State and National Progressivism
With networks of Progressive journals and journalists in place, Progressivism
expanded beyond city-level reform. Two of the most flamboyant individuals in
American history are responsible for expanding the Progressive Movement to the state
and national levels almost simultaneously. Robert “Battling Bob” La Follette became the
Progressive Governor of Wisconsin, and Theodore Roosevelt brought Progressivism to
the whole country upon his ascending to the presidency in the wake of the assassination
of William McKinley. A look at the lives of both men is a look at the American Dream
as the 20th century opened.
Bob La Follette led a life in Wisconsin similar to that of a sheriff in an old
Western movie, a hero that cleaned up the town. He rose from obscurity to be the
youngest member of the House of Representatives, a Senator, the Governor, and a
presidential candidate. While he often resorted to patronage he served three terms as the
Governor of Wisconsin and brought Progressivism to his state by 1900, making
Wisconsin the envy of other Progressive-minded states. He worked his way through
college and law school and took his brand of fanatically patriotic Protestantism on the
campaign circuit around the state. He pioneered the tactic of barnstorming, or speaking
wherever and whenever people would gather to listen, and it won him the District
Attorney’s job without even being endorsed by his party, the Republicans. By 1884 he
made his youthful debut in the House of Representatives but returned to practicing law
when he was defeated in 1890.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin indulged in Gilded Age graft with railroad
and lumber companies. Party leaders tried to bribe La Follette to influence his brotherin-law, a judge, to ease up on regulation that hindered these industries. Not only did La
Follette refuse the bribe, he exposed the whole affair to the press, forever cutting himself
off from the Republican Party. He campaigned on his own for ten years and won the
governorship in 1900.
As Governor, La Follette developed a strategy to push a variety of Progressive
reforms that became so successful it was referred to as the “Wisconsin Idea” as it spread
around the country. La Follette set up independent regulatory commissions made up of
experts. University professors in, say, forestry were called on to come up with ideas that
“Back-to-the-People-Bob” could popularize. Can you think of anything more boring than
listening to botany facts and statistics? But “Battling Bob” could take the plans from
state university professors and barnstorm around in exciting attacks on the lumber giants.
His persuasive leadership coupled with their scientific expertise created a startling new
phenomenon in American politics, a government machine run by the educated elite but
with the full support of an enthusiastic populace.
This unstoppable combination has been used in one form or another ever since. A
short list of immediate Progressive reforms reveals that whereas in 1900 half the states
had no laws for a minimum age for workers, by 1914 all but one state set a limit. By
1917, 39 states shortened the work day for women, and 8 states had minimum wage laws
for women. By 1916 2/3 of the states had workman’s compensation laws to protect and
provide for workers injured on the job. Obviously, these are not the accomplishments of
politicians looking out for the interests of big business. Progressives saw themselves as
returning to the example of the Founding Fathers. Many Progressives, like La Follette,
were independently wealthy and devoted their public service careers not to pocketing
more money but to helping “the needy.” Progressive heroes imagined themselves
possessed of “disinterested benevolence.”
Unlike La Follette, Theodore Roosevelt was not a “self-made” man. His
American Dream stemmed from his ancestors who were among the first to settle in New
Amsterdam and who eventually established a glass-importing business. The Roosevelts,
a name which means “field of roses,” were among the richest American “blueblood”
families. Theodore’s father was a New York City banker, and TR was raised with all the
privileged trappings of a Gilded Age upper-class lifestyle. Hampered by asthma,
“Teedie” was told by his father at the age of six that he was brilliant, but besides being
given a brain he was also given a body. “You are going to have to build your body,” his
father told him as a gym was installed in the family home. TR was the first president of
the United States to lift weights.
From that point on TR was possessed of phenomenal, nearly obscene amounts of
energy. His Harvard education made him an historian and a classical scholar, but his
curiosity and drive made him an amateur naturalist, cow-puncher, Rough Rider, and big
game hunter. In short, he was an American Renaissance man who entered politics
because he said he wanted “to be among the doers.” He was also among the readers; he
read a book a day his entire adult life.
This bundle of energy was President at the age of 42, the youngest man ever to
hold that office. After McKinley was shot in September of 1901 in Buffalo, New York,
TR claimed to the Cabinet that he would continue all of the fallen President’s policies.
