Lessons from the First Progressive Movement

excerpted from the book

The New Progressive Era

Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy

by Peter Levine

Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, paper

pxi
"An American," Walter Lippmann wrote in 1921, "will endure almost any insult except the charge that he is not "progressive." Since the word sounded unequivocally positive during the Progressive Era, practically everyone embraced it. Thus, for example, the founders of the NAACP were self-styled progressives, but so were many of the white supremacists who perfected racial apartheid in the South. The urban reformers who replaced popularly elected officials with technical experts called themselves progressives-but so did the activists who enhanced direct democracy by winning the vote for women, the popular election of senators, and initiative, referendum, and recall provisions. Some progressives wanted to replace voluntary, private associations with government bureaucracies, but others founded independent organizations and defended them against the state.

Since racists and liberals, elitists and populists, technocrats and democrats all called themselves "progressives," the term often meant nothing more specific than an enthusiasm for change.

What, then, defined La Follette's version of Progressivism? "It can be expressed in a single sentence," he told the Republican National Convention in 1910; and then (characteristically) he offered a whole paragraph:

The will of the people shall be the law of the land. Constitutions, statutes, and all the complex details of government are but instruments to carry out the will of the people, and when they fail-when constitutions and statutes and all of the agencies employed to execute statutes and constitutions fail-they must be changed to carry out and express the well formulated judgment and the will of the people. For over all and above all, and greater than all, and expressing the supreme sovereignty of all, are the people. "

pxii
Although La Follette proposed no general theory to explain how social evils arose or how they might be remedied, he did have specific ideas about democracy. In a reformed system, he thought, leaders would debate and act openly, overseen by a public composed of citizens who were politically equal. Neither private money, nor restrictions on voting, nor powerful lobbies, nor a biased press, nor political machines, nor an obstructive judiciary would dilute the principle of one-person, one-vote. Nor would popular government be hampered by any economic ideology with which the voters disagreed. For example, to those who said that the unregulated free market was "natural" (and therefore beyond criticism), La Follette replied that only the people, expressing their will democratically, were sovereign-so they could act however they chose.

La Follette championed popular sovereignty, but he did not believe that every position supported by an electoral majority necessarily represented the people's "well formulated judgment." The government had to be open and fair, but citizens had a corresponding responsibility to act cooperatively and wisely: otherwise, they would forfeit their legitimacy. The surest way for voters to form wise judgments, La Follette thought, was for them to deliberate together about public affairs. He therefore supported a variety of practical measures to increase the quantity, quality, and inclusiveness of public deliberation.

The core of La Follette's Progressivism, in short, was a belief in fair, deliberative democracy. Political reform came before social action. To reform politics meant to improve both the fairness of political institutions and the quality of public dialogue.

p5
Theodore Roosevelt

"I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of modern civilization; but I believe that they should be so supervised and regulated that they shall act for the interest of the community as a whole."

p6
As well as seeking the vote for all adult Americans, Progressives also sought to extend the principle of representative democracy to primary elections and party conventions, where national policy often originated. Once an election was over, they wanted politicians to remain accountable to voters and not to wealthy interests. Hence they favored campaign-finance reform, conflict-of-interest rules, and lobby regulation; and they tried to prevent public officials from receiving private gifts or income. Congress passed campaign-finance legislation in 1907, 1910 1911, and 1925, forbidding contributions from banks and corporations, requiring disclosure, and establishing spending limits. Especially after hostile courts had reviewed these laws, they were full of loopholes and lacked enforcement mechanisms; but stronger statutes passed in some states. To ensure that voters would be able to assess the performance of their elected representatives, Progressives also fought for press freedom, open-meeting laws, and roll-call votes. And-in case politicians still violated the voters' will-they favored initiative, referendum, and recall provisions to enhance direct democracy.

La Follette's program in Wisconsin was especially sweeping. At his urging, the legislature restricted campaign contributions and forced the railroads to end their tradition of giving politicians free passes. Lobbyists were required to register and forbidden to have any private contact with legislators; if they communicated with elected officials in writing, they had to file copies in a public office, "so that any citizen or body of citizens shall have the opportunity, if they desire, to answer such arguments." Wisconsin also passed initiative and referendum provisions to give its citizens more direct control over policy.

