The
1928 Presidential Election remains the zenith of Republican political
power. Republican Herbert Hoover crushed
Democrat Al Smith, winning 58 percent of the popular vote and 83 percent of the
electoral vote. [1] The landslide was fueled by years of prosperity, affection
for outgoing President Calvin Coolidge, and deep seated concerns over Smith’s Catholicism.
Republicans also amassed majorities in the House and Senate not seen again
until 2014.
Ironically,
the 1928 election also marked the formation of an American consensus supporting
a permanent and expanding role for the federal government. Both candidates
espoused the need for federal intervention in the economy. [2] Both party
platforms articulated a vision of economic vitality guided by federal
regulation. [3] Business leaders embraced “the advantages of an economy managed
through government-business cooperation.” [4]
Contrast
the national consensus of 1928 with 1876.
In that turbulent year both Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat
Samuel J. Tilden were universally opposed to government intervention. The Republican and Democratic Platforms
displayed equal vehemence against the federal government. In fact, the Democratic Party was viewed as
an “orderly, dependable, even conservative partner.” [5] Tilden spoke out
against:
“…a spirit of
gambling adventure, engendered by false
systems of public finance; a grasping centralization absorbing all functions of
local authorities, and assuming to control the industries of individuals by
largesses to favored classes from the public treasury of money wrung from the
body of the people by taxation.” [6]
What
happened during the intervening 52 years to cause such a paradigm shift
relating to the role of the federal government?
The
years after America’s Civil War unleashed an explosion of invention,
entrepreneurship, and economic growth unknown in world history. America would
complete its conquest of North America, lead the world in innovation, and
in1898 emerge as a major world power.
America became the foremost land of opportunity attracting record
numbers of immigrants desiring farmland in the west or employment in the cities
of the east.
This
historic introduction of technology and population fundamentally challenged
America’s existing civic culture.
Reconciling America’s founding values with the modern age would change
our nation forever.
America
in 1876 was organized around small communities.
This had always been a fundamental aspect of rural life, and it now manifested
itself in urban neighborhoods. Within
these small spheres everyone knew each other, allowing for direct local engagement
of affected individuals in every matter relating to collective well-being. Such
intimacy supported informal and private sector solutions that formed the basis
of America’s founding principles. [7]
This
local mindset formed the national consensus, which universally rejected federal
government activism. The 1876 Democratic
Party Platform ended with:
“Resolved, That this Convention, representing the
Democratic party of the States, do cordially indorse the action of the present
House of Representatives in reducing and curtailing the expenses of the Federal
Government, in cutting down enormous salaries, extravagant appropriations, and
in abolishing useless offices and places not required by the public
necessities, and we shall trust to the firmness of the Democratic members of
the House that no committee of conference and no misinterpretation of rules will
be allowed to defeat these wholesome measures of economy demanded by the
country.”[8]
The
absence of federal regulations, combined with sustained peace and stability in
the late Nineteenth Century, to unleash Americans’ genius for invention and
innovation. Every new technology, every
new machine, every new business and business leader, accelerated the American
economy to previously unrealized levels.
The typewriter (1867), the telephone (1876) the adding machine (1888),
and cash register (1897) thoroughly reinvented business. [9]
These
technologies linked America together in new ways on a broad scale. A new middle class arose composed of
specialists and managers to run this new business age. Railroads allowed goods and services to move
across the continent. Other forms of transportation, cable cars (1873),
elevated trains (1878), and subways (1895) bridged neighborhoods and reached
out to surrounding rural areas.
Electricity (1880) made urban areas safer and extended the hours used
available for work and play. [10] These technologies were open to all, making
cities lands of opportunity as enticing as the vast western expanses of
America.
