Slanting Roosevelt

Making a living the old hard way
Taking and giving my day by day
I dig the snow and the rain and the bright sunshine
I'm draggin' the line
--Tommy James

Have been watching Ken Burns' new series The Roosevelts. I enjoy Burns' work as he shares interesting records and factoids that help me better understand history.

However, piecing together history primarily on Burns' accounts would be a mistake. Burns is not a critical reporter of history who sees various perspectives and thoroughly evaluates their validity. He is a story teller with a viewpoint, and his work reflects his particular slant.

Roosevelt is no exception. While Burns does present some dark sides of Teddy, FDR, and Eleanor, this work is clearly pro-Roosevelt and neglects alternative views that have previously been put forth.

This was obvious in the first 30 minutes that I watched. I missed the first episode when it initially aired, meaning that my first exposure to the series was Episode 2. Episode 2 opens with Teddy taking over the presidential reigns from the assassinated McKinley and immediately setting his sights on busting the 'trusts' that allegedly were squeezing life out of America.

Burns assumes the conventional stance that large firms were 'bad' for America and that they needed to be regulated, and TR was just the man to do it. He never questions how such firms got so large in the first place, although he implies that this was a consequence of capitalism and free market behavior. He never presents alternative views--e.g., that it was government privilege that assisted many 'trusts' in amassing such size, and that, despite these advantages, many of these presumed 'monopolies' were actually losing the battle to smaller entrepreneurial competitors.

In particular, Burns focuses on TR's intervention in the Coal Strike of 1902. Many biases immediately become evident. To build sympathy for the labor side of the story, for example, Burns says that many workers had not seen hourly wage increases in decades. What he does not say is that price levels throughout America had been constant or falling for decades due to increased productivity. It is likely, therefore, that real wages for workers making the same $/hr were increasing over time.

Following the traditional script, Burns also paints coal company owners as the bad guys, refusing to negotiate with unions etc. What he doesn't say, however, is that the owners approached the federal government for help in protecting person and property from the wrath of striking workers, who had purportedly killed at least 20 people. The owners argued that the government should use its power to protect the interests of people who want to work (such as strikebreakers) and that, if those rights were protected, that there would be no coal shortage in the upcoming winter as many forecast. Such an argument, of course, is consistent with the notion of freedom of association, property rights, and use of government for defensive rather than offensive purposes.

Like the Progressives of the time, however, Burns hoists TR's intervention as a victory. Teddy overstepped the Constitution and "it worked" according to Burns. But did it really, in the long run? Burns does not consider the downstream consequences of TR's actions here, such as their long term impact on employment in the coal industry or on precedent setting for even larger government interventions in future 'crises.'

While Roosevelt is interesting, it would be even more insightful if Burns carefully considered that which is not typically seen.