The Progressive Monopolies

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After the Civil War a great deal of people gained wealth at a rapid speed, many of these entrepreneurs had the advantage of having a lot of power in their hands. Although these big corporate businesses mostly only had a monopoly over economic policies they also created a domino effect that caused political and social consequences. These consequences gave birth to the progressive era. There were four reforms that were influenced by the progressives: nonpartisanship, block ballot, primary elections and direct democracy. The electoral reforms fell under the category of direct democracy, which included: initiative, referendum and recall. Progressives wanted to take the power from the monopolies and give it to the people. The reforms made by the Progressives were made so…show more content…
The Progressive Era began at the local level, “… in the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.” Their main goal was to eliminate the cities government from “graft and bribery.” The progressive group started growing when people realized that the monopolies of the time had too much power in their hands. As their group grew they gained more power. In 1911 four main reforms changed the way California’s government and politics worked. Nonpartisanship changed which said that a certain candidate wasn’t going to be directly correlated to a party. Block ballots said that every candidate or party had their own box for people to choose from when they were voting. Primary elections changed where now a party nominee had to win more votes than his opponent in order to be able to run for the party’s candidate in the next general election. The most important – direct democracy, which included three subcategories gave “citizens the ability to rein in the abuse of power by elected officials or to ignite those same public officials if they are paralyzed by inaction and partisan bickering.” The three electoral reforms were created, “at the state level
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