Chapter 29 - Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt 1901-1912

 

Major Themes

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• Progressivism was a reform movement aimed at using government power to correct the social and economic problems associated with industrialization
• Progressivism had both local and national focal points, and was large enough to include several competing theories

Major Questions

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• In what ways did progressivism set the stage for modern government?
• In what ways was progressivism a source for beneficial reform and in what ways was it a harmful movement?
• What are the major characteristics of the progressive movement?

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Pre-Reading

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• Identify, briefly, earlier reform movements (abolition, labor, women’s rights, etc), their time period, and their major characteristics

Outline

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Progressive Roots

• The government could no longer practice a laissez-faire policy
• Populists considered trusts as corrupt withh a lot of wrongdoing
• Jocob Riis shocked middle class Americans with How the Other Half Lives
  • Exposed the New York City Slums
• Socialists began to register strength at the ballots
• Messengers of social gospel promoted progressivism from their Christianity
• Feminists added social injustice to their list of needed reforms

Progressivism in the Cities and States

• Progressives scored some of their most impressive gains in the cities.
• Frustrated by the inefficiency and corruption of city gov't many localities followed the pioneering example of Galveston, Texas.
  • In 1901 it had appointed expert staffed commisions to manage urban affairs.
• Other communities adopted the city-manager system, also designed to take politics out of municipal administration.
• Some of these "reforms" obviously valued effeciency more highly than democracy, as control of civic affairs was further removed from the people's hands.
• Urban reformers attacked "slumlords", juvenile delinquency, and wide-open prostitution which flourished in red-light districts unchallenged by bribed police
• City dwellers also moved to halt the corrupt sale of franchises for street cars and other public utilities.
• Progressivism naturally bubbled up to the state level notably in Wisconsin
  • The governor, Robert M. La Follette, was an overbearing crusader who emerged as the most militant of the progressive Republican leaders
    • He wrested considerable control from the crooked corporations and returned it to the people.
    • He also perfected a scheme for regulating public utilities while laboring in close association with experts on the faculty of the state university at Madison
• Other states marched steadily toward the progressive camp, as they undertook to regulate railroads and trusts, chiefly through public utilities commissions.

TR's Square Deal for Labor

• Roosevelt feared that the public interest was submerged in a sea of indifference
• Demanded a "Square Deal" for labor, capital, and the public
  • Embraced control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation of natural resources
• A strike in the Pennsylvanian coal mines began in 1902
  • Workers wanted a 20% pay increase, and a reduced work day
  • The strike caused a decreased supply of coal, this caused factories to and schools to shut down
  • Roosevelt summoned representatives from each side to the White House
  • Threatened seizeure of the mines by federal troops
  • Workers got a 10% pay increase and a shorter work day
• Roosevelt urged Congress to create a new Department of Commerce and Labor
  • In 1903 it passed and the Bureau of Corporations joined the President's cabinet

TR Corrals the Corporations

• The Interstate Commerce Commision couldn't stop the railroads
• Elkins Act of 1903 provided heavy fines to the railroads who gave rebates, and to the shippers who used the rebates
• Hepburn Act of 1906 restricted free passes and bribery
• The Commerce Commision was extended to include companies and pipelines
• Roosevelt attacked the Northern Securities Company in 1902
  • This trust was ordered to dissolve by the Supreme Court in 1904
• The Beef trust was found illegal (1905) and so were those of sugar, fertilzer, harvesters, and other key products
• Roosevelt wanted the government to run the company, not business

Caring for the Consumer

• Some American meat was claimed to be tainted
  • Foreign nations threatened to ban the US imports
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906) appalled the public with the exposure of the unsanitary products
• Roosevelt appointed an investigative commitee
  • Piles of poisoned rats, rope ends, splinters, and other debris were being canned as potted ham
• Meat Inpection Act of 1906
  • The preparation of meat shipped oveer state lines would have to be subject to federal inspection
• Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906
  • Designed to prevent adulturation and mislabeling of foods and drugs

