The decades between Reconstruction and World War I were a period of vast transformations in American society. In his book, The Search for Order, Robert Wiebe seeks to address these rapid changes in analyzing the changing values among individuals in the United States. Wiebe’s central thesis argues that the Progressive Era was a period in which the American people were in search for societal stability.
Wiebe introduces his text by identifying the nation as a collection of ‘island communities’. He argues that Americans largely had a “Little House on the Prairie” outlook on the world and society. Americans operated through personal relationships and maintained small-town community values. However, by 1877, American society was growing rapidly in industrialization and urbanization; this would lead to the dissolution of the island communities. Wiebe’s central argument focuses on the Progressive era as a reactionary movement, with the first wave of reform coming from groups such as the Populists or Knights of Labor who sought to regain the traditional values and community-based society. Wiebe states that this era of reform sought to preserve individualism and democracy by protecting American communities. However, by the 1890’s, the author asserts that a new middle class was emerging. Wiebe states that the new reformers wanted to adapt an existing order to their own ends.
Wiebe identifies this “new middle class” as urban individuals marked as ‘professionals’. This second movement of reform by the Progressives establishes a more collective national thought, rather than a predominantly local or state order. Wiebe also states that these Progressives emphasized national solutions to local issues, establishing federal regulation such as child labor or sanitation laws. The last few chapters of The Search for Order discuss the results of Progressivism on foreign policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wiebe argues that the mobilization of World War I and Wilson’s proposed League of Nations marked the peak of Progressivism by 1917.
Wiebe’s piece was a well-executed synthesis of the society of the Progressive Era. The elements of Wiebe’s central argument that were perhaps the most compelling were the emergence, as well as the image of the Progressives. He argues that the breakdown of the previous society and the rise of the Progressive movement was a reform-minded outlook on modernization. Unlike other previous reform movements that sought to reestablish the traditional organization of society, Wiebe argues that the Progressives sought to shape the industrious society to their own needs. Wiebe also offers that these “men and women did represent a new society. They had enough insight into their lives to recognize that the old ways and old values would no longer suffice. Often confused, they were sill the ones with the determination to fight those confusions and mark a new route into the modern world”. Other historians have argued that the Progressives were a group of individuals who already existed. However, Wiebe’s Progressives were a group created out of the modern, industrious society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were seeking to establish their status in this new society.
The author also portrays a certain image of Progressive individuals. Wiebe refers to them as working middle-class ‘professionals’. The professionals, or the educated elite, were the individuals who were most pertinent to society, as they were the ones who could rationally analyze and organize society and could pioneer and encourage the progression of American society. To be considered a professional, Wiebe asserts that one must meet the standards of a particular profession and be properly educated. For example, doctors had to be certified through the American Medical Association and lawyers needed to pass the bar exam. Progressive thought, Wiebe argues, focuses on democracy and education, so Americans can arrive at the point in societal success they wish to achieve.
The Search for Order offers a historical analysis of the Progressive Era that differs from the other historians of the mid-twentieth century. For example, Wiebe mostly directly contrasts from Richard Hofstadter’s argument that the Progressive movement was a reactionary movement of status reform. As previously stated, Wiebe viewed Progressivism as an intellectual movement of the newly-emerging middle class who sought to establish order in American society. As engaging and challenging as the piece was, Wiebe was arguably lacking in some aspects of his main argument. In particular, Wiebe hyper-focuses on the specific group of ‘professionals’ as the main contributors in the Progressive movement. He rarely mentions other groups of American society that were also integral parts of the reform movement—such as the suffragettes or those in rural communities. Overall, The Search for Order is a carefully researched synthesis of the emergence of the Progressive Era and it offers a new interpretation of the period that had never been discussed before. Wiebe’s book arguably reshaped the historiography of the Progressive Era for the remainder of the twentieth century, as well as into the current era.
