But when Post No. 2 was auctioned off for five dollars, William O. Douglas just laughed.
FIVE
The Conservative Phoenix
To put the aftermath of the New Deal’s great referendum in perspective: the year 1937 lay midway between FDR’s entry into the White House and Pearl Harbor—at dead center, that is, of the prewar Rooseveltian experience. The inconveniences and economies of the Depression had been institutionalized; 98 percent of American families now lived on less than $5,000 a year. Excluding reliefers, the average was $1,348. Typically, that income supported a mother, a father, and one or two children who lived in a four-or-five-room apartment or a six-room house. The house was almost always rented; after the great shakedown of 1929–33, few white middle-class Americans owned their own homes. Taxes, on the other hand, were inconsequential. Most people paid no income tax, and the top earners of 1937—Louis B. Mayer of MGM, $1,161,753; Major Edward Bowes, $427,817; and Thomas J. Watson of IBM, $419,398; and George Washington Hill, $380,976—spent or kept most of what they made.
Between May or June of 1937 and April of 1938, Alger Hiss’s Woodstock typewriter was clattering most of the time on Thirtieth Street N.W., though in August he, his wife, and Whittaker Chambers took a break and drove to New Hampshire to see She Stoops to Conquer. Richard M. Nixon was then being investigated by the FBI. He wasn’t suspected of anything. He wanted to be an agent, had taken the bureau’s examination, and, as he wrote his law school dean, “They have been investigating my character since that time.” The FBI rejected him. For others of his generation, however, 1937 was the year of making it. Joe Louis knocked out James Braddock and became heavyweight champion of the world. A Colorado halfback named Byron “Whizzer” White became an all-American. Ann Sheridan, who had something called oomph, replaced Jean Harlow, who had just died, as Hollywood’s sex bomb. Mary Martin was about to make her Broadway debut singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” supported by a chorus which included Gene Kelly and Van Johnson. It was, in short, a marvelous year for entertainers, and America’s sweetheart was twenty-five-year-old Ginger Rogers. Housewives envious of her narrow waist shopped tirelessly in girdle departments, to the immense satisfaction of rubber planters in what was then called the Dutch East Indies.
Du Pont chemists had developed a synthetic rubber called Duprene, but its significance would be overlooked until the Japanese seized the Indies plantations five years later. Although all sorts of exciting discoveries were being made in laboratories—the sulfanilamides, insulin shock treatment for schizophrenics, and a polyamide fiber made from coal, air, and water named Nylon—the country was largely unaware of them. Business was wary of new products. In searching for prosperity it clung instead to its 1920s faith in salesmanship, and 1937 was preeminently the year of the hard sell. George Washington Hill was still the trail blazer. To compete with him, full-page advertisements announced that “By speeding up the flow of digestive fluids and increasing alkalinity, Camels give digestion a helping hand”; a midget bellboy called Johnny Roventini made America’s ears ring with his howling, “Call for Philip Morris”; and Old Golds were tested for British thermal units in something called an oxygen bomb calorimeter.
But pioneer manipulators could be found in almost all industries. It is perhaps symbolic that John D. Rockefeller—the symbol of traditional capitalism, who had defiantly listed himself as “capitalist” in Who’s Who in America—died in 1937. Replacing him were management executives, with their newfound manipulation techniques and their reliance on A. C. Nielsen’s “Advertising Effectiveness” reports. Listerine reduced germs “up to 86.7 percent.” Women got the Monday Blues while worrying about Flour Face, Dated Skin, and Housework Hands. Men were fired because of Five O’Clock Shadow, owed their inability to get a date to the fact that they were Ninety-Eight-Pound Weaklings, and became social bankrupts because they lacked Talon zipper flies. (Most trousers were still equipped with buttons. In mixed company one man would tell another that a button was unfastened by saying cryptically, “It’s one o’clock.” That watchword held no terrors for the Talon man, but the other poor slobs would have to feel around furtively to make sure they were Gap-Free.)
Increased leisure, with all its implications for family life, was becoming widespread in 1937. By introducing part-time employment in the bad years, industry had assured the five-day work week. In recreation, radio and the movies held their supremacy—that year audiences first saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and heard Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald bellowing at one another in Maytime—but with more free time there were also more choices: amateur photography, stamp collecting, Chinese checkers, bingo, golf, bicycling, skiing, bowling, and the softball craze. The National Football League was in the fourth year of its east-west championship play-offs, though professional football’s great moments awaited television.
