The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam

One mark of the incipient blurring of party lines in the Progressive Era (visible in Figure 3.1) is that the major reforms of that period were enacted during both Republican and Democratic administrations with support (and opposition) from both sides of the aisle. On ten major reforms passed between 1906 and 1919, including the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the federal income tax, the direct election of senators, the tariff cuts of 1913, the Federal Reserve, the Clayton Antitrust Act, child labor regulation, Prohibition, and women’s suffrage, the administration in power received, on average, the support of 78 percent of the House and Senate members of its own party, as well as 40 percent of the votes of the opposing party.14 Party-line votes were beginning to be replaced by bipartisan coalitions.