During the Progressive Era (1900–1920), the country grappled with the problems caused by industrialization and urbanization. Progressivism, an urban, middle‐class reform movement, supported the government taking a greater role in addressing such issues as the control of big business and the welfare of the public. Many of its accomplishments were based on efforts of earlier reform movements. The federal income tax and the direct election of senators, for example, were a part of the Populist program, and Prohibition grew from a pre‐Civil War anti‐alcohol reform tradition. Although the Progressives formed their own political party in 1912, the movement had broad support among both Democrats and Republicans. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft (Republicans) and Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) all claimed the Progressive mantle.
The need for reform was highlighted by a group of journalists and writers known as the muckrakers, who made Americans aware of the serious failings in society and built public support for change. Exposés such as Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of the Cities (1904), an attack on municipal corruption, and Ida Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), which chronicled John D. Rockefeller's ruthless business practices, often first appeared in the new mass circulation magazines, such as McClure's and Cosmopolitan, and were later published as books. The muckrakers' impact could be powerful, as in the case of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), a book whose vivid descriptions of working and sanitary conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants led directly to federal laws regulating the industry.
Making government more responsive and efficient. Two important objectives of Progressivism were giving the public the opportunity to participate more directly in the political process and limiting the power of big city bosses. Progressives hoped to accomplish these goals through a variety of political reforms. These reforms included the direct primary a preliminary election giving all members of a party the chance to take part in a nomination and that was intended to limit the influence of political machines in selecting candidates; initiative a process for putting a proposition or proposed law on a ballot (usually by getting a specified number of signatures on a petition), and referendum, the voting on an initiative, allowing the people to enact legislation that a state legislature is either unwilling or unable to do; and recall, a process giving voters the power to remove elected officials from office through petition and a vote. Governor Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin championed these reforms, and their implementation in his state became the model for the rest of the country (the Wisconsin Idea).
Meanwhile, making the national government more responsive to the people was expressed through the Seventeenth Amendment (1913) which provided for the direct election of senators rather than their selection by the state legislatures. State legislatures were also increasingly concerned about the welfare of their citizens. In 1902, Maryland became the first state to offer workmen's compensation, payments to workers or their families for disability or death suffered on the job. Some protection was offered to federal employees under the 1916 Workmen's Compensation Act.
Progressives were also fascinated by efficiency and scientific management. In 1900, when a hurricane and flood destroyed much of the infrastructure of Galveston, Texas, the mayor and city council were replaced with a commission made up of nonpartisan administrators who ran each of the city's municipal departments. The commission form of government became popular in small and medium‐sized cities throughout the country. Following a flood in 1913, Dayton, Ohio experimented with a city‐manager system. Under this plan, the structure of a city government followed that
