United States

A movement already begun, to wrest control of city governments from corrupt political machines, was given tremendous impetus by the panic of 1893. The National Municipal League, organized in 1894, united various city reform groups throughout the country; corrupt local governments were overthrown in such cities as New York in 1894, Baltimore in 1895, and Chicago in 1896–97. And so it went all over the country well into the 20th century.

Despite initial differences among urban reformers, by the early 1900s the vast majority of them were fighting for and winning much the same objectives—more equitable taxation of railroad and corporate property, tenement house reform, better schools, and expanded social services for the poor. Even big-city machines like Tammany Hall became increasingly sensitive to the social and economic needs of their constituents. Reformers also devised new forms of city government to replace the old mayor–city-council arrangement that had proved to be so susceptible to corrupt influences. One was the commission form, which vested all responsibility in a small group of commissioners, each responsible for a single department; another was the city-manager form, which provided administration by a professionally trained expert, responsible to a popularly elected council (these two forms were in widespread use in small and medium-sized cities by 1920).

Tammany Hall politicsTammany Hall politics; political cartoon by Thomas Nast.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Reform in state governments

The reform movement spread almost at once to the state level, for it was in state capitals that important decisions affecting the cities were made. Entrenched and very professional political organizations, generously financed by officeholders and businessmen wanting special privileges, controlled most state governments in the late 1890s; everywhere, these organizations were challenged by a rising generation of young and idealistic antiorganization leaders, ambitious for power. They were most successful in the Midwest, under such leaders as Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, but they had counterparts all over the country—e.g., Charles Evans Hughes of New York, Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, Andrew J. Montague of Virginia, and Hiram W. Johnson of California.

La Follette, Robert M.Robert M. La Follette, 1906.Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

These young leaders revolutionized the art and practice of politics in the United States, not only by exercising strong leadership but also by effecting institutional changes such as the direct primary, direct election of senators (rather than by state legislatures), the initiative, referendum, and recall—which helped restore and revitalize political democracy. More important, perhaps, progressives to a large degree achieved their economic and social objectives—among them, strict regulation of intrastate railroads and public utilities, legislation to prevent child labour and to protect women workers, penal reform, expanded charitable services to the poor, and accident insurance systems to provide compensation to workers and their families.

Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive movement

By 1901 the reform upheaval was too strong to be contained within state boundaries. Moreover, certain problems with which only the federal government was apparently competent to deal cried out for solution. McKinley might have succeeded in ignoring the rising tide of public opinion had he served out his second term, but McKinley’s assassination in September 1901 brought to the presidency an entirely different kind of man—Theodore Roosevelt, at age 42 the youngest man yet to enter the White House. Roosevelt had broad democratic sympathies; moreover, thanks to his experience as police commissioner of New York City and governor of New York state, he was the first president to have an intimate knowledge of modern urban problems. Because Congress was securely controlled by a group of archconservative Republicans, the new president had to feel his way cautiously in legislative matters, but he emerged full-grown as a tribune of the people after his triumph in the presidential election of 1904. By 1906 he was the undisputed spokesman of national progressivism and by far its best publicity agent. (The White House was, he said, “a bully pulpit.”) Meanwhile, by his leadership of public opinion and by acting as a spur on Congress, he had revived the presidency and made it incomparably the most powerful force in national politics.

McKinley, William: assassinationLeon Czolgosz assassinating U.S. Pres. William McKinley, 1901.Photos.com/Thinkstock