In the early 1900s, business continued to expand, labor conflicts increased, and there were additional marvelous inventions. In 1903, for example, the Wright brothers had the first airplane flight on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Wilbur and Orville Wright were actually from Dayton, Ohio, where there is a fascinating museum devoted to innovations in air travel.
Sons of a Christian minister, the Wright boys lost their mother to an illness while they were teenagers. Orville, the younger of the boys, dropped out of high school to start a printing business, which he turned into a newspaper with the help of his brother Wilbur. But the competition from larger newspapers was too great, and their business went back to only printing.
A bicycle craze hit our nation in the 1890s, and the Wrights started making and selling bicycles. Then they began to focus on designing a bicycle-powered airplane:[1]
In 1896, the newspapers were filled with accounts of flying machines. Wilbur and Orville noticed that all these primitive aircraft lacked suitable controls. They began to wonder how a pilot might balance an aircraft in the air, just as a cyclist balances his bicycle on the road. In 1899, Wilbur devised a simple system that twisted or "warped" the wings of a biplane, causing it to roll right or left. They tested this system in a kite, then a series of gliders. ... [D]uring the winter of 1901-1902 Wilbur and Orville built a wind tunnel and conducted experiments to determine the best wing shape for an airplane. ... Toward the end of the 1902 flying season, their third glider became the first fully controllable aircraft, with roll, pitch, and yaw controls. During the winter of 1902-1903, with the help of their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, the Wrights designed and built a gasoline engine light enough and powerful enough to propel an airplane.
Yankee ingenuity continued. Within five years Henry Ford was producing his first "Model T" automobiles. He developed the assembly line and the use of interchangeable parts to make production more efficient, to reduce costs, and to increase output. Henry Ford also believed in sharing his enormous profits with his workers, increasing their wages to record high levels. He felt they could become his best customers if they were paid more. Ford was an example of a businessman who had almost no original ideas of his own, but improved and used the ideas he learned from others. There is nothing wrong with that, and unfortunately many do not achieve their potential because they are unwilling to use someone else's good idea. "Not invented here" as a reason to reject good ideas is a mistake.
The labor movement grew, while continuing to suffer from infiltration by radicals. "Big" Bill Haywood was a miner and a violent unionist who founded Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905. He was involved in many labor disputes, including textile strikes in New Jersey. He was eventually convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 (see its discussion below) and, while he was out of jail pending appeal of his conviction, he fled to the newly communist Russia in 1918.
Meanwhile, a dispute developed in the African American community about how to advance. W.E.B. Du Bois took a more aggressive and militant approach to advancement than Booker Washington had. In 1905 Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement, which demanded full citizenship rights for African Americans. In 1909 he founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),[2] which became very influential in the mid-to-late 1900s in advocating for civil rights.
But the NAACP was too "moderate" or passive for some. Marcus Garvey, another African American leader, founded the United Negro Improvement Association, which advocated both black pride and a return to Africa.
In 1915, in Guinn v. U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court helped African Americans by striking down "grandfather clauses" that interfered with voting by descendants of slaves. The Court based its ruling on the 15th Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In other words, the 15th Amendment prohibited interfering with the rights of former slaves to vote.
In the last lecture we discussed imperialism, and mentioned how Teddy Roosevelt became a hero in the Spanish-American War. He is also a modern-day hero to some; the 2008 presidential candidate John McCain considered Teddy Roosevelt to be a role model. Teddy Roosevelt is the only modern figure to have his face carved in Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, due to his support for the national park system. Let's look now at this important American President.
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Teddy Roosevelt
Vice President Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt was only 42 years old when President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901. Teddy Roosevelt thereby became the youngest President in American history, a record that continues to this day (the minimum age required by the Constitution is 35 years old for the president). Athletically fit and vigorous, he brought an exciting level of aggression in leading America. He was a "progressive" but also an imperialist, pushing for a a strong foreign policy. As President Andrew Jackson had done over 70 years earlier, Teddy Roosevelt expanded the power of the presidency with a view that he should take whatever action he thought promoted the public good, as long as it was not expressly prohibited by law or the Constitution. "I did not usurp power," Teddy Roosevelt declared, "but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power."[3]
Roosevelt became famous as a "trust buster" for requiring the dissolution of a huge railroad conglomerate in the Northwest. The Roosevelt Administration took the case of Northern Securities Co. v. U.S. to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1904 that the Sherman (Antitrust) Act required breaking up the railroad trust. This decision had the effect of "resurrecting" or reviving the Sherman (Antitrust) Act, and Roosevelt used it to break up other monopolies. His popularity soared as a result; newspapers and the common man loathed the big corporations, and considered Teddy Roosevelt to be a hero in defeating large companies.
The breaking up of monopolies was part of Roosevelt's approach that he called the "Square Deal." This name resulted from his negotiation of settlements between striking workers and big corporations, which reportedly gave a "square deal" to both sides in the agreement. He campaigned in 1904 by taking credit for treating the owners and workers equally in resolving a nasty coal miner's strike in 1902, giving them both a "square deal."
Roosevelt was neither a liberal nor a conservative, and after serving as president he even left the Republican Party to start a new political party based on his own personality. He had his own "maverick" style similar to that of the 2008 presidential candidate John McCain.
Roosevelt approved many new regulations and assistance programs. He signed the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which gave federal assistance to irrigate Western land for farmers and ranchers. He signed into law the Hepburn Act of 1906, which strengthened federal regulation of railroads by increasing the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Later, in 1910, the Mann-Elkins Act empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to suspend any increases in rates by railroads in shipping goods. The Act also extended the ICC's authority to include communications. The political support for this increased regulation was so broad that it passed by the huge margin of 50-12 in the U.S. Senate. (Note that there were not yet 100 Senators in the U.S. Senate then, because many states had not yet joined the United States).
In 1906 an influential book entitled "The Jungle" was published. Author Upton Sinclair exposed the filthy conditions of Chicago slaughterhouses. This resulted in swift passage in 1906 of both the Meat Inspection Act, which established federal regulation and inspection of slaughterhouses, and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established federal regulation and inspection of food and medications (drugs).
In foreign policy, Roosevelt's famous approach was to "speak softly and carry a big stick" (to use against anyone who causes problems). In 1902 there was a boundary dispute concerning Venezuela resulting in a blockade by both Britain and Germany, but Roosevelt persuaded both to withdraw. He was a peacemaker, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.