I have long believed historians misread the Progressive Era.
They see it as a victory for liberal values.
I read it as a victory for business. Which isn’t necessarily a different thing.
Fact is, the business of America is business. America has always been led by a dominant industry. Farming, then cotton, then railroads, then infrastructure, manufacturing, oil, and now technology.
Power flows to the highest-value industry and, when that is supplanted, flows away from it. Just as cotton lost to the railroads in the Civil War, I believe railroads lost to infrastructure in the Progressive Era.
What the great inventions of the late 19th century – electricity, telephony, and the automobile – required for mass adoption was scaled, organized infrastructure. Having two or more electric utilities, two or more phone companies, or (God forbid) two or more private road networks made no sense. What Wall Street saw in the 1890s was that monopolies created efficiency.
But the monopolies would need the approval of government. The price of government approval, in a democracy, would be regulation, and some means of control over the result.
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