American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Liberty and the New Deal]: see Jerold S. Auerbach, Labor and Liberty: The La Follette Committee and the New Deal (Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), pp. 208-18, and sources cited therein.

  [“Weakest in philosophy”]: Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1942), p. 492.

  [Wells on FDR]: quoted in ibid., p. 493.

  The People’s Art

  132 [Short's House performance]: quoted in Congressional Record, 75th Congress, 3rd Session, vol. 83, part 8, p. 9497 (June 15, 1938); see also Richard D. McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists (Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 154-55.

  [Attack upon cultural programs]: McKinzie, ch. 9; Jerre Mangione, The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers’ Project, 1935-1943 (Little, Brown, 1972), chs. 1, 8; Jane De Hart Mathews, The Federal Theatre, 1935-1939: Plays, Relief and Politics (Princeton University Press, 1967), chs. 5-6.

  [“Smeared upon the walls”]: testimony of Walter Steele, Hearings Before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 75th Congress, 3rd Session (1938), vol. 1, p. 554.

  [“Is he a Communist?”]: Representative Joe Starnes of Alabama, quoted in testimony of Hallie Flanagan, ibid., vol. 4, p. 2857.

  133 [Eleanor Roosevelt’s support of arts programs]: quoted in McKinzie, p. 10; see also Lash, pp. 467-68.

  [Biddle’s initiative]: McKinzie, pp. 5-10, McKinzie quoted on “social revolution” at p. 5; George Biddle, An American Artist’s Story (Little, Brown, 1939), pp. 263-80; William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts (Ohio State University Press, 1969), pp. 357-61.

  [“Awkward embrace”]: Joan Simpson Burns, The Awkward Embrace: The Creative Artist and the Institution in America (Knopf, 1975); see also McKinzie, chs. 3-5.

  134 [San Francisco murals controversy]: McKinzie, pp. 24-26.

  [Kent’s Eskimos and Puerto Ricans]: ibid., pp. 63-64.

  [“The Fleet’s In”]: ibid., pp. 29-30, quoted at p. 29.

  [Artistic production under public works program]: ibid., p. 27.

  [TAP]: ibid., ch. 5; McDonald, chs. 18-19; Francis V. O’Connor, ed., Art for the Millions (New York Graphic Society, 1973); O’Connor, ed., The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972); New York Public Library, FDR and the Arts: The WPA Arts Projects (exhibition brochure, 1983); Marianne Doezma, American Realism and the Industrial Age (Cleveland Museum of Art/Indiana University Press, 1980), pp. 108-14; Selden Rodman, Ben Shahn: Portrait of the Artist as an American (Harper, 1951), ch. 3; Garnett McCoy, “Poverty, Politics and Artists, 1930-1945,” Art in America, vol. 53, no. 4 (August-September, 1965), pp. 88-107; Art in Public Buildings, vol. 1: Mural Designs, 1934-1936 (Art in Federal Buildings, Inc., 1936). [Output under FAP]: McKinzie, p. 105.

  135 [Bringing people’s art to the people]: Jane De Hart Mathews, “Arts and the People: The New Deal Quest for a Cultural Democracy,” Journal of American History, vol. 62, no. 2 (September 1975), pp. 316-39; McDonald, pp. 463-79; McKinzie, ch. 8.

  [Cahill on art]: quoted in Mathews, “Arts and the People,” p. 323.

  [New York artists’ protest]: McKinzie, p. 96.

  [Reduction of WPA rolls]: ibid., p. 97. 135-6 [Flanagan and formation of FTP]: Hallie Flanagan, Arena (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), pp. 3-47; Mathews, Federal Theatre, chs. 1-2; McDonald, pp. 496-533; Willson Whitman, Bread and Circuses: A Study of the Federal Theatre (Oxford University Press, 1937), chs. 2-3; Jay Williams, Stage Left (Scribner, 1974), pp. 221-22.

  136 [“A changing world”]: quoted in Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 42-43.

  [Murder in the Cathedral]: ibid., pp. 74-75; Whitman, pp. 39-40; Williams, p. 223. [Macbeth]: Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 75-76, woman quoted on Shakespeare at p. 104; Richard France, The Theatre of Orson Welles (Bucknell University Press, 1977), ch. 2; John Houseman, Run-Through (Simon and Schuster, 1972), pp. 185-205.

  137 [Cagey on Living Newspapers]: Edmond M. Cagey, Revolution in American Drama (Columbia University Press, 1947), pp. 165-66; see also Williams, pp. 224-25; Flanagan, pp. 64-65, 70-73.

  [Ethiopia]: Williams, pp. 225-26; Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 62-68.

  [Triple-A Plowed Under]: Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 70-74; Williams, pp. 88-92.

