Progressivism

by Arthur S. Link, Richard L. McCormick

A brief, interpretive analysis of the highly ambitious American reform movements from the 1890s to 1917 that shows progressivism to have been a vital and significant phenomenon although there was no unified progressive movement. Link and McCormick succeed in making the events comprehensible while at the same time conveying a strong sense of the complexity and contradictions of the era.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

149 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Arthur Stanley Link was a longtime historian specializing in Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era. Link taught for most his career at Princeton University, with the exception of an 11-year interval he spent at Northwestern University. The author of 30 books, he is most notable for writing an incomplete multi-volume biography of Wilson and editing the 69-volume Papers of Woodrow Wilson.

Reviews

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Progressive Era is one of those hazy periods in the general American historical memory that doesn’t receive a lot of attention nowadays, even though it was hugely consequential and has a number of intriguing parallels to the current moment, so I decided to refresh my understanding of the time period with this brief bibliographic survey from acclaimed Woodrow Wilson scholar Arthur Link. That hazy remembrance is partially because the titanic drama of the World War 1/Great Depression/World War 2 decades immediately following tends to overshadow the comparatively boring episodes of administrative reform between the McKinley and Wilson administrations (though there was plenty of war and economic unrest then too), and also because it’s harder to sum up what progressivism was about, since it was about so many things, and driven by so many different types of people. In one section, Link enumerates several strands of progressive reformers:

- Western and Southern rural farmers
- The WASP middle class
- Ministers, lawyers, and professors
- Businessmen and professionals
- Doctors, engineers, scientists
- Rich elites
- Immigrants and ethnic groups in urban areas

In other words, basically everyone in America at the time was interested in reform of one kind or another, so to the extent that the progressive era was ever an even vaguely coherent thing, you can think of it as a general reaction to the explosive growth of the nation during the Gilded Age as existing institutions came under strain due to corruption, crime, labor unrest, racism, ethnic struggles, economic turbulence, poverty, illiteracy, alcoholism, disenfranchisement, pollution, and so forth. Each group had its own agenda items it wanted to make progress on, and varying ideas about how to make said progress, so the primary mechanism was in creating new institutions of administrative control along with new means for providing public feedback to those institutions.

If that sounds a little abstract, it is, but between new institutions like the Federal Reserve, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Federal Trade Commission; new democratic mechanisms like party primaries, initiative, recall, and referendum; and new movements like immigrant groups, labor unions, suffragists, and social reformers, it’s fair to see this period as not merely a prelude to the New Deal and Great Society, but as a distinct set of responses to distinct social needs, even if incomplete and prematurely truncated by the forces of reaction in the Roaring Twenties. At the same time, not all of the progressive initiatives were unalloyed goods, and there is much to be said about the racist, nativist, xenophobic, eugenicist, etc strains in the progressive forces, which bears directly on any attempt to analogize or draw lineages between those movements and ones today. To that end, Link closes with a passage of great relevance to our modern era of impatience with the increasingly creaky machinery of American governance:

“That the urge to impose social control often overshadowed the desire for social justice is another example of the distinction between the rhetoric, intentions, and results of progressivism. In their language and appeals, the reformers commonly gave greater weight to justice than to coercion, while in their actual methods they tended to rely on controls. The progressives often failed to recognize the degree to which the aims of justice could be neglected in the actual administration of a reform. Often, as well, the means which progressives used simply failed to achieve what had been expected of them. Today we are far more conscious of the limitations of progressive techniques than were the reformers of the early twentieth century. It is significant, however, that while the progressives’ methods of trying to bring justice and order to an industrial society have been criticized, even repudiated, they have not been replaced by a fundamentally different means of social reform.”

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much a historiographical survey of attitudes and analysis surrounding the American Progressive Era as it is a history of the Progressive Era itself, Progressivism is a good introduction to the concept as well as the varying understandings of it. Although largely ignoring the radical wings of the movement and suffering from the lack of Marxist perspectives (relying solely upon Gabriel Kolko for the "radical" views), the books in the "American History Series" are not meant to be comprehensive in their scope. Even though it was published 40 years ago, Link and McCormick's work holds up nicely as a balanced view of the contradictions of the era.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was chalked full of facts and references, the authors did well in explaining the multiple struggles of the progressivism era. Yet it was an incredibly boring read, there has got to be another book that discusses progressivism without putting me to sleep. Overall I'm glad I read it because I did learn a great deal from it but man, did they have to zap the life right out of it?

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for a grad class.
Good introduction/review/all the info in one little place kind of book for getting Progressivism straight. Would definitely recommend it for that purpose. For personal enjoyment, probably not so much. Just facts, a bit of historiography, no new interpretation.

[Colton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good information. Bad writing.

[Tom Darrow · Rating 1 out of 5]

Basically a long biographical essay. He summarizes the ideas of other authors, provides their bibliographic information, but makes no personal insights.

[Paige · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has got some good information, but it feels a bit dated because of the style of writing.