America’s first period of progressivism, known as the Progressive Era, came at the height of industrialization and urbanization in the United States. Although the goals and the types of reforms that progressives sought during this period differed, perhaps nothing characterizes the Progressive Era better than the impulse to reform. At the time, the United States was characterized by the increasing dominance of large corporations and political party machines, which progressives perceived as a threat to the American ideals of democracy and individual freedom. Corporate dominance inhibited the capacities of the vast majority of Americans to achieve social mobility, and urban-based political party machines were seen as corrupting the democratic process.
In response, progressives challenged laissez-faire ideology by arguing that good government could help solve problems. Progressives promoted, often successfully, a long list of reform legislation at all levels of government, including regulation of railroads, public utilities, and banks; laws protecting women and child laborers; and the passage of workers’ compensation and minimum-wage legislation. Progressives also worked for a progressive income tax; relief for the poor; a host of electoral reforms, including the direct election of senators, direct primaries, referendums, and recalls; voting rights for women; nonpartisan election systems; civil service; and commissionmanager and council-manager forms of local government. Such reforms aimed at strengthening popular sovereignty and produced significant and lasting results, even if some reforms did not lead to intended outcomes.
Progressivism had its roots in the populist movement of the late nineteenth century, as well as the struggles for equality for women and better living conditions for workers. Similar to the response of radical agrarian and working-class groups during the Gilded Age, progressives targeted many of the same problems wrought by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration: the spread of poverty, rapid financial and industrial concentration, and the oligarchic character of the political parties.
As the power of corporations expanded and social strife spread, middle-class social workers established settlement houses and other programs to ameliorate human degradation in city slums. Muckrakers, or investigative journalists, illuminated the corruption of corporate influence in politics and society. Religious groups promoted a social gospel that raised concerns about poverty, corruption, and the concentration of economic power and called on the moral conscience of the nation. Labor unions and workers organized to improve wages and working conditions, and to make business more responsible through regulation. Women organized against child labor, in support of a minimum wage and a maximum number of working hours, and in favor of temperance. Even businessmen joined progressives in attacking political machines and promoting reform regimes. Thus, progressivism included professionals who undermined the foundations of laissez-faire ideology and promoted an ideal of public interest.
Yet progressivism was an uneasy coalition and not a cohesive movement. Progressivism during this period actually encompassed numerous movements for reform on the local, state, and national levels. These movements were diverse and sometimes even mutually antagonistic. Some progressives, such as socialists, sought fundamental change and structural reform to achieve social justice. Other progressives, such as middle-class professionals, strove for social order and more modest reform. Similarly, Protestant patrician reformers differed in their goals, approach, and sensibilities from Catholic, immigrant, and urban liberal progressives. There were also overtly reactionary groups involved in Progressive Era reform efforts, including eugenicists and antiblack and anti-immigrant groups. Thus, the Progressive Era was an ideologically fluid period where particular groups focused on different issues, and shifting coalitions competed to reshape American society. Despite their varying agendas, shared ideals of antimonopolism, efficiency, and social justice propelled and sustained the diverse progressive reform coalitions.
For example, new types of professionals—members of an emerging middle class, and members of religious organizations and business groups—pressed for reforms that focused in particular on urban America. These progressives strove to undermine big-city political machines, which had in many cities retained the loyalty of immigrant working-class voters. Middle-class reformers regarded political machines as inefficient and corrupt, and they attacked the use of government resources as patron-age—whether in the form of jobs for loyal party workers and supporters, or the distribution of municipal franchises, licenses, and contracts to favored businesses, sometimes in exchange for graft. Protestants attacked the toler