53 pages • 1 hour read
Michael McGerrA Fierce Discontent
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Progressive Battles”
Chapter 3 Summary: “Transforming Americans”
McGerr begins Part 2 by exploring how the new progressive middle class sought to change other American classes through their new creed of association. Progressives felt that they needed to reshape others’ values pertaining to the role of the individual in relation to society, domestic life and gender roles, and the roles of work and pleasure in American life.
The big question for progressives was how to best approach reshaping other people in the image of middle class values. Whereas the upper class’s doctrine of individualism blamed the individual for their “crimes,” new sociological research on the role of environment revealed that reformers could “reshape character by reshaping the environment” (232). The middle class came to understand that many of the issues experienced and perpetuated by both the working and upper classes were the product of the environments in which they lived, worked, and played. If the middle class achieved success in creating society in their own image, they would need to reform the other classes by meeting their specific needs and, in the process, eradicating their vices.
Equipped with this new understanding of the role of environment in shaping behaviors, with a fervent urgency, the middle class set out to change the negative aspects of people’s environments. Middle class reformers, concerned about the increased rate of divorce among the upper class and the debaucherous pursuit of pleasure and satisfaction outside of the home and family among the working class, were determined to eradicate any publicly available vices that threatened the integrity of domestic life at the turn-of-the-century. These reformers crusaded against saloons and liquor, gambling, card playing, dance halls, and contraception. They also sought changes in public policy to place income and inheritance taxes on the wealthy, to reduce child labor and increase education, and to provide public social services in working class communities.
Though the middle class was ardent that their reform efforts were in the interest of the public good, the farming, working, and upper classes were not interested in embracing middle class values, nor did they fully welcome government interference into private life (247). Similarly, though middle class reformers recognized that they needed the support of the federal government in order to enact many of the social changes they desired, the government was hesitant to interfere in ways that seemed radical.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Ending Class Conflict”
Chapter 4 explores the progressive reformers’ crusade to change labor conditions and the relationship between workers and employers at the turn-of-the-century. In 1902, America was the most strike-torn nation in the world; workers and employers were in constant struggle, and their polarized adherences to the ideologies of mutualism and individualism caused ongoing misunderstandings and hostility.
Conflict between labor and capital undergirded the conflict between workers and their employers. Feeling caught in the middle of this conflict, middle class reformers set out to resolve it. They sympathized with the plight of the workers and supported their right to organize through workers’ unions, but they ultimately desired to change the motive behind unionization: They wanted those unionizing to do so in the interest of transcending class differences and for the good of society as a whole, rather than for the good of their own class. Likewise, progressive reformers sought to change the mindset of the capitalists by getting them to acknowledge the legitimacy of organized labor, and changing working conditions so the workers would not feel so dissatisfied and angry. In keeping with their understanding of the role of environment in shaping people’s behavior, progressives believed the workplace needed transforming into a place that allowed workers to gain imaginative power over their labor (372). Getting the workers and the capitalists to cooperate with any plan to resolve the conflict, however, proved near impossible. Neither trusted the other, and any compromise that seemed to slightly favor one side over the other never saw fruition.
When the federal government first intervened at the height of the conflict between labor and capital in 1902, it felt like a victory for middle-class progressives because their interests had been “subsumed and depoliticized in a broader ‘public’ interest, and linked effectively to the power of the state to stop class conflict” (348). By the 1910s, however, relations between workers, workers’ unions, capital, and the government were tense and radicalized yet again; it was clear that the progressives’ dream of “shaping the outlook and behavior of workers and the upper ten” and ending class conflict had little hope of becoming reality (403). Moreover, the courts began defaulting to defense of property against labor, and “saw working-class mutualism as a threat to their authority and to the individualist values embedded in the American common law” (396). The power of the state had proven unreliable and the battle over labor and capital, it appeared, would continue.
Part 2, Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In the first two chapters of his book, McGerr explains the social, cultural, and economic crisis that fragmented American society and motivated the middle class Victorians to define a new progressive identity for themselves. In Chapters 3 and 4, McGerr describes the social “battles” the progressives chose to fight in the interest of imposing the progressive identity on the rest of the nation. Their first goal was to transform other Americans into individual progressives; by transforming other Americans, progressives hoped to achieve their second goal of ending class conflict.
Much of McGerr’s discussion of the progressives’ chosen battles focuses on the experiences of the other classes—of the working, farming, and upper classes—and the difficulties that their reluctance to change presented to progressive reform efforts. But there is more at play in progressive reform than just an outward focus on the issues and needs of the other classes; McGerr also subtly points out some of the self-serving aspects of progressives’ efforts to transform others and end class conflict. Progressives’ internal interests help explain the logic behind their approach to reform and the battles they chose to fight. While fighting for the good of society, the progressives were also fighting for the good of the middle class.
McGerr makes it clear that an undercurrent of coerciveness catalyzed progressive reform efforts, and—though they were publicly committed to their ideology of association—when it served their interests, progressives were selective about when their to apply ideology. In other words, the progressive condemnation of individualism was somewhat selective: Whatever served their cause to mold the rest of society to their vision of what society should be was permissible.
Moreover, McGerr suggests that the progress made by the middle class reformers presented some troubling possibilities at the turn-of-the-century. A key facet of reform efforts involved persuading the federal government to pass laws and enact policies that supported the progressive ideology. Some were concerned that too much external involvement in regulating behaviors and environments shifted the responsibilities once native to domestic life onto the rest of society. Progressives wanted individual Americans to feel a sense of responsibility for preserving domesticity, but others thought that external regulation might backfire and instead diminish people’s sense of responsibility and self-control. If the government was in charge of guiding people’s behavior, then people may forget that they were also in charge of guiding themselves (323).
The limits of progressive reform become apparent in this set of chapters, and the connection between reform efforts and the middle class’s self-interest emerges once again. Some believed that the abundance of wealth in society would bring the transformation of character and behavior that middle-class reformers desired if everyone in society had the opportunity to experience that abundance. Abundance, however, raised other questions for progressive reformers: If there is abundant wealth in American society, how should it be distributed? If it is true that material wellbeing reshapes people’s character, then is a broad redistribution of wealth and income necessary to remake Americans? (326). In response to these questions, some of the more radical reformers at the time suggested that dismantling the capitalist system might be in the best interest of society as a whole.
The middle class, though, thrived in America’s new industrial capitalist society, and was not so radical as to suggest that a system that benefited the middle class itself should be dismantled. McGerr’s discussion of these “troubling possibilities” indicates that some of the options suggested by progressive reformers were troubling to progressives themselves. Ultimately, the battles that progressives chose had to benefit society without eliminating privilege from their own class. In a way, then, progressives themselves put the limits of the progressive movement in place.
