A Progressive Statesman Confronts Modern Art

The Progressive Era (ca. 1900-1920) was a time of great change in American life. Urbanization and industrialization increased, immigration grew, progressive reformers introduced new forms of government regulation, and new types of literature and art entered the scene. The changes delighted some Americans but confounded and upset others. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was a change-maker but also someone who struggled to understand and accept some of the changes of the era. Modern art, which debuted in the new century, was one of those changes.

2025 Prize and Grant Winners

The Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is pleased to announce our 2025 prize and grant winners, including the Vincent P. DeSantis Prize and the H. Wayne Morgan Prize.

Minding the GAPE – January 2025

The Panama Canal, Grant’s Ku Klux Klan pardons, birthright citizenship and U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, Greenland and Arctic imperialism, the origins of the anti-vaccine movement, teaching resources for Black History Month, and much more.

“Faces of the First Red Scare”: Documenting Red Scare Deportees

Below is an interview with Dr. Kenyon Zimmer, a historian of transnational radicalism. Recently, as I was editing a piece for our blog, I stumbled across his personal website where he has published a comprehensive digital archive of Red Scare deportees. I thought our readers could benefit from this resource, both for their own research and for the classroom. It is also a wonderful example of a digital history project, and Zimmer gives us insight into the surprising responses he’s had to it.

Minding the GAPE – December 2024

Rereleasing an 1891 country song recording, evolving depictions of Santa Claus, historical holiday drinks and the history of punch, Black self-publishers, acrimonious elections of the past, investigating deaths at Indian boarding schools, and much more

High Cost of Living? Blame the President.

The federal government’s regulatory involvement in the economy has grown greatly since the 1910s. The incongruities of fiscal politics, though, resembled those of today. A Democratic administration tolerated massive borrowing—to meet wartime needs then and a pandemic emergency recently—while Republicans condemned as inflationary actions they might well have taken themselves (and did during Trump’s administration). Unlike in Wilson’s era, today’s Federal Reserve Board bears much of the responsibility for curbing inflation. Yet politically, the president’s administration still faces most of the criticism when consumer prices have risen sharply. Then and now, the budgetary pressures of competing policy needs and the sheer difficulty of lowering prices virtually guarantee voter discontent.

Understanding Comstock Through Primary Sources

In addition to reading and assigning the posts in this blog series, instructors may want to bring a discussion of Anthony Comstock and the Comstock Laws into their classes through primary sources. This piece introduces a few readily accessible and rich options.

Anthony Comstock, Abortion, and the Arrest of Madame Restell

Anthony Comstock arrested many people, but perhaps none was so famous as Madame Restell, whom he arrested on February 11, 1878, for selling contraceptives and abortifacients. Because Restell remains best known as an abortion provider, and because Comstock succeeded in passing a federal statute that bears his name, one might assume that abortion occupied a central place in his campaign, or that Restell was arrested for performing an abortion. Neither is completely accurate. By taking the arrest of Restell as a case study, this post considers the various legal modes by which Comstock did his work, and the way he understood abortion as related to his greater campaign against obscenity and sexual license.