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Reform Measures of Progressivism

Progressivism, with its plethora of social and moral reforms, was instrumental in developing new ideas about the role of government which the New Deal later incorporated. The series of reforms from the Progressive Era to the New Deal were a "mixed and shifting collection of morally concerned as well as self-interested pressure groups." James Patterson cites this incipient diversity as a result of two possible factors: the regional differences of turn-of-the-century America, and the improbability of accord among conflicting groups.

However, these groups did share a number of commonalities in spite of their wide-ranging gender, race and class concerns. Most reform measures purported an ostensible moderation that was really a "conservative movement dominated by business interests who turned to government in order to protect themselves...." Moreover, the reforms of the Progressive Era shared the goal of fostering economic opportunity, a goal which simultaneously reified individualism, embraced the traditional Protestant work ethic and reinforced traditional notions of family unity. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Bell's Out of This Furnace (1941) illustrate how two groups of people--Dust Bowl migrants and Slavic immigrants, respectively--were systematically victimized under the auspices of a paternalistic society whose moral tone and nostalgia for the past in actuality sought to preserve the status quo.

The proliferation of reform groups, frequently "moralistic in [its] rhetoric," can be characterized by function. Reform groups sought to preserve their moral tone, which they perceived as endangered by the major social forces of industrialization, bureaucratization and urbanization. Patterson images the group of social reformers as the empowered few who were so "threatened" that "people felt they had to adopt new methods to control" these social forces. Heavily influenced by the Genteel Tradition and by s...

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Reform Measures of Progressivism. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 03:14, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692679.html