Category: Uncategorized

Theodore Roosevelt had sent into stone a new era in American politics, an age of big government, moralistic policy, and foreign interventionism. Roosevelt and his successors worked to eliminate corruption and inefficiency to create a world power that could compete with other countries. Progressivism reached a peak under the Woodrow Wilson administration due to Prohibition, new progressive anti-banking measures, and America’s entry into World War I. By this point, the public was exhausted with progressivism, and turned to more conservative laissez-faire presidents like Harding and Coolidge, who brought America back to normalcy and made America a prosperous and wealthy nation of great patriotism and pride. Americans once again embraced idealism and progressivism after an 8-year break, but this time they wanted to do it with the respect and consent of the big business class. Then, Herbert Hoover came along.

Herbert Hoover Administration

Hoover had an impressive and well-experienced background: he was a civil engineer-turned businessman and philanthropist, and he worked in the Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge administrations, trying to push more progressive policies. Hoover was seen by many as the new Roosevelt: someone who was a progressive and pushed for progressive reforms but did so without being too radical; he was a moderate who, as a businessman himself, respected the role big business played in society and sought simply to tame its worst aspects. However, unfortunately for Hoover, he would barely have any time to implement his new vision, as in 1929, the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression began.

Due to the conservative laissez-faire policies of the Harding and Coolidge administrations and the general financial prosperity, the stock market was booming in the 1920s, and more and more people were investing in it, but many economists warned the stock market was volatile, and, at any moment, if the stock market crashed, you should prepare to divest your savings and sell everything, although some, more smarter economists warned against that too, but those people were in the minority. After a fraudulent account in the London Stock Exchange was suspended, stocks in New York took a significant dip. And, so, most stockholders, following the advice of those not-so smart economists, decided to divest and sell everything, and so, the stock market just kept going down and down. However, it also turns out the banks had used the savings they had gotten from their customers to invest that in the stock market as well, so when the stock market crashed, they had no money, and they couldn’t reimburse any of their clients. As a result, banks across the country closed down as they had literally no way of running.

At this point, Hoover realized that he couldn’t pursue his original agenda, and so took all the resources he was going to use to enact his agenda and put them into trying to stop the depression, increasing the role of government in the economy significantly as a result. However, even despite this time of emergency, he still tried to balance the role of business and government, which literally led to the worst results; he should have either done nothing and let business run its usual course, or intervened a lot and propped up the economy, but instead, he just chose the worst possible option. With the 1932 election coming soon, the Republicans and Hoover were extremely unpopular as the economy was in complete freefall, and the Democrats promised intensive government action with a business-government balance (which is exactly what Hoover promised to do.) The Democrats were literally campaigning on the same policies Hoover supported, but were essentially just saying that they would execute them better. The main way they got away from this was that he misrepresented Hoover’s views as someone who didn’t want the government to intervene in the economy at all, which he was not, and Hoover wasn’t able to respond because he was scared, yes scared, of public speaking.

The progressivism promised and implemented by Wilson and Roosevelt was not enough for the day. The purpose of the government was to grow every day, day by day. If you stopped growing the government for a year, or for even one single second, you would not only halt the march of civilization, you would go backwards. That was the philosophy and campaign promise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democrat’s candidate for the 1932 presidential election.

FDR Biography

Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York, in 1882. His wealthy family gave him private education, traveled abroad with him, and basically prepared him to become someone who was going to be very influential. His mom, Sarah, was Roosevelt’s major figure in his life, staying with him until 1941, when she passed away. Sarah cared about Franklin, but he also was very protective of him. Sarah opposed Franklin’s marriage to Theodore Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor. After their marriage, she purchased a house right next to Franklin’s and Eleanor’s house to keep tabs on the two, and she played a very active role in raising her grandchildren.

While Roosevelt’s father was caring, he wasn’t able to be with him for a long time, due to work and health issues, but Franklin did find another role model, Reverend Endicott Peabody, an Episcopal priest, cousin-in-law to Theodore Roosevelt, and Headmaster of the Grotton Boarding School. Peabody taught FDR that he had a public duty to care for those in need, words that Franklin would remember for the rest of his life. Franklin also really liked Thomas Jefferson, whom he regarded as an aristocratic elitist intellectual who cared for the people and established what would become the foundations for the modern Democratic party. Franklin disregarded the southern agrarian view of Jefferson held by most historians at the time, which Jefferson wanted to be seen as but actually was not.

As Franklin’s cousin Theodore became President, Franklin went to Harvard Law. Franklin loved and largely agreed with his cousin’s ideas of progressivism and entered politics with a sense of moral duty to help the public. In 1910, Franklin would win an election to the New York Senate in a Republican district. As Senator, Franklin focused on battling the corrupt political establishment of Tammany Hall in Manhattan, successfully blocking one of their appointees and negotiating a compromise with the establishment. Franklin also supported agricultural and labor reform bills, earning him a reputation as a progressive reformer and someone who was essentially doing what his cousin had done.

When the 1912 election came about, Franklin backed not his cousin but Democrat Woodrow Wilson. He would be rewarded by Wilson by being appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, although since the real Secretary of the Navy wasn’t very good at his job, Franklin basically was the Secretary of the Navy at the time. He played an important role and learned a lot about military organization but also how to negotiate with labor, due to negotiations between Franklin and the members of the Navy’s own labor union.

Wilson would easily win re-election on the promise of keeping America out of war, but as soon as he won his second term, Franklin told Wilson to begin preparing for American entry into World War I, which he viewed as inevitable but Wilson, at the time, opposed. After the sinking of the Lusitania, Roosevelt presided over a naval buildup and was largely concentrated on World War I for the rest of Wilson’s term.

