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

by Robert D. Putnam

Progressive Era social innovations and institutional reforms put the US on a new path toward greater economic equality, laying the foundations for the Great Convergence that lasted until the 1970s. Progressive Era reformers, both dreamers and doers, created innovations such as the public high school, labor unions, the federal tax structure, antitrust legislation, financial regulation, and more.66 Those creations did not immediately close the income gap, given the turbulence of the Twenties, but they were the necessary foundations for further developments (especially during the New Deal, but not only then) that underpinned the Great Convergence.

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