Elite Progressive-era philanthropy aimed primarily at social order, not sincere reform.

Evidence

Though it is popularly remembered as a time of heartfelt social concern and awareness, in reality the Progressive era was rigged by elite White men and women. It was dominated, at least from the standpoint of its elite funders and organizers, by a desire to end the social strife caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and inequality in the 1880s and 1890s. Cotton Mather’s blessings of order through benevolence still held the philanthropist’s ear from Boston to Atlanta after all these years. The projected benevolence of the Plessy ruling and the Atlanta Compromise seemed to bring a finality to the disorder of the “Negro problem.” Indeed, the finality of the “Negro problem” as the nineteenth century closed meant a United States dead set on playing down the southern horrors of discrimination and playing up what was wrong with Black people. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 738

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in Kendi’s causal inversion: policy/self-interest before stated benevolent ideas — the self-interest engine dresses as charitable concern. — connects to: WWI repression of dissent pushed Progressive jurists toward stronger speech protections — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 168; Uplift philanthropy blended charity with cultural condescension and anti-socialism lectures — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 135; Municipal government was the focal point of Progressive reform energy — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 252 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the continuity claim that Mather’s ‘order through benevolence’ ideology persisted intact into the Progressive era — does Kendi substantiate a direct lineage or is this a loose parallel?