With Wilson’s presidency coming to an end, Franklin would now be moving on to the next step in his political career. Now, he would look at Theodore and what he did. After serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore became Governor of New York and McKinley’s running mate before becoming President. However, his run for Governor ended in disaster, as he lost the nomination to Tammany Hall’s preferred establishment appointee. So, Roosevelt decided to make a run for Vice President, and he hoped he would be on the ticket with friend and member of the Wilson administration Herbert Hoover. However, by this point, while Hoover was a progressive, he hadn’t declared himself a Democrat or Republican yet, before ultimately declaring himself a Republican. This disappointed Roosevelt, who was a Democrat, but he was still selected as the Democrat running mate alongside capable progressive James M. Cox, but with Americans tired of progressivism, Harding and Coolidge defeated the Cox-Roosevelt ticket in a landslide. Roosevelt saw his election loss as a bump in the road, and thought he would pick himself back up next election and maybe even make a run for the Governorship or presidency, but then, everything changed.

While he was on vacation, Roosevelt became paralyzed from the waist down. Although, at the time, it was diagnosed as polio, some modern scientists suggest it might be a result of a neurological disorder, the result of his earlier contraction of the Spanish flu. At this point, Sarah told Franklin to sit back and relax for the rest of his life at Hyde Park, but both Franklin and Eleanor said no. Franklin would try his best to adapt to polio and build close relationships with top progressives, including New York Governor Alf Smith, who then asked Roosevelt to be the Democrat nominee for Governor in 1928 so that he could be the Democrat nominee for President. Although Landon would end up losing the 1928 election to Herbert Hoover, Franklin would narrowly win with Landon’s support.

In charge of New York during the Great Depression, Roosevelt governed based on three pillars: (1): government aid, (2): public works, and (3): rooting out corruption, with Roosevelt firing a bunch of people Smith had appointed since Smith was more friendly with Tammany Hall. This made Smith really mad, leading to a decade-long rivalry between the two, until right before Smith’s death in 1944. 

FDR would sign the Power Authority Act, authorizing the construction of a large hydroelectric dam alongside the St. Lawrence River. Roosevelt also sought to eliminate Tammany Hall, because he knew that if it was still standing, he would have to play by their rules to win elections. To do this, FDR established the Hoffstetter Committee, the goal of which was to find corruption in New York City’s corrupt legal system. The corruption uncovered was so great that the establishment tried to murder and disappear witnesses to prevent it from getting out. With this, Roosevelt was able to jail many of Tammany Hall’s most corrupt officials and replace them with anti-corruption progressive crusaders, essentially ending their decades-long iron grip over New York politics.

However, the biggest thing FDR did as Governor was focusing on trying to tackle the Great Depression. Roosevelt would establish the Temporary Relief Administration to build new public works and create more jobs. Roosevelt would also work towards banking reform and unemployment compensation as well. Roosevelt did so well as Governor that he became famous, and he was the Democrat nominee for the 1932 presidential election. Roosevelt would defeat Hoover in a landslide and assume the office of President, with many suggesting that Roosevelt should get emergency dictatorial powers to do whatever he wants without congressional approval so that he could bring a quicker end to the Depression.

A New Deal

FDR wanted to take the success he had in New York and transplant that to the rest of the country, but, truthfully, there wasn’t a bigger plan than that. The policies that Roosevelt had instituted in New York were less about ending the Depression and finding its’ root cause and more about alleviating its symptoms to make public life better. FDR wanted to do experiments with different options to find the best plan. Franklin met with the outgoing president Herbert Hoover, where he refused Hoover’s offer to work together to solve the depression, with FDR asserting that Hoover could’ve solved the depression but he didn’t. Roosevelt and Hoover agreed upon a lot actually, yet Roosevelt basically refused to support the same policies that Hoover did; here is a list of what Roosevelt did.

• Immediately upon taking office, Roosevelt would call for a bank holiday, where the federal government would inspect banks across the country and determine whether they could stand the burden; if they could operate, they would be allowed to reopen, but if they couldn’t, then they would either close or be given assistance by the government. 
• Roosevelt also scaled back the intensely high tariffs of the past few decades to give Americans an extra option of buying cheaper foreign products and allowing for American goods to be sold in other countries where those goods were not available. 
• Roosevelt also supported public works projects, since it hit two birds with one stone; it reduced unemployment and fixed America’s crumbling infrastructure. The most famous of these was the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps,) which created 250,000 jobs and built 13,000 miles of trail, planted 2 billion trees, and upgraded 250,000 miles of roads.
• Roosevelt would sign the Agricultural Adjustment Act and establish the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, (which Hoover had proposed,) to provide relief to farmers who had way too many products on their hands that they couldn’t sell and thus would decrease prices. 
• The National Recovery Administration was basically a copy of what Hoover wanted, which was a partnership between government, business, and labor for the common good; the agency did succeed in its goals, which were to improve working conditions, reduce competition, and stabilize prices. However, it would be considered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court just two years later and struck down. 
• Roosevelt would also establish the Good Neighbor policy, which would establish friendlier relations between the U.S. and Latin America, a repudiation of Wilson and Roosevelt’s more interventionist policy, and basically a more successful version of Taft’s foreign policy.
• Congress would overturn Prohibition through the passage of the 21st Amendment.
• And, of course, Roosevelt would build a monument to his hero, Thomas Jefferson, as expected.

