53 pages • 1 hour read
Michael McGerrA Fierce Discontent
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Preface-Chapter 2 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part1: “The Progressive Opportunity”
Preface Summary
In the Preface to A Fierce Discontent, Michael McGerr argues that “progressivism created much of our contemporary political predicament” (19). According to McGerr, Americans in the 2010s are disinterested in participating in political and government life—unlike Americans living at the turn of the 20th century. For this reason, people remain fascinated with the Progressive Era in American history—that period from 1870 to 1920 when everyday Americans felt a “fierce discontent” with the failures of society and relentlessly toiled to change their country.
Through his examination of four quintessential progressive battles—“to change other people; to end class conflict; to control big business; and to segregate society,” McGerr traces the rise and fall of progressivism in the United States (21).
Chapter 1 Summary: “Signs of Friction: Portrait of America at Century’s End”
The book opens with a description of American society at the end of the 19th century, focusing on the differences in the values, behaviors, and conditions of life for the wealthy class—called the "upper ten"—the working or laboring class, and the farming class. McGerr supports the main point of this chapter by describing the varying ways of life of the different classes in American society; class differences were more pronounced at the end of the 19th century than at any other time in American history to that point. A new industrial order had emerged on the heels of 19th century Victorianism which affected people from the various classes in dramatically dissimilar ways.
A key source of the conflict between the American upper class and working class at the end of the 19th century was their adherence to dissimilar ideologies. “The upper ten” glorified the power of the individual to determine their own destiny, no matter life’s circumstances, while the working class depended on a sense of mutualism—or mutual dependence on other people for social wellbeing—to navigate their grueling lives. Clinging to their doctrine of individualism, the upper ten blamed the hardships of the poor on their individual shortcomings, rather than on the inherent unfairness of the economic system.
Glorification of the individual, however, meant nothing to the working class. They had to depend on each other to survive within a harsh and often dangerous system characterized by harmful working conditions and low wages that often resulted in an early death. Self-denial was key to survival in the working class, as individuals sacrificed their dreams and desires in order to support their families. This climate contributed to the emergence of trade unions and a sense of mutualism among working class people.
The experience of farmers in rural areas was a combination of both individualism and mutualism. Though farmers could not necessarily aspire to wealth, they could aspire to a certain degree of independence by owning their own land and producing their own resources.
Despite the potential for revolt through unionization within the working and farming classes, and the potential within the elite classes for total control of the nation’s economic interests, there were divisions within all classes that prevented any such movements (114). The “gulf between the upper ten and the working class was enormous” at the turn of the 20th century, and the middle class, simultaneously appalled by and caught in the middle of this conflict, was desperate to mend these divisions (57).
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Radical Center"
In this chapter, McGerr paints a picture of the group caught in the middle of the conflict between the upper and working class at the end of the 19th century: the middle class. McGerr describes middle-class Americans—who were more hesitant to discard the Victorian values of the previous century than the wealthy and working classes—as hardworking and prosperous, yet sober-minded, and unselfish. The Gilded Age presented a sort of crises for the Victorians of the late 19th century: Raised to respect and revere the conventions of domesticity, individualism, self-discipline, and self-denial, they experienced increasing feelings of dissatisfaction and concern over class conflict and self-indulgence. McGerr claims, “In some ways, the Progressive Era emerged from a middle class that could not cope with its own affluence” (134).
Middle-class Americans viewed the individualism of the upper class and the mutualism of the working class as inadequate ideologies to shape life in American society. Dissatisfied with both individualism and mutualism, the middle class created a new ideology that displaced Victorianism and ushered in a new progressivism. Progressivism was radical: It sought to change the world around the middle class—something the elite and working classes, with all of their internal class struggles, could not accomplish—by bringing a halt to the frictions and conflicts that were increasingly plaguing their industrializing nation.
Feeling the tension between the upper and working classes, the middle class radically reacted. They rejected what they saw as the ultimately self-serving doctrines of upper-class individualism and working-class mutualism in favor of a new creed of association (196). To bring this creed to the rest of society, the middle class had clear goals to reform certain areas of social life they believed the upper class and working class had a hand in corrupting: to rework domesticity, restrain pleasure, expose the dangers of staunch individualism, promote association, and mobilize state power.
By the end of the 1890s, the new identity of the middle-class Victorians became clear: their “imperative to turn outward, combined with the reform of domesticity and the reconsideration of work and pleasure, made the Victorians a new class. By the turn of the century, they had become ‘progressives’” (204).
Part 1, Preface-Chapter 2 Analysis
In the Preface and first two chapters of A Fierce Discontent, McGerr examines two dynamics in American life at the end of the 19th century: the friction between the different classes in American society, and the identity of the “radical” Victorian middle class that saw opportunity in the midst of that friction.
Industrialization was a major catalyst for both the creation of and the conflict between the working class and the upper class in American society from 1870 to 1920. With the exception of a few “revolutionaries,” the upper class had no interest in making sacrifices or lifestyle changes in order to benefit the lower classes. On the other hand, the working class had no interest in changing their behaviors in the interest of creating a more harmonious national society. McGerr makes it clear that the two polarized classes were only interested in making changes that would privilege or benefit their individual class.
This refusal to make changes for overall societal wellbeing was what originally spurred the middle class toward radical reform, but it is important to recognize that the Victorians’ passion for changing society was not purely altruistic. Middle-class Victorians experienced a crisis of their own at the turn-of-the-century: They struggled to understand their own identity in an increasingly industrialized and conflict-torn nation. The Victorianism of the 19th century gave Americans a sense of safety and assurance, but these feelings disappeared as industrialism took over and dismantled the social structure that had comfortably reigned in pre-industrial life. Victorians faced an unknown future, as their values failed to provide direction in a new society marked by dissatisfaction between men and women in their domestic lives together. Class conflict generated by the economic, political, and cultural innovations of the upper ten, and the rise of self-indulgence in their own middle-class homes in response to their newfound affluence contributed to the feeling of unease.
McGerr indicates that the “middle class paradise” that the Victorians-turned-progressives sought to bestow on all of America was also to bring a sense of safety and direction back into their own lives. In order to secure their futures, they needed to remake the other classes in the image of the middle class. The “progressive opportunity” that McGerr describes further refers to the opportunity progressives saw to create a society shaped around their vision for America.
