ABSTRACT
The Progressive Era in the United States presents an ideal opportunity to examine social thought, social images, capitalism and the American character at a crucial point in the history of American society. Americans were self-consciously aware that they were living in an exciting and volatile period. Images of progress, growth and prosperity proliferated in society. Phallic symbols representing virility and masculine prowess abound in descriptions of Progressive Era American capitalism. A good number of Americans, many of them women, recognized the dark underside of the capitalist celebration of industrialization and urbanization. Contemporary social thinkers now argue that it is crucial to regard “women’s experience as basic, not incidental, to how people view the past”. Women’s clubs and organizations functioned somewhat as a halfway house and gave women the opportunity to expand their private “feminine” sphere into the more “masculine” public arena in a socially approved manner.
