Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T10:29:05.945Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Food Prices, Politics, and Policy in the Progressive Era1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

David I. Macleod
Affiliation:
Central Michigan University

Abstract

U.S.food prices surged abruptly higher in 1910–1913, alarming urban consumers, who equated them with the high cost of living, but delighting farmers. Progressive reformers tackled detailed aspects of the food-price problem but had no overarching solution and no effective programs t o please both consumers and farmers. A volatile pattern of economic voting resulted, but unlike conventional models, it had countervailing tendencies, setting consumers against food producers. Food prices cost the Republicans heavily in the 1910 election and helped disrupt the party by 1912, ending the Republican “system of 1896.” In power, Democrats pursued primarily a southern-tinged agrarian agenda and narrowly preserved power through 1914 and 1916 but fell victim to interest-group conflicts in 1918 and economic disasters in 1920.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Taft, William H., “First Annual Message,” A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York, n.d), 16:7440.Google Scholar

3 This contrasts with the many connections that historians have traced between New Dealera politics and consumer issues, including food prices. See Donohue, Kathleen G., Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer (Baltimore, 2003)Google Scholar; Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (Cambridge, 1990),Google Scholar And A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003), 1861;Google ScholarJacobs, Meg, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, 2005)Google Scholar.

4 Steigerwalt, David, “All Hail the Republic of Choice: Consumer History as Contemporary Thought,” Journal of American History 93 (Sept. 2006): 385CrossRefGoogle Scholar (quotation); Diner, Hasia R., Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Cambridge, MA, 2001)Google Scholar; Levenstein, Harvey A., Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; Shapiro, Laura, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Gabaccia, Donna R., We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA, 1998)Google Scholar; Lears, Jackson, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Leach, William, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; McGovern, Charles F., Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Several authors link food more explicitly to consumer issues: Strasser, Susan, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York, 1989)Google Scholar; Heinze, Andrew R., Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Searchfor American Identity (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; , Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics.Google Scholar On “advancement,” see Horowitz, Daniel, The Morality of Spending. Attitudes toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (Baltimore, 1985), 85108Google Scholar.

5 Cohen, Nancy, The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865–1914 (Chapel Hill, 2002), 226Google Scholar; Glickman, Lawrence B., “Born to Shop? Consumer History and American History” in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, ed. Glickman, Lawrence (Ithaca, NY, 1999), 12Google Scholar.

6 Rauchway, Eric, “The High Cost of living in the Progressives' Economy,” Journal of American History 88 (Dec, 2001): 898924;CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Jacobs, Pocketbook PoliticsGoogle Scholar; , Donohue, Freedom from Want.Google ScholarThelen, David P., Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit (Boston, 1976),Google Scholar finds a retreat from consumer concerns to producer issues early in the Wilson administration.

7 Campbell, Ballard, “Economic Causes of Progressivism,” journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4 (jan. 2005): 722 (quotation on 8).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Studies of “economic retrospective voting” presume volatility, positing that voters consider conditions only in the year immediately before the election and react “more to changes in income, unemployment, and inflation than to the actual levels of these indicators.” Kiewiet, D. Roger, “Economic Retrospective Voting and Incentives for Policymaking,” Electoral Studies 19 (June-Sept. 2000): 427–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Walter Dean Burnham's idea of enduring Republican realignment from 1896 to 1930 survives as conventional wisdom. A recent proponent simply removed the elections of 1910, 1912, and 1914 from his analysis! Campbell, James E., “Party Systems and Realignments in the United States, 1868–2004,” Social Science History 30 (Fall 2006): 366.Google Scholar For refutations based on Democratic electoral and legislative successes, see Rauchway, Eric, “William McKinley and UsJournal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4 (July 2005): 243Google Scholar; Mayhew, David R., Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (New Haven, 2002), 1–4, 128–29Google Scholar.

10 Frank Greene, “High Prices and the Cost of Living,” Outlook, Mar. 12, 1910, 569.Google Scholar Greene was managing editor of Bradstreet's Journal.

11 New York Times, Dec. 2, 29, 1909Google Scholar; Jan. 3, 1910; Congressional Record, 61st Cong., 3rd sess., Jan. 4, 1910, 290–92Google Scholar.

12 Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 11 (ministers), Jan. 13, 14 (“top prices”), Feb. 1, 3, 1910Google Scholar; New York Times, Jan. 19, 1910Google Scholar; Report ofthejoint Select Committee… Appointed to Inquire into the Purchase, Storage, Sale ofand Traffic in Food Products, Commodities and Supplies (Columbus, OH, 1910), 1226Google Scholar

13 New York Times, jan. 16, 22 (Comfort-Brooks), Jan. 23, 1910 (Wiley)Google Scholar; Washington Post, Jan. 26,1910Google Scholar.

