Peter S. Grosscup versus the Rough Rider

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that Presbyterian Judge Peter S. Grosscup was very closely focused on a key aspect of Catholic social teaching which Catholic Father John A. Zahm seems to have ignored, even as the latter personally met with Pope Leo XIII regarding Rerum Novarum: the importance of private property in Catholic social thought.

Progressivism and Connections

This is what happens when you open a can of worms.  We have been working for several years on a series of books tracing the origin of socialism, modernism, and the New Age, the reactions to these res novae or “New Things,” and explaining why our “Just Third Way of Economic Personalism” is the best response and counter to these anti-human “New Things.”

Who Will Own America?

Back at the dawn of the 20^th century, Judge Peter Stengar Grosscup (one of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Trust Busters”) published a series of articles on the importance of ordinary Americans becoming owners of the commercial, industrial, and agricultural productive wealth.  One of these articles was titled “Who Shall Own America?”, published in the December 1905 issue of The American Magazine.

Ends, Means, and Might Makes Right

It may be open to debate (but not much), but the prevailing modern philosophy of modern times is that the end justifies the means . . . which translates into “might makes right.”  If you don’t agree with that assessment, think about it for a moment.  If someone wants something badly enough and is willing to run roughshod over everything and everybody in his or her way to get it, then — if he or she is strong enough to get it — that proves the means used were fully justified, regardless of where the chips fell.  It worked; therefore, it was good.

The Very Model of a Modern Chestertonian

Our previous posting on this subject was an expansion of a comment we made on an article, “Catholics and Race in American History,” on the website of the Catholic World Report, a Catholic webzine.  We thought we were agreeing with the author, Kevin Schmiesing, but adding a few interesting tidbits we’ve uncovered in our research as well as a little analysis of our own.

A Systematic Diffusion of Power

Ironically, it is not out of the realm of possibility that had Theodore Roosevelt won the 1912 U.S. Presidential election, World War I might never have occurred.  It might also have occurred to Judge Peter S. Grosscup and the Rough Rider that when the Federal Reserve was finally established in 1914, here was the desperately needed source of financing that could open access to ownership by all Americans of America’s vast corporate wealth without the necessity of past savings and without redistribution or taxation.

Something Missing

Sometimes we’re tempted to paraphrase Vince Lombardi (even if he didn’t actually say it) and say that money isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.  We’d be completely wrong, of course, but money — properly understood — is such a key element of any economy that it’s easy to make that kind of mistake.

A Philosophy of America

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, we asserted the main reason one “side” is so opposed to “rum, Romanism, and rebellion,” is that there is a profoundly anti-personalist philosophy prevalent today about the human person and each person’s place in society — and this philosophy seems to permeate both sides of the debate.

War and Depression

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, a serious problem developed in the United States following the Civil War: wealth became concentrated.  Many people had no realistic hope of ever owning land or technology that could generate an income to supplement or even replace wage income from labor.

Theodore Roosevelt and the Crisis

In our previous posting on this subject — the failure of the progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to address the issue of widespread ownership of capital — we noted that because of a quarrel between Roosevelt and one of his “trust busters,” Judge Peter S. Grosscup, the ownership issue was sidelined during Roosevelt’s administration.  It never became a part of the progressive platform, despite ongoing efforts by Grosscup to focus people’s attention on the critical need to spread out ownership of America’s productive capacity.

Why Not Ownership?

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. described himself as a “Lincoln Republican.”  That term means pretty much anything someone wants today, but back in Roosevelt’s day it meant something specific: government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  When most people owned a small farm or business or were wage workers socially and economically not too different from owners and managers, society was more egalitarian.

Populism v. Progressivism

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.

New Freedom? Or Old Slavery?

Back in 1913 during his first year in office as president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson published a book, The New Freedom.  Concerned about the growing power of corporations and trusts and the abuses of human rights that accompanied it, Wilson contended that the power of the giant organizations must be reined in.  After all, he needed something to convince the electorate that they hadn’t made too big of a mistake in electing him instead of Theodore Roosevelt. . . .

“The Worst Law in America”?

In its “Review & Outlook” section on Monday of last week, March 26, 2018, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece entitled, “The Worst Law in America.”  Without getting into an argument as to whether the referenced “Martin Act” in New York state really is the worst law in the entire United States — a claim that could no doubt engender some very lively discussion — we do have to admit that the Martin Act is pretty bad.  As described by the editorial staff,

Nothing Succeeds Like Secess!

Secessionism, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (“Secessionism’s Dangerous Return,” 10/17/17, A15), is big, it’s bad, and it’s back.  The way things are going, it’s 1914 all over again, with the big powers and little people squaring off for a final showdown.  As the author, Walter Russell Mead, a fellow of the Hudson Institute and Professor of Foreign Affairs at Bard College, opines,

Socialist Delusions, Capitalist Illusions, X: The Closing of the Frontier

At the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932) delivered a paper titled, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”  Turner’s paper was one of the most important studies of the American character, civilization, and economy ever published.

Justice-Based Management, II: Reforming Corporate Culture

[This posting was rescheduled from November 30.  Sorry.  The refugee crisis seemed more important, and then the whole panic over falling prices by people who think we need to pay more for less to be better off.] In the early twentieth century, Judge Peter S. Grosscup of the United States Seventh Circuit Court published a series of articles on what to do about the problem of rapidly concentrating ownership of the nation’s productive capacity.  With such titles as “Who Shall Own America?” and “How to Save the Corporation,” Judge Grosscup outlined a plan for expanded ownership of corporate equity that, while it relied on past savings and was therefore not universally applicable, at least attempted to address the increasing wealth and income gap that was a growing problem even a century ago.

The Lost Speech of Peter S. Grosscup, VI: People-izing the Corporation

The first principle of economic justice as defined by Kelso and Adler and refined by CESJ is participation.  The institutions of the common good must be open to participation by everyone.  That is why the principle of participation — participative justice — leads off the three principles of economic justice.  After all, if the system isn’t working the same (or nearly the same within reasonable parameters) for everyone, it really cannot be said to be a just system.

The Lost Speech of Peter S. Grosscup, V: Financing Widespread Ownership

In yesterday’s blog, we posted the portion of Grosscup’s “long lost” speech that looked at the two primary types of barriers to widespread capital ownership: 1) Those that deny the right of ownership to ordinary people, and 2) Those that deny the rights of ownership to ordinary people — two very different, if closely related things, and very important.

The Lost Speech of Peter S. Grosscup, V: Restructuring the Social Order

Yesterday we posted the portion of Judge Grosscup’s 1907 speech highlighting the fact that, under then-current methods of corporate finance (which still obtain today), most people had no means to obtain ownership of the large corporations, combinations, and trusts.  In today’s portion, Grosscup makes it clear that it is not the size of the enterprise that matters, but the distribution or size of the individual ownership stake.