¹ This summary of the progressive interpretation of liberalism is based upon the following works: Dumas Malone's biography of Jefferson, , especially Vol. 11, Jefferson and the Rights of Man (Boston, 1951)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur M. JrThe Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945)Google Scholar; Faulkner, Harold U., The Quest for Social Justice, 1898–1914 (New York, 1931), pp. 27–51, 110–29, 184–88, 236–38Google Scholar, and The Decline of Laissez-faire, 1897–1914 (New York, 1951), pp. 153–86, 366–82Google Scholar; Goldman, Eric F., Rendezvous with Destiny, A History of Modern American Reform (New York, 1952), pp. 29–36, 71–76, 79–81, 83, 163Google Scholar.

² See Mowry, George E., Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (Madison, Wisconsin, 1946)Google Scholar; Lindley, Ernest K., The Roosevelt Revolution, First Phase (New York, 1933)Google Scholar; Goldman, , Rendezvous, pp. 189–219, 320–71Google Scholar.

³ Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America, An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York, 1955), pp. 3–23, 27–32Google Scholar.

⁴ Hartz, , Liberal Tradition, pp. 10, 205, 228, 229–30, 259–60, 263–64, 270Google Scholar.

⁵ Higham, John, “The Cult of the ‘American Consensus,’” Commentary, 27 (1959), pp. 93–100Google Scholar.

⁶ For this viewpoint, see Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism, A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Kolko, , Railroads and Regulation 1877–1916 (Princeton, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State: 1900–1918 (Boston, 1968)Google Scholar; Caine, Stanley P., The Myth of a Progressive Reform: Railroad Regulation in Wisconsin 1903–1910 (Madison, 1970)Google Scholar.

⁷ Bernstein, Barton J. criticized the New Dealers in these terms in Bernstein, “The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform,” in Bernstein, , ed., Towards a New Past, Dissenting Essays in American History (New York, 1968), pp. 264, 274–75, 278–79, 281Google Scholar.

⁸ John L. Thomas, “‘The Road Not Taken’: Perspectives on Post Frontier America, 1920–1940,” lecture delivered at University College London, 17 Jan. 1986.

⁹ See Goodwyn, Lawrence, Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America (New York, 1976), especially pp. xi–xv, xx, 110–11, 112–13, 129, 185, 195–97, 272, 359–60Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Lustig, R. Jeffrey, Corporate Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory, 1890–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Gerber, Larry G., The Limits of Liberalism: Josephus Daniels, Henry Stimson, Bernard Baruch, Donald Richberg, Felix Frankfurter and the Development of the Modern American Political Economy (New York: New York University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Lustig, pp. 2, 90–93, 110–13, 116–40, 146–49, 151–55, 162–63, 166–67, 170–72, 183–91, 220–21, 227–29, 238–40, 243.

¹² Gerber, pp. 44–46, 75, 77, 102, 132–33, 134–35, 138, 146–47, 149–150, 156, 166–67, 185, 242, 255, 283–85, 314–15, 338–39. The New Left and neo-consensus views of liberalism come closest together over the New Deal. Barton J. Bernstein, for example, anticipated Gerber in arguing that the effect of the New Deal had been to preserve the dominance of large-scale corporate capitalism. But whereas Bernstein saw this as a means of pre-empting more left-wing solutions, Gerber — true to the neo-consensus outlook — regards it as the result of flaws in a liberal ideology so pervasive as to rule out other alternatives. See Bernstein, “The New Deal,” op. cit., pp. 264, 267, 271–73.

¹³ The disparities here noted increased still further in subsequent years. By 1970, corporations making up less than 14% of the total number of businesses were attracting more than 84% of all business receipts. These figures are calculated on the basis of tables set out in The Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present, published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census (New York, 1976), p. 911Google Scholar. The comparable figure on large corporations for 1918 had been 79·60%. Ibid., p. 915.

¹⁴ See Gerber, especially pp. 7–8, 90–91, 133–134, 239. According to estimates cited by Gerber, 37% of the American population lived below the poverty line at the beginning of the century. By 1941, this had declined to 32%. Ibid., p. 8.

¹⁵ See Ibid., pp. 6–7, 352, n. 11.

¹⁶ See Lustig, especially pp. 243, 245, 247, 248.

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. x, 2, 4. The term “corporate liberalism ”, as Lustig himself points out, has been used in different ways by historians. It has been employed to describe a particular type of economy (one dominated by large monopolies) and a particular kind of political system (one under the control of corporate bodies but with certain “liberal” features). James Weinstein has used it, from a “New Left” perspective, to describe the programme of the most farsighted capitalists of the Progressive Era, who – he argues – set out to make the state into the conscious and willing instrument of corporate capitalism. Lustig himself defines corporate liberalism as the new variant of the liberal philosophy which evolved in the early years of the twentieth century and was responsible for creating “the altered theoretical climate in which we live.” Lustig, , Corporate Liberalism, pp. xi–xiiGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ See Ibid., pp. 2, 29–31, 83–84, 110, 112, 116, 126, 128, 132, 142, 203–06.

¹⁹ See Gerber, pp.9, 44–45, 59, 66, 129, 134–35, 138, 146–49, 165–67, 185, 255, 283–85, 314–15, 335, 343.

²⁰ In attempting to show how liberals copied the corporations in their emphasis on bureaucratic administration, for example, Lustig depicts Lincoln Steffens as a champion of the idea of “the non-political ruler.” This interpretation is based on the analysis of a single article by Steffens, on Mayor Seth Low of New York. As he revealed in other articles he wrote, notably those on Chicago and the reform of Ohio cities, however, Steffens never believed that politics could be replaced entirely by administration. See Lustig, pp. 151–52; Steffens, , The Shame of the Cities (New York, 1904), pp. 162–214Google Scholar; Steffens, , The Struggle for Self-Government (New York, 1906), pp. 161–208Google Scholar.

²¹ See Lustig, pp. 29–30, 203–06.

²² John Dewey is a particular victim of this technique. No fewer than three of his later books are referred to: The Public and Its Problems (1927), Individualism, Old and New (1930), and Liberalism and Social Action (1935). See Lustig, , Corporate Liberalism, pp. 122–24, 140, 148, 163–64Google Scholar.

²³ Gerber, pp. 87, 132.

²⁴ Cuff, Robert D., The War Industries Board, Business–Government Relations during World War I (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 272, 274–75Google Scholar.

²⁵ McCraw, Thomas K., “The New Deal and the Mixed Economy,” in Sitkoff, Harvard, ed., Fifty Years Later, The New Deal Evaluated (New York, 1985), pp. 57, 58Google Scholar.

²⁶ See Lustig, pp. 48, 247, 260–64.

²⁷ See Gerber, pp. 232, 255, 279, 337, 347.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 349.