14 New York Times, Jan. 23, 28, 1910Google Scholar; U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee on Wages and Prices of Commodities, Investigation Relative to Wages and Prices of Commodities, 61st Cong., 3rd sess. (Washington, 1911), 1:5—144;Google Scholar Massachusetts Commission on the Cost of Living, Report of the Commission on the Cost of Living, May 1910 (Boston, 1910)Google Scholar.

15 In May and June 1910, Italian butchers in New York and Jewish women in Providence protested. , Diner, Hungering for America, 68Google Scholar; Smith, Judith E., Family Connections: A History of Italian and Jewish Lives in Providence, Rhode Island, 1900–1940 (Albany, NY, 1985), 156–57Google Scholar.

16 The total fell to 29 in 1914. Greene, “High Prices,” 569; “The Problem of Subsistence,” Cosmopolitan, June 1910, 21.Google Scholar The phrase “cost of living” in American Periodical Series online, Feb. 19, 2006,Google Scholar netted 145 references for 1907, 93 for 1908, 124 for 1909, 376 for 1910, 212 for 1911, 332 for 1912, 383 for 1913, and 236 for 1914.

17 Annals 48 (July 1913)Google Scholar and 50 (Nov. 1913); Nearing, Scott, Reducing the Cost of Living (Philadelphia, 1914)Google Scholar; Fisher, Irving, Why Is the Dollar Shrinking? (New York, 1914)Google Scholar; Clark, Walter E., The Cost of Living (Chicago, 1915)Google Scholar; Franklin, Fabian, Cost of Living (Garden City,NY, 1915)Google Scholar; King, Clyde Lyndon, Lower Living Costs in Cities (New York, 1915)Google Scholar.

18 Thelen, David P., The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885–1900 (Columbia, MO, 1972), 43Google Scholar; Robert B. Barsky and J. Bradford DeLong, “Forecasting Pre-World War I Inflation: The Fisher Effect and the Gold Standard,” Quarterly journal of Economics 106 (Aug. 1991): 815–36; Edwin R. A. Seligman, “High and Low Prices,”Google ScholarIndependent, Mar. 31,1910, 679Google Scholar; “Falling Prices,” Literary Digest, Nov. 20, 1910, 970Google Scholar.

19 Campbell, “Economic Causes of Progressivism,” 8–12; Robert C. Allen, “Real Incomes in the English-Speaking World, 187—1913” in Labour Market Evolution, ed. Grantham, George and MacKinnon, Mary (London, 1994), 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lebergott, Stanley, Pursuing Happiness; American Consumers in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1993), 148.Google Scholar Two commonly cited sources differ concerning price increases and hence trends in real wages. Paul Douglas's 1930 study concluded that U.S. industrial workers' real wages fell 6 percent between 1896 and 1914. To 1950s economists, that seemed preposterous. Albert Rees concluded that workers' prices had climbed only 20·5 percent and real daily earnings had risen, though less than in other decades. The truth may lie between Rees and Douglas. Rees's reliance on mail-order catalogues for prices biased them downward, and contemporaries believed that manufacturers maintained price stability by lowering quality. Rees also weighted missing data items using only nonfood prices. Douglas, Paul H., Real Wages in the United States, 1890–1926 (1930; New York, 1966), 19—41, 130Google Scholar; Rees, Albert, Real Wages in Manufacturing, 1890–1914 (Princeton, 1961), 3, 74126;CrossRefGoogle ScholarShergold, Peter R., Working-Class Life: The “American Standard” in Comparative Perspective, 1899—1913 (Pittsburgh, 1982), 166–67, 215, 291n25Google Scholar.

20 Pope, Daniel, “American Economists and the High Cost of Living: The Late Progressive Era,” journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 17 (Winter 1981): 7587;Google ScholarStrieker, Frank, “American Professors in the Progressive Era: Incomes, Aspirations, and Professionalism,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19 (Autumn 1988): 231257;Google ScholarThorndike, Edward L. and Wbodyard, Ella, “The Effect of Violent Price-Fluctuations upon the Salaries of Clergymen,” journal of the American Statistical Association 22 (Mar. 1927): 6671;Google ScholarCleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 11, 1910Google Scholar; Select Committee, Investigation, 1:52; Report of the Joint Select Committee, 5; Theodore Roosevelt, “Progressive Democracy: The High Cost of Living,” Outlook, Oct. 5, 1912, 247; Rubinow, I.M., “The Recent Trend of Real Wages,” American Economic Review 4 (Dec. 1914): 811Google Scholar.

