The Rise of the New Deal

IT IS a credit to the academic training available in America that two young, able, imaginative, hardworking, and meticulous historians, both now at Harvard as professors, have within fifteen years of Franklin Roosevelt’s death established and published so much of the living reality — the economic situation, the political forces of the time, the forceful personalities, and the dynamic actions —which contributed to the New Deal.

For neither Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the author of The Coming of the New Deal, the second volume in a series of four to be called The Age of Roosevelt, nor Frank Freidel, the author of a fullscale biography of Roosevelt, had any actual participation in the period about which they are writing. Both were mere boys in 1933, when Roosevelt was elected, with their years of education still ahead of them while the stirring events took place. Freidel, writing a biography in several volumes, is working from records, writings, and interviews with Roosevelt’s associates. He is bringing into focus a clear, objective picture of the man and the times that formed him, while Schlesinger goes zealously and constructively at a vivid explanation of the events, the measures, the politics, and the means by which this man effected great changes in American life. It is characteristic of these two scholars that each admires the work of the other and that they dwell in peace.

The Coming of the New Deal is an amazing book. Mr. Schlesinger has, with the creative artist’s skill, put a life-giving touch to the record of a relatively recent period of American life when disaster, fear, and despair paralyzed the country, to be followed in a few days or hours after the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President by hope, excitement, activity, life, and faith. Schlesinger has succeeded in giving the sense of urgency, of haste, of intelligence, and of dedication with which the New Dealers attacked the problems of reviving the nation after the long and deep economic depression which had crushed it and its gods in 1929.

The first volume of his series of four traced the forces and events which led to and caused what the title calls The Crisis of the Old Order, and it was excellent. This second book is better, particularly in the sense of life and movement. Historical training is a severe discipline, and Schlesinger’s book is a credit to that discipline, but the value to the reading public is that it is written as drama is written. One of the most engaging of his techniques is the thumbnail sketch of each administrator, adviser, or political leader which accompanies his first appearance on the scene, beginning with William H. Woodin, the Secretary of the Treasury, who dealt with the banking crisis of closed banks and ruined credit.

Woodin, whose pointed chin and delicate triangular face inevitably provoked the adjective, “elfin,” hid strength beneath his guileless surface. The stories about him were disarming but not particularly relevant to the banking crisis; he was addicted to bad puns; he liked to strum the zither or the guitar; he was the composer of “Raggedy Ann’s Sunny Songs.” Sixty-four years old, in poor health, soft-spoken and self-effacing, he seemed hardly the man to dominate a melee of panic-stricken bankers. Still the crisis found him clearheaded. He demanded what he called “swift and staccato action”; he was ready to accept responsibility and enforce decision; and he moved through turbulence with serenity.

The prologue is not to be omitted even by a serious historical reader. It sets the pattern for the whole period. The first hundred days, in which President Roosevelt had his greatest test and his greatest successes: the closing of the banks and their reopening under a law passed by Congress in exactly eight hours; the economy message to Congress; the message calling for a modification of the Volstead Act to legalize the sale of beer and light wines and the immediate passing of an act to that effect; the first of the fireside chats to the American people, in which Roosevelt explained the banking situation in words “that even the bankers understood”; the visit of the second “Bonus Army” (veterans) seeking an increase of pensions and Roosevelt’s easy, cordial handling of that with kindness, coffee, conferences, and tickets home; these hundred days brought relief to the country and applause and approval for Roosevelt. All through this prologue the author has painted a picture of the times of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the reaction of the nation to him in enthusiastic support.

The prologue sets the stage. The author plunges into the meat of the book: the development of a farm policy and the emergence of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Here Schlesinger explains, in simple, lucid style, the plan and purpose of plowing under the crops and slaughtering the little pigs, which horrified many Americans. The fact that such a program was designed to meet a severe emergency is made clear, as, indeed, are the many complex problems in the agricultural economy of the United States. The tensions and conflicts within the Agriculture Department are vividly described, and “the purge,” so disturbing at the time, is accepted as inevitable. It is unfortunate that Mr. Schlesinger was tempted to give such a long analysis of the character and personality of Henry Wallace, the then Secretary of Agriculture. It is heavily loaded with Freudian interpretations and is presumptuous, cruel, and of questionable delicacy. It is unnecessary and mars the story.

As ONE who participated in many of the programs and projects described in The Coming of the New Deal, this reviewer recognizes that she never had a perfect understanding of all that was going on. One became deeply involved in one part of the events and was almost unaware of either the internal disputes or the main objectives of another part. This book answers many questions.

Mr. Schlesinger has limited himself to the discussion of such aspects of each problem as occurred between 1933 and 1935, which he sets as the principal part of the New Deal period. Both the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act, promising as they were and full of many accomplishments, were brought to an end by the Supreme Court, which decided that at least some aspects of the cases presented were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decisions and further developments on both the AAA and NRA will be dealt with, presumably, in the next volume.

