Woodrow Wilson and the New Freedom
Wilson was elected largely because Roosevelt and the Progressive party split the Republican vote. But once elected, Wilson became a vigorous and aggressive chief executive who set out to translate his ideas about progressive government into legislation. Wilson was the first southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor in 1848 and only the second Democrat since the Civil War. Wilson, like Roosevelt, had to work with his party, and that restricted how progressive he could be. But he was also constrained by his own background and inclinations. Still, like Roosevelt, Wilson became more progressive during his presidency.
Tariff and Banking Reform#
Wilson was not as charismatic as Roosevelt. He had a more difficult time relating to people in small groups, but he was an excellent public speaker who dominated through the force of his intellect. He probably had an exaggerated belief in his ability to persuade and a tendency to trust his own intuition too much. Ironically, his early success in getting his legislative agenda through Congress contributed to the overconfidence that would get him into difficulty later in foreign affairs. But his ability to push his legislative program through Congress during his first two years in office was matched only by Franklin Roosevelt during the first months of the New Deal and by Lyndon Johnson in 1965.
Within a month of his inauguration, Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to outline his legislative program. He recommended reducing the tariff to eliminate favoritism, freeing the banking system from Wall Street control, and restoring competition in industry. By appearing in person before Congress, he broke a precedent established by Thomas Jefferson. First on Wilson's agenda was tariff reform. The Underwood Tariff, passed in 1913, was not a free-trade bill, but it did reduce the schedule for the first time in many years.
Attached to the Underwood bill was a provision for a small and slightly graduated income tax, which had been made possible by the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment. It imposed a modest rate of 1 percent on income over $4,000 (thus exempting a large portion of the population), with a surtax rising to 6 percent on high incomes. The income tax was enacted to replace the money lost from lowering the tariff. Wilson seemed to have no interest in using it to redistribute wealth in America.
The next item on Wilson's agenda was reform of the banking system. A financial panic in 1907 had revealed the need for a central bank, but few people could agree on the exact nature of the reforms. The progressive faction of the Democratic party, armed with the findings of the Pujo Committee's investigation of the money trust, argued for a banking system and a currency controlled by the federal government. The congressional committee, led by Arsene Pujo of Louisiana, had revealed a massive consolidation of banks and trust companies and a system of interlocking directorates and informal arrangements that concentrated resources and power in the hands of a few firms, such as the J. P.Morgan Company. But talk of banking reform raised the specter among conservative Democrats and the business community of socialism, populism, and the monetary ideas of William Jennings Bryan.
The bill that passed Congress was a compromise. In creating the Federal Reserve System, it was the first reorganization of the banking system since the Civil War. The bill provided for 12 Federal Reserve banks and a Federal Reserve Board appointed by the president. The bill also created a flexible currency, based on Federal Reserve notes, that could be expanded or contracted as the situation required. The Federal Reserve System was not without its flaws, as later developments would show, and it did not end the power of the large eastern banks; but it was an improvement, and it appealed to the part of the progressive movement that sought order and efficiency.
Despite these reform measures, Wilson was not very progressive in some of his actions during his first two years in office. In the spring of 1914, he failed to support a bill that would have provided long-term rural credit financed by the federal government. He opposed a woman suffrage amendment, arguing that the states should decide who could vote. He also failed to support an anti-child labor bill after it had passed the House. Most distressing to some progressives, he ordered the segregation of blacks in several federal departments.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OF THE PROGRESSIVE ERA#
| Year | Candidate | Party | Popular Vote | Electoral Vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | WILLIAM MCKINLEY | Republican | 7,218,039 (51.7%) | 292 |
| William Jennings Bryan | Democratic, Populist | 6,358,345 (45.5%) | 155 | |
| 1904 | THEODORE ROOSEVELT | Republican | 7,628,834 (56.4%) | 336 |
| Alton B. Parker | Democratic | 5,084,401 (37.6%) | 140 | |
| Eugene V. Debs | Socialist | 402,460 (3.0%) | 0 | |
| 1908 | WILLIAM H. TAFT | Republican | 7,679,006 (51.6%) | 321 |
| William J. Bryan | Democratic | 6,409,106 (43.1%) | 162 | |
| Eugene V. Debs | Socialist | 420,820 (2.8%) | 0 | |
| 1912 | WOODROW WILSON | Democratic | 6,296,547 (41.9%) | 435 |
| Theodore Roosevelt | Progressive | 4,118,571 (27.4%) | 88 | |
| William H. Taft | Republican | 3,486,720 (23.2%) | 8 | |
| Eugene V. Debs | Socialist | 897,011 (6.0%) | 0 | |
| 1916 | WOODROW WILSON | Democratic | 9,129,606 (49.4%) | 277 |
| Charles E. Hughes | Republican | 8,538,221 (46.2%) | 254 | |
| Allan L. Benson | Socialist | 585,113 (3.2%) | 0 |
Note
Winners' names appear in capital letters.
