The progressive era in several ways failed to protect American workers, exclusively women and children which led to mass number of deaths that were unjust and unconstitutional. The focus of the Progressive era was to elimination in the government. However, this goal was met, but not until many deaths. As a whole, American workers in this era suffered greatly through hardships such as having extensive hours, not enough pay, and poor treatment. Analyzing document #2, it follows a young woman recording the dark experience in a cloth factory and the events that took place that day. As the recording begins, she explains how much she enjoyed her job as a sewing machine operator and her days with her colleagues despite the low wage and poor conditions. Her pay was twelve dollars a week, she clocked in half past eight and leaving at four o’ clock. They had never gone out through the front door because a man locked it, in caution that workers would steal things. As she was leaving, suddenly a worker shouted “ c’mon lets run!”. She left all her personal belongings and noticed the work area being set ablaze, one by one the women piled up by the locked door attempting to break through meanwhile others avoided the efforts and plummeted out the window to their deaths. This poor woman was one of many, that were on the faulty side of the Progressive era and had to forego such events. Only nineteen years old, as she finishes the entry exclaiming how the women who didn't jump eventually escaped to safety and what a shame it was that the others felt that they had to jump. This only one story of many, and the amount of anxiety that is built up from this story is unbelievable lasting from 1820 all the way until 1920. Women's suffrage played a massive role during this time period, as previously stated this young girls story is only one of many. Forward to Document #6, women began protesting outside of the white house uproaring a feminist movement. Women had still just beginning to be recognized as human beings and not objects. Womens affairs were never an actual topic brought to society until they began to conduct illegal activity to protest and denying orders from tyrant male political and citizen figures. America couldn’t have been a true democracy without the input and views of women who had been abused and put into far more unjust situations than a working male had been. Gender roles played a significant part for women, as on of the views not shared by many men at the time such as child labor and it’s tolls it had taken on not just the children but the mother of those children. Women are seen as nurturers and caretakers as their movements began to disperse into the factor of fighting for themselves and their children. Document #3, covers this topic by discussing young boys working as miners. This job for a child had been taking on strains that even the modern man could not nearly handle. “The coal is hard and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead.” Children as young as twelve were eligible to take up a job like this in the eyes of corrupt business owners. Characterized by loose and contradictory goals, children were brutally killed by conditions that no child should have to go through. Days of a mining boy were described as dark, as they stayed and would often get caved in by boulders. By the very early time, a boy went into the mines, they saw nothing but darkness going home very late at night. Instances like these, women had been taking the stand that children could not. The voices of women and children were taken as minorities and not seen fit to initiate the real success of the Progressive era. In Doc. 3, a reporter attempts to take on the task of a miner boy and could barely stand it for half an hour. Low wages also applied to children earning under 50 cents a day. Education had been prioritized last on a child's agenda, working for ten hours. Of course, night school was an option, but working for so long, children wouldn’t even have enough energy to eat dinner.
In conclusion, the Progressive era failed to protect women and children exclusively as proven, it wasn’t until 1920 that success from the Progressive era would soon to take effect and eventually lead to the nineteenth amendment of women being able to vote. Soon enough child labor was also prohibited as well never on record be utilized.