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Welcome to the Deep Dive.
Today, we're jumping into the Woodrow Wilson years, specifically 1913 to 1920.
And it's, well, it's a really fascinating period because you see this huge contradiction.
It kicks off with American progressivism really hitting its peak, you know, tons of idealism.
But then, boom, the whole domestic plan gets completely overshadowed by World War I.
Absolutely.
And that tension really comes down to Wilson himself.
He's often called the idealist in politics.
Think about his background, very intellectual, son of a minister, first president, born in the South since Zachary Taylor.
He had this core belief, almost a conviction that the president must lead Congress, must appeal directly to the people, a real moral force.
Right, a moral clarity.
And that gave him this, like, laser focus right when he came into office.
So for you listening, our mission today is twofold.
First, let's unpack his domestic agenda, that famous triple wall of privilege he wanted to tear down.
And then we'll trace how trying to reshape the world ultimately pulled everything off the rails at home.
Okay, first target,
the tariff.
Wilson wasted no time.
Early 1913, he does something pretty radical.
He goes in person before Congress to deliver his message.
Breaks the tradition, going all the way back to Jefferson.
Yeah, no sending a clerk for him.
It was a real power move, showed he meant business.
And the result, the Underwood Tariff.
It significantly cut import fees.
But here's the really crucial part, the thing to remember.
This tariff act also brought in the first graduated income tax.
Under the new 16th Amendment.
Exactly, the 16th Amendment.
And that was the landmark change.
Why so significant?
Why is that the key takeaway?
Well, because it totally rewired how the government gets its money.
Before this, it was mostly tariffs, right?
Taxes at the border.
Suddenly, the federal government is collecting money directly from people's incomes.
And pretty quickly, just a few years, that income tax money totally dwarfed tariff revenue.
It set the stage for, well, for modern government financing.
Okay, wall number two, the banks.
The system was ancient, basically running on Civil War -era rules.
And the Panic of 1907 had really exposed this problem of currency inelasticity.
What did that actually mean for, say, a regular business?
It meant the money supply, the actual cash out there.
Couldn't stretch fast enough when everyone needed it, like during a crisis.
You'd get runs on banks, financial chaos.
Louis Brandeis wrote that famous book, Other People's Money, highlighting how bankers were using the system.
Wilson knew they needed stability, needed public trust.
So the big solution was the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
How did that fix the inelasticity thing while keeping public control?
Okay, so it set up 12 regional reserve districts across the country, each with its own bank.
Overseeing it all was a new Federal Reserve Board appointed by the president.
So public oversight, check.
But the practical magic was empowering the board to issue flexible paper money Federal Reserve notes.
You know, the bills in your wallet today, they could adjust the supply quickly, need more credit.
The Fed can pump money in.
It was revolutionary, really ended that era of private banking chaos.
Right, okay.
Third wall, the trusts.
Wilson came at them with a kind of one -two punch in 1914.
First, the Federal Trade Commission Act set up a commission to go after unfair stuff like false ads, bribery.
Unlawful competition, yeah.
And the second punch was the Clayton Anti -Trust Act.
This one basically beefed up the old Sherman Act, added more banned practices, things like price discrimination or interlocking directories.
They're the same guys that sit on boards of competing companies?
Exactly.
But here's where the Clayton Act got really interesting, especially for labor.
Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, he called it the Magna Carta of Labor.
The Magna Carta?
Why such high praise?
That sounds huge.
It was huge for them because earlier antitrust laws, they were often used against unions.
Courts treated unions like illegal trust restraining trade.
The Clayton Act flicked that.
It specifically said labor and farm organizations weren't trusts.
And crucially, it legalized strikes and peaceful picketing.
A massive win for workers' rights on paper.
And that progressive energy kept going for a bit, didn't it?
By 1916, we see more reforms like the Federal Farm Loan Act for farmer credit, the Adamson Act mandating an eight -hour day for railroad workers.
La Follette Siemens Act for sailors, working man's compensation for federal employees.
It was a busy time, but, and this is important, we have to see the limits.
