Progressive Era

In the United States, the Progressive Era was a period of reform which lasted from the 1890s through the 1920s.

Progressives strongly opposed waste and corruption. They sought change in regard to worker's rights and protection of the ordinary citizen in general. Initially the movement was successful at local level, and then it progressed to state and gradually national. The reformers (and their opponents) were predominantly members of the middle class. Most were well educated white Protestants who lived in the cities. Catholics, Jews and African Americans had their own versions of the Progressive Movement, led by the likes of George Cardinal Mundelein, Oscar Straus and Booker T. Washington.

Women came to the forefront in the Progressive era and proved their value as social workers. The Progressives pushed for social justice, general equality and public safety, but there were contradictions within the movement, especially regarding race.

Almost all major politicians declared their adherence to some progressive measures. In politics the most prominent national figures were Republicans Theodore Roosevelt and Robert LaFollette and Democrats William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson.

Reform

Significant changes achieved at the national levels included Prohibition with the 18th Amendment and women's suffrage through to the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as the income tax with the Sixteenth Amendment and direct election of Senators with the Seventeenth Amendment.

Muckrakers were journalists who exposed waste, corruption, and scandal in the highly influential new medium of national magazines, such as McClure's. Progressives shared a common belief in the ability of science, technology and disinterested expertise to identify all problems and come up with the one best solution.

Progressives moved to enable the citizenry to rule more directly and circumvent political bosses; California, Wisconsin, and Oregon took the lead. California and Oregon established the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall. About 16 states began using primary elections. Many cities set up municipal reference bureaus to study the budgets and administrative structures of local governments. In Illinois, Governor Frank Lowden undertook a major reorganization of state government. In Wisconsin, the stronghold of Robert LaFollette, the Wisconsin Idea, inspired by Charles McCarthy, used the state university as the source of ideas and expertise.

Catholics had their own version of the movement which they applied to their schools, colleges, and hospitals.

Characteristics of progressivism

• Favorable attitude toward urban-industrial society
• Belief in mankind's ability to improve environment & conditions of life
• Belief in obligation to intervene in economic and social affairs
• Belief in ability of experts and in efficacy of government intervention

Issues at the federal level

• President Theodore Roosevelt (Republican, 1901-1909).
• Trust-Busting.
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
• Northern Securities Company.
• Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1905).
• Pure Food & Drug Act, Meat Inspection Act (1906).

Notable Progressive intellectuals, writers, advocates

• Edward Johnson
• Jane Addams
• Horatio Alger
• Charles Beard
• Andrew Carnegie
• Brian Carrol
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Crystal Eastman
• Charles Edison
• Irving Fisher
• Henry Ford
• E. Franklin Frazier
• Charlotte Gilman
• Lewis Hine
• Walter Lippmann
• Jack London
• John R. Mott
• George Cardinal Mundelein
• Ulrich B. Phillips
• Jacob Riis
• John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Upton Sinclair
• Albion Small
• Ellen Gates Starr
• Lincoln Steffens
• Ida Tarbell
• Frederick Winslow Taylor
• Frederick Jackson Turner
• Thorstein Veblen
• Booker T. Washington
• Ida B. Wells
• William Allen White
• Woodrow Wilson

