THE BEGINNING OF A NEW CENTURY
Most of the tendencies which characterized the growth of population,
the expansion of the West, the concentration of the people in cities,
the development of manufacturing and agriculture, and the extension of
the railway system, from 1870 to 1890, were equally significant during
the two decades following the latter year. Nevertheless there were
important differences of detail in the tendencies of the later period;
and about the year 1900 in particular there occurred changes that were
far-reaching.
[Illustration:
The chief foreign elements in the population of the United States, 1910]
The rate of growth of population slowed up slightly after 1890, being
twenty-one per cent. per decade, as contrasted with twenty-five per
cent. from 1870 to 1890. The increases were distributed over a larger
area during the later two decades, and aside from the industrial
states, those which showed the greatest growth were Oklahoma, Texas and
California. Immigration continued to be large, and concentrated in the
north, especially in the cities. In New York city, for instance, forty
per cent. of the inhabitants in 1910 were foreign born, and
thirty-eight per cent. more were of foreign, or mixed foreign and
native parentage. The chief European contributors to the population of
America in 1910 in the order of their importance were Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Russia, Ireland, Italy and England. Moreover the
foreign elements had frequently become concentrated in especial states:
the Germans in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois; the Russians in New
York, North Dakota and Connecticut; the Austrians in Pennsylvania and
New Jersey; and the Irish in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.
The immigration of Canadians, which had been of importance before 1900,
appreciably slowed down after that year; and instead there was a
distinct movement in the opposite direction, especially from Minnesota,
North Dakota and Washington. The emigration was caused mainly by the
desire to take up fertile lands which had been widely advertised by the
Canadian government. The migration from the eastern states toward the
West continued as in earlier years. It was noticeable, however, that
whereas previous migration had been almost wholly on east and west
lines, there was in later years a greater tendency to seek favorable
openings wherever they were found. Oklahoma, for example, in 1910
contained 71,000 natives of Illinois, 101,000 Kansans and 162,000
Missourians. The trend of population toward the cities was so rapid
between 1890 and 1910 as to suggest the likelihood that by 1920 half
the people of the country would be living in communities of 2,500
persons or more. Of the twenty-three towns that more than doubled in
numbers during the two decades after 1890, seventeen were in the South
and on the Pacific Coast, indicating that the tendency toward urban
life was no longer confined to the North and East.
Manufacturing increased its importance as the greatest economic
activity in the Northeast, and was moving westward so rapidly that
Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois found their interests becoming
increasingly like those of the eastern states. Parts of the South,
also, developed considerable industrial interests. The manufacture of
cotton goods, for example, increased with such rapidity that three of
the first five states in the value of their product in 1909 were
southern states--North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Since 1889
the production of lumber has taken a prominent place. Louisiana doubled
its activity from 1889 to 1899 and had tripled this record by 1909.
Almost the entire South from Virginia to Louisiana produced large
amounts during the twenty years under consideration. The iron and steel
industry in Alabama, and the production of turpentine, resin and
fertilizers were other important southern interests. Throughout the
country at large the number of wage earners engaged in manufacturing
grew somewhat more rapidly than the population, being about twenty-five
per cent. per decade from 1890 to 1910.
The center of agriculture continued to be in the Middle West, in which
was to be found nearly fifty-three per cent. of the improved farm lands
and fifty-eight per cent. of the value of all farm property. It was in
this part of the country that the greatest increases in the amount of
improved land took place, and particularly in the prairie country west
of the Mississippi. By 1890 the Plains had lost their earlier unique
and picturesque characteristics as a cattle country, and had given way
to the homesteader. Hence the greatest expansion in agriculture took
place in the tier of states from North Dakota to Texas. It appeared,
therefore, that manufacturing was driving agriculture farther and
farther to the west: New England cultivated less farm land in 1910 than
in 1850; the improved area in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania
declined after 1880; Ohio tilled fewer acres in 1910 than in 1900, and
the gradual replacement of agriculture by manufacturing was observable
in Indiana and Illinois. Oklahoma and Texas, on the other hand,
together opened to cultivation between 1890 and 1910 nearly 24,000,000
acres, an expanse almost equivalent to the combined areas of New
Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland.
