Men Against Myths : The Progressive Response 9780313003004, 9780275968885

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Men Against Myths

Men Against Myths The Progressive Response FRED GREENBAUM

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Greenbaum, Fred, 1930– Men against myths : the progressive response / Fred Greenbaum. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–96888–X (alk. paper) 1. United States—Politics and government—1901–1953. 2. Progressivism (United States politics)—History—20th century. 3. Politicians—United States—Biography. 4. Capitalism—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. E743.G738 2000 973.91'092'2—dc21 99–055225 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright 娀 2000 by Fred Greenbaum All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99–055225 ISBN: 0–275–96888–X First published in 2000 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America TM

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright Acknowledgments The author and publisher are grateful for permission to reproduce portions of the following copyrighted material: William E. Borah Collection, Bainbridge Colby Collection, William Gibbs McAdoo Collection, and George W. Norris Collection, The Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Hiram Johnson Papers (BANC MSS C-B 581); The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The Edward P. Costigan Papers, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book, and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions.

To Emma and Sophie May they grow into a more equitable and compassionate world

Contents 1.

Introduction: Power and Myth

1

2.

George Norris: Pragmatism

7

3.

William E. Borah: The Wisdom of Our Fathers

53

4.

Hiram Johnson: Isolationist

97

5.

William Gibbs McAdoo: Business Promoter as Politician

131

6.

Bainbridge Colby: Conservative as Progressive

153

7.

Edward P. Costigan: Urban Progressive

171

8.

Progressives: An Analysis

193

9.

Power at the Millennium

201

Selected Bibliography

211

Index

219

Chapter 1

Introduction: Power and Myth IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS CHAOS! Thus, the myth of creation begins. After epic battles, order reigns; a chief god presides over an ordered society: the Babylonian Marduk, the Egyptian Ra, the Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter, the Vedic Indra, the Hindu Vishnu. These myths sanctified the social stratification of ancient societies and gave credence to their rulers, who often claimed descent from philandering gods and goddesses. Even the relatively democratic camaraderie of Jesus and his disciples is transposed by an ordered society into a heavenly hierarchy. The truth of myths is irrelevant; what is important is that they are perceived to be true and that people are motivated or controlled by them. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, doubted the details of the Olympic myths but felt that some truth had been perceived, that the divine pervades the whole of nature. In his Reflections on Violence, George Sorel dismissed as unimportant the validity of myths; instead he believed that they played a powerful role in motivating and sustaining movements: the Christian myth of the struggle with Satan, the Marxist myth of catastrophic revolution, Greek glory, the myth of the Napoleonic soldier of ‘‘immortal deeds,’’ and, of utmost concern to him, the anarcho-syndicalist myth of the General Strike. What was important was that without a myth ‘‘accepted by masses, one may go on talking of revolts indefinitely, without ever provoking any revolutionary movement.’’ Of even greater moment historically, a ruling class is secure as long as the myths that justify its rule are pervasive. If you control the minds of the ruled, minimal force is necessary to continue to control their bodies. When these myths lose their hold (for example, when Enlightenment ideas undermined an ordered society based on serfdom and servitude), the rulers have lost ‘‘the mandate of heaven.’’

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For longer than historical time the wealth of rulers, even in democratic Athens, rested upon the labor of slaves. ‘‘There are some persons qualified intellectually to form projects, and these are natural rulers or natural masters,’’ Aristotle wrote in his Politics, ‘‘while there are others qualified physically to carry them out and these are subjects or natural slaves, so that the interests of master and slave are coincident.’’ The myth of natural superiority and inferiority, of the predetermination of heredity, has justified various forms of human subjugation, whether based on status or gender. And, sometime between the ninth and eleventh centuries in the Arab world, slavery began to be associated with color as procurement of slaves from other than sub-Saharan Africa became uncertain. These justifications for slavery converged in the antebellum American South and merged with ideas of Aristocratic honor. Along with the competing Jeffersonian vision that democracy could only prevail in a society of yeomen, of small independent landholders, these myths were overrun by the corporate capitalist social order that emerged from the Civil War. A dominant new mythology did not eliminate all the old myths. The concept of an ordered society remained, now based on wealth rather than birth, a standard already well established in the West. The primacy of property rights became even more prominent. Daniel Webster’s ‘‘harmony of interests’’ trickled down. Color and ethnicity remained a social determinant. Yet, capitalist mythology overwhelmed earlier pervasive systems where they had once held sway. This new mythology was drawn from many sources: from the renaissance of capitalism in Italy; from Enlightenment efforts to uncover natural laws governing human behavior as immutable as the Newtonian laws governing the cosmos, particularly in the field of economics (though, there, chaos theory would have been more applicable); from evolutionary biology; and from the myths that emerged from the settlement of the West. Like earlier ideologies it seemed to have just enough factual basis to be believable, unless it was subjected to critical evaluation. If there were eternal laws of economics, then there could be no interference in their operation. There was magic in the marketplace, transmuted through infallible enlightened self-interest, while an invisible hand guided capital to its most efficient investment. In classical theory this precluded protective tariffs. In its practical American application, where individual tariff schedules could be 100% with an overall average of 57%, folklore proclaimed that internal competition would reduce prices to the lowest level compatible with an American standard of living. Unions interfered with the iron law of wages, which postulated that wages always tended toward subsistence and could not exceed that level in the long run; unions could not help, but could hurt workers by distorting natural laws and reducing production and employment (overlooking the stimulus of a mass market created by higher wages and ignoring that income is related to power, not market). Prices

Introduction: Power and Myth

3

were determined by the law of supply and demand (except in the money supply, where value could only be set by miraculous gold); even in classical theory this required that no producer produce enough to affect supply and that no purchaser be large enough to affect demand, a condition possibly achieved only in agriculture, and maybe not even there. Above all, government could not intervene in the economy to regulate business activity; on the other hand, government should intercede with infrastructure, huge land grants, subsidies, protection against the actions of organized workers, legislation and judicial decisions favorable to corporations, particularly one decision that created a fiction that corporations were persons, entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection from actions by states, and another that permitted the traditional governmental right of eminent domain to be used to remove homes and businesses, not for a public project, but to meet the needs of private corporations. A capitalist myth system replaced that of aristocracy, religion and traditional subsistence agriculture (never much practiced in the United States). In this system, material or economic progress was now the measure of success, the primary goal in life across the political spectrum. This was achieved by savings, investment and efficient work. Social stability remained necessary, for all interests harmoniously coincided with those of capitalist leaders. The test of ability was competitive earnings; therefore, the business elite was more capable than other men. These men were the product of rugged individualism, frontier style. Consequently, business organization could not be democratic. Clear lines of authority descended from this natural elite, based on sanctions of ownership or competitive bureaucratic success. Business was unlike government; government bureaucrats lacked business acumen and should not intervene. But government should be businesslike and balance the budget. Unfortunately, governmental budgets were not like business counterparts. When business increased its assets, expenditures exceeded income, but its books were balanced; somehow this was not true in the government. Corporate expenditure was private and could not be investigated; government expenditure had to be closely observed. Government waste, favoritism and corruption burdened the taxpayer; business waste, corruption and favoritism was private, even though it meant higher prices to the same taxpayer. Charity by government destroyed initiative by the recipient; private and corporate benefactors were a blessing for the poor. Dependence upon a business organization for a career fostered initiative and independence; dependence on government for a career stifled these virtues. Government subsidy of transport construction and business increased national product; government subsidy for farms and housing distorted and hampered the economy. Capitalist ideology maintained the folklore that a bankrupt company would surrender its property to creditors like ordinary citizens. In fact, corporate assets include intangibles as well as physical plant: its name, good

