Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  In 1934 Roosevelt did not worry about defections on the right. What concerned him were the critics on the left. Huey Long had burst the confines of the Bayou State and was barnstorming the nation to make “every man a king.” FDR had worked diligently to keep Long inside the administration tent pissing out, but the Kingfish was now outside pissing in. Long’s Share Our Wealth clubs claimed a mailing list of 7.5 million persons. The program was blindingly simple. Long proposed to confiscate large personal fortunes, levy steeply progressive income taxes, and redistribute the revenue to every American family so they could buy a home, a car, and a radio. In addition, each family would receive a guaranteed annual wage of $2,500—roughly double the median family income at the time. The elderly would receive pensions, the young would be provided college educations, and veterans would receive their bonuses. Long meant trouble, and FDR did not underestimate his appeal.*

  Marching almost in lockstep with Long was Father Charles Coughlin, a parish priest in Royal Oak, Michigan, whose weekly radio sermons drew a national audience estimated as high as 40 million.62 Like Long, Coughlin initially supported FDR. But as the New Deal took shape, he became increasingly critical. The Radio Priest, as he was called, railed against the power of “international money,” lauded silver as the “gentile” metal, and was soon accusing Roosevelt of having out-Hoovered Hoover. By the fall of 1934 Coughlin was calling for a political realignment. “The old parties are all but dead,” he told his Sunday audience. They should “relinquish the skeletons of their putrefying carcasses to the halls of a historical museum.”63 Because he had been born in Canada, Coughlin was not a rival for the presidency like Long. But his National Union for Social Justice, formed in November 1934, was another wild card of which Roosevelt had to beware.

  The most benign, yet in some ways the most serious, threat was headed by Dr. Francis Everett Townsend, an unemployed physician in Long Beach, California. Townsend proposed to pay a monthly pension of $200 (roughly $2,600 currently) to every citizen over sixty, on the condition that he or she retire and promise to spend the sum within the coming month. Pensions would be financed by a business transaction tax of 2 percent. Advocates argued that this would reduce unemployment because older workers would yield their jobs to younger people who had none. And the mandatory spending of pension checks would produce a demand for goods and services that would create still more jobs.64 The Townsend Plan was far from radical. It appealed to heavily Protestant rural America, proclaimed traditional values, and promised to preserve the profit system free from alien collectivism, socialism, and godless communism. As Townsend put it, the movement embraced people “who believe in the Bible, believe in God, cheer when the flag passes by, the Bible Belt solid Americans.”65 It was a movement FDR dared not ignore.

  The congressional elections in November 1934 provided the first political test of Roosevelt’s policies. Cognizant of the midterm tradition, in which the president’s party normally suffers a decline, Vice President Garner predicted the Republicans would pick up only thirty-seven seats in the House, a gain so small it could be regarded as “a complete victory” for the administration.66 Farley thought the party would hold its own and the results would be “about even”—a forecast FDR thought recklessly optimistic.67 Farley was closer than Garner, but both underestimated the strength of Roosevelt’s appeal. Contrary to the predictions of the most seasoned political pros, the Democrats won an additional twelve seats in the House of Representatives and gained nine in the Senate.*

  In the House, the Democratic majority increased from 310 to 322 (against 103 Republicans), and in the Senate the Democrats held 69 seats—5 more than a two-thirds majority.68 Never in the history of the Republican party had its percentage in either House been so low. In the statehouses and governor’s mansions across the nation the rout was equally great. When the dust settled from the 1934 election, the GOP retained only seven governorships, as opposed to thirty-nine for the Democrats and one each for the Progressives and Farmer-Laborites.

