American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Debs and associates]: Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (University of Illinois Press, 1982), chs. 7, 8; Sally M. Miller, Victor Berger and the Promise of Constructive Socialism, 1910–1920 (Greenwood Press, 1973), chs. 2–3.

  [Socialist party membership and budget]: Kipnis, pp. 364–65.

  [Socialist platform, 1912]: reprinted in Schlesinger, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 2486–90.

  369 [Wilson’s troubles with his History]: Link, Road to the White House, pp. 381–87.

  [Hearst on Wilson]: quoted in ibid., pp. 382–83.

  [Democratic convention, 1912]: ibid., ch. 13.

  [Bryan’s resolution and subsequent charge]: quoted in ibid., pp. 442–43.

  Armageddon

  371 [Roosevelt’s reception at Progressive party convention]: Mowry, Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, op. cit., p. 264.

  [“Authentic voice” of Progressive convention]: Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy, op. cit., p. 117.

  [“They were crusaders; he was not”]: New York Times, August 7, 1912, p. 2.

  372 [Roosevelt on having to “drag forward” Addams]: Roosevelt to Arthur H. Lee, November 5, 1912, in Morison, Letters, op. cit., vol. 7, p. 633.

  [Campaign of 1912]: George E. Mowry, “Election of 1912,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971), pp. 2135–66; Gardner, op. cit., ch. 13; Link, Road to the White House, op. cit., ch. 14.

  [Taft on his role as a conservative]: quoted in Mowry in Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 2158.

  [Taft’s attacks on “dangerous changes” and direct democracy]: “Acceptance Speech,” August 2, 1912, in ibid., pp. 2204–19, quoted at pp. 2204, 2208.

  [Debs on making the working class the ruling class]: quoted in Salvatore, op. cit., p. 263.

  [The “Ohio yell”]: ibid., p. 264.

  373 [Woodrow Wilson on liberty “never coming from the government”]: John Wells Davidson, ed., A Crossroads of Freedom (Wilson’s 1912 campaign speeches) (Yale University Press, 1956), p. 130.

  [Roosevelt’s response]: ibid., pp. 123, 130; Mowry in Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 2160.

  [Journal cartoon]: reprinted in Davidson, p. 123.

  [Wilson’s shift to acceptance of government]: ibid, p. 264.

  [Democratic party platform plank on democracy]: Schlesinger, vol. 3, pp. 2169, 2177.

  374 [Progressive party planks on democracy]: ibid., pp. 2186–87.

  [Wilson on the referendum]: Davidson, p. 487.

  [Observer on the secrets of Wilson’s “verbal power”]: William Bayard Hale, quoted in George and George, op. cit., p. 108.

  [Georges on Wilson’s mastery of oratorical techniques]: ibid.

  [Democratic party plank on antitrust policy]: Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 2168.

  [Progressive party plank on antitrust policy]: ibid., p. 2190.

  375 [Roosevelt quoting Morgan on not unscrambling an omelet]: quoted in Cooper, op. cit.,p. 196.

  [Deletion of antitrust plank]: Mowry, pp. 269–71.

  [Brandeis establishing connection with Wilson]: Philippa Strum, Brandeis (Harvard University Press, 1984), read in manuscript; Melvin I. Urofsky, “Wilson, Brandeis, and the Trust Issue, 1912–1914,” Mid-America, vol. 49, no. 1 (January 1967), pp. 3–28.

  375 [Brandeis’s evaluation of Wilson after first meeting]: Brandeis to Alfred Brandeis, August 29, 1912, in Melvin I. Urofsky and David W. Levy, eds., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis (State University of New York Press, 1971–78), vol. 2, p. 661.

  [Roosevelt’s ambivalence on race]: Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Louisiana State University Press, 1980), esp. chs. 1, 5.

  376 [Maude Malone’s confrontation with Wilson]: quoted in Davidson, p. 472.

  [The wounding of Roosevelt]: Frank K. Kelly, The Fight for the White House (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1961), ch. 11, assailant quoted at p. 244, Roosevelt at pp. 245, 246, 247.

  377 [The candidates’ climactic speeches]: quoted in Cooper, p. 202, and Link, Wilson Papers, op.cit., vol. 25, pp. 493–501, at 497.

  [Election results]: Cooper, pp. 204–5; Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 2242 (state-by-state touts); Sundquist, op. cit., p. 165.

  [Roosevelt’s postelection comment]: Roosevelt to Arthur Hamilton Lee, November 5, 1912, in Morison, Letters, vol. 7, p. 633; Roosevelt to James R. Garfield, November 8, 1912, in ibid., p. 637.

