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The

Truth Is

Out

There

Since 1877

American History

National Politics 1895-1920s

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ProgressivismDuring this time (1890s to 1920) a different political and social discussion – Progressivism

The closing of the frontier (opportunity); Roosevelt and the Presidency; Immigration, and an overall sense that America was now different from its frontier past; the Civil War had created a new future

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Progressivism

◆What– Dominant political and social

movement between 1890s and 1920; redefined by the New Deal as liberalism (same ends)

– Based upon the hopes and economic and political ambitions of the “new” middle class

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Progressivism

◆Optimistic–Application of science

–Could predict the future

• Assumed a higher morality

–Knowledge is power

–Reason and peace were normal

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ProgressivismProgressivism: begins with the business community, but also defined by new, social and political ideas

The search for order in a new business climate–Larger organizations

–Labor issues (industrial unions)

–Needed financial stability

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Progressivism

◆Apply the principles of the administrative revolution

–Led by businessmen

–Apply to the public’s business

–Order and predictability

• The unexpected

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Progressivism

–Stressed

•Experts

•Efficiency

•Audits (where is the

money going)

•Better control

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ProgressivismThe idea of social and political Progressivism

Always moving forward in a positive direction

Knew the direction of history

Resulted in intolerance and a culture of the “better people”

Three primary influences

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Progressivism(1)Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

Desired a utopia but thought society was not improving

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Progressivism1798: An Essay on the Principle of PopulationPopulation increase made a good society impossible as famine and disease would always followFocused attention on birth and marriage rates (how to limit)More optimistic toward the end of his life; encouraged domestic production; but … the concerns remained

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Progressivism(2)Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

1859: The Origin of Species

1871:The Descent of Man

Science and Scientism

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ProgressivismScientism: the idea that the social sciences could be as scientific as physics or chemistry; a long standing debateThat science and technology could solve age old social problems; all of the changes already in place from the organizational revolutionThe social engineering could change politics and society for the better; that “social expediency was more important than democracy or the ConstitutionThe old dream of human perfectibility seemed within reach

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ProgressivismEvolution supplied a new theory of the state

Evolutionary adaptation now was associated with “experimentation” by the government; provided an argument for state expansion

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ProgressivismHerbert Spencer (1820-1903)

Survival of the Fittest – Social Darwinism

Was the social equivalent of natural selection

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ProgressivismHas been argued that the idea was used as a justification for the fortunes of Carnegie, Rockefeller and JP Morgan.

The myth of the “Robber Barons”

The idea was never used as an explanation

Instead, became a basic social principle of Progressivism

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Progressivism(3)1883:Eugenics (Francis Galton)

Brought together Malthus’ pessimism and Darwin’s science

Applied to human society

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Progressivism“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

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ProgressivismEugenics was advocated by the leading progressive reformers and clergy who did not want to be seen as “enemies” of scienceHad been a fringe movement until 1909. To improve the human gene pool through a new science of selective breeding and sterilization. A series of conferences by 1912.1909: Indiana legalized sterilization. The Supreme court upheld Virginia’s law in 1927.A new kind racism: “Classical” and “Scientific” – set the stage for Nazi race theory; a reduction of human beings to their biology.

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ProgressivismPurpose was to ban the reproduction of the “unfit”

–Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)

–American Birth Control League(1921)

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ProgressivismThe Pivot of Civilization (1922): “We want fewer and better children … we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make … with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us”She did not want a “race of degenerates” and “human weeds” as well as the “dead weight of human waste” which included the feeble minded, the insane or the just plain “idiots” to prosper.An advocate for racial eugenics. She spoke to a gathering of women KU Klux Klan members at Silver Lake, New Jersey in May 1926. She said she hoped for “race improvement” and to refine the “gene pool”. She supported what she called the “Negro Project”.(1939) She wrote to a friend that “we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population”.

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Progressivism(1934) “ … no woman shall have a legal right to bear a child without a permit … no permit shall be valid for more than one child.”

(1957) Interview with Mike Wallace: I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world … that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically …

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ProgressivismThe election of 1912.In 1913, Woodrow Wilson delivered the State of the Union in person (Jefferson)– The Founders checks and balances was

not what the times demanded– George Washington had said that the

Congress was “the first wheel of the government, a wheel which communicates motion to all the rest.”

– Wilson had decided that the President was the first wheel

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ProgressivismWilson: politics “is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton” (Instead of fixed political principles there would be constant adaptations to social change) Human nature is always changing and can be fashioned by experts devising policy for the state.There would be a new class of bureaucrats who would practice the new science of government without bias.Effectively changed the meaning of Democracy.

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ProgressivismThe Declaration was fine as long as you ignored the preface.

