gemini://thrig.me/blog/2023/09/15/the-progressive-era.gmi

Democrats were, back in the day, the free-market hard-money low-tax types, as opposed to the authoritarian protectionist Republicans, though the Democrats were cool with slavery and stealing land from the natives. Laissez-faire treaty honorance? Can do! Voting is shown to correlate with religious sect, with Catholics voting Democrat; these are the liturgical types who favor ritual. By contrast the pietists held that "each individual, rather than the church or the clergy, was responsible for his own salvation." These are the Republicans, who also felt that society "was duty-bound to aid each man in pursuing his salvation, in promoting his good behavior, and seeing as best it could that he does not fall prey to temptation." Therefore, mandatory public schools (that did not teach Catholic doctrine), "blue laws" to restrict what could be done on Sunday, repeated efforts at prohibition… and this was before the 1860s! Nanny state, much?

An exception was the pietist South that voted Democrat for various reasons; small wonder they later swung right. Alas, at some point the Democrats also got on board with the big gov, big corp thing (and big labor union, to give the wobbly stool a third leg) which meant there was no alternative, as some Thatcher put it some eight decades later.

Immigrants were mainly of the liturgical type, that is to say, Catholic, that is to say, they voted Democrat. Hence the Republican Party's opposition to immigration ("Hungarian ruffians", "Bohemian bruisers", "Mexican rapists"). Other immigrants of the pietist type, mainly Scandinavian or British, naturally went Republican. There were not many of these.

The Democrats got a boost around 1892; heavy immigration and higher birth rates flipped enough states in the midwest. Also Republicans put in prohibition in Ohio and Wisconsin in 1872, and then lost. The German immigrants did not like prohibition, it turned out. On the other hand, Republicans could play up anti-Catholic sentiments via "opposition to subsidizing Catholic parochial schools with tax-supported funds". Some Republicans denounced liquor while "also coming out against government-mandated prohibition". Republican decline might relate in part to moderates alienating the ultra-right factions though such waffling on booze; the ultra-rights sat out or voted for some Progressive party.

> They [Republicans] also supported Governor Foraker's request for a constitutional amendment to allow the state to control election boards in cities and thereby to eliminate "corruption" — that is, victories by urban machine Democrats.

The Democrats lost around 1894; "the impact of the Depression caused the public to stress economic issues more intensively than before." (Democracy in Athens had a similar problem due to economic woes during the Peloponnesian War.) And another, different boot in 1896, when the Democrats went in for big government:

> the Byranites were both extreme economic statists and extreme religious and cultural pietists. All too far from the "party of personal liberty," … ever more moralistic than the old Republican enemy.

This caused some flip-flopping of political allegiances as the Catholics were suddenly okay with the (more moderate) Republicans, and others jumped to the Democrats.

> The McKinley Republicans were happy to be known as the "party of prosperity" rather than the "party of great moral ideas." … There was no longer a political party, nor a clear-cut constituency, devoted to the traditional American ideology of laissez-faire.

> This decline of the political party as well as its voting constituency left a power vacuum which … the new order of experts, technocrats, and organized economic pressure groups rushed to fill. The dominance of the new elites alienated still more citizens

Theodore Roosevelt, the first progressive: he was for a strong nationalist policy, devoted to militarism, tariffs, and strengthened the civil service system so that politics could be removed from the government in favor of efficiency and non-partisanship in government. Also, yet more crackdowns on booze and doing business on Sunday.

> Roosevelt put through a bill for a state tenement house regulatory commission, which in turn put through a new housing code in 1901 that soon became a model for all the states in the nation. The code, which restricted the supply of new housing, and thereby raised costs in the name of higher quality, was put through by a commission of wealthy reformers and social workers

Cartels would be allowed, but regulated. Of course only the "bad" corporations would be investigated. "Good" and "bad" do vary depending on the party in power, as one might observe for the Microsoft monopoly ruling. Also the Sherman Antitrust Act probably wasn't written with the common man in mind.

So on the one hand food adulteration may be a problem, or folks using outdated or damaging farming practices, but on the other regulations can be arbitrary or protectionist, and thus bad for consumers in various ways, especially if the industry gets taxpayers on the hook for paying the inspection bill.

> It is no accident that … Teddy Roosevelt should have broken with Wiley over the saccharin question, for Roosevelt was accustomed to take saccharin in his daily coffee

This is a bit like control+f doing forward and not find in Outlook because of a bug report from a certain beta tester. Or so it is reported, I never did use Outlook enough to memorize what control+f did.

> A striking fact about the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 … is that urban workers and families did not agitate for its passage or enforcement. … The movement for a national food law came from food commissioners, agricultural chemists, [etc]

Maybe if looking after consumer health and going after business fraud had been the goals there may have been better results? For consumers, I mean. The little people. Or folks who want to use the tonka bean or young cheese without having to operate like a speakeasy.

> … many Yankee postmillennial pietist reformers went to Bismark's Germany to get their Ph.D.s and became instilled with German socialism and centralization …

The Progressive Era

Prehistory

T.R.

Pure Food and Drug Act