I mean “pure” laissez-faire is something economists and libertarians are going to disagree on the definition of. But even a definition of laissez-faire that most of them can agree on is something that has never existed in American history.
The pre-1933 government was always paying pensions, building internal improvements (what we would call infrastructure today: roads, bridges, canals), setting up national banks, levying tariffs on foreign goods, seizing land using eminent domain, and of course the most glaring example: using state force to keep a large segment of the population enslaved.
But all of these various measures usually had some faction or other that opposed them on laissez-faire grounds. Andrew Jackson opposed a national bank, South Carolina planters opposed a heavy tariff and even threatened to secede over it in the 1830s, and the construction of the Erie Canal in New York was derided by opponents as an expensive government boondoggle, although it did decrease the cost of transporting goods from Ohio to the Atlantic Ocean by 95% so it was an unambiguous success.
But you are right that before 1933, economic intervention by the state into the market seemed to generally favor the few and not the many. A stark example of this is the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Critics have held that far from being used to break up and punish business cartels and monopolies, it was used more often to break up and punish labor unions for striking.
Another criticism is of the supposedly "rugged individualist" settlement of the West. Far from the fantasy of "homesteaders" individually appropriating unused land, this was the government using massive violence to dispossess, exile, and in many cases slaughter the Native Americans who lived on that land first, opening it up to settlement by white farmers who got the land, from the government, for free.
Now, all of this is to undermine the notion that we ever had laissez-faire economic policy. But if you understand laissez-faire as a sort of spectrum, where policy can be more laissez-faire or less, then it would be accurate to say that after the Progressive Era (beginning the first decade of the 1900s), there was new and unprecedentedly large intrusion into the economy by the government. The scale of government regulation and intervention has certainly increased in terms of the sheer amount of regulations, the financial and personnel-size of the bureaucracies that manage them all, and the level of income redistribution from the wealthy to the poor through taxation and social welfare programs. Teddy Roosevelt instituted the first nationwide regulation of the purity of food and drugs by creating the FDA. The 16th Amendment to the US Constitution allows the federal government to levy an income tax on individuals. And the New Deal created large-scale and permanent programs of redistribution of income from taxpayers to the unemployed and disabled, through [Social Security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States).
But one could also argue that's not necessarily the only measure of what makes an economy laissez-faire. I would argue that using the massive violence of the government to keep millions of people in bondage and dispossess an entire race of people of an entire continent of land qualifies as a pretty massive intervention in the economy. This was not voluntary interactions between rational actors, this was big, violent, powerful government enforcing its edicts at gunpoint.
Also worth highlighting the “World-Systems theory” put forward by Immanuel Wallerstein as it’s directly relevant here.
It’s quite an expansive theory (as it’s name suggests) that is best left to the author to explain (so please do read his book, Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. World-systems analysis: An introduction. Duke University Press, 2004) but I just wanted to reference one aspect of it, in particular.
To begin: He views the global capitalist system as being made up of (broadly) three types of economies/ countries; the core (e.g wealthy/industrialised/developed militaries), peripheral (undeveloped relying on exporting raw materials) and the semi-peripheral (developing nations).
Amongst other aspects, he views the system as leading to certain countries developing a hegemony in the system at various points in history.
Finally, to the point, he argued that ‘semi-peripheral nations’ adopt aggressive protectionist policies in order to develop their economy and become part of the ‘core’ group of nations, and possibly become the global economic hegemon. Whilst core nations, led by the hegemon, encourage (by hook or by crook) open markets and free trade.
If you look at the history of three key examples, Holland, the UK and the US as well as the current “trade war” between the US and China; the argument is very compelling.
The relevance here is that throughout the time period you note the US, according to the theory, was rising to its eventual hegemonic position in the global system, utilising protectionist policies to close the ‘gap’ between it and the European nations’ economies. The watershed moment they pinpoint is WW1. With European economies in turmoil, the USA’s rapid ascent to hegemony is achieved. We see after this, for the first time, the US export levels boom(and, well, everything...at one point, 1/3 of exports were US, it held 2/3 of gold reserves and over 1/2 of worlds industrial production). This leads to the US vastly expanding its military capabilities to protect its interest and its access to markets and thus, the Isolationist and protectionist US suddenly becomes the main advocate for the free trade.