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will, customers. The failed business is allowed to reorganize with high fees for reorganizing lawyers. This mythology was reinforced and enhanced by popular literature. In 119 books with such titles as Luck and Pluck, Ragged Dick, and Tattered Tom, Horatio Alger broadcast the legend of rags to riches that still permeates American thought. Orphaned boys were taken off the streets by a benefactor, given an entry-level job, and by hard work and dedication made their way through the corporate hierarchy. In the real world of the late nineteenth century, corporate leaders had at least a high school education in a society where the average education was four years and employment began as a child; corporate leaders came from families of urban businessmen and professionals in a society in which most people were raised on farms; corporate leaders grew up attending prestigious Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregational or Unitarian churches when most Protestants were Baptist or Methodist and the working class was heavily Catholic; corporate leaders were raised in an atmosphere of business expectations and business contacts; Andrew Carnegie was a rare exception. While Horatio Alger influenced the populace, Herbert Spencer was the leading philosopher among the middle brow and intellectuals. As understood in America, he adapted Darwin’s theory of evolution to create a natural law applying to society. Rather than the evolution of a species through natural selection and the survival of those best fit in a given environment, often through close cooperation of its members, Spencer and his American disciples postulated an attractive theory of progress: under completely free competition the fittest individuals came to the fore and transmitted acquired traits of success to their children. The poor were unfit and not deserving; while aid to the poor was a waste, altruism brought egoistic pleasure and harmony, enhancing the donor; the poor must be allowed to fall by the wayside to evolve a fitter man for a better society. Social reform was contrary to natural law, an effort to remedy the irremediable. This conservatism was not traditional. It was not based on religion, or the state, or evolved institutions, but on politically conservative men who were economic and social innovators, the entrepreneurs. These ideas did not prevail uncontested. Socialists and anarchists rejected most of business ideology; the very existence of the trade unions they helped develop challenged the iron law of wages and the paternalist logic of the hierarchical corporate structure. Populists questioned most of the economic thinking of the time, projecting government responsibility for the commonweal, rejecting the monetary primacy of gold and insisting that the money supply and middlemen had more to do with declining farmers’ income than supply and demand. Some popular writers rejected the capitalist vision. Edward Bellamy, in Looking Backward, depicted a futuristic nationalist utopia. Borrowing from the classical economist David Ricardo’s theory of rent, Henry George, in his Progress and Poverty, offered an economic theory that

Introduction: Power and Myth

5

postulated a more prosperous and more equitable society if Americans adopted a single tax on rent, defined as the increase in the value of land solely due to economic and social expansion. While earlier religious writers had embraced Spencerian Darwinism, as the century drew to a close some Protestant ministers embraced Christian Socialism and the Social Gospel, clear challenges to capitalist mythology. At the same time a few economists, John Bates Clark, Richard T. Ely and Simon N. Patten among them, argued for government intervention in the marketplace so that the productive power of capitalism could enhance the lives of a broader public. Still, the most effective challenge to the prevailing economic practices came from progressive politicians of both political parties, disturbed by growing industrial concentration—the rise of the trusts. Working on municipal, state and federal levels they carved out a role for government in controlling the excesses of unfettered capitalism and providing protection for the populace. Their view of government responsibility dominated the political debate through most of this century until the media sold the repackaged failed ideas of the 1870s as the new ideas of the 1980s and 1990s. Engaged in public life, progressive politicians did not write systematic treatises and were unaware that they were challenging a system of myths, as well as tackling particular problems. They did not always view the world from the same perspective, and when they agreed upon problems, they did not always agree upon solutions. There was no single progressive theoretical structure. Generally, they believed that government had the responsibility to curb the economic and political power of trusts in order to improve the life of ordinary people. In the process of commenting on the political issues of their era they raised concerns that are still pertinent in our time. For example, they examined the boundaries between state and federal governments and among legislative, executive and judicial branches. Governments have traditionally served the needs of the powerful. They sought means of ensuring that government pursued the general welfare. The burdens of government did not rest on those who received the greatest social benefits. They sought a tax system that was not only more equitable but helped retard the concentration of wealth. For centuries much of the revenue of Western governments was drawn from duties on trade. They joined the debate over whether tariffs should be solely a source of revenue, as opposed to protection for producers and a guardian of an American standard of living for workers. Some sought to adapt the tariff to insulate export producers from excessive world output. They wrestled with the question of natural rights versus social rights, of the primacy of human or property rights. Progressives struggled with the role of government in regulating working conditions, interfering in labor management strife. They wondered what tactics of union and management were acceptable. The contemporary labor force was composed largely of immigrants. They had to contend with the treatment of this labor force and

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consider whether to keep the portals open. And they took positions on how to deal with gender, race and the rights and restrictions of political and ethnic minorities. The progressive movement was, to a large degree, a reaction to the rise of trusts during this century’s first decade. If they were to find effective means of restraining the negative impact on small businesses, consumers and government, they first had to decide whether trusts were a natural development or the product of unfair practices. Regulation was flawed if regulators could be captured. Corporations violated laws: possible responses included penalizing the firm, indicting executives and suspending the corporate charter. Federal natural resources were enormous. They explored how to utilize this bounty, who was to benefit and the balance between conservation and economic needs. By 1908 America had begun to shift from a debtor to a creditor nation. While generally agreeing that we had a right to economic penetration, many progressives challenged those who asserted that the United States could intervene and correct a weak nation that had failed to maintain an attractive economic environment. When investors’ judgment proved flawed there was a dispute as to whether government was responsible to these bankers and investors, or to taxpayers who bore the military costs. While these politicians embraced the country’s international influence, they disagreed on whether it was best projected by example or by the exercise of power. The general conflagration of 1914 led to conflicting visions of a settlement and how to achieve permanent peace. During wars between America’s trading partners, they sought means to assert the rights of neutral carriers without endangering a non-combatant status. While they often worked together, the progressives were strong individualists. For this study I have chosen six progressives who survived to the New Deal: the Republicans George Norris of Nebraska, William E. Borah of Idaho and Hiram Johnson of California; the Democrat William Gibbs McAdoo of New York and California; and the Republicans turned Progressive and then Democrat, Bainbridge Colby of New York and Edward Prentiss Costigan of Colorado. Gleaning as much as I could from their books, articles, speeches and correspondence, I have attempted to construct a gallery of separate intellectual portraits. While no one can be entirely objective I have tried to view them from their own perspectives, not from my more radical perch, nor still less from that of conservative mythmakers, who might view progressive ideas as a competing myth, ignoring the greater factual and historical foundation for progressive ideas. A close examination of the arguments of early-twentieth-century progressives remains pertinent to our times, as the final chapter reveals, and might help their turn of the twentyfirst-century counterparts fashion an effective response to today’s dominant mythology.