21 Russell, Charles Edward, “Monometallism and ‘Water,’” Cosmopolitan, June 1910, 23Google Scholar; Taussig, E. W, “The Plan for a Compensated Dollar,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 7 (May 1913): 414Google Scholar ; Holmes, George K., Cold Storage and Prices (Washington, 1913), 3048;Google ScholarBureau of Labor Statistics, Wholesale Prices, 1890–1913 (Washington, 1914), 11Google Scholar.

22 Department of Commerce and Labor, Cost of Living and Retail Prices of Food (Washington, 1904), 648Google Scholar; Massachusetts Commission, Report, 594Google Scholar; , Shergold, Working-Class Life, 179Google Scholar; Bureau of Labor Statistics, Retail Prices, 1890 to December, 1913 (Washington, 1914), 11Google Scholar.

23 Massachusetts Commission, Report, 92–93; Hutchinson, Woods, “The Dangers of Undereating,” Cosmopolitan, Aug., 1909, 392Google Scholar; Macleod, David, The Age of the Child: Children in America, 1890–1920 (New York, 1998), 3637;Google ScholarAronson, Naomi, “Social Definitions of Entitlement: Food Needs, 1885–1920,” Media, Culture and Society 4 (jan. 1982): 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Department of Commerce and Labor, Cost of Living, 81Google Scholar.

24 Patten, Simon Nelson, The Theory of Prosperity (New York, 1902), 6061,Google Scholar quoted in , Donohue, Freedom from Want, 82Google Scholar; Patten, Simon N., “The Crisis in American Home Life,” Independent, Feb. 17, 1910, 342–46;Google ScholarLewinson, Edwin R., John Purroy Mitchel: The Boy Mayor of New York (New York, 1965), 138–42;Google Scholar Charles Brand to Mr. Harrison, Feb. 17, 1917, box 285, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, RG 16, National Archives (hereafter NA), College Park, MD. See also note 75.

25 Massachusetts Commission, Report, 552Google Scholar; Libbin, Thomas, “Constructive Program for Reduction of the Cost of Food Distribution in Large Cities,” Annals 50 (Nov. 1913): 247—9;Google Scholar, Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, 64—65, 238—44, 268—84;Google Scholar “Price Maintenance—Discussion,” American Economic Review 6, supp. (May 1916): 206Google Scholar; Walsh, William I., The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (Secaucus, NJ, 1986), 2532;Google Scholar, Cohen, Making a New Deal, 109, 117.Google Scholar Chains aroused charges of predatory competition. Louis Brandeis defended small stores in producerist terms as bastions of independent citizenship. McCraw, Thomas K., Prophets of Regulation (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 106–07;Google ScholarBrandeis, Louis, “Cutthroat Prices: The Competition That Kills,” Harper's Weekly, Nov. 1913, 1012Google Scholar.

26 Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianizing the Social Order (New York, 1912), 202Google Scholar; “Making War on the Middleman and the High Cost of Living,” Current Literature, Mar., 1912, 289–90;Google Scholar U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Agriculture, Division ofMarkets, Department of Agriculture, 62nd Cong., 3rd sess., Jan. 28, 1913, 2Google Scholar; Wilson, James, “The Farmer and the Retailer,” Cosmopolitan, June 1910, 2930Google Scholar.

27 Chandler, Alfred D., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, MA, 1990), 638Google Scholar; David Gordon, “The Beef Trust: Antitrust Policy and the Meat Packing Industry, 1902–1922” (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1983), 170–228; Chambers, John Whiteclay, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ, 2000), 196Google Scholar; Roy Potts to Charles Brand, Jan. 7, 1916, Records of the Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates and Its Predecessors, RG 83, box 243, NA, College Park.

28 McCormick, Richard L., The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York, 1986), 274Google Scholar; Clemens, Elisabeth S., The People's Lobby: Organisational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925 (Chicago, 1997)Google Scholar; Weyl, Walter E., The New Democracy (New York, 1912), 251–53;Google ScholarLippmann, Walter, Drift and Mastery. An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest (1914; Englewood CliffsNJ, 1961), 54Google Scholar.

29Household Economics,” Federation Bulletin 7 (Apr. 1910): 225Google Scholar; Christine Frederick quotedby Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, 270; , Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 35, 48Google Scholar; Nathan, Maud, History of an Epoch-Making Movement (Garden City, NY, 1926), 74, 180, 198—211Google Scholar.

