Progressive Warm-up 3/10/15

Should historians continue to treat the Progressive Era as its own period in American history?

Historians should continue to treat the Progressive Era as its own period in history because it represented a change in American history that differed from preceding era/s such as the Guilded Age; the major goal being to use the government as an agency of human welfare as well as reform society in general. This can be supported with the expansion of the presidency with Theodore Roosevelt and his elimination of all the, so called, "bad trusts" who had too much power. This can be refuted by the status of the women who were an indispensable catalyst in the Progressive army and still could not vote or hold political office.