Chapter 2

George Norris: Pragmatism ‘‘Why should people be mad at me?’’ queried the nation’s leading progressive statesman after his unexpected defeat: I have lived according to my philosophy of government and now I am passing out of the political picture with that flag of that philosophy trailing in defeat. . . . I have done my best to repudiate wrong and evil in government affairs. But I have to admit I have utterly failed. The most important thing from my viewpoint is that righteousness has been crucified and the people I love have condemned the things I held most sacred. As far as I am concerned, the people have exercised a privilege which all citizens in a free democracy have a right to exercise. . . . Although it is sad— bitterly sad—for me, yet I believe I was right.1

Confused, tears welling under the small rimmed glasses fitted on his soft, somewhat round face, George Norris bowed out of the Senate. Standing in his customary dark suit and bow tie, ‘‘clothes as drab as an army blanket,’’ he was bewildered and dejected. He never realized that he was a victim of his error in political judgment. Undecided, he did not seek the Republican nomination in 1936. Subsequently, his low-budget campaign as an independent was successful. Mistaking the non-partisan mood of the mid-1930s as a trend towards a welcome decline in party spirit, he again sought reelection as a non-partisan candidate. He miscalculated. Nebraska had returned to the Republican fold. The ardent partisan of the 1890s had fallen victim to a resurgence of party spirit. Nothing in the childhood of George Norris seemed to prepare him for his particular political career. E. G. Lowry wrote that Norris was ‘‘a typical average American citizen.’’2 George was the eleventh of twelve children ex-

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pected to toil as hard-working Ohio farmers. Early in life he tasted tragedy. As the three-and-a-half-year-old George watched, horrified, he saw his father killed when his team bolted. When George was four, his older and only brother died from infectious complications to a minor Civil War wound; his baby sister perished when he was six. The family remained poor, even after Mrs. Norris remarried, but no poorer than their neighbors. They never tasted debilitating, hopeless poverty—only the deprivation that often leads to aspiration for a better life. And his parents always expected a marked improvement in family circumstances. Mr. Norris had projected a pretentious loft for his farmhouse, one that he did not live to complete. Without formal education, both parents could read, and Mrs. Norris found books a constant comfort. At a time when few even completed grammar school, his brother attended Baldwin University at Berea, Ohio, three sisters completed high school and, pressured by their mother, two sisters attended college. George attended Baldwin and graduated from Valparaiso University after sporadic attendance; like many in the late twentieth century, he withdrew for long periods in order to earn funds to continue his education.3 There was nothing average about George Norris or his family. The seeds for Norris’s Rousseauan concept of democracy—a sense of duty to a community controlled by an enlightened general will—was an inheritance from his mother, strengthened by his experiences at Valparaiso. The stories Norris repeated emphasized this sense of community, not of a competitive economic jungle. His mother, he said, planted fruit trees they did not need, whose fruit she would never see, for someday someone would enjoy its bounty.4 He wrote of Valparaiso’s egalitarian democracy, where students with modest resources worked their way through school, of the lifelong friendship of a group nicknamed Lunatics Under Norris.5 When asked about his religion the unaffiliated senator told of the story of Abou Ben Adhem, who loved his fellow men and loved God only through them.6 ‘‘True religion,’’ he wrote to John Cordeal in 1929, ‘‘is founded on human love.’’ It is not based on individual salvation for oneself but on concern for one’s fellow men. ‘‘I can conceive of no God except a just God, and I cannot understand how a just God, knowing the frailties and weaknesses of human nature, can punish his imperfect creatures for wrongs which He has, Himself, planted in the minds and hearts of all of us.’’ And his religious convictions formed the basis of his political career. ‘‘A government, in its truest sense, is only a method to bring humanity the greatest amount of happiness and is founded, after all, upon the love of man for man.’’7 Barriers to his conception of government had to be removed, pragmatically, following no preconceived plan. Maldistribution of wealth and power, and institutional inequities, were not products of natural law but were correctable restraints on democracy. His first efforts on the national scene were to adjust institutional imbalance. Norris made no attempt to create a pure Rousseauan democracy but one

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9

that reflected Jefferson’s concern for minority rights and Madison’s assurance that security could only be attained by a balancing of conflicting interests. Had he not been elected to Congress he might have remained an essentially conservative judge, tempering his decisions with his fundamental humanity and practicality. (Alternately, like some other Republicans, he might have reacted to the political and economic impact of the enormous growth of trusts between 1898 and 1904 and, embracing formerly populist issues, become a progressive.) It is fitting, then, that he was first brought to national attention by his efforts towards procedural congressional reforms. As a congressman, he saw no sense in a representative waiting thirteen months after his election to be seated, and then standing for reelection a year later. The representative could barely assume his responsibilities before he was forced to return to local political contests. Party platforms did not receive a fair test: there was little time to enact the legislation, much less evaluate its effects. The system, he said, worked against poor, honest candidates, for campaign funds were constantly required, a very modern refrain. The proposal for a four-year congressional term made little headway, although periodically it has been revived.8 His first successful campaign for institutional reform restored some power to individual representatives. When he first arrived in Congress he was astounded that his assigned committee would not bother to draft a bill unless it was first approved by Speaker Joseph Cannon. With the Speaker’s blessing the bill, though flawed, had virtually no opposition. Shocked, Norris joined the fight against Cannon. The national government, he protested, was divided into three parts: the Senate, the president, and the Speaker. ‘‘The speaker . . . ought to be the servant of the House, doing its will, rather than the master controlling its action.’’ Therefore, his fight was to change the rules, to restore control over committee assignments to the House, rather than to remove Cannon. Until such a change took place, effective progressive legislation was doubtful. Key to this struggle was the alliance of insurgent Republicans with the Democrats, which meant that when the chips were down united Democrats supplied the bulk of the votes. The contest was highlighted by the brilliant maneuvering of Cannon at crucial moments, splitting his opponents twice, once by offering tariff schedules to a few Democrats, and again by offering a compromise to a few insurgents. It ended with the surprise tactics of Norris, which finally led to Cannon’s defeat and a reduction of the Speaker’s powers—until revived by Newt Gingrich. During the struggle Norris’s proposed restructuring of the Rules Committee reflected Madison’s balancing of conflicting interests. He contemplated a regional division of a fifteen-member bipartisan committee, chosen by the House rather than the Speaker, who was no longer to be a member of the committee. In addition, he suggested that committee assignments be decided by the House, rather than the Speaker. The climax revealed Norris’s pragmatic approach to politics: Representative Crumpacker

