58 ChaPter 2
factories, and other commercial institutions [the “means of production”], that
government should do what was needed to help those economic leaders pros-
per and expand, that the state and society should enact reforms to help
people live better so they could work as professionals in this new economy
and, more importantly, get jobs and earn wages so they could purchase goods.
It was a system of “free market” capitalism with social reform to make life
better for the American people. It also would be practiced abroad, as the rul-
ing class would begin to expand its interests to other lands, in order to find
new places to sell the goods that American factories produced, to invest
capital in new areas, to find cheaper labor, and to gain important resources
like fruit, copper, lumber, or, later and critically, oil. Liberals created private
ownership capitalism and the “open door” for trade, and they would do what-
ever they believed necessary to keep that system. When anyone got in the
way—whether Railroad workers in 1877, steelworkers from Homestead,
Populists, or anyone else—the liberals would do whatever they needed to do
to end those “threats” to their system. The 20th Century brought in the era
of liberalism, and imperialists, capitalists, and workers would all operate
according to its political and economic rules and requirements. Indeed, lib-
eralism, capitalism, and imperialism were so interconnected that it is not
unreasonable to think of them interchangeably—they all need the others to
create the system of private ownership, wage labor, and military intervention
that would lead the U.S. to huge economic success and global power.
American Capitalism was now virtually identical with liberalism, and the
goals and problems of Capitalists would find liberal answers. The problems
already evident in the late 19th Century—overproduction, surplus capital, the
creation of classes and struggles between them, the quest for land and mar-
kets—would become even more pronounced as wars abroad, labor crises,
reform movements, and ultimately a world war dominated the first two decades
of the new century. Capitalism, or liberalism, had created immense wealth, but
did not create social harmony. There were factories producing more goods than
Americans could buy, capitalists with money that they had to invest somewhere,
workers living in poverty and fighting for their rights, and farmers still staggered
by the changes in their lives. As the United States was making the turn from
the 19th to the 20th Centuries, more trouble loomed ahead as those with power
would find ways to confront the often-angry American people.