I've spent most of my evening working on a truly dreadful part of the dissertation -- the section of Chapter Three ("The Progressive Assault on the Constitution") that reviews the historiography (itself dreadful until recently) of the Progressive movement.  By the time I got my papers gathered and such, I barely had time to write the very first part, which is a look at the so-called "Progressive" or "Robber Baron" historians of Progressivism.   Benjamin Parke DeWitt is an exemplar.  The following is from his 1915 The Progressive Movement:  A Non-Partisan, Comprehensive Discussion of Current Tendencies in American Politics.  Do not let the name mislead.  It is certainly partisan.  It's mistaken.  But it's representative of what the Progressives were all about:

Instinctively men turned to each other for support. They did not at first turn to the government for relief. They were still under the delusion that the government was a dispassionate, fair arbiter; and that was what they desired it to be. The workmen of the country tried to fight their own fight. They formed labor unions. . . . Capitalists had joined together: labor would join together, too; and united labor would oppose a solid front to united capital.

But the first was too unequal. Capital, wealth, and the corporations did not play fair. The government was theirs and they used it with deadly effect. They secured what their opponents bitterly called government by injunction; they had laws limiting the number of hours a day a man might work declared unconstitutional; they fought factory regulation. Meanwhile, they strengthened their own resources. Stolen franchises were ratified; inflated capitalization was given legal confirmation; the tariff was adjusted to meet their needs.

The idea that permanent relief from oppressive conditions could be obtained only through governmental intervention slowly gained ground. (14)

Thankfully, some of the recent revisionist histories of the Progressive movement have made some progress in debunking this myth of Progressivism.  As a political/philosophical movement, it represented an assault on the Constitution and the principles of the American Founding.  To claim otherwise -- and certainly to contend the movement was about saving the poor masses from the evil interests -- is to engage in rhetorical fantasy.  Stay tuned as the dissertation continues....  Tomorrow I will finish this Historiography and move on to researching the good part of this chapter:   the Progressive historicist assault on American constitutionalism.

Comments?  Visit my Message Boards.