The Pragmatic Ideal: Mary Field Parton and the Pursuit of a Progressive Society

by Mark Douglas McGarvie

Overview

Following 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 denigrating rights as artificial legal impediments to social progress. The issues she faced and the options she considered find important currency in the political divisions confronting Americans a century later.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501762666
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2022
Pages:	210
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark Douglas McGarvie holds a JD and PhD in history. He is a Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation. He is the author of One Nation under Law and Law and Religion in American History.

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

What People are Saying About This

Kristine McCusker

This book provides a tremendous summary of some of the major intellectual trends of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries.

Robert D. Johnston

Mary Field Parton is one of the most fascinating little-known individuals in twentieth-century American history. The Pragmatic Ideal thoughtfully brings to life—in vivid detail—Parton and her political and intellectual milieu. At the same time, this gracefully written book reveals a great deal about the complexity, and even contradictions, of modern American liberalism

Wendy Gamber

Through an innovative blend of biography and microhistory, Mark Douglas McGarvie paints a vivid portrait of a remarkable woman and the society in which she lived. His fascinating exploration of the personal, the political, and the intellectual illuminates tensions between communitarianism and individualism, elitism and democracy—tensions that continue to bedevil liberalism to this day.