The Story of American Freedom

Foner examines freedom in the Progressive era, the first two decades of the 20th century in which widespread reforms were sought for economic inequality and other social ills. While Progressives were successful in instigating “the use of political power to expand economic freedom,” other liberties became restricted in this time, as was the case with increased racial segregation and prohibition of alcohol. Unlike groups that limited their concern to concentrated economic power in the Gilded Age, the Progressive movement was very broad because of the new language that it utilized. The metaphorical use of the term “wage slavery” transitioned to the new concept of a “living wage,” as the realization that most workers would never truly prosper sunk in. Foner argues, “The idea that social and moral considerations, not simply the law of supply and demand, should determine the level of wages, became a staple of progressive thought” (144). A new definition of freedom emerged later in the Progressive era in the form of consumerism, as mass consumption came to represent economic autonomy.

A broad coalition of intellectuals concerned with reform, made up of unionists, socialists, and a resurgent women’s movement, “emerged to reinvigorate the idea of an activist national state” (152). Although most of the era’s legislative reforms came at the municipal and state level, many federal agencies and federal laws came into existence to regulate market behavior and protect citizens from industrial abuses (152). Foner explains that a unique aspect of the Progressive era was that the electorate “simultaneously expanded and contracted” (154). As massive disenfranchisement of Black voters was taking place across the South, an amendment enfranchising women was added to the Constitution (154). In the successful women’s suffrage movement and in other social movements aimed at education and alleviating poverty, women played a pivotal role in the formation of an activist federal government during the Progressive era.

Although Woodrow Wilson 1913-1921 presidency is most commonly associated with World War I, Foner argues that he was an important Progressive president in some ways. He writes, “Though representing a party thoroughly steeped in states’ rights and laissez-faire ideology, Wilson was deeply imbued with Progressive ideas” (159).

Foner explains that freedom of speech issues surrounding organized labor, sexual freedom, and birth control were key aspects leading to the birth of civil liberties in the early 20th century. However, he argues, “[I]t was World War I that made civil liberties a major public issue in America” (168). America’s entry into the war inspired the activist and expanded government that Progressives had envisioned, and support for the war came from both feminist groups and the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) because they thought that the fight for freedom abroad would naturally mean freedom at home. Foner argues, “[T]he war unleashed social changes that altered the contours of American race relations” (173). Chief among these was the Great Migration, the massive movement of Black Americans from the South to the North in search of safer living conditions and job opportunities.

Believing that freedom and democracy would also become standard in American industry, union membership doubled during the years of World War I. With the rise in union membership also came “the greatest wave of labor unrest in American history” (175). In 1919 and 1920, strikes and violent conflicts between labor and management occurred in various industries across the country. Although the war effort instigated the activist government that Progressives had wanted, in the end it also “inaugurated the most intensive repression of civil liberties the nation has ever known” (177). Foner explains, “It laid the foundation not for the triumph of Progressivism but for one of the most conservative decades in American history” (177). The government sided with business interest in crushing unions and laws repressing free speech and the free press such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. The tide of repression turned, however, in the 1920s with various court decisions indicating that many of the wartime limitations on civil liberties went too far.

What came to be known as America’s “race problem” referred to the continued inequality faced by African Americans in the North, the violence from the Ku Klux Klan in the South, and increased immigration. Foner argues that the “nationalization of politics and economic life served to heighten awareness of ethnic and racial difference, and spurred demands for Americanization—the conscious creation of a more homogenous national culture” (187). In addition to forced assimilation efforts through Americanization, various laws were passed that outlawed the teaching of foreign languages, and a quota system for immigration was imposed by Congress in 1924. The quota system “severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and barred the entry of all those ineligible for naturalized citizenship—that is, the entire population of Asia” (189).

Foner explains that “the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the United States into the greatest economic and social crisis in its history” (195). The hardships for Americans that followed in the 1930s during the Great Depression resulted in a political revolution that saw the federal government attempt to provide citizens with economic security. According to Foner, “[T]he New Deal recast the idea of freedom by linking it to the expanding power of the national state” (196). Because the federal government was for the first time openly siding with labor, the “mid- and late thirties were an era of heroic militancy” (199). Instrumental in the growing power of unions was the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was founded in 1935 to organize workers in mass production industries.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s initial strategy to deal with the Great Depression was his “New Deal.” The New Deal focused on agricultural and industrial recovery, provided emergency relief and public employment, and reformed the banking system. Later, the focus turned to expanded relief programs and higher taxes on concentrated wealth (201). Central to the “second New Deal” actions were the government’s support of workers’ rights to collective bargaining, Social Security, and the establishment of a national minimum wage. With the Social Security Act of 1935, Roosevelt aided a broad group of citizens in need, including the unemployed, those with disabilities, the elderly, and dependent children. Social Security was unique in that it was partially structured to provide old age pensions and unemployment insurance to wage workers who have paid taxes, allowing them to avoid the stigma of dependency. However, the structure of the program excluded most women and most unemployed Black Americans who worked in agriculture and domestic service (206). Social Security included assistance for the latter groups as well, but aid for single mothers and the non-white in poverty came to be known as “welfare.”

While non-white citizens were still discriminated against, other groups of immigrants and religious minorities were absorbed into society during the 1930s as cultural assimilation accelerated. Through its willingness to ally with labor organizations, New Deal liberals, socialists, religious organizations, and civil rights groups, the Communist Party played a key role in redrawing the boundaries of American freedom. This coalition of left-wing groups instigating social change became known as the Popular Front. According to Foner, “It was the Popular Front, not the mainstream Democratic Party, that forthrightly sought to popularize the idea that the country’s strength lay in diversity and tolerance, a love of equality, and a rejection of ethnic prejudice and class privilege” (212-213). Whereas civil liberties, and especially the right of labor to organize, had come under attack during the 1920s, by the end of the 1930s they were a key part of the New Deal understanding of freedom.