-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 27, 2007 9:56:06 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Conservative Spin on the Failure of Cartel Corporate-
Statism (Fascism)
Those who have fought the power of the modern State and attempted
to resist the onslaught of modern liberalism have had little time
to write or even to read the history of their own struggle. And the
literature is often less than adequate or nonexistent.
Almost forgotten today, of all those who have fought against
collectivism, is the American Liberty League, which in the midst of
the Great Depression dared to attack the whole philosophical basis
of the New Deal. It was perhaps the best-financed and the most
professionally run and star-studded anti-big-government
organization ever to come down the pike.
It was also a gigantic flop.
And that is probably all that most people now know of it. Not much
has been written about it since—except pejoratively. Conservatives,
who do not usually retrieve their wounded, have shown little
interest in its history. But the past—as conservatives, above all
others, should acknowledge-—is instructive. And we who struggle for
liberty today should elicit and pay heed to its lessons.
Liberty League Origins
Who were the men making up this organization? There was, of course,
its chairman, Jouett Shouse, a GM executive, former chairman of the
Executive Committee of the Democratic Party, and former president
of the Association against the Prohibition Amendment. Then there
were Alfred E. Smith and John W. Davis, former Democratic
presidential candidates; Congressman James W. Wadsworth (who would
eventually become the father-in-law of Sen. Stuart Symington);
Nathan Miller, a director of U.S. Steel and a one-time governor of
New York; John Jakob Raskob, another GM executive and former
Democratic national chairman; Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., head of General
Motors; Ernest T. Weir of Weirton Steel; Dr. Samuel Hardey Church,
head of the Carnegie Institute; David A. Reed, former Republican
senator from Pennsylvania; Hal Roach, motion picture producer;
Sewell Avery of Montgomery Ward; Joseph B. Ely, former Democratic
governor of Massachusetts; Howard Pew of Sun Oil; James Beck,
constitutional authority; and the Du Pont brothers—Irenee, Lammot,
and Pierre.
So this was clearly not some fringe organization. It was wealthy
and it was respectable—eminently respectable. At its height it
claimed the allegiance of 124,856 members, and it sincerely
believed that it could topple the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt.
When the formation of the League was announced on August 23, 1934,
its public goals of nonpartisanship and constitutionality were
unveiled, without any mention of the New Deal. Yet everyone knew
what its eventual goal must be, and the White House and its liberal
allies launched a preemptive strike on the League. New Deal
congressmen jumped to the attack, and the battle was on.
The League could in part be traced to Shouse’s old Association
Against the Prohibition Amendment. Raskob and the DuPonts had also
been active in it, and its emphasis on local self-government
resembled later Liberty League doctrine. The antipathy of this
group to Roosevelt was of long standing. Just a few days after
Roosevelt’s nomination, Raskob wrote to Shouse, “When one thinks of
the Democratic Party being headed by such radicals as Roosevelt,
Huey Long, Hearst, McAdoo, and Senators Wheeler and Dill, as
against the fine, conservative talent in the Party as represented
by such men as you, Governor Byrd, Governor Smith, Carter Glass,
John W. Davis, Governor Cox, Pierre S. Du Pont, Governor Ely, and
others too numerous to mention, it takes all one’s courage and
faith not to lose faith completely.”
The League, according to historian James Patterson, author of
Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal, was partially the
result of urging for a coalition of conservatives of both parties
to defeat Roosevelt. It was reported that such conservative
Democratic senators as Glass, Byrd, Gore, Bailey, and Clark were
mildly in favor of such action; but partisan politics being what
they are, little came of the idea for a formal coalition.
Emphasis on Rights
“The particular business and objects” of the league, said its
articles of incorporation, “shall be to defend and uphold the
Constitution of the United States and to gather and disseminate
information that (1) will teach the necessity of respect for the
rights of persons and property as fundamental to every form of
government and (2) will teach the duty of government to encourage
and protect individual and group initiative and enterprise, to
foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property, and to
preserve the ownership and lawful use of property when acquired.”
The reason for this emphasis on economic freedom was simple to
understand, explained one of the League’s pamphlets. “There is one
very clear lesson to be learned from history— namely, that
governmental disregard for property rights soon leads to disregard
for other rights. A bureaucracy or despotism that robs citizens of
their property does not like to be haunted by its victims.”
