What were the typical methods of progressive reformers?
dbello Teacher High School – 12th Grade eNotes Editor The progressive movement was born out of the emerging middle class in America. Reform by definition is to make something better. In this case rais the quality of life for many Americans. The industrial Revolution in America was met face to face with a seemingly endless suply of unskilled laborers in the form of immigrants. Essentially those who were lowest on the economic scale were pushed upward because of the influx of immigrants. The new middle class people who didn’t have to work seven days a week anymore had time to think and look at the ills that industrialization caused. Literacy rates grew and the ‘muckraker’ was born. If compared with today they would be ‘investigative journalists’. Upton Sinclair, Jacob Riis, and Ida Tarbell exposed the worst industrialization was responsible for in American society, labor and health conditions, living conditions, and wages so low a man that worked 15 hours a day could not feed his family
