Midcentury Modern Progressivism
It's 1911.
Walt Bundy chose a small reading table in the corner of the library at the University of Wisconsin. This was his first extended stay away from his family's land, a dairy farm going back four generations, his first foray into the higher intellectual reaches of college. Walt wanted to make the best of it, to make his family proud.
He carefully laid a new book on the table—Addresses to Engineering Students. This 520-page tome was the largest he'd ever seen in his life. What kind of book was this?
Oh no—a series of lectures. How boring was this going to be? He wanted to learn about math and science, how to build bridges and steam engines, not be lectured about being a better person. "If I wanted lectures about studying harder, I'd have stayed home on the farm."
The editors, Waddell and Harrington, open the book by saying:
Most young men when entering technical schools have no adequate conception of what the engineering profession really is. Many of them undertake the course either because their parents desire them to receive a useful education or because they think that engineering is a good calling in which to make a living; but very few of them enter on account of a heartfelt admiration of engineering as the profession of progress, to which are due practically all the wonderful developments of the world during the last one hundred years developments that have so added to the comforts and conveniences of man as to make life truly worth living instead of a burden grievous to be borne.[1]
He thought wryly about his high school teacher's constant reminders of science revolutionizing the world in the last fifty years. His teacher only taught them half the story, though. Scientists might invent things, but engineers bring everything the scientist might dream to life—and engineers add a fair number of inventions of their own.
Encouraged by these words describing the importance and nobleness of engineering, Walt reconsidered. The excitement of what lay before him as an engineer overcame his doubt; he began reading earnestly.
Turn of the Century Confusion
Walt's world would have been confusing. In the material world of atoms, Science seemed to be making discoveries every day, and engineers were using these discoveries to revolutionize life in ways no one in 1850 could have predicted. For instance:
The first electrical power plant was built in 1882 by Thomas Edison—but it soon failed. George Westinghouse—an engineer—built the first successful commercial electrical power plant in 1886 and the first plant able to send electricity over long distances in 1896. Generating electricity and carrying it to homes moved from experimental to possible on a large scale across the short span of fourteen years.
Cars using internal combustion engines were first designed and built in Europe in the early 1800s, and practical designs were created by 1885. In 1890, two cars raced 200 miles from Green Bay to Madison, Wisconsin. One of the two cars managed the entire trip, averaging 6mph. In 1908 the first Model Ts rolled off the production line. Engineers had once again moved from an idea to changing people's lives in less than twenty years.
Orville and Wilber Wright achieved the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft in 1903. By 1911, similar planes were being used in war. Blimps, lighter-than-air craft, were first flown in 1901, and the first German air passenger service using blimps started in 1910. In less than ten years, another technology was brought from idea to commercial use, primarily by engineers (the Wrights ran a bicycle shop).
The first factory producing engine-powered farm tractors was established in 1902. By 1919, more than 100 factories producing engine-driven farm equipment operated in Minneapolis-St. Paul alone. Food production was revolutionized over seventeen years.
Society challenged engineers with problems, and—in most cases—within twenty years the problems were well on their way to being solved.
On the other hand, Walt's world was in upheaval. Large waves of immigrants flooded the United States from southern and eastern Europe, all of whom needed support until they could gain some foothold in their new life—and some of whom, unfortunately, were criminals or uninterested in anything other than a handout.
Industrialization led to the growth of urban centers and the decentering of rural towns and farms in the national imagination. Social changes also brought declining birth rates and increasing divorce rates. Families were not staying together as they had in previous decades, exacerbating the problems caused by mass immigration.
Political and social power was centralized in the great corporations—the "robber barons" ruled supreme in the financial and corporate worlds. It must have seemed that either you worked for one of these companies or were some kind of "dirt farmer" with few prospects for the future (regardless of the many fairs and words used to honor farmers).
Finally, the newly minted social sciences were trumpeting warnings about the rising tide of crime and depravity. People classified as idiots or morons were increasing rapidly in the population, as well as people with physical deformities like blindness and deafness.
Progressives such as Richard Ely in 1899 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 turned these social shifts into a crisis of epic proportions:
What are the characteristics of the present social crisis? I suppose the chief characteristic of all is a deep stirring of the masses, not a local stirring, not merely a national stirring, but an international, world-wide stirring of the masses. The aim of this movement is a profound social reconstruction. What is desired is change, not merely in surface phenomena, but in the foundations of the social order. Those institutions which lie at the very basis of social life, and which give shape and direction to this life, are called in question. Perhaps, when the full import of this is understood, it may be a sober judgment — and not a rash exaggeration — to say that it is the most important, the farthest and deepest reaching crisis known to human history.[2]
We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.[3]
The solution seemed obvious: since science and engineering were conquering the physical world, why not turn them on the social world?
[1] J. A. L. Waddell and John Lyle Harrington, “The Profession of Engineer,” in Addresses to Engineering Students, ed. J. A. L. Waddell and John Lyle Harrington (Kansas City, MO: Waddell & Harrington, 1911), 1.
[2] Richard T. Ely, Social Aspects of Christianity (Boston: Thomas Y. Cromwell & Company, 1889), 137.
[3] Theodore Roosevelt, “Address by Theodore Roosevelt before the Convention of the Progressive Party,” August 1912, https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record.aspx?libID=o284876.