Walter Hines Page by John Milton Cooper

Author:John Milton Cooper [Cooper, John Milton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Historical
ISBN: 9781469643953
Google: c2RqDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2018-08-25T16:09:30+00:00

THEODORE ROOSEVELT,

speaking at the cornerstone laying of the Country Life Press,

September 1910; Page is standing to the left

(by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

JOHN BURROUGH AND WALTER HINES PAGE, September 1910

(by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

After 1904 Page became a moderate, circumspect, but committed reformer. He found himself once again in company with Roosevelt, who campaigned for reelection in 1904 on the square-deal platform. When the president followed his triumph at the polls with proposals for railroad regulation and attacks on corporate influence, World’s Work applauded: “What a relief it is to turn from the old policies of reminiscence and obstruction to positive tasks! The problems of industrialism are now becoming clearly defined, difficult as their solution is; and sooner or later the general government must solve them.” During Roosevelt’s second term, the magazine supported his programs at the national level, together with a variety of state and municipal reform movements throughout the country. Page pointed with particular pride to such business-minded, anti-machine, pro—public school southern governors as Aycock in North Carolina and Andrew Jackson Montague in Virginia. As Roosevelt’s presidency wore on, the editor warmed to his new reform allegiance. “We are going to have in this Republic a standard of financial and corporate morals that will square with the moral sense of Americans in their private conduct” his magazine avowed in October 1907; “and we are going to have it at any cost.”20

Yet Page’s reform enthusiasm, even at its height, retained a strain of skepticism. In April 1906, for example, he called the outcry against big business “a sort of revolution,” yet he doubted “whether a time will ever come when Industry will loosen its hold on public affairs.” The most that he expected was an unremitting struggle “to weaken this hold, at least to the point of lessening corruption and open tyranny.” World’s Work’s tougher stance toward corporations did not entail any softening toward labor unions. Instead, the magazine wobbled toward unions in much the same way that it did toward the corporations, between denunciations and resigned or understanding acceptance. Nor did Page equally favor all current reform proposals. Measures such as direct primaries and popular election of senators left him cold, because he believed that moneyed interests and political machines could control those processes just as easily as conventions or state legislatures. He never contemplated stringent remedies for economic or social problems. The editorial of October 1907, in which Page thundered about “corporate morals” concluded by recommending “more honest conduct of corporations,” loosening “the grip of the financial kings on the surplus capital of the whole country,” and “reform of the tariff.” In viewing industrial America after 1900 Page displayed the same disparity that he had in the 1880s between acute perception of injustices and limited conception of redress. Similarly, lowering tariffs still beckoned to him as a principal cure of economic ills.

Toward social problems, Page demonstrated comparable dilemmas and confusions. More than twenty years’ residence in northern cities had not reconciled him to urban life.

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