- Published: December 25, 2021
- Updated: December 25, 2021
- University / College: North Carolina State University
- Language: English
- Downloads: 13
The Progressive ideology stemmed from the failures of the Greenback Labor party from back in 1870 and the Populists in the 1890’s, thus leading the modern age reformists to reflect on what was truly necessary in order to achieve their platform. The newest Progressive movement upheld beliefs that said “ an outwork philosophy of hands-off individualism seemed increasingly out of place in the modern machine age” and that “ social and economic problems were now too complex for the intentionally feeble Jeffersonian organs of the government”(657). Essentially, what they attempted to emphasize is that the modern era is being led by an outdated political backbone and needs an update which includes the obsoleting of the “ limitless ‘ let alone’ (laissez-faire) policy.
The people need to, through government, “ substitute mastery drift. ”(656) The belief was told through writers in era. Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote in his Wealth Against Commonwealth, about the corruption of the Standard Oil Company and the government’s failure to limit the riches’ exploitation of the poor. Thorsten wrote, in Theory of the Leisure Class, “ a savage attack on the ‘ predatory wealth’ and ‘ conspicuous consumption”. Veblen wrote about the condemned the industrializing monopolization, and essentially damned the useless, incapable government and presidents for not doing anything to appease the poor.
Furthermore, with the rise of the muckrakers, the public was frequently exposed to publicly published publications on the dirtiness of the government’s, feeble in enforcement. The corrupt governments, as many would be called, did not maintain their own responsibilities, participated with the monopolizing, “ undemocratic” industrialists, and lacked attention towards the common men and women who toiled in labor. Lincoln Steffens wrote about in “ Shame of the Cities”, “ corrupt alliances between big bus. and municipal governments. ” (658) Ida Tarbell “ published a devastating but factual expose to of the Standard Oil Company” after her father had been ruined by its monopolization.
As a finishing blow, David Phillips published “ The Treason of the Senate” in 1906, which “ boldly charged that seventy-five of the ninety senators did not represent the people at all, but the railroads and trusts. ” These muckrakers enumerated the reasons for corruption in the government, local and federal, and its incapabilities to wholly look after every social class in America. These articles and publications state how the law favors and spoils the rich and privileged by practicing “ hands off” policies in economics as by practicing strict, rigid government styles, thus wholly mending every hole in the American economic society.