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The Frank P. Walsh statement is part of his essay,
“Labor’s Day,” in American
Federationist (a publication of the American
Federation of Labor) 25 (Oct. 1918): 895, 897. Also helpful on the
U.S. Industrial Relations Commission are Allen Davis, “The Campaign
for the Industrial Relations Commission, 1911–1913,” Mid-America 45 (Oct. 1963): 211–28; the
obituary of Walsh in the New York
Times, May 3, 1939; and Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive
Movement, The Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern
Liberalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2006), esp. chap. 7.
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The Elizabeth Sanders quotation is in her book, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the
American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999), 169. The later quotation is on 158. Sanders’
book articulates the thesis that Progressivism’s legislative muscle
lay in agrarian parts of the country. Party affiliation—Populist,
Democratic, or insurgent Republican—was less important than
connections to the agrarian economy and the concentration of
political strength in such districts. In urban or mixed districts,
she argues, the interests of labor (the natural ally of agrarians)
were diluted by competing forces. Close students may want to know
that Sanders’ interpretation is recent and, to me, convincingly
solves the problem of interparty, intersectional, urban and rural support for Progressivism.
Earlier interpretations such as Robert Wiebe’s widely read The Search for Order (1967) stress
reformers’ search for social control of both the new industrial
capitalism and the mass of potentially radical people. Others such
as Martin Sklar had written in the 1960s, from a Marxist
perspective, that Progressive-era reform was a cover for business
interests. This became known as the “corporate-liberal”
interpretation. In The Corporate
Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916
(1988), Sklar explored more subtly and in more detail how capitalism
moved “from the competitive to the corporate stage of its
development” by 1914.
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The Eric Rauchway quotation on Bryanites: in “Armchair
Warriors,” Reviews in American
History 32 (2004): 228. For a comprehensive survey of
wealth distribution comparing the Gilded Age and Progressivism with
the present, see Louis Uchitelle, “The Richest of the Rich, Proud of
a New Gilded Age,” New York
Times, July 15, 2007, and supportive letters to the
editor, July 17, 2007. One of the few contemporary treatments is
Willford Isbell King, Income in the United
States, Its Amount and Distribution, 1909–1919 (New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., for the National Bureau of Economic
Research, 1921-22), 146.
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Bryan’s speech in Congress, “An Income Tax,” given
Jan. 30, 1894, may be found in Speeches of
William Jennings Bryan, rev. and arranged by Himself, with a
Biographical Introduction by Mary Baird Bryan, His
Wife (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1913),
I:159–79. Quotations here are from 161, 163–65, and
174.
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For E. R. A. Seligman, see his The Income Tax: A Study of the History, Theory, and Practice of
Income Taxation at Home and Abroad (1911; 2d ed., New
York: Macmillan, 1914), 33, 640. The Hartford Courant quote appears in John D. Buenker,
“The Ratifi cation of the Federal Income Tax Amendment,” Cato Journal 1 (spring 1981):
221-22.
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Biographies of Wilson include H. W. Brands, Woodrow Wilson (New York: Times Books,
2003) and John Milton Cooper, The Warrior
and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1983).
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“divided heart on race” of TR: Kathleen Dalton’s phrase,
in Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous
Life, 92.
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Wilson, “ours is a program of liberty,” is in Lewis L.
Gould, Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912
Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008), 164. Wilson explained
his program in The New Freedom: A Call for
the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1913).
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The commentator on socialism is David J. O’Brien, “A Vote
for Socialism: Like Christianity, It’s Never Been Tried.” In
Commonweal, July 18, 2008,
18.
