McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870 – 1920. New York: Oxford, 2003.

Summary
Falling within the unitary tradition, McGerr’s analysis attempts to “shift the conventional narrative” to include the progressives’ extrapolitical efforts to transform and reshape America and Americans along the lines of the Middle Class image.[1] “Progressivism,” McGerr contends, emerged out of the Victorian Middle-Class, who found themselves stuck between the antagonisms of the working class and what he calls the “upper ten.” The strikes and the conflicts between the rich and the poor had left Middle-Class Victorians in “no-man’s land.” Combined with domestic changes in the Victorian home, such as the elimination of the double standard, easing women’s domestic burdens, and increasing their public opportunities, this unique position “freed and even compelled Victorians to turn outward to engage other Americans over issues of personal behavior,” and formulate a political and social agenda forkl lAmerican society.[2] The Middle-class advocated a philosophy that emphasized association and social solidarity and replaced individualism with state power. It became, McGerr argues, an ideology of the “Radical center,” or more appropriately, a progressive ideology. “By the end of the 1890s,” McGerr argues, “the middle class had not only rejected its longstanding individualism; it had also adopted a new “creed, the will to use association and the state to end class conflicts and the other problems of industrial capitalism.”[3] This “remarkable reworking of middle-class ideology” fomented a “bold determination to take on some of the most basic and intractable issues of human existence.”[4] McGerr examines what he sees to be the four quintessential progressive battles: to change other people, to end class conflict, to control big business, and to segregate society.[5] It is the boldness of the progressive reforms, McGerr ultimately claims, that not only led to the demise of the Progressive Movement but also set “boundaries” around American political and social ambitions throughout the 20th century. “We have been scaling back our expectations,” McGerr writes, “ever since that age of bold reform.”[6]

[1] Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), XV.

[2] McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, 53.

[3] Ibid, 68.

[4] Ibid, 215.

[5] Ibid, xv.

[6] Ibid, xvi.