Liberalism: Power, Economic Crisis, Reform, War 75ing people’s votes, so he supported laws to help workers, including an 8-hour
law for Railroad workers. This led one Republican opponent to claim, some-
what hysterically, that Wilson was stepping “away from the old democracy of
Thomas Jefferson and the Federal policy of Alexander Hamilton to the social-
ism of Karl Marx.” But Wilson’s rhetoric or even the 8-hour law did not
really make a dent in the labor issue, as the courts were still issuing injunctions
against labor, state governments were still using the militia to break unions,
and the Clayton Act was being torn apart. Another round in America’s class
struggle had gone to the bosses, but labor was ready to continue the fight.
Progressivism, Cleaning Up the Rough Edges of Capitalism
Clearly, the ruling class Capitalists had control of the economic and political
system by the early 20th Century, but there were still problems to confront.
Inequality between the wealthy and poor was worse than ever, and businesses
themselves were often in conflict. As a result, most Americans saw the need
for reform, to clean up the rough edges of capitalism. Unlike the Populists
or Wobblies, there was no desire to fundamentally restructure the system, but
it needed to be tweaked, and so Progressivism would come to define the era.
Progressivism meant many things in the early 1900s; the spectrum was so wide
that a billionaire like Andrew Carnegie or a Socialist like Eugene Debs could
both be called Progressives. In general, Progressives understood that there
were still problems with capitalism that needed to be fixed—poverty, lack of
opportunities, racial and gender discrimination, unregulated business and
unsafe products for consumers, among others. For the most part, Americans
came to define Progressivism, or the Progressive Era, as a time when people
fought for reform and social justice. To the poor and working class, it meant
that working conditions had to improve; to the wealthy, it meant that eco-
nomic inequality had to be addressed so that radical groups could not exploit
the poverty and injustice to fight for an alternative to capitalism. And to the
ruling class, it mean that “stability” was essential, that competition did not
become so extreme that it actually damaged their economic interests. It was
a time when Andrew Carnegie could bring in $23 million but an average
worker made about $500 while the cost-of-living rose by over 30 percent.
Especially, it was a time when all Progressives agreed that liberalism had to
change to meet new developments in capitalism.