More than a river: using nature for reform in the progressive era

Abstract

The decades around the turn of the twentieth century were a time of vast social and economic change. Industrialization altered the ways people related to each other and to their social, political, and cultural institutions. Some perceived that the rise of cities, changing middle-class values, and changing work patterns created vexing social convulsions—disorder, inefficiency, and class struggle. The work of John Gneisenau Neihardt, William Ellsworth Smythe, and Francis Griffith Newlands revealed how progressives looked to nature as a tool of social reform. Each of these men understood the American environment in multiple contexts. Nostalgia and romanticized Missouri River history activated themes of empire, race, and manhood in Neihardt’s work. He also voiced the concerns of river improvement advocates, who wanted more federal support for their cause. William Smythe became the chief propagandist for the western irrigation cause. He formulated resilient and emotionally powerful rhetoric that motivated irrigationists. Both the river improvement and irrigation causes, however, proved fractious and parochial. Newlands was a practical politician. In reclamation, he found a mechanism to bring irrigation and river control under coordinated government management for social order, business expansion, and reliable systems of investment and return. These social reform efforts, however, faltered and created new kinds of conflicts that justified and necessitated continued government intervention in society and business in the name of progress