American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Schlesinger on Thomas]: Upheaval, p. 177.

  53-4 [Divisions among Socialists]: Johnpoll, ch. 4; Swanberg, esp. ch. 9; John H. M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Failure of a Dream?: Essays in the History of American Socialism (Doubleday, 1974).

  54 [Attempts at Socialist-Communist union]: Johnpoll, pp. 111-16, 140-43; Howe and Coser, pp. 325-27; Klehr, pp. 99-112; Norman Thomas, “The Thirties as a Socialist Recalls Them,” in Simon, pp. 114-17.

  [Madison Square Garden meeting]: New York Times, February 17, 1934, pp. 1, 3; Klehr, pp. 113-16.

  [Thomas on impossibility of united front]: quoted in Johnpoll, p. 115; see also Peggy Lamson, Roger Baldwin: Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (Houghton Mifflin, 1976), esp. ch. 14.

  [In the Archey Road]: Finley Peter Dunne, “Proposed: A Federal Divorce Law,” in Dunne, Mr. Dooley on the Choice of Law, Edward J. Bander, comp. (Michie Co., 1963), pp. 87-95, quoted at p. 87.

  [AFL as federation of craft and industrial workers]: Christopher L. Tomlins, “AFL Unions in the 1930s: Their Performance in Historical Perspective,” Journal of American History, vol. 65, no. 4 (March 1979), pp. 1021-42; see also Edwin Young, “The Split in the Labor Movement,” in Milton Derber and Edwin Young, eds., Labor and the New Deal (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), pp. 47-50.

  55 [Federal labor unions]: Bernstein, Turbulent Years, pp. 355-60.

  [Bernstein on federal union leaders]: ibid., p. 373; see, generally, Walter Licht and Hal Seth Barron, “Labor’s Men: A Collective Biography of Union Officialdom During the New Deal Years,” Labor History, vol. 19, no. 2 (Fall 1978), pp. 532-45.

  [Supporters of federal union leaders]: Bernstein, Turbulent Years, p. 363.

  [Divisions among AFL leaders]: see ibid., pp. 360-66 and ch. 8 passim; Maxwell C. Raddock, Portrait of an American Labor leader: William L. Hutcheson (American Institute of Social Science, 1955), ch. 14; Robert D. Leiter, The Teamsters Union (Bookman Associates, 1957), ch. 2; David Dubinsky and A. H. Raskin, David Dubinsky: A Life with Labor (Simon and Schuster, 1977), ch. 9; Matthew Josephson, Sidney Hillman: Statesman of American Labor (Doubleday, 1952), ch. 17.

  55 [Lewis]: Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis (Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1977).

  55-6 [Debate among craft and industrial unionists, 1934-35]: Bernstein, Turbulent Years, pp. 368-86; Young in Derber and Young, pp. 52-55.

  56 [1935 AFL convention]: American Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings of the Fifty fifth Annual Convention (1935), esp. pp. 521-75, 614-65, 725-29; Bernstein, Turbulent Years, pp. 386-98.

  [Lewis on strong and weak unions]: quoted in Proceedings, pp. 541, 542. [Lewis’s punch]: Bernstein, Turbulent Years, p. 397; Proceedings, p. 727.

  [Lewis-Green exchange]: quoted in Schlesinger, Coming, p. 413.

  [Formation of CIO]: Bernstein, Turbulent Years, pp. 397-431; Dubofsky and Van Tine, ch. 11; see also David Brody, “Labor and the Great Depression: The Interpretive Prospects,” Labor History, vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 1972), pp. 231-44.

  56-7 [Lewis-Green exchange of letters]: quoted in Bernstein, Turbulent Years, pp. 403-4; on Green’s writings in favor of industrial unionism, see ibid., pp. 399-400.

  57 [Social justice in Catholic Church]: see John F. Cronin, Social Principles and Economic Life (Bruce Publishing, 1959); Aaron I. Abell, American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice, 1865-1950 (Hanover House, 1960); Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, Olive Wyon, trans. (Allen & Unwin, 1950), vol. 1.

