The Progressive Movement of the 1920s represented a massive change in the levels of political activism among American citizens and the overall attitude toward the course that the U.S. government was taking at the time. In the “era of the massive explosive growth,” the public discontent with the choices made by the president coupled with social anxieties about industrialization, urbanization, and immigration defined the goals and political manifestation of the movement. As a result, the key ideas that the movement pursued concerned fighting power corruption and sustaining the economic development of the United States.
Promoting the fight for the freedoms and opportunities of mostly working-class people, particularly farmers, the movement also tended to introduce the principles of socialism into its premise, thus allowing different groups to participate. For instance, the people known as Muckrakers, who view the new principles of economic relationships as undermining “traditional American values,” were included in the group. In addition, the increasing rates of immigration in the U.S. contributed to the expansion of the movement to include impoverished immigrants, specifically from China and Mexico. Eventually, the movement grew large enough to include female participants, who were gaining increasingly large influence and developing the platform for the second wave of the feminist movement with the “new visibility of women in urban public places.”
The effects of the Progressive Era on democracy can be explored from different standpoints. On the one hand, the focus on the needs of the oppressed and the propensity toward addressing the problems of ethnic minorities and women were emblematic of a huge change. On the other hand, the evident tendency toward leftist ideas deviated from the democratic premises based on which American society was born.