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Movements for Change: Populism and Progressivism
Movements for Change: Populism and ProgressivismPopulists. The spirit of protest —whether generated by radicals and labor unionists, by critics such as George and Bellamy, or by farmers reeling from low prices—ani-mated third-party politics in the 1880s and 1890s. During the 1880s diverse agrarian organizations such as the Farmers’ Union, the Texas State Alliance, and the National Colored Farmer’s Alliance joined forces to form two large national organizations: the Southern Alliance and the National Farmers Alliance of the Northwest. These groups singled out several enemies, including the “Eastern money interests” that controlled monetary supply and policy, the network of middlemen who moved crops from field to market, the large railroad companies whose influence over the agricultural economy and national politics was widespread, industrial monopolies, and supporters of the gold standard. Eager for a solution to the many problems faced by farmers in the 1880s and 1890s, the alliances supported a broad program of political, economic, and monetary reform. The People’s Party. The genesis of the People’s Party, or Populists, came in December 1889, when representatives of the two farmers alliances and labor groups met in Saint Louis with members of the Grange—a militant group that had been forming farm cooperatives and fighting for government regulation of the rates charged farmers by railroads and warehouses—and members of the Greenback Party, founded in 1875 by Grangers and others favoring the circulation of more paper money and opposing a return to the gold standard. The Greenback Party had unsuccessfully fielded presidential candidates in the 1876, 1880, and 1884 elections and had had some success in the congressional elections of 1878, but it had become largely defunct after 1884. The People’s Party combined agrarian and labor protests and the farming interests of the South and West against the rich and more politically powerful East. The first statewide People’s Party was formed in Kansas, and more soon fol-lowed. On 19 May 1891 at a gathering in Cincinnati more than fourteen hundred delegates from thirty-two states formed the national People’s Party. The Populist Platform. The Populists called for many of the reforms demanded by farm and labor interests, including increased coinage of silver money, a national cur-rency, governmental regulation or ownership of all transportation and communication lines, a graduated income tax, lower tariffs on manufactured goods, a postal savings bank, direct elections of U.S. senators, adoption of the secret ballot, the establishment of the initiative and the referendum (measures that allowed the introduction and passage of laws by direct vote of the people), prohibition of foreign ownership of land, a shorter workweek, and restrictions on immigration. One of the Populists’ more radical proposals was Southern Alliance leader Charles W. Macunis’s “sub-treasury system,” a plan that called for government warehouses where farmers could deposit their crops and receive credit—in the form of green-backs—until the crops were sold. Setting a National Agenda. The Populist Party proved to be an important force in national politics, with impressive showings in the 1892 and 1894 elections, and the party succeeded in bringing the issues of money supply, labor and farm grievances, anxiety about monopolies (particularly the railroads), and the unfair effects of the tariff to the national stage. Many Americans were frightened by the Populist alliance between farmers and labor-ers, seeing their ideas as radical and potentially dangerous for the country. While the Populist Party went down to defeat in the 1896 presidential election, when they endorsed the Democrats’ free-silver candidate, William Jennings Bryan, many of their proposals were taken over by progressive candidates in other parties, and the Populist movement continued to animate national politics until World War I. Progressivism. By the end of the nineteenth century reformers in both major political parties were calling themselves “progressives” to indicate their commitment to a just and equitable society. These reformers were spurred on by accounts of urban blight written by reporters such as Jacob Riis, by political orators such as Populist and Democrat Williams Jennings Bryan, and by grassroots organizations such as the Nationalist Clubs and the Single-Tax Clubs. Furthermore, Constant agitation over the limited money supply, poor working condi-tions, the discriminatory tariff, and the restriction of women from voting, led many reformminded citizens and politicians to search for new ways to address problems spawned by rapid urbanization and industrializa-tion. Rather than a single party, progressivism was a loose coalition of reform groups and impulses that shaped national and local politics well into the twentieth century. Cleaning up Corruption. Progressivism developed from a wide variety of pressures for modernizing society and for cleaning up corruption on local, state, and national levels. Moral reformers attacked the spoils system, political corruption, boodle, and the power of saloons. Many of these reformers worked at the municipal level, and helped to elect reform mayors and city councils in small and large cities. Other groups sought to establish a more sound political democracy, advocating direct election of senators, a secret ballot, and votes for women. Still others hoped to modernize government by bringing the navy and military up to date and by building a stronger federal government that could regulate corporations and the economy. Many hoped to take what they saw as the short-sighted, narrow-minded focus of partisan politics out of important national policy issues such as the money supply and tariffs and to create a governing class that would watch out for national rather than local and party-based allegiances. Working within the Two-Party System. Progressive reformers continued build a political power base through elections. As with the Greenback Labor Party, the Popu-lists, Henry George, and the prohibition movements, progressives attempted to gain control of political parties and to win elections on the state and national levels. Unlike earlier reformers, however, progressives worked within the Democratic and Republican Parties, lining up behind whichever candidate endorsed the reforms they supported. SourcesLawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Movement: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Up Country, 1850-1890 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955); Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). |
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Cite this article
"Movements for Change: Populism and Progressivism." American Eras. 1997. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "Movements for Change: Populism and Progressivism." American Eras. 1997. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601642.html "Movements for Change: Populism and Progressivism." American Eras. 1997. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601642.html |
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Progressivism
Progressivism, spanning roughly the first two decades of the twentieth century, was a reform movement through which Americans struggled to cope with a wide range of social, economic, and cultural changes. Progressives differed in their perceptions of the nature of the nation's problems and of how best to resolve them, but most shared the conviction that government at all levels must play an active role in reform. They sought legislation to broaden the state's power to curb the excesses of large‐scale corporate capitalism and to address the host of inequities that had resulted from rapid and unprecedented economic and social change. Since their vision of the function of government was somewhat unorthodox by traditional American standards, reformers had not only to secure the passage of new legislation but also to persuade the judicial system that such laws were both warranted and constitutional.
