AmPageantEtext23-32

The Filipinos land many went on to become respected citizens
and leaders.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the
United States, its imperial muscles just flexed in Most Filipino immigrants to the United States in
the war with Spain, found itself in possession of the these years, however, came not to study but to toil.
Philippines. Uncertain of how to manage this em- With Chinese immigration banned, Hawaii and the
pire, which seethed resentfully against its new mas- Pacific Coast states turned to the Philippines for
ters, the United States promised to build democracy cheap agricultural labor. Beginning in 1906 the
in the Philippines and to ready the islanders for Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association aggressively
home rule. Almost immediately after annexation, recruited Filipino workers. Enlistments grew slowly
the American governor of the archipelago sent a at first, but by the 1920s thousands of young Filipino
corps of Filipino students to the United States, hop- men had reached the Hawaiian Islands and been
ing to forge future leaders steeped in American ways assigned to sugar plantations or pineapple fields.
who would someday govern an independent Philip-
pines. Yet this small student group found little favor Typically a young Filipino wishing to emigrate
in their adopted country, although in their native first made his way to Manila, where he signed a con-
tract with the growers that promised three years’
labor in return for transportation to Hawaii, wages,
free housing and fuel, and return passage at the end
of the contract. Not all of the emigrants returned;
there remain in Hawaii today some former field
workers still theoretically eligible for free transport
back to their native land.

Those Filipinos venturing as far as the American
mainland found work less arduous but also less cer-
tain than did their countrymen on Hawaiian planta-
tions. Many mainlanders worked seasonally—in
winter as domestic servants, busboys, or bellhops;
in summer journeying to the fields to harvest let-
tuce, strawberries, sugar beets, and potatoes. Even-
tually Filipinos, along with Mexican immigrants,
shared the dubious honor of making up California’s
agricultural work force.

A mobile society, Filipino-Americans also were
overwhelmingly male; there was only one Filipino
woman for every fourteen Filipino men in Califor-
nia in 1930. Thus the issue of intermarriage became
acutely sensitive. California and many other states
prohibited the marriage of Asians and Caucasians in
demeaning laws that remained on the books until
1948. And if a Filipino so much as approached a

650

Caucasian woman, he could expect reprisals—
sometimes violent. For example, white vigilante
groups roamed the Yakima Valley in Washington and
the San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys in California,
intimidating and even attacking Filipinos whom
they accused of improperly accosting white women.
In 1930 one Filipino was murdered and others
wounded after they invited some Caucasian women
to a dance. Undeterred, the Filipinos challenged the
restrictive state laws and the hooligans who found
in them an excuse for mayhem. But Filipinos, who
did not become eligible for American citizenship
until 1946, long lacked political leverage.

After World War II, Filipino immigration accel-
erated. Between 1950 and 1970, the number of Fil-
ipinos in the United States nearly doubled, with
women and men stepping aboard the new transpa-
cific airliners in roughly equal numbers. Many of
these recent arrivals sprang from sturdy middle-
class stock and sought in America a better life for
their children than the Philippines seemed able to
offer. Today the war-torn and perpetually depressed
archipelago sends more immigrants to American
shores than does any other Asian nation.

651

652 CHAPTER 28 America on the World Stage, 1899–1909

Imperialism or Bryanism in 1900? hero of San Juan Hill. Capitalizing on his war-born
popularity, he had been elected governor of New
President McKinley’s renomination by the Republi- York, where the local political bosses had found him
cans in 1900 was a foregone conclusion. He had headstrong and difficult to manage. They therefore
piloted the country through a victorious war; he had devised a scheme to kick the colorful colonel
acquired rich, though burdensome, real estate; he upstairs into the vice presidency.
had established the gold standard; and he had
brought the promised prosperity of the full dinner This plot to railroad Roosevelt worked beauti-
pail. “We’ll stand pat!” was the poker-playing coun- fully. Gesticulating wildly, he attended the nominat-
sel of Mark Hanna, since 1897 a senator from Ohio. ing convention, where his western-style cowboy hat
McKinley was renominated at Philadelphia on a had made him stand out like a white crow. He had
platform that smugly endorsed prosperity, the gold no desire to die of slow rot in the vice-presidential
standard, and overseas expansion. “burying ground,” but he was eager to prove that he
could get the nomination if he wanted it. He finally
An irresistible vice-presidential boom had gave in to a chanting chorus of “We want Teddy!” He
developed for “Teddy” Roosevelt (TR), the cowboy- received a unanimous vote, except for his own. A
frantic Hanna reportedly moaned that there would
be only one heartbeat between that wild-eyed
“madman”—“that damned cowboy”—and the pres-
idency of the United States.

William Jennings Bryan was the odds-on choice
of the Democrats, meeting at Kansas City. The free-
silver issue was now as defunct as an abandoned
mine, but Bryan, a slave to consistency, forced a silver
plank down the throats of his protesting associates.
Choking on its candidate’s obstinacy, the Democratic
platform proclaimed, as did Bryan, that the para-
mount issue was Republican overseas imperialism.

Campaign history partially repeated itself in
1900. McKinley, the soul of dignity, sat safely on his
front porch, as before. Bryan, also as before, took to
the stump in a cyclonic campaign, assailing both
imperialism and Republican-fostered trusts.

The superenergetic, second-fiddle Roosevelt
out-Bryaned Bryan. He toured the country with
revolver-shooting cowboys, and his popularity cut
heavily into Bryan’s support in the Midwest. Flash-
ing his magnificent teeth and pounding his fist
fiercely into his palm, Roosevelt denounced all das-
tards who would haul down Old Glory.

Bryanites loudly trumpeted their “paramount”
issue of imperialism. Lincoln, they charged, had
abolished slavery for 3.5 million Africans; McKinley
had reestablished it for 7 million Filipinos. Republi-
cans responded by charging that “Bryanism,” not
imperialism, was the paramount issue. By this accu-
sation they meant that Bryan would rock the boat of
prosperity once he got into office with his free-silver
lunacy and other dangerous ideas. The voters were
much less concerned about imperialism than about
“Four Years More of the Full Dinner Pail.”

When the smoke cleared, McKinley had tri-
umphed by a much wider margin than in 1896:

Republican Victory 653

7,218,491 to 6,356,734 popular votes, and 292 to 155 TR: Brandisher of the Big Stick
electoral votes. But victory for the Republicans was
not a mandate for or against imperialism. Many citi- Kindly William McKinley had scarcely served
zens who favored Bryan’s anti-imperialism feared another six months when, in September 1901, he
his free silver; many who favored McKinley’s “sound was murdered by a deranged anarchist. Roosevelt
money” hated his imperialism. One citizen wrote to became president at age forty-two, the youngest
former president Cleveland: “It is a choice between thus far in American history. Knowing he had a rep-
evils, and I am going to shut my eyes, hold my nose, utation for impulsiveness and radicalism, he sought
vote, go home and disinfect myself.” If there was any to reassure the country by proclaiming that he
mandate at all it was for the two Ps: prosperity and would carry out the policies of his predecessor. Cyn-
protection. Content with good times, the country ics sneered that he would indeed carry them out—
anticipated four more years of a full dinner pail to the garbage heap.
crammed with fried chicken. “Boss” Platt of New
York gleefully looked forward to Inauguration Day, What manner of man was Theodore Roosevelt,
when he would see Roosevelt exit Albany and “take the red-blooded blue blood? Born into a wealthy
the veil” as vice president. and distinguished New York family, he had fiercely
built up his spindly, asthmatic body by a stern and
self-imposed routine of exercise. Graduating from
Harvard with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he published
at the age of twenty-four the first of some thirty vol-
umes of muscular prose. Then came busy years,

The contest over American imperialism took
place on the Senate floor as well as around
the globe. In 1900 Senator Albert J. Beveridge
(1862–1927), Republican from Indiana,
returned from an investigative trip to the
Philippines to defend its annexation:

“The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just
beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable
markets. We will not retreat from either. We
will not abandon our opportunity in the
Orient. We will renounce our part in the
mission of our race: trustee, under God, of
the civilization of the world.”

Two years later Senator George F. Hoar
(1826–1904), Republican from
Massachusetts, broke with his party to
denounce American annexation of the
Philippines and other territories:

“You cannot maintain despotism in Asia and a
republic in America. If you try to deprive even
a savage or a barbarian of his just rights you
can never do it without becoming a savage or
a barbarian yourself.”

654 CHAPTER 28 America on the World Stage, 1899–1909

which involved duties as a ranch owner and bespec- appeal, partly because the common people saw in
tacled cowboy (“Four Eyes”) in the Dakotas, fol- him a fiery champion. A magnificent showman, he
lowed by various political posts. When fully was always front-page copy; his cowboyism, his
developed, he was a barrel-chested five feet ten bear shooting, his outsize teeth, and his pince-nez
inches, with prominent teeth, squinty eyes, droopy glasses were ever the delight of cartoonists. Though
mustache, and piercing voice. a staunch party man, he detested many of the dirty-
handed bosses. But he learned, as Cleveland never
The Rough Rider’s high-voltage energy was did, to hold his nose and work with them.
electrifying. Believing that it was better to wear out
than to rust out, he would shake the hands of some Above all, Roosevelt was a direct-actionist. He
six thousand people at one stretch or ride horseback believed that the president should lead, and
many miles in a day as an example for portly cavalry although he made mistakes, he kept things noisily
officers. Not surprisingly, he gathered about him a moving—generally forward. Never a lawyer, he con-
group of athletic, tennis-playing cronies, who were demned the law and the courts as too slow. He had
popularly dubbed “the tennis cabinet.” no real respect for the delicate checks and balances
among the three branches of the government. Find-
Incurably boyish and bellicose, Roosevelt loved ing the Constitution too rigid, he would on occasion
to fight—“an elegant row.” He never ceased to ignore it; finding Congress too rebellious, he tried a
preach the virile virtues and to denounce civilized mixture of coercion and compromise on it. The
softness, with its pacifists and other “flubdubs” and president, he felt, may take any action in the general
“mollycoddles.” An ardent champion of military and
naval preparedness, he adopted as his pet proverb,
“Speak softly and carry a big stick, [and] you will go
far.” If statesmen had the big stick, they could work
their will among foreign nations without shouting; if
they lacked it, shouting would do no good. TR had
both a big stick and a shrill voice.

Wherever Roosevelt went, there was a great stir.
At a wedding he eclipsed the bride, at a funeral the
corpse. Shockingly unconventional, he loved to
break hoary precedents—the hoarier the better. He
was a colossal egoist, and his self-confidence
merged with self-righteousness. So sure was he of
the correctness of his convictions that he impetu-
ously branded people liars who disagreed with him.
As a true cosmopolite, he loved people and mingled
with those of all ranks, from Catholic cardinals to
professional prizefighters, one of whom blinded a
Rooseveltian eye in a White House bout.

An outspoken moralizer and reformer, Roo-
sevelt preached virtue from the White House pulpit.
Yet he was an opportunist who would cut a deal
rather than butt his head against a stone wall. He
was, in reality, much less radical than his blustery
actions would indicate. A middle-of-the-roader, he
stood just a little left of center and bared his mule-
like molars at liberals and reactionaries alike.

Roosevelt rapidly developed into a master
politician with an idolatrous personal following.
After visiting him, a journalist wrote, “You go home
and wring the personality out of your clothes.” TR—
as he was called—had an enormous popular

The Panama Canal 655

interest that is not specifically forbidden by the laws After much debate, Congress in June 1902
of the Constitution. As one poet noted, decided on the Panama route. The scene now
shifted to Colombia, of which Panama was an
The Constitution rides behind unwilling part. A treaty highly favorable to the
And the Big Stick rides before, United States was negotiated between Washington
(Which is the rule of precedent and a Colombian government agent in Bogota. It
In the reign of Theodore.) granted to the United States a lease for a six-mile-
wide zone in perpetuity in exchange for $10 million
Colombia Blocks the Canal and an annual payment of $250,000. The Colom-
bian senate rejected the treaty, putting a higher
Foreign affairs absorbed much of Roosevelt’s bullish value on this precious isthmian strip. Evidence later
energy. Having traveled extensively in Europe, he unearthed indicates that had Washington been will-
enjoyed a far more intimate knowledge of the out- ing to pay an additional $15 million, the pact would
side world than most of his predecessors. have been approved.

The Spanish-American War had emphasized Roosevelt was infuriated by his setback at the
the need for the long-talked-about canal across the hands of what he called “those dagoes.” Frantically
Central American isthmus, through which only eager to be elected president “in his own right” in
printer’s ink had ever flowed. Americans had 1904, he was anxious to “make the dirt fly” to
learned a sobering lesson when the battleship Ore- impress the voters. “Damn the law,” he reportedly
gon, stationed on the Pacific Coast at the outbreak cried in private, “I want the canal built!” He assailed
of war in 1898, had to steam all the way around “the blackmailers of Bogota” who, like armed high-
South America to join the fleet in Cuban waters. An waymen, were blocking the onward march of civi-
isthmian canal would plainly augment the strength lization. He failed to note that the U.S. Senate also
of the navy by increasing its mobility. Such a water- rejects treaties.
way would also make easier the defense of such
recent acquisitions as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Uncle Sam Creates
Philippines, while facilitating the operations of the Puppet Panama
American merchant marine.
Impatient Panamanians, who had rebelled numer-
Initial obstacles in the path of the canal builders ous times, were ripe for another revolt. They had
were legal rather than geographical. By the terms of counted on a wave of prosperity to follow construc-
the ancient Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, concluded with tion of the canal, and they feared that the United
Britain in 1850, the United States could not secure States would now turn to the Nicaraguan route.
exclusive control over such a route. But by 1901 Scheming Bunau-Varilla was no less disturbed by
America’s British cousins were willing to yield the prospect of losing the company’s $40 million.
ground. Confronted with an unfriendly Europe and Working hand in glove with the Panama revolution-
bogged down in the South African Boer War, they ists, he raised a tiny “patriot” army consisting largely
consented to the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in 1901. It of members of the Panamanian fire department,
not only gave the United States a free hand to build plus five hundred “bought” Colombian troops—for
the canal but conceded the right to fortify it as well. a reported price of $100,000.

Legal barriers now removed, the next question The Panama revolution occurred on November
was, Where should the canal be dug? Many Ameri- 3, 1903, with the incidental killing of a Chinese civil-
can experts favored the Nicaraguan route, but ian and a donkey. Colombian troops were gathered
agents of the old French Canal Company were eager to crush the uprising, but U.S. naval forces would
to salvage something from their costly failure at not let them cross the isthmus. Roosevelt justified
S-shaped Panama. Represented by a young, ener- this highly questionable interference by a strained
getic, and unscrupulous engineer, Philippe Bunau- interpretation of the treaty of 1846 with Colombia.
Varilla, the New Panama Canal Company suddenly (This pact obligated Washington to maintain
dropped the price of its holdings from $109 million
to the fire-sale price of $40 million.

