As all of these stories illustrate, the Progressive movement was, first and foremost, a moral awakening. Facilitated by the muckrakers’ revelations about a society, economy, and government run amok—and urged on by the Social Gospelers’ denunciation of social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics—Americans from all walks of life began to repudiate the self-centered, hyper-individualist creed of the Gilded Age.
