What is the summary of chapters 1 and 3 in A Fierce Discontent?
Written by American historian Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent is a work of non-fiction that recreates the Progressive Era which ran from the 1890s to the 1920s. The Progressive Era was a time of extensive social and political activism and reform across the United States.
In chapter one, "Signs...
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of Friction: Portrait of America at Century’s End," McGerr takes a detailed look at the class system—the upper, working, and laboring classes—in America at the end of the nineteenth century. Here he finds widespread disunity, with the upper classes generally believing that the poverty and general hardship of the working class were due to their own failings:
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.
Whilst the upper class believed in the individual being instrumental in creating their own success, the working classes were forced, through economic hardship, to depend on one another.
In chapter three, "Transforming Americans," McGerr examines the middle-class progressives in America who wanted both the upper classes and the working classes to follow their own middle-class principles and codes. They believed that many of society’s problems were down to the failings in these two classes and that they could “reshape character by reshaping the environment.”
However, neither the upper, laboring, or working classes were interested in changing their environments to fit in with the middle-class ideology.
What is the summary of chapters 2 and 4 in A Fierce Discontent by McGerr?
In chapter 2 of A Fierce Discontent, McGerr discusses how the Progressivists represented an ideological middle ground between the upper and lower classes. Referring to the Progressive movement as a “radical center,” McGerr explains how the Progressivists’ goals were not as individualistic as the upper classes’ values but not as supportive of some of the socialist ideals of the working class. To explain this concept, McGerr provides a brief outline of the middle class’s development in nineteenth-century America and the emerging crisis of Victorian culture. For example, he notes how middle-class homes provided a “refuge” of sorts from the chaos of working-class urban life, yet still expressed the values of hard work and “postponed gratification” that the wealthiest class didn’t have to worry about (McGerr, 44).
In chapter 4, “Ending Class Conflict,” McGerr discusses the theory and application of one of the Progressive movement’s goals to decrease class conflict. To explain the context of these ideas, he discusses several examples of class conflict in America at this time. For example, he calls the coal strike of 1902 "the greatest conflict between capital and labor ever waged in the history of the world” (118). McGerr discusses how such conflicts led to a rise of support for ideas of worker cooperation, such as Frederick Winslow Taylor's theory of scientific management. He also explains how such ideas prompted groups like the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to advocate for government regulation of fair labor conditions.