Progressive Era

Definitions of manliness during the Progressive Era (1890– 1915) were often ambiguous and contradictory. While a more assertive and aggressive masculinity (with origins in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century) spilled over into the twentieth century and continued in the Progressive Era, new articulations of manliness were emerging that emphasized a greater foundation in social networks and political associations and a scientific approach to examining and understanding society and politics. These new definitions, which sought to balance notions of liberal individualism and social justice with notions of social bonds, social order, the common good, and social efficiency, began to reign in and temper the more aggressive concepts of masculinity common in the Gilded Age.

Since the Civil War, U.S. society had seen the emergence of new administrative capacities that expanded the reach and powers of the nation, while corporate capitalism had transformed the economic model of U.S. society by concentrating production (and political power) in the hands of large industrial conglomerates. These developments challenged prevailing ideals of manhood, bringing about what contemporaries referred to as a “crisis of masculinity” and prompting, particularly among middle-class men, the ideal of a “strenuous life” and hedonistic articulations of a “passionate manhood.” By the early twentieth century a reform-oriented state, geared toward correcting the worst abuses of the system, sought to assure men of their status, rights, and opportunities as autonomous individuals in a liberal, capitalist society and offered new outlets for masculine activity. This resulted in new loyalties between the federal government and the voting (male) citizenry.

During the Progressive Era, men continued to speak a language of masculine individualism, which was manifested in a strong opposition to corporate monopolies and an insistence on an open, liberal marketplace. Yet the stress on male individual autonomy was balanced by stresses on the common-wealth and social efficiency. Definitions of manhood stood in opposition to arbitrary and unregulated sources of power, and men accepted a critical break with nineteenth-century notions of the autonomous individual. Instead, they acknowledged the necessity to intervene in people's lives and to regulate social and economic processes to improve social conditions and to restore economic opportunity. To realize this goal, Progressives not only accepted, but also demanded, an enlarged government role in their lives.

Theodore Roosevelt serves as one outstanding example of the simultaneous commitment to individual autonomy, social obligation, and the acceptance of an enlarged role of the state. During the Spanish-American War (1898), Roosevelt led the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, known as the “Rough Riders,” in Cuba in a specially tailored uniform. As spokesmen for the “strenuous life,” he journeyed to the West to recapture a more pure and true masculinity. As president (1901–09), he announced a “square deal” for Americans and sought to use the power of the state to break up trusts and ameliorate social abuses, thus helping to create the twentieth-century notion of the interventionist state.

Concerns with men's commitment to social justice and the common good did not remain limited to presidential politics. Authors such as Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford felt that the nineteenth-century ideal of the autonomous self-made man had proven to be a failure. The “Young Americans,” as they were called, set out to reconcile notions of community and society in a new, inclusive, and participatory democratic society by formulating a masculine ideal grounded in a notion of the common good.

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