The study of the World Wars has always peaked my interest, coming from a family with military history. I am especially interested in the study of World War I and how the United States adapted to dealing with global conflict for the first time, especially with regards to its domestic policies governing the lives of individual citizens during times of war.

It really is no question that under the Wilson Administration more progressive policies increasing government influence over the lives of Americans would be instituted. We see immediate examples of this in The Selective Service Act of 1917, which instituted a mandatory draft upon which 24 million men complied by the war’s end in 1918.

Consider also the establishment of agencies like the War Industries Board, which pretty much skyrocketed the federal government’s ability to regulate industry for purposes of maximizing output in manufacturing materials for the war effort (Faragher et al, 577) and the Food and Fuel Act of 1927, which allowed the president to initiate regulations on food distribution and production for the war effort (Faragher et al, 577).

Controversial legislation, such as The Sedition Act of 1918, passed as an amendment to the already instituted Espionage Act of 1917, which increased government surveillance of citizens, put a cap on speech that was deemed to profane government (Faragher, 583). Even the Constitution, under the Wilson administration, was amended to prohibit alcohol under the 18^th Amendment in 1917, which caused huge upticks in organized crime in later years (Faragher et al, 582).

Under President Wilson, government massively expanded in its size, but the question is, was that necessarily a good thing? I argue the contrary that such federal intrusion into the lives of American citizens was not only unconstitutional but incredibly dangerous.

The Framers of the Constitution had never intended for government to exceed beyond its constitutional boundaries, and in effect never created government to impose its will upon the populace, let alone silence dissent against it during times of war. The Constitution of the United States outlines the inalienable rights of individual citizens to protect them from the kinds of overreaches that Woodrow Wilson instituted during his administration.

Consider this analytical excerpt from Hillsdale College, “According to the Founders’ understanding of the executive branch, the President’s duties centered on national defense and the veto power, but little else. Wilson argued that the President, as the embodiment of national popular opinion, would be a singular force for the common good, able to lead the nation, including the two other branches of government, through the force of his own will. As the future President Wilson wrote, “His office is anything he has the sagacity and force to make it” (Pestritto, 2012).

This sets a dangerous precedent if one considers the wanton increase of the overreach of the federal government beyond the purposes of its constitutional confines.

It was from this logic that the argument for a bureaucratic regulatory state was rationalized by President Wilson as allowing the government to operate more efficiently outside of “political confines” (Meier and Krause, p. 2). The problem presents itself in the question of “How far should the government have gone in its bureaucratic efficiency?” I would argue that the socialist progressivism damaged American policymaking in the long run.

Legislation like the Sedition Act, for example, basically infringed upon dissenters' rights to freedom of speech, even if the “speech” was simply against the war and America’s part in it. In trying to create a unified public mood towards the war, Congress essentially outlawed any speech that hindered the patriotic conscience towards the war.

As Faragher notes in Out of Many: History of the American People, “These acts became a convenient vehicle for striking out at socialists, pacifists, radical labor activists, and others who resisted the patriotic tide. The most celebrated prosecution came in June 1918, when federal agents arrested Eugene V. Debs in Canton, Ohio, after he gave a speech defending antiwar protesters. Debs served thirty-two months in federal prison before being pardoned by President Warren G. Harding on Christmas Day, 1921” (Faragher et al, 583).

I am puzzled to think how anyone could believe that such federal intrusions in any way could positively affect Americans when freedom of speech is curtailed to create “unity of thought” by fiat, while imprisoning dissenters for merely exercising their rights.

Faragher further highlights in his textbook the close business-government partnership that occurred during the First World War and the mass expenditures and profits for large corporations that resulted from it. However, it is important to put this into context. Under the provisions of the War Revenue Act of 1917, which dramatically increased the federal income tax five times the original rate prior to the need to fund the war effort only scratched the surface of the $21,000,000,000 in appropriations and authorizations to fund the war in its totality (Blakey, 1917).

Massive spending and massive amounts of bureaucratic red tape that pervaded throughout the Great War caused a spending bubble that increased the national debt by $25 billion. Further economic consequences included a plunging GNP after the war ( from $91.5 billion to $69.6 billion in 1921) and an over 100% rate of increase in the unemployment rate ( from 2.1 million to 4.9 million) (Powell, 2009).

Faragher even notes some of the difficult issues that took place post-war, “Most of the modest wartime wage gains were wiped out by spiraling inflation and high prices for food, fuel, and housing. With the end of government controls on industry, many employers withdrew their recognition of unions. Difficult working conditions, such as the twelve-hour day in steel mills, were still routine in some industries” (Faragher et al, 585).

I am a strict Constitutional Conservative and I view any increase in government authority outside of its Constitutional confines as a seriously dangerous issue. To me, the ends never justify the means, and although we managed to survive the Great War, it was not without devastating costs to our economic stability and our civil liberties, which is why I solemnly conclude that increased federal authority (by a near 100% probability) is guaranteed to breed tyranny and eventual societal collapse.

Liberty is a sacred and intrinsic reality of American exceptionalism, and willingly sacrificing it to the whim of an executive on a power trip like Woodrow Wilson makes us even more susceptible to losing it.

This even makes the situation of policy during World War 1 even more egregious when President Wilson contradicts his own politics with this statement:

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.” - President Woodrow Wilson

Spoken like a true chameleon. Bravo Mr. President....

Joseph Vazquez III

References:

Faragher, John Mack; Buhle, Mary Jo; Czitrom, Daniel; Armitage Susan;. 2012. Out of Many: History of the American People, Brief Edition, Combined Volume (6th Edition). Saddle River: Prentice Hall. pp. 577, 582, 583, 585.

Pestritto, Ronald. 2012. “ Woodrow Wilson and the Rejection of the Founders’ Constitution”. Hillsdale: Hillsdale College Press. p. 2. https://online.hillsdale.edu/document.doc?id=318 (Accessed 21 July, 2017)

Meier, Kenneth John and Krause, George A. 2003. The scientific study of bureaucracy: an overview. In: Krause, George A. and Meier, Kenneth John eds. Politics, Policy, and Organizations: Frontiers in the Scientific Study of Bureaucracy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 1-22.

Blakey, Roy G. "The War Revenue Act of 1917." The American Economic Review 7, no. 4 (1917): 791-815. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1809436. (Accessed 21 July, 2017).

Powell, Jim. 2009. “ Not-So-Great Depression”. Cato Institute. January 23. Accessed 21 July, 2017. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/notsogreat-depression