30 Dudderidge, Mary, “Embattled Housewives,” Independent, Nov. 28, 1912, 1230—34;Google Scholar Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, 266–68; New York Times, Jan. 5, 1916; Dudderidge, Mary, “The Lesson of the Egg Campaign,” Housewives League Magazine, Feb. 1913, 2223;Google Scholar Mrs. Hurrell, Arthur S., “A Year of League Work in Buffalo,” Housewives League Magazine, May 1913, 31Google Scholar.

l Glickman, Lawrence, A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society (Ithaca, NY, 1997), 6465;Google ScholarAmerican Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings 33 (1913): 13Google Scholar; Sanders, Elizabeth, Roots ofReform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago, 1999), 94—100, 359Google Scholar.

32 , Clark, Cost of Living, 121.Google Scholar This concern for specific problems and programs has bedeviled efforts to find a succinct, synthetic definition of progressive reform.

33 Messer-Kruse, Timothy, “The Crusade for Honest Weight: The Origins of an Overlooked Progressive Movement,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5 (july 2006): 241—86;Google Scholar Peter Edward Samson, “The Emergence of a Consumer Interest in America, 1870—1930” (PhD diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1980), 103–10; Louis A. Fischer, “Recent Developments in Weights and Measures,” Popular Science Monthly, Apr. 1914, 346–67; Reichmann, Fritz, “Weights and Measures,” Conquest Magazine, May 1910, 11.Google Scholar Possibly in part because enforcement targeted ethnic merchants, Democratic governors eliminated the Republican Reichmann's traveling inspectors and replace d him by 1914. New York Times, Mar. 25, 1913, Mar. 28, 1914.

34 Massachusetts Commission, Report, 342—45;Google Scholar U.S. Senate, Committee on Manufactures, Amendment to Pure Food and Drugs Act, 62nd Cong., 3rd sess., Feb. 11, 1913, 1—73; Congressional Record, 62nd Cong., 3rd sess., Feb. 28, 1913, 4287—303.

35 Select Committee, Investigation, 1:24; , Holmes, Cold Storage, 8, 20–23, 72Google Scholar; Elizabeth McQuat, “Our Legislative Department,” Housewives League Magazine, Aug. 1913, 32; Anderson, Oscar Edward, Refrigeration in America: A History of a New Technology (Port Washington, NY, 1972), 131—41;Google Scholar B. H. Rawl to Assistant Secretary, Dec. 23, 1913, RG 16, box 129, NA, Washington.

36 Clippings with Frederick Siddons to Joseph Tumulty, Sept. 10, 1914, case file 60, Woodrow Wilson Papers, library of Congress, microfilm edition, 1973; Mayo, James M., The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space (Westport, CT, 1993), 19Google Scholar; Sullivan, J. W., Markets for the People: The Consumer's Part (New York, 1913), 5375, 101Google Scholar; Messer-Kruse, “Crusade,” 274—80. Modernizers sought to streamline wholesaling by imitating European terminal markets. In New York City, George Perkins proposed a massive new depot in Brooklyn, but wholesalers blocked the change. Garraty, John A., Right-HandMan: The Life of George W. Perkins (New York, 1960), 313Google Scholar; Weld, L. D. H., The Marketing of Farm Products (New York, 1916), 394–96, 458–60Google Scholar.

37 Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 326–27;Google Scholar Samson, “Emergence of a Consumer Interest in America,” 144–48; , Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat, 87-88Google Scholar; G. A. Nahstoll to Charles Brand, Mar. 27, 1915, RG 83, box 79, , NA; , Franklin, Cost of Living, 106–08;Google Scholar, Weld, Marketing of Farm Products, 413–20Google Scholar.

38 Kelley, Florence, “Minimum Wage Laws,” journal of Political Economy 20 (Dec. 1912): 1009Google Scholar; U.S. Women's Bureau, The Development of Minimum-Wage Laws in the United States, 1912 to 1927 (Washington, 1928), 3,155; Goodwin, Joanne L., Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers' Pensions in Chicago, 1911–1929 (Chicago, 1997), 8283, 174CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Cochrane, Willard W, The Development of American Agriculture. A Historical Analysis (Minneapolis, 1979), 100, 383Google Scholar; Historical Statistics of the United States, ed. al, Susan B. Carter et. (Cambridge, 2006), 3:175Google Scholar; Adams, T. M., Prices Paid by Vermont Farmersfor Goods and Services Received by Them for Farm Products, 1790–1940 (Burlington, VT, 1944), 105Google Scholar.