656 CHAPTER 28 America on the World Stage, 1899–1909

Caribbean ATLANTIC Big Stick in the Caribbean
Sea In 1901 Roosevelt declared, “If a man
Colon OCEAN continually blusters . . . a big stick will
not save him from trouble; and neither
10-MILE Theodore Roosevelt will speaking softly avail, if back of the
U.S. ZONE intervenes, 1906 softness there does not lie strength,
Panama City power. . . . If the boaster is not pre-
CUBA pared to back up his words, his
Gulf of position becomes absolutely
Panama (U.S. Protectorate) DOMINICAN contemptible.”
Guantanamo REPUBLIC
MEXICO HAITI
(United States base, 1903) PUERTO
PACIFIC
OCEAN Theodore Roosevelt RICO
customs intervention, 1905 (U.S.)
Panama Canal
Proposed canal Caribbean Anglo-German
blockade, 1902–1903
Sea
NICARAGUA

PANAMA

VENEZUELA

Revolution, 1903

COLOMBIA

Bogota

the “perfect neutrality” of the isthmus, obviously
against outsiders.)

Roosevelt moved rapidly to make steamy
Panama a virtual outpost of the United States. Three
days after the uprising, he hastily extended the right
hand of recognition. Fifteen days later, Bunau-
Varilla, who was now the Panamanian minister
despite his French citizenship, signed the Hay–
Bunau-Varilla treaty in Washington. The price of the
canal strip was left the same, but the zone was
widened from six to ten miles. The French company
gladly pocketed its $40 million from the U.S.
Treasury.

Roosevelt, it seems clear, did not actively plot to
tear Panama from the side of Colombia. But the
conspirators knew of his angrily expressed views,
and they counted on his using the big stick to hold
Colombia at bay. Yet the Rough Rider became so
indiscreetly involved in the Panama affair as to
create the impression that he had been a secret
party to the intrigue.

Unhappily, the United States suffered a black
eye as a result of Roosevelt’s “cowboy diplomacy.”
European imperialists, who were old hands at this
sort of thing, could now raise their eyebrows in
scorn at America’s superior moral pretensions—and
they did.

The Roosevelt Corollary 657

Completing the Canal the Dominican Republic were chronically in arrears
and Appeasing Colombia in their payments to European creditors, particu-
larly Britain and Germany. Seeking to force pay-
The so-called rape of Panama marked an ugly ment, German warships sank two Venezuelan
downward lurch in U.S. relations with Latin Amer- gunboats and bombarded a town in early 1903.
ica. Much fear had already been aroused by the
recent seizure of Puerto Rico and by the Yankee This ironfisted intervention aroused Roosevelt.
stranglehold on Cuba. The fate of Colombia, when it He feared that if the Germans or British got their
dared defy the Colossus of the North, indicated that foot in the door as bill collectors, they might remain
its weak fellow republics were not safe. The era of in Latin America, in flagrant violation of the Monroe
the bullying “Big Brother” policy was brazenly Doctrine. Roosevelt therefore devised a devious pol-
launched. icy of “preventive intervention,” better known as the
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. He
Roosevelt heatedly defended himself against all declared that in the event of future financial malfea-
charges of evildoing. He claimed that he had sance by the Latin American nations, the United
received a “mandate from civilization” to start the States itself would intervene, take over the cus-
canal and that Colombia had wronged the United tomshouses, pay off the debts, and keep the trou-
States by not permitting itself to be benefited. To blesome powers on the other side of the Atlantic. In
deal with these “blackmailers,” he insisted, was like short, no outsiders could push around the Latin
“nailing currant jelly to the wall.” nations except Uncle Sam, Policeman of the
Caribbean.
But TR was not completely candid. He failed to
point out that the Nicaragua route was about This new brandishing of the big stick in the
equally feasible and that it was available without a Caribbean became effective in 1905, when the
revolution. Yet this alternative would have involved United States took over the management of tariff
some delay, and the presidential election of 1904 collections in the Dominican Republic, an arrange-
was fast approaching. ment formalized in a treaty with the Dominicans
two years later. Dominican officials, who had raked
Active work was begun on “making the dirt fly” in much juicy graft, were not happy with such inter-
in 1904, but grave difficulties were encountered, ference, and they acquiesced only after some stren-
ranging from labor troubles to landslides. The organ- uous arm-twisting from Washington. But from a
ization was finally perfected under an energetic but debt-collecting point of view, the customshouse
autocratic West Point engineer, Colonel George intervention was a success.
Washington Goethals. At the outset sanitation
proved to be more important than excavation. Roosevelt’s corollary, though tacked onto the
Colonel William C. Gorgas, the quiet and determined Monroe Doctrine, bore only a strained relation to
exterminator of yellow fever in Havana, ultimately the original dictum of 1823. Monroe had in effect
made the Canal Zone “as safe as a health resort.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) wrote to a
Americans finally succeeded where the French correspondent in February 1904,
had failed. In 1914 the colossal canal project was
completed at an initial cost of about $400 million, “I have been hoping and praying for three
just as World War I was breaking out. The whole months that the Santo Domingans would
enterprise, in the words of the English writer James behave so that I would not have to act in
Bryce, was “the greatest liberty Man has ever taken any way. I want to do nothing but what a
with Nature.” policeman has to do. . . . As for annexing
the island, I have about the same desire
TR’s Perversion of Monroe’s Doctrine to annex it as a gorged boa-constrictor
might have to swallow a porcupine
Latin American debt defaults created the conditions wrong-end-to.”
for further Rooseveltian involvement in affairs
south of the border. Nations such as Venezuela and

658 CHAPTER 28 America on the World Stage, 1899–1909

said to the European powers, “Thou shalt not inter- but another example of the creeping power of the
vene.” TR changed this warning to mean, “We shall Colossus of the North.
intervene to prevent you from intervening.” The
Roosevelt doctrine was actually so radical as to be a Roosevelt on the World Stage
completely new policy, but it gained readier accep-
tance by being associated with the honored name of Booted and spurred, Roosevelt charged into interna-
Monroe. Yet in its own right, the corollary had con- tional affairs far beyond Latin America. The outbreak
siderable merit as a preemptive stroke. of war between Russia and Japan in 1904 gave him a
chance to perform as a global statesman. The Rus-
Roosevelt’s rewriting of Monroe’s doctrine had sian bear, having lumbered across Asia, was seeking
its dark side. It probably did more than any other to bathe its frostbitten paws in the ice-free ports of
single step to promote the “Bad Neighbor” policy China’s Manchuria, particularly Port Arthur. In Japa-
begun in these years. As time wore on, the new nese eyes, Manchuria and Korea in tsarist hands were
corollary was used to justify wholesale interventions pistols pointed at Japan’s strategic heart. Russian
and repeated landings of the marines, all of which troops had invaded Manchuria during the Boxer out-
helped turn the Caribbean into a “Yankee lake.” burst of 1900 and, despite solemn promises, were not
Latin Americans mistakenly cursed the unoffending withdrawing. The tsar was obviously stalling until his
Monroe, when they should have cursed the offend- trans-Siberian railroad could be finished, as it would
ing Roosevelt. To them it seemed as though the be in a few months. With the clock ticking against
Monroe Doctrine, far from providing a shield, was a them, the Japanese suddenly began war in 1904 with
cloak behind which the United States sought to a devastating surprise pounce on the Russian fleet at
strangle them. Port Arthur. They proceeded to administer a humili-
ating series of beatings to the inept Russians—the
The shadow of the big stick likewise fell on Cuba first serious military setback to a European power by
in 1906. Revolutionary disorders brought an appeal a non-European force since the Turkish invasions of
from the Cuban president, and “necessity being the
mother of invention,” U.S. Marines were landed.
These police forces were withdrawn temporarily in
1909, but in Latin American eyes the episode was

Roosevelt and Japan 659

the sixteenth century. But as the war dragged on, ships withered on the windswept plains of
Japan began to run short of men and yen—a weak- Manchuria. American relations with Russia, once
ness it did not want to betray to the enemy. Tokyo friendly, soured as the Russians implausibly
officials therefore approached Roosevelt in the deep- accused Roosevelt of robbing them of military vic-
est secrecy and asked him to help sponsor peace tory. Revelations about savage massacres of Russian
negotiations. Jews further poisoned American feeling against
Russia. Japan, once America’s protégé, felt robbed of
Roosevelt agreed and shepherded the delegates its due compensation. Both newly powerful, Japan
of the two sides together at Portsmouth, New and America now became rivals in Asia, as fear and
Hampshire, in 1905. The Japanese presented stern jealousy between them grew. To many Americans,
demands for a huge indemnity and the entire strate- the Japanese were getting too big for their kimonos.
gic island of Sakhalin, while the Russians stubbornly
refused to admit the depths of their defeat. Bluster- Japanese Laborers in California
ing at both sides behind the scenes, Roosevelt
forced through an accord in which the Japanese Adding to tensions between America and Japan was
received no indemnity for the losses and only the the issue of Japanese migration to America’s Pacific
southern half of Sakhalin. Coast. The Japanese government prohibited emi-
gration of its citizens until 1884, when it began
For achieving this agreement, as well as for allowing temporary laborers to work on sugar plan-
helping arrange an international conference at tations in Hawaii. From there thousands of Japanese
Algeciras, Spain, in 1906 to mediate North African
disputes, Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1906. But the price of TR’s diplomatic glory was
high for U.S. foreign relations. Two historic friend-

660 CHAPTER 28 America on the World Stage, 1899–1909

were recruited for work in California as farm labor- dents in a special school to free more space for
ers, railroad workers, and servants. Like the Chinese whites. Instantly the incident boiled into an interna-
before them, Japanese immigrants did the nation’s tional crisis. The people of Japan, who were highly
most arduous, dangerous work but were barred sensitive on questions of race, regarded this dis-
from becoming citizens. And like the Chinese, crimination as an insult to them and their beloved
Japanese immigrants confronted racist hostility. children. On both sides of the Pacific, irresponsible
Although Japanese residents never amounted to war talk sizzled in the yellow press—the real “yellow
more than 3 percent of the state’s population, white peril.” Roosevelt, who as a Rough Rider had relished
Californians ranted about a new “yellow peril” and shooting, was less happy over the prospect that Cal-
feared being drowned in an Asian sea. ifornia might stir up a war that all the other states
would have to wage. He therefore invited the entire
A showdown on the influx came in 1906 when San Francisco Board of Education, headed by a bas-
San Francisco’s school board, coping with the after- soon-playing mayor under indictment for graft, to
math of a frightful earthquake and fire, ordered the come to the White House.
segregation of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stu-

The Gentlemen’s Agreement 661

TR finally broke the deadlock, but not until he ready for “a feast, a frolic, or a fight.” The Great
had brandished his big stick and bared his big teeth. White Fleet—saluted by cannonading champagne
The Californians were induced to repeal the offen- corks—received tumultuous welcomes in Latin
sive school order and to accept what came to be America, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia.
known as the “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” This secret
understanding was worked out, during 1907–1908, As events turned out, an overwhelming recep-
by an exchange of diplomatic notes between Wash- tion in Japan was the high point of the trip. Tens of
ington and Tokyo. The Japanese, for their part, thousands of kimonoed schoolchildren had been
agreed to stop the flow of laborers to the American trained to wave tiny American flags and sing “The
mainland by withholding passports. Star-Spangled Banner”—reportedly in English. In
the warm diplomatic atmosphere created by the visit
Roosevelt worried that his intercession between of the fleet, the Root-Takahira agreement of 1908 was
California and Japan might be interpreted in Tokyo reached with Japan. The United States and Japan
as prompted by fear of the Japanese. Accordingly, he solemnly pledged themselves to respect each other’s
hit upon a dramatic scheme to impress the Japanese territorial possessions in the Pacific and to uphold
with the heft of his big stick. He daringly decided to the Open Door in China. The once fight-thirsty Roo-
send the entire battleship fleet on a highly visible sevelt, who thus went out of his way to avoid a war
voyage around the world. with Japan, regarded the battleship cruise as his
most important contribution to peace. The voyage of
Late in 1907 sixteen sparkling-white, smoke- the white fleet also gave Uncle Sam a new recruiting
belching battleships started from Virginia waters. slogan: “Join the Navy and See the World.”
Their commander pointedly declared that he was

662 CHAPTER 28 America on the World Stage, 1899–1909

Chronology

1899 Aguinaldo launches rebellion against 1904-
United States in the Philippine Islands 1914 Construction of the Panama Canal

First American Open Door note

1905 United States takes over Dominican
Republic customs
1900 Boxer Rebellion and U.S. expedition to
China Roosevelt mediates Russo-Japanese peace
treaty
Second Open Door note
McKinley defeats Bryan for presidency

1901 McKinley assassinated; Roosevelt assumes 1906 San Francisco Japanese education crisis
presidency Roosevelt arranges Algeciras conference

Filipino rebellion defeated 1906-
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty 1909 U.S. Marines occupy Cuba

1902 Colombian senate rejects canal treaty 1907 Great White Fleet

1903 Panamanian revolution against Colombia 1907-
Hay–Bunau-Varilla treaty 1908 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Japan

1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe 1908 Root-Takahira agreement
Doctrine

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Why Did America Become a World Power?