Wilson, despite all the idealistic talk, actually reinstituted segregation in federal offices.
He even dismissed black leaders who came to protest.
It's a stark contradiction in his progressive vision.
Okay, so while all this is happening domestically, the world starts knocking.
Loudly.
Wilson initially tried to pull back from aggressive foreign policy.
Rejected Taft's dollar diplomacy, remember?
And he backed the Jones Act in 1916, promising the Philippines independence, eventually.
Right.
His rhetoric was definitely anti -imperialist at first.
But reality kind of intervened, especially in the Caribbean.
Political chaos just kept pulling the U .S.
in.
Marines sent to Haiti in 1915.
They stayed 19 years.
Put down riots in the Dominican Republic state eight years.
Bought the Virgin Islands in 1917.
It basically solidified the Caribbean as a Yankee moat, you know?
For security.
And then there's the real headache, the Mexican mess.
Revolution down there leads to Victoriano Huerta taking power in 1913.
A brutal regime.
Wilson refused to recognize Huerta's murderous government, as he called it.
Let arms flow to rivals.
And this chaos, by the way, pushed over a million Mexicans north.
A huge migration changing the U .S.
southwest forever.
Things really blew up with the Tampico incident in 1914.
American sailors arrested.
Wilson ordered the seizure of Veracruz port to stop German arms getting to Huerta.
Almost led to full -blown war.
Later, Pancho Villa, one of the rivals, turned on the U .S., murdered American engineers, then raided Columbus, New Mexico, killed 19 Americans.
That's when General Blackjack Pershing got sent in.
Yep.
Sent deep into Mexico to hunt down Villa's group.
But he never caught him.
And Pershing got pulled out in January 1917.
Because something much, much bigger was brewing over in Europe.
World War I.
It had started back in 1914.
America declared neutrality, officially, but economically, not so at all.
Allied war orders, massive loans, billions.
J .P.
Morgan alone lent like $2 .3 billion to the allies.
This basically pulled the U .S.
economy out of a slump.
Our money was totally tied up with Britain and France.
Meanwhile, the British Navy blockaded Germany.
So U .S.
trade with them just dried up.
Which gives Germany a big incentive to use its main weapon against that blockade, the U -boat.
In 1915, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare around Britain.
Then came the U .S.
and the U .S.
in May.
A passenger ship.
Over a thousand dead, including 128 Americans.
Huge public outrage.
Wilson had a really tough time navigating this.
More ships were sunk, like the Arabic, than the French steamer Sussex.
Finally, Wilson issued the Sussex Ultimatum.
Basically told Germany,
stop sinking merchant ships without warning, or else.
Germany agreed with the Sussex pledge, but they attached a string.
A big one.
What's the string?
They said, okay, we'll stop if the U .S.
can persuade the allies to lift their illegal naval blockade.
Wilson kind of just ignored this string.
Accepted the pledge, but not the condition.
It created this very fragile peace.
And that fragile peace was the key theme for the 1916 election, wasn't it?
Wilson just barely beat the Republican Charles Evans Hughes.
The winning slogan, he kept us out of war.
Yeah, he played on that peace sentiment.
Plus his progressive reforms helped keep voters on board.
But keeping us out of war?
I thought it didn't last long after the election.
January 1917, Wilson gives this idealistic peace without victory speech, trying to mediate.
Just days later, Germany announces, unrestricted submarine warfare is back on.
Full stop.
They pulled the string on the Sussex pledge.
That was pretty much it.
Then came the final straws in March 1917.
First, the Zimmermann night.
Intercepted telegram.
Germany proposing an alliance with Mexico if the U .S.
entered the war, promised Mexico they could recover Texas, New Mexico, Arizona.
That really inflamed the West.
And at the same time, German U -boats sank four unarmed American merchant ships.
And there was another crucial factor, right?
Something happening in Russia.
Yes.
The Russian Revolution had just overthrown the Tsar.
This was actually huge for Wilson's framing of the war.
Now, America could join the allies and argue it was purely a fight for democracy without being allied with the autocratic Russian regime.
