Progressivism’s “Gilded” Beginnings: The Lost Decade of the 1880s in American Politics
Rebecca Edwards, Eloise Ellery Professor of History, Vassar College
Historians have long divided the decades between Reconstruction and World War I into two distinct eras. The first, circa 1877 to 1900, was a “Gilded Age” marked by legislative inaction, corruption, and partisan stalemate. The second, emerging after 1900 (by some accounts 1890), was a “Progressive Era” marked by grassroots activism and landmark reforms.
Calling such a periodization scheme into question, this paper focuses primarily on the 1880s, suggesting that many strands of American progressivism emerged from Reconstruction and were evident at an early date. From the Greenback Labor Party to an array of Workingmen’s Parties, agrarian and labor groups developed an ambitious agenda in the 1880s--so much so that historian Leon Fink has judged it “the American worker’s single greatest push for political power.” Middle-class organizers, at the same time, created dynamic coalitions working for civil service, public health, temperance, abolition of Mormon polygamy, and other reforms.
Although Americans supposedly did not advocate “progressive” change until two decades later, these reformers scored major policy victories. Among the most notable were the Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883), an 1885 anti-contract labor law, and the Interstate Commerce Act (1887). Two other sweeping federal acts—the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and the Dawes Severalty Act (1887)--had far more harmful results. Both, however, resulted from popular pressure, and both foreshadowed the racial exclusion and social-control impulses of post-1900 progressivism.
After outlining these developments, the paper briefly discusses the peculiar electoral landscape of the 1880s, suggesting that the decade’s rapidly shifting Republican and Democratic coalitions have made it difficult for historians, in retrospect, to identify key reform actors. That failure, however, has contributed to ongoing confusion about what progressivism really was.