9.1The Progressive impulse

Progressivism was a broad reform spirit rather than a single program. Its adherents believed that expert knowledge, active government, and an engaged citizenry could cure the ills of industrial society—corruption, monopoly, poverty, and unsafe conditions. Journalists called "muckrakers" exposed scandals from corporate abuses to filthy meatpacking plants.

Reformers won concrete changes: regulation of food and drugs, limits on child labor, and measures to make government more democratic, such as the direct election of senators (Seventeenth Amendment) and, in many states, the initiative and referendum. Progressivism cut across party lines, animating reformers among both Republicans and Democrats, and it permanently expanded expectations of what government should do.