Return to "The Roosevelt Reconstruction: Retrospect"
2 Clinton Rossiter, The American Presidency (Signet edition, New York, 1956), p. 114.
3 Ibid., pp. 81-84; Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and
Powers 1787-1957 (New York, 1957), pp.274-275. Yet despite the growth
of the Presidency, this was a period in which Congress had great influence.
Much of the specific New Deal
legislation was the consequence of the work of a Robert Wagner or a Robert
La Follette, Jr. The expansion of the Presidency resulted in a
reinvigoration of of the whole political system.
4 Luther Gulick, cited in Rossiter, American Presidency, p. 96.
5 Rossiter, American Presidency, p. 100. Cf. Emile Giraud, La
Crise de la democratie et le renforcement du pouvoir executif (Paris,
1938).
6 "At times Roosevelt acted as if a new agency were almost a new
solution. His addiction to new organizations became a kind of nervous tic
which distrubed even avid New Dealers." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The
Coming of the New Deal (Boston, 1959), p. 535. Schlesinger has an
excellent discussion of Roosevelt's administrative talent.
7 Elbert Thomas to Colonel E. LeRoy Bourne, January 6, 1934, Elbert Thomas
MSS., Box 23.
8 Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power (New York, 1960), pp.
156-158.
9 In Roosevelt's first year in office, he signed an order restoring Clavis
to to the civil service status he had lost when president Taft fired him.
Ironically, Ickes found Glavis as intolerable a subordinate as Taft had,
ane concluded that he had "been very unjust to Ballinger all of these
years."; The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes (3 vols., New York,
1954), III, 111.
10 John Collier to Louis Brandeis, April 5, 1937, Brandeis MSS., SC
19.
11 H. H. Chapman, "Digest of Opinions Received on the Shelterbelt
Project," Journal of Forestry, XXXII (1934), 952-957; Bristow
Adams, "Some Fence!" Cornell Countryman, XXXII (1934), 4;
Science News Letter,CXXXIV (1938), 409; "Prairie Tree
Banks," American
Forester, CXLVII (1941), 177.
12 Samuel Rosenman (ed.), The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin
D. Rooosevelt (13 vols., New York, 1938-50), V, 165.
13 Elmer Cornwell Jr., "Presidential News: The Expanding Public
Image," Journalism Quarterly, XXXVI (199), 275-283; "The
Chicago Tribune," Fortune, IX (May 1934), 108; Editor and
Publisher, March 4, 1933; Thomas
Stokes, Chip Off My Shoulder (Princeton, 1940), p. 367.
14 Erwin Canham, "Democracy's Fifth Wheel," Literary Digest,
CXIX (January 5, 1935), 6; Douglass Cater, The Fourth Branch of
Government(Boston, 1959), pp.13-14, 142-155; James Pollard, The
Presidents and the Press (New York, 1947), pp. 773-845
15 Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York, 1946), p. 72,
Bernard Asbell, When F.D.R. Died (New York, 1961), p.161.
16 Felix Frankfurter, "The Young Men Go to Washington,"
Fortune, , XIII (1936), 61; E.W. Baake, Citizens Without
Work (New Haven, 1940), pp.52-53.
17 Richard Neuberger, "They Love Roosevelt," Forum and
Century, CI (1939), 15; Corwin, The President, p.471; William
O. Douglad, Being an American (New York, 1948), p.88.
18 Josephine Chapin Brown, Public Relief 1929-1939 (New York,
1940), p. ix; Thomas paul Jenkin, Reaction of Major Groups to Positive
Government in the United States, 1930- 1940 (University of California
Publicans in Political Science [Berkely and Los Angeles, 1945]), p.284
19 Public Papers, V, 235, J. F. T. O'Connor MS. Diary, June 25,
1933. 20 Paul Carter has noted the change in the
social gospel. The editors of The Baptist, he has written,
"recognized that the transfer of social privilege involves the use of
social coercion, a fact which the Right and Center of the old
Social Gospel had not always faced up to." Carter, "The Decline
and Revival of the Social Gospel," (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Columbia University, 1954). 21 On the compulsory Potato Act, only six
Republicans (and just nine Democrats) voted in opposition.
