| In
the
previous unit, we saw early
reform movements. One of these was the Populist movement.
The
Populists were primarily agrarians, responding to the economic and
political changes wrought by industrialization. Their movement
failed
for a couple of reasons: first, they justified their reforms in
terms
of producers, which most Americans were not--they were consumers;
second, most Americans perceived the Populists as radicals because they
wanted outright government ownership of private property such as
railroads; finally, Populists rejected the corporations and wanted them
all broken up. Many Populists reforms survived in, and were realized by, the Progressive reform movement, which also arose as a response to the challenges of indutrialization. Why, then, did the Progressives succeed where the Populists failed? One reason lay in the makeup of the Progressive reformers. They were not farmers, but middle-class, largely urban professionals. Many owed their living to corporations. Thus, they did not want to abolish corporations (as did the Populists) but to regulate them and erase their worst abuses. Progressivies also owed their success to the reshaped electorate. Thanks to the disfranchisement that followed the Election of 1896, the electorate of the early twentieth century was mainly white and middle-class. These voters shared similar cultural preconceptions and attitudes with the reformers (indeed, they were the reformers), which made the passage of legislation easier because it was no preceived as deriving from dangerous radicalism. Moreover, the Progressives justified their reforms as protecting consumers rather than producers. This was perhaps the most critical and fundamental difference from the Populists, for as we saw in the Election of 1896, urban areas, populated by consumers, now dominated elections, and only issues of concern to them stood a chance of finding their way into law. |
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