Reinventing "The People": The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism

4. Communities of Reformers

4 Communities of Reformers I still think that among social movements (how they multiply ! I myself, at last counting, belonged to fifty-nine duespaying societies bent on reform), those are most vital and plow deepest which bring members of the alienated or separated classes into close personal fellowship. —Vida Scudder, On Journey, 1937 Like many of her contemporaries, Vida Scudder moved within a densely organized world of social reform during the early years of the Progressive Era. The orbits of her activity centered around Boston’s settlements and Wellesley College, where she taught English literature. With her reform colleagues she shared a commitment to harmonizing the interests of the “alienated classes.” Although she read Marx, supported strikers, and eventually joined the Socialist Party,Scudder’s commitment to the search for social unity and a harmony of interests persisted.1 And in those respects, she remained deeply connected to the Progressive movement. The pioneering efforts of a handful of settlements, investigatory commissions and conferences,and muckraking journalists in the 1890s spawned a spirited and diverse community of reformers who fed off the sense of social crisis that pervaded those years. They launched a host of discrete but related reform initiatives that came to embody the Progressive movement. Much as Florence Kelley at the turn of the century moved from Hull-House and her duties as Illinois state factory inspector to head the National Consumers’ League, so did others enter and move through various organized sectors of an expanding world of reform.The nodal points of reform proliferated.Some materialized around publications such as Charities and the Commons, later the Survey, others through cooperative investigations such as the Pittsburgh Survey . Coalitions of reformers who established the National Child Labor Committee reflected seemingly conflicting interests that nevertheless assembled around a specific concern, or, like the Women’s Trade Union League, mobi- lized the energies of women across classes to pursue reforms that targeted the needs of an especially vulnerable population, in this case working women. Both at the time and retrospectively,reformers vividly described being part of a wider movement. For some, such as Herbert Croly, their participation transcended the sincere but “unintelligently planned,insufficiently informed, and inadequately organized” campaigns carried out in the 1890s by the Populists and other such groups. But even Croly acknowledged that these agitations had the unintended consequence of breaking down a sense of national self-satisfaction and promoting a new synthesis of reform initiatives. A wave of muckraking, in his view, “broke over the country . . . [providing] a common bond,which tied reformers together” and committed them to reform not simply “disconnected abuses” but also “a perverted system.” These bonds led to growing political effectiveness. Differences between Progressives and conservatives transcended party. In sum, Croly concluded, political leaders “who have offended the progressives” increasingly faced retirement from public life.2 Jane Addams, after a second twenty years at Hull-House, recalled feeling in 1909 that “our intellectual interests, our convictions and activities were all becoming parts of a larger movement.” The investigation of social conditions , pioneered by the settlements, was being taken up in universities and by philanthropic foundations. In the five years that followed, before the outbreak of the world war, she recalled that the reformers forged bonds with many other movements.Simon Patten tied this great advance to “the growth of social expression,” when “social workers found words to convey to each other what they saw.” Recalling how reformers coalesced to launch the Progressive Party in 1912, Addams recaptured their language of common purpose : “We were convinced that the nexus between citizens could be more scienti fic and durable and at the same time more understanding and heartfelt.”3 The sense of common purpose within the community of reform was powerfully shaped by the search for means to transcend the polarizing politics of class. They attacked social evils spawned by industrialism that bred misery and threatened a renewal of class warfare. While playing an influential role in the formation of the Progressive Party in 1912, they also witnessed an ominously rising tide of mass strikes between 1909 and 1914 that threatened to derail their larger reform project. Battling on Many Fronts By 1905, reformers in a variety of campaigns saw their interests as allied. The particularity of their concerns masked the broader community of re84 . reinventing “the people” form that took shape through overlapping activities and the mutual aid...