40 Wallace, Henry in Proceedings of the Third National Conservation Congress… 1911 (Kansas City, 1912), 16Google Scholar; , Wallace in Proceedings of the Second National Conservation Congress… 1910 (Washington, 1911), 193Google Scholar; F. A. Sirrine to James Wilson, Feb. 21, 1910, box 28; Mrs. M. E. Vanderbilt to David Houston, Dec. 10, 1913, box 82; Mrs. F. Spear to Mrs. Houston, Dec. 13, 1913, box 82;Secretary [Houston] to Mrs. F. Spear, Dec. 19,1913, box 82; all RG 16, NA; Danbom, David B., The Resisted Revolution: Urban America and the Industrialization of Agriculture (Ames, IA, 1979), 89Google Scholar; Stuart William Shulman, “The Origin of the Federal Farm Loan Act: Agenda Setting in the Progressive-Era Print Press” (PhD diss., Univ. of Oregon, 1999), 254–59.

41 , Sanders, Roots of Reform; , Danbom, Resisted Revolution, vii, 66.Google Scholar

42 To compound the unfairness, much butter was itself colored! Department of Commerce, Cost of Living, 81; Oleomargarine and the High Cost of Living (Washington, n.d.), 2458,Google Scholar copy in RG 16, box 91, NA; New York Times, Jan. 22, Apr. 3, 1912; Ruth Dupré, ‘“If It's Yellow, It Must Be Butter’: Margarine Regulation in North America since 1886,” Journal of Economic History 59 (June 1999): 355–58;Google Scholar William T. Creasy to Carl Vrooman, Dec. 15, 1915, RG 16, box 215, Oleomargarine File, NA. Agriculture Department officials thought that adding butterfat would benefit consumers but advise d their superiors to stay clear of the politically dangerous margarine wars, [illeg.] Alsberg to Assistant Secretary, Jan. 3,1916, RG 16, box 215, Oleomargarine File, NA; B. H. Rawl to Assistant Secretary, Jan. 26, 1916, RG 16, box 301, Oleomargarine File, NA.

43 Massachusetts Commission, Cost of Living, 524–25;Google ScholarHill, James J. in Second National Conservation Congress, 182–84;Google ScholarNew York Times, Jan. 13, 1910Google Scholar; Roosevelt, Theodore, “How I Became a Progressive” in Roosevelt, Social Justice and Popular Baile (New York, 1926), 317Google Scholar; Democratic National Committee, The Democratic Text-Book, 1912 (New York, 1912), 66Google Scholar; Irving Fisher to William H. Taft, Jan. 9,15, 1912, William Howard Taft Papers, library of Congress, series 6, section 1893, microfilm edition, 1972; Berghahn, V. R., Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (New York, 1973), 145–60;Google ScholarDangerfield, George, The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York, 1961), 214–33;Google ScholarOffer, Avner, The First WorlWar: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford, 1989), 14, 127Google Scholar.

44 Republican National Committee, Republican Campaign Text-Book, 1912 (Philadelphia, 1912), 5051, 153Google Scholar; Select Committee, Investigation, 1:13; Report of the Country Life Commission, 60th Cong., 2nd sess., 1909, 23; David Brady and David Epstein, “Intraparty Preferences, Heterogeneity, and the Origins of the Modern Congress: Progressive Reformers in the House and Senate, 1890–1920,” journal of haw, Economics, and Organisation 13 (Apr. 1997): 33Google Scholar.

45 Although wheat prices trended upward, they were unnervingly volatile. The South produced some sugar, fruit, and early vegetables for the national market, but these remained secondary crops. On insurgents, see Kleppner, Paul, Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 1893–1928 (New York, 1987), 135Google Scholar; Holt, James, Congressional Insurgents and the Party System (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 2-11, 45–46, 85–89, 111; Sanders, foots of Reform, 165–69, 228Google Scholar.

46 Republican National Committee, Republican Campaign Text-Book, 1916 (n.p., 1916), 23Google Scholar; Edwards, Rebecca, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politicsfrom the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York, 1997), 6987, 147Google Scholar; Republican National Committee, Republican Campaign Text-Book (Milwaukee, 1904), esp. 200–14;Google ScholarRepublican Congressional Committee, Republican Text-Book for the Congressional Campaign, 1910 (Philadelphia, [1910]);Google ScholarDemocratic National Committee, The Campaign Text Book of the Democratic Party of the United States, 1908 (Chicago, [1908]).Google Scholar In 1912, with victory in prospect, the Democrats produced a more impressive book with many statistical tables linking tariffs, trusts, and the high cost of living. Democratic National Committee, Text-Book, 1912.

47 Brady and Epstein, “Intraparty Preferences,” 33; , Sanders, Roots of Reform, 5, 36, 160–61, 341–42Google Scholar; National Democratic Congressional Committee, Democratic Campaign Book for 1910 (Baltimore, 1910), 106–08;Google ScholarSelect Committee, Investigation, 1:163-66Google Scholar; Wilson, Woodrow, A Crossroads of Freedom: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Wells, John (New Haven, 1956), 26, 120, 139–41, 322Google Scholar; United States Tariff Commission, Cattle and Beef in the United States (Washington, 1922), 7, 9Google Scholar.

