The Progressive Era was a period in American history from 1890 to the 1920s. The Progressive Era saw a mixture of political and social change, which sought to reduce inequality, corruption and introduce reforms to make society fairer.
Key Elements of the Progressive Era
Anti-corruption. In the Nineteenth Century corruption was a major problem in American politics with local bosses controlling key positions of patronage and power. Progressives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, sought to take on corrupt political and voting practices.
Labour market reforms. Progressives sought to reform working conditions. This included health and safety, the right to unionise and higher pay.
Anti-trust. The Gilded Age saw the development of monopolies which were highly profitable. In the Progressive Era, the government tackled many monopolies through anti-trust legislation.
Women’s suffrage. The Progressive Era saw the culmination of efforts to give all women the vote (Nineteenth Amendment)
Modernisation. Progressives generally sought the implementation of new scientific and business methods to overturn outdated customs and improve efficiency. This included Taylorism and the assembly line.
Limited civil rights. Some progressives sought to improve conditions of black Americans, but the Progressive Age failed to end decades of segregation. In fact, the 1890s to 1920s saw the implementation of many ‘Jim Crow laws’ cementing segregation between races.
Prohibition. Many progressives supported the banning of alcohol ‘prohibition’. One of the motivations was that they hoped it would reduce the economic power of salon owners who often exercised great influence.
“The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see Truth in fragment and from different points of vision.”
“Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”
“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.”
“It’s an universal law– intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.”
“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
“It is in our liberal understanding of all religious faiths that we can hope to achieve tolerance. Tolerance helps us to a large degree to put an end to the age-old prejudices born of ignorance.”
“Religion is like a pair of shoes…..Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes.”
― George Carlin
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
– Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these.”
― Lloyd Shearer
Related pages
Quotes that changed the world – Inspiring quotes that changed the world from some of the world’s leading minds – including Einstein, Buddha, Darwin, and Galileo.
Ideas that changed the world – Scientific, political, religious and technological ideas that transformed the world. Including democracy, feminism, human rights and relativity.
It means that a person feels the importance of sticking to certain values, beliefs and actions – regardless of outer consequences.
For example, if we believe it is wrong to discriminate on the grounds of religious faith, a man of principle will be willing to oppose this discrimination even if it costs his job.
Men and women of Principle
Socrates (469 BC–399 BC) – Greek philosopher. During a time of war, Socrates was critical of his own Athenian government. Socrates said in matters of war and peace principles of justice should trump the view of the majority. For his criticisms and unorthodox views, Socrates was condemned to death – something he willingly undertook.
William Tyndale (1494 – 1536) – Tyndale believed that everyone should be able to read the Bible in their native tongue. At the time, that was strictly prohibited, but clandestinely, Tyndale translated and printed the Bible in English. Tyndale was burnt at the stake for his ‘heresy’, but soon after English Bibles became widely distributed.
Thomas Paine(1737-1809) English-American writer and political activist. He was a free thinker – criticising many political and religious orthodoxies of the day. He narrowly avoided execution in Paris, after falling foul of Robespierre. He fled to America, though even in America he became shunned by society for advocating non-Christian ideas. Read On…
Muhammad Ali was a truly great individual. All around the world people have identified with the positive energy, courage, dynamism and principles of Ali.
Ali was an Olympic and world champion boxer, but he would also display courage in many fields of life, not just the boxing ring. During the Vietnam war he was a conscientious objector, seeing the war as unjust. He endured much hate and scorn for his refusal to fight in that war, but Ali was a fighter for social justice and fairness at home. His position on the war was very unpopular at the time, but in retrospect many see it as a principled stand.
Ali was no angel and his response to the racial injustices of society was often strong, especially in his early years. But over the years his stance became more nuanced and understanding. He started out as an activist for Muslims and African Americans, but by the end of his life, it would be fair to say that Ali stood for the rights of all humanity. As Ali himself said:
“A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
Before boxing matches, Ali could express an unmatched self-confidence, a self-confidence that was well founded. But that is only one side of Ali; there is also the spiritual side, the humble side.
“Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths”
― Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times
“Truly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves. All they wanted was the chance to do good for others and be close to God.”
― Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections of Life’s Journey
When struggling with Parkinson’s disease, Ali retained his wit and humility, seeing it as an opportunity to make a different kind of progress:
“Maybe my Parkinson’s is God’s way of reminding me what is important. It slowed me down and caused me to listen rather than talk. Actually, people pay more attention to me now because I don’t talk as much.”
“I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson’s stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.”
Asked how he would like to be remembered, Ali said:
“I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times. Who was humorous and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him. And who helped as many people as he could. As a man who stood up for his beliefs no matter what. As a man who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And if all that’s too much then I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.”
Population of Scotland: 5,313,600 (9% of UK population 64m)
Area: 33% of UK landmass including 790 islands. (660 uninhabited)
Capital: Edinburgh
Patron Saint: Saint Andrew
Scotland’s major cities
Glasgow – 592,820
Edinburgh – 486,120
Aberdeen – 217,120
Dundee – 144,290
Inverness – 56,660
Stirling – 89,850
Mountains: Ben Nevis is the highest peak in the UK at 1,346m.
There are 600 square miles of freshwater lakes, including Loch Ness
Loch Ness Monster is a famous and enduring myth of an ancient sea creature still inhabiting the deep loch of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It became world famous in 1934 after a hoax photograph was widely circulated.
The first recording of the Loch Ness monster was 565 AD where a follower of St. Columba related being attacked by a ‘water beast.’ Scottish dogs.
There are over 2,000 castles recorded being built in Scotland, most of which are still standing. Famous castles include Stirling Castle (above) Balmoral and Edinburgh Castle. Usually, these were built as defensive mechanisms. Read On…
Some of the great Olympic runners from sprinters to middle distance and marathon runners.
Sebastian Coe (1956 – ) (Great Britain, athletics) Double Olympic gold medallist at 1500m in 1980 and 1984. Also chairman of the successful London Olympics of 2012. In 2015 became President of the IAAF, amidst difficult circumstances of doping problems in the sport.
Hicham El Guerrouj (1972 – ) (Morocco, athletics) Double Olympic gold medallist in 2004 – at 1500m and 5,000m. Set World Record for the mile at 3.43.13 and 1500m of 3.26.00.
Paavo Nurmi (1897 – 1973) ( Finland, athletics) Nurmi dominated middle distance running in the 1920s, winning nine Olympic gold medals and setting 22 new world records from the distance of 1500m to 20km.
Grete Waitz (1953 – 2011 ) (Norway, athletics) First women to run the marathon under two and half hours. Waitz won nine NY marathons and five gold medals at the World Cross Country Championships. Waitz won silver in the inaugural female Olympic marathon of 1984. She won gold at the inaugural World Championship marathon in 1983. Read On…
Ideas that have influenced and changed the world. This includes political ideas, such as democracy, nationalism and socialism; it also includes technological, religious, and scientific ideas and movements.
Political ideas
Democracy
In early history, most societies were governed by a small clique of oligarchs or just one powerful king / ruler. Democracy has been a revolutionary idea that everybody in society should have a say in how they are governed, who governs them, and also gives everybody an opportunity to participate. The evolution of democracy has been a gradual process. Ancient Greece had some of the earliest experiments in participatory democracy, with writers like Aristotle sharing democratic ideas. In 1215 the King of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta – based on the important principle that the power of a king wasn’t absolute, but subject to approval by (at least some of) his subjects. It is only in the Twentieth Century that we have seen the widespread adoption of universal democracies with all adults able to vote and take part in the political system. See: People who helped shape the growth of democracy)
Independence Movements (1776)
In the Eighteenth Century the idea of empire building was well established. Major European powers took it as a natural right to increase their wealth through expanding their Empires overseas. The American Independence movement was one of the first major breaks from a colonial power. American colonies (which had previously thought themselves as British) sought independence and the right to govern themselves. Throughout the 19th and 20th Century, independence movements have been some of the most powerful political forces in the world. For example Simon Bolivar leading many Latin American countries to independence. In 1947, India gained independence from the UK, which marked the ending of the British Empire.
