Woodrow Wilson or Teddy Roosevelt

                            Woodrow Wilson

You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible, which exercises its power as little as possible. That was said in a day when the opportunities of America were so obvious to every man, when every individual was so free to use his powers without let or hindrance, that all that was necessary was that the government should withhold its hand and see to it that every man got an opportunity to act if he would. But that time is past. America is not now, and cannot in the future be, a place for unrestricted individual enterprise. It is true that we have come upon an age of great cooperative industry. It is true that we must act absolutely upon this principle (p. 439).

One thing that many working people have in common is no contact between employees and management. Wilson's central point is that the size and scale of American society is so large that  government intervention is necessary:

Who in this great audience knows his employer? I mean among those who go down into the mines or go into the mills and factories. You never see, you practically never deal with, the president of the corporation. You probably don't know the directors of the corporation by sight. The only thing you know is that by score, by the hundred, by the thousand, you are employed with your fellow workmen by some agent of an invisible employer. Therefore, whenever bodies of men employ bodies of men, it ceases to be a private relationship" (p. 440)

This paragraph is an attack on the size of government.  His perception is also an attack on the

framers  of the Constitution.  His progressive views sees the framers as not being able to 

comprehend the direction of the country at that time, he claimed that the Declaration " is of no consequence to us unless we can translate its general terms into examples of the present day"

It goes back to Thoreau, who said, " people are basically machines and do as they are told, with no use of their own autonomy or intelligence.  Wilson goes on to say that as an example the disparity in

connection between owner, management and employee and corporations, is what is happening

to government, because that is whats controlling the economy.  The only difference between the 

framers, and during his time is that the wealth was centered individually as opposed then

becoming industrialized,creating different problems like monopolies and corporations.

I chose this passage because, it appears that Wilson had tremendous foresight, In retrospect for him
not difficult to envision the future of  the country based on the realities of the day.  Government  was
so huge that it seems distant.   We've come to where major companies, and wealthy families control
so much of the direction of the country.The country is controlled by 5% of the population.  That
hasn't changed much since  since the beginning of the country.  The only change is the shifting of 
resources that gain wealth, from Agriculture to Industrial, and now the Information Age.  Government
will never be small, it will only get more complicated. The wealthy will never share adequately nor 
do they want too. There seems to be a shift, where there are entities to at least get a foundation to
sponsor their beliefs. If there is no change, I believe we are headed for anarchy.

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

The Depression had profound political implications. In countries such as Germany and Japan, reaction to the Depression brought about the rise to power of militarist governments who adopted the regressive foreign policies that led to the Second World War. In countries such as the United States and Britain, government intervention ultimately resulted in the creation of welfare systems and the managed economies of the period following the Second World War.

In the United States Roosevelt became President in 1933 and promised a "New Deal" under which the government would intervene to reduce unemployment by work-creation schemes such as street cleaning and the painting of post offices. Both agriculture and industry were supported by policies (which turned out to be mistaken) to restrict output and increase prices. The most durable legacy of the New Deal was the great public works projects such as the Hoover Dam and the introduction by the Tennessee Valley Authority of flood control, electric power, fertilizer, and even education to a depressed agricultural region in the south.

The New Deal was not, in the main, an early example of economic management, and it did not lead to rapid recovery. Income per capita was no higher in 1939 than in 1929, although the government’s welfare and public works policies did benefit many of the most needy people. The big growth in the US economy was, in fact, due to rearmament.

In Germany Hitler adopted policies that were more interventionist, developing a massive work-creation scheme that had largely eradicated unemployment by 1936. In the same year rearmament, paid for by government borrowing, started in earnest. In order to keep down inflation, consumption was restricted by rationing and trade controls. By 1939 the Germans’ Gross National Product was 51 per cent higher than in 1929 — an increase due mainly to the manufacture of armaments and machinery.