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Economic Causes of Progressivism
Ballard Campbell, Northeastern
University
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Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States
Senator from Massachusetts, wrote to his friend Theodore Roosevelt
in November 1909 with some thoughts about the forthcoming elections
in 1910. He speculated that if the country was prosperous and
wages rose, "I think we will win; but if wages do not rise and
the high prices which we cannot control continue, we are likely
to lose."1
Lodge predicted correctly. The GOP lost badly in 1910. Stagnant
wages and rising prices did contribute to the Republican electoral
slide.
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The Republicans lost fifty-seven
seats and control of the House of Representatives in 1910. Forty-five
Republican congressional incumbents were defeated, which produced
the largest defeat of sitting members in the House since the sweeping
Democratic losses of 1894. In Lodge's Massachusetts, a bedrock
of Republicanism, only one seat changed partisan hands in 1910.
Yet Democrats increased their percentage of the vote in thirteen
of fourteen Bay State congressional districts.
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Republican fortunes slipped further
in 1912, when the Democrats captured the presidency behind Woodrow
Wilson. His party increased its control of the House, and gained
a majority in the Senate. The Democrats had achieved unified control
of the national government (Sixty-Third Congress) for the first
time in twenty years. Partisan fortune had changed. But why? And
what was its effect? |
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The observations of contemporaries
about the condition of the economy provide suggestive answers to
the first question. Frank Greene reported in Outlook, a magazine
of news and commentary, that one of the memorable events of 1910
was "the great national agitation, partaking of the proportions
of a National Revolt, against the high prices of food." Woodrow
Wilson of New Jersey noted in his gubernatorial inaugural address
shortly after his 1910 election that prices had undergone an extraordinary
rise and remained "at an intolerably high level." Alexander Noyes,
a financier of the period, called 1910 a depression year, with "steadily
slackening activity in general trade." The Congressional elections
of 1910, he wrote, "voiced the popular feeling of unrest and discontent."2 |
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