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World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Int...

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World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the

Intellectuals

By Murray N. Rothbard

Posted on 6/9/2007

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I. Introduction

II. Pietism and Prohibition

III. Women at War and at

the Polls

IV. Saving Our Boys from

Alcohol and Vice

V. The New Republic

Collectivists

VI. Economics in Service of

the State: The Empiricism of

Richard T. Ely

VII. Economics in Service of

the State: Government and

Statistics

I. Introduction

In contrast to older historians who

regarded World War I as the

destruction of progressive reform, I

am convinced that the war came to

the United States as the

"fulfillment," the culmination, the

veritable apotheosis of

progressivism in American life. [1]

I regard progressivism as basically

a movement on behalf of Big

Government in all walks of the

economy and society, in a fusion or

coalition between various groups of

big businessmen, led by the House

of Morgan, and rising groups of

technocratic and statist

intellectuals. In this fusion, the

values and interests of both groups

would be pursued through

government.

Big business would be able to use the government to cartelize the economy,

restrict competition, and regulate production and prices, and also to be able

to wield a militaristic and imperialist foreign policy to force open markets

abroad and apply the sword of the State to protect foreign investments.

Intellectuals would be able to use the government to restrict entry into their

professions and to assume jobs in Big Government to apologize for, and to

help plan and staff, government operations. Both groups also believed that,

in this fusion, the Big State could be used to harmonize and interpret the

"national interest" and thereby provide a "middle way" between the extremes

of "dog-eat-dog" laissez faire and the bitter conflicts of proletarian Marxism.

Also animating both groups of progressives was a postmillennial pietist

Protestantism that had conquered "Yankee" areas of northern Protestantism

by the 1830s and had impelled the pietists to use local, state, and finally

federal governments to stamp out "sin," to make America and eventually the

world holy, and thereby to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. The

victory of the Bryanite forces at the Democratic national convention of 1896

destroyed the Democratic Party as the vehicle of "liturgical" Roman Catholics

ad German Lutherans devoted to personal liberty and laissez faire and

created the roughly homogenized and relatively non-ideological party system

we have today. After the turn of the century, this development created an

ideological and power vacuum for the expanding number of progressive

technocrats and administrators to fill. In that way, the locus of government

shifted from the legislature, at least partially subject to democratic check, to

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the oligarchic and technocratic executive branch.

World War I brought the fulfillment of all these progressive trends.

Militarism, conscription, massive intervention at home and abroad, a

collectivized war economy, all came about during the war and created a

mighty cartelized system that most of its leaders spent the rest of their lives

trying to recreate, in peace as well as war. In the World War I chapter of his

outstanding work, Crisis and Leviathan , Professor Robert Higgs

concentrates on the war economy and illuminates the interconnections with

conscription.

In this paper, I would like to concentrate on an area that Professor Higgs

relatively neglects: the coming to power during the war of the various groups

of progressive intellectuals. [2] I use the term "intellectual" in the broad

sense penetratingly described by F.A. Hayek: that is, not merely theorists

and academicians, but also all manner of opinion-molders in society Ï

writers, journalists, preachers, scientists, activists of all sort Ï what Hayek

calls "secondhand dealers in ideas." [3] Most of these intellectuals, of

whatever strand or occupation, were either dedicated, messianic

postmillennial pietists or else former pietists, born in a deeply pietist home,

who, though now secularized, still possessed an intense messianic belief in

national and world salvation through Big Government. But, in addition, oddly

but characteristically, most combined in their thought and agitation

messianic moral or religious fervor with an empirical, allegedly "value-free,"

and strictly "scientific" devotion to social science. Whether it be the medical

profession's combined scientific and moralistic devotion to stamping out sin

or a similar position among economists or philosophers, this blend is typical

of progressive intellectuals.

In this paper, I will be dealing with

various examples of individual or groups

of progressive intellectuals, exulting in

the triumph of their creed and their own

place in it, as a result of America's entry

into World War I. Unfortunately,

limitations of space and time preclude

dealing with all facets of the wartime

activity of progressive intellectuals; in

particular, I regret having to omit

treatment of the conscription

movement, a fascinating example of the

creed of the "therapy" of "discipline" led

by upper-class intellectuals and

businessmen in the J.P. Morgan

ambit. [4] I shall also have to omit both

the highly significant trooping to the

war colors of the nation's preachers, and the wartime impetus toward the

permanent centralization of scientific research. [5]

$30

There is no better epigraph for the remainder of this paper than a

congratulatory note sent to President Wilson after the delivery of his war

message on April 2, 1917. The note was sent by Wilson's son-in-law and

fellow Southern pietist and progressive, Secretary of the Treasury William

Gibbs McAdoo, a man who had spent his entire life as an industrialist in New

York City, solidly in the J.P. Morgan ambit. McAdoo wrote to Wilson: "You

have done a great thing nobly! I firmly believe that it is God's will that

America should do this transcendent service for humanity throughout the

world and that you are His chosen instrument." [6] It was not a sentiment

with which the president could disagree.