There was an audible sigh of relief in the room. Within one year, however, TR was
challenging Congress at every turn. By 1909, after winning a second term in his own
right, TR had launched Progressive Reform at the national level and made the US
President the most powerful individual in America and in the world. While not every
president has since deserved or wanted that status, they possessed it because of TR. He
called the presidency a “bully pulpit,” from which he preached that the benefits of being a
member of the wealthy class and a Harvard graduate entailed social responsibility. He
laid the foundations, therefore, for the modern welfare state.
TR’s social conservatism and pugnacity were mixed perfectly with political
shrewdness to make him a powerful reformer. He is by far the most eager man to have
ever been president. His rise to power is a stunning arc of talent that began with being
elected to the New York legislature as a Representative. He ran for mayor of New York
City next (and lost), but his career received a sudden blow with the death of his first wife
and his mother in the same house on the same day in 1884—Valentine’s Day! To escape
these tragic events he bought a ranch out in the Dakota Territory and worked right
alongside his cowhands. He became famous for knocking a cowboy out cold who had
called him “four-eyes” in a bar and for admonishing one of his workers on a cattle drive
by shouting, “Hasten forward thither!”
He also became famous for writing The Winning of the West, a multi-volume
history of westward settlement that was nationalistic, patriotic, and filled with
biographies of heroic expansionists. Throughout the work he expressed Federalist
opinions going so far as to call Thomas Jefferson a “humbug and a hypocrite.” These
exploits brought him to the attention of President Benjamin Harrison who placed the
energetic young man on the United States Civil Service Commission from 1889-1895
where TR received much publicity by being a Republican who actually believed, much to
Harrison’s surprise, in civil service reform.
Even greater publicity came with a new post as the New York City Chief of
Police. TR and his friend, Jacob Riis, would sneak around at night to catch corrupt cops
and violators of liquor laws. Riis took photos of TR catching the offenders red-handed,
and the photos appeared in newspapers, making TR’s teeth, moustache, and glasses
famous. Roosevelt would work all the next day after a night out to avoid letting his desk
work get behind, then stay up the next night to go out and catch some more evil-doers
who assumed he would be home in bed. Then he would go to work the next day so that
no one could say he was a slacker at the office. How many hours was he awake by
then—60?
These exploits brought him to the attention of William McKinley who made him,
as we have seen, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy where he read Mahan’s book and
operated with nationalistic and militaristic views. When war broke out with Spain, TR
sought to enlarge his heroic image by resigning from the Navy Department and mustering
the Rough Riders. We last left him exulting after the charge up San Juan Hill that he got
to shoot a Spaniard in the stomach saying afterward that the enemy soldier “crumpled
like a rabbit.” This heroic image was tempered by the fact that TR had stashed a dozen
pair of glasses all over his uniform apparently terrified that an accident would leave him
blind. All the nation saw, however, was his gallant flesh wound and his triumphal return
to win as Governor of New York. His Rough Riders even rode around and shot their
weapons in the air during his campaign.
His meteoric rise did not stop. Despite the fact that he had begun to show
Progressive leanings, William McKinley took him on as his Vice President. The
Republican Party wanted to capitalize on TR’s fame but imagined the nearly useless role
of VP would “keep him harmless.” Mark Hanna, however, reminded the Republicans
that only one heartbeat stood between “that Madman and the Presidency.” And that
noble heart stopped. I say noble because I can never forget McKinley’s treatment of his
wife who had a bizarre condition that prompted her to occasionally have spasms of the
face that caused her to make “demonic” expressions, even during state dinners. When
such an episode took her, President McKinley would merely take out his handkerchief
and cover her face until the fit was over. Then he would resume conversation as if
nothing had happened. How could an assassin shoot a man who was that kind?
The Madman was President, though. TR was an opinionated storyteller that had
to be the center of attention wherever he went, and he always arrived 15 minutes late to
let anticipation build. His relatives, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, said that TR had to
be the “bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” He commented on
everything. He hated Emile Zola’s novels (banned by obscenity laws); he liked “full
baby carriages, football players, and reform.” He was incessantly active and hunted or
hiked whenever possible, usually with visiting dignitaries in tow, panting. His second
wife’s parlor was the one room at Sagamore Hill, the family home on Long Island, not
covered with game heads, and it even had a polar-bear rug. He is the only president to be
an amateur boxer and lost the sight in one eye in the boxing ring, a fact he demanded be
kept secret. He claimed he would never be assassinated because his reflexes were too
quick.