In doing all these radical actions, Roosevelt and the New Deal would make a bunch of enemies, split into three camps, people who thought Roosevelt was overstepping his executive authority, people who opposed Roosevelt’s policies and thought they were bad for the economy because they hindered business, and those who simply had a grudge against Roosevelt, like Smith and Hoover. All throughout this, Roosevelt had basically become pro-labor and labeled the New Deal’s opposition pro-business and conservative, which basically ignored Roosevelt’s campaign promise to pursue a balance between labor and business. Essentially, the term progressive now meant supporting the New Deal, and if you didn’t, well, even if you were considered progressive 10 years ago, you weren’t progressive anymore. This was essentially very similar to what happened with Jefferson and Jackson; basically, Jefferson and Roosevelt had created the ideologies of Democratic-Republicanism and progressivism, and Jackson and FDR had taken it to its logical next step.

There was also a conservative backlash to FDR’s policies, through the American Liberty League and later the Conservative Coalition, led by Robert A. Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft, while the New Dealers continued to become more and more liberal. This foreshadows the modern party dynamic, where Republicans are considered conservative and Democrats are considered liberal, and this is likely where that dynamic began. However, there were still divides in the GOP. There were the conservatives, who were mostly in the Midwest, the liberals, who were mostly in New England, and the progressives, who were mostly in the Far West. The conservatives, led by Taft, opposed foreign interventionism, were socially conservative, and generally opposed New Deal economics. The liberals, led by Thomas E. Dewey, were willing to compromise on New Deal economics, and were supportive of foreign interventionism, free trade, and socially liberal values. The Progressives, led by former President Hoover, supported New Deal economics, were socially moderate, and were kind of supportive of foreign interventionism, although they opposed free trade. The Democrats were also split, between the conservatives in the South and the progressives in the North, and as Roosevelt was increasingly alienating the conservatives, he needed to hone in on certain demographics if he wanted to keep Democrat control of Congress in the midterms and win reelection.

FDR was a strong supporter of labor unions, which got him increased support in the cities, especially from many ethnic and religious minorities who were often working in low-skill labor jobs. He won a lot of support among Catholics, who were mostly either Irish, Italian, or Polish, and Eastern European Jews, as well as support from urban Blacks who had fled north during the Great Migration in fear of Southern persecution. Roosevelt would also mostly keep the southern vote, since Southerners were staunchly Democratic just by name, and they liked Roosevelt’s pro-agriculture policies after the Dust Bowl affected their crops. However, many Southerners questioned Roosevelt over his appeal to minorities, his far-reaching social programs, and the fact that most of Roosevelt’s public works weren’t in the South, although this was likely because the South had a much better employment state than other areas of the country did. Whatever the case, you see a lot of conservative Southern Democrats defecting to the Republicans, who are increasingly embracing them, which really foreshadows the future, where Republicans become the party for all conservatives, and the Democrats become the party for all liberals and progressives. 

This strategy would pay off, as Roosevelt’s Democrat party would keep control of both houses of Congress and even expand their majorities. Roosevelt, seeing that the public had now given him a wide mandate, implemented what he called the Second New Deal which was even more wide-reaching, radical, and economically interventionist than the first:

• Roosevelt raised taxes, establishing a 79% income tax on those making above $5 million a year, a 75% income tax on those making above $1 million, and a 27% tax on corporation’s profits that were not paid out in dividends.
• He also established the Works Progress Administration, which was charged with employing as many workers as possible for new infrastructure projects. The WPA employed 8.5 million workers and built around 650,000 miles of highways and roads, and around 125,000 new public buildings, as well as 5,900 athletic fields and playgrounds, 770 swimming pools, 1,700 parks, and 8,300 recreation buildings. The program was a huge success, and only served to increase his popularity among urban voters, where it appears his new center of popularity is. This trend of the Democrats being extremely popular in the cities is still true to this day.
• With elderly folks struggling across the country due to the depression, Roosevelt established Social Security, a system where if you pay your FICA tax, you get benefits when you’re older, essentially a social safety net that funds itself.
• Roosevelt also continued to deliver for labor unions by signing into law the Wagner Act, which guaranteed the right to collective bargaining, prohibited discrimination against union members, and established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB.)

With the Second New Deal and consequently Roosevelt as popular as ever, Roosevelt and Democrats rode their popularity to victory. Roosevelt won 515 electoral votes and 60% of the popular vote, while congressional Democrats expanded their majority to encompass more than 3/4ths of both the House and the Senate. It appeared Roosevelt was going to continue to enact more radical policies and expand the role of government even more.

But, as the economy slipped into yet another recession, and conservatives became more organized, the stage was set for a massive conservative backlash.

Presidency of Warren G. Harding

Harding came into office wanting to take the country back to normal by reversing the progressive policies of the Wilson administration. He wasn’t a guy who cared about what was morally 100% right and morally wrong; he was a traditional old-fashioned Republican who supported big business. This was a sharp turn from the era of progressivism, but it was a turn that was wholly appropriate for the time. With the Bolshevik revolution and the first Red Scare underway, Americans were skeptical of labor unions, while many felt that big business had been cleaned up by Wilson and Roosevelt. As a result, labor union membership declined significantly during this period. This did not mean that things were bad for workers, however; wages were the highest they had ever been, conditions in the work environment were the best they had ever been, and the quality of the products that were being made were the best they had ever been. Essentially, life was good. People felt the progressives had done enough; it was time to take a break from that turbulent experiment.

Domestically, Harding cut taxes, raised tariffs, and eliminated business regulations; in foreign affairs, Harding largely sought to focus on America and scaled back the military significantly. Harding also signed the Federal Aid Highway Act into law, which set in motion the creation of the highway system by investing $75 billion into highway development and providing guidelines for how highways should be built. As the 1920’s progressed, radio became widespread, cars became widespread, eugenics became popular, and aviation was taking off. However, Harding would die of a heart attack just two years into his term, leading his Vice President Calvin Coolidge to take the office, before Coolidge would win reelection in 1924.

