The age of reform

Age of Reform

The period in American history between the 1890s and the 1920s is often referred to as the Age of Reform. However, the various reform movements during those decades were conflicting and disparate. The three major reform movements in the United States during this time included populism, progressivism, and the New Deal ("The Age of Reform"). Each of these movements had its own agenda and ideology, and its own vision for America's future.

Populism was the bastion of the agricultural workers. As the Industrial Revolution and Westward expansion increasingly encroached on farmland in America, those who earned their living through agriculture found themselves weakened economically and politically. Fearful that industrialism would completely threaten their livelihood and infringe on their political rights, agrarian workers organized in a populist movement to challenge what they viewed as the rise of urban elite. Therefore, the populist reform period was characterized mainly by a conflict between the agrarian classes and the elite, and consisted of a range of social and political reforms relative to preserving an agrarian way of life in the United States. In general, the populists mistrusted centralized government.

In contrast with populism, progressivism was mainly an urban reform movement. However, like populism, the progressive reform movement demanded more government accountability and less corruption in the wake of a significant number of corruption scandals related to the rise of wealth and power among the American elite. Therefore, progressivism shared some of the political, economic, and social ideologies of populism. Progressivism was more widespread, though, and its initiatives spread from the rise of muckraking journalism to the prohibition of alcohol, both attempts to reform corruption in American society.