Woodrow Wilson’s America 100 Years Ago

July 30, 2013 by Michael Streich 

During his term in office, Woodrow Wilson saw many similar problems to those America faces today. Image by A. B. Lagrelius & Westphal, Stockholm; courtesy of Nobel Prize.

“The old political formulas do not fit the present problems; they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age.”

This observation seems appropriate in describing the contemporary political climate in the United States. It was written, however, by the newly elected president, Woodrow Wilson, in 1913. It was the year before the Great War in Europe, a time of changing social trends and growing economic disparity. The new president was a Democrat, the first one since Grover Cleveland and only the second one since 1860 and the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Wilson’s America in 1913

Wilson won with 6,293,454 popular votes out of over 15 million cast in 1912. The dominant Republican Party split between incumbent William Howard Taft and former president Theodore Roosevelt. Although the period was dubbed the Progressive Era, Wilson’s America was characterized by great wealth disparity, deplorable working conditions, and an influx of immigrants, many coming from non-traditional regions such as Eastern Europe and Russia.

Unlike Roosevelt and Taft, Wilson had no political background except for having served two years as the governor of New Jersey. He was not aligned to the social upper class. After winning the presidency, for example, his wife was “appalled,” according to historian Virginia Cowles, that Mrs. Taft, the former First Lady, had spent over $6,000 a year on clothing appropriate to her position.

Mrs. Wilson reportedly remarked, “I like to be tastefully gowned but I do not think that extravagance brings a woman happiness.”

The silk industry in Paterson, New Jersey employed many children with low wages and cruel conditions. Strikes in 1913 closed the factories. Library of Congress photo. Part of the Bain Collection.

In 1913 the American nation was in a period of transition. Like their counterparts in Britain who tended to be more aggressive, suffragettes marched, fighting for the right to vote. Wilson opposed them, as did his wife. Wealth disparity, highlighted in the nation’s social columns reporting on the Newport parties and other such gatherings, bred the fear of socialism. In the election of 1912, Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs had received almost a million popular votes.

On the world stage, the United States was an imperialist power. Directly and indirectly, the spheres of influence included the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Conquering the Philippines came as a result of the Spanish American War and enhanced the career of William Howard Taft who had served as governor of the territory followed by an appointment to Teddy Roosevelt’s Cabinet.

From the War Department, Taft’s next career move was as President. He golfed, ate out of frustration – according to several historians – and worked with the Congress to achieve reforms Progressive legislators deemed paltry while appeasing the money interests.

Reforms and Issues Facing Wilson

But it was Wilson, beginning in 1913, who personally spearheaded reforms like the Federal Reserve and tariff reform. A “brilliant historian and political theorist,” according to Constitutional scholar Alfred Kelly, Wilson modeled his executive leadership more on the British parliamentary system, going to the Congress himself to push through “administration” bills. When lobbying interests opposed him, he took his case directly to the people.

Wilson was, at heart, a schoolmaster, the Princeton professor immersed in research and lecturing. He was conservative by contemporary standards, religiously moral, and an idealist. He supported Prohibition yet fought tenaciously for a new world order at the end of World War I, including the creation of the League of Nations. It was this man, who began every Cabinet meeting with prayer, that rose to lead the nation in 1913.

The “big money trusts,” however, controlled practically every aspect of business and finance. The Federal Reserve Act, crafted by Wilson and Representative Carter Glass of Virginia, was originally conceived on Jekyll Island, Georgia – the “millionaires retreat,” by Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and a small group of bankers.

The Congressional “Pujo Committee,” after months of hearings and interviews, determined that, “In all, 341 directorships in a hundred and twelve corporations [had] aggregate resources of $22,245,000,000.” (Virginia Cowles, 1967). The wealthiest and most powerful man was J.P. Morgan. Morgan’s vast holdings included the British White Star Line which included the ill-fated RMS Titanic. Morgan missed the maiden voyage; his stateroom remained empty.

America in 1913 was both patriotic and religious. Wilson was a conservative Presbyterian. His Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, was a fundamentalist who would defend creationism in the Scopes Trial in 1925 Tennessee. In 1913, evangelist Billy Sunday was still drawing large crowds to his revivalist meetings where he preached against the sin of alcohol consumption. Yet, according to writer Bob Frost, Sunday earned more in one day than an average American family earned annually.nd of 1913, Henry Ford began to pay his employees five dollars a day after recording record profits of twenty million in 1913.

Pursuing the American Dream

Early in 1913 underpaid restaurant workers staged a walkout in New York. Mobs of waiters and kitchen employees broke the windows of the famed Hotel Knickerbocker, Hotel Belmont, Waldorf Astoria, the Ritz-Carlton, and Delmonico’s.

These actions, under the auspices of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), were followed by a strike in Paterson, New Jersey lasting four months. Ironically, both actions were planned in the Greenwich Village apartment of Mrs. Mabel Dodge, one of the wealthiest Americans, and a leader in New York society.

This was also the time new music – syncopation, “modern” art, and silent movies were altering society. The Birth of a Nation, which premiered in 1915, received a “thumbs up” from President Wilson, who supposedly commented, “that’s the way it really was.” The film perpetuated many of the myths associated with the Reconstruction Era as well as stereotyping blacks in the South.

One hundred years later the nation is still divided between post-modernists and the social purists who yearn for a simpler past. The history of America, however, has always been of struggle and the attainment of the American Dream. At the end of 1913 many believed that Henry Ford was making that dream possible by raising wages for his workers from two to five dollars a day. World War One was only six months away.

Resources

Cowles, Virginia. 1913 An End and a Beginning. (1967). New York: Harper & Row.

Frost, Bob. Soul Saver. (July/August 2013). History Channel Magazine.

Kelly, Alfred and Winfred A. Harbison. The American Constitution Its Origins and Development. (1976). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Smith, Page. A People’s History of the United States. (1986). New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

© Copyright 2013 Michael Streich, All rights Reserved. Written For: Decoded Past