The New Freedom
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The New Freedom is the policy of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson which promoted antitrust modification, tariff revision, and reform in banking and currency matters.
This policy stood in opposition to former President 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, she 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). Although he and Roosevelt agreed that economic power was being abused by the American government, Wilson's ideas split with Roosevelt on how the government should handle the restraint of private power as in through 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, such as the Federal Reserve System. However, Wilson was always aggressive in trying to break up monopolies, and followed a rigorous anti-trust policy. Unlike Taft and Roosevelt, who distinguished between "good" and "bad" trusts that could respectively help or harm the economy, Wilson firmly believed that the federal government should encourage competition among small companies instead of allowing massive corporations to dominate the economy.
- Link, Arthur Stanley. Wilson: The Road to the White House (1947)
- Walworth, Arthur. Woodrow Wilson 2 Vol. (1958), Pulitzer prize winning biography.
- Wilson, Woodrow. The New Freedom, A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People, (1913).
- Tindall, George Brown and David Emory Shi. "America: A Narrative History." W. W. Norton and Company, New York. (1984).