Taking the oath of office for the second time on January 20, 1937, Franklin Roosevelt saw “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” Social protest continued to be the overriding theme among intellectuals, and would be until the world crisis preempted their attention. But the well-housed, well-clothed, well-fed two-thirds was less given to vicarious suffering. For the first time since the Crash, youth was speaking in tongues. Girls spoke of boys as smooth; a boy called a girl neat, though he knew she might give him the shaft. The ultimate accolades were “in the groove” and “terrific.” Among the terrific hit songs of 1937 were several whose lyrics were as obscure as the most esoteric rock: “The Dipsy Doodle,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Three Little Fishies,” and “Flat Foot Floogee with the Floy Floy.” It was that kind of year.
***
It was a strange year in Washington, too. The President’s extraordinary victory, combined with his political skill and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, should have given him an even freer hand than in the First Hundred Days. It didn’t. Indeed, very little went his way. At times he appeared to have lost control, both of the country and, even more dismaying, of the party which owed him so much. Part of the difficulty could be traced to errors of presidential judgment, though his miscalculations were not so obvious at the time. Certainly he was entitled to interpret his lopsided victory over Landon as approval of Rooseveltian leadership, and the most powerful force thwarting that leadership—and the will of the people—was the Supreme Court.
His “horse and buggy” press conference hadn’t been well received, and for over a year after that he had said nothing on the record about the Court. Even then, his objection to the ruling that no one could regulate wages and hours was no stronger than Hoover’s; he merely observed that that opinion created a “no-man’s-land” into which neither Congress nor the legislatures could trespass. Meanwhile, however, he was scheming. The Court’s challenge had been on his mind even before it had arisen; during the 1932 campaign he remarked that at the time of the Crash Republicans had been in charge of all branches of the federal government—the White House, the Capitol, “and, I might add for good measure, the Supreme Court as well.” Thus he viewed the issue as partisan. He may have been right, but the American people, including the men on the Hill, believed the Court and the Constitution were above politics. That strategic blunder was compounded by a tactical error. The struggle brought out what John Gunther called Roosevelt’s “worst quality,” a “deviousness,” a “lack of candor” that “verged on deceit.” He gave the impression of sneaking up on the Nine Old Men; as John Randolph said of Martin Van Buren, he “rowed to his object with muffled oars.”
Those oars first became audible, for those with highly sensitive ears, on that rainy January day when he took the oath of office for the second time. Afterward he told friends that when the Chief Justice “came to the words ‘Support the Constitution of the United States,’ I felt like saying, ‘Yes, but it’s the Constitution as I understand it—flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy….’” Actually he had said something very like that in the speech that followed, and Hughes had heard hi
m. The American people were determined to go forward, the President declared, and they “will insist that every agency of popular government use effective instruments to carry out their will.” One New Dealer who was watching Hughes’s face noted, “There was no doubt that the Chief Justice understood.”
Two weeks later the President and the Chief Justice came face to face again. This year the Court had agreed to attend the annual judiciary dinner, and everyone present left with the impression that both men had been in high good humor. The reason for the jurist’s jollity is unknown. FDR, on the other hand, was enjoying a private joke, soon to become public. Digging back in Justice Department records, Attorney General Cummings had found a proposal to invigorate the federal judiciary by appointing a new judge for every judge who had reached the age of seventy and had failed to retire. The document was dated 1913, and its author had been Attorney General James C. McReynolds—now the most vehement of the Court’s Four Horsemen. If the principle were applied to the Hughes Court, Cummings pointed out, the President could name enough liberal justices to reverse the reactionary tide of 6–3 and 5–4 decisions. Hence the origins of what was to become famous (and infamous) as the “Court pack.”