Cities
grew. In 1860 only 16 percent of
Americans lived in areas with more than 8,000 inhabitants. By 1890 this had more than doubled. City population exploded. New York City was
just over 800,000 in 1860. By the 1930
Census in was 6.9 million. Chicago went from 112,000 to 3.47 million. Detroit went from a small town to 1.5
million. [11]
The
enthrallment for urbanization and the nationalization of America shattered the
intimacy of rural communities and urban neighborhoods. The logistics of providing water, sewer, public
sanitation (i.e. removal of animal waste), garbage collection, law enforcement,
and maintaining roads and light rail overwhelmed informal and private sector
solutions.
The
breadth and pace of change had other consequences: “Yet to almost all of the
people who created them, these themes meant only dislocation and bewilderment.
America in the late Nineteenth Century was a society without core. It lacked those national centers of authority
and information which might have given order to such swift changes.” [12]
Urban
political machines served as interim mechanisms to translate neighborhood culture
into metropolitan-wide operations. This
came at the price of corruption and myopia. [13] The rapidly expanding demand
for urban infrastructure and services eventually overwhelmed even the most
pervasive city machines. [14] “As more people clustered into smaller spaces, it
became harder to isolate the individual.
As more of a previously distant world intruded upon community life, it
grew more difficult to untangle what an individual did and what was done to him,
even to distinguish the community itself from the society around it.” [15]
The
complexity, scope, and pace of challenges were reaching a breaking point. It
was at this juncture that leaders and innovators among the new urban middle
class saw their opportunity to apply skills honed from managing complex and
geographically dispersed enterprises in the private sector. [16]
Broadly
defined as the Progressive Era, these were local efforts to bring order out of
chaos, honest government out of corruption, and efficiency out of waste. The urban middle class offered ways to save
cities from themselves. Their movement
was not ideological, but at times idealistic.
Both Republicans and Democrats saw the utility in adopting new methods to
solve the new problems. [17]
Tangible
successes from this array of ad hoc experiments had leaders using newspapers
and magazines to share their experiences and explore increasingly expansive
ways to apply their approaches. For
them, and a new wave of political & economic thinkers, the lessons from
business could be applied to public services and local governance. It was only a short matter of time, and an
even shorter philosophical leap, for many of these thinkers and doers looking
for ways to apply industrial design in factories to society as a whole, to
“regulate society’s movements to produce maximum returns for a minimum outlay
of time and effort.” [18]
Business
leaders also saw the benefits of adequate, predictable, urban services and
infrastructure. Concerns about a
slippery slope to Socialism or Communism were not voiced as every step forward
was framed in terms of management, professionalism, honesty, the rule of law,
and industrial innovation. [19]
The
ascendancy of Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt provided a national forum and
credibility to the myriad of local initiatives.
This included systemizing government at all levels, professionalizing
administration, and the collecting and assessment of objective data to guide
decisions. By 1912, the Progressive era had established government at all
levels including the federal, as a co-equal partner to business, “in order to
achieve the adaptable order that both public officials and private interests
sought, some sense of mutual purpose, some accommodation that still allowed
each side ample room to maneuver, was considered indispensable.” [20]
President
Woodrow Wilson filled his Administration with Progressive thinkers and doers.
The federal funding of innovation and statistical research, and the
collaboration between government, industry, and academia completed the civic
shift begun in earnest after the financial panic (depression) of 1873.
“Nineteen
sixteen marked “the completion of the federal scientific establishment”,
covering industry, agriculture, and an assortment of public services, and much
the same was true of the basic regulatory mechanisms in both Federal and state governments...what
had emerged by the war years was an important segment of the population, a
crucial one in terms of both public and private leadership, acting from common
assumptions and speaking a common language.
A bureaucratic orientation now defined a basic part of the nation’s
discourse.”
[21]
The
Harding-Coolidge Administrations gave America the opportunity to assess the
legacy of the Progressive Era. Andrew
Mellon, Treasury Secretary under both Harding and Coolidge, led the way in
rolling back taxes and spending while dismantling or privatizing federal
functions. Unfortunately, other Harding Cabinet members saw personal
opportunity and fell into various ethical pits, like the Tea Pot Dome scandal. [22]
Harding’s
death allowed Coolidge to bring the full power of the Presidency to support
Mellon’s crusade against federal government over reach. They were opposed by Cabinet Secretaries and
Republicans in Congress who jealously guarded their fiefdoms and prerogatives.
