A New Progressive Era

✍ Scribed by E. J. Dionne; Jr.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Weight: 324 KB
• Volume: 87
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0027-9013
• DOI: 10.1002/ncr.87101

✦ Synopsis

The current confusion in American political life arises from possibilities and insecurities created by a new economic and moral ord e r. This uncertainty is not entirely novel. Our times bear a striking similarity to the period between the Civil War and the turn of the century, which culminated in the original P ro g ressive achievement. That era of upheaval is described brilliantly by the historian Robert Wiebe in his classic work The Search for Ord e r. 1 It was, Wi e b e writes, a time when "Americans every w h e re were crying out in scorn and d e s p a i r. " 2 In the post-Civil War period, the small town was losing its central role in American life to the big city. The shop was being replaced by the fact o ry, craftsmen by factory workers, local elites by powerful national elites. State l e g i s l a t u res came under the influence of lobbyists for railroads and the other t rusts. Public expenditure came under suspicion. Reformers demanded change, though their programs were as often as not backward-looking. Sounding much like Ross Perot does today, the Illinois Grange issued a call in the late 1870s for continuous re f o rm "until every department of our government gives token that the region of licentious extravagance is over, and something of the purity, honesty and frugality with which our fathers inaugurated it has taken its p l a c e . " 3 Wiebe noted that there was even a revolt against a congressional pay raise, routinely labeled a "salary grab" by its critics-the same phrase invoked by Ralph Nader and other opponents of congressional pay raises a century later.

The dissident and re f o rm impulses of that time, like those in this one, were rooted not simply in a sense of economic injustices but also in a fear that old values were being undermined or ignored in the rush of industrialism. Thus was the late nineteenth century awash in movements to re s t o re American morality and a sense of the "purity" of its community, seen as under threat fro m the immigrants pouring into the factories of the big cities. The drive for the p rohibition of alcohol began in that era, spawning organizations such as the Wo m e n ' s Christian Temperance Union. The cause of prohibition was perf e c t l y suited for a time of rapid change. "Uneasy people could turn here, as they had for generations," writes Wiebe, "with assurance that in attacking liquor they N o t e : This article was adapted by E.