By 1890 it was clear that the future of the Far West lay in
agriculture, rather than in the mining of the precious metals. Between
that date and 1910, the amount of improved farm land in the section
increased sixty-five per cent. In the states of Washington, New Mexico,
Colorado, Idaho and Montana, large areas were placed under cultivation.
In Washington the amount of improved farm land increased about 350 per
cent. The growing of fruits and nuts was brought to a high state of
excellence in the coast states. The timber industry developed after
1880 and particularly after 1900. About the close of the nineteenth
century the great lumber companies began to seek sources of supply to
take the place of those around the Great Lakes. They turned to the
South and the Far West. The methods which were used for getting control
of the land, and the recklessness with which the supplies of timber
were cut off became of importance as causes of the conservation
movement. The main handicap in the way of the development of trade
between the Far West and the East was the great distances involved.
Hence arose the interest of the Coast in transcontinental railway rates
and the project for a canal across the isthmus of Panama.
An economic fact of no little importance was a change in the downward
tendency of the price level after 1896. It will be remembered that the
constant fall in prices from 1873 to 1896 had brought distress to the
farmers of the West and had been one of the causes of the Populist
revolt. After 1896 the process was reversed. Between that year and 1913
the quantity of gold in circulation considerably increased, as has been
seen; bank deposits subject to check trebled in volume, and the use of
checks became more common; altogether it was estimated by Professor
Irving Fisher that the quantity of money in circulation increased
two-fold. Prices were fifty per cent. higher in 1913 than in the
earlier year, and accordingly the complaints of the farmer were less
frequently heard. The wage earner in the factories, however, was
differently affected. The price which he had to pay for the necessities
of life increased faster than his wages, so that his standard of living
was going down. Inasmuch as the number of wage earners in the factories
was rapidly increasing, it seemed inevitable that the problem of rising
prices after 1896 would constitute as great a problem as the problem of
falling prices had done before that year.
[Illustration:
The Cost of Food, 1900-1912]
In industrial enterprise the close of the nineteenth century and the
opening of the twentieth were characterized by a mad rush toward
consolidation. To a milder degree the process had, of course, been
under way for many years, during which the Standard Oil Company and
other trusts were the subject of much study and legislation. In the
course of time some of these concerns made such great profits that
their leaders sought attractive openings for the investment of their
surplus. They began to appear on the boards of directors of railways,
banks, electric lighting companies and other industrial organizations.
Before 1900 two powerful groups had definitely formed. The Standard or
Rockefeller group was obtaining large interests in such railroads as
the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western,
and the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. It was reaching out to the gas
and electric companies in New York, had an alliance with the National
City Bank and others, and was in touch with great life insurance
companies such as the Equitable and the Mutual of New York. Such
connections enabled them to determine the policies and direct the
investments of these important concerns. The Morgans extended their
influence over the Philadelphia and Reading, the New York, Lake Erie
and Western, the Lehigh Valley and others. Morgan himself also entered
the industrial field as organizer of the Federal Steel Company and the
National Tube Company.
The mania for organizing large corporations came to a climax about
1900. The census taken in that year noted ninety-two that had been
formed between January 1, 1899, and June 30, 1900. Early in 1904 the
editor of Moody's _Manual of Corporation Securities_ noted the
existence of 440 large industrial and transportation combinations whose
capitalization as measured by the par value of their stocks and bonds
was nearly $20,500,000,000. The securities--stocks and bonds--of the
new companies were eagerly taken up by the investing public. Prosperity
was wide-spread and the financial strength behind the organizations
seemed unlimited. Speculation became common. A few individuals amassed
wealth through the shrewd purchase and sale of stocks, and countless
others sought unsuccessfully to imitate them. Where sales of 400,000
shares on the stock exchange had formerly been looked upon as a good
day's business, the record jumped to a million, then two, and even
three.[1]
A threatened competitive struggle among certain steel manufacturers in
1901 led to the formation of the United States Steel Corporation, the
most famous consolidation of the period. It was, strictly speaking, a
"holding corporation" which did not manufacture at all, but merely held
the securities and directed the policies of the group of companies of
which it was composed. It integrated all the elements of the
industry--ore deposits, coal mines, limestone, a thousand miles of
railroads, ore vessels on the Great Lakes, furnaces, steel works,
rolling mills and other related interests. The value of the tangible
property which was thus brought under the control of a single group of
men was estimated by the United States Commissioner of Corporations at
about $700,000,000. The company issued securities, however, to somewhat
over twice this amount. In other words, about $700,000,000 of the
capitalization was "water," that is, securities issued in excess of the
value of the tangible properties owned. The prices paid to those who
controlled the constituent companies were such as to make them
multi-millionaires over night, and the commission given to the
financiers who organized the Corporation was unparalleled in size,
amounting to $62,500,000.
