In “The Crucible of Class: Cleveland politics and the Origins of Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era”, author Shelton Stromquist argues that “progressive reform at the municipal level congealed in a crucible of class polarization and conflict”, in which industrial workers were “agents in the construction of a new urban politics of reform, not simply its constituents or for that matter its beneficiaries”.[1] Stromquist thinks that “the pulse of class warfare”, instigated by industrial workers, “realigned the field of social polarities and party identities”, thus restructuring municipal politics around the turn of the century.[2] He cites the example of Cleveland, which had “a large and ethnically diverse working class” that went on strike eighty-three times between1893 and 1898 and thus changed local policies, to demonstrate how the industrial working class can shape progressive reforms.[3]
On the other hand, in “Gender and Urban Political Reform: The City Club and the Woman’s City Club of Chicago in the Progressive Era”, author Maureen Flanagan argues that progressive reform was brought about by “a broad range of urban residents, not just elite white males” who all held “the belief that all municipal problems had to be solved before the city would be a good place in which to live”.[4] Flanagan uses the example of male and female reformers (such as the Woman's City Club), both of which shared “a citywide vision” of municipal reform.[5] Therefore, all urban residents, not just industrial workers, shaped progressive reform.
While Stromquist stresses industrial workers and Flanagan stresses municipal workers, in my opinion, I think each group was a key group, each one acting as a “support beam” in a large and varied progressive reform movement “structure”. One group could not exist without the other, and vice versa, and they shaped each other and the reform movement in different yet equally important ways. Evidence from Stromquist and Flanagan’s articles supports this theory of the reform efforts of industrial and municipal workers cyclically influencing one another. As Stromquist notes, major industrial worker events, such as the streetcar strike and the Jones campaign of 1899, “redefined the terms of municipal politics”.[6] In turn, as Flanagan notes, municipal reform groups, such as the Women’s City Club, “ viewed the city as they had viewed their homes, a place where the health and welfare of all members should be sought”, which brought attention to the plight of industrial workers.[7] The actions of municipal reform groups then helped push for reform in the industrial sector. In essence, the progressive reform movement “wanted to free the existing government of corruption so that it could be more efficient in an expanded role as guardian of workers and the poor”, and, together, industrial workers and municipal workers embodied this goal in unique ways.[8]
[1] Shelton Stromquist, “The Crucible of Class: Cleveland politics and the Origins of Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era”, Journal of Urban History 23, no. 2 (1/31/1997), http://juh.sagepub.com/content/23/2/192.full.pdf (accessed Feb 17, 2011), 194.
[2] Ibid, 194.
[3] Ibid, 196-197.
[4] Maureen A. Flanagan, “Gender and Urban Political Reform: The City Club and the Woman’s City Club of Chicago in the Progressive Era,” The American Historical Review, 95, no. 4 (Oct., 1990), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2163477 (accessed Feb 17, 2011), 1044-1045.
[5] Ibid, 1044.
[6] Stromquist, “The Crucible of Class”, 213.
[7] Flanagan, “Gender and Urban Political Reform”, 1050.
[8] Andrew Cayton and others, eds., America: Pathways to the Present (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000), 543.
