Yet they were exceptions. A list of examples of forbearance would be many times longer, and might be regarded as a national roll of libertarian honor. It would include the names of Angela Davis, the Berrigans, Stokely Carmichael, Dr. Spock, the Chicago Seven, Woodstock, Ti-Grace Atkinson, the American Nazis who carried “Free Gas for Peace Creeps” signs, the captain of the Pueblo, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Edwin Walker, SANE’s Linus Pauling, Rosa Parks, the America Firsters, Earl Browder, the Shrine of the Little Flower, William Dudley Pelley, Huey Long, Gerald L. K. Smith, and the emaciated wraiths who greeted the 72nd Congress, on its return to Washington in December 1932, by singing “The International.”
Defiers of the popular will, like those who give it voice, deserve remembrance; but so do the silent witnesses who kept the key figures alert and honest and strengthened the country’s democratic institutions simply by their presence. In time of crisis they gathered quietly in Lafayette Park, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House; a President had but to look out a window and there they were, reminding him that his employers were watching. They were conspicuously in attendance at the great congressional hearings in which the country’s temper was being tested, and often its policy forged, through the past forty years, weighing the Vietnam War, Sherman Adams and Bernard Goldfine, the Bricker Amendment, the Army-McCarthy controversy, the hoodlums exposed by Estes Kefauver, Hiss and Chambers, the five-percenters, Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt’s plan for Supreme Court reform, and the part played by Wall Street in the Great Depression. They were the spectators when the Taft bell tower was dedicated, they mourned when Roosevelt and Eisenhower lay in state, and they stood in stricken silence on November 25, 1963, as a caisson bearing the body of John Kennedy clattered across Memorial Bridge toward Arlington and the eternal flame.
***
There is a school of historians which holds that great events may tell us less about the past than the trivia accumulated by ordinary people—the letters, pressed flowers, prom programs, cherished toys and the like saved by those who loved them and could not bear to throw them away. From time to time construction workers will stumble across such caches, sometimes entombed in old mansions. Occasionally they may find something almost as elaborate as the Westinghouse time capsule which was buried at the New York World’s Fair of 1939. Such discoveries always excite curiosity, and the older ones stir speculation over what this or that article meant to people at the time it was put away. With the growing mobility of Americans the accumulation of such troves is rarer, but if members of the swing generation had one—put away, perhaps, in a storeroom the size of Fibber McGee’s fabled closet—it might provide insight into what they had been like, what they had endured, what their dreams had been, and which had been realized and which dashed.
Envisaging such a cupboard, we see in front on the top shelf a steel tennis racket, several dieting books, a wide necktie, and a pantsuit broad in the beam. Just behind them are a “Welcome Home POWs” bumper sticker, one for MIAs (“Only Hanoi Knows”), and a peace decal; then a brass-colored PT boat tie clip, and cassette recordings of Camelot, Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, and Carol Channing’s Hello, Dolly. Behind them, well hidden in a corner beneath a pile of tie-dyed jeans, are well-thumbed copies of Fanny Hill and The Autobiography of a Flea.
Various items of clothing occupy much of the space on the second shelf: a sheath dress, a gray flannel suit, a man’s narrow-brimmed felt hat, several incredibly narrow neckties, a child’s coonskin cap, and a straw boater with the legend I LIKE IKE on the hatband. Concealed beneath them is an obsolete item of female apparel: a diaphragm in a white plastic case. Beyond is a curious little silver lapel pin. It resembles the bottom of a man’s shoe with a hole in the sole. Nearby are a My Fair Lady album, a record of Edith Piaf singing “Il Pleut,” a Winky Dink kit, a Mouseketeer cap, and a collapsed Bayby-Tenda. Copies of Fireman Small and Peyton Place lie on top of miscellaneous papers: a pamphlet on how to stop smoking, a Fish House Punch recipe, an Around the World in Eighty Days program, a batch of bills from a diaper service, and an envelope containing plans for a home bomb shelter (never opened).
Near the front of the third shelf is a Dior New Look skirt, an Eisenhower jacket which appears to have been worn by a slender man, early nylons, a freshman beanie, a copy of Tropic of Cancer, and under it a packet of three Trojans. (They sold for a dollar.) Various certificates: military discharge, marriage license, college diplomas. A ruptured duck pin. An Army divisional patch. Rationing stamps. Navy dog tags, long tarnished. A packet of V-letters. A Nazi helmet; a samurai sword. A Kate Smith Columbia record: “God Bless America.” A rhinestone V-for-Victory pin.