48 Gould, Lewis L., Reform and Regulation:American Politics, 1900–1916 (New York, 1978), 190Google Scholar; Campbell, “Economic Causes of Progressivism,” 14–15; D. Roderick Kiewiet and Michael Udell, “Twenty-Five Years after Kramer: An Assessment of Economic Retrospective Voting Based upon Improved Estimates of Income and Unemployment,” Economics and Politics 10 (Nov. 1998): 219–8;Google Scholar William H. Taft to Theodore Roosevelt, May 26,1910, Taft Papers, ser. 8, vol. 15, 477; Democratic Congressional Committee, Campaign Bookfor 1910, 1–176; “Meaning of the Republican Waterloo,” Literary Digest, Nov. 13, 1910, 915; Carter, , ed., Historical Statistics, 5:201Google Scholar.

49 Reynolds, John F., Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform in New Jersey, 1880–1920 (Chapel Hill, 1988), 91,Google Scholar compares off-year elections 1898–1907 to those 1910–1914; the Democrats' vote declined in rural districts but rose in suburbs and cities. Roger Edwards Wyman, “Voting Behavior in the Progressive Era: Wisconsin as a Case Study” (PhD diss., Univ. of Wisconsin, 1970), 820–27, finds Democrats gaining in cities in 1910 and 1912. See Campbell, “Economic Causes of Progressivism,” 15–16.

50 This approach differs from most voting studies that either compare enduring loyalties (regional, ethnic, religious, etc.) or treat each national election as one case in a series of elections. In either instance, one might expect to find a larger proportion of variance explained.

51 There are advantages and disadvantages in using counties rather than congressional districts as units for analysis. In settled states, county boundaries tended to remain stable, whereas redistricting periodically changed district boundaries, as happened between the 1910 and 1912 elections. Census data were reported by county, whereas assembling data for congressional districts that included only part of a county or more than one county requires some estimation and recalculation of census data. Also, county data separate, at least approximately, rural and urban portions of some mixed districts. On the other hand, if one thinks in terms of total vote or numbers of representatives elected, using counties overweighs the number of cases toward small rural counties. Urban counties typically had far more congressional representation per county. This does not matter when comparing different tendencies within the vote, in this case urban versus rural, but it weakens the results as an explanation of overall election results, where winning districts mattered. One must remember that urban and nonfarm shifts outweighed rural shifts within the regions outside the South where the elections under consideration were decided. On the other hand, the farm vote remained too large to be ignored by politicians seeking to build broad coalitions.

52 The dependent variables were the difference between the Republican percentage of a county's vote for Congress in 1910 and the same percentage in 1908 (1,764 counties) and the same difference for the Democrats (1,754 counties). Results were significant beyond the.0001 level except the r of.090, significant at the.0002 level. I omitted the eleven former Confederate states. Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H., and Zingale, Nancy H., Electoral Datafor Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840–1972 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1986)Google Scholar [computer file]; Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790–1970 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1992) [computerfile, update]Google Scholar.

53 Republican results (613 counties) were statistically significant beyond the.0015 level, Democratic results only at the.026 level (612 counties).

54 ‘“Falling Prices,” 968; Ellis, L. Ethan, Reciprocity 1911: St Study in Canadian-American Relations (New Haven, 1939), 33–34, 65Google Scholar; William Howard Taft to Nelson W. Aldrich, Jan. 29, 1911, Taft Papers, ser. 8, vol. 22, 283; Taft, “Reciprocity with Canada,” journal of Political Economy 19 (July 1911): 520Google Scholar; James Wilson to Legislative Committee of the National Grange, Feb. 9,1911, Taft Papers, case 543.

55 White, G. C., “The Proposed Agreement as Viewed by the Farmer,” journal of Political Economy 19 (July, 1911): 569CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buta, Phillip, “Michigan Newspapers and the Canadian Reciprocity Agreement of 1911,” Michigan Academician 27 (Aug. 1995): 531–50;Google ScholarCongressional Record, 62nd Cong., 1st sess., May 6, 1911, 1035–40. After first supporting reciprocity, Driscoll changed his vote; he lost in 1912.

56 Frank Baum to Robert La Follette, July 24, 1911; Homer Fisher to W. L. Houser, Nov. 9, 1911, La Follette Family Collection (LFFC), ser. J, box 77, Library of Congress; various letters, LFFC, ser. J., box 114; , Thelen, La Follette, 87, 101Google Scholar; Congressional Record, 65th Cong., 1st sess., Apr. 4, 1917, 226.

