The Lexington Civic League: Agent of Reform, 1900 - The Filson ...

1988] Lexington Civic League 353
Mrs. Cantrill during this period worked in a little lending library
which had been established in Irishtown. She later became deeply
involved in the Civic League's playground work and ultimately
succeeded to the presidency of the League in 1920. She recorded
in her autobiography concerning herself and close friend
Margaret Preston Johnston : "I really believe we naively thought
at one period that neither the city of Lexington nor Christ
Church Episcopal could get along without us.''
As Blaine A. Brownell notes, Progressivism has "been defined
and redefined, examined and reexamined" with fervor in
the last thirty years, and yet "there will doubtless never be universal
agreement on the precise meaning of 'progressivism' and
whether or not it was a distinct 'movement' or a vague collection
of impulses for political change. ''37 The Lexington Pro-
gressives, however, were a fairly coherent group which sought
justice by attempting to change the environment in order to
prevent rather than simply cure social ills; thus, their emphasis
on education, health, child labor, and other reforms which particularly
affected children. Without a doubt the leading reformer
among Lexington Progressives was Madeline McDowell Breckinridge.
Referred to at the time of her death in 1920 as the
founder of the Civic League, the Associated Charities, and the
Fayette County Anti-Tuberculosis Society as well as leader of
the successful fight for a federal woman suffrage amendment,
she had long been the guiding force for change in the Bluegrass.
Due in large part to her dominance, the Civic League never
developed a close organization althought it maintained a number
of standing committees. It functioned primarily when she had
a new idea, and she reportedly orchestrated its activities in an
adept and sometimes dictatorial manner. Through her relationship
with her sister-in-law, Sophonisba Breckinridge, Lexington
36 Cantrill, "Among My Souvenirs," 51, 89.
37 Blaine A. Brownell, "Interpretations of Twentieth-Century Reform,"
in David R. Colbure and George E. Pozzetto, eds., Reform and Re]ormers
in the Progressive Era (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983),
3, 18.