22Today, III (January 12, 1935), 4. 23 "The Marines Are Coming," Fortune, X
(August, 1934), 56 ff.; Literary Digest, CXVII (May 5 1934), 9,
CXVIII (July 28, 1934), 6; CXVIII (December 8, 1934), 7; Time,
XXIII (March 12, 1934), 14; Public Papers, III, 2
42 ff. 24 Wickard v.. Filburn, 317 U.S. Ill (1942). 25 Sidney Hyman, The American President
(New York, 1954), pp. 263- 264; Carl Degler, Out of Our Past
(New York, 1959), pp. 391-393. In a few pages, Degler has written the
best analysis of the permanent significance of the New Deal. 27 Public Papers, IX, 11; Walter Pierce to Bureau
of Publicity, Democratic National Committee, January 4, 1940, Pierce MSS.,
File 7.1; Robert Wagner to Harold McCollom, April 24, 1935, Wagner MSS.;
Sidney Lens, Left, Right & Center (Hinsdale, III., 1949), pp.
286 ff., Degler, Out of Our Past, p. 416. Not only did the New Deal
borrow many ideas and institutions from the Progressive era, but the New
Dealers and the progressives shared more postulates and values t han is
commonly supposed. Nonetheless, the spirit of the 1930's seems to me to be
quite different from that of the Progressive era. 28 The New York Times, December 31, 1933; Ludovic
Naudeau, "Le Rooseveltisme ou la troisieme solution,"
L'lllustration, XCCV (November 28, 1936), 375; Otto Veit,
"Franklin Roosevelts Experiment," Die Neue Rundschau, XLV
(1934), 718-734; Nicholas Halasz, Roosevelt Through Foreign Eyes
(Princeton, 1961); Donald Dozer, Are We Good Neighbors?
(Gainesville, 1959), p. 30. 29 Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American
Film (New York, 1939), pp. 509512; Lincoln Kirstein, "James
Cagney and the American Hero," Hound and Horn, V (1932),
465-467; Alistair Cooke, A Generation on Trial (New York, 1950),p.
11. 30 A New Deal social worker, obviously moved by
something she had seen, would preface her report apologetically: "At
the risk of seeming slobbery . . ." Martha Gellhorn to Harry Hopkins,
April 25, 1935, Hopkins MSS. 31 A. A. Berle, Jr., "The Social Economics
of the New Deal," The New York Times Magazine, October 29,
1933, pp. 4-5. 32 Edgar Kemler, The Deflation of American
Ideals (Washington, 1941), p. 33 Tugwell, The Battle for Democracy (New York,
1935), p. 319. "The excuse for us being in this thing," Aubrey
Williams explained to NYA leaders, "is that we are trying to reform
the structure of things rather than try to reform the
people." National Advisory Committee, NYA, Minutes, August 15, 1937,
Charles Taussig MSS., Box 6. In a speech to TVA employees, David
Lilienthal derided "uplift." George Fort Milton to Lilienthal,
July 10, 1936, Milton MSS., Box 20. 34 Time, XXIII (January 1, 1934), 10; XXI (May 8,
1933), 10. Cf. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York,
1955), pp. 300-322. 35 Arnold, Symbols of Government, pp. 270-271. C_
Sidney Hook, Reason, Social Myths and Democracy (New York, 1940),
pp. 41-61. 36 National Advisory committee, NYA,
Minutes, August 15, 1935, Charles Taussig MSS., Box 6. 37 In Ernest Hemingway's To Haue and Haue Not,
Harry Morgan says: "No matter how a man alone ain't got no bloody
. . . chance." Hemingway, To Have and Have Not (New York,
1937), p. 225. 38New Republic, XCI (1937), 262; Time,
XXIII (February 19, 1934), 14; Herbert Harris, American Labor
(New Haven, 1938), p. 175. 39 Cf. Editor and Publisher, LXVI (December 23,
1933), 7, 28. 40 Kemler, Deflation of Ideals, pp. 109-llO.
Kemler, it hardly need be said, grossly overstated his argument. 41Stuart Chase, "Old Man River," New
Republic, LXXXII (1935), 175. "I speak in dispraise of dusty
learning, and in disparagement of the historical technique," declared
Tugwell. "Are our plans wrong? Who knows? Can we tell from reading
history? Hardly." Tugwell, Battle for Democracy, pp.
70-71. 42MacLeish, A Time to Speak (Boston, 1941), p.
