header by Emerson Taymor, 2005
1. The Colonial Era: 1607-1763
2. The Revolutionary Era: 1763-1789
3. The Early National Period: 1789-1824
4. Jacksonian America: 1824-1848
5. Antebellum America: 1848-1860
6. The Civil War Era: 1861-1877
9. The Twenties
10. Depression and New Deal: 1929-1939
14. The Sixties
Woodrow Wilson, speech in Buffalo, Sept. 2, 1912
Why is it that the people of this country are in danger of being discontented
with the parties that have pretended to serve them? It [is] because in
too many instances their promises were not matched by their performances
and men began to say to themselves, “What is the use of going to
the polls and voting? Nothing happens after the election.” Is there
any man within the hearing of my voice who can challenge the statement
that any party that has forfeited the public confidence, has forfeited
it by its own nonperformance….I want to speak upon this occasion,
of course, on the interests of the workingman, of the wage earner, not
because I regard the wage earners of this country as a special class, for
they are not. After you have made a catalogue of the wage earners of this
country, how many of us are left? The wage earners of this country, in
the broad sense, constitute the country. And the most fatal thing we can
do in politics is to imagine that we belong to a special class, and that
we have an interest which isn’t the interest of the whole community.
Half of the difficulties, half of the injustices of our politics have been
due to the fact that men regarded themselves as having separate interests
which they must serve even though other men were done a great disservice
by their promoting them. We are not afraid of those who pursue legitimate
pursuits provided they link those pursuits at every turn with the interest
of the community as a whole; and no man can conduct a legitimate business,
if he conducts it in the interest of a single class. I want, therefore,
to look at the nation as a whole today. I would like always to look at
it as a whole, not divide it up into sections and classes….We now
complain that the men who control monopolies control the government, and
it is in turn proposed that the government should control them [by the
Progressive party]. I am perfectly willing to be controlled if it is I,
myself, who control me….These monopolies that the government, it
is proposed, should adopt are [run by] the men who have made your independent
action most difficult. They have made it most difficult that you should
take care of yourselves; and let me tell you that the old adage that God
takes care of those who take care of themselves is not gone out of date.
No federal legislation can change that thing. The minute you are taken
care of by the government, you are wards, not independent men….Because
the working-men of this country as perfectly aware that they sell their
commodity, that is to say labor, in a perfectly open market. There is free
trade in labor in the United States. The laboring men of all the world
are free to come and offer their labor here and you are similarly free
to go and offer your labor in most parts of the world. And the world demand
is what establishes for the most part the rate of wages….What has
created these monopolies? Unregulated competition. It has permitted these
men to do anything that they chose to do to squeeze their rivals out and
crush their rivals to the earth. We know the processes by which they have
done these things. We can prevent those processes by remedial legislation,
and that remedial legislation will so restrict the wrong use of competition
that the right use of competition will destroy monopoly….Ours is
a program of liberty…by which we find we know the wrongs that have
been committed and we can stop those wrongs.