Conversely, at this time, the UK (former global hegemon) abandons its long-held advocacy for free trade and laissez-faire (ongoing since 1830s, at least). It’s position is untenable, with an expensive military, global empire and a bankrupt economy.
At this point, it initially attempts to create a protectionism system in which it has favourable trading terms with its colonies, with the US and others facing high tariffs. The US strong arms the UK to give up on this and uses the IMF and Marshall plan to compensate them. Not to mention, following WW2 and Britain losing its hegemony, the UK becomes much more interventionist and protectionist. Plenty of examples of this with nationalisation of declining industries and railways being just two.
Currently, we see China’s ascent (arguably it already is) to global hegemon. Having utilised protectionist economic policies for decades, which have been well documented so I won’t go into it, it is now becoming the main advocate for free trade. The US under Trump, conversely, is becoming more protectionist. It’s a damn interesting theory.
Edit: adding some sources
Certainly the US government was never perfectly laissez faire, but it was never totally interventionist before 1933 either. The myth of a completely hands-off US government has been disproven for a long time, but more recently, historians and economists have also debunked the myth of the "American System", the allegation that the US had some kind of nationwide scheme to promote growth through tariffs and investments.
Modern economists believe the US was probably closer to laissez faire than interventionist in most periods before 1933. Its behavior was far similar to laissez faire countries like the UK than it was to protectionist countries like France and Russia. In the great majority of massive development projects and industrial works, the government had almost no involvement.
While intervention did occur, it was on a small scale, and generally not done for economic reasons, but to raise funds for the government, to bring prestige to a state, or to assist corruption.
Intervention can be broken up into three main areas before 1933: tarriffs, infrastructure, and banking.
Tariffs
The idea that the US used tariffs for protecting industries alone is disproven by Dormois and Lains, who assert the US and UK were "fiscal" protectionist states, while France was motivated by economic ideology. From 1815 to 1914, every major tariff hike in either the US or UK was done in response to revenue problems or the need to fund new projects. They conclude:
Nineteenth-century United States protectionism constitutes a paradigmatic case of government revenue being heavily dependent on tariff revenue.
It should be obvious why in the 1800s tariffs constituted a huge source of revenue: they were simply the easiest form of revenue to collect. Goods had to enter through a border or through ports - it was much easier to collect even a 60+% tariff than it was to collect a 15% income tax.
Tariffs were often implemented in a slapshod or improvised form. A great example is the Abominable Tariff of the 1820s, which was voted into office due to failed political intrigues on both sides, with little to no economic value. Douglas Irwin concludes that, because of the way tariffs were implemented in the US, they actually had no meaningful effect on growth:
The U.S. experience in the late nineteenth century is often appealed to as evidence that high tariffs can prove beneficial to economic growth and development. Upon closer scrutiny, it is difficult to establish this claim. That tariffs coincided with rapid growth in the late nineteenth century does not imply a causal relationship. To provide compelling evidence of a causal relationship requires the identification of the particular channel or mechanism through which the beneficial effect of the tariff purportedly operates. The simple calculations performed here suggests that U.S. economic growth during this period did not hinge on the tariff.
Banking
The US government intervened in finances long before the New Deal, with the Banks of the United States and state banks. Most of these banks were simply fronts for government pet projects or corruption:
In the banking industry, state intervention assumed several forms. In the south and the west, many state governments established state banks (Hawk 1973 [1934]: 352-358). While some of these state banks, such as those of Missouri and South Carolina, conducted themselves on a conservative basis, most proceeded speedily to inflation, corruption and failure.
Another amusing anecdote from the 1900s:
In 1923, the Bank of the State of Alabama was organized, which soon became famous for the loans it made to members of the state legislature and their friends. During one session of the state legislature, a member died, after which the other members wore black crepe on their arm as a sign of mourning. The black crepe came to be an indication that the wearer was eligible for bank loans.
Infrastructure
The best argument for government intervention as an economic strategy before 1933 comes from infrastructure. There were genuine attempts to improve the economy through government investment in the early 1800s - however, all these attempts were linked to jealousy over the "success" of New York's Erie Canal project, and most were insignificant enough that they had almost no real impact on growth. In short, almost all these investments were prestige projects.