Feminism
Through most of human history, power was largely exercised by men, with the lives of women limited to narrow spheres. It was widely believed that women were not suited to certain jobs, voting or taking part in politics. In the Nineteenth Century, the women’s suffrage movement campaigned for the right of women to have the vote. There were similar attempts for women to move into previously men only fields. For example, in the Nineteenth Century we see the first registered female doctors, lawyers and engineers. Gradually over the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries we have seen women gain increased rights and opportunities, which were previously denied. (see: Women’s rights activists)
Communism (19th and 20th Century)
Against the backdrop of Victorian Capitalism, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, which called for a revolution to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a Communist society based on equality. The political and economic philosophy was an important feature in the Russian revolution. Communism led to a polarising of politics during the Twentieth Century, and was supported by many counties seeking liberation from colonial rule. Communism as a political force largely died out with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. (See: Famous Socialists)
Helen Keller (1880-1968) An American who became the first deaf blind person to gain a bachelor degree. She campaigned on issues of social welfare, women’s suffrage, disability rights and impressed many with her force of personality.
“I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others’ lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.
– The Story of My Life (1903)
“If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.”
– Optimism (1903)
“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?”
– Optimism (1903)
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.”
– Optimism (1903)
“The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. Ancient prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.”
– Optimism (1903)
“The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.”
The Five-sensed World (1910)
“We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.”
The Five-sensed World (1910)
“The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus — the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.”
– The Five-sensed World (1910)
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
We Bereaved (1929)
“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933)
“It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.”
The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933)
Quotes on Politics
“Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.… You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?”
Letter published in the Manchester Advertiser (3 March 1911), quoted in A People’s History of the United States (1980) page 345.
“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.”
“Strike Against War”, speech in Carnegie Hall (5 January 1916)
“Indeed, everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom, had a part in my education…. Few know what joy it is to feel the roses pressing softly into the hand, or the beautiful motion of the lilies as they sway in the morning breeze. Sometimes I caught an insect in the flower I was plucking, and I felt the faint noise of a pair of wings rubbed together in a sudden terror….”
In 1969, the lunar landings transfixed the whole globe. Previously the idea of landing on the moon had been the stuff of science fiction. But, in a seeming short space of time, man had enabled huge strides in technology which enabled the seemingly impossible to become reality. It is regularly cited as a great moment that changed the world.
But, what was the significance of the lunar landings?
1. Self-Transcendence
Neil Armstrong – the first person to walk on the moon. Also with his colleagues Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the first person to land a craft on the moon. In 1969, Armstrong was asked about the lunar landings. He replied that it was part of man’s expression for self-discovery.
“I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul … we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.”
In the early Twentieth Century, man’s taste for challenge and exploration was found in explorations to the north and south pole – attempts to climb the highest peaks of the world. By the 1960s, we had reached all corners of the globe, including the highest and farthest. The final frontier was to see life beyond the earth.
2. Cold-War Symbolism
There is no doubt that part of the motivation and funding for the space programme came from national pride. There was a strong rivalry between the Communist Soviet Union and the United States. The Soviet Union seemed to have the upper hand in the space race, when they put the first man in space – Yuri Gagarin, 1961. The race to land on the moon was one that the US wanted to win.
However, Neil Armstrong put an interesting perspective on this ‘space race’
“I’ll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, but nevertheless, it was a diversion.”
Apollo 11 40th anniversary celebration (2009)
Like sport, the space race was a global competition, which spurred technological progress. But, the space race was also a rare case where there was a mutual respect between the two countries – or at least between fellow astronauts.
The Apollo 11 mission commemorating the achievements of Yuri Gagarin and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov – by leaving medals dedicated to them on the surface of the Moon. In 1970, Neil Armstrong visited the Soviet Union and was warmly received. Russian Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova presented Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) with a badge in memory of his visit to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, Russia.
Pride for America
There is no doubt that the moon landing was a proud moment for America. In particular, it was a positive ending for a turbulent decade. A decade that had seen the civil rights protests, the Vietnam War and the assassination of major political leaders – John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.
Was the moon landing worth it?
In the 1960s, as now, there was widespread economic and social problems on earth. The US, the richest country in the world, still had wide-scale poverty – and lingering problems from decades of racial segregation and the resultant poverty. During the moon landings, there were civil rights protests, protests who argued that the billions spent on the space programme, could have been better spent dealing with problems closer to home.
Another interesting feature about the moon landings is that although it promised a whole new adventure, the program fizzled out. In 1972, Eugene Cernan, also walked on the moon. But, he is the last person to have done it, and by then interest had waned. Far from leading to moon stations, very little direct benefit has been attained from walking on the moon.
