(music playing)
So, in our last segment
of the larger lecture on the Politics of Progressivism,
we talked a bit about trust-busting,
but there were a number of other sort of progressive elements to the Roosevelt
administration. One of those involved Public Health,
specifically the passage,
in 1906, of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act;
two pieces of legislation that still impact our lives today.
Every time you go to the grocery store, for instance,
you may notice, on your meats that you purchase,
a stamp, which suggests that the United States Department of Agriculture has,
at least at some level, inspected this meat
for purity, for treatment, for handling and all those type things.
We still have outbreaks of disease.
We're all aware of that, but this notion that the federal government has a role
to play
in inspecting something like meat reflects one,
the growing dependence, or
importance of, the federal government in the everyday lives of Americans
in the early 20th Century, thanks to the progressives.
I think it also reflects the distance that many Americans now have from the
things they use every day.
What I mean by that, very simply,
is that there was a time when most Americans got their meat
from local sources. Well,
if we're having to worry about the condition of our meat, the treatment of our meat,
where it's coming from, that suggests that already, by the early 20th Century,
as people are moving to cities and taking industrial jobs and moving off the farm,
they're increasingly dependent
upon chains of production and chains of provision that stretch
longer distances. In other words, they are alienated from,
or separated from, the source
of their food and that's a point well worth consideration. It reflects the
changing economics and society of
the United States by the late 19th and early 20th Century.
But back to these two acts that are passed in 1906.
Let me suggest that one of the factors leading to especially passage of the Meat
Inspection Act was the publication in 1906 of a work
called "The Jungle" from
Upton Sinclair. It's very much an expose in the true
muckraking, progressive tradition. It's an expose about the stockyards in the meat
packing industry of Chicago,
and I want to read a brief passage,
relatively brief passage, and I want to forewarn you it's relatively graphic,
fairly vulgar, and not something you might want to hear
if you're eating something. Well,
Sinclair writes this, "There was never the least attention paid
to what was cut up for sausage. There would be,
there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage
that had been rejected and that was moldy and white.
It would be dosed with borax and glycerin
and dumped into the hoppers and made over again for home consumption.
There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor
in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped,
and spit uncounted billions of tuberculosis germs.
There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms,
and the water from leaky roofs would drip,
and thousands rats would race about on it.
It was too dark in these storage places to see well,
but a man could run is hand over these piles of meat
and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.
These rats were nuisances and the packers
would put poisoned bread out for them, and the rats would die.
Then rats, poisoned bread, and meat
would go into the hoppers together."
It's a really pleasant picture, but you got to kind of imagine what impact that
had
on people reading Sinclair, reading reports
in newspapers about where their meat was coming from, how it was treated and
what it most likely contained.
It makes sense, then, that in 1906 Congress would respond with
federal intervention; certainly, in the Progressive
Era, which relied so heavily on this notion of
federal intervention and the use of government
for so many ends.
But it's the Pure Food and Drug Act I guess I need to tell you about. Meat
Inspection makes a lot of sense.
Understand that exposes were showing, too,
that America's medicines and cosmetics were, themselves, adulterated and often
poorly handled and
unhygienic. Understand that what
the new law of 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, required
was that the federal government enforce laws,
which required manufacturers to put ingredients,
especially narcotics
and other drugs, onto labels
to make sure that consumers knew what was there.
Understand that there was an effort in place to remove those
elements that could be considered extraordinarily dangerous.
It was not uncommon, for instance, for producers
of medicines, sometimes cures,
to use stuff like cocaine, or
mercury, or other ingredients that
particularly, in large doses could be highly addictive
or worse yet, could lead to death.
It's in that spirit that
Congress acts during the Roosevelt
Administration. Now, it doesn't
completely outlaw practices.
Instead, like Roosevelt generally, and sort of progressives generally,
what we see here is a middle way. Government is going to have a role,
government is going to have enforcement, but we're not simply telling producers what
they may do.
It has to do with letting the people know, understand, freedom of information,
those type of things, Another area where Roosevelt's middle way, and the
progressive middle away, seems to come out, at least
so it seems to me, is in how Roosevelt handled the issue of labor;
these sort of radicals of the underclass.
In 1902, Roosevelt faced a strike
in the coalfields by, among others, the United Mine Workers.
Roosevelt's first response was a response of investigation.
He wanted to turn the issue over
to experts and, ultimately,
he wanted to avoid outright conflict and
use the experts to bring about arbitration
of the difficulties, the issues that separated employer
from employee. The mine workers
in the anthracite fields, from Pennsylvania all the way out to Colorado,
mine workers wanted higher wages and they wanted a restriction to an
eight-hour day,
a limitation on hours. But the owners
not only refused to consider the demands of the workers,
more importantly, the owners rejected
any discussions with the Union. They rejected the notion of collective
bargaining.
You may think about this, and it's going to continue after Roosevelt, by the way. It's
not just something he solves and then the problem of collective bargaining
goes away. No, no, it's more of a matter where
we've seen over, and over, how employers
reject collective bargaining. They reject unions or unionization.
Well, that's what happens in this case. The owners refused to deal
with an agent for the workers, for the miners,
but Teddy Roosevelt is faced with the dilemma of his own
because America relies on coal.
If coal is not dug and made available, the public relations nightmare will be
for Teddy Roosevelt, president.
You know, who's supposed to be out doing and protecting the interest of the
American people.
