The Outcomes of Progressivism

Progressivism flowered in the first two decades of the 20th century for a number of different reasons. First, there was a national pushback by the Populists against immigration (and the ethnic Europeans—i.e., Catholics—who were coming to America and bringing their non-Protestant views and behaviors with them). This led to a crackdown on “vice” such as drinking alcohol, which led to Prohibition (and, ironically, the rise of crime—bootlegging—among gangsters), and unjust working conditions. To be fair, the working conditions at the turn of the century were not great. As Chapter 22 shows, many workers faced conditions like these: “twelve-hour days in stifling, crowded workrooms, weekly paychecks of only $3 to $15, fines for the tiniest mistakes, deductions for needle and thread, even for electricity,” and so on (p. 593). Progressivism at home was thus a reaction against the ills of society—from corruption in politics (as seen in Tammany Hall in NYC) to corruption abroad, which progressive diplomacy aimed to fix. Roosevelt was the poster president of Progressive Reform: he cracked down on New York when a police commissioner there and he helped to display the “big stick” abroad to let other nations know that they must act within the law while he was in charge. It helped of course that “the Panama Canal gave the United States a commanding position in the Western Hemisphere” (p. 623). There was nothing like a little muscle to back up one’s progressive politics.
At home the need for reform was evident: by the end of the 19th century there was “an army of unemployed on the roads; hunger, strikes, and bloody violence across the country—the wrenching depression of 1893 forced Americans to take a hard look at their new industrial order” (p. 595). The people of America wanted the nation’s ills to be addressed. Movements like Carrie Nation and teetotalism and Women’s Suffrage were aimed at ending those ills—but in many ways they just served to create new ones. Meanwhile, abroad the U.S. was engaging in imperialism by waging war against the Spanish in the Philippines. This was deemed a progressive war but that application rang hollow. It was true that “Progressive diplomacy—whether through Theodore Roosevelt's big stick diplomacy, William Taft's dollar diplomacy, or Woodrow Wilson's missionary diplomacy—stressed moralism and order, championed ‘uplifting’ nonwhites, and stretched presidential authority to its limits” (Chapter Summary), but this was simply a continuation of imperialism—neo-colonialism in a way. Progressivism thus flourished because it was linked to morality, which was in many ways needed—but the cause was also co-opted by politicians and imperialists who sought to push their own objectives.
As a result, progressivism led to some positive changes (such as labor laws and unions) which helped families against companies exploiting their labor; it also lead to some negative changes, such as Prohibition (which unleashed the rise of organized crime) and neo-colonialism (which led ultimately to the new order of slave labor abroad, with companies outsourcing labor). Thus, Progressivism had some positive and some negative roots, just like it had some positive and some negative fruits.