The early 20th century was an era of progressive reform in America. The Progressive Era was a time when people started to speak out and join ways to make their own laws. These people called themselves progressives, they worked together to improve human equality. The progressives wanted all American citizens to join their group and fight to improve social conditions. They were mainly considered journalists, writers, and even illustrators. There main focus was on reforming the United States in many ways such as, unsanitary living conditions, harsh practices from businesses, and revealing political corruption. The Progressive Era was indeed successful and changed America forever.
The progressives would discover ways to show the world the cruelty that would occur behind the doors. A title called muckraking journalism is how progressives would inform their audience with unknown problems in the 20th century. They would create political cartoons, young children books, and plenty of novels. Monopolizing was one main issue in the Progressive Era. Ida Tarbell was the well educated man who exposed the truth behind the Standard Oil. “ But the Standard oil agents were not sent into a territory back in the seventies simply to sell the oil they could by efficient service and aggressive pushing; they were sent there to sell all the oil that was bought”(“Muckrakers”). This quote shows how Rockefeller had corrupted all the oil there was to buy and then would began to wipe out all the competition and became richer by the day. Tarbell had created a book where statistics and facts about the existence of monopolies could be shown. After the book was released, monopolies were permanently shut down. Jacob Riis was also a progressive that helped change the U.S. for good. Riis was a photographer who mainly had his focus on exposing the unsanitary living conditions and share them with his fellow U.S. citizens to help them become aware of the situation. His most famous work was called The Other Half Lives. These photos showed the harsh conditions people were dealing with constantly such as sleeping on the stairs. After the photos were released, people …show more content…
The hardworking men were getting cruel treatment and low pay. They would work for more than half the day with no beneficial rewards whatsoever. There was no such thing as minimum wage back in the Gilded Age so the progressives knew their was a change to be made. They began to focus more on this problem and show the American people some truth behind this. After the progressives had some say on it, the government began to put in safety conditions, a minimum wage was made, and less hours were assigned (“The Progressive Era”). This shows how the progressives were truly successful in enforcing new laws.
With all the problems going around in this era, you would expect sanitary to not be included but infact was a major problem. Upton Sinclair was the progressive who did his research on unsanitary procedures in the industry. He was known for writing a book titled The Jungle for his realistic descriptions and views. In this book he describes the rotten and disgusting meat that was being produced, This shocked the public eye and got led to the federal food