Theodore Roosevelt, a prominent American businessman, promoted a public relations image of being a trust buster, facing political pressure to act against trusts. However, Roosevelt was not a trust buster, as he held a consistent position that there was a power larger than the power of even the biggest. The trust-busting movement began in 1904 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Northern Securities Co. v. U.S. to break up a railroad trust. Over 40 antitrust lawsuits were filed during Roosevelt’s trust busting campaigns.
The history of union busting in the United States dates back to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Roosevelt managed to build a platform for election in his own right and resurrected the nearly defunct Sherman Antitrust Act in 1902. He followed the idea of rules of reason, which was the policy of busting bad trusts, leaving good ones alone.
William Howard Taft, another trust buster, was even more aggressive in his use of the Sherman Antitrust Act. During his four years in office, Taft launched more antitrust cases than Roosevelt had done in his seven and one-half years in office. Trust busting and the handling of monopolies dominated the election of 1912.
Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting activities impacted his image leading up to the 1904 presidential election. The deterioration of bipartisanship in the political arena and the impeachment of a president caught in a sex have brought further blows to our sense of trust.
📹 NHD Nationals 2017 — Theodore Roosevelt: Pioneer of Trust Busting
This project placed 1st in the 2017 Washington State National History Day competition in the Senior Individual Documentary …
📹 Teddy Roosevelt the Trustbuster – Trainwreck – US History – Part 4 – Extra History
Teddy Roosevelt figured out that the courts aren’t a productive way to battle the Trusts. There’s no way they can catch everyone …
Today, Tillmann is probably best remembered for something totally unrelated to racism or trusts: fed up with the ever-increasing costs of naval arms races, he commissioned a series of designs for battleships so ridiculously large and powerful that, in theory, the navy would just build those and be done once and for all. Nobody at the time took the designs seriously – except maybe for Tillmann himself – but they have remained a favourite of naval history enthousiasts as amusing “what-ifs”.
Yeah, THAT Tillman. The same Tillman that so infamously was so fed up with the navy that he proposed his own set of “Maximum” battleships as every battleship was being built just a bit bigger than what was ordered cause innovation. The kind of battleships that would put the Yamato itself to shame but proposed 2 decades before Yamato itself, featuring designs using 18″ guns when the yamato itself only had 18″. He was a penny pincher ironically suggesting the navy build maximum overbuilt units. Id look over at Drachinifel’s article on the Tillman designs for pure hilarity.
RANDOM FACT Tillman would later lay down ideas for a series of battleships known as “maximum battleships”, later known as “Tillman battleships”. These ships were of some ridiculous designs that really pressed the boundaries of US shipbuilding. The Navy dismissed pretty much all of his ideas (though some of his ideas would later be incorporated into the Iowa-class and designs for the Montana-class battleships).
There’s one kinda funny thing about Tillman, he HATED how much money he had to agree to spend on Battleships. And how every year the next one was bigger and more expensive than the last! So he asked the Bureau of Contruction and Repair to make a design of a ship as large as possible, so he can pay for it now and forget about it later. The following designs are known as the “Tillman Battleships” and are, absurd. Most of them would’ve been bigger than the mighty Yamato. and have things like 4 6 gun 16 inch turrets (24 guns, almost 3 times the firepower of a single Iowa class)
Trivia: Ben Tillman’s left eye was removed after cranial tumor surgery. So it’s not Grindelwald heterochromia thing. A caricature once portrayed Tillman as a coconut, after his maneuver leading the Hepburn Bill. “Brash, hard” on the outside but “milky and soft” on the inside He’s a terrible man indeed ( 5:59 ), but still he’s a competent and effective politician
Tillman is entertaining to me due to his involvement in the creation of the Tillman Battleships. Basically, he didn’t get why the navy was asking for more money for incrementally larger battleships (he seemed unable to comprehend the need to keep pace with foreign navies were doing in order for the navy to do it’s job in the event of war) so he asked the navy to design ships as big as possible for the navy to use. The results were rather Memetic.
Roosevelt: “Look, we DO NOT like each other and WILL NEVER agree. I get that and see that. But we both want these Monopolies gone too. So here’s the deal. We use a go between to communicate and get the bill passed. We don’t speak to each other, we don’t even look each other in the eye. Hell, we don’t even have to be in the same room. What do you say?” Tillman: “…fine…”
The Colorado Labor Wars are a really interesting piece of history. Mining unions 8 hour days, a 5 day work week, and a guaranteed minimum wage. They went about this either by striking(which included preventing scabs from breaking the strike) or by getting elected to county governments and legislating their demands. The mine owners responded by bringing in Pinkerton agents armed with rifles and machine guns to break the strikes and arrest elected officials. The miners responded by arming themselves in self defense. There were a few bombings that the mine owners and the governor(who was a bank owner) attributed to the miners, but it’s actually unclear of who actually committed the bombings because the only investigations were done by the two parties involved and were thus biased. At least one bombing is believed to be the work of the Pinkertons
Would you talk about Wales? I’m from there and we have a rich history Celts vs Roman druids in Anglesey, the Viking invasion that Wales resisted and even fought aside some Vikings against England, llywelyn the last and the magna carta Owain glyn dwr and unifying the country and his hiding in beddgelert, to the persecution of being welsh in a English Britain
Ben Tillman really was the definition of leading a life of hate and misery. In 1896, he was seen as the favorite for the Democratic candidacy for president. But it’s said that his speech was so divisive and offensive, that delegates screamed for him to stop talking before he was halfway finished with his speech. In the end, only delegates from his home state voted for him, and his misfire caused William J. Bryan to win the nomination. Bryan ultimately lost to William McKinley though.
I learned all about the progressive era during my 20th century America class, but it’s very fun to get refreshed on the matter with Extra History. What I can say for the next part, is that the author of that book (lord curse my forgetfulness of his name) had perhaps the most badass and rhythmically pleasing name in all of 20th century America.
Gotta admit I have the utmost respect for Roosevelt for putting aside differences to work with Tileman to get the legislation passed! Tileman may have been a racist piece of $HIT, but Roosevelt recognized the enemy of my enemy is my ally & like a good politician (I know its a bit of an oxymoron but by it I mean someone who is good at playing the political game for the good of the country) managed to find a way to work with them to get legislation passed without completely sacrificing their own principles! Even if it didn’t work out quite as Roosevelt had originally planned!