Presidency of Calvin Coolidge

Coolidge largely continued Harding’s policies of tax cuts, high tariffs, deregulation, and demilitarization. As a result of this, companies began to reform monopolies, although they kept the workplace standards that Wilson and Roosevelt had established. The argument was, if everyone was under the same company and there was no competition, then that company could do everything possible to promote the public good and continue supporting that industry. Coolidge’s most significant piece of legislation was the Immigration Act of 1924, which capped immigration at 165,000 per year and established the National Origins Formula; basically, if 30% of Americans were Germans, then 30% of all immigrants into the country would be German, effectively, the goal being to ensure that America had the same demographics going forward.

Herbert Hoover Biography

Coolidge’s successor would be Herbert Hoover, who, although he was a Republican, had served in the Wilson administration and wanted to enact new progressive policies. Hoover had served as Secretary of Commerce during the Harding and Coolidge administrations, where he frequently clashed with other pro-deregulation Cabinet officials. This led to significant conflict with members of the GOP establishment, particularly President Coolidge himself. In the 1928 presidential election, Hoover earned the support of both the progressives, who admired his efforts in the Harding and Coolidge administrations, and more establishment Republicans, who trusted him to not go too radical, since he was a businessman and civil engineer himself. Hoover had an idealistic vision: labor, business, and government all working together for America’s best benefit, and he could experiment with this vision, with the economy on the rise.

Unfortunately for him, however, the economy would collapse, and America would soon undergo its’ next great change.

William Taft Administration

So, our good boy Teddy Roosevelt is up in 1908. He could run for a third term, but, eh, he’s done enough work. He’s ready to retire and hand the mantle to someone else. But who to hand the mantle to? Roosevelt decided to essentially exonerate Taft as his successor. Now, who was Taft? Taft was a lawyer who had risen up to become Roosevelt’s Secretary of War and his chief legal advisor. Roosevelt liked that Taft basically agreed with him on everything (even though, in real life, Taft probably just did that to get on his good side and get appointed as Supreme Court justice,) and so decided to give him the presidency.

Taft didn’t even know what to say and what political positions to take. He basically asked Roosevelt to write his speeches for him and tell him which policies he should support. Yet, despite the fact he was not prepared at all, Roosevelt was so damn popular that Taft was able to ride his old boss to victory in the 1908 presidential election, and it was a landslide, 321 – 162 electoral college votes.

Ok, so now our old boy Taft is now President. Now, what’s he supposed to do? Well, he basically just decides to continue whatever Roosevelt was doing. Two constitutional amendments passed during his presidency, the 16th and 17th ones. The 16th amendment basically allowed for the federal government to create an income tax; at this time, the only time the government had taxed someone’s income was under Abraham Lincoln, and it was only because the government REALLY needed money to pay their troops during the Civil War and they weren’t getting enough from tariffs. The other one, the 17th amendment, basically changed the voting process to elect Senators by saying that the people could directly choose their Senator instead of the state. The idea of letting the state choose was that the state would pick someone who was actually qualified for the job. However, as you can imagine, there was a lot of corruption and bribing, so they decided to give the choice to the people, although this arguably led to more corruption as Senate seats just became a contest of who spends more. Taft was an even more hardline progressive than Roosevelt on antitrust suits against big corporations, as in half the time Roosevelt had, Taft sued twice as many companies than him. However, there were areas of disagreement, primarily conservation and foreign policy. While Roosevelt was much more hawkish and wanted to fight out disagreements, Taft was more of a guy that wanted to talk to people and work things out peacefully, although that didn’t stop him from invading Central America. On conservation, Taft didn’t exactly think that Roosevelt had the authority to reserve millions of acres just by signing an executive order, instead believing that you needed Congress on board to do that. First, Taft fired two key Roosevelt-era conservation officials. Then, the administration freed up 3 million acres of land for private companies to use, basically undoing large swaths of Roosevelt’s conservation policy. Roosevelt was angry by these decisions, so angry that he would attempt to primary Taft, whom, again, he picked to be his successor; however, as it turns out, the GOP establishment didn’t want a radical populist like Teddy, they wanted a more stable and more moderate candidate like Taft. 

Fuming against the GOP, Roosevelt and his fellow supporters formed their own party, the Bull Moose Party, and, as it turns out, Roosevelt was still pretty damn popular; Roosevelt defeated Taft by a margin of 5 points in the popular vote and won ten times as many electoral college votes as him. But, make no mistake, Roosevelt did not win the election; in fact, he didn’t even come close. Remember, the Democrats still exist. The Democrats put up a candidate whom nobody even knew was, and he only won 41% of the popular vote, but, since the GOP vote was split, the Democrats managed to somehow win. Without even really trying that hard, Woodrow Wilson won 435 electoral votes, winning every state except 8. This guy is, like, the second Democrat to be elected since the Civil War, and the first Southerner to be president since before the Civil War.

Woodrow Wilson Biography

Wilson was only 5 years old when the Civil War broke out in his home state of Virginia. Luckily for him, his family had moved him to Augusta, Georgia, far away from the forefront of the conflict, at least until General Sherman came along. As Sherman marched through the state, Augusta became a major hub for wounded Confederate soldiers to come there and get treatment, partly because of the Medical College of Georgia. Not only were there wounded soldiers, there were also refugees fleeing the Union army, as Sherman wasn’t necessarily the most kind general to women and children. Obviously, interacting with and seeing a bunch of mutilated, frightened people at five years old is going to probably have a lasting mental impact on you, although Wilson refused to talk about this period for the rest of his life.

