Progressive Reform

As the nineteenth century came to a close, just decades after the Civil War, many feared the nation faced another explosive and violent conflict, this time between the forces of industrial capitalism and militant workers.

In the same period, cyclical economic downturns spawned massive protests, including marches by millions of largely rural farmers drawn into the populist movement.

In the same period, cyclical economic downturns spawned massive protests, including marches by millions of largely rural farmers drawn into the populist movement.

Several factors made this achievement possible: unprecedented scale in manufacturing, technological innovation, a transportation revolution, ever-greater efficiency in production, the birth of the modern corporation, and the development of a host of new consumer products.

A new class of muckraking journalists fed this outrage with stunning exposés of business exploitation and corruption of government officials.

A new class of muckraking journalists fed this outrage with stunning exposés of business exploitation and corruption of government officials.

At other times an economic and political emphasis dominated, with primary interest in moderate regulation to curtail the excesses of Gilded Age capitalists and politicians.

But it is potentially more useful to think of progressivism as falling under three broad areas of reform: efforts to make government cleaner, less corrupt, and more democratic; attempts to ameliorate the effects of industrialization; and efforts to rein in corporate power.

Rather, they wished to regulate industry and mitigate the effects of capitalism on behalf of the public good.

Theodore Roosevelt declared in a 1910 speech that the government should be “the steward of the public welfare.”

Except in its most extreme wing, it did not repudiate big business, but used the power of the state to regulate its impact on society, politics, and the economy.

They swept up in their midst cadres of women, many of them among the first generation of female college graduates, but others came from the new ranks of young factory workers and shop girls.

They put much store by the new modern social sciences of sociology and economics and believed that by applying technical expertise, solutions to urban and industrial problems could be found.

Interest groups became an important vehicle for progressive reform advocacy.

Twentieth-century understandings of the government as a necessary force mediating among diverse group interests developed in the Progressive era.

“Good government” advocates sought to restructure municipal governments so that parties had little influence.

The National Municipal League, which had Teddy Roosevelt among its founders, for example, supported election of at-large members of city councils so that council members could not be beholden to party machines.

Ironically, such processes often resulted in less popular influence over government since it weakened machine politicians who were directly accountable to immigrant and working-class constituents.

Many states adopted the initiative (allowing popular initiation of legislation) and referendum (allowing popular vote on legislation) in these years, and in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution mandated the direct election of US Senators.

Perhaps the most dramatic campaign for more democratic government was the woman suffrage movement which mobilized millions to campaign for women’s right to the franchise.

Perhaps the most dramatic campaign for more democratic government was the woman suffrage movement which mobilized millions to campaign for women’s right to the franchise.

Some activists concentrated on tenement reform, such as New York’s 1901 Tenement House Act, which mandated better light, ventilation, and toilets.

New federal regulatory bureaucracies, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Trade Commission, also limited business’s free hand.

These progressive initiatives also included efforts to protect consumers from the kind of unsavory production processes revealed by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Roosevelt had a genius for publicity, using the presidency as a “bully pulpit” to bring progressivism to the national stage.

Roosevelt had a genius for publicity, using the presidency as a “bully pulpit” to bring progressivism to the national stage.

For Roosevelt the concentration of industry in ever fewer hands represented not just a threat to fair markets but also to democracy as wealthy industrialists consolidated power in their own hands.

Although not always successful in achieving his goals, Roosevelt brought to the federal government other progressive causes during his presidency, including support for workers’ rights to organize, eight-hour workdays for federal employees, workers’ compensation, and an income and inheritance tax on wealthy Americans.

Through the new Bureau of Fisheries and National Forest Service, Roosevelt emphasized efficient government management of resources, preventing rapacious use by private businesses and landowners.

Its tenets united the themes of his leadership of progressivism: faith in a strong federal government, an activist presidency, balancing of public interest and corporate interest, and support for a roll-call of progressive reform causes, from woman suffrage and the eight-hour work day to abolishing child labor and greater corporate regulation.

Commercial leisure—dance halls, movies, vaudeville performances, and amusement parks like Coney Island—appeared to many reformers to threaten public morality, particularly endangering young women.

Opponents famously deemed Coney Island “Sodom by the Sea.”

Eugenics also garnered the support of some progressive reformers.

Any assessment of the progressive movement must grapple with this element of social control as reformers established new ways to regulate the daily lives of citizens, particularly those in the lower ranks of society, by empowering government to set rules for behavior.

Progressive reform’s greatest failure was its acquiescence in the legal and violent disfranchisement of African Americans.

Many endorsed efforts by southern progressives to enact literacy tests for voting and other laws in the name of good government that effectively denied black Americans the right to vote and entrenched Jim Crow segregation.

Progressives carved out what historian James Kloppenberg describes as a “via media,” a middle way between the laissez-faire capitalism dominant in the Gilded Age and the socialist reorganization many radicals of the period advocated.

Some regulation of business joined some protection of workers, but no dramatic overhaul of the distribution of wealth or control of the economy occurred.

Instead, progressives bequeathed the twentieth century faith in an active government to moderate the effects of large-scale capitalism on citizens and communities.

Theodore Roosevelt epitomized progressive rebuke of the outrageous excesses of capitalists and their cronies, but also typified progressive accommodation of the new order.

Theodore Roosevelt epitomized progressive rebuke of the outrageous excesses of capitalists and their cronies, but also typified progressive accommodation of the new order.

He opposed unregulated business, deemed monopolies antithetical, defended labor unions, supported consumer protections, and initiated government protection of natural resources.

Yet he never believed we could turn away from the new economy and the transformation it had wrought in American society.