 
and what, one may ask, was the united states government doing while these 
portentous events were afoot? 
it is hard for us, today, to realize how small the government was in 1900, 
and how limited in its functions and powers. 
it spent roughly half a billion dollars a year, about one-eightieth of what 
it was destined to spend half a century later. 
in fact, the federal government in 1900 spent considerably less money than 
new york state did in 1950. 
the national debt amounted to only a little over a billion and a quarter 
dollars, about one two-hundredth of the 1950 debt of 257 billions. 
even when one makes allowance for the diminished value of the dollar and 
for the way in which federal expenses and particularly the federal debt have 
been swollen since 1900 by wars and defense expenditures, those are incredibly 
small figures by today's standards. 
the government had no department of commerce, no department of labor, no 
federal trade commission, no federal reserve system. 
the reason was simple: business was supposed to be no affair of the 
government"s. 
it had an interstate commerce commission, which was supposed to regulate 
the railroad companies, but the powers of the commission were small and 
uncertain. 
even the sherman antitrust act had been whittled down by supreme court 
decisions into a feeble instrument for the maintenance of competition in 
business; and during the year 1900 the attorney general brought not one single 
suit under that law. 
as for the white house, we have it on the authority of "ike" hoover, who 
was long the chief usher, that when he began work there in the early nineties 
"the whole executive office staff, which was then domiciled in the white house 
proper, consisted of but ten people, and four of these were doorkeepers and 
messengers." 