The appreciation of the value of the ore deposits controlled by the
Steel Corporation later replaced some of the water in its securities,
but in many cases no such process came about. Investors therefore
discovered that the paper which they had purchased did not represent
real property, but merely the hope of a company that its profits would
be large enough to provide returns upon all its securities. One hundred
of the leading industrial stocks shrank in value $1,750,000,000 within
eighteen months. In the case of the Steel Corporation it was noticeable
that its supremacy depended to a large extent on the possession of
resources of ore on land much of which had originally belonged to the
public, a fact which, the Commissioner of Corporations remarked, made
the affairs of the company a matter of public interest.
The growth and consolidation which characterized the history of
industry were also taking place in the railway system, although
somewhat more slowly. It has already been noted that the length of the
railroads had reached 160,000 miles by 1890. For the next two decades
the rate of construction diminished slightly, yet the total in 1914 was
252,231 miles, and the par value of all railroad securities was
estimated at $20,500,000,000. Nearly four and a half million persons, a
railroad president estimated in 1915, were at that time interested in
the industry as employees, as workmen in shops making railroad
supplies, or through the ownership of stocks and bonds.
The management of the roads is, of course, continually changing;
alliances are made and broken; groups form and dissolve. About the time
that the United States Steel Corporation was being organized, however,
about ninety-five per cent. of the important lines were in the control
of six groups of influential persons, which were dominated by fourteen
individuals. Each group had obtained the upper hand in the roads of one
or more sections. The Morgan-Hill group, for example, held the Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy, the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, the
Southern, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Erie and others, amounting to
47,206 miles. E.H. Harriman, chairman of the board of directors of the
Union Pacific, succeeded in obtaining control of so many lines that by
1901 the Interstate Commerce Commission asserted that the consummation
of plans which he then had in mind would subject nearly one-half the
territory of the United States to the power of a single will. Before
his death in 1909 he had obtained practical control of a system of
roads running from coast to coast and passing through the most
important cities of the country and had planned to continue
indefinitely the process of acquiring new lines.
[Illustration:
Morgan-Hill railroads as listed shortly after 1900]
The concentration of the banking interests of the country went hand in
hand with consolidation in industry and railway control. The
unprecedented operations which have just been mentioned demanded
unprecedented amounts of capital and credit, and the concentration of
these necessities occurred in New York City. The Standard Oil group and
the Morgan group dominated the banking interests to such an extent that
it was doubtful whether any great business enterprise demanding large
capital could be started without the aid of one or the other of them.
Some years later a congressional investigation was started, to discover
whether the control of a few men over the financial affairs of the
nation amounted to a "money trust," and at that time it was found that
the members of four allied financial institutions in New York City held
341 directorships in banks, insurance companies, railroads, steamship
companies and trading and public utility corporations, having aggregate
resources of $22,245,000,000.
The financial power thus placed in the hands of a small number of men
was the cause of much legislation passed by the states and by Congress
in connection with the railroads and trusts. Opinions varied widely in
regard to the effects of concentration. On the one hand it was argued
that the men of greatest ability and vision naturally came to the top;
that industry received the necessary stabilizing influence; that
production and demand were compelled to harmonize; that scientific
research directed toward the discovery of new processes and products,
and the better utilization of old ones could be successfully carried on
only by concerns with large resources; and that efficiency and economy
resulted from large-scale operation. On the other hand it was pointed
out that a small number of persons who were responsible to nobody could
dominate the fortunes of hundreds of thousands of wage earners,
manipulate production, make or break a region or a rival, bring about
financial crises and, in a controversy or for private gain, use a great
industry or a railroad as a weapon and wreck it regardless of the
welfare of the public at large.
