Economics at the end of WWI

Review

• Laissez-faire = rise of industry and the industrialists
• Monopolies > John D Rockefeller & Standard Oil
• Super rich industrialists and poor workers

Progressive Era

• Attempt by "progressives" to put government controls on business > break up trusts (monopolies), unions, labor laws (no child labor & work place safety)

World War 1

• Industry used for production of war materiel
• Farmers supply troops
• Good economy

Recession after WWI

• No markets for war materiel and over-production of food
• European nations broke = no trade

President Harding's Response

• "All human ills are not curable by legislation"
• "Problems...are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government"
• "The call is for productive America to go on."
• "...omission of unnecessary interference of Government in business"

The "Do Nothing" President

• Mini-depression averted
• Jump start to "Cool Calvin's" prosperity

Calvin Coolidege

• Era of prosperity
• "people...having the ownership and control of their property, not in the Government, but in their own hands"
• "rewards of industry belong to those who earn them"
• "helpful influences of restrictive immigration"

Liberalism (early 20th century)

• Continuation of laissez-faire policies
• Government is hands-off for business
• Franklin Roosevelt changes this meaning during the Great Depression