American imperialism has long been an embar- kind of international peer pressure: if other coun-
rassing topic for students of American history, tries were expanding their international roles and
who remember the Republic’s own revolutionary even establishing colonies around the globe, could
origins and anti-colonial tradition. Perhaps for that the United States safely refrain from doing the
reason, many historians have tried to explain the same? In Beale’s view, Theodore Roosevelt was no
dramatic overseas expansionism of the 1890s as simple-minded imperial swashbuckler, but a coolly
some kind of aberration—a sudden, singular, and calculating diplomatic realist who perceived that if
short-lived departure from time-honored American the United States did not hold its own against other
principles and practices. Various explanations have powers, it would soon risk being pushed around,
been offered to account for this spasmodic lapse. even in its own hemisphere, despite the Monroe
Scholars such as Julius Pratt pointed to the irre- Doctrine.
sponsible behavior of the yellow press. Richard Hof-
stadter ascribed America’s imperial fling to the Perhaps the most controversial interpretation of
“psychic crisis of the 1890s,” a crisis brought on, he American imperialism has come from a so-called
argued, by the strains of the decade’s economic New Left school of writers, inspired by William
depression and the Populist upheaval. Howard K. Appleman Williams (and before him by V. I. Lenin’s
Beale emphasized the contagious scramble for 1916 book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capital-
imperial possessions by the European powers, as ism). Historians such as Williams and Walter LaFeber
well as Japan, in these years. argue that the explanation for political and military
expansion abroad is to be found in economic expan-
In Beale’s argument, the United States—and sion at home. Increasing industrial output, so the
Theodore Roosevelt in particular—succumbed to a argument goes, required ever more raw materials

Varying Viewpoints 663

and, especially, overseas markets. To meet those many feared, was losing touch with the manly
needs, the nation adopted a strategy of “informal virtues. It had grown soft and “feminine” since the
empire,” shunning formal territorial possessions closing of the frontier. Imperialists also saw the
(with the conspicuous exception of the Philippines), nations of the world in a strict racial hierarchy, with
but seeking economic dominance over foreign mar- “primitive” blacks and Indians at the bottom and
kets, materials, and investment outlets. That “revi- “civilized” Anglo-Saxons at the top. In this world-
sionist” interpretation, in turn, has been sharply view the conquest of “inferior” peoples seemed nat-
criticized by scholars who point out that foreign ural—a tropical tonic to restore the nation’s
trade accounted for only a tiny share of American masculine virility. Scholars who emphasize these
output and that the diplomacy of this period was far explanations of imperialism are less likely to see the
too complex to be reduced to “economic need.” expansionism of the 1890s as an aberration in
American history. Instead, they argue, these over-
Most recently, historians have highlighted the seas adventures were part of a long tradition of race-
importance of race and gender in the march toward fueled militarism, from the nation’s earliest Indian
empire. Roosevelt and other imperialists perceived wars to Cold War engagements in Korea and Vietnam.
their world in gendered terms. American society,

For further reading, see page A20 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

29

Progressivism and the
Republican Roosevelt

ᇻᇾᇻ

1901–1912

When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean . . . to give
every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man,
or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them,
that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness

in the dealing.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 1905

Nearly 76 million Americans greeted the new was “to use government as an agency of human
century in 1900. Of them, almost one in seven welfare.”
was foreign-born. In the fourteen years of peace
that remained before the Great War of 1914 engulfed Progressive Roots
the globe, 13 million more migrants would carry
their bundles down the gangplanks to the land of The groundswell of the new reformist wave went far
promise. back—to the Greenback Labor party of the 1870s
and the Populists of the 1890s, to the mounting
Hardly had the twentieth century dawned on unrest throughout the land as grasping industrial-
the ethnically and racially mixed American people ists concentrated more and more power in fewer
than they were convulsed by a reform movement, and fewer hands. An outworn philosophy of hands-
the like of which the nation had not seen since the off individualism seemed increasingly out of place
1840s. The new crusaders, who called themselves in the modern machine age. Social and economic
“progressives,” waged war on many evils, notably problems were now too complex for the intention-
monopoly, corruption, inefficiency, and social ally feeble Jeffersonian organs of government. Pro-
injustice. The progressive army was large, diverse, gressive theorists were insisting that society could
and widely deployed, but it had a single battle cry:
“Strengthen the State.” The “real heart of the move-
ment,” explained one of the progressive reformers,

664

Critics of Social Justice 665

no longer afford the luxury of a limitless “let-alone” box. High-minded messengers of the social gospel
(laissez-faire) policy. The people, through govern- promoted a brand of progressivism based in Chris-
ment, must substitute mastery for drift. tian teachings. They used religious doctrine to
demand better housing and living conditions for the
Well before 1900, perceptive politicians and urban poor. Feminists in multiplying numbers
writers had begun to pinpoint targets for the pro- added social justice to suffrage on their list of
gressive attack. Bryan, Altgeld, and the Populists
loudly branded the “bloated trusts” with the stigma
of corruption and wrongdoing. In 1894 Henry
Demarest Lloyd charged headlong into the Standard
Oil Company with his book Wealth Against Com-
monwealth. Eccentric Thorstein Veblen assailed the
new rich with his prickly pen in The Theory of the
Leisure Class (1899), a savage attack on “predatory
wealth” and “conspicuous consumption.”

Other pen-wielding knights likewise entered the
fray. The keen-eyed and keen-nosed Danish immi-
grant Jacob A. Riis, a reporter for the New York Sun,
shocked middle-class Americans in 1890 with How
the Other Half Lives. His account was a damning
indictment of the dirt, disease, vice, and misery of
the rat-gnawed human rookeries known as New
York slums. The book deeply influenced a future
New York City police commissioner, Theodore Roo-
sevelt. Novelist Theodore Dreiser used his blunt
prose to batter promoters and profiteers in The
Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914).

Caustic critics of social injustice issued from
several other corners. Socialists, many of whom
were European immigrants inspired by the strong
movement for state socialism in the Old World,
began to register appreciable strength at the ballot

666 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

needed reforms. With urban pioneers like Jane
Addams in Chicago and Lillian Wald in New York
blazing the way, women entered the fight to
improve the lot of families living and working in the
festering cities.

Raking Muck with the Muckrakers

Beginning about 1902 the exposing of evil became a plices in “Frenzied Finance.” This series of articles,
flourishing industry among American publishers. A appearing in 1905–1906, rocketed the circulation of
group of aggressive ten- and fifteen-cent popular Everybody’s. Lawson, by fouling his own nest, made
magazines surged to the front, notably McClure’s, many enemies among his rich associates, and he
Cosmopolitan, Collier’s, and Everybody’s. Waging died a poor man.
fierce circulation wars, they dug deep for the dirt
that the public loved to hate. Enterprising editors David G. Phillips shocked an already startled
financed extensive research and encouraged pugna- nation by his series in Cosmopolitan titled “The
cious writing by their bright young reporters, whom Treason of the Senate” (1906). He boldly charged
President Roosevelt branded as “muckrakers” in that seventy-five of the ninety senators did not rep-
1906. Annoyed by their excess of zeal, he compared resent the people at all but the railroads and trusts.
the mudslinging magazine dirt-diggers to the figure This withering indictment, buttressed by facts,
in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress who was so intent on impressed President Roosevelt. Phillips continued
raking manure that he could not see the celestial his attacks through novels and was fatally shot in
crown dangling overhead. 1911 by a deranged young man whose family he had
allegedly maligned.
Despite presidential scolding, these muckrakers
boomed circulation, and some of their most scan-
dalous exposures were published as best-selling
books. The reformer-writers ranged far, wide, and
deep in their crusade to lay bare the muck of iniq-
uity in American society. In 1902 a brilliant New York
reporter, Lincoln Steffens, launched a series of arti-
cles in McClure’s titled “The Shame of the Cities.” He
fearlessly unmasked the corrupt alliance between
big business and municipal government. Steffens
was followed in the same magazine by Ida M. Tar-
bell, a pioneering journalist who published a devas-
tating but factual exposé of the Standard Oil
Company. (Her father had been ruined by the oil
interests.) Fearing legal reprisals, the muckraking
magazines went to great pains and expense to check
their material—paying as much as three thousand
dollars to verify a single Tarbell article.

Plucky muckrakers fearlessly tilted their pen-
lances at varied targets. They assailed the malprac-
tices of life insurance companies and tariff lobbies.
They roasted the beef trust, the “money trust,” the
railroad barons, and the corrupt amassing of Ameri-
can fortunes. Thomas W. Lawson, an erratic specu-
lator who had himself made $50 million on the
stock market, laid bare the practices of his accom-

Progressives Battle Corruption and Corporations 667

In his muckraker speech (1906), Theodore Political Progressivism
Roosevelt (1858–1919) said,
Progressive reformers were mainly middle-class
“Now, it is very necessary that we should not men and women who felt themselves squeezed
flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. from above and below. They sensed pressure from
There is filth on the floor and it must be the new giant corporations, the restless immigrant
scraped up with the muck-rake; and there hordes, and the aggressive labor unions. The pro-
are times and places where this service is the gressives simultaneously sought two goals: to use
most needed of all the services that can be state power to curb the trusts and to stem the social-
performed. But the man who never does ist threat by generally improving the common
anything else, who never thinks or speaks or person’s conditions of life and labor. Progressives
writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, emerged in both major parties, in all regions, and at
speedily becomes, not a help to society, not all levels of government. The truth is that progres-
an incitement to good, but one of the most sivism was less a minority movement and more a
potent forces for evil.” majority mood.

Some of the most effective fire of the muckrak- One of the first objectives of progressives was to
ers was directed at social evils. The ugly list included regain the power that had slipped from the hands
the immoral “white slave” traffic in women, the rick- of the people into those of the “interests.” These
ety slums, and the appalling number of industrial ardent reformers pushed for direct primary elec-
accidents. The sorry subjugation of America’s 9 mil- tions so as to undercut power-hungry party bosses.
lion blacks—of whom 90 percent still lived in the They favored the “initiative” so that voters could
South and one-third were illiterate—was spot- directly propose legislation themselves, thus
lighted in Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color bypassing the boss-bought state legislatures. Pro-
Line (1908). The abuses of child labor were brought gressives also agitated for the “referendum.” This
luridly to light by John Spargo’s The Bitter Cry of the device would place laws on the ballot for final
Children (1906). approval by the people, especially laws that had
been railroaded through a compliant legislature by
Vendors of potent patent medicines (often free-spending agents of big business. The “recall”
heavily spiked with alcohol) likewise came in for bit- would enable the voters to remove faithless elected
ter criticism. These conscienceless vultures sold officials, particularly those who had been bribed by
incredible quantities of adulterated or habit- bosses or lobbyists.
forming drugs, while “doping” the press with lavish
advertising. Muckraking attacks in Collier’s were In his muckraking classic The Shame of the
ably reinforced by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist Cities (1904), Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936)
of the Department of Agriculture, who with his decried the great threat posed by New York
famous “Poison Squad” performed experiments on City’s Tammany machine:
himself.
“Bribery is no ordinary felony, but treason; . . .
Full of sound and fury, the muckrakers signified ‘corruption which breaks out here and there
much about the nature of the progressive reform and now and then’ is not an occasional
movement. They were long on lamentation and offense, but a common practice, and . . .
short on sweeping remedies. To right social wrongs, the effect of it is literally to change the
they counted on publicity and an aroused public form of our government from one that is
conscience, not drastic political change. They representative of the people to an oligarchy,
sought not to overthrow capitalism but to cleanse it. representative of special interests.”
The cure for the ills of American democracy, they
earnestly believed, was more democracy.

668 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

Rooting out graft also became a prime goal of states established primary elections in which the
earnest progressives. A number of the state legisla- voters expressed their preferences for the Senate.
tures passed corrupt-practices acts, which limited The local legislatures, when choosing senators,
the amount of money that candidates could spend found it politically wise to heed the voice of the peo-
for their election. Such legislation also restricted ple. Partly as a result of such pressures, the Seven-
huge gifts from corporations, for which the donors teenth Amendment to the Constitution, approved
would expect special favors. The secret Australian in 1913, established the direct election of U.S. sena-
ballot was likewise being introduced more widely tors. (See the Appendix.) But the expected improve-
in the states to counteract boss rule. Bribery was ment in caliber was slow in coming.
less feasible when bribers could not tell if they
were getting their money’s worth from the bribed. The suffrage campaign of the early twentieth
century benefited from a new generation of
Direct election of U.S. senators became a women who considered themselves
favorite goal of progressives, especially after the “feminists.” At a mass meeting in New York in
muckrakers had exposed the scandalous intimacy 1914, Marie Jenny Howe (1870–1934), a
between greedy corporations and Congress. By minister by training as well as a prominent
1900 the Senate had so many rich men that it was early feminist, proclaimed,
often sneered at as the “Millionaires’ Club.” Too “We intend simply to be ourselves, not just
many of these prosperous solons, elected as they our little female selves, but our whole big
then were by trust-dominated legislatures, heeded human selves.”
the voice of their “masters” rather than the voice of
the masses.

A constitutional amendment to bring about the
popular election of senators had rough sledding in
Congress, for the plutocratic members of the Senate
were happy with existing methods. But a number of

Urban Reformers 669

Woman suffrage, the goal of feminists for many He also perfected a scheme for regulating public util-
decades, likewise received powerful new support ities, while laboring in close association with experts
from the progressives early in the 1900s. The politi- on the faculty of the state university at Madison.
cal reformers believed that women’s votes would
elevate the political tone, and the foes of the saloon Other states marched steadily toward the pro-
felt that they could count on the support of enfran- gressive camp, as they undertook to regulate rail-
chised females. The suffragists, with their cry of roads and trusts, chiefly through public utilities
“Votes for Women” and “Equal Suffrage for Men commissions. Oregon was not far behind Wisconsin,
and Women,” protested bitterly against “Taxation and California made giant bootstrides under the
Without Representation.” Many of the states, espe- stocky Hiram W. Johnson. Elected Republican
cially the more liberal ones in the West, gradually governor in 1910, this dynamic prosecutor of grafters
extended the vote to women. But by 1910 nation- helped break the dominant grip of the Southern
wide female suffrage was still a decade away, and a Pacific Railroad on California politics and then, like
suffragist could still be sneeringly defined as “one La Follette, set up a political machine of his own.
who has ceased to be a lady and has not yet become Heavily whiskered Charles Evans Hughes, the able
a gentleman.” and audacious reformist Republican governor of
New York, had earlier gained national fame as an
Progressivism in the Cities and States investigator of malpractices by gas and insurance
companies and by the coal trust.

Progressives scored some of their most impressive Progressive Women
gains in the cities. Frustrated by the inefficiency and
corruption of machine-oiled city government, Women proved themselves an indispensable part of
many localities followed the pioneering example of the progressive army. A crucial focus for women’s
Galveston, Texas. In 1901 it had appointed expert- activism was the settlement house movement (see
staffed commissions to manage urban affairs. Other p. 565). At a time when women could neither vote
communities adopted the city-manager system, nor hold political office, settlement houses offered a
also designed to take politics out of municipal side door to public life. They exposed middle-class
administration. Some of these “reforms” obviously women to the problems plaguing America’s cities,
valued efficiency more highly than democracy, as including poverty, political corruption, and intoler-
control of civic affairs was further removed from the able working and living conditions. They also gave
people’s hands. them the skills and confidence to attack those evils.
The women’s club movement provided an even
Urban reformers likewise attacked “slumlords,” broader civic entryway for many middle-class
juvenile delinquency, and wide-open prostitution women. Literary clubs, where educated women met
(vice-at-a-price), which flourished in red-light dis- to improve themselves with poetry and prose, had
tricts unchallenged by bribed police. Public-spirited existed for decades. But in the late nineteenth and
city dwellers also moved to halt the corrupt sale of early twentieth centuries, many of these clubs set
franchises for streetcars and other public utilities. aside Shakespeare and Henry James for social issues
and current events. “Dante has been dead for sev-
Progressivism naturally bubbled up to the state eral centuries,” observed the president of the Gen-
level, notably in Wisconsin, which became a yeasty eral Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1904. “I think it
laboratory of reform. The governor of the state, pom- is time that we dropped the study of his Inferno and
padoured Robert M. (“Fighting Bob”) La Follette, turned our attention to our own.”
was an undersized but overbearing crusader who
emerged as the most militant of the progressive Nineteenth-century notions of “separate
Republican leaders. After a desperate fight with spheres” dictated that a woman’s place was in the
entrenched monopoly, he reached the governor’s home, so most female progressives defended their
chair in 1901. Routing the lumber and railroad “inter- new activities as an extension—not a rejection—of
ests,” he wrested considerable control from the
crooked corporations and returned it to the people.

