How Successful Was The Progressive Movement In The 1920's

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Between the 1890s and World War One, reform efforts started taking place by the progressives. The progressives were not a single unified group and even had some contradicting goals. They were middle class urban dwellers and some were women. The progressives wanted to end prostitution, Americanize immigrants, antitrust legislation created, women’s suffrage, and the start of prohibition. An example of a group of progressive women who wanted to start prohibition is The Women’s Christian Temperance Union. This group was lead by Francis Willard. The goals of the Women’s Christian Temperance union were to lobby for federal aid for education, free school lunches, unions for workers, an eight-hour workday, work relief for the poor, municipal sanitation and boards of health, national transportation, strong anti-rape laws, protections against child abuse and of course prohibition. The root of Willard 's argument for female suffrage was based on the platform of "Home Protection", which Willard described as "the movement...the object of which is to secure for all women above the age of twenty-one years the ballot as one means for the protection of their homes from the devastation caused by the legalized traffic in strong drink."[1] These "devastations" were the violent acts against women committed by …show more content…

Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York City said, "It is impossible to tell whether Prohibition is a good thing or a bad thing. It has never been enforced in this country."[8] The end of prohibition came in 1932 by the 21st amendment. The people who had supported Prohibition had changed their minds. They realized that the evils of alcohol remained, but they had also realized the effects of Prohibition to be far-reaching and perhaps worse than alcohol itself. According to famous tycoon John D. Rockefeller, "Drinking has generally increased, the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal

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