Progressivism and
Social Control

At its core, progressivism was a response to the unsettling forces of rapid industrialization, corporate capitalism, urbanization, and immigration. Although the Populists of the 1890s addressed similar grievances, they focused more on the economic plight of rural Americans than did progressives. Progressivism emerged a decade later during relative prosperity and tended to originate in cities of the East and Midwest. Progressives shared common concerns as consumers, urban residents, and political citizens. In their search for political, economic, social, and cultural order, they supported a variety of reforms, including direct primary elections, conservation measures, the abolition of child labor, and the regulation of trusts, banks, and railroads.

Often forgotten in the history of these reforms is the extent to which progressives sought to control the behavior of people they considered morally deficient and a danger to civilization. Unlike governmental reforms that aimed to expand democracy and political participation, progressives’ efforts to impose their moral values on the rest of the population ignored the wishes of ordinary people. Progressives favored policies that reflected their own brand of middle-class morality and targeted the behavior of immigrants, the working classes, women of questionable character, and nonwhites. What these progressives called moral reform—prohibition, antivice campaigns, immigration restriction—poor and working-class families often saw as an invasion of their privacy and a threat to their way of life. The eugenics movement, which sought to maintain white racial purity through selective breeding, represented the most sinister form of progressive reform. While some eugenicists advocated birth control for the poor, others favored sterilization for those deemed “undesirable.” By 1931 more than thirty states had passed laws allowing the forced sterilization of people with mental or physical disabilities, as well as individuals from socially disadvantaged groups.

As you read the following documents, consider why progressives singled out these groups for attention. Why did many progressives think members of these groups posed a threat to society? What social and moral norms did the progressives who initiated these reforms hope to impose on society as a whole?