# Has New England always been at the front of progressivism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 11, 2010, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491 "2010-01-11T08:28:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/1 "2010-01-11T08:28:12Z")
I’m looking at a history of child labor in the US (abolishing it was a progressive goal) [http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child\_labor/about/us\_history.html](http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html) And some of the earliest reforms were in New England. I believe the same thing happened with abolitionism, the first states were northeast or new england. Now with gay marriage New England is at the front again. So is New England usually at the front of the nation in economic, social and political progressivism (or is this selection bias)? If so, why? I really don’t see how an area known for working class hardasses (yeah, I’m talking to you Boston) or rural dwellers (like Vermont or Maine) would be so progressive. I think I once heard the lack of diversity makes people more progressive. In areas where there are large amounts of diversity (mississippi, which is 60% white and 40% black for example) people try to keep the ‘others’ down. But if you look at the white vote, they tend to become far more conservative when the black % of the population goes above 15%. Fear of ‘the other’ can be used as a wedge issue. [http://blog.prospect.org/blog/ezraklein/Obama-Kerry-Race.jpg](http://blog.prospect.org/blog/ezraklein/Obama-Kerry-Race.jpg) However I don’t know if that is just a fluke due to the south being heavily black, or a sign that people are only progressive when they aren’t exposed to diversity. Either way, I get the impression New England is fairly culturally and racially homogenized. And the conservatives I do know from the northeast tend to be more moderate libertarians rather than the kinds you see in the south. Will racially and culturally homogeneous nations like Sweden become more right wing as their Muslim immigration numbers keep going up? ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/2 "2010-01-11T08:33:57Z")
I’ve heard it said that fashion trends go east to west but legal trends go west to east. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/3 "2010-01-11T08:34:45Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#): > > I’ve heard it said that fashion trends go east to west but legal trends go west to east. I would assume it is the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/4 "2010-01-11T15:23:02Z")
My guess is that the Northeast has always been one of the wealthier parts of the country, and that wealth affords economic progression. The US in general preaches morals to the poorer parts of the world in the same way, telling them that their labor practices are all wrong. You should be paid more money. You should eliminate sweatshops. You shouldn’t put children to work. These things are easy to do when you’re rich, not so much when every precious penny counts. This is what I believe happened in the early part of the 20th century when the comparatively rich Northeast began campaigning for better working conditions and pay across the country. I think that’s the story for economic issues at least. I think diversity is the key for human rights issues. We can see how relatively rich Europe, while quite progressive economically, has been scared shitless by the influx of Muslims to the point of banning minarets and head scarves. Hopefully it doesn’t get any worse. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/5 "2010-01-11T15:31:59Z")
David Hackett Fischer, in [_Albion’s Seed,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed) developed a theory of regional sociopolitical cultures. It is discussed in [_Vietnam: The Necessary War,_](http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Necessary-Reinterpretation-Americas-Disastrous/dp/0684870274/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201468966&sr=8-1) by Michael Lind, Chapter 4, “The Fall of Washington”: > [@](#): > > The real reason for the persistence of sectionalism in U.S. foreign policy can be found in the ethnoregional theory of American politics, which has been developed by the historians David Hackett Fischer, Daniel Elazar, D.W. Meinig, Kevin Phillips, and others. The ethnoregional theory holds that in the United States powerful ethnic and regional subcultures are more important and enduring than political parties and ideologies. The labels “Democrat” and “Republican” differ in their meaning from generation to generation; regional subcultures such as those of New England and the Tidewater South change much more slowly. > > The greatest insight of ethnoregional theorists is that immigrants in the United States do not assimilate to a uniform American national culture; rather, they assimilate to one of a small number of preexisting regional cultures. The historian Wilbur Zelinsky has defined a thesis he calls the Doctrine of Effective First Settlement that holds: “Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to affect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been.” . . . > > Historians differ on the question of how many of these enduring regional cultures there are in the United States. Most agree on three: a Yankee culture that spread westward overland from New England; a Quaker culture operating in Pennsylvania; and a Cavalier culture originating in the coastal South. Most, but not all, identify a fourth regional culture, that of the Scots-Irish Highland South from Appalachia to the Ozarks and Texas. In his magisterial Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), David Hackett Fischer argues persuasively that these four “hearth cultures” originated in different regions of early modern Britain and were transplanted to North America by four waves of immigrants. In the first wave (1629-40), Puritans from the eastern counties of England settled New England. The second wave (1642-75) brought anti-Puritan, royalist Cavaliers from the south of England to Virginia. Quakers from the North Midlands of England colonized Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley