The Age of Reform

First edition (publ. Knopf)

The Age of Reform is a 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Richard Hofstadter. It is an American history that traces events from the Populist Movement of the 1890s through the Progressive Era ending with the New Deal in the 1930s. The Age of Reform stands out from other historical material because Hofstadter's main purpose for writing is not to retell an extensive history of the three movements, but to analyze the common beliefs of the reform groups in our modern perspective to elucidate historical distortions, most notably between the New Deal and Progressivism.

Hofstadter organizes The Age Of Reform chronologically, beginning with Populism. The key concept he introduces is "the agrarian myth," which is the representation of the homage Americans have paid to the subsistence, innocent, and yeoman farmer of old. The myth became a stereotype since agriculture became more commercial and industrial. Populism's main cause for formation was the alleged loss of "free land." Many Populist leaders believed that industry and government had a vendetta to destroy the agricultural business. The last chapter on Populism explains the agricultural prosperity after the Populist revolt because city migration lessened competition which caused farmers to organize for the first time. Hofstadter highlights the foibles in the Populist revolt. The first was its sectional appeal, rather than national. Secondly, he argues its leaders were incompetent and that there was a perennial lack of funds. However, the single most destructive weakness was lack of silver. By joining with the Democratic campaign of 1896 on silver, Populists lost political ground. Despite their dissolution, Populists were successful because criticism they voiced caused the passage of new laws years later.

The next major reform movement was Progressivism. The two groups of Populism and Progressivism shared many philosophies, yet the latter was widely accepted because it was not seen by the majority as anarchically. The causes for Progressivism were the status revolution in the post-Civil War era ("new money" supplanted "old money" prestige), the alienation of professionals, and the introduction of the Mugwump. The urban scene during the Progressive era, as argued by Hofstadter, provided little support for the Progressive movement because immigrants cared not for reforms, but for democracy in general. From this point of view, Hofstadter provides evidence from numerous sources of the general nativism possessed by Progressives. As a corollary of the growing urban scene, aggressive newspaper reporters, named muckrakers, emerged. These Progressive journalists multiplied as new styles of magazines appeared. The last chapter focused on enemies of Progressives like trusts, unions, and political machines. Leaders expressed the need for entrepreneurship, individualism, and moral responsibility, rather than organization.

The Age of Reform's final section stretches from Progressivism's end through the New Deal. Reformations have an interesting relationship with wars in that the aftermath of war is usually a time of conservatism. Such was the case after World War I, which heralded the death of Progressivism. The New Deal was a culmination of both Populism and Progressivism; however, Hofstadter stresses that for the most part, the New Deal was a "new departure", and despite its continual association with Progressivism, it was quite dissimilar. The reason why it was different is because the New Deal was born out of the Great Depression, not prosperity like Populism and Progressivism. Hofstadter expounds on the New Deal's characteristics; the New Deal was not concerned with democratizing the economy, but managing it to meet the problems of the people. The New Deal had no set plans of reform; it was a chaotic experiment. Old Progressive woes were ignored. Party bosses were left alone. The New Deal did not intercede between the public and big business because the public wanted economic restoration, not regulation. A major disparity between Progressivism and the New Deal was that the latter was not based on Protestant morality and responsibility, but was instead more pragmatic. The latter reform movement did not use moral rhetoric to create changes, but instead, physically acted.

Reception and criticism

Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform is a genuine evaluation of the reform associations from Bryan to F.D.R. Rather than just provide a copious number of details of each reform movement, Hofstadter instead analyzes the ideas of the average participant, not the legislative or political philosophies. By writing from this perspective, The Age of Reform proves to be an innovative historical work. In the introduction, Hofstadter states his point clearly: his purpose is to analyze the reformations in modern perspective and to define the distinctions between each of them. By the book's conclusion, Hofstadter has effectively done this. The clearest example of his efficacy is in the final chapter on the New Deal. The last section has an abundance of acute disparities between the New Deal and the closely related Populist and Progressive reforms. Despite the vast number of facts and outside sources, Hofstadter effectively organized the book both chronologically and topically. His method of order accommodates the reader in that each reform is divided into chapters that are then divided into specific sections. By dividing up the material into smaller portions, the main points are easily accessed.

The Age of Reform is a candid approach to the reforms from the period 1890-1941. The fact that it was published in 1955 has an effect on the facts of the reform organizations. As previously stated, one of Hofstadter's principal goals was to clear up the overly strong association between the New Deal and the other two reform parties. Had the work been published in the 1940s, the material would have been biased towards labeling the New Deal as a direct corollary of Progressivism. Hofstadter adequately avoided bias on either side.

