Altgeld and the Progressive Tradition

Abstract

As severe depression of 1893 deepened, carrying with it fresh disillusionment for American gospel of success, those social antagonisms which had lain dormant since riotous days of 1877 and i886 found new expression.1 In Pullman Strike of I894 nationally organized railway employers faced similarly organized railway employees, first group determined that there was nothing to arbitrate, second prepared to use loaded weapon of general strike. The philosophy of Manchester Liberalism, widely espoused by metropolitan press of nation, met with increasing criticism from exponents of a new social democracy. In Washington a governmental leadership which had been reared on a federal concept arising from an agrarian background was clearly unprepared to deal effectively with perplexing problems of an urban industrial society. If national government appeared helpless, state legislatures, hampered bly a parochial outlook, were even more so, justifying in too many instances cynical characterization of local administration as the jungle of American politics. Contemporary observers like Lincoln Steffens, Henry Demarest Lloyd, and Brand Whitlock have furnished a dark portrayal of unbridled corruption and machine politics that rendered local reform ineffectual. Professor Harold U. Faulkner has correctly appraised state administrations of this period: