Promise of American Life


The book is said to "offer a manifesto of Progressive beliefs" that "anticipated the transition from competitive to corporate capitalism and from limited government to the welfare state." By Croly’s death in 1930, only 7,500 copies of The Promise of American Life had been sold. Despite this, the book was immensely influential, even influencing Theodore Roosevelt to adopt the platform of The New Nationalism. (18 hr 33 min)

Chapters

What Is the Promise of American Life?
How the Promise has been realized
How the Promise is to be realized
The Federalists and the Republicans
Federalism and Republicanism as opponents
Federalism and Republicanism as allies
The Democrats and the Whigs
The New National Democracy
The Whig failure
Slavery and American Nationality
Slavery as a Democratic Institution
Lincoln as more than an American
The Contemporary Situation and Its Problems
The Development of the Business Specialist
The Development of the Political Specialist
The Labor Union and the Democratic Tradition
Government by Lawyers
American Democracy and the Social Problem
Reform and the Reformers
The Logic of Reform
William J. Bryan as a Reformer
William Travers Jerome as a Reformer
William R. Hearst as a Reformer
Theodore Roosevelt as a Reformer
The Reformation of Theodore Roosevelt
Reconstruction: Its Conditions and Purposes
Democracy and Discrimination
Constructive Discrimination
The Bridge between Democracy and Nationality
Nationality and Democracy: National Origins
The Implications of National Development
Nationality and Democracy in England
Democracy and Nationality in France
The Relation of German Nationality to Democracy
Militarism and Nationality
The American Democracy and Its National Principles
Nationality and Centralization
The People and the Nation
A National Foreign Policy
A stable American international system
Democracy and Peace
Problems of Reconstruction: Part 1 - State Institutional Reform
State Administrative Reform
Possibilities of effective state action
Problems of Reconstruction: Part 2
The recognition of Industrial Organization
The fruits of Industrial Organization
Taxation and inequalities in wealth
The organization of Labor
Conclusions: The Individual and the National Purposes - Individual vs. Collecti…
Conditions of individual emancipation
Attempts at individual emancipation
Means of individual emancipation
Constructive individualism