The United States Since the Civil War

by Charles Ramsdell Lingley

[Illustration:
Daily Newspaper Circulation, 1918]

The rise of the "muck-rake"[2] magazines was typical of the ten years at the opening of the twentieth century. These periodicals printed articles which portrayed a side of American life not commonly discussed in the newspapers. One of the earliest serials of this type was Miss Ida M. Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company, published in McClure's Magazine in 1902-1903. Instead of the ordinary eulogy of the size and success of the Company, Miss Tarbell presented many of its unfair practices. At the same time and in the same publication Lincoln Steffens was exposing the seamy side of municipal affairs in "The Shame of the Cities." Between 1901 and 1906 one of the muck-rake periodicals increased its sales threefold, another four and another seven.

Cooperation among newspapers in the gathering of information is no novelty in the United States, but the greatest strides have been taken since 1890. By 1915 the Associated Press had leased 50,000 miles of telegraph wires forming a net all over the country; it had agents in every important news center; it exchanged services with three European press associations; and it had its own representatives not only in London, Paris, and Berlin, but in Fez, Madeira, Colombo, Tsingtau and Sydney. News from Europe reached New York in less than an hour and was promptly sent to 900 newspapers, whence it was copied in thousands of daily and weekly publications. As in the case of other enterprises the publication of newspapers showed a tendency towards consolidation. The establishment of a new periodical became a million-dollar venture, and it remains to be seen whether the tendency toward centralization will result in the publication only of such news or such phases of the news as meet the approval of the relatively small number of persons that can launch a million-dollar organization.

It will be remembered that laissez faire was the prevailing theory in regard to the proper relation between government and industry during the twenty-five years after the close of the Civil War, except in so far as industrial organizations desired protective tariffs. In brief the upholders of this creed contended that legislation should concern itself as little as possible with the regulation of trade, that it should restrict itself to protecting commerce from interference and that business men should be permitted to work out their own problems with the least possible reference to such artificial forces as were supplied by legal enactments.[3] It would be inaccurate to say that the theory of laissez faire had completely given way by the end of the half century after the Civil War. Nor would it be wholly correct to say that any other theory has yet demonstrated its permanent reliability, Nevertheless the distinctive philosophy upon which later legislation has been built is the theory of public interest. The theory needs definition in some detail, because it forms the philosophy which underlies most of the political developments and much of the legislation of the early twentieth century.

As the men of the eighties and nineties contemplated the vast amounts of wealth created during those decades they saw it concentrated to a great extent in the hands of the few. The few believed that the public good was best cared for in this way, but an increasing majority of the people looked upon the tendency with greater and greater alarm. They complained that the railroads discriminated in favor of the powerful few; that corporations were achieving monopoly; and that the government itself often assisted the process by framing tariff schedules primarily for the interest of the manufacturers. When the reaction against this situation started, it was of course found that the seats of power were already occupied by the adherents of laissez faire,—the party committees, the legislatures, the executive offices and the courts. There ensued, therefore, a long struggle for power and for a new theory of government. The land-marks of the controversy were to be found in interstate commerce acts, anti-trust laws, income taxes, bureaus of labor and factory legislation.

The proponent of laissez faire would allow the few to accumulate large fortunes which they might share with the many through benefactions, gifts to education, libraries, and other public enterprises; the adherent of public interest would inquire why the many are poor, and attempt so to change economic conditions as to reduce the number of the poor to a minimum. Instead of framing laws so that wealth and power would get into the hands of a small number of individuals, in the expectation that prosperity would filter down to the many, the advocate of public interest would aim his legislation directly at what he considers the needs of the less powerful classes. He would interfere with the railroads, for example, to compel them to charge uniform rates, prevent corporations from electing public officers by means of large contributions to campaign funds, force industry even at some cost to protect employees through safety devices, and would hold the great forests on the public lands for the direct good of the whole people. The transfer of emphasis from laissez faire to public interest was based upon a steady growth in the value placed upon the worth of the individual man, and upon a shift from legislating for the few to legislating directly for the multitude. The change was greater than can be indicated by citing any one law or group of laws. It was "a new intellectual perspective through which we view all moral issues affecting society."[4]

Underlying many of the difficulties in the way of replacing laissez faire with a new theory, was the attitude of the courts toward certain parts of the Fourteenth Amendment. It will be remembered that a portion of section one of the Amendment forbids the states to "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." It will also be remembered that the majority of the Supreme Court in early decisions interpreting the Amendment had expressed the belief that its purpose was the protection of the negro. By 1890, however, the Court had come to hold that the word "person" as used in the first section included corporations, and thus had given the language of the Amendment a greatly widened application. Of 528 decisions given by the Court on the Amendment between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen concerned the negro race, while 289 affected corporations. In the decision of the case Lochner v. New York, a state law regulating hours of labor in bakeries was declared to conflict with the Amendment, because the right of the laborer to work as many hours as he pleased was part of the "liberty" which was protected by the Amendment. Laws regulating railroad rates through commissions were held to deprive corporations of property without due process. Until recently changed, the statutes did not allow appeal to the Supreme Court in cases where state courts declared state laws in conflict with the United States Constitution, and the Fourteenth Amendment therefore acted as a protective bulwark in state as well as nation. In brief, then, the legal position of the big industrial organizations was almost impregnable because of the fortuitous circumstance that the words of a part of the Constitution might be held to mean something which probably did not enter the minds of the Congress or the state legislatures which placed the words in the document.

The people of the United States have usually avoided hostile criticism of the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court, and they have reflected this feeling in their acquiescence in the unexpected turn given to the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The members of the Court, however, have frequently expressed disquietude. Dissenting opinions opposing the view which the Court has taken, have been common. Mr. Justice Harlan declared that the scope of the Amendment was being enlarged far beyond its original purpose; Mr. Justice Holmes asserted that the word "liberty" was being "perverted" and that the Constitution was not intended to embody laissez faire or any other economic theory.[5]

The most prominent pioneers in replacing the old by the new theory were William J. Bryan, Robert M. La Follette and Theodore Roosevelt. Bryan's leadership in 1896 has already been mentioned. With courage and sincerity he attempted to solve the social and economic problems of his day, but his youth, his inexperience, his radicalism, and the fact that he did not choose issues that were immediately practicable made it impossible for him to command the confidence of the majority. Unable himself to scale the heights of reform, he nevertheless pointed them out to others. With a voice that has been likened to an organ with a hundred stops, with persistence, energy and good nature he spread far and wide a new conception of social obligation. He insisted that the social and economic discontent of the South and West were real, and that they could not be laughed out of court or frightened into silence.

La Follette's constructive pioneer work was done for the most part in Wisconsin. During the ascendency of the laissez faire theory, the state was largely controlled by the lumber, railroad and other interests, using the Republican party as their political agency; and a small but powerful group controlled the election of state and federal officials, the press and state legislation. Between 1885 and 1891 La Follette, who was himself a Republican, was a representative in the federal House. In the latter year he came into collision with Senator Sawyer, a wealthy lumber merchant who was the leader of the dominant party in the state. For years the state treasurers had been lending the state's money to favored banks without interest. Senator Sawyer had acted as bondsman for the treasurers and was sued by the attorney-general of the state for back interest. La Follette threw himself into this controversy on the side of the state; and being unable to obtain a hearing through the usual medium of the press, he and his supporters went directly to the people, speaking from town to town before interested audiences; and subsequently the state won.