  [Injunction Granted]: Flanagan, pp. 72-73; Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 109-13; Whitman, pp. 85-86; John O’Connor and Lorraine Brown, Free, Adult, Uncensored: The Living History of the Federal Theatre Project (New Republic Books, 1978), pp. 76-87; Granville Vernon, review of Injunction Granted, Commonweal, vol. 24, no. 17 (August 21, 1936), p. 407.

  [Power]: Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 113-15, Atkinson quoted at p. 114; Whitman, pp. 87-88.

  [One-Third of a Nation]: Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 169-77; O’Connor and Brown, pp. 160-73; Brooks Atkinson, review of One-Third of a Nation, in Bernard Beckerman and Howard Siegman, eds., On Stage: Selected Theater Reviews from The New York Times, 1920-1970 (Arno Press, 1973), p. 196.

  [It Can’t Happen Here]: O’Connor and Brown, pp. 58-67; Williams, pp. 228-29.

  [Regional FTP]: Flanagan, passim; McDonald, ch. 22; Mathews, Federal Theatre, ch. 4; Whitman, pp. 73-78.

  138 [FTP’s dance unit]: O’Connor and Brown, pp. 212-23; Williams, p. 231. [“Always dangerous”]: quoted in Whitman, p. 172.

  [Alexander on 1930s]: Charles C. Alexander, Here the Country Lies: Nationalism and the Arts in Twentieth-Century America (Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 191.

  138-9 [Cradle Will Rock controversy]: Mathews, Federal Theatre, pp. 122-25; France, ch. 5; Houseman, pp. 245-49, 253-79.

  139 [FWP]: Mangione; McDonald, chs. 26-28.

  [Publishers’ letter on FWP]: quoted in Mangione, p. 15.

  [Women as FWP state heads]: ibid., p. 88.

  [FWP writers and output]: Ray A. Billington, “Government and the Arts: The W.P.A. Experience,” American Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 4 (Winter 1961), p. 468; Mangione, pp. 8-9.

  [Slave narratives]: Mangione, pp. 263-65; and see George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Greenwood Press, 1972-79), 19 vols., and supplements, series 1 and 2, 22 vols.; Benjamin A. Bodkin, ed., Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery (University of Chicago Press, 1945); Savannah Unit, Georgia Writers’ Program, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (University of Georgia Press; reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1973).

  [American Guide Series]: Mangione, pp. 46-49.

  [Kazin on American Guides]: Kazin, p. 486.

  [Size of Guide Series]: Mangione, p. 352.

  140 [Aiken on Deerfield]: Federal Writers’ Project, Massachusetts: A Guide to Its Places and People (Houghton Mifflin, 1937), p. 223.

  [Individualism vs. collectivism controversy in Massachusetts]: Billington, p. 475; Massachusetts Guide, pp. 89-109, “profound individualism” quoted at p. 90.

  140 [Controversy over Massachusetts guide]: Mangione, pp. 216-20, Traveler quoted at p. 217; Billington, pp. 477-78.

  [Critics on guide]: Mangione, pp. 351-66; Robert Cantwell, “America and the Writers’ Project,” New Republic, vol. 98, no. 1273 (April 29, 1939), pp. 323-25; Lewis Mumford, “Writers’ Project,” New Republic, vol. 92, no. 1194 (October 20, 1937), pp. 306-7; Robert Bendiner, “When Culture Came to Main Street,” Saturday Review, vol. 50 (April 1, 1967), pp. 19-2); Daniel M. Fox, “The Achievement of the Federal Writers’ Project,” American Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 1961), pp. 3-19.

  [Cantwell on guides]: Cantwell, p. 323. [“I’m a hog”]: quoted in Mangione, p. 273. 140-1 [Rockefeller at play]: ibid., p. 362.

  141 [“A vast new literature”]: Kazin, pp. 485-86.

  [“Jus’ let me get out to California”]: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (Viking, 1939), p. 112.

  [Dust bowl refugees]: Donald Worster, Dust Howl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford University Press, 1979); Walter J. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration (Greenwood Press, 1973); Thomas W. Pew, Jr., “Route 66: Ghost Road of the Okies,” American Heritage, vol. 28,
no. 5 (August 1977), pp. 24-33; see also Dorothea Lange and Paul S. Taylor, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939).

  [“Too nice, kinda”]: Grapes of Wrath, p. 122.

  [Grapes controversy]: see Peter Lisca, “The Grapes of Wrath, ” in Robert M. Davis, ed., Steinbeck: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 75-101, esp. pp. 78-82; Martin S. Shockley, “The Reception of The Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma,” in E. W. Tedlock, Jr., and C. V. Wicker, eds., Steinbeck and His Critics (University of New Mexico Press, 1957), pp. 231-40.

