The Progressive Era: both parties were controlled by a bunch of middle-class Protestant do-gooders trying to push their morals on everyone. Vile.
I heard that an unpublished Murray Rothbard book on the Progressive Era is coming soon. He wrote a lot of books that he did not get to release. Some were unfinished of course and needed notes to complete it. I am curious about this book. Naturally, as a person interested in the classical liberal movement, economic history, and increasingly philosophy this era as the defeat of classical liberalism both in the US and Europe is a key one to understand, personally.
His book on the Great Depression had a ton of data on the loose money policies of the 1920s and Hoover's own interventionism - not just the usual platitudes toward Coolidge or Hoover as 'laissez faire'. It was an interesting counter to both the usual conventional Great Depression studies which blame speculators and Hoover as a hands off president and the Milton Friedman monetarist view that the Fed did not act in line with their previous actions such as with the 1920/21 recession and did the reverse of their standard response in response to the crash and bank failures in 1929 and 1930.
Coming at it from the opposite side, many socialists seemed inclined to like particular Progressive era reforms that curbed the power of industrialists, broke up monopolies, and increased the power of unions. I thought that was a big deal for your lot. Am I mistaken? Wasn't there a crossover to some extent with actual Progressive candidates winning states like La Follette in Wisconsin in 1920. Or was their religious moralizing too much baggage to take the other part of it?