The bottom shelf is rather junky. A pair of Thorn McAn saddle shoes, very dirty, stand on top of an equally soiled reversible raincoat, beneath which is a sport coat with a belted back. A dead corsage is pressed between two 78 rpm records—“Deep Purple” and “Stardust.” Beside them lie campaign pins reading “We Want Willkie” and “FDR.” A third pin is shaped like a sunflower. Then: a shabby Philco radio in the form of an arch, a tattered copy of Gone With the Wind, a copy of Ulysses in which only the last forty pages seem to have been read, Boy and Girl Scout handbooks, and several square Big Little Books. There is a dusty Lionel train transformer, a jump rope, several marbles and one steelie, a splintered hockey stick, a well-oiled first baseman’s mitt, a Shirley Temple doll, a sheaf of bubble gum cards, a G-man cap gun. Two Post Toasties box tops. A box of cherry bombs. A Bolo ball attached by elastic to a paddle. A pair of brown corduroy knickers. A hair ribbon. An old stand-up telephone.
Lastly, on the floor of the closet, are a batch of snapshots taken with a box Brownie. There are automobiles in them: a Model A Ford with the windshield down in some, a Chevy sporting a sassy rumble seat in others, and in the older ones, brown with age, a Model T. People are posing by the running boards. It is summer, yet the adults look very formal. The men are wearing stiff collars, the women vast hats and shapeless cotton dresses. But it is the children who seem oddest. Like their parents they are quaintly dressed. There is something else, though. It takes a moment to realize why they look so peculiar. Then you see it. There is an intensity in their expressions. They are leaning slightly forward, as though trying to see into the future. And they are smiling.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
COPYRIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
Acknowledgments
Harry Sions, the editor of this book, died in Philadelphia on March 26, 1974, when the manuscript was in the final stages of preparation for the press. He had completed his final review of the text just a few days earlier. For over seventeen years he was a colleague and a cherished friend; his skill and high intelligence left their mark on every page of this volume, as well as on much of my earlier work.
Don Congdon, my literary agent for a quarter-century, planted the seed for the book by suggesting a study of the American national character. Together with Harry and J. Randall Williams of Little, Brown, he was an unfailing source of encouragement and sound advice. The support of Don and Randy Williams was immense, and is most gratefully acknowledged.
Several other associates and acquaintances were generous with suggestions and insight. I am particularly indebted to Henry Anatole Grunwald, Herman Kahn, Louis Lasagna M.D., Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Eric Sevareid. In addition, Harry McMahan of Advertising Age was a treasure of information in his special field.
My invaluable assistant, Margaret Kennedy Rider, was loyal, resourceful, and tireless during the long years of research and writing. Epsey Farrell was of great help in her role as researcher, and I am appreciative of the assistance of Ellen G. D’Oench in annotating the manuscript.
No expression of thanks to Wyman Parker, Librarian of Wesleyan University, and the staff of the university’s Olin Library, can really be adequate. For fifteen years they have sheltered me, cheered me, guarded
my privacy, and given unstintingly of their considerable technical skills. At a time when their stacks are crammed, all I can give them in return is another book, and an outsize one at that. Moreover, it is imperfect, as all books are. It is true, insofar as diligence and research can establish truth, but it is not the whole truth. No volume, nor even a whole library, can provide that. All an author can offer is a fragment of reality—that, and the hope that it will endure.
Chapter Notes
In these Notes, works are generally cited by the author’s name only; for full listings see the Bibliography. If the note is citing an author with more than one work in the Bibliography, a brief title for the work cited is also given in the note. Other forms of citation are:
Fab Time-Life series This Fabulous Century (see entries at Maitland A. Edey and Jerry Korn in the Bibliography)
NYT New York Times
TA Time Annual 1969: The Year in Review
T Time magazine
TC Time-Life series Time Capsule (see entry at Maitland A. Edey in the Bibliography)
W Associated Press series The World in—(see listing at Keith Fuller in the bibliography)
WA World Almanac (cited with the year)
WM Author’s interviews
The words identifying each note are the end of the paragraph which the note covers.