Among the intellectual forces underlying American history after 1890, a
prominent place should be given to the expansion of the public library,
the growth of public education and the development of the press. Many
libraries, of course, had been established long before the Civil
War--the Library of Congress, for example, having been founded in
1800--but the great growth of the public library supported by taxation
and open to all citizens alike occurred after 1865. Between that year
and 1900 no fewer than thirty-seven states passed laws enabling the
towns within their borders to levy taxes for the support of public
libraries; private bequests amounted to fabulous sums, the outstanding
example of which were the gifts of Andrew Carnegie, amounting to
$62,500,000 between 1881 and 1915. By 1914 there were over 2,000
libraries containing at least 5,000 volumes, and forty that contained
more than 200,000 each.
The significant features in the growth of education between 1865 and
1890 had been the improvement of the public grammar school, the
establishment of high schools and the foundation of the great state
universities. After 1890 the public high schools were greatly improved,
business and vocational courses were added, and the enrollment at the
colleges and universities received large additions. Such universities
as that in Wisconsin exerted an unusual influence on intellectual and
political currents in individual states.
A large proportion of the political, social and economic changes and
reforms that have taken place in the United States since 1890 have done
so because public opinion was educated, quietly influenced or noisily
bestirred by the press. Governors and presidents appealed to their
constituents through the newspaper and the periodical. Political
campaigns have become increasingly matters of publicity; candidates for
office have their press bureaus; corporations, abandoning their
traditional policy of silence, explain their practices; and railroads
defend their policies by means of advertisements in the newspapers.
Newspaper correspondents go out through the country months before
candidates for the presidency are nominated, and discover and publish
sentiment favorable to the individual whom the particular organ desires
to see placed in office. In 1918 the circulation of the daily
newspapers amounted to approximately 28,000,000 copies for each issue.
In the North, the Middle West, and on the Pacific Coast the number
published was sufficient to provide every family with one copy. The
South and the Rocky Mountain region were less well supplied. The great
metropolitan newspapers circulate widely, not only in the immediate
vicinity of the publisher's office, but over a wide area outside. At
least one of them in 1918 approached half a million copies daily,
another exceeded 800,000, and a third issued nearly three-fourths of a
million on Sunday. William R. Hearst established a chain of newspapers
which gave him an audience of over a million readers every day. Several
of the weekly and monthly magazines circulated in hundreds of thousands
of copies; and one weekly periodical which presented newspaper opinion
of all shades of political partisanship had a circulation of 750,000
copies for every issue.
[Illustration:
Daily Newspaper Circulation, 1918]
The rise of the "muck-rake"[2] magazines was typical of the ten years
at the opening of the twentieth century. These periodicals printed
articles which portrayed a side of American life not commonly discussed
in the newspapers. One of the earliest serials of this type was Miss
Ida M. Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company, published in
_McClure's Magazine_ in 1902-1903. Instead of the ordinary eulogy of
the size and success of the Company, Miss Tarbell presented many of its
unfair practices. At the same time and in the same publication Lincoln
Steffens was exposing the seamy side of municipal affairs in "The Shame
of the Cities." Between 1901 and 1906 one of the muck-rake periodicals
increased its sales threefold, another four and another seven.
Cooperation among newspapers in the gathering of information is no
novelty in the United States, but the greatest strides have been taken
since 1890. By 1915 the Associated Press had leased 50,000 miles of
telegraph wires forming a net all over the country; it had agents in
every important news center; it exchanged services with three European
press associations; and it had its own representatives not only in
London, Paris, and Berlin, but in Fez, Madeira, Colombo, Tsingtau and
Sydney. News from Europe reached New York in less than an hour and was
promptly sent to 900 newspapers, whence it was copied in thousands of
daily and weekly publications. As in the case of other enterprises the
publication of newspapers showed a tendency towards consolidation. The
establishment of a new periodical became a million-dollar venture, and
it remains to be seen whether the tendency toward centralization will
result in the publication only of such news or such phases of the news
as meet the approval of the relatively small number of persons that can
launch a million-dollar organization.