  11. THE NEW FREEDOM

  381 [Gary steel-making]: Stewart H. Holbrook, Iron Brew: A Century of American Ore and Steel (Macmillan, 1939), pp. 298–304.

  [Coal mining in Appalachia]: Carter Goodrich, The Miner’s Freedom: A Study of the Working Life in a Changing Industry (Marshall Jones, 1925), pp. 19–27, quoted at p. 22.

  [Amoskeag]: Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach, Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory City (Pantheon, 1978), pp. 34–38, 41–49 (interview with Mary Cunion, weaver), 196–200 (interview with Yvonne Dionne).

  382 [Mechanization in tire manufacture]: Alfred Lief, The Firestone Story (McGraw-Hill, 1951), pp. 65–66.

  [American socialism during the progressive era]: Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897–1912 (Columbia University Press, 1952).

  383 [Taft’s trust-busting and tax backing]: Donald F. Anderson, William Howard Taft: A Conservative Conception of the Presidency (Cornell University Press, 1968), pp. 78–82, 108–10, 230.

  [Wilson on leadership]: quoted in Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., Progressivism in America (NewViewpoints, 1974), p. 224; see also Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,”Political Science Quarterly, vol. 2 (June 1887), pp. 197–222.

  [Wilson on need of concert of purpose]: “Remarks in Trenton to the New Jersey Electors,” January 13, 1913, in Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton University Press, 1966–83), vol. 27, pp. 40–44, quoted at p. 41.

  The Engine of Democracy

  [Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural]: Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton UniversityPress, 1956), pp. 57–60; John Morton Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality (Little, Brown, 1956), p. 65.

  384 [Wilson’s Inaugural Address]: “An Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1913, in Link, Papers, op. cit., vol. 27, pp. 148–52.

  385 [Wilson’s Administration in early years as textbook model of presidential leadership]: Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917 (Harper & Bros., 1954), ch. 2; John J. Broesamle, “The Democrats,” in Lewis L. Gould, ed., The Progressive Era (Syracuse University Press, 1974), pp. 101–3; John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest (Harvard University Press, 1983), ch. 15.

  [Wilson on President as “prime minister”]: Wilson to Alexander Mitchell Palmer, February 5, 1913, in Link, Papers, vol. 27, pp. 99–100.

  [Wilson’s denunciations of tariff lobbyists]: quoted in Link, The New Freedom, p. 187.

  [Wilson on “acid test”for cabinet ministers]: quoted in ibid., p. 11.

  386 [La Follette on rejection of Brandeis]: La Follette to Josephine La Follette Siebecker, March16, 1913, in Belle Case La Follette and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La Follette (Macmillan,1953), vol. 1, p. 462.

  386 [Broesamle on Wilson’s personal control of his party]: Broesamle in Gould, quoted al pp.102–3.

  [Tariff reform]: Link, The New Freedom, ch. 6.

  [Wilson on stimulating business to be more efficient]: “An Address on Tariff Reform to a Joint Session of Congress,” April 8, 1913, in Link, Papers, vol. 27, pp. 269–72, quoted at p. 271.

  [Houston on downward revision]: David F. Houston to W. H. Page, September 12, 1913, quoted in Link, The New Freedom, p. 194.

  387 [Banking and currency reform]: ibid., ch. 7.

  [Wilson on the variety of judgments on banking]: quoted in Cooper, p. 233.

  [Ekirch on money trust viewed as a spider web]: Ekirch, op. cit., p. 226.

  [Wilson’s message to Congress on currency legislation]: “An Address on Banking and Currency Reform to a Joint Session of Congress,” June 23, 1913, in Link, Papers, v
ol. 27, pp. 570–73, quoted at pp. 572–73.

  388 [Lindbergh and La Follette on Federal Reserve Act]: quoted in Link, The New Freedom, p. 239; see also La Follette and La Follette, vol. 1, pp. 486–87.

  [Link on Federal Reserve Act]: Link, The New Freedom, p. 238.

  [Burleson’s advice to Wilson on patronage]: quoted in ibid., pp. 158–59 (from an interview of Burleson by R. S. Baker, March 17–19, 1927).

  [O’Gorman’s thwarting of Wilson]: ibid., pp. 165–67.

  [Wilson to Burleson on “old standpatters”]: quoted in Cooper, p. 231.

  389 [Wilson’s short-run and long-run strategies]: Cooper, pp. 231–32; Broesamle in Gould, pp.104–5; James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy (Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp.131–33; Blum, passim.

