The Age of Reform

The Gilded Age is described fairly well by it’s name. It was a time of advancement economically and technologically, at least on the surface. If you dig deeper you can find that it wasn’t a very good time to live in for the common people, and it would stay like that for most of duration of the Gilded Age until the Progressive Era began. As cities grew, political machines formed and the corruption that followed blinded the government. The common people lived in poverty while the government catered to the rich. Reformists who recognized these issues with society and reacted to them with public dismay were dubbed “mugwumps” because of their mistrust of conventional party discipline. The most notable mugwumps being Edwin L. Godkin, George William…

Maggie Read An Age of Reform 1820-1840 The Reform Impulse Utopian Communities 100 reform communities Restore social Less gap between rich and poor Socialism Communism Shakers Religious community Men and women equal No traditional life The Mormons’ Trek Joseph Smith 1820’s No sep from church and state Persecution NY, Ohio, Missouri, Ill, Smith was murder Brigham Young Great Salt Lake Oneida John Noyes ‘Complex marriage’ Dictator Worldly Communities Robert Owen New Harmony ‘New moral world’…

Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body and Mind. page 26 The majority of the primary resources are in the political, religious, and social documents from as early as 1630 from the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He relies heavily on social habits, bar expenses, minutes from church and political meetings as well as newspapers to maintain the narrative flow. He also places concern that objectivity with prohibition history cannot be achieved because of the inaccuracy of the primary data. …

The Gilded Age led to progressive reform because the people were tired of the problem taking place in the economy and in their social lives. The people began to find ways to make issues better. This brought the people closer to the progressive age. During the gilded age there was a lot of greedy and funny business going on in the economy. People weren’t really catching on at first but when they did, they formed a social movement which later grew into a political movement. The movement fought…

Before the Civil War the United States (U.S.) experienced a time period that was highlighted by increased sectionalism called the antebellum period. The antebellum time period was from 1819 to 1860 and economic, political, and social issues started to divide the various regions of the U.S. This sectionalism, or loyalty towards a particular region, started to develop between the North and South over the practice of slavery. Also during this time period the U.S. was expanding westward and the…

Back in the day kings and emperors were actually not the only rulers that consolidated their power in the high Middle Ages; popes also did, and that was through a series of measures that would make the church more independent of secular control. “Under the leadership of a series of reforming popes in the eleventh century, the church tries to end this practice” (p.267). It was the popes’ efforts that were sometimes challenged by the medieval kings and emperors, in which the wealth of the church…

From the 1820s through the 1840s America was considered to be in the Age of Reform. This age was inspired from the second Great Awakening Movement of the early 1800s. After the first Great Awakening individuals and society were capable of indefinite improvements. Through the efforts of voluntary groups, reform became the badge of respectability. Voluntary groups during this time period were referred to as Utopian Communities. One major Utopian community was known as the Shakers. Founded by Ann…

The Age of Reform between 1820 and 1840 was characterized by the raise of voluntary groups which worked to prevent sins in society and to improve institutions such as prisons, public schools, and better conditions for wage laborers. Eventually, some reformers moved away from the large society and lead their voluntary groups into becoming communities called reform communities. The idea of individualism was replaced by the idea that people in the society had to cooperate with each other in order…

Child Labor was the most effective reform from The Gilded Age because it impacted most of the working children, and factories in United States. “Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor”. As the problem of child labor grew more and more attention, people started to make unions and reforms to help…

In 2003 New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act which decriminalized prostitution. The reason New Zealand decriminalized prostitution was to create a system that protected the human rights if the sex workers and protects them from exploitation; promotes the welfare and occupational health and safety of the sex workers; conducive to public health; prohibits the use in prostitution of persons under the age of 18.[1] New Zealand stated that the purpose of the Prostitution Reform Act was not…