Corporate Progressivism: The Rise of the American State

Abstract

Examining urban-rural history around the turn of the twentieth century is integral to understanding the contemporary legacy of corporations, labor, and the American State today. Much history about the period has been written about the effects of capitalism and the reformers of the period, but the entire story remains incomplete and heavily one-sided. Corporations during the period actively engaged in progressive processes as they transformed the American industrial economy to unforeseen levels of unchecked capitalism, yet historians traditionally label the reformers of the effects of that unchecked economic system ?progressive.? Progressive transformations of the United States economy reverberated throughout society affecting both the social and political spheres. The socioeconomic transformations wrought by corporate progressives changing the economy from 1870-1930 provided the impetus for the sociopolitical reforms of the Progressive Era. Through a comparative study of the farming community of Spring Valley, WI, and the Spring Valley Iron and Ore Company that began there in the 1890s, the progressivism that characterizes the period can be examined more holistically in an urban-rural context. By loosening boundaries between the social, political, economic, and the urban and rural spheres, a better understanding of corporate progressivism and the progressive characterization of the time period can be achieved.