However, from here on out, Wilson had a good life; even though he struggled with dyslexia, which left him unable to read until age 11, he was able to overcome his disability and become an avid reader, leading him to get accepted into Princeton University, where he would briefly enter law but ultimately decide to pursue history and political science as a career. Wilson loved studying, but he also was really good at being a leader, whether in his frat clubs, sports teams, and friend groups.

At 27, Wilson decided to get a doctorate at John Hopkins, which then let him become a well-respected professor at Princeton University, which then led him to become appointed as President of Princeton by the Board of Trustees, people who had valuable connections, who encouraged him to run for Governor of the incredibly corrupt state of New Jersey.

Wilson was a progressive Democrat and appealed to them as an intellectual member of the Ivy-League elite who could not get swayed by big corporations and the donor class. He was also, funnily enough, backed by big corporations and the donor class, who just really badly wanted a Democrat as Governor and who thought they could easily manipulate him due to his inexperience in politics. Wilson won the election, but he soon proved himself as someone who could not be swayed and manipulated. This shocked the business and donor classes. As Governor, Wilson passed and signed the Grand Bill, which broke up New Jersey’s corrupt political establishment, instituted new standardized regulations on schools to increase the quality of education, and enforced antitrust laws and workers protections vigorously. In just two years, Wilson had cleaned up a whole state; this earned him much positive publicity and national support. Wilson was both a Northern elitist progressive and a Southern traditionalist conservative at the same time; this meant he was basically the perfect Democratic candidate for the 1912 presidential election. Then, of course, he just so happened to be so lucky to be in the one election where the GOP vote was split, allowing him to win in a landslide.

Woodrow Wilson Administration

Today, many consider Wilson to be one of the worst presidents in American history, yet those same “historians” consider Roosevelt one of America’s best presidents. However, Wilson and Roosevelt are so similar when it comes to policy, yet, historians put them on basically opposite ends of the chart. Teddy Roosevelt’s only criticism of Wilson was that his foreign policy was too liberal, showing he completely supported Wilson’s domestic agenda. Here is what Wilson did as President:

• Wilson signed into law the Organic Act, which established the National Park Service, and continued expanding conservation.
• He would create the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as a better version of Roosevelt’s Bureau of Corporations, and he would make its’ goal to be to ensure all companies were complying with regulations.
• Wilson would institute an income tax on the top 3% of the population, and use that revenue to bring down tariffs by 14 points, which helped bring down costs for most Americans, and increase costs for the wealthiest Americans who could afford to pay it.
• The 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote.
• The Sherman Anti-trust Act was expanded.
• Wilson signed into law the Adamson Act, which helped lay the foundation for the modern eight-hour workday.
• He began taking steps toward outlawing child labor.
• He even took Roosevelt’s position on hyphenated Americans, forcing German-Americans to assimilate during World War I.

As you can see, Wilson was able to get a lot done, signing legislation that achieved most of the progressive movement’s goals. So why don’t historians rank him higher? Well, there are some other more controversial things he did that muddied the water a bit.

Roosevelt believed that the United States was an equal power to the Great powers. Roosevelt supported militarism as a way to deter foreign powers and protect the homeland. He also believed that the United States had a duty to keep the hemisphere safe from foreign threats.

Meanwhile, Wilson was a pacifist idealist, seeking a future where there would be no more wars and different peoples would get different countries. He opposed Roosevelt’s colonial ambitions in Latin America, believing it was un-American to support taking over other countries. Wilson wanted to have better relations and just talk it out with Latin American countries. However, Mexico and Columbia basically refused to talk it out, while other countries descended into chaos, forcing Wilson to take action. Wilson would use his authority to escalate the Border War with Mexico, occupy the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and invade Honduras.

Wilson also delivered on the progressive promise to create a national bank, which Roosevelt set into motion. The economy in 1913 was not the economy in 1813. America was the largest and strongest economy in the world. There needed to be some sort of institution to control money and prevent monopolistic practices by the banks. Thus, the Federal Reserve was created. Some criticism of the Reserve exists, as it is both public-owned and private-owned, and is also pretty susceptible to corruption, as you need Presidential and Senate approval to appoint a new member onto the Bank.

Under Wilson, Prohibition was also passed. The anti-alcohol temperance movement had existed for decades, and it was steadily gaining traction. Ethnically, Anglo and Protestant folks were very supportive of Prohibition, while Catholic Irish and German folks weren’t. But, World War I led to intense persecution and xenophobia against the German American population, and, as a result, America soon became anti-alcohol as well, as the largest pro-alcohol group in the country now basically just lost all their national influence. Congress passed the 18th Amendment, which allowed for the banning of alcohol, and then the Volstead Act, which actually banned alcohol. Wilson himself did not actually support Prohibition, and vetoed the Volstead Act, yet his veto was overridden by Congress. The Volstead Act set much higher standards for what alcohol would be banned, meaning even less intoxicating substances like beer were banned. However, the federal government basically refused to enforce their own law, while state governments didn’t enforce the law because it was a federal law, and it wasn’t their responsibility.

Now, let’s talk about World War I. For its first 3 years, the Great War was a European conflict, and America was basically the place that manufactured all of the goods that came to the Allies. This was because the warring powers don’t have the time or resources to produce materials themselves, so they basically relied on America for it. This would cause a boom in America’s manufacturing and agricultural sector. Beyond this, European nations also took out a bunch of loans they couldn’t pay back, leaving them in debt to America for many years. Yet, as the war dragged on year after year, the European powers wanted another country to join in on one side or the other to bring the conflict to an end. As Germany continued its attacks on American shipping and even requested Mexico to invade the United States, Wilson considered this a violation of American neutrality and successfully convinced Congress to declare war. Wilson ordered an expansion of the American army, and by the end of 1917, American troops were beginning to arrive in Europe on the Western Front. Just a year later, Germany officially surrendered.