  [Coughlin]: David H. Bennett, Demagogues in the Depression (Rutgers University Press, 1969), part 1; Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (Knopf, 1982), chs. 4-6 and passim: Sheldon Marcus, Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower (Little, Brown, 1973); Charles J. Tull, Father Coughlin and the New Deal (Syracuse University Press, 1965).

  [“Please, God—a priest”]: quoted in Brinkley, p. 84.

  58 [Stegner on Coughlin’s voice]: Stegner, “The Radio Priest and His Flock,” in Isabel Leighton, ed., The Aspirin Age, 1919-1941 (Simon and Schuster, 1949), p. 234.

  [Detroit in the depression]: B. J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence (Quadrangle, 1972), ch. 3.

  [“A detriment”]: quoted in Schlesinger, Upheaval, pp. 18-19.

  [“Four Horsemen”]: ibid., p. 18.

  [Coughlin on Smith]: see Marcus, p. 64.

  [Coughlin on O’Connell]: quoted in Bennett, p. 59.

  [Coughlin in 1934]: Brinkley, pp. 119-20; Marcus, pp. 54-56, 61-62.

  [Coughlin in 1932 campaign]: Brinkley, pp. 107-8; Marcus, pp. 44-48.

  [“Roosevelt or Ruin”]: quoted in Brinkley, p. 108.

  [“Christ’s Deal”]: ibid.

  [Coughlin’s letters to FDR]: see Bennett, p. 38; Brinkley, p. 109.

  [Coughlin and White House]: Tull, ch. 2; Brinkley, pp. 108-10.

  59 [Coughlin and CBS]: Brinkley, pp. 99-101.

  [Coughlin’s audience]: ibid., pp. 196-207.

  [Coughlin-FDR divergence]: Tull, pp. 52-58; Marcus, pp. 58-70; Brinkley, pp. 124-27, 178-79, 244-46.

  [National Union for Social Justice]: Marcus, ch. 5; Tull, ch. 3.

  [“Organized lobby”]: quoted in Brinkley, pp. 133-34.

  [Long]: T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (Knopf, 1969); Harnett T. Kane, Louisiana

  Hayride: The American Rehearsal for Dictatorship, 1928-1940 (Morrow, 1941); Huey Pierce Long, Every Man a King (National Book Co., 1933); Brinkley, chs. 1-3 and passim: Huey P. Long Papers, General Correspondence, Louisiana State University

  Library; Glen Jeansonne, “The Apotheosis of Huey P. Long: A Critique of Huey Long”

  (typescript, n.d.); Lipset and Raab, pp. 189-99.

  [Long’s use of radio]: Williams, pp. 203, 629-30.

  60 [Long’s “facts and figures”]: Brinkley, p. 72.

  [“Come to my feast”]: quoted in ibid., pp. 71-72.

  60 [Share Our Wealth plan]: ibid., pp. 72-73, quoted at p. 72; Kane, pp. 121-24; see also Arnold Shankman, “The Five-Day Plan and the Depression,” The Historian, vol. 43, no. 3 (May 1981), pp. 393-409; see also Sender Garlin, The Real Huey P. Long (Workers Library Publishers, 1935), a Communist party attack on Long.

  [“Some great minds”]: quoted in Brinkley, p. 73.

  [Mencken on Long]: ibid.

  [Brinkley on Long’s plan]: ibid., p. 74.

  61 [Long’s Louisiana]: V. O. Key, Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation (Knopf, 1949), ch. 8; Allan P. Sindler, Huey Long’s Louisiana: State Politics, 1920-1952 (Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), esp. ch. 1.

  [Long’s hold on Louisiana politics]: Brinkley, pp. 22-35, 67-70; Williams, pp. 712-36; see also Kane, pp. 102-15; Hodding Carter, “Huey Long: American Dictator,” American Mercury, vol. 48, no. 304 (April 1949), pp. 435-47.

  [Long at 1932 convention]: Williams, pp. 571-82; Long, chs. 32-33.

  62 [Long on FDR]: quoted in Brinkley, p. 46; see also Williams, p. 6.

  [Long’s opposition to Hundred Days]: Williams, pp. 627-36; see also Michael J. Cassity, “Huey Long: Barometer of Reform in the New Deal,” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 2 (Spring 1973), pp. 255-69.

