The Progressive Era (roughly the 1890s to about 1920) was the burst of American reform that tried to tame the new industrial age. Alarmed by giant corporations, corrupt city machines, and brutal working conditions, reformers turned to government and expertise to regulate, clean up, and humanize their society — winning trust-busting, the income tax, food and drug laws, the direct election of senators, Prohibition, and votes for women. The same movement also embraced racial segregation and eugenics and largely excluded Black Americans, which is why its legacy remains genuinely contested.
Between the 1890s and 1920, Americans tried to tame the machine. The industrial age had built railroad empires and giant trusts, packed cities into slums, and put children to work in mills, and a loose army of reformers, journalists, and politicians set out to clean it up. They won trust-busting, the income tax, food and drug laws, and the vote for women in 1920. But the same era was not progressive for everyone. President Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal government, many reformers championed eugenics, and Black Americans, shut out of the movement, built their own.