Looking back a
century ago, and as we saw in Tuesday's posting, we often find that words and language were used in ways that seem a
little alien to the people of today. Things
that once seemed not quite right are now deemed the height of virtue, while
goods things have now become something pretty bad, or at least very different
from what they were.
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| William Jennings Bryan |
Take, for
instance, the terms “populist” and “progressive.” Back in the 1912 presidential campaign both
of these terms meant someone tending to the moderate middle rather than the
conservative or liberal extremes. The
difference was that a populist started from the liberal end of the spectrum,
while a progressive came from the conservative end. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was the
quintessential progressive, while William Jennings Bryan was the populist icon.
It is therefore no
exaggeration to say that Roosevelt was to progressivism what Bryan was to
populism. Whatever their flaws (and historians have been quick to focus on the
faults of both men, rather than on their numerous strengths and virtues),
Roosevelt and Bryan had solid principles. They were not afraid to act in
accordance with those principles. They might do the wrong thing, sometimes
rather spectacularly, but no one could ever justly accuse either one of them of
being dishonest, insincere, or equivocating.
Their respective
goals, however, were different, often substantially so.
Roosevelt
directed most of his efforts toward the breakup of monopolies. Bound by the
slavery of past savings, however, he was convinced progress inevitably meant
that ownership as well as the physical capital itself must be concentrated. He
therefore believed himself forced to tolerate some monopolies, as long as the
State regulated them properly.
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| J. Pierpont Morgan |
This toleration sometimes
manifested itself in ways that to us, secure in the knowledge that ownership
does not have to be concentrated, come across as wrongheadedness, not to say
pure hypocrisy. For example, Roosevelt was determined to destroy John Davison
Rockefeller’s (1839-1937) Standard Oil, and at the same time lauded John
Pierpont Morgan’s (1837-1913) U.S. Steel as a model of industrial organization! Naturally, the Steel Trust repaid
Roosevelt’s support by endorsing Wilson for president. (Theodore Roosevelt, “Governor Wilson and the
Trusts,” speech given at Oyster Bay, New York, November 2, 1912, Social Justice and Popular Rule: Essays,
Addresses, and Public Statements Relating to the Progressive Movement
(1910-1916). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926, 346.)
Not that Bryan
was in favor of monopolies; he condemned them just as heartily as Roosevelt. (“The Trusts the Issue, Says Bryan: New York
Speech of Democracy’s Leader Devoted Largely to the Evils of Monopoly —
Advocates Court of Arbitration for Capital and Labor,” The Spartanburg Herald, Friday, August 31, 1906, 1.) Where Roosevelt wanted to reform the
corporate form of business organization, however, Bryan wanted to eliminate it,
a goal reflected in Wilson’s speeches.
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| Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. |
Thus, where Bryan
recommended State control to achieve desired results, Roosevelt emphasized
government regulation intended to prevent either “capital” or “labor” from
taking unfair advantage of the other. Roosevelt looked toward the
implementation and maintenance of equality of opportunity, not results — what
he called “a square deal”:
Our country — this great Republic — means nothing unless it
means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and,
in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed
the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is why the history
of America is now the central feature of the history of the world; for the
world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy. (Theodore Roosevelt,
“The New Nationalism,” speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910. Social
Justice and Popular Rule: Essays, Addresses, and Public Statements Relating to
the Progressive Movement (1910-1916). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1926, 5.)
Roosevelt,
however, seemed to be thinking in terms of owners and workers as separate
classes. This was in contrast to one of his “trust busters,” Judge Peter S. Grosscup.
Grosscup was just
as forceful as Roosevelt and Bryan in his denunciations of the trusts, and as
adamant as Roosevelt that the corporation be reformed. In 1907, in fact,
Roosevelt asked Grosscup to work up a plan to reform the corporate structure.
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| Peter S. Grosscup |
Judging from
Grosscup’s writings, he believed that the chief reform needed was to spread out
ownership of corporations. From 1905 through 1919 Grosscup wrote a series of
insightful articles, both popular and scholarly, on the absolute necessity of
workers becoming part owners of the corporations that employed them. Even then,
however, he spoke in terms of equality of opportunity, not results imposed by
coercion. (Peter S. Grosscup, “The Government’s Relation to Corporate
Construction and Management,” Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 32, Federal
Regulation of Industry (July, 1908, 3-29), 18-19.)
While Grosscup,
too, was trapped by the slavery of past savings, he promoted a number of plans
that, had they had strong legislative support and the cooperation of business
leaders, might have worked. Grosscup’s
proposals, in fact, bear a strong resemblance to those outlined by Pope Leo
XIII in Rerum Novarum.
We have no way of
knowing whether Grosscup was influenced by Rerum
Novarum and Leo XIII’s writings directed to America. There is a
possibility, however. Chicago, where Grosscup was headquartered as justice on
the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, is not too far from Saint
Paul, Minnesota, where John Ireland was archbishop.
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| Archbishop John Ireland |
Roosevelt was a
friend of Archbishop Ireland. Ireland was a strong progressive, albeit today
often incorrectly characterized as a populist, and an avid supporter of an
orthodox interpretation of Rerum Novarum.
Ireland was in sharp contrast to the type of “Americanist” that the renegade
priest Father Edward McGlynn, a friend and avid supporter of Henry George
represented.
Where McGlynn
subordinated religious truth and Church administration to the positivism that
was taking over the civil order, the archbishop was an “Americanist” of the
type Leo XIII praised in Testem
Benevolenitae Nostrae; Ireland worked to reconcile the religious and the
civil order to work together instead of at cross-purposes. Ireland and Grosscup
were acquainted and may have exchanged ideas, as they both served on the
Committee on Arrangements of the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations
in 1907. (New York National Civic Federation, Proceedings on the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations Under
the Auspices of the National Civic Federation, October 22-25, 1907. New
York: The McConnell Printing Company, 1908, 15. Grosscup spoke on the
inadequacy of the anti-trust laws then in force (ibid., 221-231).)
Ireland was a
strong advocate of widely owned capital in land. He initiated what, according
to some authorities, “was the most extensive and successful wholesale Catholic
colonization effort in American history.” (Rev. James P. Shannon, “Bishop
Ireland’s Connemara Experiment,” Minnesota
History magazine, March 1957, 205-213.) Two progressive Roosevelt men would
have found common ground on many subjects — such as broad-based capital
ownership, especially as an alternative to State power as a way of breaking up
the power of the monopolies.
Grosscup and
Roosevelt had some other differences, however, and that would cause problems,
as we will see.
#30#
