Origins of Progressivism
The Populist Movement committed political suicide by backing William Jennings
Bryan, a Democrat, for president in the Election of 1896. Their revolt was not without
results, though, because their ideas were picked up by the most successful political
reform movement in all of US history. This next movement is known as Progressivism,
and these reformers were so successful as to totally take over American politics in the
20th century. They were so successful that most modern Americans have never heard of
them. They so altered American government as to become unnoticed. Their revolution
was so profound as to create what all of us accept as normal. That is success indeed.
We therefore turn our attention back to domestic issues and to the desire to purify
American politics. Progressives stood for three main principles they would discuss and
an unstated fourth principle that was the key to their revolution. The three goals they
talked about openly included: 1) American government must be rid of corruption, 2)
Government must be controlled by many rather than by few in order to be purified, and
3) Government must control more of American life in order to maintain purity. The
landmark book that identified these principles was The Progressive Movement, written by
Benjamin Parke DeWitt in 1915. By then he was reflecting on the success of the
movement that had spread across America. Progressives said if the people of America
were ignored by politicians, the people would rise and make new politicians that will
listen. Before we look at the fourth, unstated principle, a brief comparison is in order.
A clear contrast existed between Populists and Progressives. Progressive
reformers were from the middle class as opposed to the lower-class farmers that made up
the Populists. Progressives were therefore more educated and articulate. Having seen
reform ideas raised, Progressives were even more eager than Populists to see them
become realities. Perhaps the key difference was that Progressives came from both the
Republicans and Democrats and created an even more powerful bastion of Protestant
patriotism. Farmers and Social Gospel urban reformers joined this cause. Progressivism
even had some southern support.
Among the most stunning accomplishments of the Progressive Reform movement
was the establishment of loose construction as the predominant interpretation of the US
Constitution for the bulk of the 20th century. Therefore, Progressives can be classified as
a return to Federalism although Alexander Hamilton did not see the federal government
as an agency to protect the welfare of individual citizens. Progressives linked Federalist
views to the nationalism generated by the Spanish-American War, and Hamilton’s views
on establishing a strong central government have largely prevailed ever since. Herein lay
the unstated fourth principle of Progressivism, that Big Government should solve
problems that individuals “cannot” solve for themselves.
The spread of Progressivism can be likened to dropping a stone in a pond. The
principles of Progressivism first took root at the city level and then spread to the state and
national levels. There was even an American president who tried to spread Progressivism
to the international level in the wake of World War I. We will study each level of the
Progressive Reform Movement’s spread, and you should acquaint yourselves with
individuals associated with each level.
The American city presented the first target for Progressive reform. Wealthy
businessmen who used to delight in living at city centers were convinced by their wives
as the industrial age took hold to move away from factories. Not only did the factories
belch smoke but the workers belched, too, and as more and more immigrants came from
Southern and Eastern Europe, that cloud of air stank of garlic. The end results were an
abandoning of wealthy neighborhoods and the creation of suburbs, especially as
transportation improved. When wealthy citizens moved away from the cities, less
attention was paid to crime and to repairing infrastructure. Slums were born.
In 1889 a woman named Jane Addams bought a millionaire’s abandoned mansion
in the 19th ward of Chicago and became the mother of social work. Mr. Hull’s
neighborhood had become a slum, and Hull House was established to begin relief efforts
for poor immigrants. Addams blamed party bosses for the plight of the inner city and
said her neighbors had to “. . . pay too much for a streetcar to take them to work across
filthy, poorly lit, crime-infested streets. Their taxes were too high, and their standard of
living was too low.” Why? Because government and big business were conspiring in
Gilded Age corruption. Bosses received kickbacks for doing “good” for communities
which turned out to be good for monopolies.
Progressive were the new pietistic expression in American politics and demanded
that government be more democratic and moral. City mayors took the first steps toward
Progressive reform. Hazen Pingree was the Republican mayor of Detroit from 18891896. He promised schools and parks to win support and targeted the monopolies of
streetcar and utility companies, forcing them to provide fairer rates. During the Panic of
1893, Pingree took up Jacob Coxey’s idea and provided work-relief programs for jobless
citizens in Detroit. Even if three men were given one broom to sweep the streets, those
three men had “jobs” that made it easier for them to accept help from the government.
Note that the next Progressive mayor on which I’ll focus was a Democrat, proving
the strength of Progressivism’s bipartisan appeal. Tom Johnson, mayor of Cleveland
from 1901-1909, was converted to Progressivism by Henry George’s book Social
Problems. Johnson fought the Mark Hanna political machine that ran the Republican
Party for Ohio, but he focused on winning victories in his own city. He campaigned on
the slogan “A fairer fare!” and reformed the transit system to bring the streetcar fare
down to 3¢. He even took on the police force and broke their system of graft based on
kickbacks from prostitution, getting rid of “kept” prostitutes and the men who exploited
them. Johnson gave Cleveland free public bathrooms, recreational facilities, and sanitary
inspections. He wanted city-owned utilities but settled for breaking utility monopolies.