While he is not the man to originate the saying, TR is the first president of the
United States to believe, “America should order the affairs of the rest of the world.”
While we are dealing with domestic Progressive reforms, be assured we will return to
TR’s incredible importance in foreign policy later. For now suffice it to say he was a
cartoonist’s dream to caricature, and his trademark smile became famous the world over.
His motto was, “Get action! Do things!” When asked what should be done with a mob
he responded, “Take 10 or 12 of their leaders out and shoot them!” When asked what
should be done with Socialists in America he said, “Surround them with soldiers intent
on doing them harm!” When asked if he liked Folgers coffee he said, “It’s good to the
last drop,” and that has been their company slogan ever since.
Don’t think of TR as a buffoon, though. He loved it when people underestimated
him. He was our first historian president. His keen awareness of the foundations of the
country and his understanding of the lessons of the Civil War (he was the first president
to have a Union father and a Confederate mother) pointed to Federalism. He admired the
United States as a republic of self-denying gentlemen but said we had filled the continent
and industrialized rapidly without deserving to do so. He said America had not devised a
system of management to which we could safely entrust the legacy of the American
Revolution in the modern world. He announced he was the manager to do it.
Just like his genius coffee slogan, he coined the name of his domestic program
spontaneously while in the West on a 262-speech tour. TR loved public speaking and
always leaned forward on the tip of his toes with his over-large head appearing as if he
were about to plunge into the crowd. He snapped his teeth together audibly as he spoke.
Once, in reference to Indians, he said they deserved a “square deal” from America. At
another speech he said the magic words in reference to blacks. Each time the crowd
interrupted him with uproarious applause, so he kept it. He even came up with an easy
way for journalists and citizens to remember his program. The Square Deal had three
“Cs.”
The first on the agenda was the Control of corporations. TR believed in direct
national economic development. When the nation was casting about for who would
make the determination in enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act’s language of
“unreasonable restraint of trade,” TR suggested that he could do it. He believed there
were “good” trusts and “bad” trusts and gained his reputation as the Great Trustbuster by
taking down only those trusts that “misbehaved.” He established a Bureau of
Corporations within his new Department of Labor and Commerce and gave this new
regulatory commission a characteristically brusque name, “Watchdog Agency.”
Even after being the second president to ask J. P. Morgan to personally boost the
American economy, he attacked Morgan’s railroad, the Northern Securities Company,
and US Steel. To prove that the President was sovereign economically he intervened in
the strike of the United Mine Workers and forced them and the coal mine owners to
accept his terms. TR argued that since the US Navy ran on coal, a slowdown in the
production of coal was a national security issue. He threatened, therefore, to take over
the mines and work them with the US Army. The mine owners were forced to pay 10%
higher wages and to shorten the work day.
Consumer protection was the second component of the Square Deal. TR pushed
the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Packing Act through Congress in 1906 after
reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, an expose of the muck raked up in meat packing
plants and included in the sausage. While Sinclair was trying to make the nation accept
Socialism, he managed only to make the President physically sick. Sinclair said he aimed
at the heart of America but hit them in the stomach. Regulations poured out of
Washington to protect consumers but wound up driving small competitors out of business
and raising the price of meat dramatically. Regardless of federal inspections, by the way,
I still suggest you cook all meat before eating it.
Theodore Roosevelt was a hunter but also a nature lover, and Thoreau and TR’s
friend, John Muir, did not entirely convince the President of the advantages of leaving the
wilderness pristine. The third component of the Square Deal was therefore Conservation
of natural resources which TR defined as “developing” those resources in the hands of
scientific experts. Thus the field of natural resource management was born. TR set aside
43 million acres as national forests, 53 wildlife refuges, and 65 million acres of coal
reserves. TR’s administration permitted big corporations to purchase permits to acquire
access to the coal to avoid exploitation. TR was in control.
But he did not choose to exercise his Constitutional option to run for the
presidency again, at least not yet. He honored Washington’s two-term precedent and
hand-picked William Howard Taft to succeed him, only the second time a president could
do such a thing. TR expected Taft to carry on with a nation far more accustomed to a
strong president with national unity and big government solutions to national problems.
TR’s integrity, guts, and energetic service made the presidency dominate the 20th century
with a legacy of a government bureaucracy of “experts.” While Taft set aside more land
and busted more trusts, TR was remembered as the Trustbuster and the Great
Conservationist. The two men were not to remain allies for long.