In 1910, William Allen White wrote:

to have told the campaign managers of '84 or '88 that within a quarter of a century the whole nation would be voting by secret ballot, the candidates nominated in two-thirds of the American states by a direct vote of the people, without the intervention of conventions or caucuses, and that further than that every dollar spent by a candidate or by a party committee would have to be publicly accounted for, would have set . . . the managers of those days to cackling in derision until they were black in the face....

By making the party a legalized state institution, by paying for the party primaries with state taxes, by requiring candidates at primaries to file their expense accounts and a list of their contributors (as is done in some states), by limiting the amount to be spent (as is done in certain states), and by guaranteeing a secret vote and a fair count, the state has broken the power of money in politics. Capital is not eliminated from politics, but it is hampered and circumscribed, and is not the dominant force it was ten years ago. lt is safe to say that the degree of divorce between business and politics will be absolute within a few years.

The Progressives' obsession with corruption has been criticized by those who believe that bribes, gifts, campaign contributions, and lobbying efforts are not the most important ways for corporations to gain power. These critics claim that the ) government is "structurally dependent" on the market to produce jobs and wealth, so politicians will discriminate in favor of moneyed interests as long as we have a capitalist economy. This argument was implicit in works like Beard's J Economic Basis of Politics (1916), with its dictum that, "in the absence of military force, political power naturally and necessarily goes into the hands which hold the property." As far as I can tell, the original Progressives did not respond effectively to Beard's hypothesis, but the recent literature is illuminating. Therefore, I will consider the structural-dependence thesis while outlining a modern Progressive agenda (see chapter 4). ,~ In addition to promoting procedural reforms, the Progressives sometimes argued that extremes of wealth and poverty were inherently bad for democracy. Thus, for instance, the National Child Labor Committee worked to reform conditions in Southern cotton mill towns, arguing that these were "the poorest place[s] in the world for training the citizens of a democracy." Certain levels of income, education, and leisure, it seemed, were necessary for full and active citizenship. Consequently, democratic values might require economic reform to bring everyone to a baseline level of affluence. Meanwhile, almost every Progressive book, article, letter, and speech contained some variation of the theme here expressed by Herbert Croly: "the prevailing abuses and sins, which have made reform necessary, are all of them associated with the prodigious concentration of wealth, and of the power exercised by wealth, in the hands of a few men." From an economic point of view, Croly explained, "I am far from believing that this concentration is wholly an undesirable thing." It might be efficient to put wealth in the hands of large corporations and skilled capitalists. The danger was not economic but political: people who controlled extraordinary amounts of capital might also :) gain disproportionate political power, thus endangering democracy. For this reason, Progressives often advocated modest economic changes, such as the minimum wage and antitrust laws, as integral parts of political reform. They also stood prepared to accept more radical changes, should these emerge from a reformed political system.

p8
Citizens who clearly and permanently fall outside of a democratic majority might fare just as well under a monarchy.

p9

... often we lack opinions until we talk to other people... Without talking and listening (or reading and writing), we may never formulate clear, ordered positions, and then no democratic government can possibly implement our wishes... Thus, politics is not simply a matter of aggregating private preferences ... it is a process of generating and shaping opinions.

p9
Walter Lippmann

We go into a polling booth and mark a cross on a piece of paper for one of two, or perhaps three or four names. Have we expressed our thoughts on the public policy of the United States? Presumably we have a number of thoughts on this and that with many buts and ifs and ors. Surely the cross on a piece of paper does not express them. It would take hours to express our thoughts, and calling a vote the expression of our mind is an empty fiction.

p10
... a democracy can hardly function without public conversation. If leaders want to know what "the people want," they cannot simply look at votes and polls; they also have to listen to public discourse. Meanwhile, if we citizens are to develop views that are practical, specific, and coherent enough for our government to represent, we must talk among ourselves. Even then, our conversations may be ill-informed, superficial, or narrow, and the outcomes may be foolish or unjust. Thus we should be concerned about the quality, not just the amount, of political discussion.

