The Progressives
...e, relying on the Interstate Commerce Clause for support, would be struck down by the Supreme Court. Although the concept of denying the employment of minors appeared liberal in the method of abstracting existing government powers, the Keating-Owen act can be seen as a success for conservatism. Radical motivation inspired the Act but the argument of human rights is evident. Under the Declaration of Independence it is stated that all men are created equal but does this include children? With manipulation of the Declaration and the Constitution, the statement that children should also be protected was a novelty to the hopes and pursuits of the Progressives. The government is forced to regulate on behalf of the people and even one of the founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, insisted on the Interstate Commerce Clause before the Constitution existed at the Annapolis convention. Progressives understood the importance and power that money held and utilized trade as a tool for the act. It wasn’t until the compulsory attendance laws that it was possible to remove children from the workplace and that too were a conservative effort. The desired evolution for the extinction of child labor appears liberal in nature when progressives attempted to use the Interstate Commerce clause in the Keating-Owen Act it showed an unconventional manner. However, the motivation was a triumph for conservatism with a backbone in the founding documents of the nation and attempt to conserve “certain unalienable rights.” Progressives were focused on all state, local and national policies in the economy and politics. Beginning with the movement for the emancipation of slaves, woman began to take part in the process of radical reform leading up to the era of the Progressives. The movement for woman’s suffrage blossomed out of the 1848 Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention in New York and was inspired by the courageous petitions of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Mott and Stanton devised a “Declaration of Sentiments” that resembled the United State’s Declaration and use an analogy of the inequality of woman in comparison to that of the colonies under the power of Great Britain and by 1869 western states were ratifying women’s suffrage laws. However, it wasn’t until the first two decades of the twentieth century when the Progressives provided the necessary drive for such a reform to take place. Active progressives pressured the government to intercede using traditional morals as encouragement and by claiming that by “giving women the vote would bring women’s purifying and morally elevating influence to the political realm.” After two years of lobbying states to ratify the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1920 allowing women to be active in the political process and vote. This was a “natural” right that many males felt that would be accurately continued by women with their positive moral influence. However by stereotyping the 19th Amendment as a “natural” right the progressives classified the concept as sanctioned in the long-established democratic promises of the government and validating another triumph for conservatism. The 18th Amendment was the Progressives infamous prohibition of alcoholic beverages. In order to get their point across, prohibitionists needed to prove the inherent evils that were presented by the consumption of alcohol and religion played a large part in that movement. A large amount of poverty led to the crime that was held as a subsequent attribute of alcohol abuse. However, Progressives are also classified for the diversity of motivation. There were many reasons for the prohibition of alcohol and no one embraced all of them. Most Americans were against public drunkenness, but saw nothing wrong with drinking in moderation. Nevertheless, abstinence zealots were taking the “Prohib...