The Progressive Movement: The Good Government Movement

Many of the social and political problems progressives sought to ameliorate stemmed from the mass industrialization and urbanization found in the cities across the world. These problems included labor conflicts, unprecedented poverty, slums, disease, social fragmentation, and ineffective city government, parts of what made up what was called “The Social Problem”. At the time, progressivism was never a unified movement as there were divisions on regional matters, gender, and race. There were several common features such as the strive against major corporations and an attempt to pull society more towards a communal identity rather than individualistic, along with a distrust for authoritarian governments. Many time they would demand government intervention to help lower the power of corporations and bring protection to what
Through the use of reform tickets they managed to effectively remove some of the most corrupt politicians from power as well as bring more awareness to the cause. They went on to also increase the government’s efficiency in terms of response time through special commissions made up of those most knowledgeable on the subject at hand. Though the change in America weren’t as extensive as in Europe their improvement to water, waste collection, mass transportation, gas, and electricity brought a much needed improvement to the urban environment. One movement that had much less of an effect was how to solve the housing problem, as cities were often too over crowded and hazardous due to the density. A committee was formed in response in order to oversee the building of working class apartment but this never caught on as Americans didn’t want their property rights to be encroached upon nor their taxes raised for this