Front Matter

The Progressive Era

Murray N. Rothbard

Edited by
Patrick Newman

Foreword by
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

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Mises Institute, founded in 1982, is a teaching and research center for the study of Austrian economics, libertarian and classical liberal political theory, and peaceful international relations. In support of the school of thought represented by Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, and F.A. Hayek, we publish books and journals, sponsor student and professional conferences, and provide online education. Mises.org is a vast resource of free material for anyone in the world interested in these ideas. For we seek a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order.

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Published 2017 by the Mises Institute. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Mises Institute

518 West Magnolia Ave.

Auburn, Ala. 36832

mises.org

paperback edition: 978-1-61016-674-4

large print edition: 978-1-61016-675-1

epub: 978-1-61016-677-5

Contents

Foreword by Andrew P. Napolitano

Introduction by Patrick Newman

Preface

1. Railroads: The First Big Business and the Failure of the Cartels

1. Subsidizing the Railroads

2. The Rationale of Railroad Pricing

3. The Attempts to Form Cartels

2. Regulating the Railroads

1. The Drive for Regulation

2. Strengthening the Interstate Commerce Commission

3. Attempts at Monopoly in American Industry

1. America’s Industrial Revolution

2. The Petroleum Industry

3. Iron and Steel

4. Agricultural Machinery

5. The Sugar Trust

6. Overall Assessment

4. The Third Party System: Pietists vs. Liturgicals

1. The Third Party System

2. Pietists vs. Liturgicals: The Political Party Constituencies

3. Pietists vs. Liturgicals in the Midwest

4. Reform and the Drive for Prohibition

5. The Democratic Triumph of 1892

1. The Road to Democratic Triumph

2. The Republicans Regroup

A. The Retreat from Prohibition

B. Restricting Immigration

C. Pietism and Women’s Suffrage

6. 1896: The Collapse of the Third Party System and of Laissez-faire Politics

1. The First Collapse: 1894

2. The Final Collapse: 1896

3. The Transformation of the Parties

7. Theodore Roosevelt: The First Progressive, Part I

1. Financial Influence on Political Parties

2. T.R.: The Making of a Progressive

3. T.R. as President: The “Good” Trusts

4. T.R. as President: The “Bad” Trusts

5. The International Oil War

8. Theodore Roosevelt: The First Progressive, Part II

1. The Meat Packing Myth

2. Harvey W. Wiley and the Pure Food and Drug Act

3. Theodore Roosevelt and the Conservation Crusade

9. The National Civic Federation: Big Business Organized for Progressivism

1. The Origins: The Chicago Civic Federation

2. Organizing the NCF

3. The Clash over Unions

4. The Drive for Workmen’s Compensation Laws

5. Monopolizing Public Utilities

6. Regulating Industry

7. Allied Group: The American Association for Labor Legislation

10. The Progressive Era and the Family

1. Ethnoreligious Conflict and the Public Schools

2. Progressives, Public Education, and the Family: The Case of San Francisco

3. Ethnoreligious Conflict and the Rise of Feminism

A. Women’s Suffrage

B. Eugenics and Birth Control

4. Gathered Together: Progressivism as a Political Party

5. Significance

11. Origins of the Welfare State in America

1. Why the Welfare State?

2. Yankee Postmillennial Pietism

3. Yankee Women: The Driving Force

4. Progressives and the Gradual Secularization of Postmillennial Pietism: Ely, Dewey, and Commons

5. Yankee Women Progressives

6. The New Deal

7. The Rockefellers and Social Security

12. War Collectivism in World War I

1. Big Business and War Collectivism

2. Intellectuals and the Legacy of War Collectivism

3. The Drive to Prolong War Collectivism

13. World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals

1. Introduction

2. Pietism and Prohibition

3. Women at War and at the Polls

4. Saving Our Boys from Alcohol and Vice

5. The New Republic Collectivists

6. Economics in Service of the State: The Empiricism of Richard T. Ely

7. Economics in Service of the State: Government and Statistics

Appendix: Toward the Centralization of Science: The National Research Council

14. The Federal Reserve as a Cartelization Device: The Early Years, 1913–1930

1. The Origins of the Federal Reserve: The Dissatisfaction of New York Bankers

2. The Road to the Federal Reserve

3. The Structure of the Federal Reserve

4. The Personnel of the Federal Reserve

5. The Federal Reserve and World War I

6. Internationalizing the Cartel

7. Britain and the Gold Exchange Standard

8. Open-Market Purchases in the 1920s

9. Creating the Acceptance Market

10. From Boom to Depression

11. Summary

15. Herbert Hoover and the Myth of Laissez-Faire

1. Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce

2. Herbert Hoover Fights the Great Depression

Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects