Weekly Synthesis No. 1

            It seems like America has always been obsessed with its systems of trade. Whether capitalistic or free, there was always some point that made the United States reel up and take action.

            For the presidents, it was somewhat cyclic. Theodore Roosevelt embodied the progressive movement. From the beginning, the people loved Roosevelt, and his campaigns against big business and trust busting only helped his popularity. Condemning the monopolies of businessmen, the president began the process of reopening business to the common people, small businessmen, and farmers. Apart from his domestic policies, with regards to foreign diplomacy, Roosevelt fostered open borders and trade with Europe. However, when it came to Europe’s involvement with the lesser developed portions of the western hemisphere, the president jealously guarded American interests from his competitors with the Monroe Doctrine. All in all, Roosevelt proved the progression of allowing the United States free trade.

            Taft, however, seemed somewhat daft. Once Roosevelt was out of the white house, the representatives of big business were greatly relieved to finally have a pawn in their hands once again. William Howard Taft had the belief that courts could rule everything. And with courts somehow flowed money. Contracts were made under the idea that money could buy anything, and the president attempted to buy diplomacy and alienated Roosevelt with his cowardly agreements. These ideals didn’t suite well with the progressives, and the party fell apart, big business against free trade. Republicans were split, half becoming the Bull Moose party, making the democratic victory little challenge.

            With that Woodrow Wilson settled into the White House, with strong southern ideals. After ignoring the parade for women suffrage on the eve of his inauguration, of which he completely ignored, calling the campaigns of the United States’ women “obnoxious.” Moreover, he led America straight into war. Honestly, if Wilson, being the teetotaler idealist he was, he would have honestly believed in trading openly with both Germany and Great Britain. Certainly he would have made a pretty penny. Instead of challenging the British blockade of Germany, however, he challenged the U-Boats of Germany. Admittedly, the submarine was far too deadly a weapon against trading ship’s arsenals; however, Germany did have just cause. After slowly starving, Germany realized that allowing the United States to trade with Great Britain (while lending them billions) was a foolish idea, so the country fired up their U-boats and essentially declared war on the USA. Wilson, like most others, was outraged. Treading the careful waters of biased neutrality led him to this, he had no reason to be outraged. To Wilson, money was not truly as much of an object as his ideals. Although he believed in spreading democracy, the fact that he longed for free trade with Europe was also painstakingly obvious as they continued to lend money to the Allies. Ideals could only do so much without financial support.

            Unlike President Wilson, Jane Addams was against the war. She had been from the start. Although her progressivism movement was riddled with ideas that she never quite grew out of, such as inequality, she still knew something had to be done. As thus, when she addressed New York City, she noted that the war was using the youth to fight battles that only made sense in the eyes of those who could only fiddle with its meaning instead of fight within it. However, she never mentioned the impacts trade had on their economy when the European wartime hit. With her ideas of putting young women to work at Hull House contrasting much with the ideals of the war, Addams stood her ground. This speech was made to early for her to realize what leaps the bloody war would do for the status of women, putting them in jobs that would have ostracized them had it not been for the sudden labor shortage that occurred when the soldiers went to war. But, then again, she probably wasn’t thinking about the money, as most men were. Rather, she was worried about the human compassion, apparently it was something men only felt when they saw women despairing over the war.

            All in all, America has a strange notion of holding tightly to its ideals of money. It funds the way we think (quite literally, when it comes to college) and has done so for a long while. With little doubt, the United States’ will still follow the green; though, one can only hope its to more prosperous places.