by Michael Liss
The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given control of the property interests of the country, and upon the successful Management of which so much depends. —George Baer, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, during the Coal Strike of 1902.
Whenever I read yet another article about intramural warfare in the Democratic Party over which candidate will be progressive enough for the Progressive wing, I think about that quote.
Know your enemy, know yourself. Do contemporary Progressive politicians really know either? The “old” Progressivism, which reached its zenith in the period between 1896 to 1916, was primarily a social and political reform movement. Faced with the excesses of the unbridled capitalism of the Gilded Age that had preceded it, it did not look first toward redistribution. Rather, it took aim at the pervasive rot that was created as immense wealth was being made in businesses like mining, railroads, shipping, steel, meatpacking, and finance, often at the expense of the working man, the farmer, and the small businessman. From this, it drew its moral force.
We should acknowledge that those fortunes were the product of the efforts of real visionaries, larger-than-life figures like Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, James J. Hill, the Armour and Swift families, J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie. Talent aside, though, their successes were enhanced by the sharpest, most predatory tactics, of the type described in Ida Tarbell’s The History of The Standard Oil Company, a 19 part series in McClure’s Magazine, which chronicled the rise of Standard Oil. Business was not for the faint of heart, and the most successful businessmen were monopolists who went from strength to strength, squeezing every competitor, and every last dollar, out of every transaction.
No matter how entrepreneurial the businessman, no matter how rich the oilfield, no matter how coldly efficient the operator, it couldn’t have been done without grease. Corruption was literally everywhere. Read more »