Wanted a new founding

To change the original political ideas of natural rights and constitutionalism. Rights (life, liberty and property) preceded the state which existed to protect them. Individuals and economic liberty came first.

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Progressivism

◆The basic ideas:

– Natural Rights would be replaced by relativism and knowable historical laws

–The Constitution would be replaced by disinterested policy experts

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ProgressivismPower could do great things– Have lost the Calvinist

sense of sin; the distrust of political power which is at the heart of the American political experiment (Franklin)

– “I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive”

Progressivism◆Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

◆Set the table for Wilson– 1882-84: NY State Assembly

– 1897-1898: Assistant Sec. of the Navy

– 1899-1900: Gov. of NY

– 1901(March-Sept 14) Vice President of the US

– President McKinley assassinated, shot Sept 5 and died Sept 14, 1901

– 1901-1909 President of the US

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Progressivism

• To replace Democratic self-government with the rule of experts in permanent agencies and skirting the problems with Madison’s separation of powers.

• The “Deep State”

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Progressivism

◆ The politician– Popular acclaim

– Power (basic ambition)

– Various roles

• Soldier

• Cowboy

• Hunter preacher

• Author

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Progressivism◆ A moralist

–Fought the corruption of the spoils system as a federal Civil Service commissioner

–Fought corruption in the NYC police department as its Superintendent between 1895-97

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Progressivism

–Harsh personal prejudices

–Set new pattern for campaigning

• Once he had nomination

• Ran apart

• A new financial form (an

investment in the office)

–Understanding of politics

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Progressivism◆Once in office

– three goals:

◆To make himself the most important Republican

◆To elevate the Executive as the dominant force in the National Government

◆To make Washington the most important single influence on national affairs

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Progressivism

◆Embraced the two most

important issues of the day

–(1) The railroads and

financial system

•Rates for shipping

•Other businessmen

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Progressivism

–(2) Conservation

•Sense of dwindling resources

•Was their natural wealth

without limit?

•Orderly growth

•Rational management of

natural resources

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Progressivism– Came by his concern for natural

resources and wildlife honestly.

– 1888: one of the founders of the Boone

and Crockett Club (with George Bird

Brinell who was the editor of Field and

Stream and the creator of the

Audubon Society)

– A wildlife conservation lobby for

animals (Buffalo) and national parks.

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Progressivism

◆Conservation

–Gifford Pinchot

•Chief, Division of Forestry

•Rational land use; better

resource management

•Not preservationist

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Progressivism

• Regulated private development

• Doubled the acres in the public

reserve

• 1908 National Conservation

Congress

➢44 Governors

➢+ 500 Experts and participants

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Progressivism– Dr. Harvey Wiley

• Chief Chemist, Department of Agriculture

• 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act

– 1903 Department of Commerce and

Labor

• Investigate and regulate large corporate

enterprises

– 1906 Hepburn Act

• Interstate Commerce Commission

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Progressivism

–The Trusts

•Economic combination

•1911 Supreme Court

dissolved the Standard

Oil and American

Tobacco trusts

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Progressivism◆The “Bully” Pulpit

–Dramatic investigations

–Public conferences

–Private “encouragement”

–The force of his personality

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Progressivism

◆Find a moral purpose for public officials and private interests

– Broad agreements

– Continuing negotiation

◆Administration

– Indeterminate process

– Expert, flexible, adaptive, continuous

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Progressivism

◆A New definition of the

Presidency

–Set the agenda and priorities

–Responsible for the “big”

problems

–One issue at a time

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ProgressivismWoodrow Wilson (1856-1924)The election of 1912 and William Howard Taft – only 42% of the popular vote– 1902:President Princeton University– 1910: Governor of New Jersey– 1906: Stroke; took on the intolerant and impatient

character of his father– In some ways, a prototype– The Religious context– Moralist and utopian– Distrusted legislative democracy

The United States was in the vanguard of progress. Opponents were tools of Satan. God had chosen him to do great things. Salvation would come through physics or the social sciences

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ProgressivismWhat is the origin of his politics?

He was born in Virginia and possessed his father’s sense of grievance. His father had been a Presbyterian minister who supported slavery and had been the finest of all his teachers.

Wilson had a passion for the Lost Cause and hated those who had won the war. He had a life long hostility to the constitutional political system.

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ProgressivismWilson spent his life searching for a mechanism to subvert the Constitution that had initiated Northern dominance over the South.

1902: in A History of the American Peoplehe denounced the Civil War as an injustice against the Confederacy that was only defending itself and its decent and humane system of slavery.

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ProgressivismWilson shared John C. Calhoun’s view of the constitution as a failed experiment.

