Progressivism: The Social Origins Of The Progressive Reform Movement

The Progressives Theodore Roosevelt once said, “A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.” (“Quotes About Progressivism”). Multiple historians have different interpretations of the social origins of the progressive reform movement. Historians like George Mowry, Joseph Huthmacher, and Robert H. Wiebe all talk about what they think progressivism was. George Mowry has his own viewpoint on what progressivism is. According to Mowry, the Progressives were that of the middle class. Mowry states, “But the great majority of the reformers came from the “solid middle class,” as it was then called with some pride” (Mowry 255). Also, Mowry states that most people made it out to be that a lot of the reformers

The majority of the 400 reformers were lawyers, almost 20% newspaper editors or publishers, and the next biggest group of reformers came from independent manufacturers otherwise known as merchants. The rest of the 400 reformers came from occupations like medicine, banking, and real estate. Mowry gives readers evidence of reformers being of the middle class, and also discredits the wealthy. Mowry said that a statistical study of the sixty wealthy reformers was taken. A majority of those sixty had no steady occupation except for keeping their families money, and only about half of the wealthy reformers went to college. The reformers according to Mowry lived in northern cities by the 1900’s. Religiously speaking, people of Calvin and Knox religion was the majority of the reformers, and Mowry said the leaders of the reforms were recruited from the professional and business classes of society. The middle class reformers were all liberals and struck a lot of conflict with people because they were at sometimes racist towards people, and did not earn the respect of most people. The reformers wanted a large industrial and commercial city economy. This agenda is pretty typical being that most of

Wiebe offers his expertise on progressivism and the progressive movement. According to Wiebe, the progressive movement was led by people of a new middle class who were eager to bring order to the world. The workers worked in the modern cities, and had steady jobs. These people worked in business, labor, agriculture, and other professions. This type of background drove a lot of decisions for a lot of the reforms. Large cities of the East and Midwest and the cultivated land regions of the Midwest and South were the centers of the progressive reform according to Wiebe. The main goal of the reformers was to bring organization and efficiency to a rapidly expanding society. Wiebe explains in this article that the progressive reform is at a state level, and according to Wiebe, the biggest part of progressivism was for the middle class to achieve their agenda through the state government. The reformers reached out to reorder the government by themselves and were denied, but did achieve a great deal after that. The new middle class reformers limited the privileges and duration of franchises, and also modernized tax assessment which was a big step for the reformers. Robert H. Wiebe’s viewpoints said that the progressive reform consisted of new middle class members, and they wanted to organize America to make sure it is