It will be remembered that _laissez faire_ was the prevailing theory in
regard to the proper relation between government and industry during
the twenty-five years after the close of the Civil War, except in so
far as industrial organizations desired protective tariffs. In brief
the upholders of this creed contended that legislation should concern
itself as little as possible with the regulation of trade, that it
should restrict itself to protecting commerce from interference and
that business men should be permitted to work out their own problems
with the least possible reference to such artificial forces as were
supplied by legal enactments.[3] It would be inaccurate to say that the
theory of _laissez faire_ had completely given way by the end of the
half century after the Civil War. Nor would it be wholly correct to say
that any other theory has yet demonstrated its permanent reliability,
Nevertheless the distinctive philosophy upon which later legislation
has been built is the theory of public interest. The theory needs
definition in some detail, because it forms the philosophy which
underlies most of the political developments and much of the
legislation of the early twentieth century.
As the men of the eighties and nineties contemplated the vast amounts
of wealth created during those decades they saw it concentrated to a
great extent in the hands of the few. The few believed that the public
good was best cared for in this way, but an increasing majority of the
people looked upon the tendency with greater and greater alarm. They
complained that the railroads discriminated in favor of the powerful
few; that corporations were achieving monopoly; and that the government
itself often assisted the process by framing tariff schedules primarily
for the interest of the manufacturers. When the reaction against this
situation started, it was of course found that the seats of power were
already occupied by the adherents of _laissez faire_,--the party
committees, the legislatures, the executive offices and the courts.
There ensued, therefore, a long struggle for power and for a new theory
of government. The land-marks of the controversy were to be found in
interstate commerce acts, anti-trust laws, income taxes, bureaus of
labor and factory legislation.
The proponent of _laissez faire_ would allow the few to accumulate
large fortunes which they might share with the many through
benefactions, gifts to education, libraries, and other public
enterprises; the adherent of public interest would inquire why the many
are poor, and attempt so to change economic conditions as to reduce the
number of the poor to a minimum. Instead of framing laws so that wealth
and power would get into the hands of a small number of individuals, in
the expectation that prosperity would filter down to the many, the
advocate of public interest would aim his legislation directly at what
he considers the needs of the less powerful classes. He would interfere
with the railroads, for example, to compel them to charge uniform
rates, prevent corporations from electing public officers by means of
large contributions to campaign funds, force industry even at some cost
to protect employees through safety devices, and would hold the great
forests on the public lands for the direct good of the whole people.
The transfer of emphasis from _laissez faire_ to public interest was
based upon a steady growth in the value placed upon the worth of the
individual man, and upon a shift from legislating for the few to
legislating directly for the multitude. The change was greater than can
be indicated by citing any one law or group of laws. It was "a new
intellectual perspective through which we view all moral issues
affecting society."[4]
Underlying many of the difficulties in the way of replacing _laissez
faire_ with a new theory, was the attitude of the courts toward certain
parts of the Fourteenth Amendment. It will be remembered that a portion
of section one of the Amendment forbids the states to "deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." It
will also be remembered that the majority of the Supreme Court in early
decisions interpreting the Amendment had expressed the belief that its
purpose was the protection of the negro. By 1890, however, the Court
had come to hold that the word "person" as used in the first section
included corporations, and thus had given the language of the Amendment
a greatly widened application. Of 528 decisions given by the Court on
the Amendment between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen concerned the negro
race, while 289 affected corporations. In the decision of the case
Lochner _v._ New York, a state law regulating hours of labor in
bakeries was declared to conflict with the Amendment, because the right
of the laborer to work as many hours as he pleased was part of the
"liberty" which was protected by the Amendment. Laws regulating
railroad rates through commissions were held to deprive corporations of
property without due process. Until recently changed, the statutes did
not allow appeal to the Supreme Court in cases where state courts
declared state laws in conflict with the United States Constitution,
and the Fourteenth Amendment therefore acted as a protective bulwark in
state as well as nation. In brief, then, the legal position of the big
industrial organizations was almost impregnable because of the
fortuitous circumstance that the words of a part of the Constitution
might be held to mean something which probably did not enter the minds
of the Congress or the state legislatures which placed the words in the
document.
