Weibe

Weibe

America in the late nineteenth century saw vast changes. It was time to move from the classic style of life to a more modern. Many factors led up to the start of changes in American society. The United States was in chaos and need to seek order. With the help of Robert H. Wiebe and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the factors that led to the need for change will be examined, in addition to the movement of change itself, progressivism.

"Some social workers quite literally called for a new American society. Expansionists in business, labor, agriculture, and the professions, in other words, formulated their interests in terms of continuous policies that necessitated regularity and predictability from unseen thousands." Progressivism is as one believing in moderate political change and especially social improvement by governmental action. Wiebe defines it as the ambition of the new middle class to fulfill the destiny through bureaucratic means. In order to compete effectively, members of the new middle class organized to ensure continuity of influence. Where respectable citizens in the eighties typically had called a conference, passed resolutions, the new breed around 1900 formed associations with long-ranged policies, and delegated one or two officers to act for the entire body." The changes first began at the lower levels of society where the voice was small from a few but large groups made it heard. "It was in the major cities that a fair number of citizens first gained a sufficient grip upon their lives to look anew at the society around them. Making sense out of impersonal world had been a slow, painful process that the depression of the nineties had seriously retarded."

Humanitarian progressives,"united the campaigns for heath, education, and a richer city environment, and he dominated much of the interest in labor legislation. Now laws established an outline for management, a flexible authority to meet and follow the major issues of urban living." The new movement had effect of several big aspects of society. People demanded a new structure within the government. Progressivism was the central force in a revolution that fundamentally altered the structure of politics and government early in the twentieth century. . . In fact, the major corporations tended to move somewhat ahead of the reformers in attempts to extend the range and continuity of their power through bureaucratic means.

The factors that led to the rise of the new middle class were the beginnings of progressivism. Some broader factors are focused on and their role. The American west had a hand in what was causing this need for change. When the government began to push Americans west, they ran into the problem of the Native Americans who had previously inhabited the land. A progressive solution was formed. The government tried to assimilate the Natives via the Dawes Act of 1887. Something else was peculiar about the west. It was the home to an abundance of natural resources. The natural resources are one of the catalysts that sparked the rise in new technology.

The innovation of