Progressivism Strikes Again!

Paul Gootenberg's exhaustive study, Andean Cocaine, has shown once again that the Progressive Era was not only a watershed in U.S. economic and political history, but had devastating global implications which reached as far away as the remote cocaine producing regions of South America.

Although there certainly were "grass root" reforming elements during the Progressive Era, it was not the primary catalyst (agency) for the transformation of the American and, eventually, global landscapes.  Instead, the period witnessed a grand alliance between Big Business, the State, and "intellectuals" (to justify it) to "stamp out" competition and insure Big Business' position within American and world economies.  The agencies, bureaus, and regulatory measures (Federal Reserve, FDA, FTC, ICC, etc.) were designed, staffed and legislatively enacted (bribed), by agents and members of the Big Business community.  Through regulation and tax policy, trusts and conglomerations were able to impose costs and prohibit innovative practices of their rivals. 

The reason for this was that in the years leading up to and throughout the early 20^th century, the great trusts were losing their market share and position of dominance in the economy.  Since they could not out compete their rivals, they attempted (and succeeded, in part) to shackle them through regulatory legislation.  (Business is not always opposed to state intervention in the marketplace if it can be used against competitors).

As Gootenberg demonstrates, through the Harrison Narcotics Act, the Food and Drug Act and other regulatory measures, cocaine's use in the U.S. dropped precipitously.  [p.191]  One of the powerful groups that benefited from the reduction of cocaine in the U.S. and supported the FDA was the American Medical Association as Gootenberg writes: "Power also intervened in how professionalizing guilds of pharmacists and the rising AMA sought to limit rival medical currents or patent-drug buyers from direct access to medicinal commodities like cocaine or coca." [p. 193]

Naturally, there were other factors ("evangelical pietism") which contributed to cocaine's eventual prohibition.  Nevertheless, its "criminalization" had profound effects on South American growers and societies which Gootenberg ably chronicles.  

[Two excellent studies of the Progressive Era can be found in the late, Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism and James Weinstein's The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918.]