In the introduction to Progressive Inequality, David Huyssen makes an arresting claim: at the turn of the twentieth century, “inequality between rich and poor became more, not less acute, all the way up to the stock market crash of 1929.” Inequality was “progressive,” due both to its “increasing severity” and its endemic role in the prescriptive class relations of the age.

He pursues this argument through a fine-grained study of the interactions between residents of New York City at opposing ends of the class spectrum: those who managed and financed charitable endeavors and those who were deemed worthy (or unworthy) recipients. In Huyssen's view, historians have erred in focusing so much of their attention on histories of classes in relative isolation; in contrast, he argues, we perceive class identity most clearly when it is framed in relational terms. Progressive Inequality therefore fixates on moments of dynamic interaction, arguing that even those acts ostensibly intended to redress inequalities of wealth—charity dinners, settlements, begging letters, tenement regulations—tended to reinforce rather than mitigate class differences. By exploring the evolution of such interactions during the progressive era, he asserts, we will discover “deep continuities” rather than radical transformations.

The book therefore unfolds as a succession of “dramatic encounters between rich and poor New Yorkers,” relayed in a compelling narrative style that draws on wide-ranging research in contemporary newspapers, institutional archives, and personal reminiscences. Huyssen is especially effective in explaining the spatial dynamics of power evident in the great philanthropic events of the era: the 1899 Salvation Army Christmas Dinner, or the 1910 meeting at Carnegie Hall to protest police brutality during the shirtwaist strike. Established in part to demonstrate solidarity, these events instead conveyed the deeply entrenched nature of class distinction, as impoverished and working-class New Yorkers became a spectacle for wealthy patrons who held themselves apart.

Huyssen devotes close attention to the “prescriptive” aspects of charitable aid, as donors leveraged their capital to make strict distinctions between the “worthy” and “unworthy” poor. In his representation, this was another form of “imperial” progressivism, in which affluent white Americans “asserted allegedly superior knowledge of politics, economics, science, and aesthetics” to justify “remolding” the spaces and lives of the recipients of their largess (14). Thus, charity workers visiting tenements carefully chronicled any lapses in hygiene or sexuality, which were compiled by the Charity Organization of New York City into a compendium of intimate details that were used to distinguish between those who did and (more frequently) did not deserve alms. By making such distinctions the dominant logic of poor relief, many charities ultimately reinscribed rather than subverted the class differences of the age.

Progressive Inequality shows how the power of capital enabled this logic, emanating from the wealthy, to infuse the actions and arguments of the poor and working class. Thus, the Salvation Army, founded as a working-class organization to pursue a mission of Godly charity, eventually “rebranded” itself to conform with the “norms of charity” espoused by its wealthy patrons. Its mission became the spiritual transformation of the poor, manifested in the prescribed qualities of “industry, sobriety, and thrift.” Similarly, poor citizens who wrote “begging letters” to the wealthy eagerly asserted their conformance to these norms. Huyssen depicts such efforts as attempts by the poor to wrest control of their voices from increasingly bureaucratized charities; but even these limited gestures proved abortive, as foundations developed novel infrastructures to investigate the legitimacy of such claims.

Despite all these impediments to cross-class solidarity, Huyssen identifies a few events and individuals that managed to defy the pervasive logic of distinction. The book includes a sympathetic treatment of the founder of the Nurses Service, Lillian Wald, who condemned the journalistic tone of condescension, refused to exploit the poverty of people in need to draw attention to her cause, and associated herself with labor and antiwar activism that drew the ire of her donors. Huyssen is most affirmative when describing Alva Belmont's rally in the hippodrome to publicize the shirtwaist industry's general strike. This event's integrated advocacy of women's and labor rights, he argues, was motivated by a recognition of shared oppression: Belmont believed her own cause could be aided by impoverished members of the working class, and established an atmosphere of mutual aid rather than one-sided philanthropy. The result was a “profoundly more disruptive” form of class relation that, unlike other charitable endeavors of the time, offered a “sustained rebuke to the structures of power and inequality.”

Progressive Inequality provides a rich portrayal of the dynamics of cross-class interaction in turn-of-the-century New York, and convincingly demonstrates the many ways in which charitable aid subverted its ostensible commitment to redressing inequality. The manuscript is less persuasive, however, in arguing that this narrative should lead historians to reframe the Progressive Era as one of “deep continuities.” In part, this is a problem of evidence: the book unfolds as a history of the cultural relations embedded in inequalities of wealth, rather than a close engagement with structural problems of political economy. Its narrative remains restricted to the confines of New York, devotes little attention to the ebbs and flows of the financial system, and marginalizes discussion of the middle class (despite their central role in the treatments of progressivism that Huyssen aims to subvert). The episodic and geographically constrained structure of the book is not conducive to the broad historiographical interventions it sometimes claims.

Huyssen aims to provide a “more nuanced” treatment of inequality, and his focus on relational dynamics powerfully reveals the complex and often intractable manifestations of class difference. The impetus of Progressive Inequality, however, does not lie in its elaboration of nuances: rather, the book is oriented toward a sustained critique of early twentieth-century markets and their primary beneficiaries. While Huyssen acknowledges that capitalism brought unprecedented economic growth, he seeks to emphasize its human costs and “foundational” incongruities with democratic governance. In his representation, capitalism is a social order predicated on violence leveraged by the wealthy to protect their property and position from the poor. In the absence of genuine moments of cross-class solidarity, impoverished citizens do what little they can to recoup dignity and agency from a broken system.

Progressive Inequality ends with a critique of the notion that such inequalities are “inevitable,” but at times Huyssen's narrative appears to foster just such a conclusion. In his analysis, class differences often appear too deeply inscribed for wealthy philanthropists and social workers to subvert, and the brief moments of genuine cross-class solidarity are only made possible by highly anomalous circumstances of mutual aid. Progressive Inequality provides a convincing rebuke of “the myth of classless democracy,” but risks replacing it with a model of class identity too robust to overcome.