ABSTRACT
By the 1890s, the United States had begun an unprecedented period of economic growth, spurred by new technology and modernization. On the one hand, the late-nineteenth-century American economy had produced unprecedented wealth and excess. Indeed, and probably much to the chagrin of America's ordinary workers who might have struggled with a living wage, there was the extravagance openly exhibited by the nation's elite. Unregulated economic growth and exploitive business practices, came with consequences and pushback. Despite the economic success of those at the top of the economic ladder, rights for workers and rank-and-file laborers left much to be desired. A turbulent relationship between capital and labor emerged, then, and laborers, leftists, and radicals began to resist this new and emerging industrial order. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Progressive Era, would take on this division of labor and capital and work to regulate state and society for fairness, social justice, community protection and more.
