The Historical Progressive Movement and The Republicans | The Rise of Teddy Roosevelt
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- čas přidán 26. 07. 2020
- In this episode, we talk about how the Republican Party came to embrace the historical Progressive Movement during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.
The Progressive Movement was less a single movement than a new reformist spirit that swept across America, particularly among the urban middle class and well to do. It believed we could use the novel tools of social science to plan American society to yield more efficient, just, and moral results.
Progressives included political activists, journalists, politicians, preachers and muckraking journalists. They took on an ambitious agenda of reforms reaching nearly every aspect of society from stopping child labor, limiting abusive work hours, creating public schools, purifying food and medicine, enacting women’s suffrage, creating public green spaces, prohibiting alcohol, ending public corruption, and instilling efficiency in both public institutions and private business.
Overall, it was a movement uniting morality and social science to address the new problems of industrialization then transforming America. And under the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, progressives became the most powerful faction within the Republican Party. They worked within the party with its pro-business faction, made up of the Yankee aristocracy and represented by figures like Calvin Coolidge, who believed in the work ethic and the Republican ideal of the sanctity of labor.
These historical progressives, moreover, weren’t exactly the same as modern progressives. They weren’t interested in empowered the poor, workers, or immigrants like Bryan’s populists. There were committed interested in uplifting and “improving” them into version of American protestant middle class morality.
America had begun a new national debate. On one side stood Bryan’s populist Democrats, representing the interests of the farmers and workers the new industrial economy had left behind. On the other stood Roosevelt’s progressive Republicans, representing the urban middle class and professionals concerned about industrial abuses in the cities. America left behind the Third Party System’s Gilded Age debate over the resentments of the Civil War for its Fourth Party System, launching into a new era of reform under the Populist and Progressive Era.
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Your work is excellent and you deserve a lot more views.
Thank you! Tell a friend.
Good Job….!
Fantastic show. Just what I like listening to. Love from the UK 🏴🇬🇧
Can’t wait to buy your book. Thank you.
Thanks! I really appreciate it!
Can't wait for the next video or when you get to what's going on right now
Thanks. I'm really looking forward to explaining how this all connects up to what's going on today now too!
Damn the part about the ability to sell your own labor , dude where are these republicans now ?
I don’t know about progressivism but I have hear that the Conservatives were becoming more populist it certainly would be Interesting to hear your take and also great video
Just subscribed. I've always thought of myself as a Roosevelt Republican but today's party does not match up with those ideals. It's very interesting how the parties have evolved over the years
Welcome to the channel! And be sure to tell others to check it out.
Trump is somewhat close to a Roosevelt Republican. All he has to do is be more economic interventionist.
@@12KevinPower I don't believe that's accurate. Roosevelt was not a populist or isolationist. Roosevelt also believed in keeping big business from taking advantage of the American worker. And most of all, Roosevelt believed in conservation of American lands. Trump has eased restrictions on environmental policies, given the wealthy tax cuts, and diminished American influence on the world stage. Does not seem anywhere close to Roosevelt.
Luis Rivera Trump flipped the traditional
Republican orthodoxy on trade/tariffs, libertarian economics on technology/capital/labor, and unions especially in industry, policing. A return of the Pro-Tariff Nationalist Wing of the Republican Party pre-Herbert Hoover.
@@12KevinPower Trump's approach to trade does not make him Roosevelt. There many other areas where the policy of the Trump Administration breaks away from the Progressive movement of the early 20th Century. Comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges.
Can I get college credits for watching these? Asking for a friend.
Good point at 12:54
It was definitely a different time, and you really can't just port them back from the past to the present and see them match up 1 to 1
I've been reading the book and the one thing that confuses me around this time is what is the difference between the bourbon Democrats and the Yankee/ Coolidge styled republicans
The Bourbons were pro business but Jeffersonian limited government (free trade, etc). Think the business of the South, agriculture. The Yankees were pro business but more interested in energetic government, such as to regulate away immoral interlopers who weren't also part of the Yankee aristocracy. Also mainly protectionist. Think the manufacturing business of the North.
I’d argue that the simplest way to put it would be that the Calvin Coolidge style Republicans were basically orthodox Hamiltonians while the Grover Cleveland style Democrats were basically orthodox Jeffersonians that now only look as indistinguishable as they do in hindsight due to the innovations of the Progressive Era forward that massively expanded the size and scope of government beyond what any of the Founders could have dreamed of.
However, there were two groups that were covered by the Bourbon Democrat label which much like the term Corporate Democrat today was not something they chose for themselves but was a smear by their Populist rivals within the party. You had those aforementioned Classical Liberals who were essentially the American counterparts to the Gladstonian or Manchester Liberals of the UK, but they also included the reactionary Southern landowner types.
Actually, it’s a lot like how the Progressive Republicans or the Insurgents as the Classical Conservative establishment called them, themselves variously referred to as the Stalwarts and Standpatters over the years, can be sorted out into the Progressive Conservatives like Theodore Roosevelt who were essentially the American counterparts to the Disraelian or One-Nation Conservatives that were also from the UK and the true radicals such as Robert La Follette.
I suppose that that’s delving into more than you were asking about seven months ago and I suppose you were asking Frank who gave his own answer which I won’t dispute all that much in of itself. But hey, when inspiration strikes, I can’t help myself. I just thought it was worth placing the subjects within the wider backdrop of American history and the context of international political patterns. Or rather, at least in the way in which I see it anyway.
The problem with political categorization in America around the turn of the 20th Century is that, when put into a wider context, many of the “Insurgent Republicans” such as Theodore Roosevelt were more akin to Disraelian progressive conservatives than egalitarian radicals as opposed to the likes of Robert La Follette and many of the "Bourbon Democrats” such as Grover Cleveland were more akin to Gladstonian classical liberals than aristocratic reactionaries as opposed to the likes of Wade Hampton. The fact that they shared common cause in conflict with right-wing establishment Republicans and left-wing populist Democrats, the ones who actually gave them those names rather than being chosen for themselves, seems to have inseparably intertwined their legacies in historical memory. Perhaps because their rivals in some sense won out in the long run. While Republicans like Roosevelt did advocate for higher levels of government intervention in the economy, when it came to other major issues including trade, immigration and imperialism, Democrats like Cleveland were indeed to their left, more liberal or whatever other term might be most appropriate.
EDIT: I typed this comment after pausing at 12:10. If I had kept watching, I'd have no prerogative to type out what's below. I'll still leave it here though. Awesome vid!
I've really, really liked your videos, and I appreciate that you subtly speak about historical issues in modern language that makes it more relatable to the current realignment.
But I don't agree with all of the grafting of today you do onto yesterday. For example, I disagree that TR was out to remove privilege in the 21st century sense of the word. In my non-expert evaluation, TR was looking to hit the reset button on a sclerotic system that no longer was fulfilling the promise of American upward mobility. This opposed to the modern view of "removing privilege," which colloquially means to redistribute resources to those who, in the reformer's view, have been exploited. Those are very, very different.
TR wanted to change the way the game was played. People like AOC want to change the outcomes of the game.
E.g. Roosevelt would say "Break-Up Walmart" instead of institutionalizing them in an American working class by forming a union. TR was almost proto-fascist in his ideal view of a classless society that optimized mankind. Not at all the same as the DemSoc view of leaving nobody behind for any reason.
This is obviously a bigger discussion than comments can really handle, but I don't exactly disagree. Progressivism as an ideology--using expertise and social science to drive moral and social progress--is pretty transferable over time. The individual issues not so much. And modern progressivism isn't exactly historical progressivism. It's become a flexible and contested term over the last decade. A lot of people who call themselves progressives now aren't progressive in the historical sense (or even the ideological sense) but rather liberals or something new entirely.
Well gee, when you actually explain it is makes it clear that it was evil from the start.