Tag: Teddy Roosevelt

With the walloping Republicans gave Democrats in the midterm elections, the GOP stands one Louisiana Senate runoff away from completely controlling Southern politics from the Carolinas to Texas. Only a handful of Democrats hold statewide office in the rest of the Old Confederacy.

SOURCE:  The South: Solid once again _ for Republicans – Yahoo News.

It looks like with this latest election the south has finally turned almost 100% Republican. How did that happen? That is the topic of this post. Of course I am giving you my personal knowledge on this topic. The South did turn from almost exclusively Democrat to Republican in my lifetime so I do have some, be it ever so small, personal expertise in the matter.

The Republican party should point proudly to its roots and that is Abraham Lincoln. He was our president during perhaps the most difficult time in American history, when we were killing each other by the millions over whether some people were property to be owned or citizens to be protected.

Another great Republican president forty years after Lincoln was Teddy Roosevelt. Although he was born into the American aristocracy he had a deep empathy for those less fortunate than he was. This empathy lead him to see how badly the common guy was faring during the Industrial Revolution and to do something about it. He took on the “robber barons” of his time and gave at least some power back to ordinary citizens away from the super-rich.

The Republican party has a proud heritage in at least these two great presidents. Between 1861 and 1909 there were ten Republican presidents to two Democratic presidents. They dominated American politics for almost fifty years after the Civil War. What happened to almost reverse the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt into what it is today?  To answer that turnaround we need to look at the 1960s.

Up until the 1960s the Democratic party was the party of the South. They dominated because they weren’t Republicans who took away their slaves and therefore much of their economic prosperity.  Then came along President Kennedy and the “Second Emancipation Proclamation” Here is a little about that from Wikipedia:

The Second Emancipation Proclamation is the term applied to an envisioned Executive Order that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–68) enjoined President John F. Kennedy to issue. As the Emancipation Proclamation was an Executive Order issued by President Abraham Lincoln to free all slaves being held in states at war with the Union, the envisioned “Second Emancipation Proclamation” was to use the powers of the Executive office to strike a severe blow to segregation.

Southern Democrats became outraged that a Democratic president would issue such an executive decision. And then came President Johnson with the Civil Rights agenda.  Within a decade southerners left the Democratic party in mass. During the years between 1933 and 1969 Republicans controlled the White House only eight years. When the southern white politicians moved to the Republican party it was ripe for change and change it  they did. During the years since that time the GOP sadly morphed from the party Lincoln and Roosevelt to something completely different.

Having grown up in the 1950s and 60s I am very much entrenched in the idea of a middle class society. That is where the average working person got a share of the prosperity of the times. But in looking back at history it now seems apparent to me that the “middle class”, at least as we knew it then  probably an anomaly of our times.

The middle class is a result of the Ford model for the economy. That is where the workers are paid a living wage and they would then build a community where they could afford to buy the products they make. We have much to thank Henry Ford for those times. Ford came upon the scenes shortly after the age of the “Robber Barrons”. The barons were Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carniege, JP Morgan, and Fisk.  These guys were mostly consumed by their desire for wealth and ruthlessly destroying their competition. They had little respect for the workers they employed.  They were a mere tool for their greed for ever increasing wealth. Their employees generally worked six to seven days a week for twelve hours a day. They often got a little than a dollar a day. If you got sick you lost your job. If you died because of an industrial accident your family was pretty much on their own. We learned that this is what you get with unbridled capitalism. Read more →

For those of you who aren’t up on your U.S. history lessons, John Sherman was the Congressman who about one hundred years ago introduced the first major piece of legislation to rein in corporate greed. The legislation was call the Sherman Antitrust Act. Here is some of what Wikipedia says about that:

The Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act,^[1] July 2, 1890, ch. 647, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7) is a landmark federal statute on competition law passed by Congress in 1890. It prohibits certain business activities that reduce competition in the marketplace, and requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of being in violation. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by the United States federal government. However, for the most part, politicians were unwilling to refer to the law until Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency (1901–1909).

