X Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2018

Woodrow Wilson is one of the greatest persons in world history. The path of Woodrow Wilson to power began in 1883 and ended in November 1910. Woodrow Wilson was the only American president who received a doctoral degree and first who came from the South. Political activity and experiences for the fate of the nation led him to a stroke, which resulted in blindness of the left eye and paralysis of the left side of the body. So what was his activity? What made him so famous? These and similar questions will be discussed below.

He was an advocate for democracy and world peace. Woodrow Wilson is often ranked by historians as one of the nation’s greatest presidents. Woodrow Wilson was born in 1856. He became America’s 28th president. His father was a strict Christian minister and Woodrow Wilson was brought up in a household associated with such beliefs. He was educated at Princeton and then at the University of Virginia and John Hopkins University. In 1890, he was appointed a professor at Princeton, a position he held until 1902. From 1902 to 1910, Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton.

In 1910, Woodrow Wilson was elected governor of New Jersey for the Democrats. Not surprisingly he quickly gained national fame, namely for his social reforms in New Jersey and in 1912 he won the presidential election.

As president, Woodrow Wilson focused on issues of importance to him, such as antitrust laws, to ensure that the people of America got a fair system for them. He did not bypass the banking system; Woodrow Wilson proceeded to reorganize it. Wilson has made significant progressive reforms. Congress passed Underwood-Simmons law, which reduced import tariffs. He also transferred the Federal Reserve System (which provides a system for the regulation of national banks and the Federal Trade Commission (which investigates and prohibits unfair business practices), and the activities of the 28th US President do not end there. For example, other achievements included laws on child labor, the eight-hour working day for railway workers and government loans for farmers.

Wilson tried to keep the United States neutral during World War I but the activities of German U-boats forced his hand to declare war on Germany in 1917. The sinking of the ‘Lusitania’ in 1915 which killed 128 American citizens became an important propaganda to enter the war. During the peace talks at Versailles, Woodrow Wilson presented a moderate voice.

He had no doubts that Germany should be punished, but he wanted to punish those in power – not the people. On January 1918, Woodrow Wilson had issued his ‘Fourteen Points’ as a basis for peace. He also had an idea for a League of Nations to maintain world peace. In international affairs, Woodrow Wilson proved somewhat naive. He wanted to place the trust for future world peace in the hands of the League of Nations, yet America refused to join it. By refusing to join the League, the American political structure had seriously weakened the forerunner of the United Nations. Although the Senate rejected U.S. membership in the League, Wilson received the Nobel Prize for his peacemaking efforts. Woodrow Wilson spent time after 1919 criss-crossing America trying to ‘sell’ the idea of the League. On September 26th 1919, he collapsed and his political career ended suddenly. He was an invalid for the rest of his life and died in 1924.

Woodrow Wilson was an idealist whose plan for a League was permanently weakened by America’s refusal to join it. His Fourteen Points were fine on paper but no nation was willing to substantially support them. As a Democrat, he had to deal with a Senate that had a Republican majority in it after the end of the war – and party loyalty meant that his ideas for a world that would be peaceful would be killed off at a political level.

In addition to his political career, Woodrow Wilson is also known for creating a modern system of administrative and public administration of the United States. In 1887, as a professor, he initiated the theoretical development of this problem. Wilson formulated his ideas in the article “The Science of Public Administration”, published in 1887. He the Future President of the United States analyzed the problems that stand in the way of reforms in democratic countries. He noted that any serious changes in the state occur as a result of a compromise between the two forces - the government and public opinion. At the same time Woodrow Wilson stressed that the adoption of important political decisions cannot be entrusted to a crowd that does not understand the essence of the country's political course and its national interests. Instead, the author of the new theory proposed to influence public opinion in such a way as to convince citizens of the need for certain transformations. The art of state power over the country was compared with business. This message was largely prophetic. More than a hundred years after the appearance of Wilson's article, capitalism spawned huge corporations that, by their political weight, are not inferior to some states, and their managers can have a significant impact on society. But it's not just about scale. The management methods of an effective manager of a company and a public manager have much in common (especially in the economic component). In both cases, you need to acquire a skillful team of supporters, properly distribute the powers, control the budget and competitors.

Despite various assessments of the personality and activities of Woodrow Wilson, he is recognized as one of the key figures in US history. Woodrow Wilson brought a lot of good things to the world. I would like to conclude by one of his most famous quotations: “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand”.

References

Anatoly Utkin “Woodrow Wilson”, 2010.

http://www.aif.ru/society/history/14_punktov_vudro_vilsona_mir_po_lekalam_ameriki_l ozh_krov_i_nasilie

http://www.aif.ru/society/history/14_punktov_vudro_vilsona_mir_po_lekalam_ameriki_lozh_krov_i_nasilie

Thomas Woodrow Wilson “When a man comes to himself”, 2004.