The central issue in the Election of 1912 was the rise of cooperate power. Cooperate concentration became the dominant issue in 1912 because of it’s broad influence on social and political life in early twentieth century America, and all of the presidential candidates understood that organized wealth and business combinations were a pressing economic problem that had clear social and political effects outside the world of commerce. Also in the views of almost all participants in the election, m

William Howard Taft has received less attention than other progressive era politicians and especially those involved in the election of 1912. Historians typically see him as a blunderer whose mistakes and inactivity split the Republican party in 1912. Taft was inherently legalistic and conservative. He was not party politician by training or temperament, but a lawyer and judge. He believed the challenges of the evolving corporate economy should be adjudicated according to existing law a precedent in order to maintain the social order, not as unsolved social issues that needed trailblazing legislative solutions. He did not see his role as providing creative or courageous leadership for congress, the business community, or the American people, instead he tried to follow as faithfully as possible the precedents he inherited. Taft saw corporate power as primarily an economic issue. He also believed that the problems of cooperate concentration could be solved by using existing laws, because of this he looked askance at the political innovations of the age. Taft did not fear corporate political dominance and saw little need for innovative direct democracy. He alone defended the existing political parties, and argued that they were crucial to the success of American democracy. He denigrated the new direct democratic machinery, focusing on the irrationality of majoritarian democracy and the need to protect private property. Taft had unavoidable conflict with his opponents, at it’s roots the disagreement was over ideology, economics, and social policy, not personality.

Eugene Debbs felt that corporations is what is wrong with the country. Debbs rejected anti trust laws. His rejection of these laws as “silly” and “puerile” followed Roosevelt’s logic: If combinations were a necessary precondition for socialism, the attempt to break up these combinations was an attempt to reverse history. Debbs commented that trying to return to precorporate conditions was the equivalent of “the protest of the stage coach against the locomotive and the pony express against the railroad telegraph, drawing upon the same cultural image that Roosevelt did in denigrating the ShermanAct as “flintlock” approach. Debbs and the procorporatists agreed that the federal government should play a central role in m

Some topics in this essay:
Eugene Debbs, Howard Taft, Facing American, Debs Socialist, Theodore Roosevelt, American Cultural, Taft Brandeis, , Wilson Approached, Roosevelt Taft’s, american people, social economic, election 1912, women’s suffrage, political social, corporate power, william howard taft, republican party, progressive party, eugene debbs, william howard,