Dewey aptly summarized the Progressives' view of majority rule:

The ballot is, as often said, a substitute for bullets. But what is more significant is that counting of heads compels prior recourse to methods of discussion, consultation, and persuasion, while the essence of appeal to force is to cut short resort to such methods. Majority rule, just as majority rule, is as foolish as its critics charge it with being. But it is never merely majority rule.... The strongest point to be made in behalf of even such rudimentary political forms as democracy has already attained, popular voting, majority rule and so on, is that to some extent they involve a consultation and discussion which uncover social needs and troubles.

When politicians want to appear democratic and friendly to "the common people," they often assert that average Americans automatically know what is the best policy for their country. But citizens usually disagree among themselves about important political issues. Besides, it is patronizing-and in most cases, insincere-to applaud whatever opinions a majority of people happen to hold at a particular instant. An opinion is not worth much unless the people who express it have informed themselves about the issue and reflected carefully, and unless they are willing to discuss their views with open mind. In our private lives, we do not automatically assent to majority opinion; and is no reason for us to do so in public affairs. The soul of democracy is not a reflex admiration for popular opinion but rather a belief that all citizens can deliberate about public policy. But very few of us in any class or community actually discharge this fundamental civic duty. Dewey wrote: "The essential need, in other words, is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public." Anyone who is truly committed to democracy should be dissatisfied with standards of civic responsibility and competence-but hopeful that they can be improved.

Deliberative democracy thus steers a safe course between two serious errors. One is to endorse whatever the majority appears to say through polls, votes, or market decisions. The other is to try to impose one's own views on the public. Some moral positions (for example, abhorrence of torture) are clearly right and are as important as democracy itself. Nevertheless, it would a mistake to dictate these positions, even if one were king for the day. Unless moral principles enjoy broad public support, they will not last for long or be reliably enforced. Moreover, a political system that is subject to manipulation by an honorable minority can also be manipulated by a selfish or misguided few. Thus we should always seek deliberative public support for our views, even the ones that seem obviously right. Furthermore, as soon as we move away from clear moral issues and start making everyday decisions about economic and social policy, public discussion becomes indispensable. To make good policy, we need information about everyone's needs, goals, and capacities, and most people are the best judges of their own situations.

p11
Woodrow Wilson

"The whole purpose of democracy, is that we may hold counsel with one another.... For only as men are brought into counsel, and state their own needs and interests, can the general interests of a great people be compounded into a policy that will be suitable to all."

p13
Louis Brandeis

"Those who won our independence believed that . . . the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary; . . . that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government."

p13
Dewey defined "the democratic method" as "persuasion through public discussion carried on not only in legislative halls, but in the press, private conversations, and public assemblies." In his view, as many people as possible should participate.

If the public deliberates, then the votes that people cast each November will be relatively wise. Not only will citizens choose relatively good policies at the polls, but they will be able to select skilled deliberators to represent them in the legislatures, for they will have personal experience with deliberation.

p14
WHAT THE PROGRESSIVES DID TO ENCOURAGE DELIBERATION

In 1914, Margaret Woodrow Wilson, the president's daughter, wrote that the mass of citizens were still too disorganized to reach deliberative judgments. "No wonder that [politicians] do not always know what the people want. Let us get together so that we may tell them. All of our representatives are organized into deliberative bodies. We, whom they represent, ought also to be organized for deliberation. When this happens, and then only, shall we vote intelligently." This was standard Progressive rhetoric: La Follette printed it on the front page of his Weekly. Dewey made the same point a few years later, when he wrote, "The government, officials and their activities, are plainly with us.... But where is the public which these officials are supposed to represent?" Dewey denied that there were "pueblos" wherever there were human populations. On the contrary "opinions and beliefs concerning the public presuppose effective and organized inquiry.... For public opinion is judgment which is formed and entertained by those who constitute the public and is about public affairs. Each of the two phases imposes for its realization conditions hard to meet."