57 Neiv York Times, Feb. 3, May 7, Oct. 20, 1912.Google Scholar

58 “International Investigation of the High Cost of Living,” Moody's Magazine, March 1912, copy in Taft Papers, ser. 6, file 1893; U.S. Bureau of Labor, Retail Prices, 1890. june 1912 (Washington, 1912); “Making War on the Middleman,” 290.

59 Wilson's body mass index was 23·5, compared to 30·2 for Roosevelt and 42·3 for Taft; see “The Presidents by Height and BMI” <http://home.comcast.net/∼sharonday7/Presidents/ AP060303.htm> (accessed Nov. 30, 2004).

60 Republican National Committee, Text-Book, 1912, 2–98; Flehinger, Brett, The 1912 Election and the Power of Progressivism (Boston, 2003), 171Google Scholar; “An Address on the Tariff,” The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. al, Arthur S. link et. (Princeton, 1978), 25:139Google Scholar; Democratic National Committee, Text-Book, 1912, 2–4, 145-207Google Scholar; , Wilson, Crossroads of Freedom, 356Google Scholar; Roosevelt, “Progressive Democracy,” 249; “Confession of Faith,” in Roosevelt, Socialjustice, 268–92.

61 Gable, John Allen, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington,NY, 1978), 131–43;Google Scholar Michael Haverkamp, “Roosevelt and Taft: How the Republican Vote Split in Obio in 1912,” Ohio History 110 (Summer-Autumn 2001): 125–27.

62 Carter, , ed., Historical Statistics, 5:201.Google Scholar See note 52 for sources. Significance levels beyond.0001 and n = 1785.

63 Republican significance levels were beyond.01, Democratic just beyond.05.

64 , Sanders, Roots of Reform, 228–29;Google ScholarWillis, H. Parker, “The Tariff of 1913: II,” Journal of Political Economy 22 (Feb. 1914): 105–31;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBlakey, Roy G., “Beet Sugar and the Tariff,” Journal of Political Economy 21 (June 1913): 553CrossRefGoogle Scholar; , Franklin, Cost of Living, 8990;Google Scholar, Nearing, Reducing the of Living, 2730;Google Scholar Statement by Secretary Houston, Second Revision, Feb. 27, 1917, RG 16, box 285, NA; Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., Jan. 17, 1914, 1834–37 United States Tariff Commission, Cattle and Beef, 42.

65 Sherman, Wells A., Merchandising Fruits and Vegetables (New York, 1930), 154–62;Google Scholar Charles Brand to F. R. Harrison, Sept. 18, 1915, RG 83, box 2, NA.

66 Fuller, Wayne E., RFD: The Changing Face of Rural America (Bloomington, IN, 1964), 217–44;Google ScholarFitzpatrick, Guy, “Final Report on Work Conducted at Atlanta… Aug. 13,1914,” box 119; From Farm to Table Via Parcel Post (Chicago, 1915),Google Scholar copy in box 170; Lewis Flohr to Charles Brand, Dec. 6, 1915, and Flohr to Brand, Aug. 15, 1916, box 57; all in RG 83, NA; Meeker, Royal, Market Distribution,” American Economic Review 5, supp. (Mar. 1915): 124Google Scholar.

67 New York Times, Sept. 29, 1913.

l Matt Ely to “Friend Joe” Tumulty, Feb. 14, 1914, Wilson Papers, ser. 14, file 48; J. W Sullivan to William B. Wilson, Feb. 28, 1914, Wilson Papers, case file 60; New York Times, Mar. 2, 1914; Washington Post, Mar. 7, 1914; Bureau of Labor Statistics, Retail Prices, 1890 to December 1913, 10–13; Retail Prices, 1907 to December 1914 (Washington, 1915). Investigators reported on at least five stores per city, often more.

69 Woodrow Wilson to James C. McReynolds, Aug. 13,1914, and clipping, Washington Evening Star, Aug. 24, 1914, both in Wilson Papers, case file 60; New York Times, Aug.-Oct., 1914.

70 New York Times, Dec. 28, 1913; “General Summary of Contributions on the Meat Situation,” Feb. 21, 1916, RG 16, box 296, NA.

71 McConnell, Grant, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy (Berkeley, 1959), 47Google Scholar; , Danbom, Resisted Revolution, 7273;Google ScholarCongressional Record, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., Jan. 17, 1914, 1834; Jan. 19, 1914, 1933–44; Jan. 31,1914, 2649–59; Feb. 2,1914, 2735–44; Feb. 6,1914, 3031.