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had requested that his bill on the census should be brought up out of turn. Speaker Cannon ruled that the bill was privileged business for the census was mentioned in the Constitution; the Speaker’s ruling was sustained by the House in a second vote. Norris, who had opposed the Speaker’s ruling, saw his opportunity and proposed a revision of the House rules as privileged business for it, too, was mentioned in the Constitution. A last-ditch effort by Cannon failed. Norris had won, and a compromise ten-member committee, without regional balance or the Speaker as a member, was passed. At the same time, Norris announced his intention to return to the choice of committees by the House, rather than the Speaker, at the beginning of the next Congress. Greatly respecting Cannon, Norris endorsed his retention as Speaker and, in the Republican caucus, nominated the conservative Sereno Payne as chairman of the crucial Rules Committee. The line was drawn on issues, not personalities, but effectively, Cannon remained in charge, with reduced institutional power. In the next Congress, it was the Democrat, Champ Clark, the source of most of the votes for Norris’s triumph, who completed the process of democratizing the choice of committee membership by relinquishing this power to the Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee. Hereafter, Republican progressives complained of ‘‘King Caucus.’’9 At no time during the struggle against Cannon did Norris feel that a victory would bring the millennium. He was too pragmatic and perceptive. Any body as large as the House of Representatives required strict rules, lest nothing be accomplished. For a time he was pleased with the results: ‘‘There is more individual freedom and less coercion. . . . The result is better legislation, better laws, better government.’’10 But he soon grew disillusioned. With a Democratic victory, rules presented to the House were not subject to amendment; the Democratic caucus, not the Speaker, wielded power, even rewriting Republican amendments so as to keep the legislation wholly Democratic.11 Increasingly, Norris became incensed at the evils of partisanship. During his early career, Norris was intensely partisan. He refused a good opportunity to study law with Frank Hurd since he was a Democratic congressman.12 ‘‘Virtually the only object the Democrats had,’’ it seemed to the youthful Norris, ‘‘was to hold public office and enact laws that would stand in the way of human progress.’’13 When populism swept Nebraska, Norris was one of only two lawyers in Furnas County to remain Republican, rejecting the populist critique.14 Election to Congress began his political education. He concluded that there was little difference between the great political machines, that they were oiled from the same source, and that most battles were not over issues but to discipline the congressmen and to teach them obedience to their political masters. The Nebraskan was stunned when he was chided for supporting an innocuous Democratic resolution to adjourn for Washington’s birthday. Patronage and partisanship were used by

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the president to control the legislature. The executive rewarded the defeated faithful with lucrative positions for serving the party rather than their constituents: ‘‘partisanship means that public officials shall pay their personal political debts through the instrumentality of public office.’’ It made efficient, businesslike conduct of political departments impossible. Partisanship put party above country.15 For much of his career Norris fought partisanship and devised methods to limit its effects. An early test of his loyalty came during the progressive Republican struggle against William Howard Taft. While his insurgent allies were berating the president for his unfortunate claim in the Winona speech that the Payne-Aldrich Tariff was the best tariff ever, Norris conceded Taft’s description, but still found it wholly inadequate to ‘‘the exigencies of the age.’’16 An optimistic supporter of Robert Marion LaFollette, Norris was initially irritated by Teddy Roosevelt’s entry into the race, but as an unhappy primary candidate on both the Roosevelt and LaFollette tickets, he looked towards a compromise. He embraced the Ohio formula devised by Roosevelt and James Garfield, that a single uncommitted progressive slate be entered whose votes were to be delivered to the progressive candidate with the highest popular vote. Norris was disturbed when LaFollette recognized a ruse and refused to compromise. The Nebraska senator avoided his first confrontation with the issue of a third party by insisting that Roosevelt was the legal candidate of the Republican party.17 While he hoped for a progressive realignment,18 he never put his faith in a new party. It would cost millions to start and within four years would settle into the patterns of the old parties, with candidates taking orders from new bosses. ‘‘A party ought not to be an end in itself; it should be regarded as a means to an end.’’19 The evils of partisanship could best be minimized by independent voting and structural changes. Norris’s independence of party became famous. In 1912 he supported the Progressive candidacy of Theodore Roosevelt, and in 1924 that of Robert M. LaFollette. In 1928 he bolted his party to support Alfred Smith and repeated this act for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, 1936 and 1940.20 In the 1928 senatorial campaign he stumped for the Farmer-Labor candidate, Henrik Shipstead, Republicans Lynn Frazier of North Dakota and Robert M. LaFollette, Jr. of Wisconsin and Democrats Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and Clarence Dill of Washington.21 But his most persistent effort was his crusade against the Pennsylvania Republican, William Vare. Norris first campaigned for the nomination of Gifford Pinchot; that failing, he endorsed the Democratic candidate, William B. Wilson. ‘‘If elections are controlled, through the use of immense quantities of money, the result is the same as if they were determined by military force,’’ he warned. ‘‘Selfgovernment ceases to exist.’’ The special interests, he pointed out, were willing to spend $3 million for a seat that would pay $60,000 in six years. They expected a high rate of return on their investment. If Senate seats were

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for sale, he suggested, they should be auctioned and the proceeds contributed to the U.S. treasury. He called upon Pennsylvania Republicans to repudiate the machine candidate.22 Institutional changes could complement independent voting in reducing the effectiveness of political machines, for they relied upon partisanship. Political bosses had developed techniques of controlling legislation, techniques that could not be countered as long as state legislatures consisted of two houses. Whenever there was any difference between two bills concerning the same subject, passed by each house of the legislature, it was necessary for a conference committee to meet. The committee met in secret session, permitting no hearings or roll calls, and rewrote the bill to suit the conference. The legislature could then accept the finished product, without amendment, or reject the good with the bad. Special interests could prevent legislation simply by controlling two conference committee members, who could prevent a solution, or by controlling either house, the speaker, or the presiding officer of the senate. ‘‘As a matter of practice, it has developed that, through the conference committee, the politicians have the checks, and the special interests the balances.’’ Yet, there is no need for a bicameral legislature, Norris argued. Historically it developed since one house was to represent the aristocracy. On the federal level, legislative reform was impractical, for the small states would not relinquish their advantage. But on a state level, a bicameral legislature was drawn from the same electorate and had the same functions; it was costly and redundant as well as undemocratic. Norris ran a one-man campaign for a unicameral legislature in Nebraska, defeating both political machines as well as the special interests. Since the political parties were divided on national issues, not local issues, he successfully championed a non-partisan ballot for his unicameral legislature. His success was an amazing example of crusading politics.23 Norris’s great institutional crusade on the national level was to eliminate the lame-duck Congress, another bastion of partisanship. During the short session of Congress there was little time for proper consideration of bills and extended debate. The leadership rammed bills through Congress that might not have been accepted during a full session. Since many defeated legislators cast their votes during this session, the administration used patronage to expedite legislation repudiated by the electorate. One example, he reported, was Warren Harding’s ship subsidy bill; only a filibuster prevented its enactment. Norris’s crusade for the lame-duck amendment had begun quite accidently: the amendment was referred to his agricultural committee as a joke, since it concerned ducks. It continued until a constitutional amendment had ended this relic of an age of horseback and dirt roads. He could not have foreseen that a determined partisan majority could use even a shortened ‘‘lame duck’’ session to force the passage of something as important as a presidential impeachment.24 The lame-duck amendment, he felt, would lessen the incidence of fili-