Thus the League of necessity found itself in a basic policy of
opposition to the New Deal. Although it could support such
Roosevelt measures as the Economy Act, his veto of the Bonus bill,
or his
Opposition to Senator Hugo Black’s plan for a 30-hour work week, it
almost always a nay-saying role—as in its position on the National
Labor Relations Act, which it thought to be based on an improper
use of the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause and an
intrusion on the right of contract; the Guffey-Snyder Bituminous
Coal Act; the Potato Control Act of 1935 (“flagrantly
unconstitutional. another step toward Socialism”); the Agricultural
Adjustment Act, which they termed “economic and political quackery”
and which the Supreme Court found unconstitutional; the Public
Utility Holding Company Act (“a calamitous blow”); and the Bank-
head Farmer’s Home Bill (which “would produce a government
sustained peasantry”).
A New Ideology
In summing up the League’s philosophy, liberal author George
Wolfskill (The Revolt of the Conservatives) outlined a remarkably
coherent libertarian position. They believed, he said, that the New
Deal was a threat to the Constitution and represented a danger of
tyranny via centralization; that it was based on coercion, deceit,
and false economic principles: that recovery was in fact retarded
by government intervention; that government agricultural controls
were “a cure worse than the disease”; that the New Deal combined
aspects of socialist and fascist economic systems; that private
enterprise was being damaged; that deficit financing and high
spending threatened the nation with inflation; and that the banking
community was now under the political control of the federal
government.
Statements by American Liberty League spokesmen were of a solid
anti-statist cast. Howard Pew lashed into planned economies,
charging that they lead to “lower living standards, national decay
and the sacrifice of liberty... whether the dictator is a usurper
by force or is elected under the forms of popular government.”
Journalist Neil Carothers charged: “The materials for a disastrous
inflation have been built up, and no one knows when these
inflammable materials will be set ablaze. Our currency measures
have disorganized foreign trade, cruelly embarrassed the gold
standard countries of Europe, deepened the misery of China, and
retarded recovery the world over.”
As to what this New Deal philosophy was—fascist, socialist, or
communist—the Liberty League was unsure, but it clearly sensed that
a new and unpleasant ideology was taking hold of America, a
philosophy that not even the New Deal’s most fervent supporters
really fathomed.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that President Roosevelt is a
Communist,” said Al Smith in his last speech of the 1936 campaign
against FDR. “That is not so. Or don’t let anyone tell you he is a
Socialist. That is not so. He is neither a Communist nor a Socialist
—any more than I am—but something has taken place in this country—
there is a certain kind of foreign ‘ism’ crawling over this
country. What it is I don’t know. What its first name will be when
it’s christened I haven’t the slightest idea. But I know it is
here, and the sin about it is that [Roosevelt] doesn’t seem to know
it.”
League Activities
The popularity of FDR was formidable, but the Liberty League was
well manned to carry on its struggle. Its headquarters occupied 31
rooms in the National Press Building, and its full-time staff
exceeded 50. At this time the entire staff of the Republican
National Committee numbered but 17 individuals. The League soon had
contributing members in all 48 states and most of the territories
as well. State organizations of the League were quick in forming.
By 1936 there were 20 functioning state branches, and nine more
were in the planning stages.
In terms of finances, various studies of the League’s operations
have shown that in its six-year history it solicited and disbursed
almost $1.2 million, most of which was spent in the short period
between its founding in August 1934 and the presidential election
of 1936. These totals did not include funds handled at the state or
local level, and of course it should be borne in mind that these
were pre-inflation dollars. In the calendar year 1935 the American
Liberty League raised as much money as the Democratic and
Republican parties combined. Most of it came from a handful of
generous contributors—approximately 30 percent from members of the
Du Pont family.
How then were these large sums expended? Upkeep of the offices was
a large expense, as were salaries. For example, Jouett Shouse, as
the League’s president, received $54,000 per year in salary and
expenses.
