The New Progressive Era

A century ago, Americans launched a period of civic renewal and political reform. Today, amid deep dissatisfaction with our major institutions, there are signs that a new movement may revive the spirit of the original progressive era. Peter Levine draws inspiration from the great progressive leader Robert M. La Follete, Sr., and his circle, which included John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Louis Brandeis. He argues that their ideal of a fair and deliberative democracy is right for out time. Combining their philosophy and experience with the best contemporary proposals, Levine advocates campaign finance reform, an entirely different approach to regulation, new styles of journalism and civic education, and fundamental changes in the tax system. This book offers today's most comprehensive plan for civic renewal and political reform.

From the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids, a “sweeping yet remarkably accessible” (The Wall Street Journal) analysis that “offers superb, often counterintuitive insights” (The New York Times) to demonstrate how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again, and how we can learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation. Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism—Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times. But we’ve been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became—slowly, unevenly, but steadily—more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today’s disarray. In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an “I” society to a “We” society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.

Rothbard's posthumous masterpiece is the definitive book on the Progressives. It will soon be the must read study of this dreadful time in our past. — From the Foreword by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano The current relationship between the modern state and the economy has its roots in the Progressive Era. — From the Introduction by Patrick Newman Progressivism brought the triumph of institutionalized racism, the disfranchising of blacks in the South, the cutting off of immigration, the building up of trade unions by the federal government into a tripartite big government, big business, big unions alliance, the glorifying of military virtues and conscription, and a drive for American expansion abroad. In short, the Progressive Era ushered the modern American politico-economic system into being. — From the Preface by Murray N. Rothbard

Now in its second edition, America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1917 provides a readable, analytical narrative of the emergence, influence, and decline of the spirit of progressive reform that animated American politics and culture around the turn of the twentieth century. Covering the turbulent 1890s to the American entry into World War I, the text examines the political, social, and cultural events of a period which set the agenda for American public life during the remainder of the twentieth century. This new edition places progressivism in a transatlantic context and gives more attention to voices outside the mainstream of party politics. Key features include: A clear account of the continuing debate in the United States over the role of government, citizenship, and the pursuit of social justice A full examination of the impact of reform on women and minorities A rich selection of documents that allow the historical actors to communicate with today’s readers An extensive, updated bibliography providing a valuable guide to additional reading and research Based on the most recent scholarship and written to be read by students, this book will be of interest to students of American History and Political History.

Chapter 20. How the Progressives Became the Tea Party's Mortal Enemy: Networks, Movements, and the Political Currency of Ideas -- Chapter 21. What Is to Be Done? A New Progressivism for a New Century -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

The American Progressive Era, which spanned from the 1880s to the 1920s, is generally regarded as a dynamic period of political reform and social activism. In Performing the Progressive Era, editors Max Shulman and Chris Westgate bring together top scholars in nineteenth- and twentieth-century theatre studies to examine the burst of diverse performance venues and styles of the time, revealing how they shaped national narratives surrounding immigration and urban life. Contributors analyze performances in urban centers (New York, Chicago, Cleveland) in comedy shows, melodramas, Broadway shows, operas, and others. They pay special attention to performances by and for those outside mainstream society: immigrants, the working-class, and bohemians, to name a few. Showcasing both lesser-known and famous productions, the essayists argue that the explosion of performance helped bring the Progressive Era into being, and defined its legacy in terms of gender, ethnicity, immigration, and even medical ethics.

In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal role in establishing minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws, workmen's compensation, progressive income taxes, antitrust regulation, and other hallmarks of the regulatory welfare state. But even as they offered uplift to some, economic progressives advocated exclusion for others, and did both in the name of progress. Leonard meticulously reconstructs the influence of Darwinism, racial science, and eugenics on scholars and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing a reform community deeply ambivalent about America's poor. Economic progressives championed labor legislation because it would lift up the deserving poor while excluding immigrants, African Americans, women, and 'mental defectives, ' whom they vilified as low-wage threats to the American workingman and to Anglo-Saxon race integrity. Economic progressives rejected property and contract rights as illegitimate barriers to needed reforms. But their disregard for civil liberties extended much further. Illiberal Reformers shows that the intellectual champions of the regulatory welfare state proposed using it not to help those they portrayed as hereditary inferiors, but to exclude them. -- Provided by publisher.