The New Freedom

The New Freedom has three meanings. The first two comprise the campaign speeches and promises of Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential campaign calling for limited government, and Wilson's 1913 book of the same name. The more common meaning comprises the Progressive programs enacted by Wilson as president during his first term (1913-1916), when the Democrats controlled Congress. Wartime policies are not generally considered part of the New Freedom; and after the 1918 elections the Republicans took control of Congress, and were generally hostile to the New Freedom. As President, Wilson focused on three types of reform:

Wilson's position in 1912 stood in opposition to Progressive party candidate Theodore Roosevelt's ideas of New Nationalism, particularly on the issue of antitrust modification. According to Wilson, "If America is not to have free enterprise, he can have freedom of no sort whatever." In presenting his policy, Wilson warned that New Nationalism represented collectivism, while New Freedom stood for political and economic liberty from such things as trusts (powerful monopolies). Wilson was strongly influenced by his chief economic advisor Louis D. Brandeis, an enemy of big business and monopoly.

Although Wilson and Roosevelt agreed that economic power was being abused by trusts, Wilson ideas split with Roosevelt on how the government should handle the restraint of private power as in dismantling corporations that had too much economic power in a large society.

Once elected, Wilson seemed to abandon his "New Freedom" and adopted policies that were more similar to those of Roosevelt's New Nationalism. Wilson appointed Brandeis to the US Supreme Court in 1916. He worked with Congress to give federal employees worker's compensation, outlawed child labor with the Keating-Owen Act (though this act was ruled unconstitutional in 1918) and passed the Adamson Act, which secured a maximum eight-hour workday for railroad employees. Most important was the Clayton Act of 1914, which largely put the trust issue to rest by spelling out the specific unfair practices that business were not allowed to engage in.

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