So April 2, 1917, Wilson goes to
ask for a declaration of war, frames it as this grand crusade to make the world safe for democracy.
Selling the war to the American public became a massive effort.
Wilson set up the Committee on Public Information, the CPI, led by George Creel.
They had 75 ,000 four -minute men giving short patriotic speeches everywhere.
Posters, movies like The Kaiser, The Beast of Berlin.
It was intense propaganda.
But selling the war also meant suppressing dissent.
And this is the really dark side.
You get the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.
These laws basically criminalize opposition to the war effort.
People like socialist leader Eugene V.
Debs, IWW leader Big Bill, Haywood convicted and jailed under these acts.
And the Supreme Court backed it up.
In Schenck v.
United States, the court said free speech wasn't absolute.
If speech posed a clear and present danger to the nation, especially in wartime, it could be restricted.
That ruling has echoed down through the years, obviously.
You also saw this widespread anti -German hysteria.
Banning German music, renaming sauerkraut, liberty cabbage, things like that.
Meanwhile, the economy shifts in a high gear for the war.
Progressive ideals sort of morphed into government planning.
Bernard Baruch headed the War Industries Board, the WIB,
coordinating production, setting priorities, a big precedent for government intervention in the economy.
And then there was Herbert Hoover running the Food Administration.
Hoover's approach was more about voluntary action.
Wheatless Wednesdays, meatless Tuesdays, appealing to patriotism.
And it worked pretty well.
Farm output shot up, food exports tripled.
This whole mood of sacrifice and national effort actually helped push prohibition over the line, too.
The 18th Amendment passed in 1919.
What about labor during the war?
The main union group, the AF of L.
under Gompers, strongly supported the war.
Membership doubled.
Loyalty was rewarded to some extent, but there were still thousands of strikes.
War didn't end labor conflict.
The Seattle General Strike in 1919, the huge steel strike, often broken using strikebreakers, including African Americans hired by employers.
And the war massively accelerated the Great Migration.
Black Southerners moving north for factory jobs, escaping Jim Crow.
This led to incredible demographic shifts, but also, tragically, terrible racial violence in northern cities like East St.
Louis and Chicago.
The war also had a huge impact on the women's suffrage movement, right?
It actually split them.
It did.
You had the more radical National Women's Party, led by Alice Paul.
They were pacifists, protested Wilson, even called him Kaiser Wilson, picket of the White House.
But the larger group, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, took a different approach.
They supported the war effort.
Their argument was basically, women need to contribute to the war to prove they deserve a voice in making the peace.
And Wilson eventually came around.
He did.
He started framing suffrage as a vitally necessary war measure, acknowledging women's contributions.
This momentum led directly to the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920.
Finally, women get the vote nationwide.
And soon after, the Shepherd Towner Maternity Act, providing federal funds for maternal and infant health education.
A direct result of women gaining political power.
So America mobilizes.
Conscription brings in millions.
Women serve in navy and marines for the first time, though not the army yet.
Black soldiers serve, too, but in segregated units.
The American Expeditionary Forces, the AEF, under General Pershing, start arriving in large numbers in France.
Their first major action was at Chateaubriere in May 1918, helped stop a German advance.
The biggest battle for the U .S.
was the Musargan Offensive later that year.
Over a million American troops involved.
Huge casualties.
But wasn't the main American contribution less about winning specific battles and more about just showing up?
In many ways, yes.
It was the prospect of seemingly endless American soldiers and supplies arriving, just as the Allies were utterly exhausted after four years of war.
That's what really broke German morale.
They saw they couldn't win a war of attrition against America's industrial might and manpower.
So they sued for peace, hoping to get terms based on Wilson's idealistic 14 points.
The Kaiser had to abdicate and the armistice was signed.
November 11th, 1918.
The war's over.
Now comes the peace.
And this is where Wilson's idealism really clashes with political reality.
His political standing was already weakened, right?
He'd asked voters to elect Democrats in the 1918 midterms to support his peace plans, and Republicans won control of Congress instead.