670 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

the traditional roles of wife and mother. Thus they scandal in many cities. Florence Kelley, a former res-
were often drawn to moral and “maternal” issues ident of Jane Addams’s Hull House, became the state
like keeping children out of smudgy mills and swel- of Illinois’s first chief factory inspector and one of
tering sweatshops, attacking the scourge of tubercu- the nation’s leading advocates for improved factory
losis bred in airless tenements, winning pensions conditions. In 1899 Kelley took control of the newly
for mothers with dependent children, and ensuring founded National Consumers League, which mobi-
that only safe food products found their way to the lized female consumers to pressure for laws safe-
family table. Female activists agitated through orga- guarding women and children in the workplace.
nizations like the Women’s Trade Union League and In the landmark case Muller v. Oregon (1908), cru-
the National Consumers League, as well as through sading attorney Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the
two new federal agencies, the Children’s Bureau Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of
(1912) and the Women’s Bureau (1920), both in the laws protecting women workers by presenting evi-
Department of Labor. These wedges into the federal dence of the harmful effects of factory labor on
bureaucracy, however small, gave female reform- women’s weaker bodies. Although this argument
ers a national stage for social investigation and calling for special protection for women seemed
advocacy. discriminatory by later standards and closed many
“male” jobs to women, progressives at the time
Campaigns for factory reform and temperance hailed Brandeis’s achievement as a triumph over
particularly attracted women foot soldiers. Unsafe existing legal doctrine, which afforded employers
and unsanitary sweatshops—factories where work- total control over the workplace. The American
ers toiled long hours for low wages—were a public

Examining the Evidence 671

Muller v. Oregon, 1908 Court records provide load of laundry. That request violated Oregon’s law
notably fruitful sources for historians. They not only prohibiting women from working more than ten
tell often-colorful stories about the lives of ordinary hours per day. Mrs. Gotcher later complained to the
men and women caught up in the legal system; they authorities, and Muller was fined $10. Muller
also by their very nature testify to the norms and refused to pay, and took his case all the way to the
values that lawyers employ to make their cases and United States Supreme Court. In its landmark deci-
that judges invoke to explain their decisions. The sion, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the
case of Muller v. Oregon (see p. 670) is especially Oregon statute, and Muller at last had to cough up
instructive on both counts. The official Supreme his fine. On what grounds did the Court justify its
Court records tell how on September 4, 1905, Joe ruling? What does Justice Brewer’s argument on
Haselbock, a supervisor in Curt Muller’s Grand behalf of the Court’s decision suggest about the cul-
Laundry in Portland, Oregon, asked an employee, tural identity and social role of women in early-
Mrs. E. Gotcher, to remain after hours to do an extra twentieth-century American society?

(208 U.S. 412)
CURT MULLER, Plff. in Err.,

v.
STATE OF OREGON.

. . . That woman’s physical structure and the is impossible to close one’s eyes to the fact that
performance of material functions place her she still looks to her brother and depends upon
at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsis- him. . . . The two sexes differ in structure of
tence is obvious. This is especially true when body, in the functions to be performed by each,
the burdens of motherhood are upon her. . . . in the amount of physical strength, in the
and as healthy mothers are essential to vigor- capacity for long continued labor, particularly
ous offspring, the physical well-being of when done standing, the influence of vigorous
woman becomes an object of public interest health upon the future well-being of the race,
and care in order to preserve the strength the self-reliance which enables one to assert
and vigor of the race. full rights, and in the capacity to maintain the
struggle for subsistence. This difference justi-
Still again, history discloses the fact that fies a difference in legislation, and upholds that
woman has always been dependent upon man. which is designed to compensate for some of
He established his control at the outset by the burdens which rest upon her.
superior physical strength, and this control in
various forms, with diminishing intensity, has We have not referred in this discussion to
continued to the present. . . . It is still true that the denial of the elective franchise in the
in the struggle for subsistence she is not an state of Oregon, for while that may disclose
equal competitor with her brother. . . . Differ- a lack of political equality in all things with
entiated by these matters from the other sex, her brother, that is not of itself decisive. The
she is properly placed in a class by herself, and reason runs deeper, and rests in the inherent
legislation designed for her protection may be difference between the two sexes, and in
sustained, even when like legislation is not nec- the different functions in life which they
essary for men, and could not be sustained. It perform. . . .

672 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

welfare state that emerged from female activism Caught up in the crusade, some states and
focused more on protecting women and children numerous counties passed “dry” laws, which con-
than on granting benefits to everyone, as was the trolled, restricted, or abolished alcohol. The big
case in much of western Europe, with its stronger cities were generally “wet,” for they had a large
labor movements. immigrant vote accustomed in the Old Country to
the free flow of wine and beer. When World War I
Crusaders for these humane measures did not erupted in 1914, nearly one-half of the population
always have smooth sailing. One dismaying setback lived in “dry” territory, and nearly three-fourths of
came in 1905, when the Supreme Court, in Lochner the total area had outlawed saloons. Demon Rum
v. New York, invalidated a New York law establishing was groggy and about to be floored—temporarily—
a ten-hour day for bakers. Yet the reformist progres- by the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.
sive wave finally washed up into the judiciary, and
in 1917 the Court upheld a ten-hour law for factory TR’s Square Deal
workers. for Labor

Laws regulating factories were worthless if not Theodore Roosevelt, although something of an
enforced, a truth horribly demonstrated by a lethal imperialistic busybody abroad, was touched by the
fire in 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in progressive wave at home. Like other reformers, he
New York City. Locked doors and other flagrant vio-
lations of the fire code turned the factory into a
death trap. One hundred forty-six workers, most of
them young immigrant women, were incinerated or
leapt from eighth- and ninth-story windows to their
deaths. Lashed by the public outcry, including a
massive strike by women in the needle trades, the
New York legislature passed much stronger laws reg-
ulating the hours and conditions of sweatshop toil.
Other legislatures followed, and by 1917 thirty states
had put workers’ compensation laws on the books,
providing insurance to workers injured in industrial
accidents. Gradually the concept of the employer’s
responsibility to society was replacing the old dog-
eat-dog philosophy of unregulated free enterprise.

Corner saloons, with their shutter doors, natu-
rally attracted the ire and fire of progressives. Alco-
hol was intimately connected with prostitution in
red-light districts, with the drunken voter, with
crooked city officials dominated by “booze” inter-
ests, and with the blowsy “boss” who counted poker
chips by night and miscounted ballots by day
(including the “cemetery vote”). By 1900 cities like
New York and San Francisco had one saloon for
about every two hundred people.

Antiliquor campaigners received powerful sup-
port from several militant organizations, notably
the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).
Founder Frances E. Willard, who would fall to her
knees in prayer on saloon floors, mobilized nearly
1 million women to “make the world homelike” and
built the WCTU into the largest organization of
women in the world. She found a vigorous ally in
the Anti-Saloon League, which was aggressive, well
organized, and well financed.

Roosevelt Backs Labor 673

feared that the “public interest” was being sub- the icy grip of winter. Desperately seeking a solu-
merged in the drifting seas of indifference. Every- tion, Roosevelt summoned representatives of the
body’s interest was nobody’s interest. Roosevelt striking miners and the mine owners to the White
decided to make it his. His sportsman’s instincts House. He was profoundly annoyed by the “extraor-
spurred him into demanding a “Square Deal” for dinary stupidity and bad temper” of the “wooden-
capital, labor, and the public at large. Broadly headed gentry” who operated the mines. As he later
speaking, the president’s program embraced three confessed, if it had not been for the dignity of his
C’s: control of the corporations, consumer protec- high office, he would have taken one of them “by the
tion, and conservation of natural resources. seat of the breeches” and “chucked him out of the
window.”
The Square Deal for labor received its acid test
in 1902, when a crippling strike broke out in the Roosevelt finally resorted to his trusty big stick
anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania. Some when he threatened to seize the mines and operate
140,000 besooted workers, many of them illiterate them with federal troops. Faced with this first-time-
immigrants, had long been frightfully exploited and ever threat to use federal bayonets against capital,
accident-plagued. They demanded, among other rather than labor, the owners grudgingly consented
improvements, a 20 percent increase in pay and a to arbitration. A compromise decision ultimately
reduction of the working day from ten to nine hours. gave the miners a 10 percent pay boost and a work-
ing day of nine hours. But their union was not offi-
Unsympathetic mine owners, confident that cially recognized as a bargaining agent.
a chilled public would react against the miners,
refused to arbitrate or even negotiate. One of Keenly aware of the mounting antagonisms
their spokesmen, multimillionaire George F. Baer, between capital and labor, Roosevelt urged Con-
reflected the high-and-mighty attitude of certain gress to create the new Department of Commerce
ungenerous employers. Workers, he wrote, would be and Labor. This goal was achieved in 1903. (Ten
cared for “not by the labor agitators, but by the years later the agency was split in two.) An impor-
Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom tant arm of the newborn cabinet body was the
has given the control of the property interests of this Bureau of Corporations, which was authorized to
country.” probe businesses engaged in interstate commerce.
The bureau was highly useful in helping to break the
As coal supplies dwindled, factories and schools stranglehold of monopoly and in clearing the road
were forced to shut down, and even hospitals felt for the era of “trust-busting.”

Roosevelt was a charismatic figure who made TR Corrals the
a powerful impression on his contemporaries. Corporations
The journalist William Allen White (1868–
1944) later wrote of his first meeting with The sprawling railroad octopus sorely needed
TR in 1897, restraint. The Interstate Commerce Commission,
created in 1887 as a feeble sop to the public, had
“He sounded in my heart the first trumpet proved woefully inadequate. Railroad barons could
call of the new time that was to be. . . . I had simply appeal the commission’s decisions on rates
never known such a man as he, and never to the federal courts—a process that might take ten
shall again. He overcame me. And in the years.
hour or two we spent that day at lunch, and
in a walk down F Street, he poured into my Spurred by the former-cowboy president, Con-
heart such visions, such ideals, such hopes, gress passed effective railroad legislation, beginning
such a new attitude toward life and with the Elkins Act of 1903. This curb was aimed pri-
patriotism and the meaning of things, as I marily at the rebate evil. Heavy fines could now be
had never dreamed men had. . . . After that imposed both on the railroads that gave rebates and
I was his man.” on the shippers that accepted them.

Still more effective was the Hepburn Act of
1906. Free passes, with their hint of bribery, were

674 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

severely restricted. The once-infantile Interstate assaulting the Goliaths of industry was symbolic: to
Commerce Commission was expanded, and its prove conclusively that the government, not private
reach was extended to include express companies, business, ruled the country. He believed in regulat-
sleeping-car companies, and pipelines. For the first ing, not fragmenting, the big business combines.
time, the commission was given real molars when it The threat of dissolution, he felt, might make the
was authorized, on complaint of shippers, to nullify sultans of the smokestacks more amenable to fed-
existing rates and stipulate maximum rates. eral regulation—as it did.

Railroads also provided Roosevelt with an In truth, Roosevelt never swung his trust-
opportunity to brandish his antitrust bludgeon. crushing stick with maximum force. In many ways
Trusts had come to be a fighting word in the pro- the huge industrial behemoths were healthier—
gressive era. Roosevelt believed that these industrial though perhaps more “tame”—at the end of Roo-
behemoths, with their efficient means of produc- sevelt’s reign than they had been before. His
tion, had arrived to stay. He concluded that there successor, William Howard Taft, actually “busted”
were “good” trusts, with public consciences, and more trusts than TR did. In one celebrated instance
“bad” trusts, which lusted greedily for power. He in 1907, Roosevelt even gave his personal blessing to
was determined to respond to the popular outcry J. P. Morgan’s plan to have U.S. Steel absorb the Ten-
against the trusts but was also determined not to nessee Coal and Iron Company, without fear of
throw out the baby with the bathwater by indiscrim- antitrust reprisals. When Taft then launched a suit
inately smashing all large businesses. against U.S. Steel in 1911, the political reaction from
TR was explosive.
Roosevelt, as a trustbuster, first burst into the
headlines in 1902 with an attack on the Northern
Securities Company, a railroad holding company
organized by financial titan J. P. Morgan and empire
builder James J. Hill. These Napoleonic moguls of
money sought to achieve a virtual monopoly of the
railroads in the Northwest. Roosevelt was therefore
challenging the most regal potentates of the indus-
trial aristocracy.

The railway promoters appealed to the
Supreme Court, which in 1904 upheld Roosevelt’s
antitrust suit and ordered the Northern Securities
Company to be dissolved. The Northern Securities
decision jolted Wall Street and angered big business
but greatly enhanced Roosevelt’s reputation as a
trust smasher.

Roosevelt’s big stick crashed down on other
giant monopolies, as he initiated over forty legal
proceedings against them. The Supreme Court in
1905 declared the beef trust illegal, and the heavy
fist of justice fell upon monopolists controlling
sugar, fertilizer, harvesters, and other key products.

Much mythology has inflated Roosevelt’s repu-
tation as a trustbuster. The Rough Rider understood
the political popularity of monopoly-smashing, but
he did not consider it sound economic policy. Com-
bination and integration, he felt, were the hallmarks
of the age, and to try to stem the tide of economic
progress by political means he considered the rank-
est folly. Bigness was not necessarily badness, so
why punish success? Roosevelt’s real purpose in

Protecting Consumers 675

Caring for the found meat unpalatable. The president was moved
Consumer by the loathsome mess in Chicago to appoint a spe-
cial investigating commission, whose cold-blooded
Roosevelt backed a noteworthy measure in 1906 report almost outdid Sinclair’s novel. It related how
that benefited both corporations and consumers. piles of poisoned rats, rope ends, splinters, and other
Big meatpackers were being shut out of certain debris were scooped up and canned as potted ham.
European markets because some American meat— A cynical jingle of the time ran,
from the small packinghouses, claimed the giants—
had been found to be tainted. Foreign governments Mary had a little lamb,
were even threatening to ban all American meat And when she saw it sicken,
imports by throwing out the good beef with the bad
botulism. She shipped it off to Packingtown,
And now it’s labeled chicken.
At the same time, American consumers hun-
gered for safer canned products. Their appetite for Backed by a nauseated public, Roosevelt in-
reform was whetted by Upton Sinclair’s sensational duced Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act of
novel The Jungle, published in 1906. Sinclair in- 1906. It decreed that the preparation of meat
tended his revolting tract to focus attention on the shipped over state lines would be subject to federal
plight of the workers in the big canning factories, but inspection from corral to can. Although the largest
instead he appalled the public with his description packers resisted certain features of the act, they
of disgustingly unsanitary food products. (As he put accepted it as an opportunity to drive their smaller,
it, he aimed for the nation’s heart but hit its stom- fly-by-night competitors out of business. At the
ach.) The book described in noxious detail the filth, same time, they could receive the government’s seal
disease, and putrefaction in Chicago’s damp, ill- of approval on their exports. As a companion to the
ventilated slaughterhouses. Many readers, including Meat Inspection Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act of
Roosevelt, were so sickened that for a time they 1906 was designed to prevent the adulteration and
mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals.

