From
Progressive Movement History
That Last Twenty-five Years
The destruction of free government in all but name and the establishment of a plutocracy of privileged wealth masquerading as a republic, was the deadly peril that confronted our people at the dawn of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Angry popular discontent had been in evidence for years, but nothing of a hopeful nature had followed. The "masters of the bread" had always succeeded in gaining their ends. The alarmist cry of grave statesmen and jurists had apparently had little effect either in awakening the thoughtful or intimidating the corruptors and corrupted.
Trusts and monopolies continued to multiply with appalling rapidity. The secret agreement, similar to that inaugurated by the Standard Oil Company with the public carriers, had by the closing decade of the last century practically destroyed competition along many lines of trade vital to the life of the people, giving to the trusts a stranglehold on the producing and consuming millions. Even the ominous awakening of the hitherto docile agrarian population and the rapid growth of labor organizations occasioned little uneasiness in the seats of the mighty.
True, social philosophers had been doing much fundamental work. The greatest of these was Henry George, whose "Progress and Poverty," completed in 1879 and published some time later, had enjoyed a phenomenal sale and had started scores of the most fundamental and high-minded patriots to thinking as never before on politico-economic lines. In England, Alfred Russel Wallace and other able and earnest-minded fundamental thinkers vigorously pushed forward the nationalization of the land propaganda, and in America, Edward Bellamy's fascinating social dream, "Looking Backward," instantly appealed to the popular imagination. But for the most part public opinion in the United States, though seething with discontent and unrest, was in a chaotic state, while government continued to respond to the sophistical pleas of privilege.
In the field of religious thought there was much agitation, but of a most profitless kind, being concerned with dogmas and creeds rather than with the great spiritual verities and their relation to the life of men and nations; while such social and economic evils as child labor, the slums, and sweat-shops were only beginning to impress the more thoughtful. Mighty political, economic, scientific, educational, moral, and humanitarian problems which affect the larger life of man and society were conveniently ignored by most of the popular conventional agencies for moulding public opinion.
On the other hand, among those who dared or cared to think, among the idealists who were also practical reasoners, there was a growing determination to search and find remedies for the crying evils, worthy of a free people. The modern critical scientific spirit was abroad among the more fearless and profound thinkers.
Such, in brief, was the general condition when in the closing months of 1889 the first issue of "The Arena" appeared.