Dewey meant, I think, that authentic public judgment required both broad participation and a serious focus on matters of social and political importance. It was not enough for some people to discuss politics, nor for everyone to talk together: everyone had to talk together about politics. Although public judgment could only emerge under these stringent conditions, the Progressives set out to encourage it.

Margaret Wilson, for example, favored making public school buildings available to informal social clubs of all kinds. As strangers gathered in such public settings, they could talk together about social and political issues. This idea had originated with Mary Parker Follett, a Boston Progressive, around 1900. (Parker later developed a powerful theory of deliberation, arguing that it was preferable to both conflict and compromise, because it alone could reveal unforeseen solutions that would benefit all parties.)43 By 1911, a National Community Center Association worked to turn schools into social venues, and all three of the 1912 presidential candidates endorsed the idea. On the campaign trail, Wilson said, "why not insist everywhere that [school buildings] be used as places of discussion, such as of old took place in the town-meetings to which everyone went and where every public officer was freely called to account? The schoolhouse, which belongs to all of us, is a natural place in which to gather to consult over our common affairs."

Meanwhile, some settlement houses supported diverse social and cultural clubs in their neighborhoods. Mary Simkhovitch, the Progressive founder of the Greenwich Settlement in New York City, explained that such clubs fostered cooperation and discussion. "The object of clubs," she wrote, "is training in self-government and in the art of group accomplishment." She conceded that "organization alone does not produce harmony. A man may enjoy singing in the same chorus with a man he must oppose when it comes to election time." However, participating in a chorus would at least encourage people to talk about issues; they might also develop the mutual trust upon which a lasting consensus could be built. She concluded: "conflicts tend to dissolve also in the light of a more civilized and searching understanding." In the 1990s, scholars have argued that common activities create "social capital"-habits of trust, cooperation, communication, and discussion that are essential to democracy. The Progressives anticipated this argument.

People occasionally talk about public issues when they meet on the street, but lasting, structured discussions can only occur within the institutions of "civil society"-schools, clubs, community associations, journals, and civic groups. One contributor to La Follette's Weekly stressed "the necessity of citizenship organization for deliberation as the prerequisite to voting." In order to become good citizens, people did not primarily need information-handed down from above- but rather opportunities to communicate among themselves. If they did talk about political issues, then they would become active and eager consumers of information. Voluntary associations, according to this writer, offered "equipment whereby citizens may go to school to each other in preparation for the examination of our intelligence at the ballot box."

Jane Addams recalled the Working People's Social Science Club that used to meet at Hull-House in Chicago during the 1890s:

At eight o'clock every Wednesday night the secretary called to order from forty to one hundred people; a chairman for the evening was elected, a speaker was introduced who was allowed to talk until nine o'clock; his subject was then thrown open to discussion and a lively debate ensued until ten o'clock, at which hour the meeting was declared adjourned. The enthusiasm of this club seldom lagged. Its zest for discussion was unceasing, and any attempt to turn it into a study or reading club always met with the strong disapprobation of the members.

Immigrant laborers organized these meetings, but Addams (who called herself a Progressive after 1912) gave them space at Hull-House and personally participated in their deliberations. At about the same time, rural Progressives encouraged the Chautauqua movement, a national program of educational meetings and discussions that were organized for-and by-farmers. La Follette called Chautauquas "truly an educational force in the life of the country," because participants "not only listen to, but also they demand, the serious discussion of public questions." "The composite judgment," he explained, "is always safer and wiser and stronger and more unselfish than the judgment of any one individual mind."' Putting these ideas into practice, La Follette personally attended at least 300 Chautauqua conventions, at which a total of 240,000 people were present.

Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin (a Progressive redoubt) formed a Department of Debating and Public Discussion that lent 80,000 background papers every year to citizens who wanted to discuss such topics as the income tax, women's suffrage, and simplified spelling. La Follette's Weekly endorsed the role of "Civic Secretary" in small Midwestern cities; this person typically organized public discussions, maintained a file of newspaper clippings, and coordinated the activities of local civic groups.