II. Pietism and Prohibition

One of the few important omissions in Professor Higgs's book is the crucial

role of postmillennial pietist Protestantism in the drive toward statism in the

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United States. Dominant in the "Yankee" areas of the North from the 1830s

on, the aggressive "evangelical" form of pietism conquered Southern

Protestantism by the 1890s and played a crucial role in progressivism after

the turn of the century and through World War I. Evangelical pietism held

that requisite to any man's salvation is that he do his best to see to it that

everyone else is saved, and doing one's best inevitably meant that the State

must become a crucial instrument in maximizing people's chances for

salvation. In particular, the State plays a pivotal role in stamping out sin,

and in "making America holy."

To the pietists, sin was very broadly defined as any

force that might cloud men's minds so that they

could not exercise their theological free will to

achieve salvation. Of particular importance were

slavery (until the Civil War), Demon Rum, and the

Roman Catholic Church, headed by the Antichrist in

Rome. For decades after the Civil War, "rebellion"

took the place of slavery in the pietist charges

against their great political enemy, the Democratic

party. [7] Then in 1896, with the evangelical

conversion of Southern Protestantism and the admission to the Union of the

sparsely populated and pietist Mountain states, William Jennings Bryan was

able to put together a coalition that transformed the Democrats into a pietist

party and ended forever that party's once proud role as the champion of

"liturgical" (Catholic and High German Lutheran) Christianity and of personal

liberty and laissez faire. [8][9]

Evangelical

pietism held that

requisite to any

man's salvation is

that he do his

best to see to it

that everyone

else is savedÈ.

The pietists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were all

postmillennialist: They believed that the Second Advent of Christ will occur

only after the millennium Ï a thousand years of the establishment of the

Kingdom of God on earth Ï has been brought about by human effort.

Postmillennialists have therefore tended to be statists, with the State

becoming an important instrument of stamping out sin and Christianizing the

social order so as to speed Jesus' return. [10]

Professor Timberlake neatly sums up this politico-religious conflict:

Unlike those extremist and apocalyptic sects that rejected and

withdrew from the world as hopelessly corrupt, and unlike the

more conservative churches, such as the Roman Catholic,

Protestant Episcopal, and Lutheran, that tended to assume a more

relaxed attitude toward the influence of religion in culture,

evangelical Protestantism sought to overcome the corruption of

the world in a dynamic manner, not only by converting men to

belief in Christ but also by Christianizing the social order through

the power and force of law. According to this view, the Christian's

duty was to use the secular power of the state to transform culture

so that the community of the faithful might be kept pure and the

work of saving the unregenerate might be made easier. Thus the

function of law was not simply to restrain evil but to educate and

uplift. [11]

Both prohibition and progressive reform were pietistic, and as both

movements expanded after 1900 they became increasingly intertwined. The

Prohibition Party, once confined Ï at least in its platform Ï to a single issue,

became increasingly and frankly progressive after 1904. The Anti-Saloon

League, the major vehicle for prohibitionist agitation after 1900, was also

markedly devoted to progressive reform. Thus at the League's annual

convention in 1905, Rev. Howard H. Russell rejoiced in the growing

movement for progressive reform and particularly hailed Theodore Roosevelt,

as that "leader of heroic mould, of absolute honesty of character and purity

of life, that foremost man of this worldÈ." [12] At the Anti-Saloon League's

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convention of 1909, Rev. Purley A. Baker lauded the labor union movement

as a holy crusade for justice and a square deal. The League's 1915

convention, which attracted 10,000 people, was noted for the same blend of

statism, social service, and combative Christianity that had marked the

national convention of the Progressive Party in 1912. [13] And at the

League's June 1916 convention, Bishop Luther B. Wilson stated, without

contradiction, that everyone present would undoubtedly hail the progressive

reforms then being proposed.

During the Progressive years, the Social Gospel became part of the

mainstream of pietist Protestantism. Most of the evangelical churches created

commissions on social service to promulgate the Social Gospel, and virtually

all of the denominations adopted the Social Creed drawn up in 1912 by the

Commission of the Church and Social Service of the Federal Council of

Churches. The creed called for the abolition of child labor, the regulation of

female labor, the right of labor to organize (i.e., compulsory collective

bargaining), the elimination of poverty, and an "equitable" division of the

national product. And right up there as a matter of social concern was the

liquor problem. The creed maintained that liquor was a grave hindrance

toward the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, and it advocated

the "protection of the individual and society from the social, economic, and

moral waste of the liquor traffic. [14]

The Social Gospel leaders were fervent advocates of

statism and of prohibition. These included Rev.

