Through a variety of primary sources--including speeches, poems, magazine articles, and book excerpts--this collection illustrates the origins, ambitions, and political legacy of the American Progressivism movement (1886–1924). A general introduction offers a history of the movement and a brief discussion of recent historiographical debates; headnotes introduce each selection and provide historical and political context.

American Progressivism is a one-volume edition of some of the most important essays, speeches, and book excerpts from the leading figures of national Progressivism. It is designed for classroom use, includes an accessible interpretive essay, and introduces each selection with a brief historical and conceptual background. The introductory essay is written with the student in mind, and addresses the important characteristics of Progressive thought and the role of Progressives in the development of the American political tradition. Students of American political thought, American politics, American history, the presidency, Congress, and political parties will find this reader to be an invaluable source for insight into Progressivism.

"In 1776, the American Declaration of Independence appealed to "the Laws of nature and of Nature's God" and affirmed "these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness . . . ." In 1935, John Dewey, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, declared, "Natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology." These opposing pronouncements on natural rights represent two separate and antithetical American political traditions: natural rights individualism, the original Lockean tradition of the Founding; and Progressivism, the collectivist reaction to individualism which arose initially in the newly established universities in the decades following the Civil War"--

At its core this book is intellectual history, tracing the work of progressive historians as they in turn wrote the history of progressivism. In Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea, Bradley C. S. Watson presents an intellectual history of American progressivism as a philosophical-political phenomenon, focusing on how and with what consequences the academic discipline of history came to accept and propagate it. This book offers a meticulously detailed historiography and critique of the insularity and biases of academic culture. It shows how the first scholarly interpreters of progressivism were, in large measure, also its intellectual architects, and later interpreters were in deep sympathy with their premises and conclusions. Too many scholarly treatments of the progressive synthesis were products of it, or at least were insufficiently mindful of two central facts: the hostility of progressive theory to the Founders’ Constitution and the tension between progressive theory and the realm of the private, including even conscience itself. The constitutional and religious dimensions of progressive thought—and, in particular, the relationship between the two—remained hidden for much of the twentieth century. This pathbreaking volume reveals how and why this scholarly obfuscation occurred. The book will interest students and scholars of American political thought, the Progressive Era, and historiography, and it will be a useful reference work for anyone in history, law, and political science.

Congenital malformations are worldwide occurrences striking in every condition of society. These severe physical abnormalities which are present at birth and affecting every part of the body happen more often than usually realized, once in every 33 births. The most common, after heart defects, are those of the neural tube (the brain and spinal cord) which happen in as many as one in every 350 births. They have been noted as curiousities in man and beast throughout recorded history and received great attention in our time by various fields of study, for example, their faulty prenatal development by embryologists, familial patterns by geneticists, causation by environmentalists and variability by population scientists. Attention turned much in recent years to the relation of these malformations to deficiency of a particular dietary ingredient, folic acid, a subject this book analyzes in depth. The greatest conundrum of all, which this latest matter like so much else hinges on, is the amazing fact of the tremendous, almost universal decrease in the frequency of these anomalies since early in the 20th century. The puzzle is What can this downward trend possibly mean? and at bottom Whether it is part of a long-term cyclical pattern . This fascinating biological phenomenon is explored in the book together with various other topics.

Revered as the "People's Attorney," Louis D. Brandeis concluded a distinguished career by serving as an associate justice (1916-1939) of the U.S. Supreme Court. Philippa Strum argues that Brandeis-long recognized as a brilliant legal thinker and defender of traditional civil liberties-was also an important political theorist whose thought has become particularly relevant to the present moment in American politics. Brandeis, Strum shows, was appalled by the suffering and waste of human potential brought on by industrialization, poverty, and a government increasingly out of touch with its citizens. In response, he developed a unique vision of a "worker's democracy" based on an economically independent and well-educated citizenry actively engaged in defining its own political destiny. She also demonstrates that, while Brandeis's thinking formed the basis of Woodrow Wilson's "New Freedom," it went well beyond Wilsonian Progressivism in its call for smaller governmental and economic units such as worker-owned businesses and consumer cooperatives. Brandeis's political thought, Strum suggests, is especially relevant to current debates over how large a role government should play in resolving everything from unemployment and homelessness to the crisis in health care. One of the few justices to support Roosevelt's New Deal policies in the 1930s, he nevertheless consistently criticized concentrated power in government (and in corporations). He agreed that the government should provide its citizens with some sort of "safety net," but at the same time should empower people to find private solutions to their needs. A half century later, Brandeis's political thought has much to offer anyone engaged in the current debates pitting individualists against communitarians and rights advocates against social welfare critics.

Chapter 20. How the Progressives Became the Tea Party's Mortal Enemy: Networks, Movements, and the Political Currency of Ideas -- Chapter 21. What Is to Be Done? A New Progressivism for a New Century -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Eisenach's selection of primary sources illustrates the origins, ambitions, and political legacy of the American Progressivism movement (1844-1932), while his Introduction offers a history of the movement and a brief discussion of recent historiographical debates.

In American politics, at least since the Civil War, the great philosophical divide is between "progressives" and "founders" of the American regime. The quarrel has come to be defined in the media as a contest between liberals and conservatives. This book explores the ideological underpinnings of American progressivism. In doing so, it examines the foundations of modern liberalism and conservatism. The fundamental problem of any science of politics is to explain, however imperfectly, the sources of justice and injustice in politics: What are the "self-evident truths" that inform and drive the public debates? Over time the foundational arguments for justice and injustice, what people regard as self-evident truths, do change. This process of change is at the heart of progressivism. The original arguments of the progressive movement are obscured or largely forgotten in contemporary political debates. But in a myriad of ways, the original progressive arguments continue to reverberate. They need to be more fully explored and understood in order to seriously engage the differences between liberals and conservatives. Such differences are not likely to be overcome simply by a study of the roots of progressivism, but it is a first step in a more rational debate, which this book will inspire.

Why do protesters sometimes take to the streets to demand lower taxes on the rich? In this urgently relevant study, sociologist Isaac William Martin examines how these protesters used tactics that they learned in movements of the poor and powerless-and sometimes won big.