mcgraw hill, chapter 21 summery

CHAPTER 21
The Rise of Progressivism

CHAPTER SUMMARY
The debate over progressivism asks the question to what degree were reformers motivated by the
plight of others, or to protect and improve their own lives and status? Were they really
“progressive” at all? However one answers these questions, there is no doubt that at the close of
the nineteenth century, millions of Americans looked at their society, did not like what they saw,
and acted to make profound changes to it. Convinced that rapid industrialization and
urbanization had created serious problems and great disorder, American reformers shared an
optimistic vision that a combination of private and governmental action could dramatically
improve society. These progressives sought to control monopoly, build social cohesion, promote
democracy, and improve both the public and private lives of individuals. In many respects, the
reform movement took on elements of being a crusade. Emotional and religious appeals could be
seen in “muckraking” journalists who exposed social ills, Social Gospel reformers, settlement
house workers, the temperance movement, and during the long fight for woman’s suffrage. Many
reformers, in fact, were women. This was the era of the “new woman,” whether she was building
an independent personal life or attacking ills that beset the whole of society.
Meanwhile, heightened standards of training and expertise were helping create a new
middle class of educated professionals. The progressives also tried to make politics more rational
by reducing the influence of political parties in municipal and state affairs. Parties, they believed,
should be vehicles for reform, not organizations to supply jobs to the party faithful. But the
reform movement had a conservative side as well. Some reformers believed that a lot of the
nation’s problems would simply go away if potential immigrants were kept out and if blacks
remained in their place. In response, other white progressives teamed with educated blacks to
form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which, among
other things, advocated an aggressive assertion of black civil rights. Also on the rise were radical
labor unions and the Socialist Party, which came to enjoy its greatest political successes in
America. By World War I, enormous changes had been effected in society. It has been the
struggle of historians to assess the meaning of those changes ever since.

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 21 should enable the student to understand:

1. The social justice reforms of the period and the role of various religious denominations in
carrying out the Social Gospel

2. The origins of the progressive impulse

3. The emphasis progressives placed on scientific expertise, organizational efficiency, and
education in general

4. The role of individual women and women’s groups in promoting progressive reform

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5. The significance of the woman suffrage movement

6. The reasons that progressives wanted to reform political parties and the methods they used to
accomplish this goal

7. The positive effect that progressivism had on the development of professionalism, the
temperance movement, and socialism in America

8. The origins of the NAACP and the importance of W. E. B. Du Bois

9. The movement to restrict immigration and why this was regarded as a progressive reform

10. The differences among socialists, regulators, and trustbusters and their solutions to the
problem of trusts

MAIN THEMES
1. How progressivism was a reaction to the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the
United States in the late nineteenth century

2. That all progressives shared an optimistic vision that an active government could solve
socioeconomic problems and create a better, more ordered and efficient world

3. That progressives wanted to reduce the influence of party machines on politics

4. How the temperance, immigration restriction, and woman suffrage movements took on
crusade-like aspects

5. The differences between progressives who wanted to change people’s private lives and
progressives who sought to change the larger economic and political system

6. The importance of political leadership for the progressive movement

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Progressives wanted government at all levels to be strong and democratic. How did they
want to achieve these potentially contradictory goals? Should civil service reform be seen as
a precursor to progressive reform?

2. Discuss the changing historical interpretations of the motives, the leaders, and the processes
of progressive reform.

3. What major impulses drove the progressive movement? What specific reforms embodied
those impulses?

4. How did muckrakers, Social Gospel reformers, settlement house workers, and feminists
reflect the central assumptions behind progressivism?

5. Explain how progressivism affected women and, conversely, how women affected
progressivism.

6. Who were the major opponents of progressive reforms? What arguments did they advance
against these reforms? What successes did they have?

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7. Whose interests were left out of the major progressive reform movement? For what reasons?
How did these interests react to these exclusions?

8. What similarities and/or differences characterized the crusades of progressive reform efforts
to prohibit alcohol, restrict immigration, and achieve the vote for women?

9. Is it accurate to describe the turn of the twentieth century as a time of progressivism? Is this
term misleading? Is there a better word or term that might be used?

INTERPRETATIVE QUESTIONS
1. What state was called the “laboratory of progressivism”? Who was this state’s leading
progressive, and what was accomplished?

2. In general, where were settlement houses located and why? What was their function? What
was the importance of the Hull House?

3. Why did both the commission plan and the manager plan begin in small southern cities and
spread only after they were adopted by larger northern cities? What factors explain this
pattern?

4. Compare and contrast the old and new immigrants in terms of their geographic origins and
their socioeconomic characteristics.

5. How did existing American citizens react to these newer immigrants? How did progressives
react to them?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist (1980)
Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (1976)
Ruth Bourdin, Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (1980)
John D. Buenker et al., Progressivism (1977)
Mina Carson, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885-1930 (1990)
John W. Chambers II, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1900-1917 (1980)
John Milton Cooper, The Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920 (1990)
Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (1991)
Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social
Thought (1991)
Louis Filler, The Muckrakers, rev. ed. (1980)
Linda Gordon, The Great Orphan Abduction (1999)
Thomas J. Jablonsky, The Home, Heaven, and Mother Party: Female Anti-Suffragists in the United
States, 1868-1920 (1994)
David L. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (1993)
_____, W. E. B. Du Bois:The Fight for Equality and the American Century (2000)
Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas (2001)
David W. Noble, ed., The Progressive Mind, rev. ed. (1981)
Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (1998)
Katheryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture,
1830-1900 (1995)