The people of the United States have usually avoided hostile criticism
of the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court, and they
have reflected this feeling in their acquiescence in the unexpected
turn given to the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The members of
the Court, however, have frequently expressed disquietude. Dissenting
opinions opposing the view which the Court has taken, have been common.
Mr. Justice Harlan declared that the scope of the Amendment was being
enlarged far beyond its original purpose; Mr. Justice Holmes asserted
that the word "liberty" was being "perverted" and that the Constitution
was not intended to embody _laissez faire_ or any other economic
theory.[5]
The most prominent pioneers in replacing the old by the new theory were
William J. Bryan, Robert M. La Follette and Theodore Roosevelt. Bryan's
leadership in 1896 has already been mentioned. With courage and
sincerity he attempted to solve the social and economic problems of his
day, but his youth, his inexperience, his radicalism, and the fact that
he did not choose issues that were immediately practicable made it
impossible for him to command the confidence of the majority. Unable
himself to scale the heights of reform, he nevertheless pointed them
out to others. With a voice that has been likened to an organ with a
hundred stops, with persistence, energy and good nature he spread far
and wide a new conception of social obligation. He insisted that the
social and economic discontent of the South and West were real, and
that they could not be laughed out of court or frightened into silence.
La Follette's constructive pioneer work was done for the most part in
Wisconsin. During the ascendency of the _laissez faire_ theory, the
state was largely controlled by the lumber, railroad and other
interests, using the Republican party as their political agency; and a
small but powerful group controlled the election of state and federal
officials, the press and state legislation. Between 1885 and 1891 La
Follette, who was himself a Republican, was a representative in the
federal House. In the latter year he came into collision with Senator
Sawyer, a wealthy lumber merchant who was the leader of the dominant
party in the state. For years the state treasurers had been lending the
state's money to favored banks without interest. Senator Sawyer had
acted as bondsman for the treasurers and was sued by the
attorney-general of the state for back interest. La Follette threw
himself into this controversy on the side of the state; and being
unable to obtain a hearing through the usual medium of the press, he
and his supporters went directly to the people, speaking from town to
town before interested audiences; and subsequently the state won.
In the Sawyer controversy were visible all the elements of the later
creed and methods of La Follette. He always remained with the
Republican party, preferring to attempt change from within; and he
always opposed the interests and found his strength in direct appeals
to the people of his state. Out of those years came the "Wisconsin
idea,"--a program which included the taxation of railroads and
corporations, primaries in which the people could nominate their own
candidates for office, the prohibiting of the acceptance of railroad
passes by public officials, and the conservation of the forests and
water power of the state. The conflict between _laissez faire_ and
public interest in Wisconsin was long and bitter, but it led to a
series of triumphs for La Follette, who was elected governor in 1900,
1902 and 1904, and chosen to the federal Senate in 1905. In the
meanwhile there was a widespread demand throughout the West for
legislation along the lines marked out by Wisconsin.
Party lines are so drawn in the United States that it is difficult for
like-minded men of different parties to cooperate in furthering a
program. The three pioneers were men whose capacities and personal
qualities differed greatly, but in their economic and political
philosophy they were nearer to one another than to the rank and file of
their own parties. Bryan in 1902 refused to take part in the Democratic
campaign in Wisconsin because he favored La Follette's program, and in
1905 he even aided the latter in his fight for railroad regulation; in
1912 Bryan found Roosevelt leading a revolt in the Republican party on
a program to much of which he could give unqualified assent; and of La
Follette, Roosevelt said in the same year: "Thanks to the movement for
genuinely democratic popular government which Senator La Follette led
to overwhelming victory in Wisconsin, that state has become literally a
laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the
social and political betterment of the people as a whole."
