American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Kempton on Murray]: Bernstein, p. 443.

  100 [FDR on “The President Wants”]: ibid., p. 454.

  [SWOC membership, January 1937]: ibid., p. 465.

  [Taylor’s reassessment]: ibid., pp. 466-70.

  [Taylor-Lewis negotiations]: ibid., pp. 470-73; Dubofsky and Van Tine, pp. 273-77. [Single most important document]: Robert R. R. Brooks, As Steel Goes, … (Yale University Press, 1959), p. 108.

  [Little Steel and unionization]: Bernstein, pp. 473-98; Dubofsky and Van Tine, pp. 312-5.

  [Chicago Memorial Day incident]: Donald G. Sofchalk, “The Chicago Memorial Day Incident: An Episode of Mass Action,” Labor History, vol. 6, no. 1 (Winter 1965), pp. 3-43.

  Congress-Purging: The Broken Spell

  101 [Auto industry improvement, 1933-37]: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), part 2, p. 716 (Series Q 148-62); Bernstein, p. 503.

  [Iron and steel industry improvement, 1933-37]: Historical Statistics, part 2, p. 693 (Series P 231-300); Bernstein, p. 448.

  [1937 recession and the search for a solution]: Blum, Morgenthau Diaries, ch. 9; Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America (University of Chicago Press, 1969), chs. 6-7; Byrd L. Jones, “Lauchlin Currie and the causes of the 1937 recession,” History of Political Economy, vol. 12, no. 3 (1980), pp. 303-15; Ickes Diary, vol. 2; Donald Winch, Economics and Policy: A Historical Study (Walker and Co., 1969), ch. 11; Robert Lekachman, The Age of Keynes (Random House, 1966), ch. 5; Burns, Lion, ch. 16; Kenneth D. Roose, The Economics of Recession and Revival (Yale University Press, 1954); Marriner S. Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal Recollections, Sidney Hyman, ed. (Knopf, 1951), pp. 287-323; Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs, eds., Navigating the Rapids, 1918-1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle (Harcourt, 1973), pp. 141-77; James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story (McGraw-Hill, 1948), ch. 11.

  101 [“Mob in a theater fire”]: quoted in Blum, p. 386.

  [“Rich man’s panic”]: Berle and Jacobs, p. 142.

  [Perkins on upturn]: see Ickes Diary, vol. 2, p. 212.

  [FDR’s suspicions and hopes]: ibid., p. 241.

  [Unemployment]: Historical Statistics, part 1, p. 126 (Series D 1-10).

  [“Sit tight”]: quoted in Burns, Lion, p. 320.

  [“Hooverish statements”]: quoted in Ickes Diary, vol. 2, p. 224.

  [“We are headed”]: quoted in Burns, Lion, p. 320.

  [“ Ill, tired”]: Berle and Jacobs, p. 148.

  [FDR’s fears of fascism]: Blum, p. 393.

  102 [Cabinet discussion]: quoted in ibid., pp. 391-92; see also Ickes Diary, vol. 2, pp. 240-43.

  102-3 [NAM platform]: quoted in New York Times, December 9, 1937, p. 23.

  103 [Small businessmen. Business Advisory Council, Detroit demonstration, youth delegates]: Burns, Lion, p. 326.

  [Abbott on Chicago conditions]: letter of February 3, 1938, Dewson Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.

  [FDR on carping critics]: press conference with editors of trade papers, April 8, 1938, in Public Papers, vol. 7, quoted at p. 194.

  104 [Recession in March 1938]: see Burns, Lion, p. 327; Roose, ch. 3.

  [“They understand”]: quoted in Burns, Lion, p. 328.

  [Temporary National Economic Committee]: see Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 404-15; Wilson P. Miscamble, “Thurman Arnold Goes to Washington: A Look at Antitrust Policy in the Later New Deal,” Business History Review, vol. 56, no. 1 (Spring 1982), pp. 1-15.

  [Morgenthau’s threat to resign]: Blum, pp. 423-25.

