Page "Roaring Twenties" Paragraph 31

The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s.

The politics of the 1920s was unfriendly toward the labor unions and liberal crusaders against business, so many if not all historians who emphasize those themes write off the decade.

Urban cosmopolitan scholars recoiled at the moralism of prohibition and the intolerance of the nativists of the Ku Klux Klan ( KKK ), and denounced the era.

Richard Hofstadter, for example, in 1955 wrote that prohibition, " was a pseudo-reform, a pinched, parochial substitute for reform " that " was carried about America by the rural-evangelical virus ".

However as Arthur S. Link emphasized, the progressives did not simply roll over and play dead.

Link's argument for continuity through the 1920s stimulated a historiography that found Progressivism to be a potent force.

Palmer, pointing to people like George Norris, say, " It is worth noting that progressivism, whilst temporarily losing the political initiative, remained popular in many western states and made its presence felt in Washington during both the Harding and Coolidge presidencies.

" Gerster and Cords argue that, " Since progressivism was a ' spirit ' or an ' enthusiasm ' rather than an easily definable force with common goals, it seems more accurate to argue that it produced a climate for reform which lasted well into the 1920s, if not beyond.

" Even the Klan has been seen in a new light, as numerous social historians reported that Klansmen were " ordinary white Protestants " primarily interested in purification of the system, which had long been a core progressive goal.