In the post-World War I period, American politics was dominated by the presidential administrations of the 1920s, which ushered in what was called the “New Era” in politics. This period was marked by a departure from the previous policies under presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson on several fronts, including domestic policies. While Progressives took an expansive and challenging view of the federal government as the protecting and regulating agent of the economy, businesses and workers, the Republican presidents welcomed a pro-business platitude approach, which, unlike the previous popular and governmentally embraced reforms, discarded and nullified them orthodoxically and believed in conservative economic policies.
To the Progressives of the early 20th century, one of the paramount challenges was controlling the unrestrainable parade of hugely influential industrial monopolies and trusts that had collective cartel powers over markets and excellent fortunes during the capitalistic craze of the Gilded Age. Figures like Roosevelt believed that the rise of great corporations, such as Standard Oil, to monopolize the petroleum industry was not only an economic danger for fairness and opportunities but even for American values and freedoms. Enabling such accumulations of private power and wealth, on the other hand, theorists of that time warned of an inevitable plutocracy that would suppress the people’s rights and interests.. President Roosevelt directed these “trust-busters” as his domestic policies’ number one principal point. Instead of the latter, his administration applied the Sherman Antitrust Act as the official legal basis to launch unprecedented lawsuits against monopolistic companies such as Northern Securities Company and Du Pont Corporate Trust. Fully equipped with all federal authorities, these lawsuits aimed at the erotic world of physical intimacy bring our fears, desires, and wounds’ which may contribute to curbing exploitative business.
The labour legislation policies under the Republican leadership also harmed one of the significant aspects of “the square deal”, in which progressives like Theodore Roosevelt favoured worker fairness. Both Wilson and Wilson promoted acceptable standards for wages, working hours, and working conditions through legislation and action like the Clayton Antitrust Act; however, on the other hand, the 1920s witnessed a reversion to placing the interest of the employers over their employees, just like during the previous periods.
Among the examples of this new way of leadership was Coolidge’s attitude during primary railroad workers’ and coal miners’ strikes that took place in 1922 and 1927, respectively. The Progressive leaders who had previously got involved in mediating had a stamp on labour unrest. Still, their counterparts, the Coolidge brood, let the mining companies use force and violence to end the labour movements. He notoriously gave them the feedback that these worker’s requisites to be paid more and better terms in the future showed an arrogant sense of entitlement, saying, “The worker has no inherited occupation.”
While the Republicans exhibited improvised compliance with the business interest, the Progressives unleashed government power to benefit the American workers’ labour rights and public well-being. While labour progress occurred, it further diminished in the Progressive era. Likewise, the progressive objective to confront societal problems such as child labour, abuse of workers in the course of work, food safety risks and health emergencies through the federal level of intervention was primarily forgotten during this period.. People like Roosevelt and Wilson regarded a national administration that drew its power from the people as crucial to raising living standards and overcoming problems during industrialization.
However, the Republican leaders of the New Deal era viewed the giant expansion of government control and regulation under the previous presidents as encroaching on economic freedom. Harding’s slogan was “A Return to Normalcy,” he focused on a government with less spending and fewer people and dismantling numerous progressive programs and organizations. Coolidge is famously quoted as saying, “The chief business of the American people is business, “which exemplifies his belief that Washington should stay out of running corporations or helping the public and instead focus on business. These regulatory institutions, like the Federal Trade Commission, created by President Wilson to execute the policy of antitrust and consumer protections, found themselves in the middle of a series of difficulties.. Under Harding and Coolidge, only hostile to these oversight roles were appointed; this effectively took off the FTC’s regulatory teeth. Authorities who inspected food and working places witnessed a shrinking of their mandates amid a funding relief.
This was the general stripping out of all positions by Republicans; it reflected their general rejection of the Progressive philosophy, which trusted muscular bureaucracies and federal government agencies as important vehicles for the advancement of the national welfare by responding to the disorders and public health challenges brought about by industrialization. The New Era rulers believed that the government was the main force for balancing corporate failures and the public interest, and this was turned into the doctrine of laissez-faire economics.
The rising Republicanism of the 1920s repudiated completely the values and priorities of the Progressive Era, which had before dominated the social circle.. If the leaders with reformist mindsets had spent decades focusing on building the foundation for the state activism that was meant to foster fair market competition, defence of workers’ rights, combat social ills, and regulate industrial excesses, which were all put in place to uplift the collective good, the leaders of the New Era, on the other hand, systematically dismantled this legacy.
Lastly, the federal oversight that has been adopted, labour protection, and social welfare reforms undergone during Progressivism years have been replaced by intervention in the economic realm in the form of unrivalled capitalism, private enterprise, and overt hostility to regulatory oversights. The big factory bosses were given more importance at the cost of workers, customers and society. This shift in contrast to the past politics drove the USA nation toward a more conservative pro-corporate vision, which exhibited cult-like attitudes for laissez-faire economic matters but at the same time expressed utter contempt for what was civic-minded in origin that gave birth to the progressive revolution a long time ago.. The federal government stopped being a troop that would protect the fairness of democrats and became an antagonist against the easy rule of markets. This business-oriented attitude of leaving everything alone and showing no care for the public state of affairs was still prevalent until the devastating Great Depression upset its very base.
References
Fordham, Benjamin O., and Michael Flynn. “Everything Old Is New Again: The Persistence of Republican Opposition to Multilateralism in American Foreign Policy.” Studies in American Political Development 37, no. 1 (2023): 56-73. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-american-political-development/article/everything-old-is-new-again-the-persistence-of-republican-opposition-to-multilateralism-in-american-foreign-policy/F44B69F178BD7CC9CA71A4B16866DEE8
Katz, Andrea Scoseria. “The Lost Promise of Progressive Formalism.” Tex. L. Rev. 99 (2020): 679. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=law_scholarship
Malherbe, Nick. “How Should We Understand an Anti-Capitalist Psychology of Community?.” In For an Anti-capitalist Psychology of Community, pp. 1-17. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-99696-3_1
Milkis, S. M. (2009). Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy. University Press of Kansas.
Muir, Robyn. “‘Innovative Leaders’: A Progressive Era of Princesses.” In The Disney Princess Phenomenon, pp. 119-154. Bristol University Press, 2023. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/display/book/9781529222111/ch005.xml
Murphy, M. C. Calvin Coolidge: The Presidency and Philosophy of a Progressive Conservative. McFarland, 2023. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ql_EEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Calvin+Coolidge,+Speech+to+American+Society+of+Newspaper+Editors&ots=ZQrELX1jpT&sig=0BgSczVv0OQ-q2XtEhvCdc03ERk
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