Americans are a proud, ambitious, and hopeful people; they are easily riled when life does not measure up to their expectations, find quick to express their displeasure. Only one “era of good feelings” is recorded in our history; it was short, merely superficially calm, and quickly followed by the broils and battles of the Age of Jackson. On the other hand, fundamental conflicts of interest and opinion among Americans have been extremely rare. Our Constitution, for example, has been amended only a dozen times since the Bill of Rights was added nearly two hundred years ago; it is not basically different today from what it was then.
This combination of over-all placidity and local tumult is understandable. America has been generally receptive to new ideas, but Has not tended to swallow than whole. Reformers who want to make basic changes seldom get far in our system; although their reforms are often achieved, they themselves seldom achieve power. Traditionally this “law” of American politics has been explained by the tendency of the major parties to make concessions to radical ideas as soon as they show signs of becoming popular, and by the generally happy and prosperous condition of the American people, which has predisposed them toward moderation and gradualism. I would like to suggest, without fundamentally questioning that view, that reformers also defeat themselves, not through I he ends they cherish but by the means they choose.
This article and two that will follow will try to demonstrate this position by examining the careers of three reformers of the Progressive Era, that period from the turn of the century to World War I when America was adjusting to its rapid emergence as a great industrial nation. Our subjects are William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat; George W. Perkins, one of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moosers”: and Robert M. La Follette, until the tag end of his long career always a Republican. Despite the diversity of their politics all three considered themselves “progressives,” and have been accepted as such by historians. All were, “good” men, utterly incorruptible, who devoted their lives to fruitful public service. All accomplished a great deal. But all, in the end, failed to achieve their chief objectives. What went right? What went wrong?
That is our story.
The President of the United States may be an ass,” wrote H. L. Mencken during the reign of Calvin Coolidge, “but he at least doesn’t believe that the earth is square, and that witches should be put to death, and that Jonah swallowed the whale.” The man to whom the vitriolic Mencken was comparing President Coolidge was William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, one of the dominant figures in the Progressive movement. According to Mencken, Bryan was a “peasant,” a “zany without sense or dignity,” a “poor clod,” and, in addition, an utter fraud. “If the fellow was sincere, then so was P. T. Barnum,” he sneered.
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