13
In his inaugural address in 1925 President Calvin Coolidge referenced American aid to Europe and the country’s intervention in the Caribbean, commenting that these actions sprang from “our vast powers” and “the place we hold in the world.” The Vermont native was known for his opposition to greater federal activism, but he was conscious of the national government’s expanded capacity, enlarged budget, and elevated global status. Coolidge’s agenda was to slow this expansion of federal power. A similar mind-set was observed at the local level of the political system. Writing about “Middletown,” one of most researched small cities in the United States, sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd reported that, between the 1890s and the mid-1920s, the city created more agencies, hired more officials, spent considerably more money, and oversaw more regulations. Middletown residents were apparently satisfied with these new services but, like Coolidge, clung to traditional political values.1
Scholars voiced agreement in the 1920s that the American polity had entered a new era. The growth of government, wrote political scientist Charles Beard, “is a fact, not a theory.” He observed that “the very concept of government . . . has undergone marked changes during the past fifty years,” noting that even the “activities of the Federal Government are reaching deeply into the affairs of the people.” Other scholars echoed this assessment and noted that the drift of power toward Washington was eroding the role of the states. Washington, DC, took on greater importance in the 1920s, as organizations set up shop in the city as a base to lobby Congress. This heightened status was underscored by a doubling of federal employees in Washington between 1910 and 1930. But all governments, not just the national establishment, had assumed additional functions, broadened old ones, and altered traditional relationships over the past several decades. The scale and scope of public life in the 1920s vastly overshadowed the civic footprint of the Gilded Age.2
World War I certified that the United States had become a major world power. Although the size of its army shrank after the armistice, the navy remained among the largest in the world. The United States never joined the League of Nations, yet it did not withdraw from international affairs or world trade. American military forces occupied several Caribbean countries in the 1920s. Spending on defense decreased after the war but remained competitive with European outlays. America’s military stature in the 1920s rested as much on its potential as on its force in place. The United States ranked second behind Russia in population among the major powers. Its national wealth ranked first in the world, both in total economic output and in average income per person. American manufacturers produced more in 1920 than the countries of Europe combined. Viewing the national, state, and local governments as a single polity in terms of their fiscal and coercive capacity, scope of civic functions, and global presence, the United States had joined the fraternity of national superpowers by 1920.
THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH
The transformation of the national state between Reconstruction and World War I was the product of interactions between long-term factors and shorter-term intrusions. The complexity of these pathways impedes the identification of the precise cause of political development; however, one can identify broad currents that framed the background for decisionmakers. Geography and socioeconomic development played instrumental roles in this process. By the early twentieth century America’s huge landmass supplied the economy with a bounty of resources and homes for millions. The great distances between points on this landscape spurred transportation innovations, such as national railroad networks, steel-hulled ships, mass-produced motor vehicles, and aircraft that could fly from coast to coast. The vastness of this space and the new connections between points on the map probably reinforced the commitment to a federal system and to a sense of nationhood. Folding western territories into the union had a major effect on the structure of governance. Montana was as large as Japan and twice the size of New England. All of Spain could fit inside Texas. California had more land than Germany. Collectively, these “little republics” added new synergies to political development.
The nation’s population grew two and a half times larger between 1870 and 1920. This human expansion fueled economic growth, which increased per capita wealth by 150 percent during this half century. America’s population growth occurred primarily through a natural process whereby births exceeded deaths. By global standards, America had a youthful population; Americans’ median age was twenty in 1870 and twenty-five in 1920. That year there were more white males in their twenties than men older than fifty—the age of senior political leaders. Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson were all born before the Civil War.
The incorporation of each new generation into the population has the potential to induce political change. The young differ from their elders not only in physical and psychological characteristics but also in their maturation during different socioeconomic eras. The twenty-something generation born around 1895 became adults during World War I.3 Those raised in an urban middle-class family probably had electricity, indoor plumbing, and a telephone; they probably held or looked for salaried or wage-paying jobs in a city or small town. Going to a movie or a dancehall or riding the trolley to a park was an option, perhaps with an unchaperoned date. Young women likely scanned the advertisements in the woman’s section of the city newspaper. Both girls and boys from the city likely attended high school.4 For those living on farms, rural free delivery brought the Sears Roebuck catalog loaded with merchandise that could be delivered to their homes by the US Post Office. Youngsters from industrial areas might have witnessed or perhaps even participated in the labor strikes of 1910–1912. They probably heard about the sinking of the Titanic, the German torpedoing of the Lusitania, and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Most young men registered for the draft, perhaps riding to the draft board in a Model T Ford.
