TR, Taft and Progressivism

Recently, I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's history of the progressive age, The Bully Pulpit. The book concentrates on the two careers of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and contains some interesting items. I was aware of some of them, but others have been surprises.


Probably the most upsetting part of the history, so far, is the tragedy of Theodore Roosevelt's home life. His sister "Bamie" suffered from curvature of the spine that made physical activities painful for her and rendered her nearly an invalid. Then, while Teedy, as his family called him, was a sophomore at Harvard, his much loved father died of colon cancer, in great agony, and before Roosevelt could reach New York to say good-bye. If that wasn't enough, Roosevelt's mother passed away after a short illness when Roosevelt was twenty-four, and on the same day his wife succumbed to Bright's disease after giving birth. That's right, he lost his mother and his wife on the same day, both after very short illnesses.


It was an overwhelming loss for Roosevelt, who tried to find solace in work and then by heading west to spend a year as a cattle rancher in North Dakota. After he returned to New York he remarried and resumed custody of his toddler daughter, only, a few years later, to confront the horror of his brother Elliot's disintegration in alcoholism, and his death.


Taft's history was comparatively placid, but not less interesting. Known as "Big Bill" at Yale, he had grown up in rather affluent circumstances and had been pointed towards a law career from early childhood. His rise can be attributed to his affable scholarly demeanor, but also to the ambitions of his wife Nellie. A far better politician than Taft, she is credited with urging him into the political arena when he always wanted to be a judge. The Supreme Court was his ultimate goal, not the White House.


Taft was able, friendly, and a conciliator, good qualities for most occupations, but not for the presidency.


In addition to following the lives of the two presidents-to-be, Ms. Goodwin traces the progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the staff of McClure's magazine, the best forum for political idealism of its time. And before talking about the magazine, she dwells on Henry George and the single tax.


As a young man, George had puzzled over the conundrum of rising productivity in the machine age and increasing poverty. Why were some people becoming enormously rich while others struggled through life sinking gradually into worse and worse distress? Then, according to George, one day while gazing at San Francisco from a distance,

I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked like mice, and said, 'I don't know exactly, but there is a man over there who will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre.' Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege

 Or, as Will Rogers advised years later, "Buy land. They ain't making any more of it."


George's argument was that all improvements on property belong to the person who made those improvements, or bought them, but the land itself belongs to all citizens. Therefore, taxes should be reckoned and paid on the basis of what unimproved property is worth. He called it the single tax. If enacted, there would be no need for income tax, sales tax, tariffs, or any other tax.


Now, it seems to me that such a scheme would require an army of assessors to value property, and lead to endless disputes about the size of the assessments. But then, don't we have an army of IRS agents now, not to mention the army of lobbyists in Washington and every state capital, endlessly trying to get tax breaks for their clients?


And why am I bringing this up on a January day in 2014, when George's idea went into the dustbin a century ago? Why, because we have the same dichotomy now that was so troublesome back then. I have taken to thinking of it as the lottery economy, in which a lucky few become enormously rich by doing nothing of anything approaching commensurate benefit to the country, and the rest of us plug along in life trying to keep body and soul together and having a tougher time of it every year.


Need proof? Just look at any highway junction or shopping center parking area, and you'll see beggars now, where there were none a generation ago. We need another Roosevelt. We could use another Taft.