676 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

Earth Control

Wasteful Americans, assuming that their natural the banner of leadership and charged into the fray
resources were inexhaustible, had looted and pol- with all the weight of his prestige, his energy, his
luted their incomparable domain with unparalleled firsthand knowledge, and his slashing invective.
speed and greed. Western ranchers and timbermen
were especially eager to accelerate the destructive The thirst of the desert still unslaked, Congress
process, for they panted to build up the country, and responded to the whip of the Rough Rider by pass-
the environmental consequences be hanged. But ing the landmark Newlands Act of 1902. Washington
even before the end of the nineteenth century, far- was authorized to collect money from the sale of
visioned leaders saw that such a squandering of the public lands in the sun-baked western states and
nation’s birthright would have to be halted, or Amer- then use these funds for the development of irriga-
ica would sink from resource richness to despoiled tion projects. Settlers repaid the cost of reclamation
dearth. from their now-productive soil, and the money was
put into a revolving fund to finance more such
A first feeble step toward conservation had been enterprises. The giant Roosevelt Dam, constructed
taken with the Desert Land Act of 1877, under which on Arizona’s Salt River, was appropriately dedicated
the federal government sold arid land cheaply on the by Roosevelt in 1911. Thanks to this epochal legisla-
condition that the purchaser irrigate the thirsty soil tion, dozens of dams were thrown across virtually
within three years. More successful was the Forest every major western river in the ensuing decades.
Reserve Act of 1891, authorizing the president to set
aside public forests as national parks and other
reserves. Under this statute some 46 million acres of
magnificent trees were rescued from the lumber-
man’s saw in the 1890s and preserved for posterity.
The Carey Act of 1894 distributed federal land to the
states on the condition that it be irrigated and settled.

A new day in the history of conservation dawned
with Roosevelt. Huntsman, naturalist, rancher, lover
of the great outdoors, he was appalled by the pillag-
ing of timber and mineral resources. Other dedi-
cated conservationists, notably Gifford Pinchot,
head of the federal Division of Forestry, had broken
important ground before him. But Roosevelt seized

In his annual message to Congress (1907),
Roosevelt declared prophetically,

“We are prone to speak of the resources of
this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.
The mineral wealth of the country, the coal,
iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not
reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to
be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in
dealing with it to-day means that our
descendants will feel the exhaustion a gener-
ation or two before they otherwise would.”

The Conservation Crusade 677

Roosevelt pined to preserve the nation’s shrink- 1892, dedicated itself to preserving the wildness of
ing forests. By 1900 only about a quarter of the the western landscape.
once-vast virgin timberlands remained standing.
Lumbermen had already logged off most of the first- The preservationists lost a major battle in 1913
growth timber from Maine to Michigan, and the when the federal government allowed the city of San
sharp thud of their axes was beginning to split the Francisco to build a dam for its municipal water
silence in the great fir forests of the Pacific slope. supply in the spectacular, high-walled Hetch Hetchy
Roosevelt proceeded to set aside in federal reserves Valley in Yosemite National Park. The Hetch Hetchy
some 125 million acres, or almost three times the controversy laid bare a deep division among conser-
acreage thus saved from the saw by his three prede- vationists that persists to the present day. To the
cessors. He similarly earmarked millions of acres of preservationists of the Sierra Club, including famed
coal deposits, as well as water resources useful for naturalist John Muir, Hetch Hetchy was a “temple”
irrigation and power. To set a shining example, in
1902 he banned Christmas trees from the White Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946), a leading
House. conservationist in the Roosevelt
administration, wrote,
Conservation, including reclamation, may have
been Roosevelt’s most enduring tangible achieve- “The object of our forest policy is not to
ment. He was buoyed in this effort by an upwelling preserve the forests because they are
national mood of concern about the disappearance refuges for the wild creatures of the
of the frontier—believed to be the source of such wilderness, but the making of prosperous
national characteristics as individualism and de- homes. Every other consideration comes as
mocracy. An increasingly citified people worried secondary. . . . The test of utility . . . implies
that too much civilization might not be good for the that no lands will be permanently reserves
national soul. City dwellers snapped up Jack Lon- which can serve the people better in any
don’s Call of the Wild (1903) and other books about other way.”
nature, and urban youngsters made the outdoor-
oriented Boy Scouts of America the country’s largest
youth organization. The Sierra Club, founded in

The Environmentalists prominent promoter of the progressive-era “conser-
vation” movement, composed of a loose coalition of
Humans have long been awed by nature, but they scientists, bureaucrats, and businesspeople depend-
have also yearned to be its masters. Native Ameri- ent on America’s endowment of natural resources.
can peoples did what they could to shape the natural Progressive conservationists believed that nature
environment to serve their purposes—burning forest must be neither uncritically reverenced nor wastefully
and grasslands, for example, to improve hunting exploited, but must instead be efficiently utilized.
habitats—but they lacked the tools to make Mother Thus the same TR who admired the wonders of
Earth bow deeply to their will. The earliest European Yosemite Valley in the company of John Muir also sup-
colonists saw North America as a “howling wilder- ported the professional forester Gifford Pinchot, who
ness” and toiled mightily with ax and plow to tame declared that “the object of our forest policy is not to
it. By the mid-nineteenth century, Americans com- preserve the forests because they are beautiful or
manded powerful new technologies like the railroad because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the
and steam-powered drills and dredges, which wilderness, but the making of prosperous homes. Use
promised unbridled dominion over the natural world. must be the test by which the forester tries himself.”
Only then did voices begin to be heard in defense of
the wounded earth—the faint first stirrings of what Pinchot’s “rational use” philosophy guided
would come to be called “environmentalism.” America’s natural resource policy until the mid-
twentieth century. It justified the systematic har-
In a pattern that would often be repeated, vesting of millions of trees in the sprawling national
nature’s earliest defenders tended to be well-off forests whose boundaries Roosevelt had expanded,
townsfolk and city dwellers, like Henry David and the drowning of vast river valleys behind mas-
Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Americans sive dams that Roosevelt’s Reclamation Service
most likely to appreciate the value of the pristine helped to build. This attitude toward nature tri-
wilderness, it seemed, were those who had ceased
to struggle against it. (“Cities, not log cabins, pro-
duce Sierra Clubbers,” one historian noted.) For the
loggers, miners, and farmers who continued to
sweat their living out of nature’s grudging embrace,
concern for environmental niceties often seemed
like the sanctimonious piety of a privileged elite.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, many gen-
teel, urban Americans had come to romanticize their
pioneer forebears. They reinvented hunting and fish-
ing as sports for the well-to-do, not simply as ways to
put food on the table. Preservationists like John Muir
waxed lyrical about the mystic allure of unspoiled
nature. Seizing the popular mood, Theodore Roo-
sevelt deliberately constructed a public image of him-
self as a manly outdoorsman—raising cattle in the
Dakotas, shooting lions in Africa, rafting down wild
rivers in the Amazon basin—and as president he
greatly expanded the system of national forests. But
Roosevelt was also a pioneer of another sort—as a

678

umphed in the New Deal era of the 1930s, when the Species Act and other legislation designed to regu-
federal government initiated colossal projects that late the relationship between humans and nature.
undertook nothing less than reengineering the face
of the continent—including the Tennessee Valley At the outset of the twenty-first century, devel-
Authority, the Soil Conservation Service, and the opments like global warming served dramatic notice
Shelterbelt tree-planting project on the Great Plains. that planet earth was the biggest ecological system
The huge reach of these New Deal projects also of them all—one that did not recognize national
introduced millions of Americans for the first time boundaries. Yet while Americans took pride in the
to the concept that nature had to be treated with efforts they had made to clean up their own turf,
respect, helping to stimulate the post–World War II who were they, having long since consumed much of
grassroots environmental movement. their own timberlands, to tell the Brazilians that they
should not cut down the Amazon rain forest? Who
The rise of ecological science in the post–World were they, having tamed virtually all their own free-
War II era fundamentally changed the debate about flowing waters, to tell the Chinese not to dam their
the relation of nature to civilization. Ecologists rivers? For the peoples of the developing world,
charged that the apparent “rationality” of the earlier struggling to match America’s standard of living,
conservationists dangerously neglected the fateful environmentalists often seemed like spoiled spoil-
intricacies of biological systems. They called attention ers, preaching the same privileged pieties that had
to the stunningly complex webs of interrelationships infuriated generations of working Americans.
that linked together seemingly unrelated organisms—
and to the perils of tampering even slightly with the
delicate biological fabrics that nature had taken mil-
lennia to weave. Rachel Carson helped to popularize
the new outlook in her sensational 1962 exposé, Silent
Spring, about the far-reaching effects of pesticides on
birds, plants, and animals—including humans.

The advent of ecological studies coincided with
a revival of preservationist sentiment, especially in
the suburbs, where Americans increasingly dwelled.
Hordes of affluent baby boomers took to America’s
trails, slopes, and waterways to hike, bike, ski, fish,
boat, and otherwise recreate—often on public lands
like Arizona’s wondrous Grand Canyon National
Park, or public waters like Utah’s shimmering (and
man-made) Lake Powell. Membership in environ-
mental organizations such as the Sierra Club and the
Audubon Society soared, as a generation infatuated
with nature demanded a clean and green world. The
first celebration of Earth Day, on April 22, 1970,
marked the political maturation of modern-day
environmentalism, which wedded scientific analysis
with respect for nature’s majesty. That same year saw
the creation of the federal Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), soon followed by the Endangered

680 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

of nature that should be held inviolable by the civi- tection, and summer stock grazing on the same
lizing hand of humanity. But other conservationists, expanse of federal land.
among them President Roosevelt’s chief forester,
Gifford Pinchot, believed that “wilderness was At first many westerners resisted the federal
waste.” Pinchot and Roosevelt wanted to use the management of natural resources, but they soon
nation’s natural endowment intelligently. In their learned how to take advantage of new agencies like
eyes they had to battle on two fronts: against greedy the Forest Service and especially the Bureau of
commercial interests who abused nature, as well as Reclamation. The largest ranches and timber com-
against romantic preservationists in thrall to simple panies in particular figured out how to work hand in
“woodman-spare-that-tree” sentimentality. glove with federal conservation programs devoted
to the rational, large-scale, and long-term use of
Under Roosevelt, professional foresters and natural resources. The one-man-and-a-mule logger
engineers developed a policy of “multiple-use or the one-man-and-a-dog sheepherder had little
resource management.” They sought to combine clout in the new resources bureaucracy. Single-
recreation, sustained-yield logging, watershed pro- person enterprises were shouldered aside, in the

The Panic of 1907 681

interest of efficiency, by the combined bulk of big dren piped vigorously on whistles modeled on his
business and big government. famous teeth. Yet the conservative Republican
bosses considered him as dangerous and unpre-
dictable as a rattlesnake. They grew increasingly
restive as Roosevelt in his second term called ever
more loudly for regulating the corporations, taxing
incomes, and protecting workers. Roosevelt, mean-
while, had partly defanged himself after his election
in 1904 by announcing that under no circumstances
would he be a candidate for a third term. This was a
tactical blunder, for the power of the king wanes
when the people know he will be dead in four years.

Roosevelt suffered a sharp 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 hastened to blame Roo-
sevelt for the storm. It cried that this “quack” had
unsettled industry with his boat-rocking tactics.
Conservatives damned him as “Theodore the Med-
dler” and branded the current distress the “Roo-
sevelt panic.” The hot-tempered president angrily
lashed back at his critics when he accused “certain
malefactors of great wealth” of having deliberately
engineered the monetary crisis to force the govern-
ment to relax its assaults on trusts.

Fortunately, the panic of 1907 paved the way for
long-overdue fiscal reforms. Precipitating a currency
shortage, the flurry laid bare the need for a more
elastic medium of exchange. In a crisis of this sort,
the 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. Congress in 1908 responded
by passing the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, which autho-
rized national banks to issue emergency currency
backed by various kinds of collateral. The path was
thus smoothed for the momentous Federal Reserve
Act of 1913 (see p. 692).

The “Roosevelt Panic” of 1907 The Rough Rider Thunders Out

Roosevelt was handily elected president “in his own Still warmly popular in 1908, Roosevelt could easily
right” in 1904 and entered his new term buoyed by have won a second presidential nomination and
his enormous personal popularity—the cuddly almost certainly the election. But he felt bound by
“teddy bear” honored one of his bear-hunting his impulsive postelection promise after his victory
exploits (when he saved the life of a cub), and chil- in 1904.

682 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

ity with Roosevelt-endorsed Taft, who polled 321
electoral votes to 162 for Bryan. The victor’s popular
count was 7,675,320 to 6,412,294. The election’s only
surprise came from the Socialists, who amassed
420,793 votes for Eugene V. Debs, the hero of the
Pullman strike of 1894 (see pp. 614–615).

Roosevelt, ever in the limelight, left soon after
the election for a lion hunt in Africa. His numerous
enemies clinked glasses while toasting “Health to
the lions,” and a few irreverently prayed that some
big cat would “do its duty.” But TR survived, still
bursting with energy at the age of fifty-one in 1909.

Roosevelt was branded by his adversaries as a
wild-eyed radical, but his reputation as an eater of
errant industrialists now seems inflated. He fought
many a sham battle, and the number of laws he
inspired was certainly not in proportion to the
amount of noise he emitted. He was often under
attack from the reigning business lords, but the
more enlightened of them knew that they had a
friend in the White House. Roosevelt should be
remembered first and foremost as the cowboy who
started to tame the bucking bronco of adolescent
capitalism, thus ensuring it a long adult life.

The departing president thus naturally sought a
successor who would carry out “my policies.” The
man of his choice was amiable, ample-girthed, and
huge-framed William Howard Taft, secretary of war
and a mild progressive. As an heir apparent, he had
often been called upon in Roosevelt’s absence to “sit
on the lid”—all 350 pounds of him. At the Republi-
can convention of 1908 in Chicago, Roosevelt used
his control of the party machinery—the “steam-
roller”—to push through Taft’s nomination on the
first ballot. Three weeks later, in mile-high Denver,
in the heart of silver country, the Democrats nomi-
nated twice-beaten William Jennings Bryan.