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buster, a subject on which he was torn. His dedication to democracy led him to alibi his own participation in crucial filibusters: the armed merchant ship fight was not a filibuster, he explained; no dilatory moves were made and the bill’s proponents spoke most of the time; of course, he and his allies were ready to pursue their talkfest to the end of the session. A filibuster was brute force, he felt, the flip side the House gag rule. Yet cloture was a remedy worse than the disease. It would not stop filibustering unless it ended all debate, even on amendments. Cloture would prevent full discussion on bills, reducing Senate consideration to the level of the House. While the size of the House necessitated debate limitation, the Senate lacked such constraints. Since the short session ended on March 4, most filibusters occurred during that session. The lame-duck amendment would end these filibusters. But after the passage of this amendment his vote helped sustain a Southern filibuster on the Civil Rights Bill of 1935.25 His strong predilection for the right of a senator to express his individual judgment overcame his majoritarian inclinations. Other procedural reforms did not force him to choose between two intellectual commitments, and he easily opted the more democratic methods. He disliked secret Senate votes: while his constituents could not hold a senator accountable, the president’s records determined partisan patronage.26 Nothing should interfere with an official’s conscientious pursuit of his view of the interests of the nation and his constituents, he insisted. If secret votes protected a senator from the wrath of the voters, all decisions should be open. If lobbyists threatened to distort the voice of the people, to misinform Congress in the interests of ‘‘selfish, monopolistic corporations,’’ to influence legislators through campaign contributions, then the lobbyists should be investigated. They should be forced to register under a corrupt practices law and account for their income and expenditures.27 ‘‘The searchlight of publicity,’’ applied to campaign expenditures, would expose and weaken both lobbyists and political bosses. Political machines could only block wholesome legislation when they were ‘‘supported with contributions, made in secret, by those who desire to profit by the official action of the officers whose official conduct it is desired and intended to control or influence by the contribution.’’ Contributions must be limited, and publicized before and after elections, through state and national legislation. Lobbyists, federal officeholders and lawyers practicing before government commissions should be barred from the national committees of the political parties. By these checks on lobbyists and political machines it would be easier for the good official not only to honor pledges but to do the right thing even when not pledged.28 It was always clear to Norris that the legislator must be independent of the special interests, the political bosses and the executive. But the separation between Congress and the executive was not as obvious. He recognized that the executive required some discretion in administering legislation and sup-

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ported New Deal legislation providing for such latitude. The opposition mounted against the Executive Reorganization Bill of 1938 surprised and distressed him. For Congress to consider each bureau separately would take an inordinate amount to time. Any error committed in an administration reorganization was subject to future congressional rectification, he reminded his colleagues.29 He was confident of the ability of Congress, and zealously preserved congressional powers and privileges. At the height of the Progressive Era he opposed a bill restricting members of Congress from corporate ties. Congress, he insisted, might legislate on matters involving any business. Such a bill would restrict members to men having no occupation.30 During the armed ship filibuster he quoted President Wilson’s Congressional Government to indicate the need for congress to check executive power. The bill, he felt, gave the president the power to declare war. ‘‘Our fathers fought to take this power away from the King,’’ he wrote to Governor Keith Neville of Nebraska, and he had no intention of returning it to the executive.31 During the Teapot Dome scandal he insisted that specific congressional approval was required before the administration could transfer oil reserves from the Navy Department to the Department of the Interior. Lest this government fail, Congress could investigate the activities of members of the executive who spent the funds appropriated by Congress and carried out the laws enacted by Congress.32 The Nebraskan had no rigid vision of the relationship between Congress and the executive and examined each case as it arose. Similarly, the relationship of the judiciary to the other branches of government bothered him. As a former judge, Norris recognized the need for the independence of the judiciary: ‘‘From the very nature of things the judge is called upon to protect the minority from the majority.’’ Consequently, he found the experiment with recall of judges ‘‘coupled with danger.’’ Yet, he supported the Arizona constitution, including recall, for it was an experiment, an extraordinary remedy, not daily medicine. ‘‘The people can be trusted to do the right and patriotic thing,’’ he concluded.33 Through personal experience he realized that judges were only men, with human preconceptions and prejudices. When he was being touted for appointment to the Supreme Court, he recognized the need to appoint progressives to the bench. ‘‘The U.S. judges have not always been the best timber and this fact has often, in my judgement, resulted in the defeat of real progress.’’34 The Supreme Court, he said, is a ‘‘tribunal composed of human beings who are subject to the same passions and the same feelings that apply of the Senator from Michigan and me.’’ The views of appointees to the federal courts must be examined before approval. Judges, especially of the Supreme Court, consider questions that do not involve law. ‘‘The tendency,’’ he insisted, ‘‘is for the court to set aside a law as unconstitutional which the court itself does not think should have been passed.’’ Judges fixed valuation of public utilities, he asserted, and then decided that setting a

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profit of 6.25% of inflated value is confiscatory. In injunction cases the judge has acted as initiator, prosecutor, judge and jury.35 Since the Supreme Court had become a ‘‘continuous Constitutional convention,’’ and ‘‘the people can change Congress, but only God can change the Supreme Court,’’ he was exceedingly selective when considering candidates for the Supreme Court. He opposed the appointments of James McReynolds, Pierce Butler, Charles Evans Hughes, Harlan Stone and John J. Parker, while he termed the controversial nomination of Hugo Black ‘‘a wonderfully good appointment.’’36 Some very clear views of proper judicial characteristics guided him. Judges, he wrote, ‘‘should be guided by the well established principles of law and equity that have become a part of our jurisprudence’’ but not burdened with ‘‘ancient and sometimes unreasonable forms and precedents that are not in harmony with the enlightenment of the present advanced state of civilization.’’ Judges should not be distanced from the struggling citizens of this country: judicial salaries should be high enough to make the judge free and independent to devote his life and abilities to his official duties, but not so elevated as to attract candidates simply for the financial rewards. That ‘‘would lower rather than raise the standards of the judiciary.’’37 The federal judiciary, he felt, had taken judicial procedures, ‘‘originally landmarks for the protection of the innocent against the oppression of tyrannical monarchs,’’ and turned them into bastions of property rights and havens for the guilty rich.38 He commented bitterly on the residue of Teapot Dome: ‘‘Sinclair has too much money to be convicted. We ought to pass a law that no man worth $100,000,000 should be tried for a crime. That at least would make us consistent.’’39 He saw no single solution to the problem of our courts. The NorrisLaGuardia Act was meant to relieve Labor from the abuse of court injunctions. But he preferred a much more radical solution to the problems of the federal judiciary. In the modern world, he thought a man from one state could obtain justice in the courts of another state. Federal and state jurisdictions overlapped; the courthouses were often across the street from each other. Since federal courts had been more favorable to property rights than individual rights, we now had one court for the corporations and another for the people. The corporations used the federal courts to enjoin and prevent justice. He called for the abolition of all federal courts, except the Supreme Court, and transferring their jurisdiction to the state judiciary.40 But he certainly was not satisfied with the Supreme Court. His immediate reaction to the Schecter Poultry case was that federal courts had to be limited to prevent them from enjoining the application of a law and from declaring a law unconstitutional. Upon reflection, he proposed an amendment to require a two-thirds Supreme Court majority to invalidate a law, and then only if the case was considered within six months of its effective date. And Congress should have the power to override a Court decision.41 At first, Roosevelt’s Court-packing plan seemed a poor solution. A majority of fifteen

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men could be just as reactionary as nine. Interpretation, not age, was the problem. And hadn’t he erred in his votes for Owen Roberts and against Charles Evans Hughes and Harlan Stone? It was not a fundamental, but a temporary remedy. What would have been his reaction if Harding had offered this bill, he wondered? But, in the end, he supported the administration:42 There is a great outcry against ‘‘packing the court.’’ But the Court in many recent decisions has been packed, in effect, against the common man, against the people, against the nation trying to save its life. Monopoly, special privilege, the interests of predatory selfishness have lost their commanding influence at the White House and the Capitol. They are making their last stand in the Federal Courts. There too often they still have their way. Until those courts are humanized, until in their decisions human rights count equally with property rights, the governmental machinery of democracy is stalled in bringing the country back to itself.

