Book excerpt: This study explores the ways in which female reformers during the Progressive Era (1900-1917) employed radical, even confrontational tactics, to call attention to their various causes, to force their issues onto the public agenda, and to put pressure on authority or "establishment" figures to respond to their demands. The project consists of a series of case studies of four well-known reformers, all of whom challenged prevailing norms of acceptable public behavior: labor leader Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, prohibitionist Carry A. Nation, suffragist Alice Paul, and anarchist Emma Goldman. I label these activists the "wild women" of the Progressive Era not only because they violated prevailing conventions of civil or polite speech, but also because they adopted unconventional social movement strategies for creating public spectacles, engaging in civil disobedience, and building public sympathy for their causes. Research on these reformers contributes not only to scholarly understanding of these women and their era, but also to larger theoretical conversations about the rhetoric of agitation, visual spectacle, martyrdom, and other topics in the literature on the rhetoric of social movements.