  In The New York Times, Arthur Krock said the New Deal had won “the most overwhelming victory in the history of American politics.” William Allen White proclaimed that FDR had been “all but crowned by the people.” William Randolph Hearst said simply, “The forgotten man does not forget.”69

  At the end of 1934 the recovery had yet to gain traction. The nation’s GDP registered a 17 percent increase over the dismal figures for 1932 and 1933, but national income was still little better than half of what it had been in 1929. And while more than 2 million persons had found jobs, the unemployment rate remained at an uncomfortable 21.7 percent.70 Yet as the November election results showed, the mood of the country was on the upswing. Broadway, which had dimmed its lights in 1933, had its best season in five years.71 Sixteen new plays (plus six new musicals) opened on the Great White Way, featuring a who’s who of theatrical talent: James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Jean Arthur, Walter Huston, Melvyn Douglas, Tallulah Bankhead, Judith Anderson, Claude Rains, and Ethel Merman. Clark Gable sent men’s underwear sales plunging when he removed his shirt and revealed a bare chest in It Happened One Night—for which he, Claudette Colbert, and director Frank Capra all won Academy Awards. Albert Einstein made his musical debut, playing second violin (Bach’s “Concerto for Two Violins”) in a benefit performance for displaced scientists in Nazi Berlin. In California, Ernest and Julio Gallo invested $5,900 to enter the wine business, and Sears, Roebuck commenced carrying contraceptive devices in its catalog.72

  The Seventy-fourth Congress, swept into office on an enormous wave of support for the New Deal, was more than ready to follow Roosevelt’s lead. First on the president’s agenda was a comprehensive social insurance program that would provide unemployment compensation and old-age and survivor benefits, as well as aid for dependent children and the handicapped. In June 1934, FDR had announced his intention to provide for social security but said he would wait until the new Congress convened before sending up a specific proposal.73 To draft that proposal, he appointed a special cabinet committee chaired by Secretary of Labor Perkins.* “Keep it simple,” Roosevelt told Perkins. “So simple that everybody will understand it.” The basic concept was universal coverage. “I see no reason why every child, from the day he is born, shouldn’t be a member of the social security system,” said FDR.

  When he begins to grow up, he should know he will have old-age benefits direct from the insurance system to which he will belong all his life. If he is out of work, he gets a benefit. If he is sick or crippled, he gets a benefit.… Cradle to the grave—from the cradle to the grave everyone ought to be in the social security system.74

  Frances Perkins said Roosevelt looked on social security as his personal project, and he knew that if it were going to be enacted he had to move quickly during the early days of the session. Members of Congress were spooked by the Townsend Plan, and FDR had to steal the march or be overwhelmed.

  The cabinet committee submitted its report to FDR on January 15, 1935, and two days later he sent the draft bill for social security to Congress.75 Roosevelt took no chances. The principal congressional advocates of social security were Robert Wagner in the Senate and David Lewis of Maryland in the House. But because the bill would go through the normal committee process, FDR insisted that the legislation be known as the Harrison-Doughton bill—for Mississippi’s Pat Harrison, who chaired the Senate Finance Committee, and Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina, who chaired the Ways and Means Committee in the House. Frances Perkins drew the unenviable task of reconciling Wagner and Lewis to Roosevelt’s decision.76

  From the beginning the scheme was self-funding, the contributions to be paid jointly by employers and employees. That was at FDR’s insistence. He instructed Perkins to ensure that no government contribution would be required. The plan must be actuarially sound. “It is almost dishonest,” said Roosevelt, “to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress of the United States to meet in 1980. We can’t do that. We can’t sell the United States short in 1
980 any more than in 1935.”77 Benefits would be proportional to a person’s earnings. In effect—and contrary to the rule in most modern countries, where governments provide the major funding for pension plans—America’s social security system would be freestanding: a property right, not a civil right.78 The downside of FDR’s insistence that social security pay its own way was the immediate adverse effect on the economy. To build the reserve fund from which to pay benefits required withdrawing money from workers’ wages—money that otherwise would be spent. Roosevelt understood that the payroll tax would be deflationary. But he was more concerned about what he called “legislative habits and prejudices.” “Those taxes were never a matter of economics,” FDR said later. “They are politics all the way through. We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”79