Wilson saw the war as two bad sides going to war for something the other guy had. He honestly did not care that much when Germany was defeated; he wanted to leave his mark on the world through the peace negotiations and bring about everlasting peace. To do this, borders would be redrawn to represent cultures and nations, free trade would be the law of the sea, all countries would demilitarize, and all countries across the world would come together in one association where they could work their differences out together. However, it didn’t exactly go Wilson’s way. The Allies refused to accept Wilson’s vision and were instead hellbent on revenge against Germany, Republicans sweeped Congress in the 1918 midterms and refused to accept Wilson’s vision, and Wilson couldn’t articulate his vision effectively, since his health soon came in rapid decline, so much so he was barely able to do the jobs of a president.

As his second term came to an end, his ambitions for the world were left incomplete and likely never to happen. He wanted to run for a third term, but since he was so unhealthy, he did not get the nomination.

The Democrats picked someone who was a very capable progressive, yet due to the bad state of the economy, which was in a recession, voters elected compromise Republican candidate Warren G. Harding to the presidency in 1920 in a mass rejection of globalist policies and a desire to just go back to normal. It was a landslide, and it marked the beginning of a new decade of American politics.

The Gilded Age was an age of prosperity, an age with good things and bad things. America was becoming an industrial power; the population was increasing, both due to higher native birth rates and new immigration from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Southern Europe, and Eastern Europe; rail lines were causing the country to become more interconnected; the Navy was rebuilt and expanded; the US got new colonial lands; quality of life peaked; there were lots of new cities; society was becoming more efficient; there were so many new technologies; and so much more. But there was a cost. America did not just go along a clear path laid out for them. It had to fight itself to get here. The Civil War and the North’s repression of the South during Reconstruction ended the decades-long debate; the industrial North had won, and it would plot its own vision for the country.

Since the North and South were colonies, they had been rivals, and when they became countries, there was a debate: should America be centralized or decentralized? Isolationist or interventionist? Meritocratic or democratic? Protectionist or free-trader? Industrial or agrarian?

The Civil War and Reconstruction had pretty much ended all Southern power over the country, as only people who liked the North were allowed to lead the South, until the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, where the South was left to do effectively whatever they wanted. Thus, the direction for the country’s future was clear. The country was set to be a centralized, isolationist, meritocratic, protectionist, industrial federation. But things didn’t go exactly to the North’s plan.

Lincoln was a solid, experienced, and smart leader. But when he died, the worst aspects of the Republican party took root, especially during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, an inexperienced military man who appointed his own family members and friends to political positions. The presidents after Grant were left to clean up his mess, but the power of business continued to increase, to the point that it was said that every industrialist had a couple of politicians in his pocket, only there to do his bidding for them. And, plus, as a bonus, these businessmen didn’t have an adequate policy. They just went with whatever the popular tide was. The only thing they wanted was to stay onto power.

The presidents after Grant cleaned up most of the corruption, but they weren’t able to clean up business. The argument was, yes, there could be some corruption, but it’s for the greater good of the country, and this was a fair argument, as clearly these businessmen were modernizing the country. But, it soon became apparent to the public that the cost was too high, and they demanded change.

The balance between business and government stayed the same until a man named Theodore Roosevelt came to the office of the presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt Biography

Theodore Roosevelt was born in Manhattan, New York. Roosevelt had asthma, which had no cure. He learned to exercise significantly to minimize it; eventually, he found a boxing coach to train him.

Roosevelt really loved his father, and he really took his father’s advice, that, “take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.” This mindset propelled Roosevelt from homeschooling to Harvard University. Just two years later, Roosevelt’s father, his idol of the same name, passed away.

Roosevelt loved science, specifically biology. When he was 7 years old, he saw a dead seal at the market. He and his cousins got the head, and then they founded the Roosevelt Museum of National History, a makeshift museum he filled with animals that he caught himself. He even wrote a paper at 9 years old about it. Of course, he wanted to be a scientist when he grew up, but he kinda wanted to imitate his dad, who was a philanthropist. He wanted to help the public, so he got into law. 

However, he didn’t really like it, so, instead, he dropped out, and ran for public office to be an assemblyman. At age 23, he won, defeating a corrupt member of the political establishment with ties to Roscoe Conkling, Jake Hess. He focused on combating corruption in New York. However, tragedy struck again for Roosevelt. Two days after the birth of his baby daughter, his mother and wife die on the same day. That day, Roosevelt marked a giant X in his journal and declared, “the light has gone out of my life.” He retired from politics soon after and moved to a ranch in North Dakota.

He loved frontier life. A cowboy, he said, possesses, “few of the emasculated, milk-and-water moralities admired by the pseudo-philanthropists; but he does possess, to a very high degree, the stern, manly qualities that are invaluable to a nation. “ In North Dakota, he took prominent leadership roles. He created the Boone and Crockett Club, which wanted to conserve large game animals. He even became deputy sheriff of Billings County. However, after a bad winter that destroyed about half of his investment, he decided to return to New York. He also married a second wife.

In 1866, Roosevelt ran as the Republican candidate in the mayoral race in New York City. He won third place, against the Democrat and United Labor Party candidate. Fearing his political career was over, he turned to writing the popular book The Winning of the West, about America’s westward expansion.

