The Progressive Era was a period of political reform and widespread social activism across the USA. The main goals of this era was to eliminate some of the problems caused by industrialization, immigration, and urbanization. A lot of positives came out of the Progressive Era, and so did a lot of negatives. A lot of new laws were passed to improve our lives.
The Progressive Era did have a lot of positives including women's suffrage, child labor laws, the 17th, 18th, and 19th amendments, and a lot more. Although there is a lot of positives to this era, I will only be talking about two of the main ones. A huge positive was women's suffrage, the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote. Which made both women and men equal. …show more content…
A lot of good laws and regulations came from muckrakers. For example Upton Sinclair was a major muckraker. He is the author of the book The Jungle, which exposes labor abuse in the meat industry. After The Jungle was published the pure food and drug act was passed on June 30th, 1906. Upton Sinclair is just one of many successful muckrakers. Florence Kelley was another successful muckraker who helped get child labor laws passed, She helped Jane Addams in the Hull- House. She eventually was hired to receive data from every house, and would conduct surveys on home and working conditions. She then discovered that children as young as the age of three were working to help support their families. She then wrote a report on this and in 1893 a law was passed to limit women and children's work hours to 8 per day.
Although there was a lot of positives to the Progressive Era, there also was a few negatives. One negative is that African Americans were kind of ignored during this time. Laws were made for women, for child labor, but there really wasn't much for African Americans. Another negative was that the movement ended by WW1, maybe if it hadn't ended so early more would come from it for African Americans. It was sad that it had to end so soon, I feel like there could've been a lot more that came out of the Progressive