George Wolfskill described the League’s pamphlet series as “the
most effective feature” of their educational campaign. Between
August 1934 and September 1936, 135 of these broadsides were
issued. According to Wolfskill, they “represented perhaps the most
concise and thorough summary of conservative political thought
since the Federalist papers.” Many of them were reprints of
speeches delivered by League spokesmen. Others were prepared by the
League’s staff of highly trained researchers. Five million copies
of this pamphlet series a staggering total—were eventually
distributed to the public. As a matter of general practice, copies
were sent to over 350 American newspapers, resulting in 200,000
articles either by or about the League.
Supplementary to the pamphlet series was a more simply written
leaflet series, usually of a more popular tone. Only 24 of these
were issued. Also published by the League was a monthly bulletin.
Of a different nature were the five reports issued by the Lawyer’s
Committee, which were selectively distributed and which studied the
constitutionality of New Deal measures.
Instituted in early 1936 was a special League news service for
rural weekly and small daily papers. Before the series was
discontinued, it had supplied editorials and new stories to more
than 1,600 newspapers. Still another facet of the campaign was
radio. Many speeches, such as Al Smith’s famous address at
Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, were sent out over the airwaves.
That speech by Smith was the League’s most famous single moment.
Over 2,000 members of the League assembled for dinner and heard him
denounce the New Deal’s usurpation of power from business, state
government, and ordinary citizens. Yet many felt, as Postmaster
General Jim Farley did, that the dinner was “one of the major
tactical blunders of our time” because of the opulence of the affair
—opulence that contrasted harshly with the realities of the Great
Depression.
Despite what the apologists for the New Deal said of those who
attended this gala affair, the words that Al Smith hurled at
Franklin Roosevelt still had the ring of truth about them.
“What are these dangers I see?” asked Smith. “The first is the
arraignment of class against class. It has been freely predicted
that if we were ever to have civil strife again in this country it
would come from the appeal to passion and prejudices that comes
from demagogues that would incite one class of our people against
another.
“In my time I have met some good and bad industrialists; I have met
some good and bad financiers, but I have also met some good and bad
laborers, and this I know, that permanent prosperity is dependent
on capital and labor a-like.”
Target: Election ‘36
The League had been gearing up for the election of 1936 since its
formation two years earlier. Some of its efforts were directed
toward the Democratic Party itself. Attempts were made to secure
either uncommitted or anti-New Deal delegations to the 1936
Democratic convention in Philadelphia. For the most part these
attempts were unsucessful.
In a John Ashbrook-like attempt to change the course of his party’s
leftward slant, Henry Breckinridge, under-secretary of war in the
Wilson administration, actually entered the New Jersey, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland primaries against Roosevelt but was
soundly trounced in each challenge. A telegram sent to the
Philadelphia convention by Smith, former Secretary of State
Banibridge Colby, James A. Reed, Ely, and Joseph E. Cohalan asking
it to reject Roosevelt had no perceptible effect on the gathering.
Some rumors floated about that the League was behind the third-
party effort of the Union Party of Father Coughlin, William Lemke,
Francis Townsend, and Gerald L. K. Smith, but in point of fact
their ideologies were strikingly dissimilar, and no evidence was
ever actually produced to prove such an allegation.
The main thrust of the League in 1936 was to back the presidential
candidacy of Republican Governor Alf Landon. A half million dollars
of League money was earmarked for his campaign. An organization
entitling itself the National Jeffersonian Democrats was formed in
early August to administer a “disciplinary defeat of Franklin
Roosevelt.” They estimated they would divert three million
Democratic votes from Roosevelt. Besides these efforts, Liberty
League members made large contributions individually to Landon.
“Without Liberty League money,” Republican National Chairman John
D. Hamilton would later admit, “we wouldn’t have had a national
headquarters.”
As a guiding force behind the GOP, however, it did open up the
Landon candidacy to some spirited Democratic criticism. Even the
supposedly conservative Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi called
the League “a group of griping and disgruntled politicians...
masquerading as patriots but who are in reality apostles of greed.”
Most New Deal advocates followed the same sophisticated drum-beat,
and the constant din was beginning to take its toll.
“The strategy was simple (and as it turned out surprisingly
successful),” wrote George Wolfskill and John A. Hudson in All But
the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Critics, 1933-1939:
“Make the Liberty League synonymous with social and economic
privilege, associate it closely with the Republican Party, then
attack the Republicans by attacking the League. Once synonymity
between the Liberty League and predatory wealth was established,
the League could be attacked both directly by name and indirectly
by attacking ‘economic royalists.’”