Booker T. Washington had remarked on Wilson's election, "Mr. Wilson is in favor of the things which tend toward the uplift, improvement, and advancement of my people, and at his hands we have nothing to fear." But when southern Democrats, suddenly in control in many departments, began dismissing black federal officeholders, especially those "who boss white girls," Wilson did nothing. When the NAACP complained that the shops, offices, rest rooms, and lunchrooms of the post office and treasury departments and the Bureau of Engraving were segregated, Wilson replied, "I sincerely believe it to be in their [the blacks'] best interest." When the president endorsed the blatantly racist movie Birth of a Nation, others doubted that he believed in justice for the Afro-American people. "Have you a 'new freedom' for white Americans and a new slavery for your AfricanAmerican fellow citizens?" William Monroe Trotter, a Boston journalist, asked.
Moving Closer to a New Nationalism#
How to control the great corporations in America was a question Wilson and Roosevelt debated extensively during the campaign. Wilson's solution was the Clayton Act, submitted to Congress in 1914. The bill prohibited a number of unfair trading practices, outlawed the interlocking directorate, and made it illegal for corporations to purchase stock in other corporations if this tended to reduce competition. It was not clear how the government would enforce these provisions and ensure the competition that Wilson's New Freedom doctrine called for, but the bill became controversial for another reason.
Labor leaders protested that the bill had no provision exempting labor organizations from prosecution under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. When a section was added exempting both labor and agricultural organizations, Samuel Gompers hailed it as labor's Magna Carta. It was hardly that, because the courts interpreted the provision so that labor unions remained subject to court injunctions during strikes despite the Clayton Act.
More important than the Clayton Act, which both supporters and opponents realized was too vague to be enforced, was the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), modeled after the ICC, with enough power to move directly against corporations accused of restricting competition. The FTC was the idea of Louis Brandeis, but Wilson accepted it even though it seemed to move him more toward the philosophy of New Nationalism.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Clayton Act did not end monopoly, and the courts in the next two decades did not increase the government's power to regulate business. The success of Wilson's reform agenda appeared minimal in 1914, but the outbreak of war in Europe and the need to win the election of 1916 would influence him in becoming more progressive in the next years (see Chapter 22).
Timeline#
| Year | Events |
|---|---|
| 1901 | McKinley assassinated; Theodore Roosevelt becomes president |
| Robert La Follette elected governor of Wisconsin | |
| Tom Johnson elected mayor of Cleveland | |
| Model tenement house bill passed in New York | |
| U.S. Steel formed | |
| 1902 | Anthracite coal strike |
| 1903 | Women's Trade Union League founded |
| Elkins Act | |
| 1904 | Roosevelt reelected |
| Lincoln Steffens writes The Shame of the Cities | |
| 1905 | Frederic C. Howe writes The City: The Hope of Democracy |
| Industrial Workers of the World formed | |
| 1906 | Upton Sinclair writes The Jungle |
| Hepburn Act | |
| Meat Inspection Act | |
| Pure Food and Drug Act | |
| 1907 | Financial panic |
| 1908 | Muller v. Oregon |
| Danbury Hatters case | |
| William Howard Taft elected president | |
| 1909 | Herbert Croly writes The Promise of American Life |
| NAACP founded | |
| 1910 | Ballinger–Pinchot controversy |
| Mann Act | |
| 1911 | Frederick Taylor writes The Principles of Scientific Management |
| Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire | |
| 1912 | Progressive party founded by Theodore Roosevelt |
| Woodrow Wilson elected president | |
| Children's Bureau established | |
| Industrial Relations Commission founded | |
| 1913 | Sixteenth Amendment (income tax) ratified |
| Underwood Tariff | |
| Federal Reserve System established | |
| Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of senators) passed | |
| 1914 | Clayton Act |
| Federal Trade Commission Act | |
| AFL has over two million members | |
| Ludlow Massacre in Colorado |
Neither Wilson nor Roosevelt satisfied the demands the advanced progressives. Most of the efforts of the two progressive presidents were spent trying to regulate economic power rather than to promote social justice. Yet the most important legacy of these two fascinating and powerful politicians was their attempts to strengthen the office of president and the executive branch of the federal government. The nineteenth-century American presidents after Lincoln had been relatively weak, and much of the federal power had resided with Congress. The progressive presidents reasserted presidential authority, modernized the executive branch, and began the creation of the federal bureaucracy, which had had a major impact on the lives of Americans in the twentieth century.
Both Wilson and Roosevelt used the presidency as a bully pulpit to make pronouncements, create news, and influence policy. For example, both presidents called White House conferences and appointed committees and commissions. Roosevelt strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission and Wilson created the Federal Trade Commission, both of which were the forerunners of many other federal regulatory bodies. And by breaking precedent and actually delivering his annual message in person before a joint session of Congress, Wilson symbolized the new power of the presidency.
More than the increased power of the executive branch changed the nature of politics. The new bureaus, committees, and commissions brought to Washington a new kind of expert, trained in the universities, at the state and local level, and in voluntary organizations. Julia Lathrop, a coworker of Jane Addams at Hull House, was one such expert. Appointed by President Taft in 1912 to become chief of the newly created Children's Bureau, she was the first woman ever appointed to such a position. She used her post not only to work for better child labor laws but also to train a new generation of women experts who would take their positions in state, federal, and private agencies in the 1920s and 1930s. Other experts emerged in Washington during the progressive era to influence policy in subtle and important ways. The expert, the commission, the statistical survey, and the increased power of the executive branch were all legacies of the progressive era.