  Roosevelt’s concern for the legislative pecking order paid quick dividends. Harrison and Doughton shepherded the legislation through their committees, and the floor fight was led by Wagner in the Senate and Lewis in the House. Opposition was strongest in the business community. “The dangers are manifest,” said Alfred Sloan, the president of General Motors. “With unemployment insurance no one will work; with old age and survivor benefits no one will save; the result will be moral decay and financial bankruptcy.” “Never in the history of the world,” said Representative John Taber of New York, “has any measure been brought in here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.”80 In the procedural motions that preceded final passage, House Republicans voted almost unanimously against social security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19, fewer than half were prepared to go on record against. The final vote in the House of Representatives was a lopsided 371–33.

  The debate in the Senate played along similar lines. In both Houses concern focused on old-age pensions rather than unemployment compensation. The administration’s proposal “would take all the romance out of life,” said New Jersey’s A. Harry Moore. “We might as well take a child from the nursery, give him a nurse, and protect him from every experience life affords.”81 When Daniel Hastings of Delaware moved to delete pension coverage from the bill, 12 of the 19 Republicans voted in favor. They were tilting at windmills. When the Senate voted on June 19, social security sailed through, 76–6. Roosevelt signed the measure into law in an elaborate White House ceremony on August 14, 1935.82 Commemorative pens were presented to Harrison, Wagner, Doughton, Lewis, and Frances Perkins. FDR always regarded the Social Security Act as the cornerstone of the New Deal, said Miss Perkins. “I think he took greater satisfaction from it than from anything else he achieved on the domestic front.”83

  The Social Security Act of 1935 was far from perfect. Despite Roosevelt’s desire for universal coverage, only 60 percent of the labor force was initially insured. Farm laborers and domestics—two categories of workers who needed security most—were not covered, nor were teachers, nurses, and those who worked in firms employing fewer than ten people.* Benefits for other programs, such as unemployment compensation, aid to the handicapped, and support for dependent children, varied substantially from state to state.84 And the provisions for health care and housing that FDR had originally requested proved impossible to obtain. Nevertheless, passage of the act marked a watershed in American history. The responsibility of the nation toward its citizens was redefined. “If, as our Constitution tells us, our Federal Government was established among other things ‘to promote the general welfare,’ ” said FDR, “it is our plain duty to provide for that security upon which welfare depends.”85

  The second item on Roosevelt’s 1935 agenda was to curtail relief and find jobs for the unemployed. In his State of the Union message on January 4, FDR recommended “the orderly liquidation” of existing relief agencies and the adoption of a national plan to provide work for 3.5 million people currently on the dole. “The Federal Government,” said the president, “is the only governmental agency with sufficient power and credit to meet this situation.”86 Congress responded on April 8 with the largest appropriation in American history: $4.8 billion for Roosevelt to spend largely as he saw fit.87

  With the money in hand, the question for FDR was how to organize work relief. The choice was whether to rely on Harold Ickes and a monumental program of public works or turn to Hopkins who surely knew how to put money in circulation. The rivalry between Hopkins and Ickes to be top dog spending the $4.8 billion was intense. Ickes claimed Hopkins wanted to prime the pump with a fire hose; Hopkins called Ickes stubborn and self-righteous.88* Ultimately FDR turned to Hopkins. “Ickes is a good administrator,” the president told Donald Richberg (who had succeeded Hugh Johnson at the NRA), “but often too slow. Harry gets things done. I am going to give this job to Harry.”89 Roosevelt hived off about a quarter of the appropriation for Ickes, gave a small amount to Agriculture secretary Wallace, but awarded the bulk to Hopkins. On May 6, 1935, the president issued an executive order establishing the Works Progress Administration (WPA), “which shall be responsible to the President for the honest, efficient, speedy, and coordinated execution of the work relief program as a whole, and for the execution of that program in such manner as to move from the relief rolls to work on such projects or in private employment the maximum number of persons in the shortest time possible.”90 Hopkins was appointed director; his mandate was to put people to work.

