In the previous posting on this subject, we examined
Woodrow Wilson’s philosophy of government.
We decided (we don’t know what you
decided) that Wilson’s approach to government was not exactly respectful of the
human person, dignity, and all that.
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| Bishop Francis Clement Kelley |
Wilson’s snobbery,
however, was the arrogance of the intellectual and financial élite, not the social and political élite. To Wilson, as to Walter Bagehot,
the academic and financial élite were
the “real” rulers of the country. Wilson despised the social and political élite as much as he detested “common”
people.
Perhaps this was
why Wilson seemed intent on ruining America’s relations with Mexico, the country’s
neighbor to the south. In his book, Blood-Drenched
Altars (1935), Bishop Francis Clement Kelley (1870-1948) observed that
Wilson seemed to have a positive knack for putting Mexican leaders in difficult
positions. Kelley claimed that a letter from Wilson over Bryan’s signature was
responsible for the assassination of Venustiano Carranza de la Garza
(1859-1920) after Wilson maneuvered Carranza into becoming president.
Bryan and Wilson
also refused to lend U.S. support to the Catholic effort to repeal the Mexican “Reform
Laws” of the 1850s. These laws resulted in the confiscation of Church property
and put the Church directly under the control of the State, to say nothing of
condoning the wholesale murders of Catholic clergy and religious
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| Venustiano Carranza de la Garza |
Bryan’s and
Wilson’s objection was on the grounds that separation of Church and State must
be preserved. It is not entirely clear,
however, that Bryan understood or appreciated the repressive nature of the “separation”
that the Reform Laws imposed; he seems to have had something of a blind spot in
that regard.
Bryan had been
criticized years earlier for his friendliness toward Mexico and Mexicans (Boston Evening Transcript, Monday,
December 29, 1902, 8), and made no mention of the dismissal of the effort to
repeal the Reform Laws in his memoirs, although noting as a great achievement
measures that he considered beneficial to Mexico and the relationship between
the two countries. In this instance Wilson may have overruled Bryan’s judgment.
It is certain that Wilson’s insistence on taking a hard line with Germany over
the sinking of the Lusitania over
Bryan’s objections led to Bryan’s resignation on June 9, 1915.
In any event, Kelley
wrote a detailed letter explaining the Mexican situation to Bryan, and Bryan
commented,
Father Kelley’s letter is on the whole quite moderate I
think, but there is one proposition in it which would seem to be untenable,
namely, that the revolutionists should be asked to repeal the laws which they
have there on the separation of church and state.
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| Edward Mandell House |
That the Catholic
hierarchy would even make an effort to interfere in matters of state in such a
fashion outraged Wilson. He was tempted to punish the Church. As reported by Edward
Mandell House in his diary, “The President was very firm in his determination
to strike the Catholics a public blow, provided they carried their arrogance
too far.” Wilson seems to have thought better of it, however, possibly not wanting
to alienate Mexicans’ co-religionists north of the border, who had always been
a mainstay of the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately for
the leader of a country that was not only confronted with a turning point in
its own history but was poised to become a major player on the world scene,
Wilson combined elitist arrogance with an essentially weak and vacillating
character. He seemed to feel that he was a natural leader because of his
scholarly attainments
and his position, regardless what he might do (or not do) with either.
The problem was,
in common with many politicians today, Wilson tried to command and order,
rather than to persuade and lead, when he lacked the ability or the will to do
either. This would cause Wilson to fail spectacularly at the Versailles peace
talks at the end of the First World War, when more able and, yes, tougher
leaders simply ignored him and his “Fourteen Points.” It also seriously
hampered the reform effort that he had promised to undertake as soon as he took
office in 1913.
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| Wilson the quintessential snob |
More immediately,
Wilson’s fixed belief in the superiority of the “better” sort of people,
meaning the economic and academic élite
whom he considered the real rulers of the country, led him to try and delay and
change the reform program that had gotten him elected. Nowhere was this more
evident than with his interference in and foot-dragging with respect to the
reform of the financial system.
Wilson virtually
personified the dangers the progressives had seen threatening the country: disappearance
of opportunity, rule by an economic élite,
the great mass of people left powerless at the mercy of an all-powerful State
on which they depended for everything — the list is long, too long to give
here.
Matters had been
building up to this for some time, since at least before the Civil War, in
fact. This was seen in the new view of sovereignty and the role of the State
implicit in Scott v. Sandford in
1857. Wilson’s election, however, institutionalized social, economic, and what
might be called “political” positivism in the U.S. government. Not
surprisingly, this paralleled the growth and spread of religious positivism, “modernism,”
in the Catholic Church, along with socialism and “New Age” thought.
There was,
however, one chance that the trend could be reversed. A reform of the financial
system that broke the virtual monopoly the economic élite enjoyed over money and credit would at least keep open the
door to opportunity by emancipating economic growth from the slavery of past
savings — and thus dethrone the fixed belief that “the rich” are essential to a
free market and democracy.
In and of itself,
of course, such a reform would not restore democratic access to the means of
acquiring and possessing private property in capital. It would, however, ensure
that the mechanism existed, much as the landed frontier existed before the
Homestead Act. A “Capital
Homestead Act” duplicating the success of the land-based Homestead Act is,
in fact, not possible without a reform of the financial system — and the
powers-that-be exerted all their efforts to ensure that the reform either would
not take place, or would take place only on their terms.
But that is a
story for another day.
#30#
