How would the world be different if there had been no Progressive Era?

Answer 1

If you look at the writings of the time, the Pre-Progressive Era featured child labor (14 hour days, 61/2 days per week, dangerous working conditions, extreem low pay, slums (without indoor plumbing), hired thungs who shot labor unionists and their families, garbage in the streets, party bosses who chose the candidates with no input from the people, direct and indirect bribing of congressmen, no direct party primary, and lots of other probelms. People began to wake up, speak out, and organise. Among the leaders were: McClure's Magazine--featuring Ida Tarbell, Lincolon Stffens and other reporters; Jane Addams, founder of Hull House;environmentalists like John Muir and Gifford Pinchot; politicians like Robert La Follette, William Borah, and Teddy Roosevelt; Labor leaders, including Mother Jones and lawyers like Clarence Darrow. Between then they changed our world, but not alone. They organized people by neighborhood, by getting real news out to the readers, muchraking (It's a good thing) and pushing for good laws. They even formed a political party--the Progressive Party. This party started in 1912, but there was a spat between Teddy Roosevelt and Robert La Follette, so La Follette went back to the Republican Party. In 1924, La Follette took his turn to run as a Progressive. In 1934 his sons founded the Progressive Party again in Wisconsin. FDR convinced many Progressive that he would make their ideas into law, but he watered them down so much that his vice-president, Henry Wallace, got disgusted, and ran for President as a Progressive in 1948. Locally, many state Progressive Parties changed their name to Farmer/Laborer Party, which is why it looks as if they disappeared. Some held on until 1960. The Progressive PArty started up again in 1982, with the Vermont Prgressive Party, and is now a series of state parties united under the term, US Progressive Party http://www.usprogressiveparty.org You can find the original platforms o the internet. The 1912 one included the right to a Living Wage.