Could a New Progressive Era Be Around the Corner?

The Second Gilded Age could yield a new progressivism

Lady Liberty brings “Votes for Women” across the nation, 1915 (public domain)

Let me take you back to America as it was about 125 years ago.

• Giant, monopolistic corporations pursued profit at any cost. America’s industries were largely unregulated, and their products — along with the conditions in which they were produced — were often harmful.
• The class of unaccountable oligarchs that ran these industries disrupted established economic patterns and accumulated unspendably vast mountains of wealth.
• Politics was viciously polarized; Republicans and Democrats constantly swapped control of the country and each seemed more focused on defeating the other side than solving the nation’s problems.
• The country was undemocratic in many ways, as machine politics, undemocratic voting procedures, and voting restrictions limited the influence of Americans on their own government.
• Politics was widely believed to be corrupt; the “robber barons” had immense influence on the government, while ordinary Americans felt unheard.
• Nativist Americans, fearful that the nation they loved was transforming in ways they didn’t understand, attacked immigrants that, in their words, “were lowering the tone of… national life.”