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The Progressive Dream and the American Lie [1]
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Date: 2025-06-11
The abuses of the Gilded Age were so extreme that the backlash ushered in the Progressive Era (roughly 1890–1920). It attempted to address a troubling legacy: rapid industrial expansion that caused overcrowding of cities, substandard housing, unregulated labor including child labor, poor public health, farmer indebtedness, and sharecropping—especially for southern Blacks—and a wealth gap in which 1% of Americans owned nearly 90% of the nation’s wealth.
These conditions worsened with the Panic of 1893, a major economic depression that lasted until 1897. Of the country’s 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt. Within two years, 18,000 businesses failed. By 1896, unemployment had risen to 14%. Source:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/grant-panic/)
The panic helped galvanize opposition to the entrenched power structure, fueling the progressive movement.
Widespread unrest followed, including the Pullman Strike of 1894, in which railroad workers protested wage cuts while living costs in the company-owned town remained unchanged. In July, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to break the strike. The violence that followed resulted in dozens of injuries and at least 30 deaths.
The public was deeply divided. Workers, unionists, and progressives were outraged, while the elite and much of the middle class supported the crackdown—highlighting a national divide over whose interests the government truly served. It was clear: government power sided with business.
In an attempt to pacify labor, Cleveland declared Labor Day a national holiday in September 1894—although 23 states had already been observing it. His action was seen by many as an empty gesture.
It was becoming increasingly obvious that America was not working. Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” (1906) exposed the horrific, unsanitary conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants and the brutal exploitation of immigrant workers. Yet public outrage focused more on tainted food than on worker abuse. The reaction led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
Ida Tarbell’s “The History of the Standard Oil Company” (1904) exposed the corrupt business practices and ruthless monopolization that enabled Standard Oil to dominate the industry. Her work helped lay the groundwork for the 1906 antitrust case that led to the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil.
Lincoln Steffens’s “The Shame of the Cities” (1904) was a collection of magazine articles that exposed how political machines, bribery, and backroom deals dominated city governments across America. He named names, detailing how business interests bought off politicians at every level. Reform mayors like Tom Johnson (Cleveland, OH) and Brand Whitlock (Toledo, OH) utilized their offices to advocate for progressive city policies—public ownership of utilities, open meetings, and ethical budgeting.
Lincoln Steffens’s “The Shame of the Cities” (1904) compiled investigative articles exposing how political machines and bribery dominated city governments. He detailed how business interests controlled politicians at every level. Reform mayors like Tom Johnson (Cleveland, OH) and Brand Whitlock (Toledo, OH) began to push progressive city policies—public ownership of utilities, open meetings, and transparent budgeting.
These books and authors helped shape a new wave of investigative journalism. Known as muckrakers, they used the power of the press to hold institutions accountable and mobilize public opinion.
The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) and the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914) offered tools to regulate corporate monopolies. It was minimal under presidents like William McKinley (1897-1901) or Grover Cleveland (1893-1897) and more aggressive under Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), William Howard Taft (1909-1913), and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). Wilson focused on preventing monopolies from forming rather than busting existing ones.
Roosevelt earned his “trustbuster” image by breaking up 44 monopolies. However, he made a key distinction between “good trusts” (efficient, fair) and “bad trusts” (exploitative). Giants like U.S. Steel were left untouched. Roosevelt reassured the public and co-opted the energy of reform, but the structure of corporate power largely remained intact.
Progressive reformers believed expertise—not political patronage—should govern complex public domains. This helped establish the modern administrative state. New federal agencies included the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC, 1887), Reclamation Service (1902), Food and Drug Administration (FDA, 1906), Bureau of Mines (1910), Children’s Bureau (1912), Federal Reserve (1913), Department of Labor (1913), Federal Trade Commission (FTC, 1914), and the National Park Service (1916).
But the Progressive Era was far from progressive for Black, Indigenous, and Asian communities. Most labor unions excluded them. Many progressive leaders embraced eugenics and racial hierarchy. Reforms such as minimum wage and child labor laws were often not extended to non-white workers or domestic laborers.
President Woodrow Wilson—often celebrated as a progressive—was a staunch segregationist. He oversaw the informal segregation of the federal workforce by introducing separate bathrooms, lunchrooms, and workspaces. Implementation depended on agency leadership, often rooted in the South. One of the most notorious figures was Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, whose father had been a Confederate officer. Burleson pushed segregation in the U.S. Post Office beginning in 1913, demoting Black supervisors and firing many Black workers. Postal segregation persisted until the 1950s.
World War I (1914–1918), which the U.S. joined in 1917, disrupted the progressive agenda. The Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) triggered a wave of censorship and repression of dissent.
Following the war, a wave of conservatism and backlash against reform emerged. The Red Scare (1919-1920) was animated by a national climate of fear of communism, anarchism, and radicalism tied to the Russian Revolution (1917). The anxiety was driven by labor strikes (1919 saw over 3,600 strikes), immigration, and anarchist bombings. It was amped up by media hysteria and public paranoia about a possible revolution in the U.S.
Following the war, a conservative backlash set in. The Red Scare (1919–1920) reflected fear of communism and anarchism fueled by the Russian Revolution (1917). Over 3,600 strikes occurred in 1919 alone, turning public sentiment against labor unions. The backlash, fed by media hysteria and paranoia, led to the Palmer Raids (1919-1920), carried out by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and his aide J. Edgar Hoover. The Justice Department conducted massive raids on suspected radicals, especially immigrants, which violated civil liberties, i.e., no warrants and no due process. Thousands were arrested, and many were held without charges. Deportations followed, including that of the anarchist Emma Goldman, who was sent to Russia after three decades in the U.S., arriving at 16 years old.
In the same year, the Red Summer of 1919—red because of the bloodshed—saw over three dozen race riots and hundreds of smaller incidents in cities across the U.S. The Great Migration, which brought Black Americans to Northern cities seeking work, triggered white resentment and violence. White mobs, often encouraged by local authorities, attacked Black communities. Returning Black WWI veterans demanding civil rights were specifically targeted.
The Progressive Era offered great promise—but it delivered uneven and often exclusionary progress. It showed the difference between reform and transformation. Reform, frequently led by elite or middle-class liberals, changed policies—but not the deeper systems that generated injustice.
Reforms during this period were largely superficial responses to crises. They reassured the public and quelled dissent but preserved the power structures that perpetuated inequality. Problems like systemic racism, entrenched wealth gaps, restricted social mobility, and gender violence were not seen as interconnected structural flaws—but as isolated issues to be patched.
While women won the right to vote in 1920, broader issues—economic inequality, reproductive rights, and violence—remained unaddressed. Jim Crow laws went untouched. Immigrants and the poor were pathologized, not empowered. Eugenics policies targeted the “unfit.” Even as some were let into the circle of progress, many were shut out—or crushed.
The Progressive Era left behind a legacy of institutional reform—and institutionalized inequality. It was a moment of idealism that, by failing to confront foundational injustice, left the American illusion intact: that this was the land of the free, where equality was for all who worked hard enough to earn it. That myth endured—but for millions, it remained tragically out of reach.
The myth of the age that was hypernormalized was that American society could be perfected through rational reform, scientific expertise, and moral uplift. This illusion could barely hide the reality. The reform agenda simply repackaged inequality in more institutional and “respectable” forms, leaving behind a country that was more economically unequal and racially stratified, a country that was fearful, politically repressive, and deeply divided along lines of class, race, ideology, and culture. In disturbing ways, the end of the Progressive Era bears a fearful resemblance to the dysfunction of Trump’s second term.
Day 143: days left to January 20, 2029: 1,319 days
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