After the success of the Erie Canal, a genuinely good project, New York massively expanded its canal project:
Soon the entire state was clamoring for new, bond-financed development projects. Eight new canals, costing $9.4 million, were approved, as was reconstruction of the Erie Canal itself, widening it and deepening it, as were dozens of turnpikes, and bond guarantees for a railroad to traverse the mountainous southern tier of the state, i.e., the Erie Railroad mentioned above. In 1829, Governor Martin Van Buren, a Democratic-Republican, signed legislation creating the New York Safety Fund, guaranteeing the bank notes and deposits of participating banks, mostly the “country banks” of the interior, that otherwise would have found it difficult to get their money into circulation. A speculative boom got underway.
The state intervention in banks and the unprofitability of the new infrastructure led to economic disaster:
But, the new canals failed to cover their operating costs, not to speak of the interest on their bonds. The turnpikes were also money-losers. The Erie Railroad went bankrupt, forcing the state to assume its bonds. Eight of the banks participating in the Safety Fund failed, in case after case due to "reckless banking," causing the Safety Fund itself to fail. New York was pushed to the brink of default, and only avoided doing so by raising taxes.
Pennsylvania followed shortly, with similar results:
While New York imprudently followed-up on the success of the Erie Canal, Pennsylvania reacted wildly. In order to compete with New York, Pennsylvania pushed its "Mainline," originating in Philadelphia, through to Pittsburgh [...] In 1842, the state of Pennsylvania defaulted on its debts, paying the interest and principal coming due on its bonds in scrip. Two years later, when taxes were raised, and the Mainline and other state enterprises were sold off or abandoned, the state was able to refinance its scrip and resume payments on its debt.
Then, the rest of the Midwest:
As the work on the Erie Canal progressed, the state of Ohio became excited by the prospect offered by canals for its own development (Bogart 1924, Ransom 1967, 1970) [...] By 1841 interest on the state's growing debt reached $800,000 per year, and was being paid by borrowing. [...] The state having withdrawn from the business of road building, private enterprise stepped in. By 1860, 2,000 miles of railroad were constructed, at a total cost of $111 million, only $8 million of which was provided by local subsidies.
In Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Missouri, a pattern emerges similar to that observed in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Either as a follow-up to an initial success (e.g., Illinois, with the Illinois-Michigan Canal), or as an initial effort, these states undertook massive transportation projects that failed miserably. Only after the failures did these states swear-off direct involvement in economic development. Then, with a commitment to private enterprise in place, development proceeded rapidly.
In infrastructure, the vast majority of development was by the private sector, in the so-called "piecemeal" system. Under this system, each individual railroad was built to be profitable alone, and then they were later bought out and consolidated. As one observer noted in 1852:
The railway undertakings of the United States have nearly all been the result of private enterprise, called into action to meet the requirements of the particular neighborhoods or districts through which they pass. As in England, there has been an almost total absence of any great design, or connected system of national advancement in the first adoption. [...] Through adoption of what may be called the piecemeal system, it undoubtedly happens that lines are formed which do not fulfill, in the highest degree, the full and general benefits which would have arisen from a more comprehensive plan, and the best route between the more important points of the country is scarcely to be selected; but it must be remembered that the railway system of this country, and of the United States, has been the growth of a principle unknown in its relation before, and the consequences of which it was impossible to have fully anticipated.
The picture of a hands-off United States government in ye olde times before Socialists ruined America has been disproven for a long time. More recently, however, the myth of an intelligent, interventionist government that defended and promoted industry and railroads from British competition is also wrong.
Instead, the US was basically a laissez faire government in ideology and outlook, but state governments couldn't resist the opportunity to spend lavishly for political purposes and get their hands on more money.
TLDR: The US was more or less a free market society, but had to use tariffs to increase revenue, and where governors built prestige projects and state legislators wanted to skim off the top by intervening in finance. In scale and scope, government projects were dwarfed by private sector activity during this period, and economic analyses prove that they basically had no effect - positive or negative - on growth.
Sources:
Thies, Clifford. Development of the American Railroad Network During the Early 19th Century: Private versus Public Enterprise
Irwin, Douglas. Tariffs and Growth in Late Nineteenth Century America
Dormois, Jean-Pierre and Lains, Pedro. Classical Trade Protectionism 1815-1914