This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances from major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks. Learn more about this landmark celebration at America250.org. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
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Bill McClay. Although populist William Jennings Bryan would lose the election to William McKinley, he'd start a revolution that would come to be known as the Progressive Movement. Let's get into this story. Take it away, Bill. It turns out that Bryan won more votes, 6.5 million, than any candidate in American history.
Except for McKinley's performance that year. The fact was, there was little reason to believe this Reform Party was some kind of blip. But to gain enough traction to win the presidency, The reform torch would have to be taken up by the progressive movement, which included a more middle class and professional dimension. The progressive movement was filled with educated Americans, civic-minded Americans, to boot, who were religious and quite earnest, morally speaking. They didn't just wish to address poverty in the poor, but to change the governance and systems that brought about that poverty.
And by doing so, they would restore democracy itself. They supported real changes in hope of restoring what they believed were the classic American values. older value. The movement started not at the national level, but at the local level. In the city of Toledo, Ohio, for example, Samuel Golden Rule, Jones, a self-made millionaire and Christian socialist.
created free kindergartens, public parks and baths, and the eight hour work day, all very popular reforms. In Cleveland, Mayor Tom Johnson was an even bolder reformer than his Toledo counterpart. One popular fight for reformers was over control of electricity and water. These reformers wanted household essentials like that controlled by public rather than private interests. By 1950, nearly two-thirds of cities had publicly owned water systems, and many had public transportation too, along with electricity.
This was to the progressive mindset a nod to what they called the public interest. The public interest, set apart by the self-interest. The idea was simple: pursuit of the public interest was the highest ideal. And the chief concern of government. This belief was predicated on the progressive distrust of politics itself.
Which they believed was a never-ending series of wheeling and dealing with business and private interests and manifested in vote trading, or worse, vote buying. What progressives preferred was an expert managerial class to run the government for its own sake and protection, with the added benefit that they, the experts, would have no outside conflicts of interest getting in their way to support the public interest. Those experts could proceed in a more scientific and disinterested way. due to their expertise. All this sprang the creation of the city manager system of government, with the city of Dayton, Ohio, leading the charge.
What that looked like was quite simple. An unelected professional city manager with the proper credentials generally gained in the universities was hired by the city council to run the many city departments, all of whom would report not to the city council. but to the city manager, the disinterested expert himself. This system would, by 1923, be in place in more than 300 cities across the country in one form or another. Changes were about to happen in state governments as more governors battled with powerful corporate interests such as the railroads.
Progressives looked to usher in changes in how laws were made, introducing ideas like the initiative. Which would allow citizens to end-run the legislature in passing laws. And then there was a referendum, which gave the people the power to overrule their legislatures. And last but not least, The party primary process. would strip party bosses, presumably, of their power.
This all showcased a real paradox at the heart of progressive thinking. On the one hand, they were quite skeptical of democratic political institutions, and looked favorably on the ideas of experts and professionals. wherever possible. On the other hand, they had real faith in the people and in the people's ability to make positive changes reflecting the public interest. In short, they had great faith in democracy, but much less faith in democratic institutions.
In some places, these new ways of thinking about government worked. In Wisconsin, Robert LaFollett would give birth to what would be called the Wisconsin idea. In which government, informed by the best and latest research at their big local university, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, would create and put into action the very best thoughtful policies based on science, the science of government, so to speak. Rather than the offerings or demands of political pressure groups, The hope ideally would be that this process of governance would produce better government and better delivery of government services. And weed out government corruption.
If there was a great example of this kind of government, it was Wisconsin. But there were cracks in this system. Progressives, it turns out, believed human beings were basically good and that evil was a product of bad social systems. They didn't subscribe to the idea that there could be something wrong or unchangeable or even sinful deep within the soul of the individual. They also refuted the notion that problems in governance and government.
could be solved by a system of competition in which ambitious people would be countered by other ambitions and interests. This had been a deeply and longly held American view, tracing back to James Madison and the Constitution, which is structured around just such a system of competition. Correction would be found and improvement discovered through science and the expert class. Progressives believed this. They believed there was a form of social intelligence that would properly order the affairs of human beings and citizens.
And that was the problem. There was an arrogance underlying the progressive view, a form of paternalism that actually could be shocking, a form of hubris which could have tragic consequences. Progressives had little understanding or concern for the plight, for instance, of racial minorities or religious minorities. And they failed to see that many immigrants tended to have larger families And this was a deep and genuine cultural norm, not some kind of social problem. It sometimes became impossible to distinguish between the reformers' desire to uplift the people they serve.
and their desire to remold and reshape them more to their liking. A shocking number of progressives came to see real merits in a growing scientific field. Eugenics. A theory that pushed for human engineering that would all but end what progressives deemed to be undesirables from the general population.
So there was a battle between the scientific wing of progressivism and the religious wing. Big conflicts and bigger questions emerged. How could one square the purifying elements of progressivism? With the Christian ethos that respects each and every human life as equal. equal under the law and equally made in the image of God.
How could this scientific efficiency gospel on the workplace front, how could that be squared with the Christian notions of the dignity of all work? And of the worker, how could progressives hold these almost diametrically opposed value systems together? And there's one more important point here. These progressives were not radical socialists or communists. There was no desire to destroy capitalism or private property.
What they instead hoped for was to make capitalism more humane, to soften capitalism's rough edges, and improve such dire necessities as worker safety and satisfaction. Question remained. How to do that? To that question, there were two answers from the progressives. The first is best described as the antitrust method.
give government the power to break up large concentrations of power and wealth, prevent monopolies, keep all good and healthy competition alive, all of which would serve the public interest. The second approach, which we'll call the consolidation method, would accept concentration and bigness. in some businesses, as a necessary evil and even a public good, one that made possible efficiencies based on scale, the kind of scale that delivered better outcomes to consumers. it was better to regulate them. with the public interest in mind.
Both approaches had been adopted in some form or another in the economy. The question was which would come to dominate the reform movement in the years to come, and to some extent today. But one thing was clear. Despite its city and state beginnings, progressivism would need to grow into a national movement, addressing national issues if it were to have any real and lasting impact on the country. Perhaps the biggest lingering question for the progressive movement was the Constitution itself.
Was our founding document still the pillar of our governance and the foundation of American law? Or was the Constitution outdated, not up to the challenges of modern industrial life? These were questions being asked in almost every walk of American life, and sooner or later, they would have to be answered. The Story of Us, the Story of America series with Bill McClay on Our American Stories. Uh This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250.
America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances from major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Learn more about this landmark celebration at America250.org. Flowers fade, cards get tossed, but a personalized song?
That lasts forever. Surprise someone you love with a custom song made just for them with Joybox. Visit joybox.studio to get started on your personalized song today. Don't just say I love you, sing it with Joybox. You ever wonder how far an EV can take you on one charge?
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