  [Long at White House]: James A. Farley, Behind the Ballots (Harcourt, 1938), pp. 240-42, Long quoted at p. 242.

  [Administration action against Long]: Williams, pp. 636-38, 689-92, 793-98, 812-13; Brinkley, pp. 79-81; Farley, Ballots, pp. 251-52.

  [Hoot owl and scrootch owl]: quoted in Kane, p. 101.

  [Share Our Wealth Society]: Williams, pp. 692-98, 700-2; Long Papers, General Correspondence, 1934-35.

  [Share Our Wealth membership]: Williams, p. 700; see also Raymond Gram Swing, “The Menace of Huey Long: III,” Nation, vol. 140, no. 3629 (January 23, 1935), pp. 98-100.

  [Long’s communications kingdom]: Brinkley, pp. 62, 70-71, 169; Williams, pp. 641-47; collection of radio speeches, Long Papers.

  The Politics of Tumult

  6
3 [Condition of FDR’s staff, midterm]: Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs, eds., Navigating the Rapids, 1918-1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle (Harcourt, 1973), p. 102; Berle Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.; Schlesinger, Upheaval, p. 212; Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (Simon and Schuster, 1953-54), vol 1., p. 303; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (Norton, 1971), pp. 435-36.

  [“A democracy after all”]: quoted in Lash, p. 437; see also Molly Dewson Papers, Roosevelt Library.

  [Agriculture in first New Deal]: Raper, pp. 243-53; Georgia tenants’ conversation quoted at p. 245; Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900-1939 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), ch. 17; Theodore Saloutos, The American Farmer and the New Deal (Iowa State University Press, 1982), chs. 3-7; Bernard Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal (Rutgers University Press, 1964), chs. 15-22; C. Roger Lambert, “Want and Plenty: The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation and the AAA,” Agricultural History, vol. 46, no. 3 (July 1972), pp. 390-400; Irvin May, Jr., “Cotton and Cattle: The FSRC and Emergency Work Relief,” ibid., pp. 401-13.

  [Agricultural lobbying groups]: Saloutos and Hicks, chs. 8-9; John L. Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion: The Farmers’ Holiday Association (University of Illinois Press, 1965), chs. 9-11; Wesley McCune, The Farm Bloc (Doubleday, Doran, 1943); Orville Merton Kile, The Farm Bureau Through Three Decades (Waverly Press, 1948), esp. chs. 16-17; John A. Crampton, The National Farmers’ Union: Ideology of a Pressure Group (University of Nebraska Press, 1965); James L. Guth, “The National Cooperative Council and Farm Relief, 1929-1942,” Agricultural History, vol. 51, no. 2 (April 1977), pp. 441-58; Robert L. Tontz, “Memberships of General Farmers’ Organizations, United States, 1874-1960,” ibid., vol. 38, no. 3 (July 1964), pp. 143-60; Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie, “Resisting the Welfare State: Southern Opposition to the Farm Security Administration,” Research in Economic History (JAI Press, 1985), Suppl. 4, pp. 83-120.

  65 [Talmadge’s agricultural policies]: see Raper, pp. 225-28.

  66 [1935 AAA “purge”]: Sternsher, ch. 16; Saloutos, American Farmer, ch. 8; Richard Lowitt, “Henry A. Wallace and the 1935 Purge in the Department of Agriculture,” Agricultural History, vol. 53, no. 3 (July 1979), pp. 607-21.

  [Townsend and Townsend Movement]: Bennett, chs. 10-12; Abraham Holtzman, The Townsend Movement: A Political Study (Bookman Associates, 1963), chs. 2-3; The Committee on Old Age Security of the Twentieth Century Fund, The Townsend Crusade (Twentieth Century Fund, 1936); Schlesinger, Upheaval, ch. 3.

  67 [Parsons on the elderly]: quoted in Holtzman, p. 20.

  [“Until the whole country hears”]: quoted in Brinkley, pp. 222-23.

  [“Onward, Townsend soldiers”]: quoted in Schlesinger, Upheaval, p. 34.

