I've been looking into the history of progressivism

[Deborah K]

I've noticed that what triggered it was child labor and the harsh treatment of laborers many of whom were immigrants.


The sharp rise in economic activity spurred by industrialization and cheap labor contributed to concentrations of economic power among large national corporations and the formation of huge "trusts" as companies sought to eliminate their prime competitors.

Between 1897 and 1904, 4,227 firms merged to form 257 corporations, with the largest merger consolidating nine steel companies to create the U.S. Steel Corp. controlled by Andrew Carnegie. By 1904, 318 companies controlled about 40 percent of the nation's manufacturing output. A single firm produced over half the output in 78 industries.

What I want to know is, is this the free market at work? What am I missing here?

[Acala]

The supposed problem of child labor from which government rescued us is a fancy bit of propaganda and revisionist history. Children working in factories at the beginning of the industrial revolution indeed often had a hard life - compared to OUR life. But compared to the life children had working on farms at that time, life in the factories was no worse and paid much better. But children were competition for adults and labor unions found it in their interest to drive children out of the market (and into compulsory government schools) and, of course, play it as "helping" the children.

The "harsh" treatment of laborers is much the same story - laborers in the industrial revolution had a hard life - compared to ours. But not compared to the lives they lived before the immigrated. They gladly chose to trade the much harder life in the places they left for the hard life in America. Of course the massive influx of laborers depressed the market and the pay fell to pretty low levels. But prices were low as well.

With regard to the corporate consolidation and trusts, I think the corporate business form is to blame. By separating ownership, management, and responsibility into three different parts, corporations become economic juggernauts that combine eternal life with short-term goals. By nature, they are reckless (particularly with respect to borrowing money), they have no loyalty to employees, they don't care about customer loyalty, and they don't care about the communities in which they reside. Because they can issue stock with which they can buy other companies, they can essentially print money and use it to buy resources and other companies endlessly and then because they are immortal, they can tie up those resources forever.

Corporations are a government creation, not a market creation, and they are bad news. They should be taxed out of existence.

[dannno]

What I want to know is, is this the free market at work? What am I missing here?


No, the central banks give giant corporations a bunch of capital which is stolen from the working poor through the hidden tax. That destroys the savings of others who could potentially pay wages to people to work locally.. but instead what this does is draw an artificially high amount of people to city centers where more business and capital decisions take place. This creates artificially dense cities. By not protecting property rights, companies pollute and those companies can employ people to pollute which can potentially be unhealthy for the worker if they are not protected.

[Young Paleocon]

Deborah if you have time I encourage you to read this.

http://mises.org/story/2225

Gives the straight up ideological history but leaves out public choice arguments. Still blows your mind though.

[Deborah K]

Thank you everyone. I'd still like to know what others have to say about the quote in my OP. I always hear how any form of regulation is bad, but this just looks like unfettered greed to me.

[Deborah K]

bumpity

[Oyate]

Agreed Deb (and danno). The rise of the modern day corporation allowed plutocracies to be created outside the effective scale of any law. That these came to dominate the lives of not only individuals but whole communities, towns, cities and states is documented beyond the point of nice little plays of revisionist history.

It's an interesting point of view to consider Marx from: when a certain few own ALL OF THE PRODUCITVE RESOURCES and their means of transport, distributed, prices, etc., in what way can we consider this a fault of "capitalism"? That these plutarchs were notorious for paying workers in company scrip only redeemable at company stores, again, how is this a failure of capitalism?

Again, we return to the corporation, the legal construct which is fundamentally incompatible with the intent of the founding fathers.

As this applies to the "progressive movement", I'm sure the nomenclature will get tricky. Since "classical liberals" in the USA were distinguished at one point at LIBERALLY interpreting the Constitution on behalf of individual rights. Populists were are early reactionary force to corporatism but they were subsumed by socialist propagandists and eventually the democratic/union party machine you see today.

As it applies to human greed (and lust for power) we know them for who they are. They aren't much different than our opposition today.

[Deborah K]

Thanks Oyate, good stuff.

[emazur]

My understanding is that the "oil trust" dramatically lowered the price of oil. Did the same thing happen with the steel trust?

And I haven't read it, but if you're interested in the Progressive era, Glenn Beck often recommends this book:
http://glennbeck.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/06/09/american-progressivism-a-reader/
http://glennbeck.blogs.foxnews.com/files/2009/06/350_american_progressivism.jpg

[Deborah K]

My understanding is that the "oil trust" dramatically lowered the price of oil. Did the same thing happen with the steel trust?

And I haven't read it, but if you're interested in the Progressive era, Glenn Beck often recommends this book:
http://glennbeck.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/06/09/american-progressivism-a-reader/
http://glennbeck.blogs.foxnews.com/files/2009/06/350_american_progressivism.jpg

Thanks! I'll check it out.