Even while accepting the plan, he wanted a further protection: nine year appointments with age limits.43 The purpose of the judiciary was to protect the rights and interests of American citizens. Its failure must be rectified. While Norris had to work his way through the tortuous maze of the relationship between the three branches of government, he had a very clear concept of the relationship between the elected official and the electorate. The voice of the people was to be heard through the most direct conduits possible. ‘‘Our government is founded upon the theory that the people are sufficiently intelligent to control their own government,’’ he wrote. While logically this might lead to a literacy test for voting, Norris feared that such a test might lead to discretionary abuse and fraud. In a government designed by our forefathers to be based on the consent of the governed, decisions upon candidates must be made by bricklayers, carpenters and farmers, not only by politicians and bosses. Nomination by a direct primary was an essential part of the electoral process. If those rejecting a primary were consistent, they would deny the right of people to vote at the general election. He realized that even an enlightened electorate could be deceived by a demagogue. The remedy lay in more, not less democracy—the recall of errant officials by the people. Norris carefully rejected all objections to the direct primary. Those who warned that the primary reduced party control and responsibility were unknowingly arguing for the innovation. It would increase individualism and decrease partisanship, confirming Washington’s warning against party spirit. Protests against high costs ignored excessive expenditures during conventions. Norris only spent $500 to capture his primary nomination. A party convention would never have chosen him. The convention was not a judicious selection process, Norris insisted, but merely a meeting where political positions were traded. While he admitted that minority candidates would sometimes win primaries, no one knew what per-

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centage of the party a convention designee represented. In due course, Norris reflected upon direct primaries as a proven success. When a 1941 Supreme Court decision recognized congressional authority to act in primaries, he suggested a national primary for president and vice president.44 Once nominated, the election of all officials must be direct. In 1906 he endorsed direct election of senators instead of choice by state legislature. If that were not possible, nomination by a party convention was a preferable alternative to selection by legislative caucus.45 Senators should reflect their constituents. In the absence of a recall provision, he offered to resign and run for reelection when he was attacked for opposing Wilson’s armed ship bill.46 Direct election of president and vice president, eliminating the electoral college, would make independent candidacies more plausible, he felt. Since this goal seemed unattainable, Norris was willing to accept the same method of allocating votes, but without vestigial electors.47 Further, proportional representation more accurately reflected the desires of the electorate and was less susceptible to representative inequity.48 After officials had been chosen directly, their activities still required another check. Direct legislation—the initiative and referendum—feared by those interests that dominated legislatures, would ‘‘give the people the right, whenever they choose to exercise it, to rectify any of the omissions, the wrongs, or the evils of the legislature. It will permit every citizen to have a direct voice in the enactment of laws under which all of the people must live.’’ If the people are capable of judging representatives on their records, they are capable of casting a ballot on legislative matters.49 Finally, even changes in the fundamental law of the land should be subject to the direct vote of the electorate.50 Yet, elected officials were not responsible for the daily application of laws to the lives of the citizens. An appointive bureaucracy is the heart of all modern government. Throughout his career, Norris insisted on retaining and extending the merit system for appointments to the civil service. In 1904 he fought to retain the Civil Service Commission. While the law could not dislodge all corrupt and dishonest officials, he saw no more reason to terminate the commission than to eliminate laws concerning murder, since that crime persisted. The civil service law, he reported, reduced the arena for partisan politics.51 When income tax was enacted, he wanted these new employees to be examined by the Civil Service Commission, not a political officer. The progressive Democrat Senator Charles S. Thomas of Colorado suggested that the similarity of function between deputy and postmaster warranted the removal of the deputies from the civil service law; Norris countered that the postmasters should be placed on civil service and repeated that proposal to Franklin Roosevelt decades later. Subsequently, the deputy would no longer train a series of higher salaried, but political, postmasters, rotated with each new administration. Indeed, he insisted that the postmaster general be a merit appointee with a ten-year term, removing the

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whole post office from partisan politics.52 During the Wilson Administration, he demanded an investigation of the charge that Postmaster General A. S. Burleson was tampering with the Civil Service Commission for partisan ends.53 Later, he charged New Deal Postmaster General James Farley with appointment of political incompetents and insisted that it was incompatible for him to remain in the cabinet while serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Additionally, Norris attempted to prevent patronage appointments to the Home Owners Loan Corporation, without success, and complained to Harold Ickes, privately, not publicly, about WPA patronage.54 Throughout his career he was a vocal opponent of patronage appointments and denied exercising any influence in such matters. Yet, he always made some recommendations for appointments, even during the Taft administration.55 Limiting partisanship and negating the influence of special interests in order to make government responsive to its citizens, was both an end in itself and a means to another end. Norris strongly supported an active government, one that kept pace with the changes in the world. He considered himself a liberal, a man with a mind open to change, a man who recognized the value of precedents but was wary of precedents created under different conditions. Still, the differences between conservatives, liberals and radicals were differences of degree: ‘‘Because too much water will drown a man is no reason for not drinking it.’’ To him: The object of government is the happiness of the people comprising the government. The continuance of our institutions, the welfare of unborn generations, are all dependent upon government. Government, in its true sense, is a religion. It has no other object for existence except the welfare of the people within the government. This principle, if carried to its logical conclusion, means equality before the law. It means the protection of the poor against the aggression of the powerful and the wealthy. It means the protection of human life first. Following that, within the limits of the happiness of the people, it also means the protection of honestly acquired property.

He did not worry about the expropriation of the rich by the poor. The powerful interests cared for themselves. The struggle had been ‘‘to protect the helpless, the weak, and the poor from exploitation by the strong,’’ from their ambition for power and wealth. Despite temporary setbacks, ‘‘new peaks of enlightened social conceptions’’ have followed periods of reaction. Unfortunately, human nature craved serenity, relief from worry, when constant vigilance was required.56 And Norris remained vigilant. His long career was devoted to the aid of those who had not been able to protect their own interests. Raised on a farm, practicing law in a farm area, representing a farm state,

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Norris came to the aid of farmers. He often reflected the Jeffersonian agrarian myth: The farmer works harder, lives more economically and has fewer of the ordinary pleasures of life, than any other class of our citizenship. . . . Agriculture is a fundamental industry. Prosperity cannot always last while Agriculture languishes. An honest civilization should demand that those who toil the most and the longest hours to supply the world with the necessities of human existence should have at least a fair return for their labors.57

After all, ‘‘It is at the rural fireside that virtue, morality, and patriotism have reached their highest state.’’58 Nevertheless, as a lawyer, he accepted commissions to carry out foreclosures. As a judge in a rural district at the height of a depression, he examined foreclosures carefully, evaluating the chances for repayment. If the mortgage was too high, or the debtor insincere, he confirmed the foreclosure. If the debtor made an effort to repay a reasonable mortgage, he continued the case. At first creditors protested, but they wanted their money, not land, and in due time they saw the wisdom of his approach.59 Agricultural problems repeatedly presented themselves during his years in the national legislature. His first congressional speech, a eulogy to rural life, was delivered to protest Democratic obstruction of rural free delivery. Early in his career he fought for increased funds for experimental irrigated farming and improved seeds. While an originator of a bill to enlarge homesteads in grazing areas, violations by cattlemen led him to prefer that such land be ceded to the state for sale or lease, with revenues earmarked for education. When Congress investigated European banking, he proposed an investigation of European rural credit—farmers needed credit to retain their crops until prices rose.60 Never rigid about the means necessary to improve the farmer’s condition, he soon realized that increased credit was not even a partial solution to the farm problem. With the exception of the war years, prices did not rise and additional credit only added to the agrarian burden of interest.61 Similarly, lowering transportation costs for farm products was helpful, but not a solution. He thought it useful to reduce the gap between the price the consumer paid and the return to the farmer by preventing speculation in agricultural products on the commodity exchanges and by eliminating middleman costs either through cooperative efforts or government activities. But with increased certainty he realized that the farm surplus had to be resolved.62 Farm production and market had to be balanced. Norris was flexible about governmental means to achieve this end. During the 1914 cotton crisis he feared that purchase of the crop could establish a precedent that might lead to federal bankruptcy. Government purchase, he predicted, would encourage increased cotton production. Diversification of crops was

