Progressive Era

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• 1/22/2023
  

  As the Progressive Era Ideal of Regulation Vanishes, What Will Stop the March of AI?

  by Walter G. Moss

  If capital decides that artificial intelligence is sufficiently profitable to put in charge of driving our cars, writing our essays, or even teaching our history classes, what is left to stop it, even if the products are terrible or even dangerous? 

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• 1/16/2022
  

  New York State's Lessons on Preventing a Crisis of Judicial Legitimacy

  by Bruce W. Dearstyne

  Forceful activism amid rapid social change results in legislation shot down by the most powerful court, leading to calls for sweeping court reform. This was New York State in the early 20th century. How the State Court of Appeals weathered this storm holds lessons for SCOTUS today, if the Justices and their critics care to learn from history.

• 
• 9/26/2021
  

  A House Still Divided (Part 1)

  by Walter G. Moss

  The core of our polarization is a disagreement about what kind of country we will be – one dominated by Christian white men or one, in Frederick Douglass's words, "of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds." 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  9/5/2021
  

  The Recall is a Test: Has California's Direct Democracy Experiment Failed?

  It's difficult to swallow the idea that Progressive era governor Hiram Johnson would have countenanced the idea that the recall system he championed could allow a minority of voters to throw out a governor who recently was elected with 62 percent of the votes cast.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/13/2021
  

  The Trouble With the Gavin Newsom Recall

  by Ron Brownstein

  California's Recall law can allow a relatively small number of petitioners to initiate a recall of an elected official, and for that official to be removed even if he or she gets more votes than any alternative candidate. This isn't what the Progressive Era architects of the law intended, says San Jose State historian Glen Gendzel. 

• 
• 12/13/2020
  

  Review of Robert Putnam’s "The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again"

  by Walter G. Moss

  Robert Putnam's book on the "Great Divergence" toward economic inequality, political polarization and social fragmentation contains ample historical generalization, but asks big questions that it will be worth historians' time to engage. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/29/2020
  

  Trump Venerates Teddy Roosevelt, But Roosevelt Would Have Hated Trump

  by David Gessner

  Although Theodore Roosevelt's tendencies toward racism is rightly criticized today, he also was a relentless critic of the power of predatory wealth as the biggest danger to society. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/22/2020
  

  Liberal, Progressive — And Racist? The Sierra Club Faces Its White-Supremacist History

  The Sierra Club isn’t the only organization that is shaking its foundations. Leaders of predominantly white, liberal and progressive groups throughout the field of conservation say they are taking a hard look within their organizations and don’t like what they see.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/10/2020
  

  The Template for Using White Privilege to Fight Racism

  by Nancy C. Unger

  Whiteness enables allies in this struggle to push in ways that African Americans sometimes cannot without disproportionate risk. That was Belle La Follette’s secret — she used white privilege to fight against it.

• 
• 5/31/2020
  

  When the President’s Son-In-Law Truly Was a Great Success

  by Gail Radford

  Treasury Secretary William McAdoo was a presidential son-in-law whose knowledge, experience, and belief in the role of government made him an effective public servant.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/23/2020
  

  Excluding Those in the Sex Industry from Covid-19 Relief is a Mistake

  by Leah LaGrone

  Government needs to back off making moral value judgments shaped by Christian values when it comes to women’s work, and instead to focus on the harsh economic reality facing millions of women. 

• 
• 4/12/2020
  

  Woman Citizen: On This Day in 1920 Helen Hamilton Gardener Became the Highest-Ranking Woman in Federal Government

  by Kimberly A. Hamlin

  Gardener’s historic appointment as U.S. Civil Service Commissioner marked one symbolic step toward the idea that women should be universally recognized as “self- respecting, self- directing human units with brains and bodies sacredly their own.”

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• SOURCE: Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
  4/7/2020
  

  SHGAPE Prizes 2020

  by Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

  Andrew Huebner, Caroline Grego, Alana Toulin and Mark C. Boxell are winners of annual prizes from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 

• 
• 2/2/20
  

  How the South Dominated American Education

  by John Heffron

  An excerpt from John Heffron's The Rise of the South in American Thought and Education: The Rockefeller Years (1902-1917). 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  8/30/19
  

  To rescue democracy, we must revive the reforms of the Progressive Era

  by Ganesh Sitaraman

  The playbook for taming industrial capitalism already exists. It’s the essential starting point for reform today.

• 
• 7/21/19
  

  Jane Addams and Lillian Wald: Imagining Social Justice from the Outside

  by Michael Bronski

  Addams and Wald were women who loved other women and that these relationships – as well as the female friendship networks in which they were involved – were profoundly instrumental to their vision of social justice that changed America. 

• 
• 5-18-14
  

  What We Can Learn from the Progressives Is What Not to Do

  by David Huyssen

  Progressive reforms made material differences in the lives of U.S. workers, but they failed in their larger goal of slowing or reversing inequality.