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First Post
Steve Jung said:Hey Sword. What's the essay about?
the prompt is so:
"Progressivism differed from the New Deal in that the former emphasized social and politcal reform while the latter emphasized economic reform."
Assess the validity of the above generalization.
I took this stance:
Progressivism was really about farmers having economic troubles b/c they were getting zapped by RR trusts who could charge outragious prices to ship goods, and by the fact that industrialization let them produce far more than what was actually in demand. On the surface, they focused on political and social issues, but underneith, they did that because the politcal changes they made (direct election of senators, secret ballots, etc) facilitated the economic changes they wanted.
The New Deal was all about FDR trying every idea he could to fix the economy, and then funding the ones that held water. What ended up working were programs that not only effected the economy in a positive way, but also improved the morale of the american citizens, such as the Tenessee Valley Athority, which gave people thier livelyhood back by giving them jobs, and which spawned a renewed feeling of pride in America, along with building a whole bunch of dams to power the south.