In the latter part of the 19th Century and early 20th Century, the Progressive Movement was born as an urban counterpart to Populism. Although the two movements shared some characteristics, there were also important differences. For one, "Progressivism" found its support among small businessmen, professionals, and successful middle-class urban dwellers, in contrast to the disgruntled farmers who fueled the Populist movement. The "Progressive Movement" was difficult to define. It is more accurately thought of as an umbrella label, under which a variety of reform groups and liberally-minded individuals gathered.
Indeed, Progressives themselves were never a unified group seeking a single objective or a single set of objectives. They had many different, even contradictory goals, including:
- End to "white slavery" (prostitution and the sweat shops)
- Prohibition
- "Americanization" of immigrants
- Immigration restriction legislation
- Anti-trust legislation
- Rate regulation of private utilities
- Full government ownership of private utilities
- Women's suffrage
- End to child labor
- Destruction of urban political machines, i.e. the well known Tamany machine.
As you can see, Progressives were mostly interested in social and political reform. The social reform aspects of the Progressive Movement were not what we today consider to be liberal, democratic or progressive. Prohibition? "Americanization" of immigrants and restrictions against future immigration? Opposition to prostitution? Indeed, social Progressives back then were positively prudish. But they envisioned achieving social progress through these stances.
And of course, today we still agree with the end of sweat shops and child labor as important social progressive reforms.
As for political reform, the Progressive Movement's two greatest achievements were the right to vote for women and the income tax. Progressive political reform also busted trusts and monopolies in the economic world and tried to end political cronyism and corruption by taking on the big city and state political machines. Progressives were the ones who gave us contested party primaries rather than smoked filled back rooms.
Even though they were not a unified group, and generally did not have a single platform of goals or demands that we are used to today, they had several common beliefs. Progressives were moralists. They believed in government action to do good in society, especially in protecting the weakest elements of society. Yet they never challenged the basic tenets of capitalism and a free market economy. They just merely wanted to reform it and make it fair for competition. Indeed, Progressives are true capitalists as opposed to Big Business and Big Monopoly. Finally, and suprisingly considering today's progressive political climate, Progressives were moderate in ideology, moralistic and religious.
Indeed, the Progressive Movement a century ago arose in religion.
Up until the 1880s most Protestant ministers had not concerned themselves with the problems of industrial society, but rapid urbanization and industrialization convinced many Protestant clergymen of the need for social justice. The Social Gospel Movement arose, whose goal was to make Christian churches more responsive to social problems like poverty and prostitution.
This in turn led to the "discovery" of poverty.
Of course poverty had always existed in American society, but in the 1880s a number of urban reformers called for new legislation to help the poor.
The movement progressed (no pun intended) to other forms of social justice that we have discussed.
Politically, progressives were typically, and surprisingly, Republican. But then again, 100 years ago the political spectrum was reversed for all intents and purposes.
Theodore Roosevelt was progressive. As was his successor, William Howard Taft. Woodrow Wilson was kinda progressive, although he scoffed at women's suffrage for years. The Progressive "Bull Moose" Party rose to prominence during the early 20th Century, finishing second in the Presidential election of 1912, the best ever showing for a third party in the nation's history. Robert M. "Fightin' Bob" LaFollette was another significant Progressive political leader who served as a Congressman, Governor of Wisconsin from 1900-1905 and U.S. Senator 1905-1925. In 1924 he ran as an independent Progressive candidate for President, polling nearly 6 million votes out of some 30 million cast, but won only Wisconsin's electoral votes. But by that time, the Progressive reform movement was dying out. The Roaring 20's were on, and the great political spectrum realignment that came with the Great Depression was still several years away.
So, that is a brief history of the Progressive movement in a nutshell. I suppose some of us use the term "Progressive" to describe themselves because they are interested in economic reform. That was the chief complaint of Nader lovers in 2000 and 2004, that the two political parties were one and the same in their devotion to big corporations that are bigging if not already are rivaling the size and influence of the monopolies of the past. I suppose some of us use the label because we are interested in social reform--equal rights for minorities and homosexuals. Still others among us use the term progressive to describe their views on political reform, such as campaign finance reform, paper trails for electronic voting machines that many believe can be susciptible to fraud.
The point of this diary is to educate ourselves. All too often I see the term "progressive" thrown around as a one size fits all description of a person's political identity when in fact the term describes a broad and divergent political movement of a century past.
Does the description still fit? Obviously, many, but not all, of the goals of past Progressives have been achieved. What do modern Progressives have in mind? What do we want to reform?
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