“That’s the one, Homer!” Roosevelt had cried. He had then flown off to a conference in Rio de Janeiro, leaving his attorney general to draft the legislation. Cummings thought the plan sound, though at the judiciary reception he was uneasy, whispering to a colleague, “I feel too much like a conspirator.” Roosevelt felt conspirational, too. That was why he was enjoying himself. The occasion appealed to his love of irony and secret deals. On February 4, 1937, Roosevelt and Cummings unveiled the bill, S.1392, to the assembled cabinet and Democratic congressional leaders. Ickes was delighted, but he didn’t have to carry the ball on the Hill. The congressional leadership, which did, said little. Riding back down Pennsylvania Avenue, Representative Hatton Sumners of Texas, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, abruptly said to the others, “Boys, here’s where I cash in.” No one knew it at the time, but Vice President Garner had reached the same decision.
Predictably, the Liberty League came back to life and joined the fight against Court reform. Arrayed with it were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and something called the Constitutional Government Committee, led by Frank Gannett, a right-wing newspaper publisher. All this had been predictable. But there was also a spontaneous surge of protest on the community level, from American Legion posts, Kiwanians, and women’s clubs. Most dismaying of all, the independent Senate liberals—Borah, Hiram Johnson, and Burton K. Wheeler—came down hard on the Court’s side. Roosevelt took off his gloves; in a fireside chat he accused the justices of usurping power and vetoing a reform program which had just been endorsed by the electorate. At a $100-a-plate Democratic dinner at the Mayflower he appealed to party loyalty and demanded passage of S.1392. Wheeler struck back, crying that “a liberal cause was never won by stacking a deck of cards, by stuffing a ballot box, or by packing a court,” and Senator Edward R. Burke, in the unkindest cut of all, told a New York rally that constitutional government faced “a rendezvous with death.”
Meanwhile the Supreme Court, for the first time in its history, was preparing to emerge from its cloister. The Chief Justice had been telling friends lightly, “If they want me to preside over a convention, I can do it.” Inwardly he was splenetic, however, and when the President argued that an overaged, undermanned Court was unable to deal with a logjam of appeals, Hughes decided to challenge him. According to Burton K. Wheeler’s recollection, Hughes telephoned him and invited him to his home. As the Senator entered, the Chief Justice said solemnly, “The baby is born,” and handed him a letter. Rapidly scanning it, Wheeler saw that it was everything he had hoped for. The Court was abreast of its calendar, it declared; no one was overburdened, and even if the President’s charge were true, the adding of justices would slow, not hasten, the administration of its business. Furthermore, the Court had closed ranks; Brandeis and Van Devanter had endorsed the letter. As the senator left, Hughes said, “I hope you’ll see that this gets wide publicity.” Wheeler did; next morning he read it to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and, as he recalled long afterward, “You could have heard a pin drop in the caucus room.”
That crippled Court reform. Even more interesting, the tory justices discovered liberal sympathies hitherto concealed. On March 29—which was immediately christened White Monday by New Dealers—the Court reversed itself on minimum wages for women and children. Next the Wagner Act was upheld, and then, to the immense relief of the administration, social security. When Van Devanter announced his decision to retire, S.1392 seemed pointless; with the President’s appointment of Hugo Black to succeed him, the New Deal had a clear majority on the bench. But Roosevelt had committed his prestige to the bill. He refused to withdraw. Instead he turned patronage screws harder and harder, and drove Joe Robinson, his Senate majority leader, mercilessly. The result was catastrophe. On July 14 Robinson fell dead of a heart attack, the Congressional Record gripped in his hand.
Now the insurrection spread among regular Democrats. Alben Barkley of Kentucky, Roosevelt’s choice to succeed Robinson, won by just a single vote, 38 to 37, over Pat Harrison of Mississippi, and the Vice President plotted S.1392’s defeat on Robinson’s funeral train, defiantly telling the President, “You are beat. You haven’t got the votes.” Garner was right, though his insurrection meant that he would never again run on a Roosevelt ticket. Meeting in executive session, the Judiciary Committee reported the bill unfavorably. Next the full Senate voted it down, 70 to 20, and while still in a mutinous mood it overrode the President’s veto of a farm loan act. For the first time in over five years, FDR had sustained a major legislative defeat in the Senate. In the bedlam which followed, most of his other big measures—wages-and-hours legislation, executive reorganization, a comprehensive farm program, and the creation of small regional TVAs—were lost for that session. Challenging the White House, which would have been inconceivable for any Democrat in 1936, was now acceptable.
