The Idea of Progressivism

The idea of Progressivism came with the belief that society was up to(p) of modifyment and that continued growth and advancement were the destiny of this great nation. The muckrakers were among the commencement people to promote this new and profound nationalistic spirit. Many were persuasive and crusading journalists who began to direct public attention and discretion toward the semipolitical, social, and economic in dependableices of the US during the deeply nineteenth and ahead of time twentieth centuries.They strove to expose scandal and corruption to the American public. Ellen Fitzpatricks Muckraking Three Landmark Articles, presents famous articles by capital of Nebraska Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker which appeared in the January, 1903 edition of McClures Magazine. The articles exa exploit political corruption, the emergence and behavior of giant corporations, and labor racketeering in industrial America. The article by Lincoln Steffens mostly focused on t he problems and examples of corruption, as swell as the challenge of re name.Steffens began to develop a somewhat mistaken view of good and evil in city politics at a young age (Fitzpatrick, 20). This frame of mind led to his views in the article, The Shame of Minneapolis. The intertwined processes of urbanization, industrialization and immigration meant that American cites mushroomed in the late nineteenth century. The city became an increasingly complex organism, which required sanitation, water, building codes, zoning regulations, policing. barely as the city administration expanded, so did opportunities to misuse government power.Throughout, the continuous tense period calls for electoral reform and/or increased efficiency and scientific management in municipal affairs were paired with revelations of corruption in municipal politics and policing. Steffens agreed with these reforms all along as well as political thieve Tarbell is using an historical example to expound the us e of trusts and holding companies by entrepreneurs seeking monopoly control of various industrial sectors in the United States with her article, The Oil War of 1872.As Tarbell hints in this article, contempt the failure of the South Improvement Company, John D. Rockefeller eventually succeeded in tyrannical the petroleum industry through the criterion Oil Company. Rockefeller pioneered the trust form of organization when he founded the shopworn Oil Trust in 1879. Standard Oil became, along with Andrew Carnegies U. S. Steel, the most notorious of the powerful trusts, a term that came to be applied to all outsize industrial combinations whether or not they followed the formal trust model of investing.Rockefeller eventually built the largest buck private fortune in the United States and became perhaps the prototypical Gilded get along robber baron, reviled for his ruth slight avocation practices. The federal government successful ly prosecuted Standard Oil for monopolistic prac tices in 1906, and the trust was forced to disband. In a sense, this was the exact outcome Ida Tarbell was aiming for in writing this article. She presented the facts of the oil scandal as she had come to understand them, believing that an objective account would best dole out the evidence (Fitzpatrick, 27).Many wondered, however, if Tarbell was prejudice toward big business. Nevertheless, Tarbell most likely just believed in fair play, taught to her by her father who was one of the men who resisted the southerly Improvement Company. Ray Stannard Bakers article, The Right to Work, relates to the 1902 anthracite char strike in Pennsylvania that lasted over five months. The miners wanted the mine owners to recognize their new union, the United Mine Workers of America but the owners refused to tidy sum with the UMW. The miners were also looking for a 10-20% increase in wages and an eight-hour attain.As the winter of 1902-03 approached, President Roosevelt ordered the mine owners and UMW president to the White firm to negotiate. When the mine owners still refused to compromise, Roosevelt told the owners that if they did not agree to arbitration, he would send 10,000 federal troops to seize their property and get the mines working. Previously, federal troops had yet been called in to support the management side in labor disputes. The truly surprised mine owners agreed to arbitration and the miners eventually went back to work with a10% increase and a nine-hour day.Although he enjoyed a public reputation as a trust buster fighting powerful capitalists on behalf of less affluent Americans, Roosevelt was not in favor of getting rid of the trusts and large corporations. He believed that large-scale capitalism brought prosperity and efficiency to the American economy. The ancestry of the federal government was to police or regulate big business to stop the worst misuses of power. The mine owners, in Roosevelts view, were abusing their power and they were moody the well-being of Americans who needed char to heat their homes.Roosevelts handling of the coal strike was very popular with ordinary Americans, Baker in particular. Conclusively, these articles advance the reader a broad understanding of the nature of Progressivism. Each of the issues presented in the three articles points out particular flaws of American society in the early 1900s. They are brought forward to the public in a manner such(prenominal) that people will realize these flaws and strive to change them, progress forward, and improve the nation.As a result, the muckrakers including Steffens, Tarbell, and Baker, played a big part in Progressivism. In my opinion, the Progressives approached these attempted social reforms just right. They were not too musical theme or too conservative. This is evident in how much society changed in that period for the better, and the condition of our society today for that matter. If people such as the muckrakers had not attempted to refor m the nation, who knows where it would be today. They must have do something right so I would conclude that they achieved their goals just right.