Letter to Uncle T. on 'liberal' v. 'progressive'

Uncle T,

Substitute the word "liberal" for progressive, I don't care. I'm proud to be liberal. But just so you know, liberal politicians use the word "progressive" because it has a positive historical antecedent in U.S. politics -- the Progressive movement from 1901-1912 and the National Progressive Republican League, a splinter from the GOP.

Progressives were alarmed at the growth of monopolies and accumulation of wealth at the top during the so-called Gilded Age, and they decided that laissez-faire policy wasn't working anymore. They didn't want to revert to socialism, which was becoming popular in Europe at the time, and taking root in America via European immigrants; the Progressives wanted to purify capitalism, not replace it with socialism.

Progressives wanted government to take action against rising economic inequality, discrimination against freed blacks, child labor, squalid living conditions and "slumlords," price discrimination and monopolies; high protective tariffs; and in general, gov't serving Big Business.

Progressive reforms included: breaking up trusts and interlocking directorates; new food safety standards (Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act); sanitation codes for sweatshops; reform of "reform" schools and prisons; workmen's compensation laws; use of the political referendum; direct election of U.S. Senators via the 17th Amendment (they called the Senate the "Millionaires Club" even back then!); regulation of the railroads through the 1903 Elkins Act and local public utilities commissions; and state corrupt-practices acts. They also campaigned for women's suffrage, the 8-hour workday, and prohibition, but weren't successful until the 1920s.

Republican progressive reformer Teddy Roosevelt urged Congress to create the Department of Labor and Commerce in 1903, which included the Bureau of Corporations, which was authorized to probe businesses doing interstate commerce. This, and expansion of the Interstate Commerce Commission, paved the way for "trust-busting" and ending price discrimination. TR is known as the "Trust Buster," but actually president W.H. Taft brought 90 anti-trust cases to court in 4 years vs. 44 cases in TR's 7.5 years, including Taft's successful bid to break up the powerful Rockefellers' Standard Oil Company, and U.S. Steel.

The Progressive era also saw the first significant national conservation legislation: the Newlands Act of 1902, which let Washington collect taxes from the sale of public lands in the West for irrigation projects; and TR set aside 125 million acres of forest reserves.

Progressives' main weapon was muckraking journalism and raising public awareness: books like Wealth Against Commonwealth, The Theory of the Leisure Class, How the Other Half Lives, The Jungle, The Financier, Following the Color Line, and The Bitter Cry of the Children.

In 1910, TR split the Republican Party in two with his campaign for "New Nationalism," i.e. increasing gov't power to remedy economic and social abuses. The Republicans lost the House to the Democrats.

So, I consider the moniker "Progressive" to hearken back to a proud list of accomplishments, and an optimistic, can-do attitude that capitalism needs government reform and oversight, not extermination. Hillary Clinton, by the way, alluded to this history in the Dem You-Tube debates. Although I admit I was ashamed when no Democrat would stand up and say "I'm a liberal" when asked directly. It's not the dirty, four-letter word our media have made it out to be.

You need to brush up on your high school U.S. history. You seem to think that all of the good things we have today just happened spontaneously, like food and drug testing, overtime pay, health and safety standards, anti-trust laws, etc. It took liberal-progressive reforms to make it happen, while Big Business cried and protested the whole way. Some things never change.