after emigrating during the third wave (1675-1715). The fourth and final major Anglo-American migration, which lasted from 1717 to 1775, transplanted so-called Scots-Irish from northern England, lowland Scotland, and the north of Ireland (Ulster). > > In addition to having distinctive folkways and dialects of English, these four groups of British-American immigrants had their own unique variants of a common individualistic and liberal British political culture. Fischer describes the New England Puritan ideal as “ordered freedom,” the Quaker ideal as “reciprocal freedom,” the Scots-Irish ideal as “natural freedom,” and the coastal southern ideal as “hegemonic freedom” (deference to traditional elites). Another historian, Daniel J. Elazar, calls the New England tradition the “moralistic” culture, the midatlantic region the “individualistic” culture, and the coastal southern tradition the “traditional” culture. . . . > > The ethnoregional theory provides the answer to the mystery of American sectional differences with respect to war. Regional disagreements about war are part of a larger pattern of regional disagreement about the legitimacy of all forms of violence. “Historians of Southern mores are agreed that violence as an aspect of Southern life clearly distinguished the region from the rest of the country,” writes historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Of the southerner, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “the energy which his [northern] neighbor devotes to gain turns with him to a passionate love of field sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat.” Southern states lead the nation not only in military academies but in homicide rates and death penalty laws and in low penalties for domestic violence. Northern states have the lowest homicide rates and the greatest number of statutes requiring a citizen to retreat before attacking an assailant or intruder in hishome. > > These regional differences reflect the difference in moral systems between the post-Calvinist Puritanism of Greater New England, which shuns violence as a means for resolving disputes, and the cultures of honor of the Scots-Irish Highland South and the Anglo-American Tidewater South. The two southern cultures are quite different, but compared to Greater New Englanders, both Highland and Tidewater southerners look with greater approval on violent retaliation for insults. But southerners are not indiscriminately violent. The difference between northern and southern homicide rates is accounted for almost entirely by violent responses of southerners to personal offenses: arguments, insults to women, lovers’ quarrels, and disputes within the family. The researchers Richard E. Nisbet and Dov Cohen discovered that, at the same university, white southern students were more likely to respond aggressively than white northern students to the same set of insults and provocations. The same researchers have pointed out the similarities between the culture of honor of white southerners and that of inner-city black Americans, most of whom are descendants of southern migrants. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/6 "2010-01-11T16:59:19Z")
New England was deliberately populated by religious progressives in the first place. Albion’s Seed, by the way, is one of the most impressive books I’ve read, truly a wonder IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/7 "2010-01-11T17:03:39Z")
New England was also the first region in the country to have its economy convert from agriculture-based to manufacturing-based, and therefore to have to deal with the substantial changes in social order that the Industrial Revolution caused. ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/8 "2010-01-11T18:29:07Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#): > > I’ve heard it said that fashion trends go east to west but legal trends go west to east. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I would assume it is the opposite. I have heard this said in the context of California being very innovative and “cutting-edge” but, at the moment, I cannot think of a concrete example. ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/9 "2010-01-11T18:36:46Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#): > > I have heard this said in the context of California being very innovative and “cutting-edge” but, at the moment, I cannot think of a concrete example. I believe strict liability for product liability had its genesis in California ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/10 "2010-01-11T20:18:15Z")
I think there is some selection bias at work here. Massachusetts and Maine were highly active in abolition and the Civil War, to be sure. However, they also have a history of discrimination against Irish immigrants. Boston saw some antisemitic violence during WWII and major racial tension in the 1970s. For decades, Boston was such a stronghold of artistic censorship that “Banned in Boston” was a well-known catch-phrase. Massachusetts has legalized gay marriage, but note that the impetus for doing so was judicial (although the people seem content not to overturn it). Maine voters of course recently rejected gay marriage. Massachusetts has implemented certain important health insurance reforms, but Olympia Snowe of Maine was one of the principal roadblocks to a public option, a stance that she presumably thinks is acceptable to her constituents. Rhode Island had no state income tax until 1971, and New Hampshire still doesn’t. None of this is to say that there’s no difference between Mass. and Miss., of course. 😃 I’m just suggesting that any generality is going to be pocked with exceptions. > [@Napier](#): > > New England was deliberately populated by religious progressives in the first place. That’s one way of looking at the Puritans, I guess. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/11 "2010-01-11T20:29:21Z")
Even the Irish situation has played a role in it. They did achieve a serious amount of political power of their own, thanks to some career pols who played up existing (well-founded) resentments to create a big-government system that catered to them. As much as the “something in the air” argument is attractive, a history of strong leadership by a relative-few individuals to create that atmosphere has to be considered, too. ---
**Author:** ![UncleFred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f0a364/32.png) [@UncleFred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleFred)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/12 "2010-01-11T20:43:10Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > I think there is some selection bias at work here. Agreed. I live in a small town near Boston and remember ‘Blue laws’ (things you can’t do or buy on Sunday) and ‘dry’ towns. You wouldn’t believe the difficulty getting the first restaurant license for sale of beer and wine (no ‘hard likker’ mind you!). ---
**Author:** ![2ply](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/b2d939/32.png) [@2ply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2ply)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/13 "2010-01-11T22:11:14Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > I think there is some selection bias at work here. I agree. New England/the Northeast were at the forefront of abolitionism in the early part of the America’s history when they’re weren’t any states away from the Atlantic, but the Northeast was happy to profit from shipping cotton out of New York and Boston. This might be biased by my Midwestern upbringing, but I tend to think that abolitionism as a political movement really took off in the Midwest. This is where the Republican party was formed and Lincoln came from, after all. Also, women’s suffrage got its start in America in the western states in the late 19th century. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I think I once heard the lack of diversity makes people more progressive. In areas where there are large amounts of diversity (mississippi, which is 60% white and 40% black for example) people try to keep the ‘others’ down. But if you look at the white vote, they tend to become far more conservative when the black % of the population goes above 15%. Fear of ‘the other’ can be used as a wedge issue. > > However I don’t know if that is just a fluke due to the south being heavily black, or a sign that people are only progressive when they aren’t exposed to diversity. Either way, I get the impression New England is fairly culturally and racially homogenized. And the conservatives I do know from the northeast tend to be more moderate libertarians rather than the kinds you see in the south. I was taught something similar in high school, but it the opposite from what you heard. Basically, most of the massive immigration in the 19th century went to the Northern (Union) states because there was plenty of open land in the West and Midwest to farm and large cities with industrial jobs in the Northeast. The South only really had one big city, New Orleans, and was mostly agriculture. Most of the farm land had been taken up by large plantations. So while the North had new waves of populations of Germans, and Italians, and Scandinavians, and Irish Catholics and the like to shake up the political landscape in the North, the South continued for generations with the same British and Scots-Irish plantation aristocracy and black underclass and one around to no push for change. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/14 "2010-01-12T01:39:19Z")
What was New England’s stance on Prohibition? That act was a classic progressive one, but if I remember correctly NE had an economic stake in brewing, which might tilt the balance somewhat. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/15 "2010-01-12T21:19:27Z")
I think the answer is that its always been that way. New England has a history of being very highly educated and high levels of education usually corellate with more progressive outlooks. I’ve often seen it claimed (I’m not sure how you prove this) that 18th century New England was the most literate society in the world at that time. New England also enacted compulsory public education very early on. So its probably no surprise that this level of education carried over into a progressive populace. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/16 "2010-01-12T23:14:34Z")
Except education doesn’t correspond directly with liberalism. Remember that the uneducated poor vote overwhelmingly Democratic, while the middle-class up to the moderately rich vote Republican. (By contrast, Obama carried the super-super-rich.) Similarly, education generally increases conservatism as you start from the bottom; only when you hit the elite college graduates and doctoral students do you get a leftward effect. That means that having “the most literate society” or “enacting compulsory public education” won’t move the population leftward in any significant manner. What it will do, however, is inflate the size of the educational elite, the tiny fraction of the population that is considered an “intellectual” - college professors, etc. That won’t swing many elections by sheer numbers, but if the educational elite has disproportionate political influence, then that _will_ make a difference. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/17 "2010-01-14T11:52:50Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > That’s one way of looking at the Puritans, I guess. Damn straight. Just look at the Waltz of the Chestnuts. ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-new-england-always-been-at-the-front-of-progressivism/524491/18 "2010-01-14T15:01:04Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > What was New England’s stance on Prohibition? That act was a classic progressive one, but if I remember correctly NE had an economic stake in brewing, which might tilt the balance somewhat. By 1855 New York and every state in New England had full statewide prohibition. By 1920 most of these states had repealed their state bans, but all still had strong local prohibitions that effectively left the states “dry.” CT, MA, NY, VT were all made completely dry by the 18th amendment. On a similar note there are 11 states which have decriminalized pot (to one degree or another). New York is one. But no New England state has.