The Progressive reform movement was social, political, and economic in the US at the local, state, and national levels. It started following the depression of 1873 and lasted until 1917. There had been very little regulation of business at any level since the beginning of the United States and a huge gap occurred between the rich and the poor. Industrialists were building huge mansions while the working people and farmers were barely able to make a living. Immigrants were living in rat-filled slums among some of the worst squalor ever seen in the U.S. Labor Unions were just beginning and involved in violent confrontation with mine owners and factory owners. Beginning at the local and state levels middle-class Americans, women, and journalists (known as muckrakers) took on the [problems of the working classes and the poor that eventually reached the federal level. There was antitrust legislation, to bust the monopolies, and legislation to confront the dangerous conditions in factories, mines, and farms; with emphasis on city-wide slums. The pure Food and Drug Act and Chicago's Hull House were some of the efforts to right the wrongs of the robber barons and the rich that controlled 95% of the money by 2% of the population.
