The Roots of Progressivism: Grangers, Mugwumps, and the Industrialization/Feminization of American Culture
             As a kick off, I will use the Grangers to talk about farmers dissatisfaction with railroads and the economic consequences of industrialization and the Mugwumps to discuss dissatisfaction with party politics among the middle class. Then I?ll talk about Ann Douglass's provocative argument that during the middle half of the nineteenth century a sentimentalized Protestantism propagated by middle class 'ministers and mothers? formed the culture of industrializing America, a culture attuned to patriarchical laissez-faire individualism and cries of horror at the ravages of slavery in the south and at the consequences of urban, industrial America. Progressivism, I will argue, grew out of all of these impulses.
             The Geography of Progressivism: Regional Progressives and Transatlantic Progressives
             I will contrast agrarian problems (drop in wheat & cotton prices from 187? to 189?, the failure of coops, rural isolation, the Farmer's Alliances) with urban problems (immigration & migration, factory conditions, housing, water & sewage, Municipal reform associations). I would then contrast a group of regional progressives who were mostly state/national political leaders and a group of transatlantic progressives who were mostly municipal/transatlantic figures. Here are the figures I would discuss: Tom Watson the quintessential Southern Populist turned Progressive compared to Jane Addams and the Settlement Houses; Hiram Johnson as Governor and Senator in California compared to John Dewey and progressive education, that is urban educational reform; finally, Robert LaFollette and the dramatic reform in Wisconsin compared to the German educated economist and professor at U. of W. Richard Ely. These pairs will give me a chance to provide a sense of the regional differe nces of progressivism and a sense of the wide range of reform movements...