  [“Discipline of democracy”]: message of April 14, 1938, in Public Papers, vol. 7, pp. 221-33, quoted at p. 231.

  [“What is needed”]: fireside chat of April 14, 1938, in ibid., pp. 236-48, quoted at p. 246.

  105 [“For God’s sake”]: quoted in Burns, Lion, p. 339.

  [Reorganization bill]: Richard Polenberg, Reorganizing Roosevelt’s Government: The Controversy over Executive Reorganization, 1936-1939 (Harvard University Press, 1966); Polenberg, “The Decline of the New Deal,” in John Braeman et al., eds., The New Deal: The National Level (Ohio State University Press, 1975), pp. 250-51.

  [“Dictator bill”]: see Polenberg, Reorganizing, pp. 148-49.

  [Weekend telegram blitz]: Patterson, Congressional Conservatism, pp. 222-23.

  [“I have no inclination”]: in Public Papers, vol. 7, pp. 179-81, quoted at p. 179.

  106 [House recommittal of bill]: Patterson, p. 226.

  [Passage of wages-and-hours legislation]: Burns, Lion, pp. 342-44; Patterson, pp. 179-82, 242-46.

  [“That’s that”]: quoted in Burns, Lion, p. 343.

  107 [FDR’s putting off of Lawrence]: ibid., p. 349.

  [“Aggressive progressive Democrats”]: quoted in ibid.

  [Rise of special-interest groups]: see Otis L. Graham, Jr., “The Broker State,” Wilson Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 5 (Winter 1984), pp. 86-97.

  [Lewis and FDR]: Burns, Lion, pp. 350-51; Dubofsky and Van Tine, pp. 323-34; see also Mike Davis, “The Barren Marriage of American Labour and the Democratic Party,” New Left Review, no. 124 (November-December 1980), pp. 43-84.

  [“Plague on both your houses”]: quoted in Bernstein, p. 496.

  [FDR in polls, 1938]: “Fortune Quarterly Survey: XII,” Fortune, vol. 18, no. 1 (July 1938, p. 37; Burns, Lion, pp. 338-39.

  [Attempts at conservative coalition]: Patterson, pp. 251-70.

  109 [FDR’s June 1938 fireside chat]: in Public Papers, vol. 7, pp. 391-400, quoted at pp. 395, 399.

  [Patterson on drive for realignment]: Patterson, p. 277.

  [FDR’s purge travels]: J. B. Shannon, “Presidential Politics in the South, 1938,” Journal of Politics, vol. 1, no. 2 (May 1939), pp. 146-70 and no. 3 (August 1939), pp. 278-300; Barkley Papers, University of Kentucky; Burns, Lion, pp. 361-64.

  110 [FDR’s attack on George]: in Public Papers, vol. 7, pp. 463-71, quoted at pp. 469-71; and Burns, Lion, pp. 362-63.

  [Press reaction to purge]: see George Wolfskill and John A. Hudson, All but the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Critics, 1933-39 (Macmillan, 1969), pp. 289-90; Burns, Lion, p. 362.

  [Moley on White House cabal]: Moley, “Perspective,” Newsweek, vol. 11, no. 24 (June 13, 1938), p. 40.

  [Liberal criticism of purge]: see T.R.B., “Washington Notes,” New Republic, vol. 96, no. 1243 (September 28, 1938), p. 212.

  [Farley’s and Garner’s evasion]: Farley’s Story, p. 141; Timmons, pp. 234-37.

  [Southern Democrats’ response to purge]: Patterson, pp. 283-85, Glass quoted at p. 285; Shannon.

  111 [Purge results]: Shannon, p. 299 (Table 2) and passim; Charles M. Price and Joseph Boskin, “The Roosevelt ‘Purge’: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Politics, vol. 28, no. 3 (August 1966), pp. 660-70; Stuart L. Weiss, “Maury Maverick and the Liberal Bloc,” Journal of American History, vol. 57, no. 4 (March 1971), pp. 880-95, esp. p. 891-95.

