Movement Toward Improvements: The Progressive Era in Political and Economic Terms

Theodore Roosevelt, the candidate for the Bull Moose Party in 1912, was writing in retrospect at the success of “trust-busting” in The Taft-Wilson Programme. In short, Roosevelt felt that trust-busting was not necessarily the answer to reforming the overwhelming acquisition of wealth by the few; rather, he felt that regulation of big business by government bodies would be effective in creating a balance of power. Roosevelt felt that by regulating big business practices, competition would be harbored and prices would be to the benefit of the consumer. This idea was challenged by Woodrow Wilson, a professor and orator on the topic of economics at the time of the 1912 election.

Woodrow Wilson, in his work Benevolence or Justice?, gives a counter argument to Theodore Roosevelt’s idea of supervision and regulation. Woodrow Wilson seems to scoff at Roosevelt’s notion that breaking up the steel and oil monopolies, among others, was a step back for reform. Wilson, who seems to take a patriotic angle toward this argument, says that breaking up the trusts is the only way to ensure a fair playing ground for smaller business. He says that “there is no hope for the people of the United States until the partnership is dissolved,” a clear and decisive rebuttal of Roosevelt. Wilson, in a nutshell, saw that the free market, not big government, would be the decisive force in ensuring competition; Wilson did not want to live in a “philanthropy.”

The partisan views of the Progressive Era really prevented many from extensively studying the time period. Most historians have taken the rhetoric that was used by reformers as the end result of the Progressive Era instead of the legislative and substantive results. One historian that looked past the partisan rancor was Gabriel Kolko, whose “Triumph of Conservatism” spelled out a new view of the Progressive Era: the real issue at hand, which was the regulation of business, was decided in favor of the institution that was meant to be reformed. Kolko said that the many different facets of the Progressive Era (i.e. socialism, Populism) found faults in society but did not provided alternatives for the Progressives. This left a power void in American society, which was fulfilled by opportunistic business interests. Their needs were met in a process called “political capitalism,” which was the use of existing governmental systems to ensure security, predictability, and stability, the ideal environment for prosperity. The real winners, despite the assertions of Progressive era historians, would be big business and the upper class.

Big business was on the lips of many of the prominent political and academic figures of the early 20th century. It was obvious that something had gone awry with the traditional American democracy, where people were capable of free thought and enterprise. The accumulation of wealth by the few was creating lifestyle issues for the masses and the representative governmente that once may have been was definitely not at that time. Theodore Roosevelt wanted to “prevent the eggs from ever being scrambled;” Wilson wanted these proverbial eggs to be scrambled so that they could allow greater participation. The result was obvious early on, for big business would exist as Roosevelt thought, in informal connections disguised as diverse business interests competing with each other. The Progressive Era was not just the arena of social reform; rather, it was a battlefield for debate over the most practical of issues: the economy.