The dull campaign of 1908 featured the rotund
Taft and the now-balding “Boy Orator” both trying
to don the progressive Roosevelt mantle. The solid
Judge Taft read cut-and-dried speeches, while Bryan
griped that Roosevelt had stolen his policies from
the Bryanite camp. A majority of voters chose stabil-

Taft as President 683

Roosevelt, who preached the doctrine of the laughter bubbling up from his abundant abdomen,
“strenuous life,” practiced it until almost the was personally popular. He had graduated second in
end. In 1913 he sent a political message on a his class at Yale and had established an enviable rep-
still-preserved phonograph recording to the utation as a lawyer and judge, though he was widely
Boys’ Progressive League: regarded as hostile to labor unions. He had been
“Don’t flinch, don’t foul, and hit the line hard.” a trusted administrator under Roosevelt—in the
Philippines, at home, and in Cuba, where he had
TR’s enthusiasm and perpetual youthfulness, served capably as a troubleshooter.
like an overgrown Boy Scout’s, appealed to the
young of all ages. “You must always remember,” a But “good old Will” suffered from lethal political
British diplomat cautioned his colleagues, “that the handicaps. Roosevelt had led the conflicting ele-
president is about six.” He served as a political light- ments of the Republican party by the sheer force of
ning rod to protect capitalists against popular indig- his personality. Taft, in contrast, had none of the arts
nation—and against socialism, which Roosevelt of a dashing political leader and none of Roosevelt’s
regarded as “ominous.” He strenuously sought the zest for the fray. Recoiling from the clamor of con-
middle road between unbridled individualism and troversy, he generally adopted an attitude of passiv-
paternalistic collectivism. His conservation crusade, ity toward Congress. He was a poor judge of public
which tried to mediate between the romantic opinion, and his candor made him a chronic victim
wilderness-preservationists and the rapacious of “foot-in-mouth” disease.
resource-predators, was probably his most typical
and his most lasting achievement. “Peaceful Bill” was no doubt a mild progressive,
but at heart he was more wedded to the status quo
Several other contributions of Roosevelt lasted than to change. Significantly, his cabinet did not
beyond his presidency. First, he greatly enlarged the contain a single representative of the party’s “insur-
power and prestige of the presidential office—and gent” wing, which was on fire for reform of current
masterfully developed the technique of using the abuses, especially the tariff.
big stick of publicity as a political bludgeon. Second,
he helped shape the progressive movement and The Dollar Goes Abroad as a Diplomat
beyond it the liberal reform campaigns later in the
century. His Square Deal, in a sense, was the grand- Though ordinarily lethargic, Taft bestirred himself
father of the New Deal later launched by his fifth to use the lever of American investments to boost
cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Finally, to a greater American political interests abroad, an approach to
degree than any of his predecessors, TR opened the foreign policy that his critics denounced as “dollar
eyes of Americans to the fact that they shared the diplomacy.” Washington warmly encouraged Wall
world with other nations. As a great power, they had Street bankers to sluice their surplus dollars into for-
fallen heir to responsibilities—and had been seized eign areas of strategic concern to the United States,
by ambitions—from which there was no escaping. especially in the Far East and in the regions critical to
the security of the Panama Canal. By preempting
Taft: A Round Peg investors from rival powers, such as Germany, New
in a Square Hole York bankers would thus strengthen American
defenses and foreign policies, while bringing further
William Howard Taft, with his ruddy complexion and prosperity to their homeland—and to themselves.
upturned mustache, at first inspired widespread The almighty dollar thereby supplanted the big stick.
confidence. “Everybody loves a fat man,” the saying
goes, and the jovial Taft, with “mirthquakes” of China’s Manchuria was the object of Taft’s most
spectacular effort to inject the reluctant dollar into
the Far Eastern theater. Newly ambitious Japan and
imperialistic Russia, recent foes, controlled the rail-
roads of this strategic province. President Taft saw
in the Manchurian railway monopoly a possible
strangulation of Chinese economic interests and
a consequent slamming of the Open Door in the
faces of U.S. merchants. In 1909 Secretary of State

684 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

Philander C. Knox blunderingly proposed that a Taft the Trustbuster
group of American and foreign bankers buy the
Manchurian railroads and then turn them over to Taft managed to gain some fame as a smasher of
China under a self-liquidating arrangement. Both monopolies. The ironic truth is that the colorless
Japan and Russia, unwilling to be jockeyed out of Taft brought 90 suits against the trusts during his 4
their dominant position, bluntly rejected Knox’s years in office, as compared with some 44 for Roo-
overtures. Taft was showered with ridicule. sevelt in 7–21 years.

Another dangerous new trouble spot was the By fateful happenstance the most sensational
revolution-riddled Caribbean—now virtually a Yan- judicial actions during the Taft regime came in 1911.
kee lake. Hoping to head off trouble, Washington In that year the Supreme Court ordered the dissolu-
urged Wall Street bankers to pump dollars into the tion of the mighty Standard Oil Company, which
financial vacuums in Honduras and Haiti to keep was judged to be a combination in restraint of trade
out foreign funds. The United States, under the in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
Monroe Doctrine, would not permit foreign nations At the same time, the Court handed down its
to intervene, and consequently felt obligated to put famous “rule of reason.” This doctrine held that only
its money where its mouth was to prevent economic those combinations that “unreasonably” restrained
and political instability. trade were illegal. This fine-print proviso ripped a
huge hole in the government’s antitrust net.
Again necessity was the mother of armed
Caribbean intervention. Sporadic disorders in palm- Even more explosively, in 1911 Taft decided to
fronded Cuba, Honduras, and the Dominican press an antitrust suit against the U.S. Steel Corpo-
Republic brought American forces to these countries ration. This initiative infuriated Roosevelt, who had
to restore order and protect American investment. A personally been involved in one of the mergers that
revolutionary upheaval in Nicaragua, regarded as prompted the suit. Once Roosevelt’s protégé, Presi-
perilously close to the nearly completed Panama dent Taft was increasingly taking on the role of his
Canal, resulted in the landing of twenty-five hundred antagonist. The stage was being set for a bruising
marines in 1912. The marines remained in Nicaragua confrontation.
for thirteen years. (See the map on p. 695.)

Taft and the Progressives 685

Taft Splits the pest. Unable to keep silent, he took to the stump at
Republican Party Osawatomie, Kansas, and shocked the Old Guard
with a flaming speech. The doctrine that he pro-
Lowering the barriers of the formidable protective claimed—popularly known as the “New National-
tariff—the “Mother of Trusts”—was high on the ism”—urged the national government to increase its
agenda of the progressive members of the Republi- power to remedy economic and social abuses.
can party, and they at first thought they had a friend
and ally in Taft. True to his campaign promises to Weakened by these internal divisions, the
reduce tariffs, Taft called Congress into special ses- Republicans lost badly in the congressional elec-
sion in March 1909. The House proceeded to pass a tions of 1910. In a victory of landslide proportions,
moderately reductive bill, but senatorial reactionar- the Democrats emerged with 228 seats, leaving the
ies, led by Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode once-dominant Republicans with only 161. In a fur-
Island, tacked on hundreds of upward tariff revi- ther symptom of the reforming temper of the times,
sions. Only items such as hides, sea moss, and a Socialist representative, Austrian-born Victor L.
canary-bird seed were left on the duty-free list. Berger, was elected from Milwaukee.* The Republi-
cans, by virtue of holdovers, retained the Senate, 51
After much handwringing, Taft signed the to 41, but the insurgents in their midst were numer-
Payne-Aldrich Bill, thus betraying his campaign ous enough to make that hold precarious.
promises and outraging the progressive wing of his
party, heavily drawn from the Midwest. Taft rubbed The Taft-Roosevelt
salt in the wound by proclaiming it “the best bill that Rupture
the Republican party ever passed.”
The sputtering uprising in Republican ranks had
Taft revealed a further knack for shooting him- now blossomed into a full-fledged revolt. Early in
self in the foot in his handling of conservation. The 1911 the National Progressive Republican League
portly president was a dedicated conservationist, was formed, with the fiery, white-maned Senator La
and his contributions actually equaled or surpassed Follette of Wisconsin its leading candidate for the
those of Roosevelt. He established the Bureau of Republican presidential nomination. The assump-
Mines to control mineral resources, rescued millions tion was that Roosevelt, an anti–third termer, would
of acres of western coal lands from exploitation, and not permit himself to be “drafted.”
protected water-power sites from private develop-
ment. But those praiseworthy accomplishments But the restless Rough Rider began to change his
were largely erased in the public mind by the noisy views about third terms as he saw Taft, hand in glove
Ballinger-Pinchot quarrel that erupted in 1910. with the hated Old Guard, discard “my policies.” In
February 1912 Roosevelt formally wrote to seven state
When Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger governors that he was willing to accept the Republi-
opened public lands in Wyoming, Montana, and can nomination. His reasoning was that the third-
Alaska to corporate development, he was sharply term tradition applied to three consecutive elective
criticized by Gifford Pinchot, chief of the Agriculture terms. Exuberantly he cried, “My hat is in the ring!”
Department’s Division of Forestry and a stalwart and “The fight is on and I am stripped to the buff!”
Rooseveltian. When Taft dismissed Pinchot on the
narrow grounds of insubordination, a storm of Roosevelt forthwith seized the Progressive
protest arose from conservationists and from Roo- banner, while La Follette, who had served as a
sevelt’s friends, who were legion. The whole unsa- convenient pathbreaker, was protestingly elbowed
vory episode further widened the growing rift aside. Girded for battle, the Rough Rider came clat-
between the president and the former president, tering into the presidential primaries then being
one-time bosom political partners. held in many states. He shouted through half-
clenched teeth that the president had fallen under
The reformist wing of the Republican party was the thumb of the reactionary bosses and that,
now up in arms, while Taft was being pushed increas-
ingly into the embrace of the stand-pat Old Guard. By *He was eventually denied his seat in 1919, during a wave of
the spring of 1910, the Grand Old Party was split wide antired hysteria.
open, owing largely to the clumsiness of Taft. A suspi-
cious Roosevelt returned triumphantly to New York
in June 1910 and shortly thereafter stirred up a tem-

686 CHAPTER 29 Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

although Taft “means well, he means well feebly.” Most of these contests were arbitrarily settled in
The once-genial Taft, now in a fighting mood, favor of Taft, whose supporters held the throttle of
retorted by branding Roosevelt supporters “emo- the convention steamroller. The Roosevelt adher-
tionalists and neurotics.” ents, crying “fraud” and “naked theft,” in the end
refused to vote, and Taft triumphed.
A Taft-Roosevelt explosion was near in June
1912, when the Republican convention met in Roosevelt, the supposedly good sportsman,
Chicago. The Rooseveltites, who were about 100 del- refused to quit the game. Having tasted for the first
egates short of winning the nomination, challenged time the bitter cup of defeat, he was now on fire to
the right of some 250 Taft delegates to be seated. lead a third-party crusade.

Chronology

1901 Commission system established in 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act
Galveston, Texas
1907 “Roosevelt panic”
Progressive Robert La Follette elected
governor of Wisconsin 1908 Muller v. Oregon
Taft defeats Bryan for presidency
1902 Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell publish Aldrich-Vreeland Act
muckraking exposés
1909 Payne-Aldrich Tariff
Anthracite coal strike
Newlands Act 1910 Ballinger-Pinchot affair

1903 Department of Commerce and Labor 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire
established Standard Oil antitrust case
U.S. Steel Corporation antitrust suit
Elkins Act
1912 Taft wins Republican nomination over
1904 Northern Securities case Roosevelt
Roosevelt defeats Alton B. Parker for
presidency 1913 Seventeenth Amendment passed (direct
election of U.S. senators)
1905 Lochner v. New York
Federal Reserve Act
1906 Hepburn Act
Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle
Meat Inspection Act

For further reading, see page A20 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

30

Wilsonian
Progressivism
at Home and Abroad

ᇻᇾᇻ

1912–1916

American enterprise is not free; the man with only a little capital is
finding it harder and harder to get into the field, more and more
impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of

this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak.

WOODROW WILSON, THE NEW FREEDOM, 1913

Office-hungry Democrats—the “outs” since nose, but to their surprise, Wilson waged a passion-
1897—were jubilant over the disruptive Repub- ate reform campaign in which he assailed the
lican brawl at the convention in Chicago. If they “predatory” trusts and promised to return state gov-
could come up with an outstanding reformist ernment to the people. Riding the crest of the pro-
leader, they had an excellent chance to win the gressive wave, the “Schoolmaster in Politics” was
White House. Such a leader appeared in Dr. swept into office.
Woodrow Wilson, once a mild conservative but now
a militant progressive. Beginning professional life as Once in the governor’s chair, Wilson drove
a brilliant academic lecturer on government, he had through the legislature a sheaf of forward-looking
risen in 1902 to the presidency of Princeton Univer- measures that made reactionary New Jersey one of
sity, where he had achieved some sweeping educa- the more liberal states. Filled with righteous indig-
tional reforms. nation, Wilson revealed irresistible reforming zeal,
burning eloquence, superb powers of leadership,
Wilson entered politics in 1910 when New Jer- and a refreshing habit of appealing over the heads of
sey bosses, needing a respectable “front” candidate the scheming bosses to the sovereign people. Now a
for the governorship, offered him the nomination. figure of national eminence, Wilson was being
They expected to lead the academic novice by the widely mentioned for the presidency.

687

688 CHAPTER 30 Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad, 1912–1916

The “Bull Moose” Campaign I want to be a Bull Moose,
of 1912 And with the Bull Moose stand
With antlers on my forehead
When the Democrats met at Baltimore in 1912, Wil- And a Big Stick in my hand.
son was nominated on the forty-sixth ballot, aided
by William Jennings Bryan’s switch to his side. The Roosevelt and Taft were bound to slit each
Democrats gave Wilson a strong progressive plat- other’s political throats; by dividing the Republican
form to run on; dubbed the “New Freedom” pro- vote, they virtually guaranteed a Democratic victory.
gram, it included calls for stronger antitrust The two antagonists tore into each other as only for-
legislation, banking reform, and tariff reductions. mer friends can. “Death alone can take me out
now,” cried the once-jovial Taft, as he branded Roo-
Surging events had meanwhile been thrusting sevelt a “dangerous egotist” and a “demagogue.”
Roosevelt to the fore as a candidate for the presi- Roosevelt, fighting mad, assailed Taft as a “fathead”
dency on a third-party Progressive Republican with the brain of a “guinea pig.”
ticket. The fighting ex-cowboy, angered by his recent
rebuff, was eager to lead the charge. A pro-Roosevelt Beyond the clashing personalities, the overshad-
Progressive convention, with about two thousand owing question of the 1912 campaign was which of
delegates from forty states, assembled in Chicago two varieties of progressivism would prevail—Roo-
during August 1912. Dramatically symbolizing the sevelt’s New Nationalism or Wilson’s New Freedom.
rising political status of women, as well as Pro- Both men favored a more active government role in
gressive support for the cause of social justice, economic and social affairs, but they disagreed
settlement-house pioneer Jane Addams placed sharply over specific strategies. Roosevelt preached
Roosevelt’s name in nomination for the presidency. the theories spun out by the progressive thinker Her-
Roosevelt was applauded tumultuously as he cried bert Croly in his book The Promise of American Life
in a vehement speech, “We stand at Armageddon, (1910). Croly and TR both favored continued consol-
and we battle for the Lord!” The hosanna spirit of a idation of trusts and labor unions, paralleled by the
religious revival meeting suffused the convention, growth of powerful regulatory agencies in Washing-
as the hoarse delegates sang “Onward Christian Sol- ton. Roosevelt and his “bull moosers” also cam-
diers” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” William paigned for woman suffrage and a broad program of
Allen White, the caustic Kansas journalist, later social welfare, including minimum-wage laws and
wrote, “Roosevelt bit me and I went mad.” “socialistic” social insurance. Clearly, the bull moose
Progressives looked forward to the kind of activist
Fired-up Progressives entered the campaign welfare state that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal
with righteousness and enthusiasm. Roosevelt would one day make a reality.
boasted that he felt “as strong as a bull moose,” and
the bull moose took its place with the donkey and Wilson’s New Freedom, by contrast, favored
the elephant in the American political zoo. As one small enterprise, entrepreneurship, and the free
poet whimsically put it, functioning of unregulated and unmonopolized
markets. The Democrats shunned social-welfare