PROLOGUE: ROCK BOTTOM
(pages 3–28)
3 “Bonus Expeditionary Force”: NYT 1/31/32; T 8/15/32; Schlesinger Crisis 256; Baltimore Sun 7/17/32. off to jail: Fab IV 25. 4 and multiplying misery: Baltimore Sun 7/17/32. to the country: Baltimore Sun 7/27/32; WM/Herman Kahn 6/5/70; Washington 29; Acheson 16–17, 91. 5 on ruling them: Mullett 3–8; “Who’s in the Army Now?”, elaborate buzzer system: Daniels 181; Gene Smith 12, 48; Washington 11. Ike came scurrying: Saturday Evening Post 12/20/30; Gene Smith 48; Washington 11; NYT 12/25/29, 7/27/41; WM/Herman Kahn; Foreign Service Journal February 1955; Eisenhower Ease 210; WM/Eisenhower 8/27/64. 6 was rich: Ease 219–20; “Who’s in the Army Now?” Rovere Years 13; NYT 10/2/43; Mellor 129–30; Farago 105; Washington 601. colonies in 1776: T 2/8/32; “Who’s in the Army Now?”. “an ungraceful angle”: “Who’s in the Army Now?” 7 trolley car: NYT 9/1/43; WM/Eisenhower; Adams 155. a cottage industry: WM/Herman Kahn; Washington xix; Phillips Blitz 294–95. “Dat’s de propolition”: Washington xxi, 3, 83, 87; Schlesinger Upheaval 428. 8 great god macadam: NYT 5/15/48; Van Camp. D.C. was like: Sylvia Porter “The Vanishing Trains” Middletown Press 12/9/69. 9 to American business: NYT 4/29/32, 5/11/32, 4/24/32, 1/17/32; Washington 945; “Washington Through the Years”; NYT 2/4/32, 11/9/32; Washington 117, 918. 10 scheduled for razing: “Washington Through the Years”; NYT 2/4/32, 11/9/32; Washington 117, 918; Shuster 64, 105. exactly what he did: Galbraith State 359; Baltimore Sun 7/27/32; NYT 7/29/32; Daniels 193. “anywhere in the world”: NYT 7/21/32; Baltimore Sun 6/5/32, 6/8/32, 6/9/32, 6/10/32, 6/19/32, 6/27/32; T 6/13/32; Gene Smith 136. 11 “their individual cases”: NYT 6/19/32; Ease 209; Gene Smith 135. about patriotism: NYT 7/29/32; Daniels 192; Gene Smith 152. 12 Chicago’s southwest side: NYT 8/17/32, 8/2/32, 7/29/32; T 8/8/32. chief of staff: NYT 7/29/32; Baltimore Sun 7/29/32; Boston Herald 7/29/32; T 8/8/32; Gene Smith 156. 13 bitterly resented it: Congdon 117; Rovere and Schlesinger 31–33; Ease 159, 212. solicitude toward civilians: Gene Smith 159. 14 suit, and all: Baltimore Sun 7/29/32; Walter Johnson 3–5; Gene Smith 161. “his mouth again”: T 8/8/32. drove him out: Gene Smith 161. 15 his next move: Ease 213. disobey a President: Walter Johnson 3–5; Ease 213; Fab IV 25–26; Ease 213. 16 “feel for them”: Fab IV 25–26; T 8/8/32; Ease 213; Gene Smith 162. George S. Fatten Jr.: Daniels 194; Crisis 263; NYT 7/30/32; T 8/8/32; Mellor 103–28. “heroes just now”: T 8/8/32. 17 “would surprise me”: NYT 7/29/32, 8/4/32; T 8/8/32; Gene Smith 164, 166. “law and order”: NYT 7/30/32; Congdon 119; New Republic 11/2/32; Crisis 263–64. 18 a difficult task: Baltimore Sun 7/29/32; “Who’s in the Army Now?”. “the Bonus marchers?” Crisis 261; Daniels 193. “in terrible shape”: Gene Smith 169. 19 land in 1932: NYT 7/30/32; Bird 56; Nation 8/17/32. “the next station”: Blitz 40–41; Congdon 102; Crisis 251; T 2/6/33; Blitz 285; Mowry 75; Walter Johnson 16; WM/Eric Sevareid; Congdon 102, 110. far from home: Sevareid Dream 49; Nation 8/24/32; Walter Johnson 23; NYT 12/11/32. 20 his old menus: NYT 5/4/32. “real estate company”: NYT 9/19/31. 