Al Smith’s prophecy of New Deal tactics had come true, but it was
of small comfort. The effectiveness of the Liberty League was fast
dissolving. By September, it was beginning to show signs of
internal dissension. Thoughts of discontinuing the League surfaced,
and when the returns came in in November and a conservative rout
had become apparent, the die was cast against the American Liberty
League.
After that the League closed down all of its public operations and
became a mere research office, analyzing legislation for members of
Congress. It lingered on the Washington scene until 1940. The Du
Ponts withdrew funding and it died.
Why the League Failed
The League expired in large part because of the high and false
hopes that it could administer one solid knockout blow to Franklin
Roosevelt in the election of 1936. When it failed to do this—and
failed by an incredibly large margin—its members gave up.
In all their planning they had failed to realize what a large
impact the Depression had had on the American people and the
immense popularity of Roosevelt’s relief measures.
Beyond this overwhelming factor, however, other things went against
the League. Their National Lawyer’s Committee was tarred and
feathered, charged with inciting to violate the law when it advised
that some New Deal legislation was unconstitutional. General
Smedley Darlington Butler, in secret—but leaked—testimony, tied
together the Liberty League, the American Legion, and a coterie of
native fascists in a bizarre plot to march on Washington and make a
puppet out of Roosevelt. This absurd tale—unbelievable as it was—
nevertheless did little to bolster the organization’s reputation.
Nor did the successful guilt-by-association tactic of linking the
group to certain racist Southern States’ Rights groups via the
connection of mutual contributors.
All in all, though, nothing was as powerful as the emotional issue
of the Great Depression. Typical of the highly charged sentiments
turned on the League were these of Senator Joseph T. Robinson: “I
think you people read of the accounts of the severe winter through
which we have just passed. As the Liberty League implies, think how
demoralizing it must have been, with the thermometer ten degrees
below zero, to have Uncle Sam supplying funds to repair the damaged
shoes of children who were forced to trudge back and forth to
school. The Du Pont brothers must have been shocked when Shouse
showed them that classic example of undermining the moral fiber of
children on relief.”
As the chairman of the Republican National Committee, John D.
Hamilton, said after the Landon debacle: “The Lord himself couldn’t
have beaten Roosevelt in 1936, much less the Liberty League.” Had
the organization itself realized that in advance and not fallen
prey to believing its own press releases and Literary Digest polls,
it could have survived, setting itself up as a continuing
educational organization in an era in which one of its stature was
badly needed.
But although the League was lampooned as simply a rich man’s club
for the protection of corporate wealth, its philosophical
underpinnings were in fact not that meager. Its organizers and
members saw a threat to American liberty, and not only to their own
prestige or wealth.
Its evident sincerity has prompted liberal yet knowledgeable
students of it grudgingly to admit that there was more to the
American Liberty League than economic royalism. Robert Comerford,
in an unpublished doctoral dissertation, put it quite well: “Theirs
was the message of old — that man needed more than material comfort
in order to survive and mature as a free agent. The questions they
raised were those of an ultimate character. They reflected more
than the mere self-interest of the moment.”
Reason Magazine January 1978
Note the underplayed subtext: the modern Republican Party
originated in the initially conspiratorial class-reaction against
FDR's choice of "socialism" (federal regulation of banking in order
to direct funds toward the public good during the Great Depression)
over the alternative of fascism (which Wall Street's banking elite
strongly supported and was financiing abroad, first in Mussolini's
Italy and later in Hitler's Germany).
The "party line" even at that early period emphasized the
"fundamental," "universal" right to own "private property" (which
no one except the upper class could afford, thanks to rapacious
bankers and corporate slavedrivers), decried "government
intervention" in "free enterprise" (which prevented rich
industrialists from treating working people as slaves with no
rights), and manipulated hope: "YOU TOO can get rich."
The super-rich wanted the government run by and for corporations,
not "by the people, for the people."
New Deal Nemesis:
The Liberty League was star-studded, wealthy, professional -- and a
flop
by David Pietrusza
http://www.davidpietrusza.com/Liberty-League.html
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