  [A “bust”]: Farley, p. 144.

  [“A long, long time”]: quoted in Burns, Lion, p. 364.

  [Republican successes in 1938]: Patterson, pp. 288-90; Milton Plesur, “The Republican Congressional Comeback of 1938,” Review of Politics, vol. 24, no. 4 (October 1962), pp. 525-62, esp. pp. 544-46; Donald R. McCoy, “George S. McGill and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938,” Historian, vol. 45, no. 2 (February 1983), pp. 186-205.

  [Reasons for 1938 setbacks]: see Plesur, pp. 544-54; Farley, pp. 149-50; Shannon, pp. 295-98; Philip F. La Follette, Elmer A. Benson, and Frank Murphy, “Why We Lost,” Nation, vol. 147, no. 23 (December 3, 1938), pp. 586-90; Patterson, pp. 286-87.

  [“Having passed the period”]: in Public Papers, vol. 8, pp. 1-12, quoted at p. 7.

  112 [Jackson Day dinner speech]: January 7, 1939, in ibid., pp. 60-68, quoted at p. 63.

  [1939 appointments]: Burns, Lion, p. 368; see also Patterson, pp. 298-99.

  [“
Not one nickel more”]: quoted in Polenberg, “Decline,” p. 261.

  [FDR’s refusal to support national health program]: Huthmacher, pp. 263-67.

  [“Sick and tired”]: quoted in John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries: Years of Urgency, 1938-1941 (Houghton Mifflin, 1965), pp. 41-42.

  [“You undergraduates”]: address of December 5, 1938, in Public Papers, vol. 7, pp. 613-21, quoted at p. 615.

  [Congressional balance of power, 1939]: see Patterson, pp. 289-90, 322-24.

  [House Un-American Activities Committee]: Walter Goodman, The Committee (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), pp. 52-58; Ickes Diary, vol. 2, pp. 506-7, 528-29, 546-50, 573-74.

  [Smith investigation of NLRB]: Earl Latham, The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 131-37; Bernstein, Turbulent Years, pp. 663-70.

  [Attack on FDR’s appointing power]: see A. Cash Koeniger, “The New Deal and the States: Roosevelt versus the Byrd Organization in Virginia,” Journal of American History, vol. 68, no. 4 (March 1982), pp. 876-96.

  113 [Restriction of political activities of federal employees]: see “Federal Workers in Politics,” New Republic, vol. 100, no. 1289 (August 16, 1939), pp. 33-34.

  [Reductions in New Deal funds]: Burns, Lion, p. 370; see also Patterson, ch. 9, [Eleanor Roosevelt and blacks]: Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 59-65, 132; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (Norton, 1971), p. 522; Joanna Schneider Zangrando and Robert L. Zangrando, “ER and Black Rights,” in Joan Hoff-Wilson and Marjorie Lightman, eds., Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt (Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 88-107; Nancy J. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln (Princeton University Press, 1983), esp. ch. 6.

  113 [Marian Anderson and the DAR]: Ickes Diary, vol. 2, pp. 612-16; Sitkoff, pp. 326-27; Lash, pp. 525-28.

  [“Unique, majestic”]: Ickes Diary, vol. 2, p. 615.

  Deadlock at the Center

  114 [Why did you lose?]: La Follette, Benson, and Murphy, “Why We Lost,” La Follette, quoted at p. 586.

  [“Price of cheese”]: quoted in ibid., p. 586.

  [FDR as administrator]: see Raymond Moley, 27 Masters of Politics (Funk & Wagnalls, 1949), p. 45; Herbert A. Simon et al., Public Administration (Knopf, 1950), p. 168; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Curmudgeon’s Confessions,” New Republic, vol. 129, no. 19 (December 7, 1953), pp. 14-15; Burns, Lion, pp. 371-75.

  [“A wonderful person but”]: quoted in Ickes Diary, vol. 2, p. 659.

  [Schlesinger on FDR’s fuzzy delegation]: “Curmudgeon’s Confessions,” p. 15.