  The Anatomy of Protest

  [Tendencies toward economic concentration]: John M. Blair, Economic Concentration: Structure, Behavior and Public Policy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), esp. ch. 11; G. Warren Nutter and Henry Adler Einhorn, Enterprise Monopoly in the United States: 1899–1958 (Columbia University Press, 1969), esp. chs. 2, 3; Ralph L. Nelson, Merger Movements in American Industry, 1895–1956 (Princeton University Press, 1959); Edward S. Herman, Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981).

  [“A burst of merger activity”]: Nelson, p. 34.

  [Antitrust legislation]: Link, The New Freedom, op. cit., ch. 13.

  390 [Hofstadter on the closed system]: Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 227.

  [Wilson on the “powers that have governed us”]: quoted in Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 514.

  [Rockefeller on petroleum prices]: testimony before the Committee on Manufactures, House Report, no. 3112, 50th Congress, 1st Session (1888), p. 389.

  [Big business’s arguments in favor of consolidation]: Edward C. Kirkland, Industry Comes of Age (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), pp. 310–14.

  391 [Brandeis’s economic views]: Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (Harvard University Press, 1984), passim.

  [Strum on Brandeis and Wilson]: ibid., p. 221.

  392 [Brandeis’s opposition to economic concentration]: Melvin I. Urofsky, “Wilson, Brandeis and the Trust Issue, 1912–1914,” Mid-America, vol. 49, no. 1 (January 1967), p. 22.

  [Brandeis on industrial democracy]: Louis D. Brandeis, testimony before the Commission on Industrial Relations, New York, N.Y., January 23, 1915, Senate Doc. 415, 64th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 7657–81, quoted at pp. 7662, 7659, 7660, 7665, respectively.

  [Croly]: Charles Forcey, The Crossroads of Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 1961), ch. 1 and passim; Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (Macmillan, 1910).

  392–93 [Croly’s views on Hamilton and Jefferson]: Croly, ch. 2.

  393 [Croly on Roosevelt’s moral urgings]: ibid., p. 174.

  [Weyl]: Forcey, ch. 2; Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy (Macmillan, 1912).

  [Weyl on America’s problems]: Weyl, pp. 1–2.

  393–94 [Weyl on being pragmatic and working for progress through prosperity]: ibid., chs. 12–13, pp. 268–70, quoted at p. 191.

  394 [Lippmann]:Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Little, Brown, 1980); Benjamin F. Wright, Five Public Philosophies of Walter Lippmann (University of Texas Press, 1973). Marquis Childs and James Reston.eds., Walter Lippmann and His Times (Harcourt,Brace, 1959); Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Politics (Mitchell Kennerly, 1913); Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery (Mitchell Kennerly, 1914).

  [Croly to Hand on Lippmann]: quoted in Steel, p. 60.

  395 [Steel on Preface to Politics]: ibid., p. 47.

  [“Tabooing our impulses”]: Preface to Politics, p. 49.

  [“Chaos of a new freedom”]: see Drift and Mastery, introduction.

  [Failures of liberal and progressive economic thought]: R. Jeffrey Lustig, Corporate Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory, 1890–1920 (University of California Press, 1982).

  396 [The socialist movement and parties during the Wilson era]: James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925 (Monthly Review Press, 1967), esp. ch. 2; Kipnis, op. cit.; Aileen S. Kraditor, The Radical Persuasion, 1890–1917 (Louisiana State University Press, 1981); Leon Fink, review of Kraditor, The Radical Persuasion, in The Nation, vol. 236, no.4 (June 18, 1983), pp. 770–73.

  [De Leon]: Don K. McKee, “Daniel De Leon: A Reappraisal,” Labor History, vol. 1, no. 3 (Fall 1960), pp. 264–97; Kipnis, pp. 12–19.

  [“Unconditional surrender of the capitalist system”]: quoted in Kipnis, p. 16.

  396–97 [Socialist Party makeup and evolution]: Milton Cantor, The Divided Left (Hill and Wang, 1978), pp. 23–24, quoted at p. 24; see also David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (Macmillan, 1955), esp. chs. 1–3; Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (University of Illinois Press, 1982); Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, 5th ed. (Russell & Russell, 1965), chs. 4–5; Sally M. Miller, Victor Berger and the Promise of Constructive Socialism, 1910–1920 (Greenwood, 1973), esp. ch. 1.

  397 [Debs on running for president to raise social consciousness]: quoted in Weinstein, p. 11.

  [Kraditor on individualism at core of IWW]: Kraditor, p. 284.

  [Haywood on the “scum proletariat”]: quoted in Weinstein, p. 15, footnote.

  398 [De Leon on the Debsites]: quoted in Kraditor, p. 290.

  [Women, blacks, and socialism]: ibid., ch. 6; Kipnis, pp. 260–65.

  [Woodward’s “Progressivism—For Whites Only”]: see C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Louisiana State University Press, 1951), ch. 14.

