Populist and Progressive Reform in American History
Populist and Progressive Reform in American History
Throughout American history, reform was common among people of a particular, race, gender, or class used to accomplish change. The emergence of the populist and progressive movements were a response to the changing climate in American society due to rapid industrialization, an ethnically diverse personality of a young nation, and birth of American imperialism. Disgruntled American farmers that wished to advance their economic position initiated the Populist movement. Progressives pushed to improve urban labor conditions, dismantle trusts and monopolies, conserve of environment, and to install an active government. Populism and Progressivism had many similarities and differences, which made them two of the most influential political movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each movement used reform to achieve the change they desired, but with different supporters, actions, and results. This era influenced social, political and economic trends of the modern age. The populist and Progressive Era happened in the years following the Civil War, after the U.S. began to rapidly industrialize, in turn creating wealth, growth of big businesses, technological advances, population shifts from rural to urban centers, and large scale immigration of different ethnic groups. Within this business-oriented society money began to replace morality in national politics. The urban transformation meant new material surroundings, causing a metamorphosis of personal values, political ideas, and group identities. Massive production and the new factory system altered the character of the originally agriculturally oriented society into a consumer culture. Populism was one of the first fundamental political movements created in response to the growing changes of industrial America. Throughout the 1870s rural discontent grew among Middle Westerners and Southerners, due to crop failures, falling agricultural prices, and
Throughout American history, reform was common among people of a particular, race, gender, or class used to accomplish change. The emergence of the populist and progressive movements were a response to the changing climate in American society due to rapid industrialization, an ethnically diverse personality of a young nation, and birth of American imperialism. Disgruntled American farmers that wished to advance their economic position initiated the Populist movement. Progressives pushed to improve urban labor conditions, dismantle trusts and monopolies, conserve of environment, and to install an active government. Populism and Progressivism had many similarities and differences, which made them two of the most influential political movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each movement used reform to achieve the change they desired, but with different supporters, actions, and results. This era influenced social, political and economic trends of the modern age. The populist and Progressive Era happened in the years following the Civil War, after the U.S. began to rapidly industrialize, in turn creating wealth, growth of big businesses, technological advances, population shifts from rural to urban centers, and large scale immigration of different ethnic groups. Within this business-oriented society money began to replace morality in national politics. The urban transformation meant new material surroundings, causing a metamorphosis of personal values, political ideas, and group identities. Massive production and the new factory system altered the character of the originally agriculturally oriented society into a consumer culture. Populism was one of the first fundamental political movements created in response to the growing changes of industrial America. Throughout the 1870s rural discontent grew among Middle Westerners and Southerners, due to crop failures, falling agricultural prices, and