  115 [Executive Council and National Emergency Council]: Otis L. Graham, Jr., “The Planning Ideal and American Reality: The 1930s,” in Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, eds., The Hofstadter Aegis: A Memorial (Knopf, 1974), p. 271; Lester G. Seligman and Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr., eds., New Deal Mosaic: Roosevelt Confers with His National Emergency Council, 1933-1936 (University of Oregon Books, 1965).

  [“The President needs help”]: President’s Committee on Administrative Management, Administrative Management in the Government of the United States, in Senate Documents: Miscellaneous, 75th Congress, 1st Session (U.S. Government Priming Office, 1937), Document 8, quoted at p. 19.

  [Committee on Administrative Management]: Graham, pp. 271-72; Polenberg, Reorganizing, ch. 1.

  [“A passion for anonymity”]: President’s Committee, p. 19.

  115-16 [Effect of FDR’s administrative techniques on New Deal]: see John Braeman, “The New Deal and the ‘Broker State’: A Review of the Recent Scholarly Literature,” Business History Review, vol. 46, no. 4 (Winter 1972), pp. 409-29, esp. pp. 426-27.

  [FDR’s description of three branches]: fireside chat of March 9, 1937, in Public Papers, vol. 6, pp. 123-24.

  116-17 [FDR and Democratic party]: see Burns, Lion, pp. 375-80; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Houghton Mifflin, 1958), pp. 503-5; Otis L. Graham, Jr., “The Democratic Party, 1932-1945,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History of U.S. Political Parties (Chelsea House, 1973), vol. 3, pp. 1939-64.

  117 [FDR’s attack on George and seniority system]: see Willmoore Kendall, The Conservative Affirmation (Henry Regnery, 1963), ch. 2.

  [“Not merely about party”]: quoted in Burns, Deadlock, p. 157; see also William E. Leuchtenburg, In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan (Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 245-46.

  [“Head of the Democratic party”]: fireside chat of June 24, 1938, in Public Papers, vol. 7, pp. 391-400, quoted at p. 399.

  118 [FDR and Virginia]: Koeniger, “The New Deal and the States.”

  [“Eight years in Washington”]: quoted in Rexford G. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt (Doubleday, 1957), p. 412.

  120 [FDR as transactional leader]: see Braeman; Graham, “Broker State”; Burns, Lion, pp. 197-202.

  The Fission of Ideas

  120-1 [Dewey on liberty]: Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (Putnam, 1935), p. 24.

  [Dewey on nineteenth-century liberals]: see ibid., ch. 1 and passim.

  [Dewey on means and ends of liberalism]: ibid., pp. 51, 54.

  [Dewey and Hull-House]: George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Southern Illinois University Press, 1973), pp. 104-6.

  121 [Dewey on the experimental method]: Dewey, “The Future of Liberalism,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 32, no. 9 (April 25, 1935), pp. 225-30, quoted at p. 228.

  [“Comprehensive ideas”]: Liberalism and Social Action, p. 43.

  [“Coherent body of ideas”]: “Future of Liberalism,” p. 228.

  122 [Old progressives in New Deal]: Otis L. Graham, Jr., An Encore for Reform: The Old Progressives and the New Deal (Oxford University Press, 1967); see also Alan Brinkley, “A Prelude,” Wilson Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 2 (Spring 1982), pp. 51-61; John Morton Blum, The Progressive Presidents: Roosevelt, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson (Norton, 1980), ch. 3.

  [Graham’s survey]: Encore, pp. 166-69. Quoted at p. 169.

  [“Direct reform bloodline”]: ibid., pp. 8-9.

  [Failure of socialism]: see sources cited in ch. 2, second section, supra.

  122-3 [Hartz on socialism’s handicap]: Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (Harcourt, 955), p. 228.

  [Communist party in 1930s]: see sources cited in ch. 2, second section, supra; and Theodore Draper, “The Popular Front Revisited,” New York Review of Books, vol. 32, no. 9 (May 30, 1985), pp. 44-50. [Communist party membership, 1938]: Draper, p. 45.

