement consisted of a diverse group of individuals-- journalists, politicians, middle class, and men and women --- the thing that united them was their goal of protecting the people, solve urbanization and industrialization problems, improve social welfare, and of course promoting the ideal of democracy. These everlasting effects are shown even until present day in two distinct ways. The most important effect is the difference between prior existing and modern definitions of democracy. Direct democracy is a government run on people’s say and in which people decide policy initiatives directly. However, the definition has changed over the years and the new western democratic definition is a government which incorporates the people’s ideas as well as elected officials which is slightly different than the previous example. Because of this continuous push of democracy, America’s [policeman] role in the world is relevant in this paper. The spread of western democracy’s (although a bit different) ideals. A key example is the 2016 Presidential Election between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic Hillary Clinton. Numerous times in their discussions and debates, the topic of democracy and whether its ideals are protected was common during the time period of the election. In