As mentioned above most of the politicians of the time were very leery to use this new law against the Robber Barons of the day until ten years later when a Republican president named Theodore Roosevelt came along. It still amazes me how almost all of the anti-big-business leaders of these times were from the Republican party. Of course the Republican party is now widely known as the party of big business! When did this major shift in party allegiance happen?  I guess I will have to study up on that.

Getting back to the matter at hand, President Bush and followed up by President Obama bailed out the financial industry because they “were too big to fail”.  If somehow we could have resurrected John Sherman to break up this monopoly power before it became so big we possibly could have spared ourselves all the grief we have been going through as a country for the last four years. Too bad that there just doesn’t seem to be anyone in congress now with the fortitude to take on the big business interests.

But, in reality I should really be looking for someone to put the laws that were repealed in the last twenty years back in place. That is where we got into all the troubles. Within a decade of deregulating the Savings and Loan industry the 1988 meltdown occurred.  Within a decade of deregulating the banking sector the 2008 meltdown occurred.  Why can’t our representatives in government learn from history and just leave these types of things that John Sherman and those like him put in place alone? This is just an example where the Republican party seem to have the belief in the innate goodness of our corporate institutions.  Yes, with this deregulation they got government out of the way and soon inevitable self-consuming greed took over with the resulting meltdowns happening soon thereafter. When will they ever learn? But maybe the more important question is when will we the voters ever learn when to tell our elected officials it is time for them to leave?

It seems literally impossible for another Republican to take charge of these types of matters. Most of those folks are just too beholding to big business to ever try to rein them in. So, currently that leaves the Democratic party to take up the mantel. I don’t see that as much of a possibility either. Where all this “too big to fail” will end I just don’t know.

Where are you John when we need you??

But what do I know….

During the 1960s and 70s there was a growing middle class in the U.S.  This was due to the abundance of manufacturing jobs and gains won by labor unions. Part of the U.S. history that precipitated the emerging middle class was the takedown of the Robber Barons of the early 1900s. The robber barons were basically a group of unscrupulous industrialists. Who controlled pretty much everything to do with life a hundred years ago. They decided where you would work, how much you would earn, and how you would live.  There was no one around to give them any restrictions. They decided what was what. This included the sweat shops of New York City, the stagnant and un-breathable air of Pittsburgh, the company owned towns of the Appalachians.

It is ironic that the first president to confront these power and money hungry tyrants was a Republican. He was Teddy Roosevelt. As a result of his crackdown on unscrupulous practices workers began to see better working conditions and slightly improved pay. When the labor unions arose in the 1920s they fought to improve the working man’s conditions even more. They withstood the company paid thugs who beat them up on the picket lines and the police who were in the back pockets of the rich.

Fast forward to today and the middle class is almost an unknown entity once again. The average worker has not seen a pay increase above inflation in more than 10 years while at the same time those who were once called robber barons have seen their income rise dramatically. CEOs are now making eight time more than they were not many years ago.  The final shoe seems to have dropped on the death of the middle class yesterday in Madison Wisconsin where the recently elected Republican governor has outlawed labor unions for State workers.  This is seen as a harbinger for other Republican governors to follow suit and take bargaining rights away from the common man.

I wonder if Teddy Roosevelt is turning over in his grave seeing his hard work undone almost a hundred years later.  Without representation the workers both public and private are once again at the mercy of the super rich who demand their profits above everything else including worker’s basic quality of life. I am a firm believer in the phrase “power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts”. It seems we are approaching that point of absolute power when we take all leverage away from the average guy.  I assume that sooner or later the working class will get fed up with the great disparity of income between the super rich and everyone else. Maybe when that day comes they finally votes those politicians who are in the pockets of the rich out of office.   The labor unions are not completely free of fault here as they often were also overcome with their greed for power. But that in no way was an excuse to strip worker of all power as was done yesterday in Wisconsin. Shame on us for letting it happen.

Maybe the rise of the robber barons is now a centennial event.  If that is the case we can only pray for another president like Teddy to put them back in their place this time around too. Our current president seems to be shell shocked by the onslaught of the greedy and powerful so I don’t hold out much hope that he can take over and recapture some of Teddy’s work.

But what do I know…..