45. Cf. MacLeish, "The Social Cant," New Republic, LXXIII
(1932), 156-158. 43 The New York Times, October 29, 1936;
Paul Conkin, Tomorrow a New World (Ithaca, 1959), p. 196, Edmund
Wilson, "The Literary Class War: I," NGW Republic, LXX
(1932), 323. 44 David Lilienthal, TVA: Democracy on the March
(New York, 1944), p. 3. 45 Waldo Frank, "Our Guilt in Fascism," New
Republic, CII (1940), 603608, Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time
(New York, 1955); p. 2, Cushing Strout, "The Twentieth-Century
Enlightenment," American Political Science$ Rev iew, XLIX
(1955), 321-339; Morton White, Social Thought in America (New York,
1949), p. 241, New Republic, LXXIII (1932), 133. 46 MacLeish mocked "the nineteenth-century poet,
the private speaker, the whisperer to the heart, the unworldly romantic,
the quaint Bohemian, the under stander of women, the young man with the
girl's eyes." MacLeish, A Time to Speak, pp.62, 88. 47 Public Papers, V, 179; Tugwell,
Battle for Democracy, p. 54; Morris Cooke to Louis Howe, July 3,
1933, Cooke MSS., Box 51; Literary Digest, CXXII (July 4, 1936),
27. 48 "We were all miserable sinners," announced
the Harvard economist Oliver Sprague. The New York Times,December
10, 1933. Cf. "Special Week of Penitence and Prayer, October
2-8," Federal Council Bulletin, XV(September, 1932),
14-15; Milton Garber, Radio Address, 1932, Garber MSS. 49 Melvin Landsberg, "A Study of the
Political Development of John Dos Passos from 1912 to 1936" (
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1959). 50 Hiram Motherwell, "Political Satire
Scores on the Stage," Today, II (July 28, 1934), 24, The
New York Times, November 12, 1933; New York Post, Press Time
(New York, 1936), pp. 317 ff. 51 William Manchester, Disturber of the Peace
(New York, 1951), p. 258. "Empty stomachs became more important
than hurt sensibilities," commented one critic. "The vexations
and hurt feelings of a Carol Kennecott or the spiritual fru stration of an
Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise, or the frantic dash for
personal freedom of a Janet Marsh seemed trifling themes when the
dominant feature of the national scene was twelve
million unemployed." Halford Luccock, American Mirror (New
York, 1940), p. 36. Cf. Margaret Mitchell to Mrs. Julian Harris, April 28,
1936, Mitchell MSS. 52 Public Papers, II, 269. "In the months
and years following the stock market crash," Professor Galbraith has
concluded, "the burden of reputable economic advice was invariably on
the side of measures that would make things worse.& quot; John Kenneth
Galbraith, The Great Crash (Boston, 1955), pp. 187-188. For a
typical example, see N. S. B. Gras to Edward Costigan, July 22, 1932,
Costigan MSS., V.F. 1. 53 Public Papers, I, 657. The Boston
Transcript commented: "Two more glaring misstatements of the
truth could hardly have been packed into so little space." J. Joseph
Huthmacher, Massachusetts People and Politics, 1919-1933 (Cambridge, 1959), p. 244. Cf. Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers, p.
73. 54 Public Papers, II, 302- V, 497- Josephine
Chapin Brown, Public Relief p. 152. Cf. Clarke Chambers, FDR,
Pragmatist-ldealist Pacific Northwest Quarterly, LII (1961), 50-55;
F. S. C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West (New York, 1947),
p.152; Jacob Cohen, "Schlesinger and the New Deal," Dissent,
VIII (1961) ,466-468. 55 Tugwell, Battle for Democracy, p. 22. This is
a vision caught, in different ways, in the paintings of Paul Sample,
Charles Sheeler, Grant Wood, and Joe Jones. 56 Marquis Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way (New
Haven, 1936); David Lilienthal to George Fort Milton, July 9, 1936; Milton
to F.D.R., July 8,1936, Milton MSS., Box 20- Irving Fisher to F.D. R.,
September 28, 1934, Fisher MSS.; John commons to Edwar d Costigan, July
25,1932, Costigan MSS., V.F. 1; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics
of Upheaval (Boston, 1960), p. 221. 57 Frances Perkins, "Basic Idea Behind Social
Security Program," The New York Times, January 27,1935. 58 Thomas to Colonel E. LeRoy Bourne, January 6, 1934,
Elbert Thomas 59 Donald Richberg, My Hero (New York, 1954), p.
279; Schlesinger, Coming of New Deal (Boston, 1959), p. 558. 61 Henry Wallace, The Christian Bases of World Order
(New York, 1943) p. 17; Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, "The Future of
Eleanor Roosevelt," Harper's CLXXX (1939), 136.
62 Public Papers, IX, 545.
26 Ferdinand Lundberg, "Wal1 Street
Dances to Washington's Tune," Literary Digest, CXVII (May 12,
1934), 46, "Federal Reserve,"
Fortune, IX (May I, 1934), 65-66, 125; Sir Josiah Stamp, "Six
Weeks in America,"
The Times(London), July 4, 1935.