Businessmen like these who can control the market intimidated all citizens. The progressives anticipated bringing in the government and limiting these monopolies to a certain extent. These ideas appealed to people in America because they were living in poverty struggling to live in the city while these industrial beasts were thriving off of them. .
Many Progressives responded to industrial America's terrible working conditions by trying to make life better for workers, particularly the women and children who were considered the most vulnerable. By 1900, women composed 20% of the manufacturing workforce, many performing double duty as wageworkers and unpaid homemakers who were held responsible for the childcare, cooking, and cleaning. They were paid less than male workers, who were not even making living wages themselves. At the same time, over 1.7 million children under age sixteen worked in factories or fields. Progressives' especially middle class female activists helped spearhead the movement for laws that restricted child labor in 38 states by the late nineteenth century. Progressives helped enact state legislation that granted financial aid in an early form of welfare to working mothers in eight states by 1913. Some states also began to provide relief for the elderly poor in 1914. Progressives also pushed for public accident insurance plans, which would provide accident victims and their families with a monetary payment to offset expenses. Such plans were enacted beginning in 1910 and a policy in all states but five by 1920. The progressives were favored by so many Americans because they had the power to do what an individual couldn't, they could stand up for the people that were being mistreated and suffered from industrialization. The goals of the progressives became the goals of almost every American struggling in the growth of industrializing.
As the Progressive Movement strengthened it enticed many people, feminists used the platform to gain support for woman suffrage.