ABSTRACT
Racism split the Populist alliance and helped disrupt the few movements of reform–Reconstruction and progressivism–movements already limited by the reformers’ dislike of federal power and their faith in free enterprise. A different sort of men began to change the course of liberalism. These were the men of the machines, the bosses and the immigrants they bossed. Far from reformers, they were among the things Progressives wanted to reform. The reformers objected, and in 1872 made the demand for a civil service the main plank of their platform. Republicans of all stripes endorsed the federal power that created the national financial system, yet were dismayed by the farmers’ demand that federal power might reform those very banking, credit, and currency laws. To reform society was beyond their interest–and against their principles, for the reforming Republicans shared with the conservatives a basic faith in free enterprise.
