The era of the Progressive Movement was largely effective in meeting and maintaining the goals that had been fought for by activists; despite many caveats. In case you forgot, the United States was founded in 1776 on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To meet these ideals, the founding fathers—who identified with a free market capitalist society—created a nation which had no powerful central authority. Each of the original colonies were separated into self-governing city states who created their own rules and regulations. This meant that the federal government acted more as a “loose friendship” rather than a commanding authority, just as was envisioned. This libertarian framing helps one to understand the condition of the free market during the later industrial revolution and the explosion of factory work. Factory work was often an extremely dangerous and grueling job which paid next to nothing, with any sort of labor protections being virtually non-existent. “Laborers often worked in sweatshop conditions. They worked extremely long hours, received little pay, and toiled in factories with few safety regulations.” / “Sinclar spent time investigating labor conditions in Chicago, Illinois’s meat slaughterhouses and packaging plants...he had hoped to bring to the public’s attention the poor conditions the workers suffered, but people were more affected by the vivid descriptions of disgusting and unsanitary practices in the food-processing facilities” (Source B). Rather than the free and open market encouraging competition and breeding innovation as theorized, business owners took full advantage of the unregulated frontier. They abused and even ended up killing some of their employees and sold inferior or even deadly food products to consumers, all to maximize profit margins. Since so many corners were cut by the majority of business owners who acted in bad faith, they could easily undercut prices against the few more ethical businessmen who naturally had higher production costs. Progressive activists took it upon themselves to push for regulation on private corporations and lobbied for the federal government to pass laws to enforce such rules. The Progressive movement had a number of successes, according to Source E: President Wilson and President T. Roosevelt had expanded the power of the federal government to impose regulations; implementing protections for workers, consumers, and the natural environment. The Pure Food and Drug act of 1906 guaranteed the safety of all food products and pharmaceuticals. The 16th amendment ratified in 1913 established a federal income tax, placing top earners as the highest taxed group. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 helped promote fair competition and gave the government the ability to break up monopolies. Despite the progress made, several backwards steps were taken. According to Source E: President Wilson authorized his Cabinet to segregate different agencies within the government based purely on race. At the same time, there was a revival of the KKK as white Americans felt threatened by the new found economic opportunity African Americans held. The Immigration Act of 1917 and the National Quota Law of 1921 allowed extremely discriminatory immigration practices which limited entry based on nationality and excluded almost all Asian migrants. The popular concept of eugenics at the time advocated for policies to forcefully sterilize “undesirables” which had included: the lower class, ethnic minorities, recent immigrants, and especially the mentally ill or developmentally disabled. In 1907, the United States passed a compulsory sterilization law. Over the span of the 20th century, the federal government sterilized 60,000 to 70,000 men and women. Sterilization methods had included either surgically tying or severing fallopian tubes for women, performing vasectomies on men, and even removing the entire uterus—especially for black women. In retrospect, we did keep the positive policies of the Progressive Era and left the negative policies in the past. Unfortunately, many people at the time were still affected by the spike of systemic discrimination towards the tail end of the movement which had already been taking place before the resurgence. Despite this, the movement was an overall success in bringing about positive change and making the United States a better place to live.