Tuesday, January 24, 2012

State Control to Insure Equality But Not Socialism

Source 1 The Woodrow Wilson House

Source 2 The papers of Woodrow Wilson, Volume 67

Date: Sunday, August 03, 1919

Title: Wilson: State Control to Insure Equality But Not Socialism
In a memo from Wilson's brother-in-law Stockton Axson dated "one Sunday night in August 1919," [Sun. Aug. 3 chosen arbitrarily as a result. WP Addenda Vol. 67] Wilson is quoted as `a Liberal from a family gathering on the White House rear portico.

"I am perfectly sure that the state has got to control everything that everybody needs and uses. This means the state must control the means of distribution -the transportation facilities, the railroads; that the state must control the coal mines and the iron mines; that the state must control the water sources, the lighting facilities. These things must be controlled by the state in order to secure equality of opportunity among individuals." Wilson gave as an example how railroads favor large shippers giving them rebates and the like. "The little man must have just the same rights as the big man, and state control provides for this....But there is a point beyond which I cannot go with the socialists, because...their further programmes are not for the individual benefit of the individual."

This is one of my newest finds, I blogged about Wilson not too long ago and this was toward the bottom of that posting.(I had actually found this that day) But I wanted it to be up front and center being as it seems like nobody's ever noticed it before, certainly not any that I can see on the internet. Now, 1919 was not a good year for Wilson but this was written by him before he had that incapacitating stroke.

This book(volume 67) and it's contents are heavily blockaded behind a firewall of copyright, so I can't do much else with this. But I'm very sure I want to spread this around so others will be able find it, should the Progressingamerica project become what I want it to become and others follow in my footsteps of digging into the history of progressivism. This book will not be in copyright forever. :-)

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