Generational succession probably contributed to Progressive Era reform. Richard Hofstadter is one of numerous scholars who have pointed to the importance of mood cycles in American politics, and he cites generational change as a source of progressivism in his classic The Age of Reform. He notes that Progressive Era leaders such as Roosevelt, Bryan, La Follette, and Wilson, who were in their thirties during the 1890s, had lived through the “searing experience” of that decade’s devastating depression and had witnessed how the antiestablishment outbursts of the Populist Party “frightened the middle classes.”5 Unanticipated intrusions—catastrophes and crises—tend to leave lasting impressions on formative minds.6 It is possible, perhaps even likely, that individuals who reached adulthood around World War I were more acclimated to governmental intervention than generations that came of age before the 1890s.
War, depression, and horrendous disasters undoubtedly contributed to the formation of worldviews among the young, and policymakers were challenged to cope with each crisis. As noted in earlier chapters, the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s and the stagflation of 1910–1912 influenced electoral and policy changes. World War I significantly intensified the scope of civic power and generated pressure from all levels of government to encourage and coerce “100 percent Americanism.” Catastrophes such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and the sinking of the Titanic motivated policymakers to formulate strategies to mitigate future disasters. Unanticipated events, ranging from presidential assassinations and terrorist bombings to prolonged economic stagnation and military engagement, can send shock waves through society.7
Longer-term trends exerted a more gradual but perhaps just as significant influence on attitudes. The shift of population from rural to urban settings, the emergence of women as a distinct consumer group and as activists, and the widespread attainment of a high school education were key trends that challenged traditional outlooks. Communications underwent several technological revolutions between the invention of the telephone and the advent of the radio and “talkie” movies. Millions of immigrants flowing into American society during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era had numerous ramifications for government and politics. Historian Robert Wiebe famously attributes these transformations to the “breakdown” of “island communities” that were rooted in the “local autonomy” of the nineteenth century. “The needs of urban-industrial life” eroded these older, “personal, informal ways” in the face of a growing aspiration for “continuity and predictability in a world of change.”8
The formal constitutional footing of the national state did not change appreciably between Reconstruction and World War I. Only four amendments—the Fourteenth through Seventeenth—were added to the Constitution between 1868 and 1913, although the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments conveyed significant new authorities. The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition; repealed in 1933) and the Nineteenth Amendment (female suffrage) were ratified in 1919 and 1920, respectively. But the national charter held latent powers that were activated through legislative actions, court rulings, and executive decisions. Reliance on this implied repository of authority accelerated during the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and World War I.9 The new states added to the union broadened patterns of competition and emulation, fueling the diffusion of policy innovations around the nation, some of which filtered into Congress.10
The electoral system was a vector for tapping the Constitution’s latent power. The elections of 1874, 1894, 1910–1912, and 1918–1920 produced major shifts in party alignments among officeholders, facilitating policy shifts at both the national and state levels. The Democratic upsurgence in 1910 and 1912, for example, enabled an outpouring of progressive reforms; the restoration of Republican control of Congress following the 1918 election doomed Woodrow Wilson’s quest for America to join the League of Nations. Party played a smaller role in governance at the state and local levels, where cross-party legislative coalitions were prevalent. At all levels of government, however, leadership could be a decisive factor in advancing new programs. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson blazed a trail for modern presidential activism, a hallmark of elected executives in the twentieth century.11
Numerous influences, in short, reinforced the trend toward greater reliance on government after the Civil War. No national leader publicly advanced a master blueprint to reframe the American state. Dreamers who envisioned an expanded state, such as novelist Edward Bellamy and socialist Eugene Debs, made little political headway.12 America’s traditional reluctance to enlarge the national government remained resilient; support for the fragmented, decentralized federal system held firm after the Civil War. The judicial embrace of laissez-faire, which blocked commercial regulation and assistance for workers, reinforced these axioms. American resistance to centralized power, deeply embedded in the nation’s ideological psyche, survived into the twenty-first century.