  [Lenin on trade-union consciousness]: V. I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?,” first published in Stuttgart, 1902, reprinted in Lenin, Collected Works (Foreign Language Publishing House, 1960–70), vol. 5, pp. 347–529, quoted at p. 375.

  Sources on the organizational and especially the intellectual problems of socialism are extremely diverse and scattered; see the model bibliography, Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Persons, eds., T. D. Seymour Bassett, bibliographer, Socialism and American Life, vol. 2 (Bibliography: Descriptive and Critical) (Princeton University Press, 1952).

  Markets, Morality, and the “Star of Empire”

  [Wilson on “irony of fate”]: quoted in Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist (Johns Hopkins Press, 1957), p. 5.

  400 [“We are chosen”]: quoted in Arthur S. Link, “Woodrow Wilson: Hinge of the 20th Century,” in Woodrow Wilson: A Commemorative Celebration (The Wilson Center, 1982), p. 21.

  [“An engine of liberty”]: Sidney Bell, Righteous Conquest: Woodrow Wilson and the Evolution of the New Diplomacy (Kennikat Press, 1972), p. 22.

  [Wilson on industries bursting their jackets]: quoted in Jerry Israel, Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905–1921 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), p. 104.

  [Wilson on war against money power]: ibid.,p. 107.

  [“Star of Empire”]: quoted in Bell, p. 22.

  [China policy of Taft and Wilson]: Roy W. Curry, Woodrow Wilson and Far Eastern Policy: 1913–1921 (Bookman Associates, 1957); Robert Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), ch. 3; Roberta A. Dayer, Bankers and Diplomats in China, 1917–1925: The Anglo-American Relationship (Frank Cass, 1981), ch. 1; Israel, passim; Walter V. Scholes and Marie V. Scholes, The Foreign Policies of the Taft Administration (University of Missouri Press, 1970); Harold M. Vinacke, “Woodrow Wilson’s Far Eastern Policy,” in Edward H. Buehrig, ed., Wilson’s Foreign Policy in Perspective (Indiana University Press, 1957). pp. 61–104.

  400 [Hay’s Open Door notes]: Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 9th ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp 480–83, quoted at p. 482.

  400–01 [Decline of U.S. trade with China]: Scholes and Scholes, p. 112; Paul A. Varg, “The Myth of the China Market, 189
0–1914,” American Historical Review, vol. 73, no. 3 (February 1968), pp. 742–758, esp. p. 755.

  401 [Taft on “force and pluck”]: quoted in Scholes and Scholes, p. 21.

  [Taft on U.S. capital in China]: quoted in Paolo E. Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft (University of Kansas Press, 1973), p. 194.

  [Wilson on Chinese movement toward liberty]: quoted in Curry, p. 16.

  402 [Wilson on awakening of China]: ibid., p. 23.

  [Need for “evangelical Christian” in Peking]: ibid., p. 38.

  [Wilson to Eliot on reordering U.S. diplomacy]: letter of September 17, 1913, quoted in ibid., p. 35.

  [Wilson’s withdrawal of American support for consortium]: ibid., pp. 21–24.

  [George on consortium rejection]: quoted in Israel, p. 109.

  [Outlook on reform in China]: September 1, 1915, quoted in ibid, p. 118.

  [“Leaving the Firm”]: Curry, p. 25.

  [Bankers sick of Chinese investments]: Charles Addis, quoted in Scholes and Scholes, p. 239.

  402–03 [Trade and investment in Latin America]: Bell, pp. 46–47; Coletta, p. 175.

  403 [Latin American policy]: Bell, chs. 3–5; Samuel Flagg Bemis, “Woodrow Wilson and Latin America,” in Buehrig, pp. 105–40; Sidney Lens, The Forging of the American Empire (ThomasY. Crowell, 1971), chs. 11–13; Scholes and Scholes, part 1; see also Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (W. W. Norton, 1983), ch. 1.

  [Taft on “substituting dollars for bullets”]: quoted in Coletta, p. 185.

  [Wilson and Mexico]: Mark T. Gilderhus, Diplomacy and Revolution: U.S.-Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza (University of Arizona Press, 1977); P. Edward Haley, Revolution and Intervention: The Diplomacy of Taft and Wilson with Mexico, 1910–1917 (MIT Press, 1970); Linda B. Hall, Alvaro Obregon: Power and Revolution in Mexico, 1911–1920 (Texas A&M University Press, 1981); Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz (University of Kentucky Press, 1962); Douglas W. Richmond, Venustiano Carranza’s Nationalist Struggle, 1893–1920 (University of Nebraska Press, 1983), chs. 3–4.