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The Public Good and the Problem of Pluralism in Lincoln Steffens's Civic Imagination1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

James J. Connolly
James J. Connolly
Affiliation:
Ball State University
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Extract

The decades surrounding the opening of the twentieth century saw one of the most significant shifts in the character of American public life. A political order dominated by decentralized parties and a limited state gave way to one defined by interest group activism, weaker parties, and more vigorous government. Scholars argue over the degree and extent of these changes, but few quarrel with the claim that public life looked substantially different by the end of the Progressive Era. Americans accepted interest group pluralism in principle and in practice by the 1920s, and the ideal of a politics devoted to an undifferentiated common good lost much of its persuasive power.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , April 2005 , pp. 125 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2005

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References

2 Key accounts of this transformation include McCormick, Richard L., From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893-1910 (Ithaca, 1981)Google Scholar; Burnham, Walter D., “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” American Political Science Review 59 (1965): 7–28;Google ScholarMcGerr, Michael E., The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (New York, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clemens, Elisabeth S., The People's Lobby: Organisational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago, 1997)Google Scholar; Ethington, Philip J., The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar and idem, “The Metropolis and Multicultural Ethics: Direct Democracy versus Deliberative Democracy in the Progressive Era,” in Progressivism and the New Democracy, eds., Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, 1999): 192-225. On the rhetorical dimensions of this phenomenon, see Rodgers, Daniel, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics since Independence (New York, 1987), 176–211Google Scholar.

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23 Oliver McClintock to Steffens, May 21, 1903; John MacAlpine Siddall to Steffens, June 30, 1903; James H. Causey to Steffens, April 6, 1908; Frederic C. Howe to Steffens, February 29, 1908; Charles G. Sewall to Steffens, February 10, 1906, in Steffens Papers, Series I, Correspondence.

24 Joseph Folk to Steffens, November 9, 1905; Brand Whitlock to Steffens, November 8, 1905; Tom Johnson to Steffens, November 8, 1905; Everett Colby to Steffens, October 20, 1905; Robert LaFollette to Steffens, November 14, 1905, in Steffens Papers, Series I, Correspondence.

25 William Kent to Steffens, September 14, 1903 in Steffens Papers, Series I, Correspondence.

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27 See for example David P. Jones to Steffens, November 20, 1906, December 20, 1902, January 8, 1903; Charles S. Deforest to Steffens, June 3, 1904, November 7, 1904, November 14, 1908; William C. Bobbs to Steffens, October, 15, 1908, in Steffens Papers, Series I, Correspondence. See Schiesl, Martin J., The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1800-1920 (Berkeley, 1977),Google Scholar 190 for the long term impact of the nonpartisan ideal on city politics.

28 Flanagan, Maureen, Charter Reform in Chicago (Carbondale, 1987), 68.Google Scholar See also Pegram, Thomas, Partisans and Progressives: Private Interest and Public Policy in Illinois, 1870-1922 (Urbana, 1992), 115Google Scholar.

29 , Flanagan, Charter Reform, 79; Hartzez to Steffens, January 28, 1908, Steffens Papers, Series I, Correspondence.Google Scholar

30 Colorado Springs Gazette, January 9, 1907,Google Scholar clipping in Steffens Papers, Series I, Scrapbooks, Box 34, folder 2; Josephine Steffens, “Publicity Release about Lincoln Steffens, ca. 1909;” Edward A. Filene to Steffens, June 6, 1908, in Steffens Papers, Series I, Correspondence.

31 Steffens, “Statement about Boston,” in Steffens Papers, Series I, Manuscripts, p.l.

32 Connolly, James J., The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900-1925 (Cambridge 1998), 133–34.Google Scholar

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34 Brighton Item, November 21, 1908Google Scholar; East Boston Free Press, January 23, 1909,Google Scholar clipping in Steffens Papers, Series I, Scrapbook 2.

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36 Boston Herald, November 10, 1908, clipping in Steffens Papers, Series I, Scrapbook 2.

37 , Steffens, Autobiography, vol. 2, 613–14.Google Scholar

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39 Kellog, Paul, “A Plan for a Boston Plan,” The Survey 22:10 (June 5, 1909): 396Google Scholar; Edward A. Filene to Steffens, December 13, 1909, in Steffens Papers, Series I, Correspondence.

40 Steffens, “Notes for a Statement,” and Kellog, “A Plan for a Boston Plan,” 383.

41 “Boston-1915—Final Report,” Steffens Papers, Series II: Printed Materials, folder 4.

42 , Kaplan, Lincoln Stiffens, 183–95, 212-25, 297-300.Google Scholar On the relationship with , Debs, Letters of Eugene V. Debs, Volume I, 1874-1912, ed. Constantine, J. Robert (Chicago, 1990): 270–83Google Scholar.

43 Walter Iippmann, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest (orig. pub. 1914, repr. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1961), 96; Arthur Fisher Bentley, The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures (Chicago, 1908).