72 Most Republican senators up for reelection in 1914 had won office after the election of 1908, a Republican year, and were more vulnerable than Republican representatives. , Carter, ed., Historical Statistics, 5:161, 201Google Scholar; National Industrial Conference Board, Changes in the Cost of Living, July, 1914-November, 1919 (Boston, 1919), 3; , Gable, Bull Moose Years, 222Google Scholar; Campbell, “Economic Causes of Progressivism,” 16; Sanders, Roots of Reform, 361; Democratic Congressional Committee, The Democratic Text-book, 1914 (Baltimore, 1914), 77–78, 101 (quotation); Republican National Committee, Text-Book, 1916, 204–06. In 1,779 nonsouthern counties, increases in Republican voting from 1910 to 1914 correlated positively with percentage urban (r =.166) and negatively with farms per capita (r = -.151). Democratic shifts in urban votes were marginally negative (r = -.075), but the only correlation statistically significant at.0001 was between an increase in Democratic votes and farms per capita (r =.109). For sources, see note 52.

73 Tom G. Hall, “Wilson and the Food Crisis: Agricultural Price Control during World War I,” Agricultural History 47 (jan. 1973): 32–34; David Houston to J. P. Tumulty, Jan. 21, 1915; “No Shortage of Foodstuffs Likely,” Feb. 17, 1915, RG 16, both in box 202, NA.

744 Bureau of Labor Statistics food index (1913 = 100): Aug. 1914,107; Nov. 1914, 105; Feb. 1915, 101; May 1915, 100; Aug. 1915, 100; Nov. 1915, 104; Feb. 1916, 106; May 1916, 109; Aug. 1916, 113; Nov. 1916, 126. National Industrial Conference Board, Cost of Living, 3.

75 Democrats from industrial states divided on the roads bill. , Sanders, Roots of Reform, 260, 298312,Google Scholar 505n10; Shulman, “Federal Farm Loan Act,” 90, 368, 418.

76 Hall, “Wilson and the Food Crisis,” 31–32; The New Democracy: Presidential Messages, Addresses, and Other Papers by Woodrow Wilson (1913–1917), ed. Ray Stannard Baker and William Dodd (New York, 1926), 2:368–69; , Sanders, Roots of Reform, 385–86Google Scholar.

77 Hall, “Wilson and the Food Crisis,” 38; David Kennedy, M., Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 2004), 118–20;Google Scholar Woodrow Wilson to William J. Harris, Feb. 7, 1917, in Food Investigation: A Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Summary of Report of the Federal Trade Commission on the Meat-Packing Industry (Washington, 1918), 50, 51 (quotation)Google Scholar; , Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 5563.Google Scholar Nash portrays Hoover as concerned with preserving social peace by keeping food affordable for urban workers but pressured toward higher prices by agrarian interests, especially in the case of pork. Nash, George H., The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies, 1917–1918 (New York, 1996), 125, 130, 167–89, 247, 388.Google Scholar Per capita consumption of wheat flour (169 pounds in 1916 and 170 pounds in 1917) fell almost 5 percent in 1918 (to 162 pounds). Although per capita meat consumption fell about 3·5 percent in 1917, it actually rose more than 4 percent in 1918 (140·1 pounds in 1916; 135·3 pounds in 1917; 141·6 pounds in 1918). U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, 1975), 330–31Google Scholar.

78 Livermore, Seward W, Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916–1918 (Middletown, CT, 1966), 4956;Google Scholar, Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 5759;Google ScholarCullather, Nick, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie,” American Historical Review 112 (April 2007): 348CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; , Kennedy, Over Here, 240–44;Google ScholarCarter, , ed., Historical Statistics, 3:160Google Scholar; Burner, David, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918–1932 (New York, 1968), 3437Google Scholar.

79 Carter, , ed., Historical Statistics, 3:158, 160Google Scholar; Clements, Kendrick A., The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence, KS, 1992), 205–07;Google Scholar, StanleyCoben, A.Mitchell Palmer: Politician (New York, 1963), 157–68,190–92Google Scholar.

80 Bagby, Wesley M., The Road to Normalcy: The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1920 (Baltimore, 1962), 156, 159Google Scholar; Dethloff, Henry C., “Edwin T. Meredith and the Interregnum,” Agricultural History 64 (Spring 1990): 184 (quotation)Google Scholar; Bureau of Labor Statistics, Retail Prices, 1913 to December, 1920 (Washington, 1922), 4Google Scholar.

81 , Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 112261;Google Scholar, Donohue, Freedom from Want, 198, 261Google Scholar; , Cochran, Development of American Agriculture, 383–84Google Scholar.