The section on the industrial problem includes discussion of the organizing drive of the United Mine Workers early in 1933, the personality and bizarre methods of John L. Lewis, the abortive attempt to organize the automobile workers under General Johnson, as well as the administration of the NRA. The full two years’ experience of the NRA from 1933 to 1935 is covered, including the inner squabbles over the brilliant and often unsound operations of Hugh Johnson. Even his picturesque language is thrown in for color. The drawing together of the more ambitious and restless members of labor unions, the rise of Sidney Hillman, and a thumbnail sketch of his associations in the world of crime, all take their place in the procession. The opposition of many employers after the first six months, the rise of the voice of labor in the NRA, the conflict inside the labor movement and the appearance of the CIO, the appointment by General Johnson of a board to settle labor-management disputes, and the genesis within the board (including Senator Wagner’s experience) of the later National Labor Relations Act and Board are laid out.

The dramatic quality of the NRA and its timing often overshadowed for the public all other programs being carried on for revival of the economy in America. Many still think of the NRA as the New Deal. Schlesinger makes clear the facts and the separation and puts his finger accurately on the great number of social advances which were accomplished in a brief time. He enumerates the social adjustments long needed which could not have been achieved by more orthodox methods. The shortening of hours of labor and the setting of a higher standard of wages, the abolition of child labor as a factor in industry, the recognition and putting aside of certain obvious bad practices in business as unfair, and the emergence of a planning capacity in both employer groups and labor groups are cited as social advances. All these have continued beyond the life of the NRA.

Mr. Schlesinger’s book also gives a clear explanation of the monetary crises which afflicted the country during this period. The meaning of the gold standard in terms of international trade and the necessity of deciding promptly whether to cling to this standard in the United States — thereby giving up hope of expanding internal credit and a large public works program for relief of unemployment, and of accepting the continuance of falling prices and further deflation —this sequence is well described, and the conflicting advice and the reason for it are clear. Roosevelt, by deciding to go off gold, greatly modified the possibilities of success of the International Monetary and Economic Conference in London. Some important bankers, however, agreed with Roosevelt that it was the only practical course. J. P. Morgan and Russell Leffingwell endorsed it. The attempts at remonetization of silver and the strong inflationist view in Congress and elsewhere served to confuse the issue, and Roosevelt, who was “bored by the money question,” tended to take it lightly.

All these matters were going on at once, not separately. Schlesinger’s list of the bills passed and measures debated in the first hundred days of F.D.R.’s Administration is evidence of the speed with which new solutions to long-term economic problems and emergencies were put into effect. The NRA experiment, the AAA, and monetary policy, though looming large in Schlesinger’s study, do not obscure for him the importance of other efforts to save the American economy.

The chapter on relief, with its many problems, its effect on the economy, the public reaction, and the enormous benefit to the recipients, is sympathetically and intelligently written. Mr. Schlesinger weaves together a rich tapestry of the ideas, experiments, and action involved in the effort to overcome rural poverty. The Civilian Conservation Corps; the struggle for control of the Forestry Service, with Secretary Ickes displaying himself as a selfish schemer; the revival and expansion of the conservation movement; the recognition of the drastic effects of erosion on the land; the somewhat romantic back-to-the-land movement, with the subsistence homesteads (Arthurdale, Granger, and others); the quiet expansion of relief work under Hopkins in rural areas; the eventual emergence of the Resettlement Administration; the discovery of the desperate plight of some tenant farmers and sharecroppers and the violent local reaction against them; the congressional moves to accomplish something in the way of reform and relief; the Farm Security Act — all these are part of the picture.

The author attempts to give a true description of the man who was President, who was the force and inspiration of this new approach to government in the days of the New Deal. “A tough, forceful and still profoundly enigmatic President” emerged, says the author. Roosevelt’s air of relaxation was, perhaps, a method of confusing those who would pry behind his mask. Some thought he deliberately concealed the processes of his mind. “This area Roosevelt plainly conceived was no one’s business save his own.” Certainly, he protected his own interior privacy. Amiable and talkative in a light way, he did not wear his heart on his sleeve or display his mentality in a glass showcase for the curious to observe. “I keep myself to myself,” he used to say. Although he talked a great deal, he rarely talked about himself.

Obviously, he enjoyed some communication with himself and his inner life. What else could account for his long relaxing sessions in fishing and with his stamps, lonely avocations to those who do not have this talent? Schlesinger handles this aspect of the man with delicacy. “If nothing ever upset him, if his confidence seemed illimitable, it was because he believed with reverence and humility that he was doing his best in the eyes of God, and that God was blessing his purpose, that he was at one with the benign forces of the universe.” He was for life and the future, and that won him the trust of the people.

This is a fine book and a useful one. The author has done his duty to scholarship and to letters.