  For Hopkins, administering an ongoing work relief effort proved far more complicated than managing the spurt of seasonal jobs provided during the winter of 1933. Federal contracting regulations intervened, paperwork increased exponentially, and on-site supervision became exceedingly time-consuming. Hopkins’s small but dedicated staff was initially overwhelmed. Assistance came out of the blue from an unlikely source: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

  “Mr. Hopkins was having a great difficulty getting underway,” said General Lucius D. Clay, later military governor of Germany. “And I went over with General [Edward M.] Markham [chief of engineers] to see Mr. Hopkins, and said, ‘We would like to lend to you, in each of your regions, a capable, competent Engineer officer who would bring with him a capable and competent chief clerk who knows how to disperse and set up public funds, just to get you going.’ ”

  Clay said Hopkins was very suspicious at first but accepted the offer, and the Corps sent many of its best officers to assist the WPA: Colonel Brehon Somervell, who would later head the Army’s entire logistical effort in World War II, took over the troubled WPA district in New York; Colonel Francis Harrington became Hopkins’s own deputy; Colonel Donald Connolly headed the program in Los Angeles. “All around the country we provided the basic, experienced staff in knowing how to put government money to work under the proper controls, to let Mr. Hopkins get underway.”*

  The Corps of Engineers’ support for WPA was scarcely disinterested. Just as the CCC program brought many Army officers into contact with the New Deal, the WPA gave a fresh lease on life to the Corps in its battle with Secretary Ickes for control of the nation’s rivers and harbors. “You’ve got to remember that you’re always fighting for position,” said Clay. “It seemed to me that the best way we could establish ourselves was to make ourselves helpful. Frankly, I would have to admit that if we hadn’t felt that Mr. Ickes was trying to give us trouble, we might not have thought of going to Mr. Hopkins.” And as Clay—whose father had been a three-term U.S. senator from Georgia—knew very well, in Washington one hand washes the other. “In our subsequent conflicts with Mr. Ickes over flood control, Mr. Hopkins was definitely on our side.”91

  In the first year of its existence the WPA put more than 3 million people to work, and over a span of eight years it employed upward of 8.5 million while pumping some $11 billion into the economy. Projects ranged fr
om make-work undertakings of little lasting value to the construction of schools (5,900), hospitals (2,500), parks (8,000), playgrounds (13,000), and highways (572,000 miles). The WPA restored the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, constructed Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mount Hood, and ran a pack-horse library in the hills of Kentucky.92 Hopkins funneled money into the arts and entertainment as well. The Federal Music Project sponsored dozens of symphony orchestras, jazz groups, and native ensembles. The Federal Theatre Project brought plays, vaudeville acts, and puppet shows to many who had never seen a stage production. In four years WPA-supported theater played to audiences that totaled more than 30 million. The Federal Art Project employed at one time or another some 9,000 of the 40,000 registered artists and craftsmen in the country to teach their trade, restore objects of art, and paint murals (often controversial) in public buildings. “Some of it was good,” said FDR, “some of it not so good, but all of it native, human, eager, and alive: All of it painted in their own country, and painted about things that they know and look at often and have touched and loved.”93 Many of the artists had little talent, but the program also gave a helping hand to some who would achieve international renown, such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Perhaps the most successful cultural endeavor was the Federal Writers Project, which put writers to work preparing the American Guide Series, an encyclopedic and still useful set of guidebooks to each of the states and major cities. The writers included Conrad Aiken, John Cheever, and Richard Wright, whose “Uncle Tom’s Children” won Story magazine’s first prize for a story by an FWP writer.94 The outpouring of literature under the sponsorship of the WPA was “one of the most remarkable phenomena of the era of crisis,” wrote the critic Alfred Kazin. “Whatever form this literature took … it testified to an extraordinary national self-scrutinizing.… Never before did a nation seem so hungry for news of itself.”95