SOURCE: Bloomfield, Maxwell. “Constitutional Ideology and Progressive Fiction.” Journal of American Culture 18, no. 1 (spring 1995): 77-85.

In the following excerpt from his essay on five Progressive-era writers, Bloomfield concludes that Dixon considered constitutional reform a way to redefine state control over race relations.

In the early 20th century an information explosion in American law coincided with the rise of revolutionary new technologies for the shaping of public opinion. Mechanical improvements reduced the cost of publishing magazines and newspapers, and encouraged the creation of mass audiences undreamed of in earlier generations. Comic strips and movies brought enhanced social awareness to millions of semiliterates, especially those recently arrived immigrants who crowded into the nation's ghettos. A new generation of writers, often young and college educated, rebelled against the romanticism and prudery of 19th-century literary conventions, and called for an American literature more responsive to the problems of a modern industrial society...