Government intervention in markets and society

Following the onset of the Great Depression, America’s leaders tried to find ways to get the country going again, to stimulate the economy, put Americans back to work, and recreate the prosperous good times of the 1920s.  Franklin Roosevelt called for action.1  Hoover before him called for the government to resist intervention.2  Two decades earlier Teddy Roosevelt called for intervention in the regulation of labor.3  Henry Ford called for self-help—not intervention—but independence.4  Based on these four perspectives, this paper argues that government intervention leads to a culture of dependency, which does not facilitate growth or positive and innovative solutions to real problems; therefore, government should not seek to intervene in the economy but rather allow the bad blood to work its way out, as painful as that may be.
Teddy Roosevelt felt that in order for America to have equitability, the government should get involved.  He argued that “the right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted.  Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good.”5  TR wanted to help any man he stumbled.  He supported his point by saying that no one could be a good citizen unless he looked out for his fellow man. His ideas were based on philanthropy.  It was the exact opposite of Henry Ford’s argument:  “independence means self-dependence.  Dependence on some one else for employment in busy times may too easily become dependence on some one else for support in slack times.”6  Ford’s argument was based on experience and the philosophy of American Transcendentalism:  self-reliance.  Ford stated he had always had to work, whether anyone would hire him or not.  When no one else would employ him, he would employ himself.  He did not like the idea of government handing out jobs to others just for the sake of them having jobs.  If there were no jobs to be had, one should go out and make one for oneself—that was Ford’s idea and it is right in line with Emerson’s notion of self-reliance, which fostered so much innovation and industry in the 19th century.
Franklin Roosevelt on the other hand was more like his cousin:  “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.”7  FDR announced that he was ready to use his Constitutional authority to put the nation to work, which he did through his Alphabet Soup programs.  He justified this intervention by appealing to the same big-heartedness that TR appealed to.  However, Hoover, two years before him argued against interventionism:  “The spread of government destroys initiative and thus destroys character…all this shouldering of individual and community responsibility upon the government can lead but to the superstate where every man becomes the servant of the State and real liberty is lost.”8  Hoover basically argued that if the State wants to be the nanny of the people, it will become the Nazi State (Hitler also put the German people back to work—like FDR, but on a grand scale and only after taking over the banking sector and chasing the money changers out—as FDR called them but failed to do anything more than that).
Thus, the two presidents who argued for intervention on behalf of the American worker were the two Roosevelts and their ideas were founded on philanthropy.  However, as Hoover argued, the more involved that government got in the lives of individual workers, the less inspired the worker would be to engage in self-reliance and follow the example of Henry Ford and make something of himself by picking him up by his own bootstraps.  Government intervention slays incentive in other words.  The more that government gets involved to help out the average American when the average American falls upon hard times, the more likely the average American is to be on hard times his whole life.  The reason Germany succeeded in climbing out of its depression whereas America failed was that Germany nipped the problem in the bud—by actually taking back its currency and backing it with honest labor.
Bibliography
Franklin Roosevelt says Government Must Act, 1933
Henry Ford on Unemployment and Self-Help, 1932
Herbert Hoover Applauds Limited Government, 1931
Teddy Roosevelt Announces  the New Nationalism, 1910.