American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise, 1865-1910

by Robert G. McCloskey

Genres: History

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Robert Green McCloskey was an American political historian who taught at Harvard University from 1948 until his death.

Reviews

[David Steece, Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

McCloskey's book, written in the early '50s, is alarmingly contemporary. He traces the journey that the democratic ideal in America takes from the Revolution through the Gilded Age. While the Founding Fathers made property rights central to their idea of democracy, McCloskey echoes others in arguing that they served to prop up more fundamental human rights, ala "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." He then analyses the biographies and work of three figures: William Graham Sumner, Justice Stephen Fields, and the famous Andrew Carnegie. None are the causative agent of liberty's degradation, instead they are each used as examples of general political/philosophical trends in mid-19th Century America.

Sumner lays an ideological base, connecting Materialism (expressed as social Darwinism) and deep-rooted Puritanism into white-hot laissez-faire screeds that pulled no punches whatsoever. For instance, this incredible description of Sumner's proscribed priorities:

"The aggregation of large amounts of capital in few hands is the first condition of the fulfillment of the most important tasks of civilization which now confronts us."

LOL. Coarse, vulgar, almost Marxist language is Sumner's style. Not so for the next figure McCloskey studies.

Justice Stephen Field was appointed by Lincoln during the Civil War, and he legitimizes the cruel philosophy of people like Sumner. McCloskey follows his shifting attitudes from cases where he sides with disabused minorities (Chinese railroad laborers) on the grounds of personal freedom, to later decisions which in a way lay the foundation for the 21st Century Citizens United case. It was men like Field in the post-Civil War era that used the new 14th Amendment to grant corporations many of the same due process protections previously reserved for citizens. McCloskey gives examples of several decisions reflecting this slow transition, although thankfully for his sanity he didn't live to see the enshrinement of "corporations-as-people" into terms so crude even Sumner would've approved.

Finally the character of Andrew Carnegie is held up as an example of these warring philosophies in one man. Carnegie's humanitarian instincts and acquisitiveness did battle during his years of profit-making; acquisitiveness won. He himself describes the war within in an early letter:

"Man must have an idol—the amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry—no idol more debasing the worship of money. Whatever I engage in I must push inordinately; therefore should I be careful to choose the life which will be the most elevating in its character. To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery..."

The man that wrote that letter at 33 years old remained "overwhelmed by business cares and with most of [his] thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time" for the next 30+ years, regardless of whatever money he had deigned to relinquish as charity. At that point, by his own admission he was degraded "beyond hope of permanent recovery."

Thus so was American democracy. For despite McCloskey's hopeful "Conclusion" section, in which he describes the at least moderate curtailment of these trends by way of economic Depression, we in the 21st Century know that the during the course of the 20th, the hegemons of capital fought back yet again, with even greater ferocity. For some of that story see Jane Mayer's recent:

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right