During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the Industrialization Era took place and changed the way America and Europe produced merchandise forever. America and Europe continually grew more urban and factories transformed the entire way the typical working man spent his work day. The Gilded Age followed the Industrialization Era and represented the large economic growth in America. After the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era occurred. The Progressive Era began in the late 18th century and political reform and social activism became the active goal during this time. During the Progressive Era, environmental protection was needed in order to save the Earth from the rapidly increasing urbanization. It was people like Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford …show more content…
Although the environmental problems were not as problematic during the Gilded Age, they progressively got worse decades later. The lack of concern people had when consuming land materials such as timber, minerals, etc., was the main issue why action needed to be taken place during the Progressive Era. Natural resources were no longer seen as tools of survival, yet as objects of wealth. An excerpt from the National Conservation Congress’s “Evolution of the Conservation Movement” written in 1909 states that, “Vast holdings of these resources were acquired by those of greater foresight than their neighbors before it was generally realized that they possessed value in themselves; and in this way large interests, assuming monopolistic proportions, grew up, with greater enrichment to their holders than the world had seen before, and with the motive of immediate profit, with no concern for the future or thought of the permanent benefit of country and people, a wasteful and profligate use of the resources began and has continued.” This analysis of the problem of businessmen who had a personal agenda of obtaining natural resources in the Gilded Age explains how people did not think about the damage they were causing to the environment and it’s future. The profit of these resources was more important than the atmosphere, working conditions, or even the streets of America! …show more content…
Teddy had grown up as a New Yorker but had left the city to go to the North Dakota Badlands to embrace his ironic love of hunting. His experience at the Badlands, “took the snob out of him,” and uprooted his love for nature, leading him to form an opinion on future environmental policies. At the Badlands, he had witnessed bad practices of game hunting and overgrazing of land which led to his hatred for the actions people took when extracting the Earth’s natural resources. During a speech at the conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources on May 13th, 1908, Roosevelt said, “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas is exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.” This statement was the basis of his opinion on what would happen if Americans continued to use resources at the rate they were. The idea of the depletion of natural resources that we need in order to survive was the motivation he used to fix the issue. When Teddy started his term as