Progressive Era Overview

Journal Entry: Origins of Progressivism

• Of the four goals of the Progressive Movement, which is most important?

• What was the most important political/government reform discussed in this section?

Discussion 9.1• Turn to p. 306.• Discuss each section of the reading in your group.

(Discuss key idea of each red heading).• Discussion should bounce around with different

people discussing a key point or thought about each section.

• Following, discuss the following journal questions:• Of the four goals, which is most important?• What was the most important political/government

reform discussed in this section?

What is the Progressive Movement?

a. Progressive Movement—Reform effort which aimed to return control of the government to the people, restore economic opportunities, and correct injustices in American life.

i. Protecting social welfare, which meant to try to relieve some of the urban problems related to industrialization.

ii. Promoting moral improvement, which meant improving personal morality would help improve the lives of poor people.

iii. Creating economic reform, which meant looking critically at capitalism and looking for ways to improve our economic system.

iv. Fostering efficiency, which meant making workers and factories more productive by using scientific management to make tasks simpler and easier for workers, and the assembly line to make production faster in factories.

Goals of the Progressive Movement

Key Point

• Progressive reformers did not all agree on what problems to solve and how to solve them. However, they all related to one of the four areas listed above.