  68 [Time inflation of Townsend clubs]: vol. 25, no. 2 (January 14, 1935), p. 14. [High on Townsend movement]: quoted in Schlesinger, Upheaval, p. 34.

  [La Follette brothers]: Donald Young, ed., Adventure in Politics: The Memoirs of Philip La Follette (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), esp. ch. 17; Edward N. Doan, The La Follettes and the Wisconsin Idea (Rinehart, 1947); Schlesinger, Upheaval, pp. 104-8; John E. Miller, “Philip La Follette: Rhetoric and Reality,” Historian, vol. 45, no. 2 (February 1983), pp. 65-83.

  [FDR’s endorsement of Bob La Follette]: Burns, Lion, p. 201.

  [Olson]: Mayer; Schlesinger, Upheaval, pp. 98-104.

  [Olson on 1940]: quoted in Schlesinger, Upheaval, p. 104.

  69 [EPIC and anti-EPIC campaigns]: Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor and How I Got Licked (Upton Sinclair, 1935); “The Epic of Upton Sinclair,” Nation, vol. 139, no. 3617 (October 31, 1934), pp. 495-96; Royce D. Delmatier et al., The Rumble of California Politics, 1848-1970 (Wiley, 1970), pp. 266-67, 272-80; Luther Whiteman and Samuel L. Lewis, “EPIC, or Politics for Use,” in Dennis Hale and Jonathan Eisen, eds., The California Dream (Collier Books, 1968), pp. 63-71.

  [White House and Sinclair’s campaign]: Sinclair, Candidate, chs. 15-17, 36; Schlesinger, Upheaval, pp. 115-17, 119-21; Lash, pp. 386-87.

  [“ (I) Say nothing”]: quoted in Lash, p. 387.

  70 [Sinclair’s books on campaign]: Sinclair, Candidate; Sinclair, I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty (Upton Sinclair, 1933); for Lanny Budd, see Sinclair’s eleven-volume “World’s End” series (Viking, 1940-53).

  [Historians’ and FDR’s “turn to the left”]: see Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America 1929-1941 (Times Books, 1984), pp. 261-63; Otis Graham, Jr., “Historians and the New Deal, 1944-1960,” Social Studies, vol. 54 (April 1963), pp. 133-40; Sternsher, ch. 11; Barton J. Bernstein, “The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform,” in Bernstein and Allen J. Matusow, eds., Twentieth-Century America: Recent Interpretations (Harcourt, 1972), pp. 242-64.

  [FDR’s coolness to Wagner bill]: see Joseph J. Huthmacher, Senator Robert B. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (Atheneum, 1968), pp. 166-69, 189-90, 197-98.

  [1935 State of the Union address]: January 4, 1935, in Public Papers, vol. 4, pp. 15-25, quoted at p. 25.

  70-1 [“Distinctly dispirited”]: Ickes Diary, vol. 1, p. 306.

  71 [Chamber of Commerce conference]: New York Times, May 1, 1935, pp. 1-2, Silas Strawn quoted at p. 1; New York Times, May 3, 1935, pp. 1, 4; Schlesinger, Upheaval, pp. 270-72.

  72 [Supreme Court invalidation of New Deal legislation]: Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935) (hot oil provisions of NRA); Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co., 295 U.S. 330 (1935); Schechter v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935) (NRA); Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 U.S. 555 (1935) (farm mortgage law); United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936) (AAA); Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238 (1936) (Bituminous Coal Act); Ashton v. Cameron County Water Improvement District No. 1, 298 U.S. 513 (1936) (Municipal Bankruptcy Act).

  [Gold Clause cases]: Perry v. United States, 294 U.S. 330 (1935); United States v. Bankers Trust Co., 294 U.S. 240 (1935); Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co., 294 U.S. 240 (1935); Nortz v. United States, 294 U.S. 317 (1935); McReynolds quoted in Newsweek, vol. 5, no. 8 (February 23, 1935), p. 7; John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries: Years of Crisis, 1928-1938 (Houghton Mifflin, 1959), pp. 130-31. 72-3 [“Shudder at the closeness”]: letter to Angus D. MacLean, February 21, 1935, quoted in Schlesinger, Upheaval, p. 260.