His Progressivism also came from his academic work at Princeton and the Social Gospel movement.

Wilson believed that the difference between socialism and democracy was a matter of means rather than ends.

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Progressivism1887 he wrote: Socialism proposes that all ideas of limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view as the state consider itself as bound to stop only what is unwise or futile … In a Democratic state … it is clear that in fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite the same thing.

Could have been a basic premise for any of the totalitarian states of the twentieth-century.

The fourth national socialism.

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Progressivism

By the end of Wilson’s first term:– (1913) The personal income tax

– (1913) The Federal Reserve to regulate money, credit and banking

– (1914) The Federal Trade Commission to supervise domestic industry

– (1916) The Federal Tariff Commission to regulate international trade

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ProgressivismAdditionally, there were federal and state regulations for worker’s compensation, the banning of child labor, the compelled education of children, settlement housing and public health

The beginnings of the administrative state; the idea of scientific administration by a special class insulated from politics to do good things because of their special knowledge and expertise

Executive agencies begin making policy instead of the Congress; arbitrary power would be used for the greater good

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ProgressivismYou can also see the political

philosophy working its way out in two additional ways.

First, the response to criticism; especially about World War One.– When the Black Tom munitions dump was

blown up by German agents in July 1916, the Congress passed the Espionage Act.

But Wilson wanted more.

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Progressivism– May 1918, the Congress passed the

Sedition Act which criminalized :”abusive language” about the government.

– The Justice Department prosecuted Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate in 1912, for making statements opposing the war. Thousands of people were jailed. Newspapers were barred from the mail; a film maker was jailed for making a movie about the Revolutionary War; and a priest was prosecuted for claiming Jesus would have been a pacifist.

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Progressivism–German language books were

barred from libraries; German language newspapers were forced out of business and some states banned speaking German outdoors.

–The Justice Department told people they had nothing to fear: just obey the law and keep your mouth shut.

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Progressivism– Created the first modern propaganda

ministry, the Committee for Public Information

– The American Protective League was formed to encourage people to inform on their fellow citizens and used against protestors to generally enforce Wilson’s views on the war

Wilson also embraced what John Dewey (the most influential Progressive social philosopher) called the “social possibilities of war”

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ProgressivismThe idea: Americans would be forced to

give up much of their economic freedom in order to bring about the “supremacy of public need over private possessions”

The railroads, telephone companies, the domestic and international telegraph were nationalized.

The Federal reserve was used to encourage inflation to satisfy the need for credit and money to finance the war

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ProgressivismLabor-management relations were

manipulated, along with the distribution of coal and oil, international commerce and markets for raw materials and manufactured productsBrought a political reaction in the off-year elections of 1918.Progressives reacted by looking abroad to countries they believed were working toward the scientific management of the economy; namely fascist Italy and Soviet Russia. The future appeared to belong to Mussolini and Lenin

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ProgressivismJane Addams called the Soviet Union “the greatest social experiment in history”

Second, Wilson embraced Eugenics and the racial theories of the day.

– 1913: the civil service was segregated; Photographs of applicants were required and if you were black you were not hired.

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Progressivism– When the NAACP

protested the policy, they were told it was in the best interest of blacks.

– These ideas were not solely associated with the South (Jim Crow) but also embraced by Northern Progressives as well.

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“Liberalism”Reaction to Wilson’s policies during

World War One.

Begin with the Social Progressives who broke with Wilson over the war and what followed (the so-called Red Scare, the Russian Civil War and the prosperity of the 20s).

Began to call themselves liberals. Encourage tolerance and a respect for differences

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“Liberalism”

But there was also an almost aristocratic common sensibility (do what I say) that blamed the stupidity of the crowd for what had happened. Most political questions were simply to complicated for popular judgment.

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“Liberalism”Did not like the middle class democracy; were uncomfortable with democratic opinion; saw themselves as a cultural elite

H.L. Mencken and the “booboise”

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“Liberalism”Vernon Parrington (1871-1929) a literary critic was worried about what he called the “dictatorship” of the middle class and the “evils of private capitalism”

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“Liberalism”Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

Thought that the public was not interested in how political decisions were made and did not govern themselves

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“Liberalism”The modern world was simply to complicated and had made the old idea of citizenship obsolete; most citizens were mentally children or barbariansWrote extensively about the press. Their responsibility was simply to circulate information. The experts would decide what it meant and what policies to enact.

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“Liberalism”Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)– 1920: Main Street

»Small town American life was contemptible, babbitry and business civilization; material complacency and social conformiity

– 1927: Elmer Gantry»Religion was the province of

hucksters (evangelicals) and reactionaries (Puritans)

– 1935: It Can’t Happen Here

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The

Truth Is

Out

There