The history of the American national state thus presents a paradox. In spite of America’s antistatist tradition, which remained vibrant after the Civil War, government grew in functional scope and financial commitment; its capacity and power expanded. A key to this transformation was broad public acceptance of civic intervention to remedy problems. These issues ran the gamut from removing wastewater and maintaining roads to authorizing a national currency and combating German militarism. The unintended consequence of these decisions was the expansion of a more powerful civic regime, reinforced by broadening popular support for America, the nation.13
THE 1920S
Americans continued their pragmatic tradition of governance in the 1920s. That decade is commonly remembered as a time of conservatism and governmental stasis, if not civic contraction. Much of the political rhetoric embraced these themes, especially regarding taxation and limitations on the federal government. The wartime fever for 100 percent Americanism lingered.14 But the broader picture shows a public sector that did not return to prewar levels. Government spending was higher in the 1920s than in the Progressive Era. The National Industrial Conference Board calculated that total public spending (in inflation-controlled dollars) in 1927 was twice as high as in 1913. The “ratchet” effect of World War I was clearly present in the federal government’s outlays (see figure 12.1). State and local expenditures also increased markedly; local governments continued the nineteenth-century pattern of outspending the US and state governments combined.15
Few major governmental programs were terminated during the 1920s. Although federal income tax rates were scaled back from wartime levels, the levy itself remained. The army returned to peacetime status, although its manpower exceeded prewar numbers. The navy retained much of its wartime capability, some of which was used for interventions in the Caribbean. No major commerce and business statutes were overturned, although federal regulators had no vendetta against private enterprise. The Federal Reserve System remained in place. The Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation (later FBI) expanded its operations. The Department of Agriculture offered new services and undertook additional scientific investigations. World War I created a new class of military veterans, a million of whom received disability benefits in 1927. Congress increased federal aid to the states for road construction. The post office expanded rural deliveries. The United States continued to administer and preserve public lands and added several national parks, national monuments, and battlefield sites. Mount Rushmore, where the visages of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt were carved into a granite wall in South Dakota, became a national memorial in 1925.
Most federal policies initiated after the Civil War were institutionalized, not terminated, in subsequent years. A similar development occurred at the state and local levels through the 1920s. Several dynamics supported these continuities. Once it was created, each program tended to spawn a set of interested constituencies, including administrators who oversaw the policy and nongovernmental organizations that benefited from the program or supported its goals. Some programs, especially those providing services and benefits, gained broad popularity among the electorate. Legislators, who increasingly sought reelection, understood this constituent interest and catered to it. Supporting programs got more votes than killing them.16
While preserving most of their prior commitments, governments also took on new responsibilities in the 1920s. The most dramatic federal interventions concerned restrictions on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages and the regulation of immigration. Congress imposed a temporary limit on immigration in 1921, fixed numerical quotas for European countries in 1924, and retained bans on Asian immigration. Enforcing national Prohibition and immigration restrictions required bigger federal agencies. The Bureau of Immigration doubled in size between 1915 and 1932. The massive scope of Prohibition required the cooperation of 200,000 state and local law enforcement officials. The number of federal prisoners, some held in state facilities, increased more than sixfold between 1915 and 1930; most were incarcerated for liquor, drug, and auto theft offenses.17
State and local governments broadened their initiatives as well, investing their greatest energy in education and roads. Local communities provided kindergartens and grade schools; most jurisdictions established high schools as well. The construction of hard roads became an extremely popular undertaking as more and more Americans drove motor vehicles. By the late 1920s paved highways traversed most states. This development owed much to the discovery of a nearly painless way to pay for these roads: a tax on the sale of gasoline, with private vendors, not government agents, collecting the levy. More cars on the road led to the creation of state police forces, whose troopers patrolled the highways and also took on anticrime duties, including the enforcement of Prohibition. Incarceration in state and local facilities doubled between the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. State law entered new fields, such as the regulation of trucking companies, and expanded older activities, such as providing assistance to special-needs populations and adopting standards for agricultural commodities. These functions and higher costs generated support for the creation of budget departments and the reorganization of state offices into cabinet-style administrations under the supervision of the governor.18 If Google’s eye in the sky had scanned the Eastern Seaboard in the late 1920s, it would have photographed US Route 1, a highway paved with state and federal funds that connected Maine to Florida.
This willingness to put government to work on societal problems confirms the observation of French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s: “Americans are more addicted to the practical than theoretical science.”19 This pragmatic tradition, in which crisis commonly trumps ideology and innovative civic initiatives coexist with antistatist sentiments, spanned America’s long nineteenth century. The acceleration of civic capacity during the Great Depression of the 1930s, World War II, and the decades afterward reinforced rather than invented America’s long history of statebuilding.