21 “with very pity”: Esquire June 1960; Bird 24; Wolfe 413–14. “Yes, sir”: Goldman Tragedy 377; Time editors 24; Tragedy 274; Relief for Unemployed Transients 35–38. venereal infection: Minehan 67–71. 22 and, later, militancy: NYT 3/26/31, 1/20/32; Upheaval 428–29; Congdon 171; Bird 130; T 4/10/33, 4/17/33, 12/11/33. day was inevitable: Minehan 18–83. for a quarter: NYT 8/2/41; T 5/12/41. “them at night”: Congdon 152; Gene Smith 80; NYT 3/5/29; Gene Smith 206. 23 return of prosperity: Gene Smith 66. such incredible speed: Wolff 198; Gene Smith 97. 24 “both of them”: NYT 3/2/32. might be softened: Years 78; Walter Johnson 27. people be tabled: Galbraith Affluent 15; NYT 1/5/32; Isabel Leighton 277. 25 legislatures, not Congress: Fab IV 25; Leary; Bird 208–209. the building trades: Crisis 57; Childs “Main Street”; Sulzberger 27. “make things worse”: NYT 1/20/32; Crisis 164; Affluent 16; Gene Smith 76. would win: Schwartz xiii, xiv; Affluent 45; Gene Smith 68. 26 “political log-rolling!”: T 5/30/32. “grandiloquent egotists”: Mowry 57; Crisis 80. “Depression is over”: Bird 13. 27 “spare a dime”: NYT 12/3/30; Bird 58; Crisis 241; T 4/4/32. Business Confidence Week: Crisis 177. “worn-out private belongings”: Fab IV 76; NYT 1/4/32; Isabel Leighton 222. 28 on American newsstands: Middletown Press 7/27/32; headlines T 8/8/32.
I THE CRUELEST YEAR
(pages 31–69)
31 could not understand: Gene Smith 103. “protect my children?”: NYT 9/6/29; Mowry 68; Gene Smith 81. 32 “to the community”: Commonweal 9/3/54; Bird 41. overextension of credit: Allen Change 144. “got too little”: Mowry 64. 33 without historical precedent: Bird 115. jobs was $16.21: Shannon 73; Phillips Blitz 32, 34. 34 Howard Johnson, survived: Allen Since 132; Time editors 63; NYT 3/2/33, 2/6/32; Theatre Arts April 1931. “off my pants” Time editors 65; Bird 12; T 12/19/32; Since 108. 35 a peculiar gait: Bird 226; Schlesinger Crisis 167. she could imagine: Bird 227. and an undertaker: Fab IV 46; Bird 40, 116; Shannon 12, 26. 36 dunes of garbage: Shannon 10; Bird 21. an entire family: Crisis 167; Bird 36. of their own: Fortune September 1932. of two hundred: Gene Smith 174; NYT 1/19/33; Shannon 23. 37 “the Depression, huh?”: Blitz 34; Fab IV 54; Shannon 23. called starvation wages: Bird 68; Shannon 26. 38 until after sunset: Congdon 36, 45, 47. began to disintegrate: Crisis. 248; T 3/13/33. and the indigent: Bird 63. 39 game called Eviction: ibid 27. population of 600,000: American Academy January 1933. “bill before delivery”: Bird 134. excluded from churches: ibid 26. 40 filthy old sheepskin: Schlesinger Coming 268; Blitz 257. began to disappear: Shannon 93–103 passim. twenty million dollars: ibid 94. 41 thin pocketbooks: ibid 99. “poor people were”: NYT 3/8/32. “to our children?”: Crisis 3; Shannon 53; Fab IV 53. 42 dying of hunger: Fortune September 1932; Bird 32. “days of 1932”: Crisis 250; Wolfe 412. might be misunderstood: Bird 19. 43 “mighty vaults”: Wolfe 414 “went to hell”: Newsweek 2/17/33; NYT 2/6/32; Gene Smith 24. 44 “of the lowest”: NYT 3/30/32; Congdon 612. couldn’t help them: Crisis 190; NYT 3/11/32; Daniels 189. “policeman searches you”: NYT 6/29/32, 4/14/32; T 10/17/32; Crisis 118. 