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a more rational solution to the problem. Time would heal the cotton crisis, as it had the corn crisis.63 But in 1924 only dairy farms were profitable and he recognized that diversification was not then feasible.64 In itself, government setting a minimum price was an overrated solution, for the minimum tended to become a maximum.65 He turned to the tariff. As a good Republican of his time, he believed in the myths surrounding the tariff. If it was possible to bring agriculture under the effective protection of the tariff, he speculated during the 1920s, the agricultural problem might be solved. In 1921, faced with a shortage of wheat in much of Europe and a surplus at home, he offered his solution. The bill created a government corporation with $100 million seed money. The corporation could buy raw or processed farm products and sell them abroad for securities. The securities, tax exempt up to $5,000, could then be sold on the open market to supply next season’s working capital. The corporation could reduce transportation costs; the Interstate Commerce Commission could impose railroad rate reductions, while the United States Shipping Board could supply its war surplus merchant ships. American farm surplus would then be used to feed a hungry Europe, temporarily short of cash.66 Farm products marketed abroad would be sold at the world price. The domestic market would be protected by a tariff schedule, setting a price above the international market. The export corporation would reimburse export farmers the difference between the two prices. ‘‘Either fix the tariff so that all classes of people shall share in its benefits, as well as assume its responsibilities, or take away its benefits entirely.’’ The farmer could not continue to buy in a protected market and sell in a competitive one.67 Unable to secure the enactment of his own scheme of subsidized exports, financed by a protected domestic market, he supported both the McNary-Haugen Bill and the Export Debenture plan, with some reluctance. The McNary-Haugen Bill he thought uneconomic; since the equalization fee had to be paid by the farmers, it reduced the benefits. The Export Debenture plan did not provide penalties to discourage overproduction. Neither guaranteed the farmer his full tariff protection.68 When the economy descended into a depression, he was completely out of tune with the Hoover administration. Hoover not only rejected a two-price system, but he appointed members of the Federal Farm Board whom Norris considered out of sympathy with farmers.69 The Nebraska Republican was much more sympathetic to New Deal efforts to solve the farm problem. He swallowed all his reservations and gave his firm support to the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The law was a severe one. That overproduction existed while people lacked the necessities of life was inconceivable to him. Destroying food repelled him. He would have liked the law to include an option for a two price system. Yet, the law was an experiment. The vagaries of agricultural production required executive discretion. While production control might fail in any given year, it was impossible to maintain prices without it. Over time it would meet fair suc-

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cess.70 Long an advocate of a subsidy for Nebraska sugar beets, he still supported the Jones-Costigan Act’s exchange of national sugar quotas for access to the American market, even though he resented a domestic quota on a crop that did not supply the entire national consumption. Still, he disapproved of the traditional alternative of a protective tariff long after production had passed its infancy. Since legislation aimed to help farmers benefited processors even more, he proposed a government financed yardstick, a cooperative processing plant.71 An early advocate of liberalizing homesteading, he supported the New Deal Resettlement Administration, unconcerned that it might make crop control more difficult.72 Undeterred by court rejection of the AAA, he supported the second AAA, the ever normal granary and the parity principle. By 1942 the continuing surplus distressed him. He voted with reluctance for 110% of parity. Surplus wheat, he added, should be sold for food at reduced prices, not continued to be held in storage.73 But at no time did he oppose New Deal agricultural policy. Throughout his career, whenever he tried to deal with agricultural problems, Norris confronted the tariff question. Never doubting the concept of a protective tariff, he was invariably concerned with its inequitable application. Tariff protection, he admitted, was a selfish policy of government. It assumed that Americans had a higher standard of living that they wanted to protect from the equalizing consequences of free trade. Even the imperfect protection that farmers received was of some aid. Farm prices in the United States were somewhat higher than the cost of conveyance to Liverpool would indicate and slightly higher than across the Canadian border.74 He sought, by a two-price system, to extend more fully the benefits of tariff protection to farmers. While an economic shield was necessary, tariff schedules should only reflect the difference in cost of production at home and abroad, compensating for our higher standard of living. This level was to be determined by a nonpartisan, disinterested tariff commission.75 Disappointed when the Tariff Commission favored tariff increases almost to the exclusion of decreases during the Coolidge years, Norris suggested a consumer’s counsel who would appear before the commission.76 Norris had often commented that the benefits of the tariff went to the manufacturers, the burdens to the farmers. Thus, while he stated that the Payne-Aldrich Tariff was the best up to that time, he opposed it as not good enough. The Canadian Reciprocity Treaty was unacceptable; it was an aid to manufacturers and a threat to farmers, reducing rates on the cattle the farmers raised but not the meat the beef trust marketed. In fact, he opposed almost every tariff that he considered.77 Still, he supported schedules that aided farmers. As early as 1906 he contested the repeal of the tariff on Philippine products, which he feared would destroy the domestic sugar beet industry. A tariff should protect an industry, he said, until it met all national needs. As late as 1934 he still wanted to

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retain a tariff on Philippine coconut and copra oil, for when it was difficult to do justice to both American and Philippine farmers, he favored Americans.78 Similarly, he opposed reduced sugar schedules, which he felt would only aid the sugar trust. If domestic and foreign competition could be eliminated, the trust could charge exorbitant prices. That did not mean he supported increases in the sugar duties. He suspected this would benefit processors, not farmers.79 By 1929 he despaired of enacting a proper protective tariff: ‘‘Human greed and monopoly always get together and play upon the selfish natures of men and get what they want.’’80 Congress, he concluded, could not make a scientific tariff. He accepted the New Deal policy of reciprocal trade agreements with power delegated to the Tariff Commission.81 The tariff, he felt, was symptomatic of iniquitous governmental legislation. It subsidized those who needed it least, ‘‘exacting enormous profits from the consumers for the manufacturers,’’ creating monopolies and millionaires, not safeguarding American wages. These swollen profits were then invested abroad to benefit from the cheap labor from which Americans were supposed to be protected.82 It shocked him that the income of 504 men was almost equal to the combined value of the cotton and wheat crop of 1930.83 The tariff was partially responsible for this great concentration of wealth; at least as responsible were the trusts they sheltered. Trusts, he felt, had many negative effects: they stifled competition, ruined individuals and organizations conducting legitimate businesses, raised prices and unduly influenced government. When J. P. Morgan’s yacht docked in Washington, Norris remarked: ‘‘I’m glad to see the Government has moved to Washington at last.’’84 His solutions for this political problem were the institutional reforms and the initiation of direct democracy previously discussed. His solutions to the economic problems they presented included the cold spotlight of publicity, attempts to prevent monopoly, controlling or dismantling established trusts, government ownership and operation of the means of transportation and the establishment of federal corporations to act as yardsticks in order to determine fair rates. Norris was solicitous of the interests of the small entrepreneur, urban and rural, in their dealings with either big business or the government, and he approached the issue pragmatically rather than dogmatically. Early in his congressional career, he considered the Meat Inspection Bill: Rigid inspection appealed to him. But he deplored the negative publicity Roosevelt used to overcome meatpacker resistance. It would injure ranchers. A requirement that packers pay the cost of inspection would eliminate small packers. He did not yet realize that government financed inspection could be made ineffective in the future, after the furor subsided, by reducing congressional appropriations for inspectors.85 By 1921, he approved Federal Trade Commission disclosure of the meatpackers’ enormous profits and of their subsidies to newspaper editors.86 In fact, he usually found publicity a very

