Progressivism sprang from many impulses: desires to curb the advancing power of corporations and end widespread corruption; efforts to bring order and efficiency to economic and political life; attempts by new interest groups to make business and government more responsive to their needs; and moralistic urges to rid society of such perceived evils as drinking and prostitution. The problems that spurred these impulses reached a boiling point in the industrial city. The chapter therefore opens with an urban, industrial tragedy, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. It is a case study of the circumstances that led to the rise of progressivism.

The Roots of Progressive Reform

The depression of 1893 underscored the national scope of the problems caused by the rise of the industrial economy. Progressive reformers aimed to solve them without overturning the American system. They became moderate modernizers, at once nostalgic and innovative. They aimed at redeeming traditional American beliefs in democracy, Christian ethics, individual opportunity, and the spirit of voluntary public service. They operated on the pragmatic principles of philosophers William James and John Dewey and applied to contemporary problems the modern techniques of research, analysis, diagnosis, and prescription. Progressives, with their emphasis on efficiency and the shaping effects of environment, found an appealing organizational model in the corporation. Like corporate executives, progressives relied on careful management and planning, coordinated systems, and specialized bureaucracies of experts to carry out their reforms.

A new breed of investigative journalists called "muckrakers" furnished an agenda of reform and the public indignation necessary to implement it. Factual and hard-boiled, they were also sentimental moralizers who rarely had solutions to the problems they discovered. When volunteers and public anger failed to curb abuses, progressives turned to politics and government. At all levels, new agencies and commissions staffed by impartial experts began to investigate and regulate society.

The Search for the Good Society

If progressivism ended in politics, it began with social reform, mostly in cities, where poverty and blight had become glaringly evident. Mixing middle-class professionalism with moral uplift, progressive reformers redefined poverty as the social consequence of deprivation rather than the individual consequence of personal failure or immorality. Settlement houses helped to produce a new profession: social work, which applied more scientific approaches to helping the poor and troubled.

Women, often single, well-educated, and denied access to other professions, moved into the forefront of social reform. In the process they became "social housekeepers," extending the traditional woman's sphere of nurturance into society-at-large. Birth control, housing reform, factory safety, workers' compensation, child labor, and consumers' issues—women and other reformers promoted these concerns as matters of social welfare and social justice. Many progressives believed women's suffrage would also help to improve society and, just as importantly, politics. In 1920, after much agitation, the Nineteenth Amendment finally granted women the right to vote.

Controlling the Masses

The drive for social justice reflected the optimistic, tolerant impulses of progressivism; the pursuit of social "welfare" for the masses portrayed its paternalistic instincts. Although for many progressives, urban society needed more stringent oversight, lest immigrants and low-lifes destroy it. Occasionally allying themselves with more traditional Protestant evangelicals worried about losing America to foreigners, some progressives pressed for immigration restriction, prohibition of alcohol, and an end to urban crime, particularly prostitution. They also largely ignored the concerns of African Americans, who, under the leadership of intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, became less willing to adhere to the patient approach advocated by earlier spokesmen such as Booker T. Washington.

The Politics of Municipal and State Reform

Increasingly, politics seemed the only way to clean up the rest of society, but first politics itself needed reforming. Through commission and city-manager plans, progressives tried to make municipal government less corrupt and political and more efficient. Colorful reform mayors such as Hazen Pingree of Detroit, Tom Johnson of Cleveland, and Samuel "Golden Rule" Jones fought boss-dominated machines and monopolistic transit and utility companies.

Building on municipal success, progressives turned to the states. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, governors like Robert La Follette injected democratic reforms as well as more experts into state government, shifting power from interest-dominated legislatures to executives and administrative agencies. Boss politics, whether at the municipal or state level, survived because machines promoted social welfare reforms that aided their working-class constituents. Working-class "urban liberalism" thus became a powerful instrument of reform.

Progressivism Goes to Washington

With the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, progressivism moved to Washington and an era of federal reform began. A conservative reformer, Roosevelt accepted growth—whether of business, labor, or capital—as a natural development that promoted stability and order. He sought only to curb abuses with big government mediating among the various factions. The result, he said in 1904, would be a "Square Deal" for all Americans. Despite the compromises he usually made, Roosevelt established a more dominant role for the presidency, enhanced the regulatory functions of the federal government (including regulation of the natural environment), and laid the groundwork for a widening federal bureaucracy. When he handed over the reins of government to his successor, William Howard Taft, conservatives in Congress had already begun to lash back. Taft's single term in office, despite its achievements, ended in frustration, divided the Republican party, and allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency in 1912.

Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality

Under Wilson, national progressivism peaked. Rejecting Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" of private consolidation and public planning ("regulated monopoly"), Wilson promised a "New Freedom" of "regulated competition" and strict limits on size, whether in business or government. The achievements of his first term were considerable: downward revision of the tariff, centralization of the banking system, a federal trade commission, and a new antitrust law. Together they raised progressive reform to new heights, even as they moved Wilson closer to the big government espoused by Roosevelt. In the end the weaknesses of progressivism—the narrowness of its social vision, the fuzziness of its definition of the "public interest," the ease with which its regulatory agencies were captured by industry—were counterbalanced by its accomplishments in establishing the modern, activist state.