15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
In pursuit of their goals, the “coercive moral reformers” further influenced Progressives through their application of sociology, “social analysis,” and statistical evidence, which led to a diminishment of moral appeals and blame on personal failings for poverty. Instead, intemperance and prostitution came to be seen as by-products of an urban environment in need of reform. [i.e., “shift from social purity to social hygiene”] Even if the studies sounded a tad more scientific, the connection between the reformers and the reformed had become “fragile but authentic.” (202)
Research required some level of intimacy with subjects. Though leadership presented simplistic explanations for prostitution and intemperance, reports describe more nuanced and understanding perspectives. However, many of the reformers themselves lacked any interaction with the spaces, places, and people they hoped to improve, which meant, unlike nineteenth-century reforms who restrained some of their stricter impulses because the concrete reality of living among the masses, their later counterparts did experience this limitation. Boyer presents the hardliners of the period as: <blockquote>“socially marginal people who in these same years were being drawn into the fundamentalist churches with their literal Biblical creeds and their rigid codes of personal morality. Viewing the immigrant poor across barriers not only of physical distance but also of class and culture, they responded with alacrity to reform proposals that promised to purify and control “the city” – without requiring direct contact with the actual inhabitants of one‘s particular city.” (214)<blockquote</>
“Positive environmentalists” shared many of the concerns of their stricter sibling, but believed that repressive legislation solved little. Instead, they hoped to create “the kind of city where objectionable patterns of behavior, finding no nurture, would gradually wither away.” (221) Like previous iterations of reform, the poor environment was blamed for the prostitution, gambling, and so forth. While the idea of nature remained a net positive, reformers believed nature needed regulation as well in the form of parks. Though later entire park systems came to be seen as the solution rather than one immense one like New York’s Central Park, parks and spaces of recreation emerged as one clear goal.
