Progressive Era Thinkers

             During the progressive era, many notable people radically “progressed” society, so to speak, and improved our quality of life through a variety of means.  These notable thinkers made beneficial economic, social, political, and/or diplomatic changes that helped the United States improve itself greatly.  The four most notable of the progressive era thinkers are: John D. Rockefeller, Eugene Debs, Alice Paul, and Andrew Carnegie.  As the popular cliché goes, “History repeats itself”, and just as there were four radically progressive thinkers in the progressive era, there are four respectively analogous present day thinkers as well.

            John D. Rockefeller was a progressive thinker known for his aggressive and successful business practices.  Although he created one of the first monopolies on the oil industry, his economic ambitions stimulated the United States’ economy greatly.  With his multi-million dollar oil industry, he literally fueled the progressive era with a sustainable fuel source and a constant source of powerful economic activities.  Today, Rex Tillerson, current CEO of ExxonMobil, is an analogous thinker to Rockefeller.  Tillerson runs one of today’s largest oil companies, and helps stimulate the American economy as Rockefeller once did.  Tillerson provides the United States with fuel crucial to all forms of transporation, home heating, and other critical infrastructure applications.  This progressive oil company, Exxonmobil, was in fact started by Rockefeller and is now continued by Tillerson.

            Eugene Debs was a progressive thinker known for his strong stances on worker rights, higher wages, women’s suffrage, and socialist values.  When not fighting for higher wages and better working conditions for workers nationwide, Debs could usually be heard speaking out against Capitalism and promoting Socialism.  His main reason for supporting socialism over capitalism was that competition would not benefit society as much as cooperation would.  All of Debs work helped to give the United States better working laws, wages, conditions, women’s rights, and many other beneficial values.  An analogous thinker in today’s society would be Oprah.  Oprah, at first glance, appears to have little similarity with Debs’ ideals or values, but she is a strong supporter of women’s rights and, though no longer a concern, obviously still their voting rights.  Her values and morals lead her to give away many valuable gifts to her show guests, and her overall political and economic attitudes portray a sense of a helpful attitude.  She, just as Debs, portrays a Socialist way of thinking.