Regardless, some of Hofstadter's arguments have since been proven to be mistaken by contemporary and later historians including Norman Pollack, C. Vann Woodward, Lawrence Goodwyn and Robert Wiebe. These historians point out several of Hofstadter's misconceptions of the Populists and the Progressives. Hofstadter's misunderstandings include the fact that the Populists were not simply incipient capitalists trying to reform but were instead forward looking radicals who sought a democratized industrial system and a transformation of social values in order to help the individual protect his humanity as his autonomy slipped away from him in a rapidly industrializing society. The Progressives, according to Robert Wiebe and others in the "modernization school" were made up not of status revolutionaries from the old guard or disaffected professionals, but were instead composed of a new class of educated professionals who came of age in the new interconnected modernizing world. These new professionals not only understood how to navigate the new bureaucracy through creating symbiotic relationships between government, education, and business but pressed through "reforms" that did away with the old "local" way of doing business by enacting civil service reforms replacing elected officials with appointed "experts".

References

Brinkley, Alan. "Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform: A Reconsideration". Reviews in American History. Vol. 13, No. 3 (September 1985) pp. 462–480.

Pulitzer Prize for History

1917–1919	1917: With Americans of Past and Present Days by Jean Jules Jusserand 1918: A History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 by James Ford Rhodes 1919: no award given

1920–1929	1920: The War with Mexico by Justin H. Smith 1921: The Victory at Sea by William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick 1922: The Founding of New England by James Truslow Adams 1923: The Supreme Court in United States History by Charles Warren 1924: The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation by Charles Howard McIlwain 1925: History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson 1926: A History of the United States by Edward Channing 1927: Pinckney's Treaty by Samuel Flagg Bemis 1928: Main Currents in American Thought by Vernon Louis Parrington 1929: The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865 by Fred Albert Shannon

1930–1939	1930: The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne 1931: The Coming of the War, 1914 by Bernadotte E. Schmitt 1932: My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing 1933: The Significance of Sections in American History by Frederick J. Turner 1934: The People's Choice by Herbert Agar 1935: The Colonial Period of American History by Charles McLean Andrews 1936: A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin 1937: The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 by Van Wyck Brooks 1938: The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 by Paul Herman Buck 1939: A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott

1940–1949	1940: Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg 1941: The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen 1942: Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 by Margaret Leech 1943: Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes 1944: The Growth of American Thought by Merle Curti 1945: Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal 1946: The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. 1947: Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III 1948: Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto 1949: The Disruption of American Democracy by Roy Franklin Nichols

1950–1959	1950: Art and Life in America by Oliver W. Larkin 1951: The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815–1840 by R. Carlyle Buley 1952: The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin 1953: The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield 1954: A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton 1955: Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan 1956: The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter 1957: Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920 by George F. Kennan 1958: Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond 1959: The Republican Era: 1869–1901 by Leonard D. White and Jean Schneider

1960–1969	1960: In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech 1961: Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis 1962: The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson 1963: Washington, Village and Capital, 1800–1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green 1964: Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell 1965: The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger 1966: The Life of the Mind in America by Perry Miller 1967: Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann 1968: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn 1969: Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy

1970–1979	1970: Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by Dean Acheson 1971: Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns 1972: Neither Black Nor White by Carl N. Degler 1973: People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen 1974: The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin 1975: Jefferson and His Time by Dumas Malone 1976: Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan 1977: The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 by David M. Potter (Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher) 1978: The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. 1979: The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics by Don E. Fehrenbacher

1980–1989	1980: Been in the Storm So Long by Leon F. Litwack 1981: American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin 1982: Mary Chesnut's Civil War by C. Vann Woodward 1983: The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 by Rhys L. Isaac 1984: no award given 1985: Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw 1986: ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter A. McDougall 1987: Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution by Bernard Bailyn 1988: The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 by Robert V. Bruce 1989: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson 1989: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963 by Taylor Branch

1990–1999	1990: In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow 1991: A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich 1992: The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr. 1993: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood 1994: no award given 1995: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin 1996: William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor 1997: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove 1998: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson 1999: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

2000–2009	2000: Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 by David M. Kennedy 2001: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis 2002: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand 2003: An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942–1943 by Rick Atkinson 2004: A Nation under Our Feet by Steven Hahn 2005: Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer 2006: Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky 2007: The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff 2008: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 by Daniel Walker Howe 2009: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

2010-2019	2010: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed 2011: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner 2012: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable 2013: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall 2014: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor 2015: Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn

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The Age of Reform

Contents

Reception and criticism

References