The Progressives didn’t emerge fully formed from Jim Lehrer’s head. Woodrow Wilson was the spearhead of a pre-existing movement. The Federalist Papers and John Thelwall even wrote about a train of thought favoring the end of private property. Coleridge and Southey in their adolescence planned to moved to America and establish a “pantisocracy” where nobody had any private property. They later became staunch conservatives. The Communist Manifesto itself was first printed in 1849.
I blame fabians and Eastern European immigration including Germany late arrivals
As first true progressives as we now understand it
Though some enlightenment writers were as well
Much earlier