When women won the federal franchise in 192O, the leading suffragists, most of whom were self-described Progressives, immediately tried to encourage deliberative citizenship. The mere right to vote was not enough, they thought; women would also have to learn how to discuss public policy. Along these lines, the new League of Women Voters devised an "experiment in political education"- discussion groups that were open to all citizens. The League's first president, Belle Sherwin, believed (according to a modern historian) that "the experience of viewing all sides of public issues would develop habits of fairness and sagacity as well as the capacity to perceive relationships; individuals would be enabled to do their own thinking and possess their own viewpoints, would be inducted into the civil culture by internalizing a self-conception as participants within the larger society."

For similar reasons, the Progressives introduced deliberation into public school classrooms. School newspapers and student governments were largely invented by Progressive reformers, who also devised a new kind of civic education that aimed to teach students how to talk freely and rationally about politics. For example, the State of Wisconsin encouraged public schools to host political discussions for their communities, and some 500 schools had joined this effort by 1915. The same year, the U.S. Bureau of Education officially endorsed an approach called "community civics," which stressed public discussion.

p17
... public discussion can be distorted by capitalism, for the mass media ignore some voices, paid advertising influences public opinion, and the rich enjoy high status.

p23
At the peak of La Follette's power, consumer-consciousness was the dominant force in American politics, campaigns were national debates about the common good, and Progressives often won. But the movement for consumers and taxpayers could not sustain its momentum for long. It was rational for special interests to spend money gaining information and leverage on specific issues that mattered greatly to them. But the average citizen would see too small a return from such an investment, especially since each citizen could expect most other people to remain apathetic. It made much more sense either to ignore politics altogether or to join a narrow, organized faction. Here, then, was another dilemma: La Follette stood for diffuse public interests that had a natural disadvantage against organized special interests.

While he was president, Theodore Roosevelt observed that consumers never complained about the cost of railroad travel, although firms complained about freight charges-so passengers must not mind the price of their tickets. But La Follette better understood the cause of the consumer's silence: "He cannot organize and come before a legislative committee and make himself heard.... Nor has he the means of knowing, when he buys his coal, his supplies, his food, his lumber, his hardware, how much the price he has to pay is due to excessive freight charges." Industries possessed relevant information and the means to lobby effectively on specific issues; but taxpayers and consumers had no such advantages. In 1914, La Follette wrote in his magazine: "It is impossible for the people to maintain perfect organization in mass. They are often taken unawares and are liable to lose at one stroke the achievements of years of effort."

Thus La Follette well understood the advantages enjoyed by well-organized, well-financed factions in a complex, pluralist society: "Their resources are inexhaustible. Their efforts never relax. Their political methods are insidious." Nevertheless, he placed hope in democratic institutions that had popular support, for "the united power of the people expressed directly through the ballot can overthrow the enemy.'' But it was difficult to construct a popular majority when people identified with their own professions, economic interests, and ethnic and cultural groups. After the First World War, as Americans discovered that political action by narrow factions was particularly effective, they signed up to join one new pressure group or another, from the National Association of Manufacturers to the American Federation of Labor, from the NAACP to the KKK. By 1924, most Americans saw themselves as mine workers or Daughters of the American l Revolution, as Irish Catholics or steel executives-but not primarily as citizens and taxpayers.

p31
The fact is that Progressives and other democratic reformers faced a genuine dilemma. They saw that any democracy worthy of the name had to take active measures to regulate the economy and to protect the environment. Otherwise, the public would cede its sovereignty to private corporations. Moreover, popular control could not be exercised exclusively at the neighborhood or township level. The only effective counterweights to huge corporations were large political units, such as city and state administrations or even the federal government. Indeed, issues like unemployment and the depletion of natural resources had to be addressed on a national scale, because the economy was national. As La Follette said, "No power other than the government itself is equal to that of these industrial combinations." But large-scale regulation, oversight, and enforcement required a professional government work force.

The New Progressive Era

Index of Website

Home Page