Walter Rauschenbusch and Rev. Charles Stelzle,

whose tract Why Prohibition! (1918) was

distributed, after the United States' entry into World

War I, by the Commission on Temperance of the

Federal Council of Churches to labor leaders,

members of Congress, and important government

officials. A particularly important Social Gospel

leader was Rev. Josiah Strong, whose monthly

journal, The Gospel of the Kingdom, was published

by Strong's American Institute of Social Service. In

an article supporting prohibition in the July 1914

issue, The Gospel of the Kingdom hailed the progressive spirit that was at

last putting an end to "personal liberty":

"Postmillennialists

have tended to be

statists, with the

State becoming

an important

instrument of

stamping out sin

and Christianizing

the social order

so as to speed

Jesus' return."

"Personal Liberty" is at last an uncrowned, dethroned king, with no

one to do him reverence. The social consciousness is so far

developed. and is becoming so autocratic, that institutions and

governments must give heed to its mandate and share their life

accordingly. We are no longer frightened by that ancient bogy Ï

"paternalism in government." We affirm boldly, it is the business

of government to be just that Ï Paternal. Nothing human can be

foreign to a true government. [15]

As true crusaders, the pietists were not content to stop with the stamping out

of sin in the United States alone. If American pietism was convinced that

Americans were God's chosen people, destined to establish a Kingdom of God

within the United States, surely the pietists' religious and moral duty could

not stop there. In a sense, the world was America's oyster. As Professor

Timberlake put it, once the Kingdom of God was in the course of being

established in the United States, "it was therefore America's mission to

spread these ideals and institutions abroad so that the Kingdom could be

established throughout the world. American Protestants were accordingly not

content merely to work for the kingdom of God in America, but felt compelled

to assist in the reformation of the rest of the world also." [16]

American entry into World War I provided the fulfillment of prohibitionist

dreams. In the first place, all food production was placed under the control of

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Herbert Hoover, Food Administration czar. But if the US government was to

control and allocate food resources, shall it permit the precious scarce supply

of grain to be siphoned off into the "waste," if not the sin, of the manufacture

of liquor? Even though less than two percent of American cereal production

went into the manufacture of alcohol, think of the starving children of the

world who might otherwise be fed. As the progressive weekly The

Independent demagogically phrased it. "Shall the many have food, or the few

have drink?" For the ostensible purpose of "conserving" grain, Congress

wrote an amendment into the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act of August 10,

1917, that absolutely prohibited the use of foodstuffs, hence grain, in the

production of alcohol. Congress would have added a prohibition on the

manufacture of wine or beer, but President Wilson persuaded the Anti-Saloon

League that he could accomplish the same goal more slowly and thereby

avoid a delaying filibuster by the wets in Congress. However, Herbert Hoover,

a progressive and a prohibitionist, persuaded Wilson to issue an order, on

December 8, both greatly reducing the alcoholic content of beer and limiting

the amount of foodstuffs that could be used in its manufacture. [17]

The prohibitionists were able to use the Lever Act and war patriotism to good

effect. Thus, Mrs. W. E. Lindsey, wife of the governor of New Mexico,

delivered a speech in November 1917 that noted the Lever Act, and declared:

Aside from the long list of awful tragedies following in the wake of

the liquor traffic, the economic waste is too great to be tolerated

at this time. With so many people of the allied nations near to the

door of starvation, it would be criminal ingratitude for us to

continue the manufacture of whiskey. [18]

Another rationale for prohibition during the war was the alleged necessity to

protect American soldiers from the dangers of alcohol to their health, their

morals, and their immortal souls. As a result, in the Selective Service Act of

May 18, 1917, Congress provided that dry zones must be established around

every army base, and it was made illegal to sell or even to give liquor to any

member of the military establishment within those zones, even in one's

private home. Any inebriated servicemen were subject to courts-martial.

But the most severe thrust toward national

prohibition was the Anti-Saloon League's proposed

eighteenth constitutional amendment, outlawing the

manufacture, sale, transportation, import or export

of all intoxicating liquors. It was passed by

Congress and submitted to the states at the end of

December 1917. Wet arguments that prohibition

would prove unenforceable were met with the usual

dry appeal to high principle: Should laws against

murder and robbery he repealed simply because

they cannot be completely enforced? And

arguments that private property would be unjustly confiscated were also

brushed aside with the contention that property injurious to the health,

morals, and safety of the people had always been subject to confiscation

without compensation.

"Another

rationale for

prohibition during

the war was the

alleged necessity

to protect

American soldiers

from the dangers

of alcohol."

When the Lever Act made a distinction between hard liquor (forbidden) and

beer and wine (limited), the brewing industry tried to save their skins by

cutting themselves loose from the taint of distilled spirits. "The true

relationship with beer," insisted the United States Brewers Association, "is

with light wines and soft drinks-not with hard liquors." The brewers affirmed

their desire to "sever, once for all, the shackles that bound our wholesome

productions to ardent spirits." But this craven attitude would do the brewers

no good. After all, one of the major objectives of the drys was to smash the

brewers, once and for all, they whose product was the very embodiment of

the drinking habits of the hated German-American masses, both Catholic and

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