Further reading

Overviews

• Buenker, John D., John C. Burnham, and Robert M. Crunden. Progressivism (1986)
• Buenker, John D. and Joseph Buenker, Eds. Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Sharpe Reference, 2005. xxxii + 1256 pp. in three volumes. ISBN 0-7656-8051-3. 900 articles by 200 scholars
• Buenker, John D. Dictionary of the Progressive Era (1980)
• Crunden, Robert M. Ministers of Reform: The Progressives' Achievement in American Civilization, 1889-1920 (1982)
• Diner, Steven J. A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1998)
• Glad, Paul W. "Progressives and the Business Culture of the 1920s," The Journal of American History, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Jun., 1966), pp. 75-89. in JSTOR
• Gould Lewis L. America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1914" (2000)
• Gould Lewis L. ed., The Progressive Era (1974)
• Hays, Samuel D. The Response to Help Me, 1885-1914 (1957),
• Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (1954), Pulitzer Prize
• Jensen, Richard. "Democracy, Republicanism and Efficiency: The Values of American Politics, 1885-1930," in Byron Shafer and Anthony Badger, eds, Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775-2000 (U of Kansas Press, 2001) pp 149-180; online version
• Kennedy, David M. ed., Progressivism: The Critical Issues (1971), readings
• Lasch, Christopher. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics (1991)
• Leuchtenburg, William E. "Progressivism and Imperialism: The Progressive Movement and American Foreign Policy, 1898-1916," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 39, No. 3. (Dec., 1952), pp. 483-504. JSTOR
• Mann, Arthur. ed., The Progressive Era (1975), readings of women's suffrage (1999)
• McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (2003)
• Mowry, George. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900-1912. (1954) general survey of era; online
• Noggle, Burl. "The Twenties: A New Historiographical Frontier," The Journal of American History, Vol. 53, No. 2. (Sep., 1966), pp. 299-314. in JSTOR
• Pease, Otis, ed. The Progressive Years: The Spirit and Achievement of American Reform (1962), primary documents
• Thelen, David P. "Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism," Journal of American History 56 (1969), 323-341 online at JSTOR
• Wiebe, Robert. The Search For Order, 1877-1920 (1967).

National politics

• Howard K. Beale|Beale Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power. (1956).
• Blum, John Morton. The Republican Roosevelt. (1954). Series of essays that examine how TR did politics
• Brands, H.W. Theodore Roosevelt (2001).
• Clements, Kendrick A. The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1992).
• Coletta, Paolo. The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1990).
• Cooper, John Milton The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. (1983).
• Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1991).
• Harbaugh, William Henry. The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. (1963).
• Harrison, Robert. Congress, Progressive Reform, and the New American State (2004).
• Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition (1948), ch. 8-9-10.
• Kolko, Gabriel. "The Triumph of Conservatism" (1963).
• Link, Arthur Stanley. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (1972).
• Morris, Edmund Theodore Rex. (2001), biography covers 1901-1909
• Mowry, George E. Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement. (2001).
• Pestritto, R.J. "Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism." (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).
• Sanders, Elizabeth. Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers and the American State, 1877-1917 (1999).
• Wilson, Joan Hoff. Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive (1965).

State, local, ethnic, gender, business, labor

• Abell, Aaron I. American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice, 1865-1950 (1960),
• Bruce, Kyle and Chris Nyland. "Scientific Management, Institutionalism, and Business Stabilization: 1903-1923" Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 35, 2001
• Buenker, John D. Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (1973).
• Buenker, John D. The Progressive Era, 1893-1914 (1998), in Wisconsin
• Feffer, Andrew. The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism (1993).
• Frankel, Noralee and Nancy S. Dye, eds. Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era (1991).
• Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003).
• Huthmacher, J. Joseph. "Urban Liberalism and the Age of Reform" Mississippi Valley Historical Review 49 (1962): 231-241, in JSTOR; emphasized urban, ethnic, working class support for reform
• Link, William A. The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (1997).
• Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The workplace, the state, and American labor activism, 1865-1925 (1987).
• Muncy, Robyn. Creating A Feminine Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (1991).
• Lubove, Roy. The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City, 1890-1917 Greenwood Press: 1974.
• Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (2000). stresses links with Europe
• Rosenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours For What We Will: Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (1983).
• Stromquist, Shelton. Reinventing 'The People': The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism, University of Illinois Press, 2006. ISBN 0-252-07269-3.
• Thelen, David. The New Citizenship, Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885-1900 (1972).
• Wesser, Robert F. Charles Evans Hughes: politics and reform in N.Y. 1905-1910 (1967).
• Wiebe, Robert. "Business Disunity and the Progressive Movement, 1901-1914," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 4. (Mar., 1958), pp. 664-685. in JSTOR

Jessica Rockfeller