After the Civil War, the challenges presented by a developing industrial economy helped to encourage the American populist and progressive movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The political and economic landscape had changed fundamentally, and many argued that  industrialization, technological innovation, urbanization, big business, and large accumulations of wealth threatened equality of opportunity and the common good. Political corruption only added to the problem. Special interests were said to dominate the political process to the benefit of the few and the detriment of the many. Broadly understood, American populism and progressivism sought to respond to these perceived challenges. The organized populism of late-nineteenth-century America was predominantly an outgrowth of southern and midwestern agrarian movements during the 1870s and 1880s. Cooperative alliances emerged claiming to defend the interests of farmers in the face of railroad expansion, exploitative banking practices, and diminishing crop prices. Of key importance were groups such as the Farmers’ Alliance, the Agricultural Wheel, and the Grange. In the early 1890s, the Farmers’ Alliance and other groups reached out to northeastern labor to form the relatively short-lived Populist (or People’s) Party. Among other things, the new party advocated the regulation and possible public ownership of the railroads, the abolition of national banking, the graduated income tax, reduced tariffs, abandoning the gold standard and embracing free silver, the initiative and referendum, the direct election of U.S. senators, and the eight-hour workday. The Populist Party reached its zenith when it joined with the Democrats to nominate William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896. While the Democratic Party absorbed Jennings’ defeat and survived, the smaller Populist Party could not, especially when Bryan lost again in 1900. The Populist Party collapsed soon afterward. Various strands of the party were absorbed into other elements of the political landscape, among them an emerging movement we now call progressivism. The American progressive movement lasted roughly from the early 1890s to the early 1920s, encompassing much more than the political party that sprang up around Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Yet, as with many such “movements,” it  is difficult to reduce progressivism to a single defining concept or motivation. Among turn-of-the century progressives we find a hodgepodge of political and intellectual strains. Under the tent of progressivism one could find the remnants of the populist agrarians, a variety of Christian social activists, temperance advocates and suffragists, labor and industrial reformers, and university Ph.D.s in philosophy and the new behavioral and social sciences, just to name a few. Nevertheless, we might see in the movement some common themes, perhaps the most significant of which resides in the name attached to it—“progressivism.” It might seem obvious, but one key element uniting many of these reformers, politicians, and intellectuals was their shared embrace of the doctrine of Progress with a capital “P.” The particular engine of that progress, be it the internal dynamics of history itself or some notion of biological or social evolution, varied among thinkers. We might say, however, that a progressive is someone who likely adheres to some notion that the human condition, and the human being, are improving, developing, or evolving over time. Through social, political, and economic reform, we not only participate in that progress but might help speed it along. As the “ism” in the name suggests, progressivism is an ideology of progress. Distinguished from philosophy, which contemplates truth for its own sake, ideology tends to investigate and employ ideas for the expressed purpose of practical, political action, be it preservation or change. Whatever particular concerns might separate the various elements of the progressive movement, they were united in their dedication to changing American life in the name of progress. In general, the progressives sought to reinterpret the American political order by giving the people more direct power over legislation and elected politicians, and in turn, giving administrative experts in state and federal agencies more power to regulate social and economic life. Progressive political scientists such as Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow distinguished politics from administration. Politics might determine the broad ends or purposes of government, but administration, they argued, deals with detailed policy and the particular, technical means by which we secure those ends. Many progressives argued that enlightened administration could be released from the restraints of elections, separation of powers, and checks and balances to help solve political and economic problems. This progressive vision was perhaps best realized a few years later in the form of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Political scientists sometimes refer to this as the rise of the “administrative state.” Key to the progressive project was the attempt to regulate certain sectors of the economy and redistribute wealth and private property in the name of  “social and industrial justice.” But these policies, many progressives argued, would not be enacted as long as the political process was dominated by powerful special interests and as long as the Constitution presented supposedly antidemocratic obstacles to progressive reform (e.g., representation, a difficult method of constitutional amendment, federalism, separation of powers and checks and balances, and a cumbersome legislative process). For many, the progressive project required an explicit, direct criticism of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Progressive thinkers understood that the natural rights and social contract thinking that informed the Declaration of Independence provided the basis for a limited government constitutionalism that often seemed to frustrate contemporary progressive reform. They often claimed that these founding principles had been swept aside in the march of progressive history or by the evolutionary science of Darwinism. Educated men, they asserted, now knew that there were no transhistorical truths or natural rights that applied to all human beings everywhere and always. Liberty ought not to be seen as natural to man, but as a product of history, a convention, or a dispensation of government. Moreover, if human nature and political wisdom can be improved through historical and scientific progress, perhaps limitations on government were no longer necessary. These admittedly abstract ideas had very practical consequences for America’s political development. This document volume deviates from more common “textbook” approaches to the study of populism and progressivism in American history, not only because it focuses on primary sources but because it takes ideas seriously. Indeed, the leaders in these movements asked Americans to think about the proper ends and means of American democracy. This is especially true of the progressive movement. Insofar as it is a reaction to the founding, any real understanding of progressivism requires that we place its ideas and institutions in conversation with those of the Founders. We must weigh, balance, and ultimately judge what among their opinions is most reasonable. Necessarily limited in its scope, the present volume can only contribute to part of that dialogue. The reader might begin to construct that dialogue, however, by pairing this volume with others in the Core Documents series, perhaps those on the American Founding and the Constitutional Convention. I thank David Tucker for editorial advice and assistance. I am also grateful for the advice provided by two anonymous readers. In closing, I should also note that this volume is in part the result of a progressivism course I sometimes teach as a visiting faculty member in Ashland University’s MAHG program (Master of Arts in American History and Government). I wish to thank the students in those classes—most of them teachers—for their conversation, insights, questions, and dedication to learning through primary source documents. I have also benefitted much from other faculty who have taught the course, among them Christopher Burkett, David Alvis, Ronald J. Pestritto, and William Atto. Pestritto and Atto’s excellent and frequently assigned reader on American progressivism originated in their iteration of the course. That volume should be required reading for anyone interested in the principles of American progressivism and is listed among the suggested readings in Appendix C.

Jason R. Jividen

Saint Vincent College