Description
Book SynopsisFollowing the life of a charismatic woman committed to reform, The Pragmatic Ideal provides an introduction to the politics that dominated the early decades of the twentieth century, ideas that are the basis for much of today''s progressive thought. As one of the new women who came of age during the Progressive era, Mary Field Parton, a close friend of Clarence Darrow, pursued social justice as a settlement house worker and as a leading writer on labor organizing, transforming pragmatic principles into action.
Mark Douglas McGarvie shows how, following the upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, liberals such as Mary Field Parton turned to pragmatism, hoping to generate greater social awareness from constructions of values rooted in personal experiences instead of philosophical or religious truths.
The Pragmatic Ideal reveals how Mary Field Parton sought to expand her rights as a woman while nonetheless denigrat
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. A Victorian Childhood in Defense of Tradition, 1878 -1896
2. Expanded Opportunities beyond the Home, 1896–1905
3. The New Women and Life in the Urban United States, 1905–1908
4. The Trials of Progressivism, 1909-1914
5. Liberalism's Decline during and after the Great War, 1914–1924
6. A Rights Revival in the Roaring Twenties, 1924–1929
7. A New Deal for Liberalism and the United States, 1929–1969
Afterword
