The New Freedom was the term used by Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 Presidential campaign to describe his domestic program. Wilson believed that “private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable” and that national government should break up such large concentrations of corporate wealth. This view distinguished him clearly from his two opponents. Wilson claimed that President William Howard Taft stood for the interests of big business and that ex-President Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism program to regulate big business would prove unworkable.
Wilson also argued for lower tariffs (taxes on imported goods) to benefit consumers. He called for reform of the banking system to ensure stability in the money supply and end financial panics as well as to provide more credit (lending money), especially to small businesses.
Congress approved most of the New Freedom program in 1913 and 1914, including the Underwood Tariff Act, which cut tariffs by about 25 percent; the Federal Reserve Act, which established the Federal Reserve Board to regulate the banks and the money supply; the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which made it more difficult to establish a monopoly in an industry; and the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prevented business practices that unfairly restrained trade. Later in his administration Wilson got Congress to pass laws to aid merchant seamen in dealing with ship owners, to provide an eight-hour day for railroad workers, and to help farmers repay their loans. Congress passed his proposal to ban child labor but the law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
See also Wilson, Woodrow
Sources
- Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913; reprint, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961)
