The Progressive Era & WWI

Reformers rose at the dawn of the twentieth century to tackle the corruption and staggering inequality that the Gilded Age had left in its wake. A new breed of activist — journalists, social workers, politicians, and ordinary citizens — refused to accept that poverty, exploitation, and political machines were the inevitable cost of progress. They demanded that democracy deliver on its promises.

Theodore Roosevelt stormed into the presidency after McKinley's assassination and wielded executive power with unprecedented vigor. He busted trusts, protected millions of acres of wilderness, mediated labor disputes, and launched the construction of the Panama Canal. His successor Woodrow Wilson continued the reform agenda, creating the Federal Reserve, enacting child labor protections, and pursuing his vision of a world made safe for democracy.

Muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell exposed the rotten underbelly of corporate America, while settlement house founders like Jane Addams built institutions that served immigrant communities and modeled a new kind of civic engagement. The NAACP was founded to combat racial injustice, and women organized with increasing militancy for the right to vote.

Then the Great War shattered the optimism of the age. America reluctantly entered the most devastating conflict in human history in 1917, sending two million soldiers to the trenches of France. The armistice came, but so did a deadly influenza pandemic that killed more Americans than the war itself. Women finally won the vote in 1920, and the world order — shattered and rebuilt at Versailles — would prove tragically fragile.