For the religious background of social gospel thought, see Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), especially 25–67.
48.
Mark Noll, History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1992), 305.
49.
Noll, History of Christianity, 306–7.
50.
Phillips, A Kingdom on Earth, 32.
51.
Gamble, War for Righteousness, 25–47. See also Robert T. Handy’s Introduction to The Social Gospel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 3–12.
52.
Phillips. A Kingdom on Earth, 9–10. See also Ronald J. Pestritto, “Making the State into a God: American Progressivism and the Social Gospel,” in Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution: A New Republic, ed. Bradley C. S. Watson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 144–159.
53.
This section relies heavily upon the works of Ronald J. Pestritto, especially his and Atto’s Introduction to American Progressivism, 1–32. See also his book, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (2005) for his interpretation of Wilsonian Progressivism. On Progressivism and administration, see his article, “The Progressive Origins of the Administrative State: Wilson, Goodnow, and Landis,” in Social Philosophy and Policy 24, no. 1 (January 2007): 16–54.
54.
Of course it would be possible to add to this list such ideas as the organic conception of the state or empiricism, but my goal is to concentrate on the truly unifying elements of Progressive thought.
55.
On historical contingency, see Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson. See also Brad Watson’s Living Constitution, Dying Faith, xviii-xix.
56.
See Pestritto’s Introduction to Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 6–11.
57.
Hegel of course taught that the dialectic of history was automatic, but that did not mean every race was foremost in the dialectic. Some peoples and nations were backward and were consequently left behind by history. Forward-looking races needed to stay attuned to the direction and flow of history, and they needed to work to keep themselves in the main current.
58.
Paul Moreno, The American State, 106–112. Examples of this critique of America’s founding order include Charles Beard’s Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), and Carl Becker’s The Declaration of Independence (1922).
59.
See Frank Goodnow, The American Conception of Liberty and Government [1916], excerpted in Pestritto and Atto, 55–64.
60.
See Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1913).
61.
This description of leadership is most clearly represented in the writings of Woodrow Wilson. See Charles Kesler, “Woodrow Wilson and the Statesmanship of Progress,” in Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution: A New Republic, 226–254. See also Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson, 199–220.
62.
Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, 388–89, quoted in Pestritto and Atto, 18.
63.
Pestritto and Atto, American Progressivism, 21–23.
64.
Pestritto and Atto, American Progressivism, 21–23.
65.
Joseph Postell, Bureaucracy in America: The Administrative State’s Challenge to Constitutional Government (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017), 167–206. See also Paul D. Moreno, The Bureaucrat Kings: The Origins and Underpinnings of America’s Bureaucratic State (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017), 61–81.
66.
Herbert Croly synthesized such elements, explaining in the New Republic that “by means of executive leadership, expert administrative independence and direct legislation, it [American democracy] will gradually create a new governmental machinery which will be born with the impulse to destroy the two-party system, and will itself be thoroughly and flexibly representative of the underlying purposes and needs of a more social democracy.” Quoted in Stettner, Shaping Modern Liberalism, 115.
67.
Pestritto and Atto, American Progressivism, 18–21. Robert H. Wiebe explains that this bureaucratic element was central to the Progressive ideals, even the unifying element of Progressive thought. See Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920, 170–195.
68.
Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson, 221–252. See Woodrow Wilson’s essay, “The Study of Administration,” in Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 2 (July 1887): 197–222.
69.
For the founding-era conception of republican self-government, as opposed to democratic, see Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, especially the defense of the place of faction and of constitutional representation through Congress in papers 10, 52–67. The Federalist, ed. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001), 42–49, 272–351.
70.
Alfred H. Kelly, Winfred A. Harbison, and Herman Belz, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 7th ed. (New York: Norton, 1991), 428–429.
71.
Moreno, The American State, 86–95. See also Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 410–411.
72.
Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 413. In United States v. Grimaud (1911), the Court decided that “the authority to make administrative rules is not a delegation of legislative power” simply because the violation of administrative rules is legally punishable. Such a decision struck at the heart of the separation of powers doctrine of the U.S. Constitution. See Gary Lawson, “The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State,” Harvard Law Review 107, no. 6 (April, 1994): 1231–1254.
73.
See The Federalist, especially no. 32 (in Carey and McClellan, eds., 154–157)
74.
Paul Moreno, The American State, 70–85.
75.
See generally Moreno, American State, 138–162. See also Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 415–419.
76.
William O’Neill, Progressive Years, 27–28. O’Neill observes that TR lent verbal support to many further reforms to regulate working hours for women and children while he was president, but that he did little to move such bills through Congress during the years of 1901–1909. See O’Neill, 44.
77.
Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 420.
78.
Moreno, American State, 140–146. See also Kelly, Harbison, and Belz, The American Constitution, 415–423. The