Roosevelt's own share in the history of the early twentieth century was
of such magnitude as to require a more extended account.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The literature is voluminous and not easy to evaluate. On population
changes and immigration, the best source is the _Abstract of the
Thirteenth (1910) Census_ (1913), with the _Atlas_ accompanying it
(1914); _Reports of the Immigration Commission, appointed under the
Congressional Act of Feb. 20, 1907_ (42 vols., 1911), is exhaustive; F.
A. Ogg, _National Progress_ (1918), has a good chapter; consult Joseph
Schafer, _A History of the Pacific Northwest_ (rev. ed., 1918), for
Washington and Oregon.
The consolidation in industry, railroads and finance may be followed
in: A.D. Noyes, _Forty Years of American Finance_ (1909); John Moody,
_The Truth about the Trusts_ (1904); _Report of the Commissioner of
Corporations on the Steel Industry_ (3 parts, 1911), on the United
States Steel Corporation; Anna P. Youngman, _Economic Causes of Great
Fortunes_ (1909); C.R. Van Hise, _Concentration and Control a Solution
of the Trust Problem in the United States_ (rev. ed., 1914); E.R.
Johnson and T.W. Van Metre, _Principles of Railroad Transportation_
(1916); John Moody, _The Railroad Builders_ (1919); John Moody, _The
Masters of Capital_ (1919); and _Report of the Committee Appointed
Pursuant to House Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigate the
Concentration of Control of Money and Credit_, (Pujo Committee) 1913.
There is no satisfactory study of the social and political effects of
the great increase in the circulation of newspapers and periodicals.
Suggestive articles are: _World's Work_ (Oct., 1916), "Stalking for
Nine Million Votes"; _Arena_ (July, 1909), "The Making of Public
Opinion"; _Atlantic Monthly_ (Mar., 1910), "Suppression of Important
News." Less superficial articles are those of Walter Lippmann in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ (Nov., Dec., 1919). The statistics are available in
N.W. Ayer, _American Newspaper Annual and Directory_.
The emergence of the theory of public interest is best seen in the
_Autobiography_ of R.M. La Follette (4th ed., 1920); consult also
Theodore Roosevelt, _Autobiography_, and C.G. Washburn, _Theodore
Roosevelt; the Logic of his Career_ (1916). A profound article is W.J.
Tucker, "The Progress of the Social Conscience," in _Atlantic Monthly_
(Sept., 1915).
On the Fourteenth Amendment, consult the volumes already mentioned
under Chap. IV.
There are no thorough estimates of Bryan and La Follette. On the
former: _Atlantic Monthly_ (Sept., 1912), and _Nineteenth Century_
(July, 1915); H. Croly, _Promise of American Life_ (1914), is critical.
W.J. Bryan, _First Battle_ (1897), is essential. On La Follette, his
own narrative as given in the _Autobiography_ is best, but should be
read with care as it was written in the heat of partisan controversy.
See also F.C. Howe, _Wisconsin an Experiment in Democracy_ (1912),
friendly to La Follette.
Frank Norris, _The Octopus, and The Pit_; Winston Churchill, _Coniston_
and _Mr. Crewe's Career_; and Upton Sinclair, _The Jungle_, are
illustrative fiction.
* * * * *
[1] The shrinkage of the value of these securities caused the "rich
men's panic" of 1903. Consult Noyes, _Forty Years_, 308-311.
[2] The word originated in 1906 with President Roosevelt, who likened
certain sensational journalists to the man with the Muck-Rake in
Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress. Annual Register_, 1906, 442.
[3] Cf. pp. 94-96 above.
[4] I have drawn largely at this point upon Dr. W.J. Tucker's article
"The Progress of the Social Conscience" in the _Atlantic Monthly_,
Sept., 1915, 289-303. The clearest idea of the transition from _laissez
faire_ to public interest is gained by reading the biography of M.A.
Hanna by Croly, and La Follette's and Roosevelt's autobiographies.
[5] Usually cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment have also involved
other parts of the Constitution. The main reliance, however, in such
cases has been the Amendment mentioned.