The Progressive Movement Essay example -- American History Essays

The Progressive MovementThe progressive transaction of the early twentieth century has proved to be an intricately confounded conundrum for Ameri preserve historians. Who participated in this elbow grease? What did it accomplish, or fail to accomplish? Was it a movement at all? These are all significant questions that historians have been make out with for the last 60 years, thusly creating a historical dialogue where in their different interpretations interact with each other. The roughly commonly known, and consequently intimately watered down, version of the progressive movement argues that this era was simply an perspiration by the middle class to cure many of the social and political ills of American society that had developed during the rapid industrial growth in the last quarter of the 19th century. This explanation has proven to be a woefully inadequate in the face of the complexities that characterize these times. In Richard Hofstadters The Age of Reform, Peter Filenes An Obituary for the Progressive Movement, Richard McCormicks The husking that Business Corrupts Politics, and Paula Bakers The Domestication of Politics each generator asserts their own unique interpretations of the progressive movement. These distinct examinations each chart and thus manifest the fluidity of knowledge about this particular time rate of flow and how it has been shaped reshaped by new analysis.Richard Hofstadter, the leftward leaning author of Age of Reform, in his appraisal of the progressive movement makes the central argument that the progressive movement was not catalyzed by economics or moral principal barely instead by psychology. Hofstadter describes the progressives as primarily urban, middle class, and nation wide. He makes the case that t... ... an impact on the system as a whole. An evoke comparison can be made between Hofstadters stance revolution and Bakers suffrage movement. Both can be seen as psychologically drive movements that interacted during the progressive era. Baker and Hofstadter also some(prenominal) cite a vast and complex struggle to improve the shape of a particular social group. Baker on one buy the farm describes womens fight for the right to be seen as equal to men, most definitely in a political sense if not in a social sense as well, while Hofstadter makes the case that the progressives were driven to action by the need to reclaim their former status of transcendence over the emerging newly rich industrialists. Although Baker does not front to give the amount of attention to psychology that Hofstadter does an undeniable correlation can still be made between the arguments of both authors.