Progressivism included democratic elements in that the movement attempted to restore a measure of fairness and competition, particularly by breaking up monopolies that were thought to have an unfair stranglehold on the economy. Progressives were concerned that too few people had too much power, and they wanted to break up the power of conglomerates in order to make the market more open for others. This was a democratic impulse. In addition, Progressives wanted to root out corruption in local politics, particularly in urban areas, to make the political process more democratic.

On the other hand, some Progressives were nativist, meaning that they were anti-immigrant. They were not necessarily in favor of immigrants gaining the right to vote. Temperance, the movement to outlaw the consumption of alcohol, was also a strain of Progressivism that showed its nativist tendencies, as Progressives believed (wrongly) that Catholics were more prone to drinking. Overall, Progressives (with some exceptions) were white Protestants who felt that they were culturally superior to other ethnic, religious, and racial groups and felt that they had the moral duty to educate others to emulate their ways. These were the anti-democratic impulses of Progressivism.

We tend to think of the Progressives as a group that was interested in making the United States more democratic, but this is not uniformly true.  It is more accurate to say that most Progressives were mainly interested in increasing the amount of democracy available to middle class, native whites and were less interested in increasing democracy for the poor, for immigrants, and for non-whites.

In some ways, the Progressives were truly democratic in their impulses.  This is seen most clearly in the fact that the supported giving the vote to women.  It can also be seen in their push for things like secret ballots and direct democracy measures such as the initiative and the recall.  Finally, we can see their democratic impulses in the fact that they passed the 17th Amendment, which allowed people to vote directly for their US senators.

But many Progressives had anti-democratic impulses as well.  They typically felt that middle class, native-born, white Americans were superior to other sorts of people and should have the most power.  Because of this, they enacted policies that worked to limit the political power of other groups.  They also passed legislation to try to control the behavior of other groups.  One example of this is Prohibition.  The Progressives wanted to prohibit alcohol largely because they felt that it corrupted the poor and immigrants.  It would seem more democratic to allow the poor and the immigrants to decide for themselves if alcohol was a good thing, but the Progressives were more paternalistic and felt that they knew what was best.  A second example is the creation of things like at-large city elections.  The Progressives did not like having poor and immigrant areas of the city electing representatives of their own.  They felt that these people were not really educated enough to vote and they felt that their representatives tended to support political machines, which Progressives did not like.  Therefore, they implemented at-large city elections so that the middle class, native-born vote could cancel out the poor and immigrant vote.

Thus, the Progressives’ impulses were both democratic and anti-democratic.  It can be argued that they wanted more democracy for the “right” kind of people and less democracy for the “wrong” kind of people.