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The Progressive Movement: 1900-1915
Describes the 15-year period of crusades against social and political abuses by business and the emergence of muckraking journalism
- GenresHistory
185 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
82 people want to read
About the author
Richard Hofstadter
81 books295 followersRichard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual, historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. In the course of his career, Hofstadter became the “iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus” whom twenty-first century scholars continue consulting, because his intellectually engaging books and essays continue to illuminate contemporary history.
His most important works are Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (1944); The American Political Tradition (1948); The Age of Reform (1955); Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), and the essays collected in The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize: in 1956 for The Age of Reform, an unsentimental analysis of the populism movement in the 1890s and the progressive movement of the early 20th century; and in 1964 for the cultural history, Anti-intellectualism in American Life.
Richard Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916 to a German American Lutheran mother and a Polish Jewish father, who died when he was ten. He attended the City Honors School, then studied philosophy and history at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1933, under the diplomatic historian Julius Pratt. As he matured, he culturally identified himself primarily as a Jew, rather than as a Protestant Christian, a stance that eventually may have cost him professorships at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, because of the institutional antisemitism of the 1940s.
As a man of his time, Richard Hofstadter was a Communist, and a member of the Young Communist League at university, and later progressed to Communist Party membership. In 1936, he entered the doctoral program in history at Columbia University, where Merle Curti was demonstrating how to synthesize intellectual, social, and political history based upon secondary sources rather than primary-source archival research. In 1938, he joined the Communist Party of the USA, yet realistically qualified his action: “I join without enthusiasm, but with a sense of obligation.... My fundamental reason for joining is that I don’t like capitalism and want to get rid of it. I am tired of talking.... The party is making a very profound contribution to the radicalization of the American people.... I prefer to go along with it now.” In late 1939, he ended the Communist stage of his life, because of the Soviet–Nazi alliance. He remained anti-capitalist: “I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it.”
In 1942, he earned his doctorate in history and in 1944 published his dissertation Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915, a pithy and commercially successful (200,000 copies) critique of late 19th century American capitalism and those who espoused its ruthless “dog-eat-dog” economic competition and justified themselves by invoking the doctrine of as Social Darwinism, identified with William Graham Sumner. Conservative critics, such as Irwin G. Wylie and Robert C. Bannister, however, disagree with this interpretation.
His most important works are Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (1944); The American Political Tradition (1948); The Age of Reform (1955); Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), and the essays collected in The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize: in 1956 for The Age of Reform, an unsentimental analysis of the populism movement in the 1890s and the progressive movement of the early 20th century; and in 1964 for the cultural history, Anti-intellectualism in American Life.
Richard Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1916 to a German American Lutheran mother and a Polish Jewish father, who died when he was ten. He attended the City Honors School, then studied philosophy and history at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1933, under the diplomatic historian Julius Pratt. As he matured, he culturally identified himself primarily as a Jew, rather than as a Protestant Christian, a stance that eventually may have cost him professorships at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, because of the institutional antisemitism of the 1940s.
As a man of his time, Richard Hofstadter was a Communist, and a member of the Young Communist League at university, and later progressed to Communist Party membership. In 1936, he entered the doctoral program in history at Columbia University, where Merle Curti was demonstrating how to synthesize intellectual, social, and political history based upon secondary sources rather than primary-source archival research. In 1938, he joined the Communist Party of the USA, yet realistically qualified his action: “I join without enthusiasm, but with a sense of obligation.... My fundamental reason for joining is that I don’t like capitalism and want to get rid of it. I am tired of talking.... The party is making a very profound contribution to the radicalization of the American people.... I prefer to go along with it now.” In late 1939, he ended the Communist stage of his life, because of the Soviet–Nazi alliance. He remained anti-capitalist: “I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it.”
In 1942, he earned his doctorate in history and in 1944 published his dissertation Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915, a pithy and commercially successful (200,000 copies) critique of late 19th century American capitalism and those who espoused its ruthless “dog-eat-dog” economic competition and justified themselves by invoking the doctrine of as Social Darwinism, identified with William Graham Sumner. Conservative critics, such as Irwin G. Wylie and Robert C. Bannister, however, disagree with this interpretation.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 1, 2014
My love hate relationship with Richard Hofstadter continues with this collection of documents. The selection of primary sources is useful and enjoyable. Hofstadter's introduction is, as always, a beautifully written argument for New Dealer consensus liberalism that relies on status anxiety for analysis and mind-reading for its narrative coherence. Or maybe heart reading would be a better term for these kind of sentences, "The Progressive movement was dependent upon the civic alertness and combative mood of a great part of the public. Such a mood cannot last forever . . . when the reaction finally came it was sharp and decisive. The war left the people fatigued with Wilsonian idealism and ready for a return to 'normalcy.'"
Missing from explanations like these was the shattering of the American left, over the war, over civil liberty issues, over the Russian Revolution, etc. Were the people fatigued by Wilsonian idealism, or did Wilson's promotion of racial panic, red panic, and crushing attacks on anti-war leftists and the labor movement have some role in the onset of reaction? Did the disappointments of the war and the sick peace have something to do with the tapering of reform enthusiasm? With a few deft sleights of hand these details disappear up Hofstadter's sleeves, because answering them is not interest of the role he wishes Progressive reformers to play in history - moral crusaders who contrast with the un-emotional pragmatism of New Dealers, and publicists of the social and political ills which New Dealers felt they more successfully engaged.
Missing from explanations like these was the shattering of the American left, over the war, over civil liberty issues, over the Russian Revolution, etc. Were the people fatigued by Wilsonian idealism, or did Wilson's promotion of racial panic, red panic, and crushing attacks on anti-war leftists and the labor movement have some role in the onset of reaction? Did the disappointments of the war and the sick peace have something to do with the tapering of reform enthusiasm? With a few deft sleights of hand these details disappear up Hofstadter's sleeves, because answering them is not interest of the role he wishes Progressive reformers to play in history - moral crusaders who contrast with the un-emotional pragmatism of New Dealers, and publicists of the social and political ills which New Dealers felt they more successfully engaged.
Displaying 1 of 1 review