  [Conservatism in New Deal era]: see sources cited in ch. 2, first section, supra. [Rossiter’s identification of conservative groups]: Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Knopf, 1955), pp. 173-86; see also A. James Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change (Brookings Institution, 1981), ch. 1.

  124 [Individualism]: see David Riesman, Individualism Reconsidered and Other Essays (Free Press, 1954), esp. part 2.

  [Dewey on “individuality”]: quoted in Arthur A. Ekirch, Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought (Quadrangle, 1969), p. 127. [“Freed intelligence”]: Liberalism and Social Action, p. 50.

  124-5 [Niebuhr on “freed intelligence”]: Niebuhr, “The Pathos of Liberalism” (review of Liberalism and Social Action), Nation, vol. 141, no. 3662 (September 11, 1935), pp. 303-4, quoted at p. 303.

  125 [“Pragmatic idealism”]: Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 232.

  [“A void”]: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Knopf, 1945), vol. 2, p. 77.

  [Softness and shapelessness of New Deal ideology]: see Jacob Cohen, “Schlesinger and the New Deal,” Dissent, vol. 8, no. 4 (Autumn 1961), pp. 461-72, esp. pp. 466-68; 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.

  126 [The four partie
s]: Burns, Deadlock, esp. chs. 8-9, 126-7.

  [Cohen on New Deal]: Cohen, p. 465.

  127 [Bernstein on New Deal]: Introduction to Bernstein in Bernstein and Matusow, p. 243, and Bernstein in ibid., pp. 259-60.

  [Conkin on New Deal]: Paul Conkin, The New Deal, 2d ed. (Harlan Davidson, 1975), p. 71; see also Jerold S. Auerbach, “New Deal, Old Deal, or Raw Deal: Some Thoughts on New Left Historiography,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 35, no. 1 (February 1969), pp. 18-30.

  [Revisionists and bank crisis]: see Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933-1937 (Random House, 1986), pp. 49-53 and sources cited therein; Conkin, pp. 65-66, 75-76; Auerbach.

  [New Deal income redistribution]: see Historical Statistics, part 1, p. 301 (Series G 319-36) and p. 302 (Series G 319-36 and G 337-52).

  [Berle on FDR]: Berle and Jacobs, p. 149; see also Berle Papers, Personal Correspondence 1936-38, esp. container 25, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.

  [Stone on taxing power]: quoted in Perkins, p. 286.

  [FDR on Keynes and vice versa]: FDR quoted in ibid., p. 225; Keynes’s reaction in ibid., p. 226.

  130-1 [Planning in New Deal]: see Graham, “Planning Ideal and American Reality,” passim; Otis L. Graham, Jr., Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (Oxford University Press, 1976), ch.1; Barry D. Karl, Charles G. Merriam and the Study of Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1974), chs. 12-13; Byrd Jones, “A Plan for Planning in the New Deal,” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 3 (December 1969), pp. 525-34.

  131 [Lippmann on planning]: Lippmann, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society (Little, Brown, 1937), passim.

  [FDR’s hopes for further TVA-like programs]: James MacGregor Burns, “Congress and the Formation of Economic Policies” (doctoral dissertation; Harvard University, 1947), ch. 6.

  [“One of those uncommon junctures”]: quoted in Burns, Lion, p. 335.

  [Sivachev on New Deal achievement]: Sivachev, “The Rise of Statism in 1930s America: A Soviet View of the Social and Political Effects of the New Deal,” Labor History, vol. 24, no. 4 (Fall 1983), pp. 500-25, quoted at p. 504; see also Bradford A. Lee, “The New Deal Reconsidered,” Wilson (Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 2 (Spring 1982), pp. 62-76; Cohen, pp. 471-72; William E. Leuchtenburg, “The New Deal and the Analogue of War,” in John Braeman et al., eds., Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America (Ohio State University Press, 1964), pp. 81-143; Rush Welter, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 310-17.