Progressive Movement

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF PROGRESSIVISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Progressive movement is a broad label for the various economic, social, and political reform movements that took place in the United States between 1900 and 1914. Given the diversity among the reform efforts proposed or undertaken during this period, many scholars have disputed whether in fact this period should be treated as one common movement. It is true that many progressive Americans at the turn of the century supported a wide variety of reforms with different and sometimes irreconcilable goals. Nevertheless, the tendency to regard this period as a common whole is generally justified by the fact that the majority of reformers identified the same problems in America despite the wide variety of solutions they proposed. Throughout the Progressive Era, a common concern sets the tone for nearly every discussion of economic, social, and political policy: an uneasiness in the population brought about by the dramatic development of modern industry and the material and social changes it wrought in the lives of average citizens. Because of the substantial changes incurred from the emergence of large-scale mass production, the centralization of industry, the demand for greater specialization in labor, and the rise of new modes of transportation and communication, the landscape of the nation seemed suddenly transformed from a simple country of small, tightly knit communities into a complex giant of interspersed economic activities. In this new environment, the relationship of the individual to the broader economic, social, and political community took on an entirely new form.

As the United States entered the twentieth century, many progressives argued that the nation’s institutions and fundamental beliefs about the nature of government lagged behind the country’s dynamic economic and social growth. Railroad development had extended to nearly 200,000 miles and engulfed the nation in a dense network of trunk lines that had transformed its relatively autonomous communities and states into a single body of fluid commerce. According to many progressives, democracy had not kept pace with the national economic development of the industrial era due to its outdated understanding of federalism and the system of constitutional checks and balances. Many progressives thought that doctrines such as federalism, property rights, and separation of powers had rendered governments so inept that when state legislatures did pass regulations they proved harmful to both customers and the efficiency of business and industry, particularly railroad operations. Federal land grants to railroads and farmers during the late 1800s, made with very few contingencies out of deference to federalism, had led to reckless speculation by farmers and land owners, leaving the natural resources of the country in disarray. The rise of mass production in the steel, lumber, flour, textile, and meat industries had a major economic impact on the services provided by artisans, local mills, and jobbers, demanding an entirely new breed of legislation and regulation to handle the complex arrangements of modern industry.

The difficulty in regulating these corporations was most dramatically expressed in the case of United States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895). Although E. C. Knight, a Philadelphia-based sugar-refining company, had consolidated nearly 98 percent of the nation’s sugar production, the U.S. Supreme Court held that refining was manufacture, not commerce, and thus could not be regulated under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. Distinctive to the Progressive Era was the belief that these obstacles to reform were not the result of temporary misjudgments by legislators or judges, but permanent defects in the institutional arrangements of American government.

From the political dilemma of government in a postindustrial age, progressivism developed along two lines: reformers bent on accomplishing concrete changes in the American system of government on the local, state, and federal levels, and intellectuals concerned with providing a revised notion of political life based on a new conception of human nature. As an intellectual movement, the Progressive Era was an intensely active period of new ideas among a diverse body of thinkers from many fields of expertise. Despite their differences, almost all of these intellectuals raised doubts about the fundamental tenets of American political thought. In contrast to the fixed principles of human nature—the self-evident truths of equality and rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence—the progressives believed that a basic understanding of human nature involved a more fluid conceptual framework, such as the concepts implied in Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) theory of evolution.

The impact of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) in social theory had raised serious questions about whether human beings were indeed created equal and endowed from birth with certain “unalienable rights.” Social Darwinists, as they came to be known, denied that human nature could be understood from such axiomatic principles, and some even challenged the fundamental political maxim that followed: governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Enamored of the concept of natural selection and “survival of the fittest,” a new generation of scholars following the seminal work of William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) argued that political life ought to be geared toward the elevation of more talented individuals over less gifted or educated members of society, regardless of individual consent. Thinkers like the economist Irving Fisher (1867–1947), Sumner’s doctoral student at Yale, had even made the case for eugenics and the sterilization of the mentally infirm. Others, like John Dewey (1859–1952), while concurring with the basic premise of social Darwinism, contended that survival depended not on the elevation of certain individuals, but on a collective effort by all to overcome threats posed to the collective interests of the whole.

This theoretical debate over human nature had implications for the political direction of the reform movements. While some progressive intellectuals believed that the emergence of powerful corporations constituted a positive development, in which more-efficient entities capitalized on their superior capability over less-efficient organizations and modes of production, others argued that these corporations presented a challenge to the common welfare. Such a challenge could only be met by reforms in law and the country’s institutions of government.

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF PROGRESSIVISM

While it is true that progressives never achieved the passage of constitutional amendments that equaled the breadth of their criticism, the movement did manage to spur a number of significant reforms at the local, state, and national levels of government. Such reforms sought to bring American government to a level of parity with the modernization that had taken place within civil society.

Municipal Reforms Progressivism was initially most successful at the level of municipal reform. Many American cities during the early twentieth century suffered from mismanagement and corruption. Under the control of party bosses and public utility magnates, city aldermen were often the stooges of special privilege rather than the guardians of urban health and safety. Through a series of reform efforts, urban dwellers managed to eliminate the most obtrusive corruption in their cities. Citing partisan politics as the main obstacle to triumph over corruption, many municipalities introduced such progressive reforms as the initiative, the referendum, and the Australian ballot to encourage greater civic participation and weaken the strong arm of political bosses. Other cities, however, took more dramatic steps during this period by replacing potentially corruptible politicians in city government with so-called nonpartisan experts in urban management.

