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

7. Class Wars and the Crisis of Progressivism

7 Class Wars and the Crisis of Progressivism [Walsh’s] colleagues are bitter against him because of his pro-labor attitude, his socialistic propaganda, and his efforts to damage this case of the employer. —Harris Weinstock, employer representative, U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, 1915 The committee asserts that no alleged or actual altruism of more fortunately circumstanced classes will avail to remove existing injustices. . . . It shares labor’s distrust of so-called welfare work where such work is not in the hands of men representing the interests of workers and directed to fitting the workers to exercise an everincreasing measure of control over the industry in which they are engaged. —Frank Walsh, chairman, U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, 1915 When Frank Walsh accepted the chairmanship of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations (USCIR) in the fall of 1913 and its charge to investigate “the causes of industrial unrest,” he publicly expressed views on class conflict that seemed consistent with a tradition of class reconciliation deeply rooted in the mainstream of the Progressive movement. At the same time, he agreed privately with the sentiments of close political allies from Kansas City who argued that “our present industrial system should be placed on trial.”1 During two years of hearings that crisscrossed the country and produced acrimonious encounters with corporate titans and meliorist reformers,Walsh came to represent a labor progressivism that challenged the reformers’ ideal of social harmony.2 Those reformers had fought to create such a commission and saw themselves as architects of its mission.3 By the spring of 1915, deep into public hearings on the causes of industrial unrest, Walsh pleaded with Edward J. Ward, “For heaven’s sake, don’t accuse me publicly of being a ‘constructive statesman.’ Phrases and terms constantly take on new meanings .In the industrial field,at the present time,a constructive statesman might be defined as one who would substitute statutes for wages, with the chloroforming of public opinion as a byproduct.” He belittled the “Wisconsin Idea,” propounded by his fellow commissioner, John R. Commons, and commission staffer Charles McCarthy. He discounted their legalistic approach to investigation whereby “fundamentals remain largely untouched.”4 The turmoil within the USCIR played out in public and behind the scenes. But despite the attention historians have lavished on the story, the implications of the commission’s undertaking for the fate of the Progressive movement and for the nature and meaning of progressivism itself have not been adequately explored. Progressive reformers divided sharply over the work and substantive conclusions of the USCIR. Under Walsh’s leadership, the commission asserted that reformers must reckon with class interests and class power if the “causes of industrial unrest” were to be addressed. In so doing, he became an iconic figure to the producerist and socialist wings of the labor movement and their reform allies.5 As class conflict intensified after 1909, an ideological division among Progressives grew deeper.A minority of reformers had advocated class-conscious support of labor’s interest, but the more dominant wings of the movement pursued the ideal of class reconciliation through programs of social amelioration . Frank Walsh, the commission’s vigorous chairman, came to view labor’s interest as paramount and concluded that “no alleged or actual altruism of more fortunately circumstanced classes will avail to remove existing injustices.” Instead, he came to argue that any constructive work must be “in the hands of men representing the interests of workers and directed to fitting the workers to exercise an ever-increasing measure of control over the industry in which they are engaged.”6 The broad coalition of reformers that conceived the USCIR took a different view. Their movement had achieved unprecedented breadth and coherence in 1911–12, as we have seen. Its vital center lay in an extensive network of reform organizations and their intellectual allies. They pursued public policy initiatives designed to mitigate social crisis at local, state, and national levels. These reformers articulated a coherent vision of a society of self-directed individual citizens—the people—pursuing the public good in a democratic polity purged of corrupting influences. They saw themselves in resolutely modern terms, agents of an efficient and democratic order. 166 . reinventing “the people” Shaken, like so many Americans, by the bitter class conflict of the late nineteenth century, they sought to invent social machinery for overcoming class polarization...