  142 [“Quality of owning”]: Grapes of Wrath, p. 206.

  [“Feel like people again”]: ibid., p. 420.

  [“Use’ ta be the fambly”]: ibid., p. 606.

  [“One big soul”]: ibid., p. 33.

  [“I’ll be ever’where”]: ibid., p. 572.

  [Guthrie’s growing-up]: Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (Knopf, 1980), chs. 1-2; Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory (E. P. Dutton, 1943); Frederick Turner, “Just What in the Hell Has Gone Wrong Here Anyhow?: Woody Guthrie and the American Dream,” American Heritage, vol. 28, no. 6 (October 1977), pp. 34-43.

  [Twenty-three-year-old soda jerk]: see Klein, p. 71.

  [“This dusty old dust”]: “So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh,” in Harold Leventhal and Marjorie Guthrie, eds., The Woody Guthrie Songbook (Grosset & Dunlap, 1976), p. 210.

  [Klein on Guthrie]: Klein, p. 79.

  142-3 [Guthrie on his songs]: Bound for Glory, p. 232.

  143 [“Living songs and dying songs”]: quoted in Guthrie Songbook, p. 30.

  [“We got out to the West Coast broke”]: “Talking Dust Bowl,” in ibid., p. 220.

  [“Real stuff”]: James T. Farrell, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan in Farrell, Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy (Modern Library, 1938), p. 107.

  [Studs in the park with Lucy]: Young Lonigan in ibid., pp. 110, 111, 113, 114, 115.

  144 [Farrell]: Farrell, “My Beginnings as a Writer,” in Farrell, Reflections at Fifty and Other Essays (Vanguard, 1954), pp. 156-63; Farrell, “How Studs Lonigan Was Written,” in Farrell, The League of Frightened Philistines and Other Papers (Vanguard, 1945), pp. 82-89; Edgar M. Branch, James T. Farrell (University of Minnesota Press, 1963); Ann Douglas, “Studs Lonigan and the Failure of History in Mass Society: A Study in Claustrophobia,” American Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4 (Winter 1977), pp. 487-505; Alan M. Wald, James T. Farrell: The Revolutionary Socialist Years (New York University Press, 1978); Kazin, pp. 380-85; Farrell, A Note on Literary Criticism (Vanguard, 1936).

  [1919 Chicago race riot]: Finis Farr, Chicago: A Personal History of America’s Most American City (Arlington House, 1973), pp. 337-38; Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (University of Chicago Press, 1922), ch. 1 and passim.

  [“Avenues of the dead”]: Young Manhood, p. 74.

  [“Bigger took a shoe”]: Richard Wright, Native Son (Harper, 1979), p. 10.

  [“He had murdered”]: ibid., p. 101.

  [“Never had he had the chance”]: ibid., p. 225.

  [“We must deal here”]: ibid., p. 357.

  [“Like a blind man”]: ibid., p. 392. [“What I killed for, I am!”]: ibid., pp. 391-92.

  [Wright]: Wright, Black Boy (Harper, 1945); Wright, in Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (Harper Colophon, 1963), pp. 115-62; Constance Webb, Richard Wright (Putnam, 1968); David Ray and Robert M. Farnsworth, eds., Richard Wright: Impressions and Perspectives (University of Michigan Press, 1973); Keneth Kinnamon, The Emergence of Richard Wright: A Study in Literature and Society (University of Illinois Press, 1972).

  [“Ringed by walls”]: Black Boy, p. 220. [“Tension would set in”]: ibid., p. 65.

  [“What was this?”]: ibid., p. 218.

  [Wright’s double intellectual life]: Aaron, “Richard Wright and the Communist Party,” in Ray and Farnsworth, p. 44.

  [“Scattered but kindred peoples”]: Wright in Crossman, p. 118.

  [The Group]: Foster Hirsch, A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio (Norton, 1984), chs. 4-5; Williams, chs. 4, 10, 12, and passim; Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties (Knopf, 1945).

  145-6 [“Blood and bones”]: quoted in Williams, p. 63.

  146 [Odets]: Gerald Weales, Clifford Odets, Playwright (Pegasus, 1971); Robert Shuman, Clifford Odets (Twayne, 1962); Harold Cantor, Clifford Odets, Playwright-Poet (Scarecrow Press, 1978).

  [Waiting for Lefty]: in Odets, Six Plays (Random House, 1939); see also Weales, ch. 3; Hirsch, pp. 79-82; Williams, pp. 144-46.

  4. Freedom Under Siege

  [FDR’s message to Hitler]: in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel I. Rosenman, comp. (Random House, 1938-50), vol. 8, pp. 201-5, quoted at pp. 201, 202, 203, 204; see also Cordell Hull, Memoirs (Macmillan, 1948), vol. 1, p. 620.

