I'm reading lots in the press lately about Wilson the racist, but the defense against that has included this article in today's Times, that calls him an architect of liberalism and praises his "leadership during World War I."
But, reading The Great Influenza, I found a very different picture of Wilson's America - a repressive state that brooked no dissent, and repressed information about the pandemic in the name of "morale" on the home front... (Scanned from the book so apologies for typos)
One cannot look at the influenza pandemic without understanding the context. Wilson had realized his aims. The United States was waging total war.
Already two million U.S. troops were in France; it was expected that at least two million more would be needed. Every element of the nation, from farmers to elementary school teachers, was willingly or otherwise enlisted in the war. To Wilson, to Creel, to his entire administration, and for that matter to allies and enemies alike, the control of information mattered…
Total war requires sacrifice and good morale makes sacrifices acceptable, and therefore possible. The sacrifices included inconveniences in daily life. To contribute to the war effort, citizens across the country endured the “meatless days” during the week, the one “wheatless meal” every day. All these sacrifices were of course voluntary, completely voluntary— although Hoover’s Food Administration could effectively close businesses that did not “voluntarily” cooperate. And if someone chose to go for a drive in the country on a “gasless Sunday,” when people were “voluntarily" refraining from driving, that someone was pulled over by hostile police…
The preservation of morale itself became an aim. For if morale faltered, all else might as well. So free speech trembled. More than in the McCarthy period, more than during World War II itself, more than in the Civil War—when Lincoln was routinely vilified by opponents—free speech trembled indeed. The government had the two hundred thousand members of the American Protective League, who reported to the Justice Department’s new internal security agency headed by J. Edgar Hoover and spied on neighbors and coworkers. Creel’s organization advised citizens, “Call the bluff of anyone who says he has ‘inside information.’ Tell him that it’s his patriotic duty to help you find the source of what he’s saying. If you find a disloyal person in your search, give his name to the Department of Justice in Washington and tell them where to find him.”
Socialists, German nationals, and especially the radical unionists in the International Workers of the World got far worse treatment. The New York Times declared, “The IWW agitators are in effect, and perhaps in fact, agents of Germany. The Federal authorities should make short work of these treasonable conspirators against the United States.” The government did just that, raiding union halls, convicting nearly two hundred union men at mass trials in Illinois, California, and Oregon, and applying relentless pressure against all opponents; in Philadelphia on the same day that Kruseh first discussed influenza with navy officials, five men who worked for the city’s German-language paper Tageblatt were imprisoned.
Regarding the influenza pandemic, the feds' attempts at "preserving morale" only made the pandemic far worse than it would have been...
The federal government was giving no guidance that a reasoning person could credit. Few local governments did better. They left a vacuum. Fear filled it.
The government’s very efforts to preserve “morale” fostered the fear, for since the war began, morale—defined in the narrowest, most short-sighted fashion—had taken precedence in every public utterance. As California senator Hiram Johnson said in 1917, “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”
It was a time when the phrase “brisk fighting” meant that more than 50 percent of a unit was killed or wounded; a time when the memoir of a nurse at the front, published in 1916, was withdrawn by her publisher after America entered the war because she told the truth about gruesome conditions; a time when newspapers insisted, “There is plenty of gasoline and oil for automobile use,” even while gas stations were ordered to close “voluntarily” at night and Sundays and a national campaign was being waged against driving on “gasless Sundays”—and police pulled over motorists who did not “voluntarily” comply.
Newspapers reported on the disease with the same mixture of truth and half-truth, truth and distortion, truth and lies with which they reported everything else. And no national official ever publicly acknowledged the danger of influenza.
I know much of Barry's info on that comes from David M. Kennedy's Over Here, which I bought but have yet to read. All that said...how is it that this part of Wilson's record seems completely absent from today's debate about his legacy?
I too read that book, and can't say I came away with any thoughts like yours in regards to the "soldier killer" pandemic that was racing to the coast.
I'll mainly address the point of suppressing this sudden scourge.
The context is vital. This was a years long total war, where finally millions upon millions of American troops are either being mobilized or arriving in France, troops that were fresh and were hoped to be the key to breaking the back and forth carnage of the western front. word that a horrific pandemic was decimating American military training camps, would be seen as a morale disaster to Americas exhausted allies, as well as a military miracle for the strained German army.
Americans that would immediately be placed with French units for training, spreading the virus to their allies, striking down experienced soldiers as well as their long awaited reinforcements.. This would destroy the already exhausted French morale, and would present the Germans with a physiological, and ultimately military, coup.
Papers all across the country would paint a picture that would make their way across the Atlantic, and revitalize the German high command.
Considering The Germans would never reveal any outbreaks spreading in their ranks, I can't imagine a more disasterous situation for the allies to be found in. Front line Units would either be infected and decimated, or see their flanks collapsing, with no hope of reinforcement in sight.
So, instead, the Americans kept up the guise that their fresh doughboys were comin over by the millions, and they were ready to do their part.
Allowing information like the wildfire like spreading deadly camp pandemics, that kill healthy soldiers in mere days, to leak to the enemy, could have easily led to a much different outcome for both sides in 1918.
There is a lot of commentary about the authoritarian aspects of Wilson's administration, but it mostly comes from the right side of the political spectrum.
The key work here is Ronald Pestritto's Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, published in 2005. Pestritto (a historian at the conservative Claremont Institute think tank) argued that Wilson greatly expanded the scope of the federal government in pursuit of his Progressive and wartime aims - in particular, establishing government agencies that overstepped the bounds on the executive branch established by the Constitution. The precedent set by Wilson in turn allowed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to greatly expand the scale and scope of federal bureaucracy in the 1930s and 1940s.
Pestritto's interpretation was subsequently popularized by Jonah Goldberg in his book Liberal Fascism, as well as by Glenn Beck (as the NYT article mentions). It has now become boilerplate in right-leaning circles: this post explaining why Wilson was the United States' "worst and first fascist president" is fairly typical. (The fact that he was the president who introduced the income tax and the Federal Reserve makes him an especially attractive target for conservatives.)
In point of fact, though, Theodore Roosevelt did more to promote the cause of a Progressive, interventionist government than did Wilson. During his presidency, Roosevelt oversaw the passage of progressive laws such as the Food and Drug Act and the Hepburn Act (which allowed for greater regulation of railroads), and was a fierce advocate of anti-trust legislation that would restrain the power and size of large corporations.
When the two candidates ran for election in 1912, Roosevelt advocated a program known as the "New Nationalism" - which entailed the establishment of regulatory agencies to oversee business, the creation of a minimum wage, and steps toward women's suffrage. By contrast, Wilson stood for the "New Freedom", which emphasized the use of antitrust policy to control unfair business practices - and thereby ensure fair competition - rather than government regulation.
And once he became president, Wilson's program was not especially ambitious in matters of social justice: his major achievements were a reduction in the national tariff (which required the introduction of the income tax to offset the loss of revenue), the establishment of a Federal Trade Commission, and the passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act. The only major piece of legislation aimed at protecting the weak and vulnerable during his administration was the Keating-Owen Act, which restricted the use of child labor. His liberal credentials, I think, have more to do with the idealist view of foreign policy that lay behind the Fourteen Points and his role in the Treaty of Versailles.
For a discussion of Wilson's reputation in recent years, see Paula Span, "How did the man hailed as the savior of humanity suddenly become America's most hated president?" American History, 46 (2011): 36-43.