Progressives contended that old ways of governing and doing business did not address modern conditions. In one sense, they inherited the legacy of the Populist movement of the 1890s. Progressives attacked laissez-faire capitalism, and by regulating monopolies they aimed to limit the power of corporate trusts, which they saw as a threat to economic and political democracy. Like the Populists, progressive reformers advocated instituting an income tax as well as a variety of initiatives designed to give citizens a greater say in government. However, progressives differed from Populists in fundamental ways. Perhaps most important, progressives were interested primarily in urban and industrial America, while the Populist movement had emerged in direct response to the problems that plagued rural America in the late nineteenth century.
Progressives were heirs to the intellectual critics of the late nineteenth century who challenged laissez-faire and rejected Herbert Spencer’s doctrine of the “survival of the fittest” (see chapter 16). Pragmatism greatly influenced progressives. Identified with Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James and philosopher John Dewey, pragmatists contended that the meaning of truth did not reside in some absolute doctrine but could only be discovered through experience. Ideas had to be measured by their practical consequences. From these critics, progressives derived a healthy skepticism toward rigid dogma and instead relied on human experience to guide social action.
Reformers also drew inspiration from the religious ideals of the social gospel. In Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), the Protestant clergyman Walter Rauschenbusch of Rochester, New York, urged Christians to embrace the teachings of Jesus on the ethical obligations for social justice and to put these teachings into action by working among the urban poor. Progressive leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot combined the moral fervor of the social gospel with the rationalism of the gospel of scientific efficiency.
Pragmatism and the social gospel appealed to members of the new middle class. Before the Civil War, the middle class had consisted largely of ministers, lawyers, physicians, and small proprietors. The growth of large-scale businesses during the second half of the nineteenth century expanded the middle class, which now included men whose professions grew out of industrialization, such as engineering, corporate management, and social work. The new middle class established organizations to promote their own professional goals and further the public interest. One of the most powerful groups, the American Medical Association (AMA), had originally formed in 1847 but grew rapidly at the turn of the century. The AMA raised qualifications to increase the level of education required to practice medicine, thus limiting access to the profession. Progressivism drew many of its most devoted adherents from this new middle class.