45 taxes in full: Blitz 134; Bird 10; NYT 4/26/33; Daniels 183. “ammunition for radicals”: NYT 5/12/33, 2/11/32; New Republic 5/29/35; T 1/25/32. from trusting investors: T 3/21/32; NYT 3/13/32. 46 “completely shattered”: NYT 5/21/33; T 6/19/33; Time editors 31. it had become: NYT 6/7/32, 7/29/32; Crisis 109; John Brooks Golconda 137. he liked it: Mowry 55; NYT 11/8/28; Crisis 280. “economic pyramid”: NYT 4/8/32. 47 “rich against poor!”: NYT 4/14/32; T 4/25/32. “have another Hoover”: Crisis 175, 280, 288; NYT 7/10/32, 6/11/32; T 7/4/32. “still a Hoover”: Rovere Years 18; Crisis 290. 48 were very direct: NYT 4/27/32, 5/5/32; Gene Smith 116. “here again!” Gene Smith 114. 49 campaign had begun: Crisis 309; T 8/8/32. to “
brain trust”: NYT 7/3/32, 5/23/32; Since 78. 50 danger of accidents: T 7/31/33; Fab IV 141. endorse any candidate: Crisis 428; Mowry 86. General MacArthur: Gene Smith 178; NYT 11/11/32, 10/16/32. 51 “this extraordinary hour”: Crisis 434; Nation 7/13/32. four years later: T 11/21/32; NYT 9/24/32, 6/17/33; Crisis 413, 416. 52 “of lost children”: Crisis 428. Johnson of California: NYT 9/13/32; Walter Johnson 37. 53 phoned Calvin Coolidge: Crisis 194, 199, 204; NYT 11/6/32. would be dead: Crisis 201; NYT 10/12/32; T 10/24/32. words had become: Walter Johnson 37; T 11/7/32; NYT 11/8/32; Crisis 437. 54 Franklin Delano Ragin: NYT 11/9/32; Crisis 218, 437; Blitz 73. “do this job”: Gene Smith 214. was right: Walter Johnson 45; NYT 11/13/32; Bird 78. 55 “world’s in birth”: NYT 12/6/32; Crisis 448; Shannon 120. “and farmers’ republic”: NYT 11/8/32; Congdon 148. 56 smashed her face: NYT 1/15/33; Blitz 5; Crisis 166. “the American system”: NYT 3/23/32; Shannon 114; Coming 22. 57 “left-wing state”: Crisis 208; NYT 8/30/32; Bird 116. of Columbia University: Crisis 204, 460; NYT 1/26/32, 1/6/32; Schlesinger Upheaval 82. 58 “one now”: NYT 11/11/32; Crisis 266. in Sioux City: Bird 131; Crisis 266. “was illegal too”: NYT 8/14/32; Daniels 195; Shannon 123, 125. 59 “of other days”: NYT 8/22/32; Shannon 121. “eat their gold”: Crisis 174; Time editors 32. about mortgage foreclosures: NYT 8/26/32. press prosecution afterward: Crisis 459; T 5/8/33. 60 “than twelve months”: T 1/16/33, 2/6/33; NYT 2/12/33; Crisis 459. 61 thirty-four years: Bird 4. these. O Pioneers!: ibid 2. before a bath: Gold 1940–41 7. 62 aluminum juice extractor: T 4/27/42. about hair “coloring”: Gold 1940–41 9, 12. 63 59 million dollars: Science 5/12/33; WM/Louis Lasagna; Bird 133. “Uncle Don”: Blitz 433. 64 best friend’s thoughts: Sevareid Dream 4. Lindbergh’s We: NYT 8/7/27. “destined to encounter”: Gold 1940–41 11. 65 “coal beds”… “in a monarchy”: Theodore White 1968 99, 97. 66 clearly visible: T 10/10/32. palms of his hands: NYT 6/16/32; Since 16. and cherry bombs: Gold 1940–41 10. 67 R.N. stewardesses: Bird 2. service improves: Bird 264. 68 “ten years ago”: NYT 5/4/37, 11/10/32; T 4/4/32. “my band, son”: Bird 30; Gold 1940–41 48. 69 paper victory: NYT 8/20/32, 9/23/32; Fab V 66. death or even illness: NYT 2/28/32, 8/24/32; T 4/11/32.
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