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1.

For a thoughtful explanation of the political theory undergirding the American founding, see Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). For a helpful interpretation of the governmental architecture created by the founding generation, see the third volume of Paul A. Rahe’s Republics Ancient and Modern trilogy, Inventions of Prudence: Constituting the American Regime (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

2.

This chapter does not aim at originality, but seeks merely to synthesize and organize major interpretations of Progressivism from the past twenty-five years. See Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Charles Kesler, I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism (New York: Broadside Books, 2012); Bradley Watson, Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2009); John Marini, “Theology, Metaphysics, and Positivism: The Origins of the Social Sciences and the Transformation of the American University,” in Challenges to the American Founding: Slavery, Historicism, and Progressivism in the Nineteenth Century, eds. Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 163–194; William Morrissey, The Dilemma of Progressivism: How Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson Reshaped the American Regime of Self-Government (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); and Paul D. Moreno, The American State from the Civil War to the New Deal: The Twilight of Constitutionalism and the Triumph of Progressivism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). I also draw on the classic studies of Progressivism: Richard Hofstadter’s Age of Reform (New York: Vintage Books, 1955); Arthur Link and Richard L. McCormick’s Progressivism (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1983); and Robert H. Wiebe’s excellent study, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).

3.

See Arthur S. Link, “What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920’s?” The American Historical Review 64, no. 4 (July 1959): 833–851.

4.

On Taft, see Sidney Milkis, “William Howard Taft and the Struggle for the Soul of the Constitution,” in Toward an American Conservatism: Constitutional Conservatism during the Progressive Era, ed. Joseph Postell and Johnathan O’Neill (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 63–93.

5.

See Edward A. Stettner, Shaping Modern Liberalism: Herbert Croly and Progressive Thought (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993).

6.

See Eldon Eisenach, The Lost Promise of Progressivism, especially pp. 8–48, on the role played by key progressives. His edited collection, The Social and Political Thought of American Progressivism (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2006), is also helpful as a cross-section of Progressive ideas that go beyond political life.

7.

See Sidney Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy. The Progressive Party platform can be found in Ronald J. Pestritto and William J. Atto, American Progressivism: A Reader (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 273–287. Woodrow Wilson led the Progressive faction of the Democratic Party to political victory that year – the Progressive Party did not encompass all progressives.

8.

See Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873).

9.

Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Free Press, 2003), 7.

10.

McGerr, Fierce Discontent, 16.

11.

McGerr, Fierce Discontent, 25–29.

12.

McGerr, Fierce Discontent, 54–55.

13.

William O’Neill. The Progressive Years: America Comes of Age (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 2–7.

14.

Bruce Kuklick, A History of Philosophy in America, 1720–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 104–105. See also Link and McCormick, Progressivism, 10–13.

15.

See especially Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism and Gillis J. Harp, Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865–1920 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1995). For a more elaborate discussion of the ideas summarized in this subsection on Philosophic Roots, see Part II of Kuklick’s A History of Philosophy in America.

16.

See Hofstadter’s imperfect but still-useful Social Darwinism in American Thought, revised edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

17.

See, for example, Andrew Feffer, The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).

18.

See Paul T. Phillips, A Kingdom on Earth: Anglo-American Social Christianity, 1880–1940 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).

19.

See Pestritto, Wilson, 7–19. See also Morrisey, Dilemma of Progressivism, 27–30. On the background to the transition from historical thinking to legal positivism in America, see Stephen A. Siegel, “Historism in Late Nineteenth-Century Constitutional Thought,” Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 1990, no. 6 (July, 1990): 1431–1547. Hegel did not initiate the turn to historicism, of course, but his historical thinking played a central role in the development of German thought, which greatly influenced American and British thinking.

20.

Pestritto, Wilson, 13.

21.

Pestritto, Wilson, 1–31.

22.

See generally George W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, translated by John Sibree (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991).

23.

Pestritto, Wilson, 16.

24.

Pestritto and Atto, “Introduction” to American Progressivism, 3–10. See also Scot J. Zentner, “President and Party in the Thought of Woodrow Wilson,” in Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 3 (Summer, 1996): 666–677.

25.

William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (Reprint: New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1931 [1907]), 54.

26.

James, Pragmatism, 51.

27.

James, Pragmatism, 54–55. Emphasis in original.

28.

James, Pragmatism, 80.

29.

James, Pragmatism, 209–210. To see how revolutionary pragmatism was, consider the implications of this theory for the truth claims made in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence.

30.

Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 141–142.

31.

Watson, Living Constitution, Dying Faith, 111–154, especially the discussion of the jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 130–147.

32.

Watson, Living Constitution, 60–69.

33.

Sumner, quoted by Thomas G. West, “Progressivism and the Transformation of American Government,” in The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science, 14.

34.

John G. West, “Darwin’s Public Policy: Nineteenth Century Science and the Rise of the American Welfare State,” in The Progressive Revolution, 253–286.

35.

Quoted in Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, 44.

36.

See Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, 30–55.

37.

See Irvin G. Wyllie, who concluded that the “nineteenth century literature of business success . . . took their texts from Christian moralists, not from Darwin and Spencer” (“Social Darwinism and the Businessman,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103, no. 5 [October 1959]: 634; quoted in John G. West, 256).

38.

John G. West, “Darwin’s Public Policy,” 253–286.

39.

For what follows, see generally Gertrud Lenzer’s Introduction to Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), xiv and following.

40.

Harp, Positivist Republic, 13.

41.

