Bill Moyers Donates 300 Progressive-Era Publications to Roosevelt House

Mr. Moyers has said “The populist and progressive eras were marked by sustained and dramatic efforts to make democracy work for common people and to shift the economy and power from domination by oligarchs, plutocrats and monopolies.  Cabals of the rich and powerful dominate America today, and we can learn from the glaring failures and inspiring successes of those earlier champions of democracy. I am deeply grateful to my friends at Roosevelt House for providing a home to this collection that my colleagues and I gathered and studied as we sought to understand the people who paved the way for the Roosevelts who sought a new deal for ordinary people.”

The Moyers donation includes numerous biographies of political figures such as President William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, as well as the key players of the Progressive movement, including President Theodore Roosevelt, settlement house pioneers Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, labor and agrarian crusaders like Eugene Debs, Mother Jones and Tom Watson, journalists Upton Sinclair, William Allen White and Lincoln Steffens, and Senator Robert La Follette.  There are books on the suffrage movement and women in politics like Jeannette Rankin, as well as crusaders against lynching like Ida B. Wells. The darkness of racism and violence that impeded the civil rights of African Americans is also well covered. The need for urban improvement emerges through books by and about photojournalist Jacob Riis. Other major figures of the era who influenced public opinion were J.P. Morgan and William Randolph Hearst, their careers covered in lengthy biographies.

Another whole category of books provides overviews of muckraking journalism, radical movements, strikes and their violent repression, and populism. The conditions that they were rebelling against is best described in the books on the so-called Gilded Age and the rapidly advancing incorporation of big business during the post-Civil War period as well as corruption on a massive scale from local wards in cities to the halls of Congress.  Another historical category of books traverses the years from President Wilson, World War I and the 1920s, to the Great Depression and the New Deal. Many of the contemporary volumes published during the last 20 years deal with topics that are still much in the news, like inequality, voting rights, challenges to democracy, social justice, workers’ rights, and incarceration policies.

The Moyers gift features original magazines and newspapers from the Progressive era. Issues of Harper’s Weekly from the 1870s to the 1904 feature their usual diverse mix of illustrated cultural and political articles, including pieces on the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, anarchy, political corruption, and the suffering of families of striking miners. Issues of McClure’s Magazine from 1903 contained articles by three of the most famous muckraking journalists: Lincoln Steffens, Ida M. Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker. Three vintage issues of Cosmopolitan magazine from 1906 feature a series on “The Treason the Senate.” The Outlook, a weekly, in 1910 and 1911 featured articles by Associate Editor and former President Theodore Roosevelt on the fight for clean government, nationalism, and “The Trusts, the People and the Square Deal.” In contrast to these magazines is Farm & Fireside, published twice monthly during the last quarter of the 19^th century, and focused on farming, farmers, and their communities.

An additional 400 books given to Roosevelt House by the Schumann Media Center cover topics related to its missions and programs, including the American presidency, media and journalism, election propaganda, foreign policy, African-American history, and American history.