well you said there were no progressives back then
Democrat President Woodrow Wilson was a progressive/marxist and this socialist monster and his democrat congress destroyed the USA (income tax,17th ammendment, federal reserve ) and a million other horrors.
In 1913 Democrat President Woodrow Wilson helped destroy the USA with his progressive era, imposing the 16th amendment (the income tax) on the USA, and the 17th. without these 2 amendments we’d have no income tax no huge government and states rights.
The 16th Amendment led directly to the enactment of a national income tax in .... In 1913, with the very active assistance of President Wilson, ...
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-wilson-presidency-woodrow-wilsons-world/
Up until the ratification of the 17th Amendment, the Senate had been traditionally focused on the interests of the states, as sovereign entities within a federal system, vis-a-vis the federal government. Before the change, the Senate only remotely reflected the so-called will of the voters and distinctly did not act like a popular assembly. With direct election becoming the law of the land, senators began to become simply another form of that scourge of democracy, the populist politician
Got it - I must not have been clear about my point of reference in the original comment, which was late 1800s (the time of Cleveland) instead of the time of the publication of the cartoon posted by marktwain. There were definitely progressives in the 1930s but not really in any meaningful numbers before the early 1900s. I agree that Wilson is more or less the right point of reference for the rise of progressivism, though Teddy would also be appropriate.