John S.J. Hsu Bücher

In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas fueled the Progressive Era's dismantling of laissez-faire capitalism and the establishment of a regulatory welfare state intended to humanize industrial capitalism. Key figures like Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, alongside reformers in social work, journalism, and law, were instrumental in enacting minimum-wage laws, maximum-hours regulations, workmen's compensation, progressive taxes, and antitrust measures. However, their vision of progress was selective; while they aimed to uplift some, they also advocated for the exclusion of others. Leonard explores the impact of Darwinism, racial science, and eugenics on these reformers, revealing a community conflicted about the poor. Economic progressives supported labor legislation to benefit the deserving poor but marginalized immigrants, African Americans, women, and those deemed 'mentally defective,' viewing them as threats to the American workforce and racial integrity. They dismissed property and contract rights as obstacles to reform, demonstrating a broader disregard for civil liberties. Ultimately, Leonard illustrates how the architects of the regulatory welfare state sought to use it not to assist those they deemed inferior, but to exclude them from society.