Progressive Movement: Trading One Master for Another!

     Most movements of the masses start out with the best of intentions, only to end in a power struggle between a new elite class.  The Progressive movement is one such movement.  Beginning in the late 19th century, farmers were beginning to feel the pinch of new technology, as new methods of farming were requiring far fewer hands.  This led many young farmers to migrate to the larger cities in search of work and a new way of life.

     The more efficient and larger farms were also having another dramatic effect on their way of life.  As their products flooded the markets, the prices began to drop, making profitability even more difficult.  A southern journalist of the time wrote, "The landowner was so poor and distressed that he forgot that he was a capitalist...so weary of hand and sick of spirit that he imagined himself in precisely the same plight as the hired man..."  While a pure free market believer like Adam Smith would say that this was market forces working to precision, the agrarian population fought back with Populism (the beginning of the Progressive Movement).  The majority of the population felt thgt since America was blessed with such great resources, then everyone should be able to enjoy them and be prosperous.  While this sounds like a great idea to many, when you look at its consequences you can see the folly of such thoughts. 

     During this same period of time you had the rise of the great industrialist such as Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan.  With little government influence, they were able to build massive empires that employed hundreds of thousands of workers.  The technological improvements they established helped the United States to become a world power on par with the greatest nations of the time.  There were many that did not see this growth and concentration of power as a good thing for the country.

     William Jennings Bryant was the vocal head of the Progressive Movement during the late 19th and early 20th century.  His main mission was to take down the 'Titans of Industry' and bring equality to the common working man.  The question is...what if the industrialist would have never been able to build their empires?  The grim reality is that the hundreds of thousands of farmers and poor city folk would've been without work and the country would not be established as a world power.  The unrestrained free market created the greatest economic boom our country has ever seen and led to greater prosperity for all.

     But that was not enough for the Progressives.  Early in the 20th century (Teddy) Roosevelt assaulted the industry's, and was successful in breaking up what they had built.  The result of this was not what most people had hoped for.  Government began to grow in power and the economy began to slow as the nation headed toward 'The Great Depression'.  This national calamity gave the Progressives an opportunity to expand governmental power to even greater extents.  With national building projects and the enactment of Social Security, the government was firmly entrenched in the average Americans life.

     As our nation moved forward in its fight against Communism, secretly and slowly, the Progressive Movement was leading our nation toward that very end.  With the gradual destruction of the dollar, due to an overspending government, and the greater dependency on the government by the average American, the enslavement of our nation was almost at its completion.  Each year that goes by our government spends more and the average worker takes home less on each paycheck.

     This is the main problem with the Progressives and their Socialist agenda, when they are given an inch, they will seek the proverbial mile.  As of the writing of this article, the government already controls the following; your retirement (through Social Security), up to 39% of your income, your moral choice in where your tax dollars are spent, your free speech (if you're a Christian), and many other areas that we hold dear, but still not enough!  Now the Progressives seek to control our health care, right to be armed, how much greenhouse gasses we emit, where we go (with the GPS monitoring black boxes being mandatory in every vehicle by 2014), and what we say on the radio or TV.  What started as an honest, but foolish, attempt at leveling the playing field, has turned into a power grab by government.  So in the end we have traded the free market and industrialist system for a government that has enslaved us in a much more effective and controlling way.  Wake up America!  We are a FREE nation!  

Jeffrey Brandon Lee