When Republican Benjamin Harrison won the presidency, he appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission. He did such a good job fighting the spoils system that the next president, a Democrat, reappointed him. After Republican William Laffayette Strong won the mayoral race in 1894 in New York City, he became the New York City Police Commissioner, where he successfully restored law and order in the city. Republican President William McKinley appointed Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, where he continued the decades-long buildup of naval strength, mainly focusing on battleships. He then resigned in 1898 to fight for his country in the Spanish-American War, forming the First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, also known as the “Rough Riders,” and it became famous nationwide for its’ charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill. Roosevelt returned home as a war hero, and soon ran for and became Governor of New York, where he saw and learned a lot about the sheer corruption occurring at the state and national level. This led him to develop an increasingly negative role of big business. Two years later, he resigned to become Vice President, (as McKinley’s previous VP had died, and he wanted a war hero on the ticket to boost his re-election chances.) Then, McKinley was assassinated, and Roosevelt was now President. 

Theodore Roosevelt Administration

Roosevelt was a manifestation of the growing movement of reform and efficiency, which was now taken from the local to the national scale, a movement determined to take America into an age of progress. Roosevelt knew what the beliefs of the day were. After all, they had shaped into himself and his own beliefs. America had several problems, and unlike his predecessors, Roosevelt was actually going to use the authority of the office of the President to actually try to solve them. Roosevelt wanted to create what he called a “Square Deal”, to make life as efficient as possible so that every citizen had the same opportunity. Roosevelt did not believe the “tyranny of the masses” theory, instead believing that if every citizen had the proper education and opportunity, they could rise above that and create a proper and efficient society. Of course, there were some other factors that could compromise this: criminals, the mentally insane, and unintegrated immigrants, the ones who were hyphenated, whom Roosevelt believed held loyalty to both America and their country of origin. Roosevelt and other Progressives believed that if you didn’t fully assimilate into American society, you wouldn’t be fully American, and you’d still do what’s best for your home country and culture. There were significant ways in which this was shown, including the rise of the Second Klu Klux Klan, anarchist terrorist attacks committed by Eastern and Southern European immigrants, persecution of German Americans during World War I, and the heightening of racial tensions.

Roosevelt, as said earlier, sought to use the President’s power to fix the problems of the day, and so he did. He issued an unprecedented 1,081 executive orders during his presidency.

First, Roosevelt wanted to crackdown on trusts, or economic monopolies, as in 1902, 100 companies held 40% of America’s industrial capital. In 1902, the Justice Department filed two antitrust lawsuits – against both the Northern Securities Company and the unpopular “Beef Trust.” Roosevelt created the Bureau of Corporations to find and report on trusts, which would later be succeeded by the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC. In 1905, the Supreme Court handed the Roosevelt administration a victory when they allowed for the breaking up of the Beef Trust.

Roosevelt won a second term in a landslide, winning the highest share of the popular 

vote since Andrew Jackson in the 1820s, and now sought to implement a bold legislative agenda. One of Roosevelt’s biggest priorities was to expand the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which was created to regulate railroads; Roosevelt signed the Hepburn Act in 1906, which did just that. After Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle exposed the unsafe conditions that the meatpacking industry operated in, Roosevelt pushed through and signed the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which called for the labeling of foods and drugs and inspection of livestock. Roosevelt’s other major legislative proposals failed, so he turned to the courts, with his Department of Justice issuing a record 44 antitrust suits in his term.

Roosevelt was also a prominent conservationist, believing that it was necessary to protect wildlife for the future generation to enjoy, conserving around 230 million acres, more than all of his predecessors combined. Although most of this was by executive action, legislatively, he signed the Newlands Reclamations Act of 1902 and the Antiquities Act, which allowed for the establishment of national parks. There was some significant backlash to these radical policies, however, which would lead to it slowing down towards the end of his term.

With regards to labor, Roosevelt helped negotiate an end to a labor strike in 1902 by hosting both sides of the strike at the White House and getting them to agree to a compromise. On race relations, following a contentious dinner between Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington, Roosevelt caved to the anti-Black “lily-white” movement within his party, reducing the number of Blacks holding federal jobs and discharging African-American soldiers in Brownsville after they were accused of killing a white bartender without evidence. Roosevelt would not take any action to reduce McKinley’s tariffs to avoid a civil war within the Republican Party. In 1907, the economy crashed, and Roosevelt blamed the big businessmen of America, calling them “malefactors of great wealth.” Roosevelt would succeed in passing a Federal Employers Liability Act and a law that ended child labor in D.C.

Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy

Roosevelt’s foreign policy was almost as successful, if not more successful than, his domestic policy. His slogan for foreign policy was, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” To get a “big stick,” Roosevelt would develop a world-class American navy, and “speak softly” meant to act justly toward other nations.

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of Roosevelt’s presidency was the construction of the Panama Canal. Congress gave the President $170 million to build the canal, and Roosevelt signed a treaty with the Columbian government, who controlled Panama at the time, to build the canal: this is the “speak softly” part. However, when the Colombian Senate refused to ratify the treaty, Roosevelt encouraged Panama to break away. When they did, Roosevelt immediately recognized them and sent the USS Nashville to go to Columbia and intimidate them: this is the “big stick” part. With the threat of U.S. invasion, Colombia agreed to recognize Panama’s independence. Panama then agreed to let America build the canal. Roosevelt also helped end the peace between Russia and Japan, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and he also helped stabilize the situation in Latin America, earning America global reputation.

Modernization & Industrialization

Following the end of Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans lost a lot of their influence across the country, as America had grown tired of the constant anti-Southern and pro-Freedmen rhetoric; Northerners simply wanted to focus on the North and set up the country for success. Southerners wanted to focus on the South, and they became a united voting bloc, the Solid South, who would vote blue for the next 10 presidential elections, all while controlling the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, at the national level, the mostly Republican presidents tried to regain the executive authority lost to Congress during Reconstruction and try to control the now-rampant corruption that almost had made America a plutocracy, a society ruled by the very wealthy.

