Progressive Generation
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The Progressive Generation is a name coined by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations for that generation of Americans born from 1843 to 1859. The Progressives were caught in an odd warp of history, as the Civil War saeculum did not have a Hero (or Civic) archetype.
The Progressives spent their childhood shell-shocked by sectionalism and the American Civil War. Overawed by older "bloody-shirt" veterans, they came of age cautiously, pursuing refinement and expertise more than power. In the shadow of Reconstruction, they earned their reputation as well-behaved professors and lawyers, calibrators and specialists, civil servants and administrators. In midlife, their mild commitment to social melioration was whipsawed by the passions of youth. They matured into America's genteel yet juvenating Rough Riders in the era of Sigmund Freud's "talking cure" and late-Victorian sentimentality. After busting trusts and achieving progressive procedural reforms, their elders continued to urge tolerance on less conciliatory juniors.
Altogether, there were about 22 million Americans born from 1843 to 1859. 27 percent of them were immigrants and 9 percent were slaves at any point in their lives.
The Progressives' typical grandparents were of the Compromise Generation. Their parents were of the Transcendental Generation and Gilded Generation. Their children were of the Missionary Generation and Lost Generation; their typical grandchildren were of the G.I. Generation.
A listing of sample Progressives includes the following, with birth and death dates as this generation is fully ancestral:
- 1843 Henry James (1916)
- 1843 Aaron Montgomery Ward (1913)
- 1844 Henry Heinz (1919)
- 1845 Mary Cassatt (1926)
- 1846 George Westinghouse (1914)
- 1846 Carry Nation (1911)
- 1847 Thomas Edison (1931)
- 1847 "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman (1918)
- 1849 Alexander Graham Bell (1922) (immigrant)
- 1849 Crazy Horse (1877)
- 1850 Samuel Gompers (1924) (immigrant)
- 1854 John Philip Sousa (1932)
- 1855 Eugene V. Debs (1926)
- 1855 Robert M. La Follette, Sr. (1925)
- 1856 Booker T. Washington (1915)
- 1856 Louis Brandeis (1941)
- 1856 Frederick Winslow Taylor (1915)
- 1857 Ida Tarbell (1944)
- 1857 Clarence Darrow (1938)
- 1859 John Dewey (1952)
The Progressives had four U.S. Presidents:
- 1843 William McKinley (1901)
- 1856 Woodrow Wilson (1924)
- 1857 William Howard Taft (1930)
- 1858 Theodore Roosevelt (1919)
They held a plurality in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1893 to 1909, a plurality in the U.S. Senate from 1903 to 1917, and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1911 to 1923.
Prominent non-U.S. peers of the Progressives include Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Giacomo Puccini, Sigmund Freud, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Henri Bergson.
Sample cultural endowments of the Progressives include the following:
- The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
- Babes in Toyland, Victor Herbert
- "The Man with the Hoe", Edwin Markham
- The Reign of Law James Lane Allen
- "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod", Eugene Field
- Uncle Remus, Joel Chandler Harris
- Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington
- The School and Society, John Dewey
- History of the Standard Oil Company, Ida Tarbell
- The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorsten Veblen
- The Rough Riders, Theodore Roosevelt
| Preceded by: Gilded Generation 1822–1842 | Progressive Generation 1843–1859 | Succeeded by: Missionary Generation 1860–1882 |