The "Roosevelt Panic" of 1907

• Roosevelt was elected president "in his own right' in 1904 and entered his term with enormous personal popularity.
• Yet the conservative Republican bosses considered him dangerous and unpredictable.
• They grew increasingly more resistent as he called ever more loudly for regulating the corporations, taxing incomes, and protecting workers.
• Roosevelt suffered a setback in 1907 when a short but punishing panic descended on Wall Street.
  • the financial flurry featured frightened "runs" on banks, suicides, and criminal indictments against speculators.
• The financial world blamed Roosevelt for the storm and said that he had unsettled industry with his boat-rocking tatics.
• Conservatives damned him as "Theodore the Meddler" and named the current distress "Roosevelt Panic"
• The president lashed back at the critics when he accused "certain malefactors of great wealth" of having deliberately engineered the monetary crisis to force the gov't to relax its assaults on trusts.
• The panic of 1907 paved the way for long-overdue fiscal reforms.
• It laid bare the need for a more elastic medium of exchange.
• In a crisis like this, hard-pressed banks were unable to increase the volume of money in circulation and those with ample reserves were reluctant to lend to their less fortunate competitors.
• In 1908 Congress passed the Aldrich-Vreeland Act which authorized national banks to issue emergency currency backed by various kinds of collateral.

Taft: A Round Peg in a Square Hole

• William Howard Taft at first inspired widespread confidence.
• The saying goes "Everybody loves a fat man," and Taft was personally popular
• He graduated second in his class at Yale and had established an enviable reputation as a lawyer and judge.
• He had been a trusted administrator under Roosevelt in the Philippines, at hom, and in Cuba
• But he suffered from lethal political handicaps.
  • Roosevelt had led the conflicting elements of the Republican party by the sheer force of his personality, in contrast, Taft had none of the arts of a dashing political leader.
  • He generally adopted an attitude of passivity toward Congress.
  • He was a poor judge of public opinion and his candor made him a chronic victim of "foot-in-mouth" disease.

The Dollar Goes Abroad as a Diplomat

• Use American investments to boost American political interest abroad, "dollar diplomacy"
• Washington encouraged Wall Street bankers to invest extra money into strategic, foreign areas, esp. in Far East & areas important to the security of the Panama Canal
  • NY bankers would strengthen US defenses & foreign policies & bring in more $ for US & themselves by displacing investors from rival powers like Germany
• Manchuria= object of Taft's biggest effort to force in the $ to Far Eastern theater
  • US Rivals: Russia & Japan controlled railroads of Manchuria
  • Taft saw RR monopoly as a possible execution of Chinese economic interests & a slamming of the Open Door in US merchants' faces
  • 1909, Secretary of State Philander C. Knox proposed that US & foreign bankers should buy the Manchurian RRs & then give them to China under a self-liquidating arrangement
  • Russia & Japan refused Knox's offer & Taft was ridiculed
• Caribbean: revolution, "Yankee Lake"
  • Washington pushed Wall Street bankers to pump $ into financial vacuums in Honduras & Haiti to keep out foreign $
  • US under Monroe Doctrine didn't let foreign nations intervene & felt obligated to prevent political & economic instability
  • Necessity brought armed US to Caribbean intervention
  • Restoring order & protecting US investment in Dominican Republic, Honduras, & Cuba brough US forces in
  • 1912 , revolutionary upheaval in Nicaragua---->landing of 2,500 marines(remaining there for 13 years

Taft the Trustbuster

• Taft managed to gain some fame as a smasher of monopolies.
• The ironic truth is that Taft brought 90 suits against the trusts during his 4 years in office compared with some 44 for Roosevelt in seven and a half years.
• The most sensational judicial acts by Taft came in 1911
  • In that year the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the mighty Standard Oil Company
  • Even more explosively in that year Taft decided to press an antitrust suit against the U.S. Steel Corporation.
    • This infuriated Roosevelt who had personally been involved in one of the mergers that prompted the suit

The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture

• Uprising in Republican ranks now a full on revolt
• In 1911, National Progressive Republican League formed w/ the Senator of Wisconsin, La Follette as leading Republican candidate for presidential nomination, assuming that Roosevelt would not run again
• Roosevelt changed his "anti-3rd termer" views as Taft decided to discard "my policies"
• Feb. 1912, Roosevelt formally wrote that he was willing to accept Republican nomination to 7 state governors
  • Reason being that the 3rd term tradition applied to 3 consecutive elective terms
• Roosevelt raged through the pres. primaries claiming the pres. had fallen under the thumb of reactionary bosses & that Taft was trying to do good but was doing so in a feeble manner
  • Taft fought back saying Roosevelt supporters were "emotionalists and neurotics"
• 1912, Republican convention in Chicago
  • Rooseveltites 100+/- delegates short of nomination, challenged 250+/- Taft delegates to be seated
  • Most contests settled in favor of Taft
  • Roosevelt adherents refused to vote & Taft was victorious
• After losing nomination, Roosevelt didn't give up & was now ready to lead a 3rd-party crusade