Exactly.
A major blow to his prestige, just as he's heading to Paris.
And then he made another critical error.
He didn't include any prominent Republicans, especially not Senator Henry K.
Lives, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in his peace delegation.
A huge political mistake.
So Wilson goes to Paris, one of the big four leaders.
His absolute top priority is creating the League of Nations.
That's the heart of his 14 points.
But the other Allies, Britain, France, Italy, they wanted revenge on Germany.
Territory, money.
Right.
Wilson had to fight hard against those punitive aims.
He was forced into some really painful compromises, like letting France occupy the Sahara Valley, letting Japan keep Germany's economic concessions in China's Shandong Peninsula,
things that violated his own principles of self -determination.
The final Treaty of Versailles, handed to Germany in June 1919.
Well, vengeance was definitely the dominant theme.
Only about four of the 14 points really survived intact.
It was deeply flawed.
And back home, the treaty immediately ran into trouble in the Senate.
Who were the main opponents?
Two main groups.
First, the hardcore isolationists called the irreconcilables.
Senators like Borah and Johnson.
They wanted no part of any League, period.
Entangling alliances were a non -starter for them.
The second, more influential group, were Republican moderates, led by Senator Lodge.
They weren't totally against the League, but they wanted changes.
Major changes.
These were Lodge's reservations.
Exactly.
Lodge proposed 14 formal reservations to the treaty,
designed to Americanize it, as he said.
Basically, to protect American sovereignty, ensure Congress still had the power to declare war, protect the Monroe Doctrine, making sure the U .S.
wouldn't be ordered around by an international body.
How did Wilson react to these reservations?
Terribly.
He saw them as undermining the entire structure of the League as a personal insult and as partisan obstruction by Lodge, whom he despised.
Instead of trying to find a compromise, which might have been possible, Wilson decided to take his case directly to the American people.
He went on this exhausting, cross -country speaking tour to build public pressure on the Senate.
And that tour ended tragically.
It did.
In Puebla, Colorado, Wilson collapsed from exhaustion.
A few days later, back in Washington, he suffered a massive paralyzing stroke.
He was incapacitated for months, largely hidden from public view.
And from his scut bed, incredibly, he instructed loyal Democrats to vote against the treaty with the Lodge reservations attached.
He wanted all or nothing.
All or nothing.
So the treaty came up for a vote twice.
Once for the reservations, once without.
Both times, it failed to get the necessary two -thirds majority in the Senate.
Wilson himself helped kill his own treaty by refusing any compromise.
Wow.
So Wilson then tries to make the 1920 election a referendum on the League.
He called it a solemn referendum.
But the election wasn't really fun on those terms.
The Republican candidate, Warren G.
Harding, was kind of vague on the League, but offered what people seemed to want.
A return to normalcy after the war and the upheaval.
Harding won in a landslide against the Democrat, James Cox.
And Republicans successfully interpreted that huge victory as the American people decisively rejecting the League of Nations.
So the end result?
The end result is that Wilson's soaring idealism, both the progressive reforms at home and his vision for collective security abroad with the League, got completely crushed.
First, the war derailed the domestic agenda.
Then his own political inflexibility, combined with isolationist sentiment and partisan politics, led America to reject global leadership right when it was arguably needed most.
And that failure has huge consequences.
The final takeaway here is pretty stark.
The U .S.
refusal to join the League meant the whole Treaty of Versailles system was fundamentally unstable from the start.
It was like a table designed for four legs, suddenly trying to stand on three.
It teetered.
And eventually, as we know, it collapsed, paving the way for even greater global conflict down the road.
So here's something to think about, your final provocative thought.
Was Wilson's rigid all -or -nothing stance on the League a tragic failure of his own idealism?
Or was his vision of international cooperation, of collective security, just too advanced, too radical for an American public steeped in isolationism and just wanting, like Harding promised, a return to normalcy?
Something to ponder.
Thank you for joining us for this Deep Dive.
Final warm thank you from the Last Minute Lecture Team.