Roosevelt Versus Wilson 689

proposals and pinned their economic faith on com- Wilson and Roosevelt exceeded the tally of the more
petition—on the “man on the make,” as Wilson put conservative Taft. To the progressive tally must be
it. The keynote of Wilson’s campaign was not regula- added some support for the Socialist candidate, per-
tion but fragmentation of the big industrial com- sistent Eugene V. Debs, who rolled up 900,672 votes,
bines, chiefly by means of vigorous enforcement of or more than twice as many as he had netted four
the antitrust laws. The election of 1912 thus offered years earlier. Starry-eyed Socialists dreamed of being
the voters a choice not merely of policies but of in the White House within eight years.
political and economic philosophies—a rarity in
U.S. history. Roosevelt’s lone-wolf course was tragic both for
himself and for his former Republican associates.
The heat of the campaign cooled a bit when, in Perhaps, to rephrase William Allen White, he had
Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a bitten himself and gone mad. The Progressive party,
fanatic. The Rough Rider suspended active cam- which was primarily a one-man show, had no future
paigning for more than two weeks after delivering, because it had elected few candidates to state and
with bull moose gameness and a bloody shirt, his local offices; the Socialists, in contrast, elected more
scheduled speech. than a thousand. Without patronage plums to hand
out to the faithful workers, death by slow starvation
Woodrow Wilson: was inevitable for the upstart party. Yet the Progres-
A Minority President sives made a tremendous showing for a hastily
organized third party and helped spur the enact-
Former professor Wilson won handily, with 435 ment of many of their pet reforms by the Wilsonian
electoral votes and 6,296,547 popular votes. The Democrats.
“third-party” candidate, Roosevelt, finished second,
receiving 88 electoral votes and 4,118,571 popular As for the Republicans, they were thrust into
votes. Taft won only 8 electoral votes and 3,486,720 unaccustomed minority status in Congress for the
popular votes (see the map on p. 690). next six years and were frozen out of the White
House for eight years. Taft himself had a fruitful old
The election figures are fascinating. Wilson, with age. He taught law for eight pleasant years at Yale
only 41 percent of the popular vote, was clearly a University and in 1921 became chief justice of the
minority president, though his party won a majority Supreme Court—a job for which he was far more
in Congress. His popular total was actually smaller happily suited than the presidency.
than Bryan had amassed in any of his three defeats,
despite the increase in population. Taft and Roo- Wilson: The Idealist in Politics
sevelt together polled over 1.25 million more votes
than the Democrats. Progressivism rather than Wil- (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson, the second Democratic
son was the runaway winner. Although the Demo- president since 1861, looked like the ascetic intel-
cratic total obviously included many conservatives lectual he was, with his clean-cut features, pinched-
in the solid South, the combined progressive vote for on eyeglasses, and trim figure. Born in Virginia

The Presidential Vote, 1912

Candidate Party Electoral Popular Vote Approximate
Vote Percentage
Woodrow Wilson 6,296,547
Theodore Roosevelt Democratic 435 4,118,571 41%
William H. Taft Progressive 88 3,486,720 27
Eugene V. Debs Republican 8 23
E. W. Chafin Socialist — 900,672
A. E. Reimer Prohibition — 206,275 6
Socialist-Labor — 1
28,750 0.2

690 CHAPTER 30 Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad, 1912–1916

WASH. ME.
7
MONTANA VT. 6
ORE. IDAHO 4 N.D. 4 N.H.
5 4 5 MINN.
WYO. 12 4 MASS.
3 N.Y. 18
S.D. WISC. 45
5 13 MICH.
15 R.I. 5
PA. CONN. 7

NEBR. IOWA OHIO 38 N.J. 14
8 13
NEV. ILL. IND. 24 W. VA. DEL. 3
3 KANSAS MO. 8 MD. 8
UTAH COLO. 29 15 VA.
CALIF. 4 6 KY. 12
11 Presidential Election of 1912
(+2 Dem.) ARIZ. N.M. 10 18 13 N.C.
3 3 (with electoral vote by state)
12
OKLA. ARK. TENN. 12 The Republican split surely boosted
10 9 S.C. Wilson to victory, as he failed to win
ALA. 9 a clear majority in any state outside
TEXAS LA. MISS. 12 the old Confederacy. The election
20 10 GA. gave the Democrats solid control
10 14

Wilson—Democratic FLA. of the White House and both
Roosevelt—Progressive 6
Taft—Republican
houses of Congress for the

first time since the Civil War.

shortly before the Civil War and reared in Georgia like a kind of prime minister, got out in front and
and the Carolinas, the professor-politician was the provided leadership. He enjoyed dramatic success,
first man from one of the seceded southern states to both as governor and as president, in appealing over
reach the White House since Zachary Taylor, sixty- the heads of legislators to the sovereign people.
four years earlier.
Splendid though Wilson’s intellectual equip-
The impact of Dixieland on young “Tommy” ment was, he suffered from serious defects of per-
Wilson was profound. He sympathized with the sonality. Though jovial and witty in private, he could
Confederacy’s gallant attempt to win its independ- be cold and standoffish in public. Incapable of
ence, a sentiment that partly inspired his ideal of unbending and acting the showman, like “Teddy”
self-determination for people of other countries. Roosevelt, he lacked the common touch. He loved
Steeped in the traditions of Jeffersonian democracy, humanity in the mass rather than the individual in
he shared Jefferson’s faith in the masses—if they person. His academic background caused him to
were properly informed. feel most at home with scholars, although he had to
work with politicians. An austere and somewhat
Son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson was arrogant intellectual, he looked down his nose
reared in an atmosphere of fervent piety. He later through pince-nez glasses upon lesser minds,
used the presidential pulpit to preach his inspira- including journalists. He was especially intolerant
tional political sermons. A moving orator, Wilson of stupid senators, whose “bungalow” minds made
could rise on the wings of spiritual power to soaring him “sick.”
eloquence. Skillfully using a persuasive voice, he
relied not on arm-waving but on sincerity and Wilson’s burning idealism—especially his desire
moral appeal. As a lifelong student of finely chiseled to reform ever-present wickedness—drove him for-
words, he turned out to be a “phraseocrat” who ward faster than lesser spirits were willing to go. His
coined many noble epigrams. Someone has sense of moral righteousness was such that he often
remarked that he was born halfway between the found compromise difficult; black was black, wrong
Bible and the dictionary and never strayed far from was wrong, and one should never compromise with
either. wrong. President Wilson’s Scottish Presbyterian
ancestors had passed on to him an inflexible stub-
A profound student of government, Wilson bornness. When convinced that he was right, the
believed that the chief executive should play a principled Wilson would break before he would
dynamic role. He was convinced that Congress bend, unlike the pragmatic Roosevelt.
could not function properly unless the president,

The Rise of Wilson 691

He tackled the tariff first, summoning Congress
into special session in early 1913. In a precedent-
shattering move, he did not send his presidential
message over to the Capitol to be read loudly by a
bored clerk, as had been the custom since Jefferson’s
day. Instead he appeared in person before a joint
session of Congress and presented his appeal with
stunning eloquence and effectiveness.

Moved by Wilson’s aggressive leadership, the
House swiftly passed the Underwood Tariff Bill,
which provided for a substantial reduction of rates.
When a swarm of lobbyists descended on the Senate
seeking to disembowel the bill, Wilson promptly
issued a combative message to the people, urging
them to hold their elected representatives in line.
The tactic worked. The force of public opinion,
aroused by the president’s oratory, secured late in
1913 final approval of the bill Wilson wanted.

The new Underwood Tariff substantially re-
duced import fees. It also was a landmark in tax leg-
islation. Under authority granted by the recently
ratified Sixteenth Amendment, Congress enacted a
graduated income tax, beginning with a modest levy
on incomes over $3,000 (then considerably higher
than the average family’s income). By 1917 revenue
from the income tax shot ahead of receipts from the
tariff. This gap has since been vastly widened.

Wilson Battles the Bankers

Wilson Tackles the Tariff A second bastion of the “triple wall of privilege” was
the antiquated and inadequate banking and cur-
Few presidents have arrived at the White House rency system, long since outgrown by the Republic’s
with a clearer program than Wilson’s or one des- lusty economic expansion. The country’s financial
tined to be so completely achieved. The new presi- structure, still creaking along under the Civil War
dent called for an all-out assault on what he called National Banking Act, revealed glaring defects. Its
“the triple wall of privilege”: the tariff, the banks, most serious shortcoming, as exposed by the panic
and the trusts. of 1907, was the inelasticity of the currency. Banking
reserves were heavily concentrated in New York and
a handful of other large cities and could not be
mobilized in times of financial stress into areas that
were badly pinched.

In 1908 Congress had authorized an investiga-
tion headed by a mossback banker, Republican sen-
ator Aldrich. Three years later Aldrich’s special
commission recommended a gigantic bank with
numerous branches—in effect, a third Bank of the
United States.

692 CHAPTER 30 Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad, 1912–1916

For their part, Democratic banking reformers Nine months and thousands of words later,
heeded the findings of a House committee chaired Congress responded with the Federal Trade Com-
by Congressman Arsene Pujo, which traced the ten- mission Act of 1914. The new law empowered a
tacles of the “money monster” into the hidden presidentially appointed commission to turn a
vaults of American banking and business. President searchlight on industries engaged in interstate com-
Wilson’s confidant, progressive-minded Massachu- merce, such as the meatpackers. The commission-
setts attorney Louis D. Brandeis, further fanned the ers were expected to crush monopoly at the source
flames of reform with his incendiary though schol- by rooting out unfair trade practices, including
arly book Other People’s Money and How the Bankers unlawful competition, false advertising, mislabel-
Use It (1914). ing, adulteration, and bribery.

In June 1913, in a second dramatic personal The knot of monopoly was further cut by the
appearance before both houses of Congress, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914. It lengthened the
president delivered a stirring plea for sweeping shopworn Sherman Act’s list of business practices
reform of the banking system. He ringingly that were deemed objectionable, including price dis-
endorsed Democratic proposals for a decentralized crimination and interlocking directorates (whereby
bank in government hands, as opposed to Republi- the same individuals served as directors of suppos-
can demands for a huge private bank with fifteen edly competing firms).
branches.
The Clayton Act also conferred long-overdue
Again appealing to the sovereign people, Wilson benefits on labor. Conservative courts had unex-
scored another triumph. In 1913 he signed the pectedly been ruling that trade unions fell under the
epochal Federal Reserve Act, the most important antimonopoly restraints of the Sherman Act. A clas-
piece of economic legislation between the Civil War sic case involved striking hatmakers in Danbury,
and the New Deal. The new Federal Reserve Board, Connecticut, who were assessed triple damages of
appointed by the president, oversaw a nationwide more than $250,000, which resulted in the loss of
system of twelve regional reserve districts, each with their savings and homes. The Clayton Act therefore
its own central bank. Although these regional banks sought to exempt labor and agricultural organiza-
were actually bankers’ banks, owned by member tions from antitrust prosecution, while explicitly
financial institutions, the final authority of the legalizing strikes and peaceful picketing.
Federal Reserve Board guaranteed a substantial mea-
sure of public control. The board was also empowered Union leader Samuel Gompers hailed the act as
to issue paper money—“Federal Reserve Notes”— the Magna Carta of labor because it legally lifted
backed by commercial paper, such as promissory human labor out of the category of “a commodity or
notes of businesspeople. Thus the amount of money article of commerce.” But the rejoicing was prema-
in circulation could be swiftly increased as needed for ture, as conservative judges in later years continued
the legitimate requirements of business. to clip the wings of the union movement.

The Federal Reserve Act was a red-letter Organization of Holding Companies Keep in mind that the
achievement. It carried the nation with flying ban- voting stock of a corporation is often only a fraction of the
ners through the financial crises of the First World total stock.
War of 1914–1918. Without it, the Republic’s
progress toward the modern economic age would SUPER
have been seriously retarded. HOLDING
COMPANY
The President Tames the Trusts
HOLDS MORE THAN 50% OF VOTING STOCK
Without pausing for breath, Wilson pushed toward
the last remaining rampart in the “triple wall of HOLDING HOLDING HOLDING
privilege”—the trusts. Early in 1914 he again went COMPANY A COMPANY B COMPANY C
before Congress in a personal appearance that still
carried drama. HOLDS MORE THAN 50% OF VOTING STOCK

CORP. CORP. CORP. CORP. CORP. CORP. CORP. CORP. CORP.
A BC DE F GH I

Wilson’s Reforms and Foreign Policy 693

Wilsonian Progressivism at High Tide Sweaty laborers also made gains as the progres-
sive wave foamed forward. Sailors, treated brutally
Energetically scaling the “triple wall of privilege,” from cat-o’-nine-tails days onward, were given relief
Woodrow Wilson had treated the nation to a daz- by the La Follette Seamen’s Act of 1915. It required
zling demonstration of vigorous presidential leader- decent treatment and a living wage on American
ship. He proved nearly irresistible in his first merchant ships. One unhappy result of this well-
eighteen months in office. For once, a political creed intentioned law was the crippling of America’s mer-
was matched by deed, as the progressive reformers chant marine, as freight rates spiraled upward with
racked up victory after victory. the crew’s wages.

Standing at the peak of his powers at the head of Wilson further helped the workers with the
the progressive forces, Wilson pressed ahead with Workingmen’s Compensation Act of 1916, granting
further reforms. The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 assistance to federal civil-service employees during
made credit available to farmers at low rates of periods of disability. In the same year, the president
interest—as long demanded by the Populists. The approved an act restricting child labor on products
Warehouse Act of 1916 authorized loans on the flowing into interstate commerce, though the stand-
security of staple crops—another Populist idea. pat Supreme Court soon invalidated the law. Rail-
Other laws benefited rural America by providing for road workers, numbering about 1.7 million, were
highway construction and the establishment of not sidetracked. The Adamson Act of 1916 estab-
agricultural extension work in the state colleges. lished an eight-hour day for all employees on trains
in interstate commerce, with extra pay for overtime.

Wilson earned the enmity of businesspeople and
bigots but endeared himself to progressives when in
1916 he nominated for the Supreme Court the promi-
nent reformer Louis D. Brandeis—the first Jew to be
called to the high bench. Yet even Wilson’s progres-
sivism had its limits, and it clearly stopped short of
better treatment for blacks. The southern-bred Wil-
son actually presided over accelerated segregation in
the federal bureaucracy. When a delegation of black
leaders personally protested to him, the schoolmas-
terish president virtually froze them out of his office.

Despite these limitations, Wilson knew that to
be reelected in 1916, he needed to identify himself
clearly as the candidate of progressivism. He
appeased businesspeople by making conservative
appointments to the Federal Reserve Board and the
Federal Trade Commission, but he devoted most of
his energies to cultivating progressive support. Wil-
son’s election in 1912 had been something of a fluke,
owing largely to the Taft-Roosevelt split in the
Republican ranks. To remain in the White House,
the president would have to woo the bull moose
voters into the Democratic fold.

