The Progressive Era

Woodrow Wilson

     The name Progressive Era caught my attention a lot this week. Reading the passages I found not one, but two passages from Wilson that caught my attention a lot. The first one because it shows how Wilson believe it in a government of action and the second one because it talks about a reality we still live today. 

      In this first passage, Wilson speaks about the importance of having a government that exercise its power in terms over the market place. The president is to create a market place were of cooperation. I believe the main focus of Wilson's ideas was to eliminate monopolies from the market. There was a time in which America was not as big and powerful and allowing to be a passive president was normal since it did not have to defend its supremacy. Given the fact that America grew in size and power it was time for the president to step up and create an stronger government. 

"You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible, which exercises its power as little as possible. That was said in a day when the opportunities of America were so obvious to every man, when every individual was so free to use his powers without let or hindrance, that all that was necessary was that the government should withhold its hand and see to it that every man got an opportunity to act if he would. But that time is past. America is not now, and cannot in the future be, a place for unrestricted individual enterprise. It is true that we have come upon an age of great cooperative industry. It is true that we must act absolutely upon this principle (p. 439)."

      In the second passage he speaks about the workforce. He discusses how most of the people work for employers that they do not know and will never meet face to face. He mentions a private relationship. I believe Wilson was referring to the fact that after employees go over a certain number and the employer is never in a direct relationship with the employee the enterprise is no longer a private matter, but a public one. The fact that the enterprise has become so large and public creates a necessity for the government to stop acting the Jefferson's way and to start acting in the Wilson's progressive way. 

Who in this great audience knows his employer? I mean among those who go down into the mines or go into the mills and factories. You never see, you practically never deal with, the president of the corporation. You probably don't know the directors of the corporation by sight. The only thing you know is that by score, by the hundred, by the thousand, you are employed with your fellow workmen by some agent of an invisible employer. Therefore, whenever bodies of men employ bodies of men, it ceases to be a private relationship" (p. 440)

 About The Dust Bowl

  The Dust Bowl is a major event of the 1930s. It was about eight years long and caused multiple difficulties in the South. It was a period of drought that affected women, children and men in their daily lives. It cause it an agricultural destruction and affected the already bad economical depression. The dust bowl is important because it affected the economy of the country as well as the world's economy which was already very related to the US.The Dust bowl started as a simple drought and continued to growth in size conformed the years past. During the first year 14 dust storms happened, the following the number grew to 38. The dust bowl time was difficult and got to be overcome with the authorities effort. Roosevelt created a committee in which re-ploting and planting trees helped to partially end the dust bowl in 1939 after more than eight years of drought.