Around the turn of the 20th century, some bad things were happening in America. Children were working long, dangerous hours in factories. Women and African- Americans were kept from voting. Political bosses controlled the political parties. Corrupt business owners abused their workers and used their money to buy off politicians.

In response to all this bad stuff, a group of people started to push for reform, or change: they were called The Progressives. They were not poor workers themselves. They were mostly college- educated, middle-class people. They were thinkers, journalists, and writers. Many of them were women.

The four goals of the Progressives: 1. Protecting social welfare: improve factory conditions, ban child labor, limit working hours, start worker's compensation for injured workers. 2. Promoting moral improvement: specifically, banning alcohol (prohibition). 3. Creating economic reform: Progressives wanted to stop big business from getting favorable treatment from the government. 4. Fostering efficiency: using scientific principles to make the society and the workplace more efficient.

Florence Kelley was the Progressive that led the push for social welfare. She lobbied toe government to pass laws to prohibit child labor and limit working hours for women.

One of the main goals of the Progressives was the banning of alcohol, called Prohibition. Several groups arose to push Congress to pass a law ending drinking, making, and selling alcohol in the US. Members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) would enter saloons, sing hymns, and pray in order to disrupt the serving of alcoholic beverages.

The Anti-Saloon League endorsed politicians who wanted prohibition. It also sponsored statewide votes on prohibition. Between 1900 and 1917, almost half the states had voted themselves "dry."

Among the Progressives was a group of journalists and writers who began to expose the evils of big business. These writers came to be called the "Muckrakers," an insulting term implying they only looked at the bad side of things.

There were many writers who could be considered Muckrakers. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle exposing the disgusting and unsanitary conditions in meat-packing plants. Ida Tarbell wrote about the ruthlessness of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Lincoln Steffens wrote about government corruption, bribes, and political machines.

Frederick Winslow Taylor used time and motion studies to improve workplace efficiency by breaking manufacturing into smaller and smaller tasks

It was called "scientific management" and soon Henry Ford's employees were working like madmen on the assembly line, the greatest achievement of efficiency.

Robert Lafollette was a Progressive governor of Wisconsin who was angered by the corruption of the railroad industry. He taxed RR property at the same rate as other businesses, regulated rates, and stopped RR's from issuing free passes to politicians.

James S. Hogg was a Progressive governor of Texas. He drove illegal insurance companies out of Texas, and pushed for anti-trust laws. He also saw the corruption of the RR's and started a group to oversee their rates.

Progressives took up the push for women to get the right to vote, called "suffrage." Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton started the National Women Suffrage Association to press for voting rights. Anthony Stanton

Republican President Theodore Roosevelt is considered Progressive as well. He thought that the government's first responsibility was taking care of the American people. He started breaking up trusts, which were groups that owned large amounts of stock in different companies. (They were basically monopolies.)

After Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle caused public outrage at the meat-packing industry, Roosevelt pushed for the Meat Inspection Act to purify America's food supply. He also pushed for the Pure Food and Drug Act which stopped the sale of contaminated foods and called for truth in labeling.

President Roosevelt stepped aside in 1908, and William Howard Taft was elected. He continued Roosevelt's trustbusting campaing. In 1912, Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected President. During Wilson's presidency, women received the right to vote with the 19th Amendment in He also destroyed trusts with the Clayton Antitrust Act, and protected unions and farm organizations by law. Taft Wilson

The Progressives never became an actual political party. Instead, the goals of the Progressives were picked up by Republicans and Democrats alike. Many of their goals are laws today: monopolies are illegal, there are strict limits on child labor, we have worker's compensation, women can vote, the 40-hour work week is law, and we have OSHA to make sure our workplace is safe. All of these were goals of the Progressives, and they still impact our lives today.