This was the trend politics followed for the next 3 decades, while, socially, America was changing dramatically. Yes, the North and the South were different culturally speaking, and there were even different divides among regions within them, but, overall, the country was becoming more interconnected via a complex system of railroads that even the common worker could access. In just a few days or even hours, a Northerner could go to the South and vice versa. Both could travel to the West much faster than they would have without the railroads. Business was now at a national, not state, scale.

Urbanization was speeding up, as the time it took to travel between different ends of the city and travel to the city from neighboring towns was now way less than before. The train also caused many other industries to explode, specifically industries that employed a lot of low-skilled workers. After all, if you want more trains and tracks for the train, you’ll need to have more steel, copper, lumber, and iron; you’ll need fuel to power the train, mainly oil and coal. Thus, the train gives rise to the titans of industry. Many of these businessmen didn’t exactly have principles and moral authorities, and most of them used illegal tactics. At the end of the day, these men, for better or for worse, shaped America’s policy, had influence over politicians, and helped construct a new social order. 

Presidential Administrations

The president after Hayes, James A. Garfield would focus on tackling the widespread corruption, before being assassinated by a crazy dude who wanted a consulship in Vienna or Paris. Garfield’s successor, Chester A. Arthur would continue fighting corruption, although the only reason he got to where he was is because of corruption itself. Arthur would also implement a 10-year moratorium on Chinese immigration, seeing that there was a huge influx of Chinese immigrants while the national population was rapidly increasing and the Freedmen were still trying to find low-skilled jobs; he also banned any immigrant who might become an expense to the economy. Immigration from the majority of Asia would eventually be banned, and heavy anti-Chinese discrimination would lead to most Chinese Americans simply returning home, making the Chinese share of the total population shrink to less than 0.1%.

Arthur did not run for re-election, due to health concerns, so the Republicans nominated James Blaine as their candidate instead. However, there was a clear divide beginning to show in the party. After the Radicals collapsed, the new divisive issue in the party was patronage or meritocracy? Should positions be handed based on political loyalty or purely on the basis of merit? Most Americans favored the second option, given how much corruption was happening at this time, but James Blaine was a guy who was involved in a multitude of corruption scandals. Meanwhile, the Democrat candidate, Grover Cleveland, had a reputation for fighting corruption and promoted his honesty and dignity in the election, helping him very narrowly win the election by less than 1%, becoming the first Democrat to win a presidential election since James Buchanan in 1856. 

As per the Democrats’ states rights tradition, Cleveland would try his best to reduce the power of the federal government and give it back to the states, believing it was both unconstitutional and unhealthy for Congress to hold so much power and for the American public to be so dependent on Washington. He also reduced the high tariffs implemented in 1861. The justification was the Democrats’ support for agrarianism and low tariffs, and his own personal belief for free trade. 

Cleveland ran for re-election, but he was defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the President who served a month of his term. Harrison would continue on previous Republican policies, restoring the tariffs that Cleveland had lowered, rooting out corruption, and supporting America’s expansion abroad, a momentum for which had faded away for a time because it was being used by the South to expand slavery. Although Harrison had good intentions with his protectionism, they cost him re-election to none other than Grover Cleveland, the first President to serve two non-consecutive terms until Donald Trump.

William McKinley Administration

The previous administrations all built up to results under the presidency of William McKinley, under whom America finally began to become not only a united country but the unchallenged superpower of the Western Hemisphere. The previous presidents had built up America’s Navy, a neglected part of America’s military since the Civil War, using the nation’s interconnectivity and industrial might to turn it into the most powerful navy in the world. The economy was prospering, although there was some significant corruption, which bled into the public sector. The previous presidents before McKinley had tried really hard to clean up the corruption, but monopolistic companies still had big sways over individual politicians of the time, adjusting themselves to whatever policies were most popular at the time in order to keep political power. This created a divide in the Republican Party: one faction wanted to represent the businessmen of America, the country’s best and brightest, who had worked their way up to the top, and the other wanted to represent the common working man of America, whose only way to show their priorities was their vote.

McKinley said, “America must avoid the temptations of territorial aggression,” but despite this, his administration quietly looked into any assets or partners in Central America, South America, and the Pacific, to protect our position in the Americas from the rising powers of Imperial Germany and Japan. Hawaii was almost a perfect spot, as it could both protect America’s position in the Americas and help America project influence into the Pacific, which could secure both our military and our trade partners in the region. Following the overthrow of the Queen by American farmers, there were significant calls for both President Benjamin Harrison and President Grover Cleveland to annex the country, although Harrison’s attempts were withdrawn by Cleveland out of principled opposition to imperialism; however, McKinley, recognizing Hawaii’s strategic importance, pushed through and signed a joint resolution annexing the territory in 1898.

McKinley was also very interested in Panama, specifically by building a canal that connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, that would allow for speedily transporting materials from coast to coast by ship, not just through rail. Britain and other European powers were also interested in building a canal. Therefore, if McKinley failed to secure this asset for the United States, it would fall in the hands of some other power that could be hostile to us. 

The final spot of interest was Cuba and Puerto Rico, two places that the US had long wanted to annex, as it would secure American dominance over the Caribbean and would give the US access to lucrative sugar plantations and valuable crops; McKinley would launch a war with Spain to take these territories for America. Here, during the Spanish-American War, a politician would make a national name for himself, volunteering himself and his regiment, which he assembled, to fight for his country. McKinley would pick him as his Vice President to boost support for his re-election campaign, which he would win, but he would not live to see it very far. Only a few months into his second term, McKinley would be assassinated by a radical leftist anarchist, and now, this young Vice President, only 42 years old, would be suddenly thrust into the office of the Presidency, and he would make sure that he would change America forever.