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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