Progressives Workshop

Progressives didn’t like the way corporations ran their businesses, they felt they took advantage of everything due to their wealth and size. They also felt that many large corporations ran with monopoly power, and took over the economic system. Corporations also used underage workers, and paid very low wages, and they did this so that they could gain max profit, and beat out all small business competitors. Corporations could get rich off of others doing all the hard manual labor, and progressives felt that something needed to change. In these large corporations workers couldn’t protest anything because the minute they did, owners would have that shut down immediately. The increasing of large-scale corporations mainly angered farmers, laborers, and middle-class professionals. Americans responded to all this chaos with a plan to reform, and that’s when progressives jumped in to kick-start this movement, and better America. As years passed, corporations just kept getting bigger, and more technologically advanced, so it seemed there was no slowing down the growth of these corporations, and the way they controlled their operations. Eugene V. Debs stepped in, and called for Reformation, he wanted to make the government operate better, and make sure everything was fair, while not leading in a demanding capitalist direction. Progressives thought that they could change everything with the power they would spark into people, so Debs did what the common people wanted, and that’s why they liked him. Debs was known for raising the wages, and improving work safety, but with this came lower profits for corporations, and that’s why they disliked him. Debs saw democracy in social and economic equity rather than in political participation. Progressives wanted in a way to break free from the old American ways, and change the way that the system was run, but Debs knew that a radical change could be in store if it wasn’t successful.

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