  73 [FDR’s meeting with liberal senators]: Max Freedman, annot., Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928-1945 (Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 269-72; Ickes Diary, vol. 1, pp. 363-64.

  [“Eleventh hour”]: quoted in Ickes Diary, vol. 1, p. 363.

  [FDR’s press conference after NRA invalidation]: May 31, 1935, in Public Papers, vol. 4, pp. 201-22, quoted at pp. 201, 202, 209, 221.

  74 [“Black-winged angel”]: Schlesinger, Upheaval, p. 280.

  [“This is the end”]: quoted in Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 352.

  [Brandeis and Frankfurter in FDR Administration]: ibid., pp. 380-87; Schlesinger, Upheaval, pp. 219-25; Bruce A. Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection (Oxford University Press, 1982), chs. 4-5; Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton University Press, 1966), part 3; Rexford G. Tugwell, “Roosevelt and Frankfurter: An Essay Review,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 1 (March 1970), pp. 99-114; Freedman, passim.

  75 [FDR’s continued desire for “collectivist” control]: see Otis L. Graham, Jr., Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 32.

  [FDR’s imperative]: Murphy, p. 159; see also FDR memorandum to legislative leaders, June 4, 1935, in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947-50), vol. 3, p. 481; and memorandum for legislative conference of August 18, 1935, in ibid., pp. 502-3.

  [Congressional progressives riding high]: see Ronald A. Mulder, “The Progressive Insurgents in the United States Senate, 1935-
1936: Was There a Second New Deal?,” Mid-America, vol. 57, no. 2 (April 1975), pp. 106-25; Freedman, pp. 269-72.

  [NLRA]: Bernstein, Turbulent Years, ch. 7; Cletus E. Daniel, The ACLU and the Wagner Act (ILR/Cornell, 1980); R. W. Fleming, “The Significance of the Wagner Act,” in Derber and Young, pp. 121-55; Huthmacher,pp. 189-98; Public Papers, vol.4, quoted at p. 294.

  [Social Security]: Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900-1935 (Harvard University Press, 1968); Schlesinger, Coming, ch. 18; Martin, Madam Secretary, ch. 26; Perkins, ch. 23; Public Papers, vol. 4, quoted at p. 324.

  [Banking Act]: Hawley, pp. 309-15; Marriner S. Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal Recollections, Sidney Hyman, cd. (Knopf, 1951), part 4, chs. 1-4, [“Knock-down and drag-out fight”]: quoted in Eccles, p. 175.

  [“An eraser instead”]: ibid., p. 229.

  76 [Public Utility Holding Company Act]: Ralph F. de Bedts, The New Deal’s SEC: The Formative Years (Columbia University Press, 1964), ch. 5; Hawley, pp. 329-37; see also William O. Douglas Papers, esp. container 2, Library of Congress.

  [Revenue Act]: Hawley, pp. 344-50; Schlesinger, Upheaval, pp. 325-34; James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal (University of Kentucky Press, 1967), pp. 59-69; Message to the Congress on Tax Revision, June 19, 1935, in Public Papers, vol. 4, pp. 270-76, quoted at p. 272.

  [WPA]: George McJimsey, Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (Harvard University Press, 1987), chs. 5-8; Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933-1937 (Random House, 1986), pp. 463-71, 567-71, 621-23.

  77 [Progressive senators and bureaucracies]: Mulder, p. 124 and passim. [Holding company bill as model]: see Murphy, p. 165.

  [Mulder on Wheeler]: Mulder, p. 124.

  [“Excessive centralization”]: quoted in ibid.

  [Regresiveness of Social Security insurance model]: McElvaine, pp. 256-57; Mark H. Leff, “Taxing the ‘Forgotten Man’: The Politics of Social Security Finance in the New Deal,” Journal of American History, vol. 70, no. 2 (September 1983), pp. 359-81.

  [Leff on payroll tax]: Leff, p. 379.

  [Social security and income redistribution]: Lubove, ch. 8; James Leiby, A History of Social Welfare and Social Work in the United States (Columbia University Press, 1978), ch. 13.