Tom Johnson and other Progressives wanted kinder and more efficient government.
Some Progressive tools to accomplish these goals were revolutionary ideas for
municipal government. Progressives developed the idea of a city manager, a hired not
elected civil servant who would not have to award graft to be re-elected and could run the
city like a business looking after the bottom line for the taxpayers. If he messed up or fell
into corruption, he could simply be fired. Zoning became a Progressive issue to try to
bring efficiency to city planning. Other innovations to American political science began
in the cities and made it all the way to the state level in some cases. The initiative
allowed citizens to launch bills through legislatures without waiting for their
representatives to do so. Referendums allowed citizens to vote on whether laws should
be passed. Recalls allowed citizens to un-elect an elected official who proved to be
corrupt and/or incompetent. Where these provisions were permitted they gave power to
the people, a key Progressive goal.
Churches provided the driving force behind urban Progressivism. The Social
Gospel movement was a response by churches that were losing members to create
“institutions” in lower-class neighborhoods. Rescue missions provided lodging and food,
and the need for diversion was supplied by reading rooms and recreational facilities.
Immigrant families were offered day nurseries since both parents worked in factories.
The main soldiers of this reform movement were young college women who lived right
in the slums. Their idealism bade them leave their ivory towers in order to become useful
in doing good for the immigrant poor. Hull House began a whole wave of “settlement”
houses tending to the birth pangs of the new cities.
Teachers, nurses, and health inspectors worked through charitable foundations to
fight child labor, ignorance, and disease. Journalists and historians labeled these intrepid
social workers religious and intellectual heroes (heroines) whose active faith and creative
intelligence formed the basis for pragmatism, an anti-Transcendentalism philosophy
espoused by William James. He said Truth must come down to reform reality. John
Dewey of Columbia University dispensed with Truth and said America should attack the
most serious conflicts by direct application of logic. Dewey was an education professor
who created a system to organize school libraries. He also espoused a new style of
education that ignored absolutes and finalities. Dewey believed Truth had no place in the
Age of Darwin. He believed the Theory of Evolution seriously challenged the biblical
account of creation and therefore schools should not present the world in anything but
relative terms. He believed children should construct their own “truths.”
Again, our focus revolves back on Hull House. Jane Addams made her settlement
house work with schools as laboratories of social experimentation. In 1895 she published
Hull House Maps and Papers, the first “scientific” survey of immigrants in a city. She
used statistics and first-hand observations to identify problems victimizing immigrants in
politics, crime, and prostitution. She catalogued information about the deteriorating
immigrant families and their pitiful housing and dangerous working conditions. Addams
worked with Chicago city leaders to establish city commissions formed of professionals
charged with the task of finding ideas to revamp city life.
The spread of these ideas was the key to the spread of Progressivism. National
societies sprang into existence to help professionals share ideas including economists,
sociologists, political scientists, and even leaders of charitable foundations. Each
national society published a journal, the goals of which were to expose, identify, and
correct problems as perceived by each field. Freelance writers and photographers joined
forces with these societies to push for Progressive reforms. Historians like Charles A.
Beard, again of Columbia University, began publishing a new perspective on the dearth
of democracy in America pointing to Jim Crow and boss politics. Government at the
municipal level implemented new ideas more like businesses than politicians. The tactics
of the trusts were used to reform the city through the collective efforts of un-ambitious,
honest public officials.
Progressivism would have spread much more slowly without the work of what
Theodore Roosevelt first referred to as muckrakers. He disliked their propensity to “dig
up” the problems of America rather than writing about our greatness—that is until he
himself became a Progressive. Famous muckraking photographers included Lewis Hine
and Jacob Riis, whose book How the Other Half Lives shocked Victorian sensibilities
with its images from the lives of the immigrant poor, created a stir similar to the impact
of Matthew Brady’s Civil War photographs of dead soldiers.
Muckraking writers included Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell (a woman), Ray
Stannard Baker, and David Graham Phillips. All of these journalists advocated a “free
and vigilant press.” Steffens wrote The Shame of the Cities, an attack on boss politics as
vehement as Thomas Nast’s cartoon war against Boss Tweed. Ida Tarbell’s father had
been ruined by John D. Rockefeller in the refining industry and published a series of
articles in McClure’s magazine called “The History of Standard Oil.” This seemingly
innocuous title lent credibility to her report which was actually written with the Robber
Baron bias front-and-center.
Other evils exposed included sweatshops, tainted meat, white slave traffic
(prostitution involving runaway girls), insurance company scandals, labor racketeering
(labor leaders’ extortion of money from union members), high-finance shenanigans, and
the gap between venerable American ideas and the ugly realities of the Gilded Age.
While the articles were filled with romanticism and even sentimentalism, they were
written in a tone of complete objectivity designed to inflame the consciences of readers
and to create a moral outcry. When readers felt that the outrage was their own, the
publicity of this type of journalism spurred America to action.