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About the Progressive Tradition Series

Accompanying the transformation of America’s public philosophy away from the predominant laissez-faire vision of the late 19th century and toward stronger forms of democratic governance in the 20th century, numerous changes occurred in the issue agendas, constituencies, and policy platforms of the major political parties in the United States as they came to grips with rising progressive sentiment.

Progressive reforms:

A century of accomplishments The eight-hour workday and 40-hour workweek

Worker’s compensation for on-the-job accidents

Unemployment insurance

Prohibitions against child labor and workplace exploitations

The legal right of people to organize within labor unions and engage in collective bargaining for fair wages and benefits

The constitutional right to vote, full legal equality, and the elimination of formal discrimination for women and minorities

The graduated income and inheritance tax

Protections against contaminated food and medicines

Hundreds of millions of acres of protected wilderness areas, waterways, and national parks

Antimonopoly and anticompetitive regulations of corporations

Direct elections of U.S. senators, direct primary elections of political candidates, and the initiative and referendum process in the states

Civil service tests to replace political patronage

National supervision of banks and the creation of a flexible national currency

Regulation of the securities industry

Federal insurance of bank deposits

Bans on speculative banking practices

Refinancing and foreclosure protections for home and farm owners

National infrastructure including electrification, railways, airports, bridges and roads, and the Internet

Social Security and Medicare to aid the elderly and Medicaid and CHIP to help low-income families and children

Minimum wage laws and income support for the working poor

Public education, college loans and grants for students, and the GI Bill

Progressivism has always found expressions both within and outside the major political parties, beginning with the early protest movements of the populists and other third party insurgencies to the transformative candidacies of William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. As Herbert Croly, co-founder of The New Republic, notes, the most distinctive progressive faction—as opposed to the more populist and agrarian one represented by Bryan—was located within the Republican Party and most fiercely advocated by prominent voices such as Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. Roosevelt and La Follette both formed outside Progressive Parties to promote the ideas of national reform after failing to transform the Republican Party into a genuinely progressive vehicle.

Meanwhile, the slow conversion of Woodrow Wilson from his southern conservative background into a national progressive president solidified progressivism within the Democratic Party—a legacy that was greatly extended under the long tenure of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s aggressive national actions to repair and transform our society and government in the wake of the Great Depression set the course for the midcentury liberalism of Harry Truman, the New Frontier of John Kennedy, and the great civil rights advances under Lyndon Johnson.

Improvements in American life would not have happened without the pioneering ideas of these early progressives. The shift from conservatism toward progressivism helped to structure our society in far more humane and effective ways and gave real meaning to our founding principles of liberty, equality, and opportunity. Progressives built on this new foundation and expanding levels of support from the American public, successfully amassing a worthy list of policy accomplishments over the last century. These included such landmarks of equality and social justice as the eight-hour workday and 40-hour workweek; the constitutional right to vote, full legal equality, and the elimination of formal discrimination for women and minorities; and Social Security and Medicare to aid the elderly and Medicaid to help low-income families and children. (See sidebar for an extensive list of key reforms.)

This paper will trace the political lineage of progressivism from the late 1890s to the late 1960s. In doing so, we show how the demand for progressive policies went from outsider protest to dominance of the American political mainstream. Future papers in our Progressive Traditions series will explore more contemporary political expressions of progressivism.

About the Progressive Tradition Series

With the rise of the contemporary progressive movement and the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, there is extensive public interest in better understanding the origins, values, and intellectual strands of progressivism. Who were the original progressive thinkers and activists? Where did their ideas come from and what motivated their beliefs and actions? What were their main goals for society and government? How did their ideas influence or diverge from alternative social doctrines? How do their ideas and beliefs relate to contemporary progressivism?

The new Progressive Tradition Series from the Center for American Progress traces the development of progressivism as a social and political tradition stretching from the late 19th century reform efforts to the current day. The series is designed primarily for educational and leadership development purposes to help students and activists better understand the foundations of progressive thought and its relationship to politics and social movements. Although the Progressive Studies Program has its own views about the relative merit of the various values, ideas, and actors discussed within the progressive tradition, the essays included in the series are descriptive and analytical rather than opinion based. We envision the essays serving as primers for exploring progressivism and liberalism in more depth through core texts—and in contrast to the conservative intellectual tradition and canon. We hope that these papers will promote ongoing discourse about the proper role of the state and individual in society, the relationship between empirical evidence and policymaking, and how progressives today might approach specific issues involving the economy, health care, energy-climate change, education, financial regulation, social and cultural affairs, and international relations and national security.

Part one examines the philosophical and theoretical development of progressivism as a response to the rise of industrial capitalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Read part one »

Part two examines the politics of national progressivism from the agrarian populists to the Great Society. Read part two »

Part three examines the influence of social movements for equality and economic justice on the development of progressivism. Read part three »

Read the full report (pdf)

Download the executive summary (pdf)

Download to mobile devices and e-readers from Scribd

About the Progressive Tradition Series