While contemporary social activists sometimes perceived the judiciary as a barrier to change, the Supreme Court actually upheld most of the legislation passed during the Progressive Era, in particular supporting reformers' efforts to expand the federal government's power to regulate commerce and to curb the growth of monopolies. The Hepburn Act of 1906 broadened the scope and authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), giving it genuine power for the first time. The Court sustained the invigoration of the ICC, and affirmed the constitutionality of administrative regulation. Initially, the Court rendered the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) virtually ineffectual when in United States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895) it drew a sharp distinction between commerce and manufacturing, thus limiting the government's regulatory power over the latter. For several years thereafter the law was of value primarily to conservative judges who employed it as a weapon in the struggle to curb the power of organized labor. During the first decade of the twentieth century, however, the Supreme Court revived the Sherman Act in several important cases. In Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1904), the Court resurrected the antitrust statute when it found a railroad holding company to be an illegal combination in restraint of trade. The following year in Swift and Co. v. United States (1905), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing the majority opinion, circumvented the commerce versus manufacturing distinction by espousing the doctrine of “stream of commerce,” which stressed the impact of manufacturing upon commerce (see Commerce Power). Like many Progressive reformers, the justices of the Supreme Court believed that a large company's size, business practices, and substantial market share were not necessarily detrimental to the economic or social progress of the nation. In Standard Oil Co. v. United States (1911), the Court adopted the “rule of reason,” indicating that it would interpret the Sherman Act in such a way as to break up only those companies whose existence constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade. The police power, the authority to protect the public's health, safety, and morals, was traditionally reserved to the states. Progressive legislators interpreted this power broadly and passed a variety of economic and social measures at the state level, including child labor minimum wage, maximum hour, factory safety, employer liability, and workmen's compensation statutes. In several famous decisions, most notably Lochner v. New York (1905), the Court overturned some of these laws. However, in Muller v. Oregon (1908) and other cases, the Court sustained much of this legislation on the grounds that the statutes represented valid exercises of the states' police power. When state government proved incapable of dealing effectively with economic and social problems, Progressives sometimes turned to Washington for help. Between 1906 and 1916 Congress passed several significant pieces of social justice legislation such as the Pure Food and Drug, Meat Inspection, Mann, Adamson, and Keating‐Owen Acts. When challenged, most of these laws, which were based on the commerce or taxing power of the federal government, were upheld by the Supreme Court. On several occasions, however, the justices concluded that Congress had overstepped constitutional bounds in its efforts to exercise federal police power. In 1908, in the first Employer Liability Case, the Court found that a 1906 employer's liability law represented a misuse of the commerce power since it affected workers not directly engaged in interstate commerce. In Adair v. United States (1908), the Court ruled that the Erdman Act (1898) prohibiting yellow‐dog contracts violated the liberty of contract under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), the Court found that the Keating‐Owen Child Labor Act (1916) was not a legitimate regulation of commerce and intruded upon the police power of the states. As the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the Progressive legislative agenda, the justices sometimes construed judicial review narrowly, ruling only on the question of whether there was a clearly constitutional basis for the statute in question. On other occasions the Court interpreted its power broadly, assuming the right to examine the substance of state legislation. In the 1890s an activist conception of judicial review had often been used to protect property rights, but in the early twentieth century Progressive judges and lawyers such as Louis D. Brandeis often successfully marshaled it to the cause of social change. Although sometimes labeled reactionary by reform‐minded critics, the Supreme Court during the Progressive Era was generally sensitive to the massive changes occurring within American life and struggled to reconcile legal tradition with the demands of modernity. While it sometimes obstructed reform in the name of individual liberty, property rights, or federalism, the Court ultimately sanctioned an expansion of both state and federal power in order that government at both levels might cope more effectively with the unprecedented problems of the age. See also Capitalism; Contract, Freedom of; Due Process, Substantive. Bibliography John W. Johnson , American Legal Culture, 1908–1940 (1981). Robert F. Martin |
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Cite this article
KERMIT L. HALL. "Progressivism." The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. KERMIT L. HALL. "Progressivism." The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O184-Progressivism.html KERMIT L. HALL. "Progressivism." The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. 2005. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O184-Progressivism.html |
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progressivism
progressivism in U.S. history, a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th cent. In the decades following the Civil War rapid industrialization transformed the United States. A national rail system was completed; agriculture was mechanized; the factory system spread; and cities grew rapidly in size and number. The progressive movement arose as a response to the vast changes brought by industrialization.
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Cite this article
"progressivism." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "progressivism." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-progrsvsm.html "progressivism." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-progrsvsm.html |
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