New Directions in Foreign Policy

In one important area, Wilson chose not to answer
the trumpet call of the bull moosers. In contrast to
Roosevelt and even Taft, Wilson recoiled from an
aggressive foreign policy. Hating imperialism, he

694 CHAPTER 30 Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad, 1912–1916

was repelled by TR’s big stickism. Suspicious of Wall Jennings Bryan to plead with the California legisla-
Street, he detested the so-called dollar diplomacy of ture to soften its stand, tensions eased somewhat.
Taft.
Political turmoil in Haiti soon forced Wilson to
In office only a week, Wilson declared war on eat some of his anti-imperialist words. The climax of
dollar diplomacy. He proclaimed that the govern- the disorders came in 1914–1915, when an outraged
ment would no longer offer special support to populace literally tore to pieces the brutal Haitian
American investors in Latin America and China. president. In 1915 Wilson reluctantly dispatched
Shivering from this Wilsonian bucket of cold water, marines to protect American lives and property. In
American bankers pulled out of the Taft-engineered 1916 he stole a page from Roosevelt’s corollary to
six-nation loan to China the next day. the Monroe Doctrine and concluded a treaty with
Haiti providing for U.S. supervision of finances and
In a similarly self-denying vein, Wilson per- the police. In the same year, he sent the leather-
suaded Congress in early 1914 to repeal the Panama necked marines to quell riots in the Dominican
Canal Tolls Act of 1912, which had exempted Ameri- Republic, and that debt-cursed land came under
can coastwise shipping from tolls and thereby pro- the shadow of the American eagle’s wings for the
voked sharp protests from injured Britain. The next eight years. In 1917 Wilson purchased from
president further chimed in with the anti-imperial Denmark the Virgin Islands, in the West Indies,
song of Bryan and other Democrats when he signed tightening the grip of Uncle Sam in these shark-
the Jones Act in 1916. It granted to the Philippines infested waters. Increasingly, the Caribbean Sea,
the boon of territorial status and promised inde- with its vital approaches to the now navigable
pendence as soon as a “stable government” could Panama Canal, was taking on the earmarks of a Yan-
be established. That glad day came thirty years later, kee preserve.
on July 4, 1946.
Moralistic Diplomacy in Mexico
Wilson also partially defused a menacing crisis
with Japan in 1913. The California legislature, still Rifle bullets whining across the southern border
seeking to rid the Golden State of Japanese settlers, served as a constant reminder that all was not quiet
prohibited them from owning land. Tokyo, under- in Mexico. For decades Mexico had been sorely
standably irritated, lodged vigorous protests. At
Fortress Corregidor, in the Philippines, American
gunners were put on around-the-clock alert. But
when Wilson dispatched Secretary of State William

The Mexican Imbroglio 695

United States possession The United States in the Caribbean
This map explains why many Latin
United States protectorate Americans accused the United States
or quasi-protectorate of turning the Caribbean Sea into a
Yankee lake. It also suggests that Uncle
CUBA Sam was much less “isolationist” in his
own backyard than he was in faraway
(U.S. troops, 1898–1902, Guantanamo HAITI DOMINICAN VIRGIN Europe or Asia.
1906–1909, 1917–1922) (U.S. naval base) REPUBLIC PUERTO IS.

Vera Cruz RICO (U.S.,
(U.S. seizure, 1914) 1917)
(U.S., 1898)
MEXICO BRITISH

HONDURAS (U.S. troops, (U.S. troops,
1924–1925) 1914–1934)
GUATEMALA (U.S. troops,
HONDURAS (Financial 1916–1924)
supervision,
EL 1916–1941) (Financial
SALVADOR supervision,
NICARAGUA 1905–1941)
(U.S. troops, 1909–1910,
1912–1925, 1926–1933) (Canal option,
1914)
(Financial supervision,
1911–1924) COSTA RICA PANAMA

VENEZUELA

(U.S acquires COLOMBIA
Canal Zone, 1903)

exploited by foreign investors in oil, railroads, and declared, to determine foreign policy “in the terms
mines. By 1913 American capitalists had sunk about of material interest.”
a billion dollars into the underdeveloped but gener-
ously endowed country. But though he refused to intervene, Wilson also
refused to recognize officially the murderous gov-
But if Mexico was rich, the Mexicans were poor. ernment of “that brute” Huerta, even though most
Fed up with their miserable lot, they at last revolted. foreign powers acknowledged Huerta’s bloody-
Their revolution took an ugly turn in 1913, when a handed regime. “I am going to teach the South
conscienceless clique murdered the popular new American republics to elect good men,” the former
revolutionary president and installed General Victo- professor declared. He put his munitions where his
riano Huerta, an Indian, in the president’s chair. All mouth was in 1914, when he allowed American arms
this chaos accelerated a massive migration of Mexi- to flow to Huerta’s principal rivals, white-bearded
cans to the United States. More than a million Span-
ish-speaking newcomers tramped across the A Republican congressman voiced complaints
southern border in the first three decades of the against Wilson’s Mexican policy in 1916:
twentieth century. Settling mostly in Texas, New “It is characterized by weakness, uncertainty,
Mexico, Arizona, and California, they swung picks vacillation, and uncontrollable desire to
building highways and railroads or followed the intermeddle in Mexican affairs. He has not
fruit harvests as pickers. Though often segregated in had the courage to go into Mexico nor the
Spanish-speaking enclaves, they helped to create a courage to stay out. . . . I would either go
unique borderland culture that blended Mexican into Mexico and pacify the country or I would
and American folkways. keep my hands entirely out of Mexico. If we
are too proud to fight, we should be too
The revolutionary bloodshed also menaced proud to quarrel. I would not choose
American lives and property in Mexico. Cries for between murderers.”
intervention burst from the lips of American jin-
goes. Prominent among those chanting for war was
the influential chain-newspaper publisher William
Randolph Hearst, whose views presumably were
colored by his ownership of a Mexican ranch larger
than Rhode Island. Yet President Wilson stood firm
against demands to step in. It was “perilous,” he

696 CHAPTER 30 Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad, 1912–1916

Just as a full-dress shooting conflict seemed
inevitable, Wilson was rescued by an offer of media-
tion from the ABC Powers—Argentina, Brazil, and
Chile. Huerta collapsed in July 1914 under pressure
from within and without. He was succeeded by his
archrival, Venustiano Carranza, still fiercely resent-
ful of Wilson’s military meddling. The whole sorry
episode did not augur well for the future of United
States–Mexican relations.

“Pancho” Villa, a combination of bandit and
Robin Hood, had meanwhile stolen the spotlight.
He emerged as the chief rival to President Carranza,
whom Wilson now reluctantly supported. Challeng-
ing Carranza’s authority while also punishing the
gringos, Villa’s men ruthlessly hauled sixteen young
American mining engineers off a train traveling
through northern Mexico in January 1916 and killed
them. A month later Villa and his followers, hoping
to provoke a war between Wilson and Carranza,
blazed across the border into Columbus, New Mex-
ico, and murdered another nineteen Americans.

General John J. (“Black Jack”*) Pershing, a grim-
faced and ramrod-erect veteran of the Cuban and
Philippine campaigns, was ordered to break up the
bandit band. His hastily organized force of several
thousand mounted troops penetrated deep into
rugged Mexico with surprising speed. They clashed
with Carranza’s forces and mauled the Villistas but
missed capturing Villa himself. As the threat of war
with Germany loomed larger, the invading army
was withdrawn in January 1917.

Thunder Across the Sea

Venustiano Carranza and the firebrand Francisco Europe’s powder magazine, long smoldering, blew
(“Pancho”) Villa. up in the summer of 1914, when the flaming pistol
of a Serb patriot killed the heir to the throne of
The Mexican volcano erupted at the Atlantic Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo. An outraged Vienna
seaport of Tampico in April 1914, when a small party government, backed by Germany, forthwith pre-
of American sailors was arrested. The Mexicans sented a stern ultimatum to neighboring Serbia.
promptly released the captives and apologized, but
they refused the affronted American admiral’s An explosive chain reaction followed. Tiny Ser-
demand for a salute of twenty-one guns. Wilson, bia, backed by its powerful Slav neighbor Russia,
heavy-hearted but stubbornly determined to elimi- refused to bend the knee sufficiently. The Russian
nate Huerta, asked Congress for authority to use tsar began to mobilize his ponderous war machine,
force against Mexico. Before Congress could act, Wil- menacing Germany on the east, even as his ally,
son ordered the navy to seize the Mexican port of
Vera Cruz. Huerta as well as Carranza hotly protested *So called from his earlier service as an officer with the crack
against this high-handed Yankee maneuver. black Tenth Cavalry.

War Breaks Out in Europe 697

France, confronted Germany on the west. In alarm, Both sides wooed the United States, the great
the Germans struck suddenly at France through neutral in the West. The British enjoyed the boon of
unoffending Belgium; their objective was to knock close cultural, linguistic, and economic ties with
their ancient enemy out of action so that they would America and had the added advantage of control-
have two free hands to repel Russia. Great Britain, its ling most of the transatlantic cables. Their censors
coastline jeopardized by the assault on Belgium, was sheared away war stories harmful to the Allies and
sucked into the conflagration on the side of France. drenched the United States with tales of German
bestiality.
Almost overnight most of Europe was locked in
a fight to the death. On one side were arrayed the The Germans and the Austro-Hungarians
Central Powers: Germany and Austria-Hungary, and counted on the natural sympathies of their trans-
later Turkey and Bulgaria. On the other side were planted countrymen in America. Including persons
the Allies: principally France, Britain, and Russia, with at least one foreign-born parent, people with
and later Japan and Italy. blood ties to the Central Powers numbered some 11
million in 1914. Some of these recent immigrants ex-
Americans thanked God for the ocean moats pressed noisy sympathy for the fatherland, but most
and self-righteously congratulated themselves on were simply grateful to be so distant from the fray.
having had ancestors wise enough to have aban-
doned the hell pits of Europe. America felt strong, Most Americans were anti-German from the
snug, smug, and secure—but not for long. outset. With his villainous upturned mustache,
Kaiser Wilhelm II seemed the embodiment of arro-
A Precarious Neutrality gant autocracy, an impression strengthened by Ger-
many’s ruthless strike at neutral Belgium. German
President Wilson’s grief at the outbreak of war was and Austrian agents further tarnished the image of
compounded by the recent death of his wife. He sor- the Central Powers in American eyes when they
rowfully issued the routine neutrality proclamation resorted to violence in American factories and
and called on Americans to be neutral in thought as ports. When a German operative in 1915 absent-
well as deed. But such scrupulous evenhandedness mindedly left his briefcase on a New York elevated
proved difficult. car, its documents detailing plans for industrial sab-
otage were quickly discovered and publicized.
American opinion, already ill disposed, was further

698 CHAPTER 30 Wilsonian Progressivism at Home and Abroad, 1912–1916

inflamed against the kaiser and Germany. Yet the
great majority of Americans earnestly hoped to stay
out of the horrible war.

America Earns Blood Money

When Europe burst into flames in 1914, the United
States was bogged down in a worrisome business
recession. But as fate would have it, British and
French war orders soon pulled American industry
out of the morass of hard times and onto a peak of
war-born prosperity. Part of this boom was financed
by American bankers, notably the Wall Street firm
of J.P. Morgan and Company, which eventually
advanced to the Allies the enormous sum of $2.3 bil-
lion during the period of American neutrality. The
Central Powers protested bitterly against the
immense trade between America and the Allies, but
this traffic did not in fact violate the international
neutrality laws. Germany was technically free to

Principal Foreign Elements in the United States (census of 1910; total U.S. population: 91,972,266)

Country of Origin Foreign-Born Natives with Two Natives with One Total
2,501,181 Foreign-Born Foreign-Born 8,282,618
{Central Germany 1,670,524 Parents Parent 2,701,786
1,219,968 3,231,052
Powers Austria-Hungary 1,352,155 3,911,847 1,869,590 4,504,360
1,732,421 900,129 131,133 2,752,675
{Allied Great Britain 1,343,070 852,610 2,098,360
(Ireland)* 1,158,474
Powers Russia 13,345,545 2,141,577 1,010,628 32,243,282
949,316
Italy 14.5 695,187 70,938 35.0
60,103

TOTAL (for all foreign 12,916,311 5,981,526
countries, including 14.0 6.5
those not listed)

Percentage of total
U.S. population

*Ireland was not yet independent.

American Neutrality 699

trade with the United States. It was prevented from The Fatherland, the chief German-American
doing so not by American policy but by geography propaganda newspaper in the United States,
and the British navy. Trade between Germany and cried,
America had to move across the Atlantic; but the
British controlled the sea-lanes, and they threw a “We [Americans] prattle about humanity while
noose-tight blockade of mines and ships across the we manufacture poisoned shrapnel and picric
North Sea, gateway to German ports. Over the acid for profit. Ten thousand German widows,
unavailing protests of American shippers, farmers, ten thousand orphans, ten thousand graves
and manufacturers, the British began forcing Amer- bear the legend ‘Made in America.’”
ican vessels off the high seas and into their ports.
This harassment of American shipping proved meanwhile began their deadly work. In the first
highly effective, as trade between Germany and the months of 1915, they sank about ninety ships in the
United States virtually ceased. war zone. Then the submarine issue became acute
when the British passenger liner Lusitania was torpe-
Hard-pressed Germany did not tamely consent doed and sank off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915,
to being starved out. In retaliation for the British with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans.
blockade, in February 1915 Berlin announced a sub-
marine war area around the British Isles. The sub- The Lusitania was carrying forty-two hundred
marine was a weapon so new that existing cases of small-arms ammunition, a fact the Ger-
international law could not be made to fit it. The old mans used to justify the sinking. But Americans
rule that a warship must stop and board a mer- were swept by a wave of shock and anger at this act
chantman could hardly apply to submarines, which of “mass murder” and “piracy.” The eastern United
could easily be rammed or sunk if they surfaced. States, closer to the war, seethed with talk of fight-
ing, but the rest of the country showed a strong dis-
The cigar-shaped marauders posed a dire threat taste for hostilities. The peace-loving Wilson had no
to the United States—so long as Wilson insisted on stomach for leading a disunited nation into war. He
maintaining America’s neutral rights. Berlin officials well remembered the mistake in 1812 of his fellow
declared that they would try not to sink neutral Princetonian, James Madison. Instead, by a series of
shipping, but they warned that mistakes would increasingly strong notes, Wilson attempted to
probably occur. Wilson now determined on a policy bring the German warlords sharply to book. Even
of calculated risk. He would continue to claim prof- this measured approach was too much for Secretary
itable neutral trading rights, while hoping that no of State Bryan, who resigned rather than sign a
high-seas incident would force his hand to grasp the protestation that might spell shooting. But Wilson
sword of war. Setting his peninsular jaw, he emphat- resolutely stood his ground. “There is such a thing,”
ically warned Germany that it would be held to
“strict accountability” for any attacks on American
vessels or citizens.

The German submarines (known as U-boats,
from the German Unterseeboot, or “undersea boat”)

U.S. Exports to Belligerents, 1914–1916

Belligerent 1914 1915 1916 1916 Figure as
a Percentage of
Britain $594,271,863 $911,794,954
France 159,818,924 369,397,170 1914 Figure
Italy* 74,235,012 184,819,688
Germany 344,794,276 28,863,354 $1,526,685,102 257%
628,851,988 393
269,246,105 363
288,899
0.08

*Italy joined the Allies in April 1915.