Illiberal Reformers

The pivotal and troubling role of progressive-era economics in the shaping of modern American liberalismIn Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and ...

The pivotal and troubling role of progressive-era economics in the shaping of modern American liberalismIn Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal ro