When historians fight about Progressivism — and fight they do — they are not just arguing about events of a century ago. They are also struggling over the basic meanings of American democracy. If we could face this fact more directly, and begin to come to grips with the stakes involved, we would not only advance the study of the past but, even in some small and indirect ways, we might improve the practice of our current politics as well. Politicians standing at the center of our nation's democratic dramas recognize, even if often without nuance, the value of reclaiming the Progressive Era. Cheerfully blurring historical distinctions, Bill Clinton announced as he left office, “I always felt that the work we did the last eight years made us the heir of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.” In turn, Al Gore's communications director saw his candidate's “message more in the tradition of progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt, who confronted powerful trusts, rather than the populists who railed broadly against elites of all stripes.” Several years earlier the vice-president's main Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, wrote, “I've always admired the progressives, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who enabled the private sector to flourish but in a way more responsive to national purpose.”

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1537781400000104

Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era: The Politics of Progressive Era Political Historiography

There was once a time in the not too recent past when scholarly discussion and debate over periodization was central to the task of writing and thinking about the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Scholars such as Richard Hofstadter, Robert Wiebe, and Samuel P. Hays applied versions of modernization theory to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to produce what came to be known as the “organizational synthesis.” A competing periodization centered on the rise of the large business corporation appeared in works by Martin Sklar, James Weinstein, and James Livingston. Since the 1970s, however, the new social and cultural history has introduced a multitude of new fields and perspectives. By the 1980s, the perceived fragmentation of history had generated an appeal for “synthesis.” In 1986 Thomas Bender called for new and intelligible narrative plots that would transcend “recent scholarship with its intensive specialization, fragmentation, and preoccupation with groups.” Yet, since then, occasional attempts to synthesize have been stillborn, and for the Gilded Age as well as for the Progressive Era the search for synthesis seems to have reached a cul-de-sac with no exit in sight.

Thoughts on Periodizing the Gilded Age: Capital Accumulation, Society, and Politics, 1873-1898

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International Resources Selected Websites

In the late 1920s and early 1930s the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, fueled largely by a deal with General Motors' international operations, opened thirty-four branch offices in Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, India, Australia, and South America. The overseas branches allowed the agency to sharpen its methods of quantitative research. They also enabled J. Walter Thompson to establish lasting understandings of European markets that proved beneficial for its long-term health.

Putting Foreign Consumers on the Map: J. Walter Thompson's Struggle with General Motors' International Advertising Account in the 1920s

Toward a History of Cultural Economy

The history of the United States is in crucial respects the history of a developing country, not only in its transition from agricultural and commercial colonies to an industrial nation, but in modern times and the foreseeable future as well. The seven studies in this book, first published in 1992, are primarily concerned with the United States as a developing country in the early twentieth century, evolving from a competitive stage of capitalism to a corporate stage, and from an industrial to a 'postindustrial' society. The chapters treat the emergence and early phases of corporate capitalism and their implications for domestic affairs and foreign relations, the origins and character of corporate liberalism, the pivotal role of Woodrow Wilson in these areas, and the emergence of postindustrial trends. They also explore some critical linkages among economic, political, and cultural developments, in tracing parallels among Henry Adams in the Progressive Era, the 'Young Intellectuals' of the twenties, and the New Left in the sixties.

Martin J. Sklar

Papers

The United States as a Developing Country: Studies in U.S. History in the Progressive Era and the 1920s