Marini, “Theology, Metaphysics, and Positivism,” in Challenges to the American Founding, 166.

42.

Harp, Positivist Republic, 14–18.

43.

Harp. Positivist Republic, xvi.

44.

Harp, Positivist Republic, 146.

45.

Harp, Positivist Republic, 195.

46.

Marini, “Positivism,” 189.

47.

For the religious background of social gospel thought, see Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), especially 25–67.

48.

Mark Noll, History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1992), 305.

49.

Noll, History of Christianity, 306–7.

50.

Phillips, A Kingdom on Earth, 32.

51.

Gamble, War for Righteousness, 25–47. See also Robert T. Handy’s Introduction to The Social Gospel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 3–12.

52.

Phillips. A Kingdom on Earth, 9–10. See also Ronald J. Pestritto, “Making the State into a God: American Progressivism and the Social Gospel,” in Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution: A New Republic, ed. Bradley C. S. Watson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 144–159.

53.

This section relies heavily upon the works of Ronald J. Pestritto, especially his and Atto’s Introduction to American Progressivism, 1–32. See also his book, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (2005) for his interpretation of Wilsonian Progressivism. On Progressivism and administration, see his article, “The Progressive Origins of the Administrative State: Wilson, Goodnow, and Landis,” in Social Philosophy and Policy 24, no. 1 (January 2007): 16–54.

54.

Of course it would be possible to add to this list such ideas as the organic conception of the state or empiricism, but my goal is to concentrate on the truly unifying elements of Progressive thought.

55.

On historical contingency, see Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson. See also Brad Watson’s Living Constitution, Dying Faith, xviii-xix.

56.

See Pestritto’s Introduction to Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 6–11.

57.

Hegel of course taught that the dialectic of history was automatic, but that did not mean every race was foremost in the dialectic. Some peoples and nations were backward and were consequently left behind by history. Forward-looking races needed to stay attuned to the direction and flow of history, and they needed to work to keep themselves in the main current.

58.

Paul Moreno, The American State, 106–112. Examples of this critique of America’s founding order include Charles Beard’s Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), and Carl Becker’s The Declaration of Independence (1922).

59.

See Frank Goodnow, The American Conception of Liberty and Government [1916], excerpted in Pestritto and Atto, 55–64.

60.

See Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1913).

61.

This description of leadership is most clearly represented in the writings of Woodrow Wilson. See Charles Kesler, “Woodrow Wilson and the Statesmanship of Progress,” in Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution: A New Republic, 226–254. See also Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson, 199–220.

62.

Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, 388–89, quoted in Pestritto and Atto, 18.

63.

Pestritto and Atto, American Progressivism, 21–23.

64.

Pestritto and Atto, American Progressivism, 21–23.

65.

Joseph Postell, Bureaucracy in America: The Administrative State’s Challenge to Constitutional Government (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017), 167–206. See also Paul D. Moreno, The Bureaucrat Kings: The Origins and Underpinnings of America’s Bureaucratic State (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017), 61–81.

66.

Herbert Croly synthesized such elements, explaining in the New Republic that “by means of executive leadership, expert administrative independence and direct legislation, it [American democracy] will gradually create a new governmental machinery which will be born with the impulse to destroy the two-party system, and will itself be thoroughly and flexibly representative of the underlying purposes and needs of a more social democracy.” Quoted in Stettner, Shaping Modern Liberalism, 115.

67.

Pestritto and Atto, American Progressivism, 18–21. Robert H. Wiebe explains that this bureaucratic element was central to the Progressive ideals, even the unifying element of Progressive thought. See Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920, 170–195.

68.

Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson, 221–252. See Woodrow Wilson’s essay, “The Study of Administration,” in Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 2 (July 1887): 197–222.

69.

For the founding-era conception of republican self-government, as opposed to democratic, see Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, especially the defense of the place of faction and of constitutional representation through Congress in papers 10, 52–67. The Federalist, ed. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001), 42–49, 272–351.

70.

Alfred H. Kelly, Winfred A. Harbison, and Herman Belz, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 7th ed. (New York: Norton, 1991), 428–429.

71.

Moreno, The American State, 86–95. See also Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 410–411.

72.

Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 413. In United States v. Grimaud (1911), the Court decided that “the authority to make administrative rules is not a delegation of legislative power” simply because the violation of administrative rules is legally punishable. Such a decision struck at the heart of the separation of powers doctrine of the U.S. Constitution. See Gary Lawson, “The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State,” Harvard Law Review 107, no. 6 (April, 1994): 1231–1254.

73.

See The Federalist, especially no. 32 (in Carey and McClellan, eds., 154–157)

74.

Paul Moreno, The American State, 70–85.

75.

See generally Moreno, American State, 138–162. See also Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 415–419.

76.

William O’Neill, Progressive Years, 27–28. O’Neill observes that TR lent verbal support to many further reforms to regulate working hours for women and children while he was president, but that he did little to move such bills through Congress during the years of 1901–1909. See O’Neill, 44.

77.

Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 420.

78.

Moreno, American State, 140–146. See also Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 415–423. The Budget Bureau only came into effect under President Harding, but it certainly belongs to the Progressive trend of rationalizing the government budgeting process.

79.

Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 117–144.

80.

This is in part why the infamous “Brandeis brief” of 1907 was so revolutionary—focusing on sociological factors rather than the logic of the law marked the beginning of the transformation of the legal profession. See Watson, Living Constitution, 121–130, on Brandeis’s influence in the Muller decision and his role after 1916 on the Supreme Court.