These two approaches to municipal reform illustrate how the movement’s diverse and even contradictory efforts aimed at solving the same problems. Some progressives hoped to eliminate corruption through increased democratic methods, such as the initiative. Others embraced the new methods of scientific management codified by Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915), author of The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), a work that spurred a movement for greater efficiency and expertise in all aspects of American life, including politics, as illustrated in such municipal reforms as the adoption of the post of city manager. While the above proposals differed, they shared the common view that democratic politics as traditionally practiced in the United States had led to corruption under the new demands of modern industrialism.

State Reforms Though less successful than municipal reformers, progressives at the state level could boast of major accomplishments in a number of states. As Wisconsin governor from 1901 to 1906, Robert M. La Follette (1855–1925) was probably the nation’s most ambitious progressive reformer, championing such state causes as railroad rate reform, procedural reforms in the legislature, progressive taxation, the open primary system, and the direct election of U.S. senators. William S. U’Ren (1859–1949) pioneered the use of the initiative, recall, and referendum in Oregon, while Hiram Johnson (1866–1945) in California successfully campaigned for the popular election for U.S. senators and to permit candidates to register with more than one political party. Other states achieved numerous reforms aimed at greater efficiency in the administration of state governments, particularly in the area of executive and bureaucratic reorganization. By adopting higher standards for admission to civil service positions and organizing administrative offices in state government to attract greater expertise, many states were able to reduce waste and corruption, which had been an obstacle to the effective regulation of their economies.

Federal Reforms While progressivism did not produce the realignment in national politics that many political leaders had hoped for, the period did compile an impressive record of legislation at the federal level. These reforms would redefine relations between the national government and the country’s economy.

One of the most notable transformations in the role of the government in the nation’s economy began in 1902 as Theodore Roosevelt’s (1858–1919) administration pioneered the federal conservation reform movement under the Newlands Restoration Act (1902), which empowered the federal government to regulate the country’s natural resources with the help of experts in resource management. Like many progressive reforms, proponents of these changes also hoped to use the conservation movement as a means of introducing nonpartisan scientific expertise into the government’s management of the economy. Under Roosevelt, and later even more vigorously under Howard Taft (1857–1930), the trusts that had for years operated in violation of the antimonopoly provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) were prosecuted by the federal government. By 1914 the Sherman Antitrust Act was strengthened by the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), which prohibited discriminatory pricing, conditional sales intended to dilute competition, mergers and acquisitions that inhibit competition, and interlocking directorates. Like the reforms in conservation, the Clayton Antitrust Act was designed to incorporate nonpartisan expertise into the government’s regulation of the economy. To enforce the provisions of the Clayton Antitrust Act, Congress created the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914. The FTC would be staffed with five commissioners appointed by the president, with the advice and confirmation of the Senate. Rather than specifying the type of anticompetitive activities that would be prohibited, as the Sherman Antitrust Act had done, the FTC was granted the power to determine what kind of activity was harmful to the interests of the national economy, and could regulate accordingly.

Between 1903 and 1906 the federal government also made progress toward mitigating concerns over the power of the railroads and their discriminatory practices in favor of big business. In 1903 Congress passed the Elkins Act, which prohibited rebate schemes responsible for discriminatory shipping prices that angered economically disadvantaged farmers. In 1906 Theodore Roosevelt successfully negotiated the passage of the Hepburn Bill, which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission power to set maximum railroad rates. Besides remedial legislation addressing economic inequalities among the public, the federal government also began protecting the health and safety of consumers. Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act (1906), which required health inspections for food-processing plants, and the first Food and Drug Act (1913), which required companies to clearly label the ingredients and contents of their products.

Not only did government expand its reach within civil society during this period, it also released its grip on foreign trade, in contrast to previous regulations that had worked to the disadvantage of consumers. Under the administration of Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), Congress repealed much of the tariff support for American industries with the passage of the Underwood Tariff (1913), which stripped many industries of the economic advantages they enjoyed under the former system.

Although constitutional reforms fell far short of progressive aspirations, two important amendments were passed during this period. Both the Sixteenth Amendment establishing Congress’s power to legislate for an income tax and the Seventeenth Amendment for the direct election of U.S. senators were ratified in 1913. Establishing a progressive income tax fit the long-term reform goal of equalizing the burden of federal revenue and easing the sectional antipathy that had arisen from debates over the tariff. The direct election of senators satisfied the more democratic strain of progressivism, which aimed at introducing greater democratic participation into the choosing of the nation’s elected officials; reformers hoped that politicians who were beholden to party machines in state legislatures would be removed from office.

Despite its achievements, progressivism ultimately waned as a movement in the United States when the public’s attention shifted to the international concerns of World War I (1914–1918). Another explanation for the demise of the movement may have been its breadth as an umbrella for many different types of reform. Unable to identify a coherent purpose among the many ideas for political reform in the age of industrial modernization, progressives could not sustain the public attention necessary to effectuate a major realignment in American politics.

SEE ALSO Antitrust; Antitrust Regulation; Eugenics; Fisher, Irving; Inequality, Wealth; Labor Union; Modernization; Monopoly; Populism; Progressives; Public Health; Railway Industry; Regulation; Sanitation; Social Movements; Suffrage, Women’s; Taylorism; Urbanization; Wilson, Woodrow

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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J. David Alvis