Progressivism Opposing Viewpoints Essays - Political Ideologies

Progressivism: Opposing Viewpoints Progressivism: Opposing Viewpoints At the commencement of the twentieth century, a period referred to as progressivism swept through America. Precisely, this era in American history began soon after the Spanish-American War and lasted until the beginning of World War I. At this point in history, America was in turmoil due to internal problems and was in dire need of social reforms. The progressive era was like a golden age for intellectuals who strived to create a nation where each citizen could be given a chance at success and involvement in the government. In the latter portion of the 1800's, America faced an economic depression and encountered problems with industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Some progressives demanded that the government should be run directly by its people and that the quality of city life should be ameliorated through sanitation improvements, the abolition of child labor, and regulated working hours. America's utmost problem, however, proved to be the overwhelming power that trusts and big business held in the nation. This factor had a leading role in the development of the era of progressivism. In general, progressives basically agreed that trusts must be destroyed; however, there were different solutions among the progressives on the correct remedy to solve this problem. One ideology in the progressive era called the New Nationalism, advocated for an increase of government involvement in order to regulate big businesses. The other ideology called the New Freedom, firmly believed the ?big? in business was the threat to American society; therefore, the role of the government should be to break up trusts and monopolies. Whatever may have been the case, the progressives desired to attack any group of concentrated power in order to bring more accountability to the government of America. Although the progressives had good intentions to reform the nation, some historians, such as Richard M. Abrams, author of The Failure of Progressivism, believe the entire movemen t was a complete failure. On the other hand, other historians, such as Arthur S. Link and Richard L. McCormick beg to differ with Abrams and defiantly defend their own belief in their article entitled Progressivism in History that the movement was indeed successful. After closely reading both of the articles mentioned above, I have come to the conclusion that Abrams's argument proves to be stronger in that it is not as biased and seems to be more sensible than that of Link's and McCormick's. In the article, The Failure of Progressivism, Professor Richard Abrams argues that the entire progressive movement was a failure. First, Abrams initially defines what he believes to have been progressivism by concluding that the progressives expressed a common feeling that government should attempt to moralize the lives of its citizens through a series of reforms. According to Abrams, its followers flowered from various groups including female emancipationists, prohibitionists, the social gospel, conservation advocates, businessmen, and intellectuals. The progressives generally advocated for an efficient government that would implement strict moral values upon its people. Although most people in America had the same views as progressives, Abrams claims that ?[the progressives] also conceived of themselves, with a grand sense of stewardship, as its heralds, and its agents.? He states that the progressives mainly wanted to instill old moral values upon Americans by attempting to assimi late immigrants by forcing them to accept the American way of life. Additionally, they wanted to impose antitrust legislation, job reforms, and direct legislation. However, according to Abrams these goals were tarnished for significant reasons. First of all, the movement failed due to racism that was rampant during this time period. In addition to racism among blacks in the south, anti-Catholicism started appearing throughout the country. According to Abrams, racism hindered the motives of progressivism because there was ?the inability of reform to deliver a meaningful share of the social surplus to the groups left out of the general national progress, and in part the inability of reform to achieve its objective of assimilation and consensus.? Suddenly, different ethnic groups such as the African Americans took a more aggressive approach towards the public to finally stand up for their rights, which further contributed to growing animosity. Moreover, Abrams believes that new scienti fic developments regarding race and culture affected the