Progressives

Karen Pastorello is Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at Tompkins Cortland Community College (SUNY) where she directs the Honors Program. She is the author of A Power Among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (2008).

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction 11 Setting the Stage: The Birth of the Progressive Impulse, 1893–1900 13On the Farm 13City Life 18Hard Times: The Depression of 1893 24Businesses: Small to Large 26Small businesses evolve 26Big business 34Mergers and monopolies 37Labor 38The workplace in transition 40The struggle to organize 42Working women 46African American workers 49Immigrant workers 50A New Era Dawns 512 Saving Society: Who Were the Progressives? 56The Muckrakers 57From Religious Roots to Secular Salvation 64Fundamentalists 65The Social Gospelers 66Intellectual inspiration 67From Charity Cases to Social Work 68Women Progressives 70Club women 70Settlement workers advocate social justice 73Professionalization in the Progressive Era 80Social workers 81The medical field 83The legal profession 88Engineering 89Academia 89The female professions: teaching, nursing, and librarianship 91Businessmen 93Labor Unions and Radical Movements 96Other Special Interest Groups 98Politicians and early reform ;98The "immigrant problem" 99African Americans 100Nativists 101Farmers and Rural Reform 1033 "Constructing the World Anew": Progressive Agency, 1900–1911 106Stepping into a New World: The Industrial City 106Settlement Workers Transform the Neighborhoods 109Women's Political Culture Emerges 114Jane Addams elevates settlement activism 116Workers on the Move 118Health and safety in the workplace 120Florence Kelley and the Push for Protective Legislation 127Child labor 129Educational Reform 133Social Centers 135The Chautauqua movement 138Country Life Commission 139Political Pathways to Reform 141Mugwumps, machine politics, and municipal reform 141The Good Government movement 143Beautiful cities and urban planning: from aesthetics to efficiency 145State Level Reform 148LaFollette and the Wisconsin Idea 148Beyond Wisconsin 150Businessmen Left Behind 151The Radical Political Reaction 152Socialists 152Industrial Workers of the World 153Labor Leans Political 155Labor's Bill of Grievances 156Workplace activism 160Progressivism Takes Center Stage 1614 The Shape of Things to Come: Progressivism and the Transition to Modern Life, 1912–1917 165The Rise of Consumerism 165Impact of the automobile 168Corporate America Takes Control 170Scientific management 171Welfare capitalism 173The Triangle Waist Factory Fire 174The legacy of Triangle 176The Election of 1912 178Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party platform 180The incumbent: William Howard Taft 184Eugene Debs and the Socialists 185Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic platform 185Wilson in the White House 186The election of 1916 189Progressivism in the National Consciousness 191Conclusion: The Progressives' Progress 194Bibliographical Essay 211Index 247