Skip to main content

What is the Progressive opportunity?

The Progressive opportunity was a period of time when the country was ready to make various social and political changes. Around 1900, muckrakers began to write about problems in various areas of our society. People were concerned about some of the issues that existed and were supportive of making reforms.


Upton Sinclair wrote a book called The Jungle. The book described the unhealthy and the unsanitary conditions in the meat industry. This led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act. This law required meat to be inspected by the federal government before it could be sold. The Pure Food and Drug Act also was passed when people realized companies were falsely labeling foods and medicines in order to make more money.


John Spargo’s book called The Bitter Cry of Children led to changes in laws regarding workers. Laws were passed that outlawed child labor in certain industries and required children to attend school. When people realized that kids were being exploited, they were ready to make changes to fix the problem.


Lincoln Steffens wrote in his book called The Shame of the Cities about how money was influencing politics. This led to many political changes. These included the direct election of U.S. Senators, the development of the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, and the granting of the right to vote to women. It also led to new forms of local government such as the development of the commission plan of government.


People were concerned about the actions of big businesses. Many people believed big businesses exploited the common person. Several government agencies were developed to regulate big businesses, and some big businesses were ordered to dissolve. The Northern Securities Company was one example of a big business that was broken up by court action.


The Progressives seized upon the opportunities that presented themselves in the early 1900s. Other groups such as the Populists had previously discussed some of the ideas that the Progressives were now supporting, but these ideas weren’t enacted. The Progressives took advantage of a supportive environment that allowed for many changes to be made to reform our society.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more