Corporate Monopolies During The Progressive Era

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During the Progressive Era, various groups responded to the political, social, and economic woes that resulted from the rapid industrialization and urbanization of America during the 19th Century. The mass immigration of foreigners and the northern migration of Africa-Americans led to urban overcrowding and competition for wage-paying jobs. Electric lighting allowed factories to expand their working hours to increase the output of manufactured goods. Because there was little regulation for employee welfare, many men, women, and children toiled long hours in unsafe factory conditions. In addition, expanding communications through the widespread use of telephones, magazines, and newspapers brought the plight of the poor and oppressed …show more content…
Small businesses struggled to compete with the price undercutting of the large companies and eventually this led to the elimination of the free market competition. Once a large corporation had control over the competition, high prices, low wages, and unsafe working conditions were the end results. The first President of the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt believed in strong corporations, but he also wanted increased governmental control to regulate these trust companies and protect the public welfare. President Roosevelt called upon the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 to protect the public from monopolies and he brought lawsuits against some of the most powerful corporations in the United States. Roosevelt’s successor, President Taft continued the fight against unfair business practices through more anti-trust lawsuits and the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, which regulated the telegraph and telephone companies. The third president of the Progressive Era, Woodrow Wilson based his campaign on the theory that less government control of business and a federal minimum wage for workers would eliminate the poverty issues in America. In 1914 Wilson’s most important antitrust legislation, The Clayton Antitrust Act strengthened the government’s ability to dismantle corporations by identifying specific business practices that defined …show more content…
The tenements were plagued by overcrowding, poor sanitation, and disease. In the book “How the Other Half Lives”, Jacob Reiss brought the poor living conditions of the urban poor to the American public. In his photograph “5 Cents a Spot”, Reiss documented the overcrowding living conditions where one boarding room could house over twenty men, women, and children. Social worker Jane Addams built a settlement house, the Hull House, in the urban slums of Chicago to provide services for the working poor. While working at the Hull House, Addams witnessed the heartbreak of working mothers losing their children to accidents and malnutrition. Addams social work also influenced the development of child labor laws, welfare programs, and factory safety laws. Margaret Sanger, a public health nurse for New York’s inner-city poor, advocated for birth control to combat the social repercussions of poverty and overcrowding caused by excessive childbearing. Sanger argued that the roots of all societal evils such as child labor, malnutrition, insanity, child abuse, immorality, and infant mortality directly resulted from excessively large families. Sanger challenged the Comstock Law, which deemed contraception as immoral, and in 1916 she began the first birth control clinic. This clinic evolved into the present day Planned Parenthood Federation. Social Era
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