  [Göring and Mussolini on FDR]: William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 470.

  [“Contemptible a creature”]: quoted in Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 186.

  [Pressure on Latvia]: Shirer, pp. 470-71.

  [Hitler’s response]: April 28, 1939, in Louis L. Snyder, Hitler’s Third Reich: A Documentary History (Nelson-Hall, 1981), pp. 311-26, quoted at pp. 317, 313, 318, 324-25, 326, respectively; Shirer, pp. 471-75, quoted on Hitler’s speech at p. 471; see also Shirer, The Nightmare Years (Little, Brown, 1984), pp. 397-404.

  151 [“Hitler had all the better”]: quoted in Dallek, p. 187; see also C. A. MacDonald, The United States, Britain and Appeasement, 1936-1939 (St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 153.

  [“Sympathy with President Roosevelt”]: quoted in James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (Harcourt, 1956), p. 184.

  The Zigzag Road to War

  152 [FDR’s pre-presidential foreign policy background]: see Dallek, Prologue; Geoffrey C. Ward, Before the Trumpet (Harper, 1985).

  [FDR’s criticism of Coolidge]: quoted in Dallek, p. 17.

  153 [Isolationism]: Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45 (University of Nebraska Press, 1983), p.9 and passim; Dallek; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (Harcourt, 1974); Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940-1941 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1953); Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935-1941 (Cornell University Press, 1966); Sheldon Marcus, Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower (Little, Brown, 1973), chs. 7-8 passim; Michele Flynn Stenehjem, An American First: John T. Flynn and the America First Committee (Arlington House, 1976).

  153 [Opinion polls, 1937]: Harvey Cantril and Mildred Strunk, eds., Public Opinion, 1935-1946 (Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 966 (item 2), 967 (item 20); see also Jerome S. Bruner, Mandate from the People (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1944), pp. 18-20.

  [Elements in equation of world power]: see Burns, Lion, p. 248.

  54 [“Groping for a door”]: quoted in ibid.

  [FDR’s prewar foreign policy leadership]: ibid., pp. 262-63; James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (Harcourt, 1970), pp. 65-66, 119-20; Gloria J. Barron, Leadership in Crisis: FDR and the Path to Intervention (Kennikat Press, 1973); Mark M. Lowenthal, “Roosevelt and the Coming of War: The Search for United States Policy, 1937-1942,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 16 (1981), pp. 413-40; Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II (Harper, 1972); Robert A. Divine, Roosevelt and World War II (Johns Hopkins Press, 1969), chs. 1-2; Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II (Wiley, 1965); Richard W. Steele, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Foreign Policy Critics,” Political Science (Quarterly, vol. 94, no. 1 (Spring 1979), pp. 15-32; Steele, “The Great Debate: Roosevelt, the Media, and the Coming of the War, 1940-1941,”Journal of Americ
an History, vol. 71, no. 1 (June 1984), pp. 69-92; Warren F. Kimball, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937-1945 (D. C. Heath, 1973), part 1; Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War (Henry Regnery, 1952); Arnold A. Offner, American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933-1938 (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969).

  [Divisions within isolationist camp]: Cole, Roosevelt, pp. 6-7, quoted at p. 7.

  155 [“The blame for the danger”]: December 28, 1933, in Public Papers, vol. 2, pp. 544-49, quoted at p. 546.

  [Nye committee]: Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (University of Minnesota Press, 1962), esp. chs. 5-6; Cole, Roosevelt, ch, 11; John E. Wiltz, In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934-1936 (Louisiana State University Press, 1963); Burns, Lion, pp. 253-54.

  [Hull on Administration marking time]: Cole, Roosevelt, p. 147.

  156 [Curtiss-Wright]: U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304 (1936), quoted at 320; Erik M. Erikson, The Supreme Court and the New Deal (Rosemead Review Press, 1940), pp. 197-200; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Houghton Mifflin, 1973), pp. 100-4.

  [Neutrality legislation and FDR’s foreign policy]: see Dallek, ch. 5; Cole, Roosevelt, chs. 12, 15; Richard P. Traina, American Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War (Indiana University Press, 1968); Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (University of Chicago Press, 1962); Burns, Lion, pp. 255-59; Divine, Roosevelt, pp. 10-14.

  [“A hat and a rabbit”]: quoted in Dallek, p. 144.

  157 [FDR’s 1937 Chicago address]: October 5, 1937, in Public Papers, vol. 6, pp. 406-11, quoted at p. 408; see also Dorothy Borg, “Notes on Roosevelt’s ‘Quarantine’ Speech,” in Robert A. Divine, ed., Causes and Consequences of World War II (Quadrangle, 1969), pp. 47-70.