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Defining the spirit of an age has never been easy. Still, American historians looking at the first two decades of the 20th century have not been shy about characterizing this critical period. while the years between the Spanish American War and the end of World War I have commonly been labeled the "Progressive" era, the dominant theme of this time has also been described by historian Robert Wiebe as a "search for order" among middle-class reformers who were responding to the disruptions of the industrial age. In ontrast, Gabriel Kolko, a leftist historian, characterized the period as a "triumph of conservatism" because he believed that reform impulses were hijacked by the business community for their own benefit David Traxel's Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898-1920 is a welcome addition to these considerable efforts to define the character of this era.
As the title suggests, Traxel finds the idea of "Crusade" to be an appropriate lens through which to interpret the motives and actions of a wide variety of both famous and not so famous individuals from that era. They range from political figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to more radical visionaries such as Emma Goldman and Mother Jones, and they include lesser known figures such as Jack Reed, the itinerant journalist who eventually fled to Soviet Russia in pursuit of his own personal dream of a better world. Though diverse and indeed often sharply divided in their convictions, these individuals "had faith in their particular visions the good society and fought to establish these with a passionate intensity that often blinded them to other points of view."
Like many historians before him, Traxel describes this post-Civil War generation as impatient "for their turn at the levers of power" to ameliorate social problems associated with industrialism and urbanization. He briefly credits religious ideals and humanitarian values as motivators, along with the "desire to organize society along rational and efficient 'scientific' lines, a belief that experts could bring order to the complex chaos of industrial society." And he allows that investigative reporters or "muckrakers" did much to raise the consciousness of middle-class Americans concerning the social problems of the day.
While it's understandable that Traxel doesn't attempt to gather all the social crusaders from the era into his narrative, especially given his attempt to stretch our understanding of the "crusading" impulse, one does wonder about his criteria for inclusion and exclusion. For example, he pays almost no attention to Social Gospel ministers such as Walter Rauschenbusch or Washington Gladden. Yet even more conspicuous is the absence of figures like Francis Willard, who led the Woman's Christian Temperance Movement for several decades. These exclusions are puzzling. In addition, Traxel tends to see Victorian culture simply as something that "crusaders" reacted against, and as a consequence he tends to overlook complex ways in which Victorian assumptions and goals provided idealistic notions for many reformers to "make the world a better place." Similarly, he too easily dismisses Prohibition as the result of "small-town, selfrighteous bluenoses … . [I]t was viewed by city sophisticates as provincialism run wild." We know too much about the complexity of Prohibition and its complicated relationship to woman suffrage to dismiss it easily as a positive social force, particularly in a book describing sources of the nation's crusading spirit. Likewise, Traxel might have highlighted countless Progressive reform movements or crusades that emerged out of this period, such as those that resulted from the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire when 146 employees—most of them women—died.
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