Roosevelt threatens to utilize federal troops
to reopen closed mines around the country.
But, ultimately, what he does is to force the mine
owners to accept arbitration
by a commission.
Nobody gets everything they want,
it's the middle way after all.
Workers get a raise, but it's not the race that they wanted.
They get a shorter working day at nine hours, but not the eight hours for which
they asked.
And the owners are not forced to recognize the Union,
or the right of workers to bargain collectively, but
they do have to deal with the Union, and its representatives, and the workers,
in part by the creation of a grievance committee.
Roosevelt declares this moderate,
sort of middle way where no side gets what it wants,
a square deal. In other words, the sides are all equal, all around the table.
It's a square, thus, this notion of
the Square Deal.
Another area that i think is worth noting, in terms of the Roosevelt
presidency,
is conservation. It may not seem like progressives, especially
urban progressives, would be overly concerned with the natural world, with
nature,
which is a fascinating concept in itself from a cultural perspective.
I mean, after all, nature has been defined and redefined over the course of human
history.
When the first puritans
came over to New England, and if you've read, of course,
books like The Scarlet Letter later on, and even into the Antebellum Period, you
get the sense
that the wilderness represented something to be feared.
An idea that traces its roots probably all the way back to
Europe, medieval Europe in particular,
when you've got stories like Little Red Riding Hood and all that, but
this idea that the forest, or the wilderness, is something to be feared;
it's dark, it's
unknown, uncivilized. It's not town, it's not settled.
It's where the Native Americans live, certainly get that the Scarlet Letter.
But consider that
by the early 20th Century, after Frederick Jackson Turner has talked about
the ending the frontier,
wilderness is no longer something that's out there that's threatening
so much as it is something that's disappearing. And what was once
considered threatening
rapidly becomes, instead, something that
may have to be preserved, that's dwindling. But consider that, too, that
nature has become,
as well, a commodity. That means something to be bought and sold;
something that has an abstract value.
It's not just a tree,
a thing that may be beautiful, It's a matter of board feet.
It's a matter of how much lumber you can get out of that tree.
And for Americans watching the wilderness, sort of, drift away, or decline,
or fade,
one of the questions that had to be asked was "how much longer will these
resources,
these commodities, be available if we use them all up?"
Using his presidential authority,
over the course of
his administration, Theodore Roosevelt added approximately 150 million
acres to America's national forests
along with other tracks of coal
and water lands.
1902,
would see passage of the National
Reclamation (or Newland) Act. And this act,
sponsored by Senator Francis Newland
of Nevada, set aside the proceeds of western
land sales to finance things like irrigation
and river control. This is very much a part of western settlement,
but it also affords
opportunities, not only to bring new lands into cultivation,
but to look toward the protection of resources in terms of watersheds.
In other words,
a rationalization in terms of watersheds
and timber resources, for preserving
or, at least, conserving certain land
for the future. It's actually a really fascinating story
about a gentleman, a person by the name of Gifford Pinchot,
who will become
affiliated with this
conservation of America's sorta wild lands.
He was America's first professionally-trained
forester, and would go on to become, under Roosevelt, go on to become the
chief of
the United States Forest Service. Pinchot represented Scientific Forestry.
Again, the notion of the expert, the notion of
progressivism itself.
And he believed that the whole question of
conservation was a practical one. It was a matter of management.
Put another way, and maybe a better way,
when you think about Environmental Protection,
you're not just thinking about environmentalism, but there are different
facets.
And, really, people mean different things even though they're using the same word,
right? The environment and Environmental Protection or environmentalism.
On the one hand, there's the attitude that things must be preserved because
they represent nature, because they're beautiful, whatever it maybe. They must be
preserved,
intact, as they are, as they would be without
human intervention. Without signs of human's
presence. On the other hand,
farther into the spectrum is this notion "use it all!"
It's there for human use, it's there as a commodity.
It's there to be used, use it!
Don't protect it in any way. So you've got
complete protection, no humans, and then you've got on the other end humans
with minimal protection, and then you have this middle way.
That's where Gifford Pinchot comes in. That's where Scientific Forestry comes
in, because the idea becomes one of management.
And the question becomes how can we not protect the land untainted, but how can
we manage the resources of the land in such a way
as to maintain those resources for the future,
for future generations of Americans, for the future national good and
national interest.
One of the areas that becomes very touchy
for Gifford Pinchot is
the Hetch Hetchy Valley. It's an area that,
under the the National Reclamation Act,
is set to be dammed and flooded.
And the question is one, again, of conservation,
preservation, or just sheer use.
Pinchot comes down in the middle, sort of,
though some might disagree, I suppose, with that interpretation.
But the argument that's made regarding Hetch Hetchy
and the creation of this body of water,
and the destruction of the nature, the natural world, that'll go beneath that
water
is really about Use. It's really about
the needs of humanity. And I'm not suggesting here that I am a great fan of
Pinchot. He's a fascinating character,
well worth study. I suggest that if you have a chance you read more about
early environmental thinking in the United States
and the world, for that matter. But I am suggesting that
Pinchot here, who is that sort of handpicked
individual by Theodore Roosevelt, by
a progressive president, like
Roosevelt, reflects this middle way;
Management, oversight,
efficiency,
not extremes. That to my mind
is very much in keeping with the progressive idea,
the middle class attitudes
that lay beneath progressive ideas.