[23] Coolidge also used the new medium of radio to warn Americans about the
folly of federal intervention and unbridled spending. [24] Coolidge ultimately
prevailed, creating a budget surplus that reduced the national debt by nearly
37 percent. The results were full employment (less than 2% unemployment) and an
economy booming with manufacturing growing by 33%, and iron and steel
production doubling. [25]
Not
everyone was thrilled with Coolidge’s counter revolution against the
Progressive’s legacy. Commerce
Department Secretary, Herbert Hoover, a Harding holdover, opposed the
Coolidge-Mellon rollbacks of taxes and spending. Unlike Coolidge, Hoover was a product of the
Progressive Era – a private sector technocrat who looked for ways to apply
industrial design to the economy. [26] In his book, “American Individualism”,
Hoover offered the quintessential mindset of Progressivism, “Our mass of
regulation of public utilities and our legislation against restraint of trade
is the monument to our intent to preserve an equality of opportunity.” [27]
Coolidge
worried about his counter revolution in the hands of Hoover. The Republican platform of 1928 proved his
worst fears:
The mighty contribution to general well-being which can be made by a
government controlled by men of character and courage, whose abilities are
equal to their responsibilities, is self-evident, and should not blind us to
the consequences which its loss would entail.
We believe that the Government should make every effort to aid the
industry by protection, by removing any restrictions which may be hampering its
development, and by increased technical and economic research investigations
which are necessary for its welfare and normal development.
We stand for the administration of the radio facilities of the United
States under wise and expert government supervision.
The
Government today is made up of thousands of conscientious, earnest,
self-sacrificing men and women, whose single thought is service to the nation.
We pledge
ourselves to maintain and, if possible, to improve the quality of this great
company of Federal employees.
[28]
It only took 52 years to
shift from an America driven by small government in rural settings and urban
neighborhoods to one that cheered expansion of federal and executive power via
the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, the Great Society, and the Carter
Administration. In 1980, America once
again decided to take stock of what had happened. It comes as no surprise that one of President
Reagan’s first acts was to place the portrait of Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet
Room to inspire his own revolution.
FOOTNOTES
[3] Ray A. Billington; “American History after 1865”
(Littlefield, Adams & Company 1971) p. 165.
[4] Otis L. Graham, Jr.; “Toward a Planned Society”
(Oxford University Press 1977) p. 11.
[5] Matthew Josephson; “The Politicos” (Harcourt, Brace
& World, Inc. 1938) p. 206.
[6] Ibid., p. 220.
[7] Robert H. Wiebe; “The Search for Order 1877-1920” (Hill
and Wang 1967) pp. 3-4.
[9] Keith W. Olson, Wood
Gray, Richard Hofstadter, “outline of American History (U.S Information Agency
1981) p. 96.
[10] Op. Cit., Billington,
p. 72.
[12]
Op. Cit., Wiebe, p. 12.
[3]
William L. Riordon, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall” (E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.
1963). First published in 1905, this is best case study on the double-edged
impact of political machines.
[14]
Op. Cit., Wiebe, pp.30-31.
[15]
Ibid., pp. 133.
[16]
Ibid., pp. 113 & 132.
[17]
Ibid., p. 143.
[18]
Ibid., pp. 155-156.
[19]
Ibid., pp. 186-187.
[20]
Ibid., p. 195.
[21]
Ibid., pp. 294-295.
[22]
Amity Shlaes, “Coolidge” (Harper Collins 2013) p.239.
[23]
Ibid., pp. 262-272 and 278.
[24]
Ibid., p. 273.
[25]
Ibid., p. 419.
[26]
Amity Shlaes, “The Forgotten Man” (Harper Collins 2007) p. 32.
[27]
Ibid., p. 34.