The long-term effects of the failure of his Court reform plan are difficult to assess. The President had won his immediate objective. Interpretation of the interstate commerce clause had been immensely broadened, and because the nine old men really were old, death and retirement would shortly permit Roosevelt to choose a Chief Justice and his eight associate justices. The price was extremely high, however, and was correctly gauged by young Congressman Lyndon Johnson, who took his seat that year. FDR’s miscalculation, Johnson reasoned, was responsible for the formation of the Southern Democratic and Republican coalition—a cross which would be borne by all subsequent Democratic Presidents, including Johnson himself.
***
On February 4, 1937, the day before he sent his Supreme Court plan to Congress, the President had put through a person-to-person call to John L. Lewis in Detroit. Like millions of middle-class Americans, Roosevelt had been exasperated by reports that General Motors workers were sitting down on the job, tying up plants and costing GM a million dollars a day. Every twentieth-century President, including Roosevelt, had endorsed collective bargaining, but no President could approve of trespass. Moreover, Roosevelt told Lewis, strikes threatened the rising prosperity, of which the administration was so proud. In March 1934 he had successfully used that argument with the AFL, which was then organizing the auto workers. The AFL had obligingly canceled a strike date, provoking 75,000 men into turning in or tearing up their cards. Now the rank and file were at it again. The President sympathized with them, but the timing was inconvenient. Lewis could hardly have agreed more. For him the workmen’s rebellion was a personal humiliation. Having organized the coal mines, his CIO was devoting its energy and money to the steel industry. He wasn’t prepared for a new confrontation elsewhere, and had mustered all his rich eloquence to persuade auto workers that for the time being their assembly lines must be kept moving.
It wasn’t enough. Labor’s leaders had misjudged the temper of their followers. Even Sidney Hillman, the radical Lithuanian, had not sensed the significance of the Court’s 9–0 vote against the NRA. He had been downcast by Brandeis’s vote. The justice had once devoted himself to closing sweatshops, Hillman protested; now he had “cleared the way for their reopening.” What the junking of the NRA had really done was to open the way for revolt. The men had taken all they could. They were literally prepared to die rather than take more, and before the uproar was over some of them would do just that. It was not a popular strike. General Motors was well regarded by the general public. Its cars were popular, and somehow it had acquired the reputation of being a benevolent employer. That was unjustified. GM paid its twenty top executives an average of $200,000 a year; its workmen scarcely $1,000. Its spy system was one of the most vicious in the country. Complainers were dismissed on trumped-up charges, and foremen controlling the tempo of the assembly lines—the great moving belts carrying frames to which men would fasten and tighten bolts, rims, fenders, engine blocks, doors, and axles, hour after relentless hour—were merciless. “So I’m a Red?” a malcontent told a reporter. “I suppose it makes me a Red because I don’t like making time so hard on these goddamned machines. When I get home I’m so tired I can’t sleep with my wife.” Another said, “It takes your guts out, that line. The speedup, that’s the trouble.”
Late in 1936 the United Auto Workers had written William S. Knudsen, GM’s executive vice president, requesting a conference on the general subject of collective bargaining. Knudsen replied that the UAW should seek adjustment of grievances with local plant managers—as though GM policy weren’t determined at the top. UAW leaders were debating their next step when the men decided it for them. The origins of the sit-down were European. Two years earlier, groups of Welsh and Hungarian miners had refused to come to the top until their wages were raised. It was in America, however, that the all-night sit-down, the affirmation that the worker has a vested interest in his job, became famous. It began on December 28, 1936, when workmen in Cleveland’s Fisher Body Plant No. 1 spontaneously sat down and ignored the steel skeletons on the belt. Quick as fever the movement spread to Fisher Body Plant No. 2 in Flint, Michigan, and then to Pontiac, Atlanta, Kansas City, and Detroit itself, until 484,711 men employed by sixty plants in fourteen states were involved. To some it seemed almost miraculous. In Akron, for example, the men struck Firestone Plant No. 1 at 2 A.M. January 29. A puzzled foreman watched as a tire builder at the end of the belt moved three paces to the master safety switch. At this signal, with the perfect synchronized rhythm mass production had taught them, all the other tire builders stepped back. The switch was pulled, and a great hush fell over the plant. Into this silence a man cried, “We done it! We stopped the belt! By God, we done it!” The worker beside him burst into tears.
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