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important anti-trust tool, shattering corporate myths. To be effective, testimony in cases under the Sherman Act had to be taken in public, before court trial. The voluminous public transcript of pre-trial evidence precluded adequate publicity by the time of the trial.87 With similar pragmatism, he accepted a patent monopoly to protect the patentee in his invention but not to use his patent rights to monopolize other business not directly connected with his creation. For example, the shoe trust rested on only two patents. Yet, the sale of other machines were tied to the lease of the patented items.88 When the Wilson administration sought to amend the Sherman Act, Norris had a number of comments. He insisted that labor and farm organizations be excluded from its coverage. Farmers had the right to withhold products, singly or as a cooperative, in order to obtain a better market price. Labor should finally be protected from anti-strike prosecutions under the Sherman Act.89 Wary about how provisions were carried out, he expressed concern that the holding company section did not prevent university investments in corporate stock. In addition, he preferred Federal Reserve Bank jurisdiction over banking interlocking directorates.90 Not only did he want trusts dissolved, but he wanted them fined twice their illegal profits. He endorsed criminal prosecutions for violators but realized that only hirelings would be convicted, not the powers behind the scene.91 After supporting the Senate version of the Clayton Act he voted against the conference report; the best provisions of both bills had been eliminated.92 The principles behind the Federal Trade Commission Act pleased him, but he was not satisfied with the final product. Violators of the law should be imprisoned. FTC decisions should be final and publicized, like an appellate court decision, to establish a precedent upon which businessmen could base their judgments. Despite all of the vigorous criticism of the commission, he retained a basic faith in the principles upon which it was founded.93 His quarrel was with all regulatory commissions during the 1920s, with the executive attitude toward big business. Presidential appointments had undermined the execution of the law. Herbert Hoover was trying to legalize the actions of business associations, although they exchanged production and wage information and refused credit to retailers who sold below a set price. It was not that these officials were dishonest or incompetent. They believed ‘‘there should be practically no restraining hand placed upon trusts and monopolies’’; he even intimated they might believe in Mussolini’s government.94 Yet, his anti-trust stand was flexible enough to support the early New Deal. The National Recovery Act suspension of the anti-trust laws was essential to prevent overproduction, diminution of manufacture and greater unemployment. At times, ruthless competition did more harm than good.95 And with U.S. entrance into World War Two, while recognizing that no one could fix prices ‘‘so no injustice will befall any man or class of men,’’

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nevertheless, he rejected a lifetime of opposition to price fixing to support emergency war controls.96 In some industries, he felt, regulation was not enough. Government ownership and operation was necessary, either as a chastening yardstick or for the entire industry. He arrived at this conclusion after lengthy efforts to control particular industries. The evolution of Norris’s attitude towards railroad control reflects pragmatic changes following a new understanding of a situation. Before his election to Congress Norris was glad to receive free railroad passes. After a short sojourn on the national scene Norris returned his railroad pass, opposed post office railroad subsidies and payments for special services.97 During Teddy Roosevelt’s second term he supported both the Hepburn Act and the more stringent Esch-Townshend Bill. He pointed out that a commerce court, with an appeal to the Supreme Court, would nullify the ratemaking powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission.98 When the Mann-Elkins Act was being considered he insisted upon the right of the ICC to defend its decisions before the commerce court and called for physical valuation as the basis for rate making. Further, he demanded ICC control over the issuance of railroad stock, for it would become a factor in setting rates. Progressive amendments made it the best railroad law ever, he reported.99 By 1916, when defending the Adamson Eight Hour Act, he dismissed as unimportant a charge that the law would lead to government ownership: ‘‘The question is, is it logical, is it right, and is it fair?’’100 When a railroad system built for speculation and profit failed to meet the exigencies of World War One, Norris accused the companies of creating an artificial shortage by misusing and hoarding cars. Cars were being used for storage or kept empty in anticipation of incoming ships. No increase in rates should be permitted without an extended hearing. Wilson’s seizure of the roads only resulted in his complaint that the years chosen as a base for determining compensation to the railroads would give them an inordinately high return.101 Never blinded by the myth of the magical efficiency of private ownership, at the end of the war Norris called for continued government operation. Federal control had not been given a fair test. Wartime conditions prevailed, a political cabinet officer was in charge, there was much administrative incompetence and government administrators had to rescue a system that had broken down and required considerable repair to worn out equipment. The Esch-Cummins Bill, which restored railroads to prewar relations, met with his displeasure. He singled out the provision for a guaranteed profit for negative comment: it would remove incentives; the unearned increment on railroads should go to the people, not to legitimize watered stock.102 Toward the end of the Roaring Twenties he pointed out that Canadian farmers’ advantage over American farmers resulted from the lower rates charged by their government owned railroads.103 When it became apparent that the New Deal would not nationalize rail-

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roads, Norris argued that all profits above mandated returns should be used to reduce indebtedness, and thus rates. Charges should be based on prudent investment and reproduction costs, not on gross physical valuation—a higher base during the depression.104 Railroads were by no means the only area where government ownership could act as a corrective. The government was being overcharged for armaments and should manufacture its own armorplate. Parcel post service should be extended, with prices as close to cost as possible, eliminating express companies. Communication should be postalized—government should own the telegraph and telephone systems.105 He was delighted that the government had succeeded with an enlarged Cape Cod Canal, where private enterprise had failed.106 And he insisted that stockyards were public marketing places that should be publicly owned and managed for public benefit.107 After the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy he concluded that the federal government should operate its own coal mines, not lease them: ‘‘I believe it at least could do as well as we have seen the business managed under private ownership. It could not do much worse.’’ With some reluctance, he was willing to accept government seizure of mines to ensure a supply of coal during strikes. Government would then set fair wages and prices.108 But by far his most important advocacy of government ownership was for a yardstick in the electric power industry. Norris did not get involved in the issue of public power until the controversy over the Hetch Hetchy site in California. Conservationists, as well as private power interests, sought to prevent the building of the dam. Norris denied that the natural beauty of the park would be destroyed. In fact, he argued, the site was inaccessible and rather pedestrian in appearance. On the other hand, ‘‘the impounding of these flood waters by San Francisco to develop water power will bring cheap light, cheap power, cheap transportation, and pure water to millions of people.’’ Thereafter, Norris became a firm advocate of multi-purpose dams on the Potomac, the Columbia, the Tennessee, the St. Lawrence, the Jordan and the Danube.109 Since the complex at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee had been created during World War One largely for the production of nitrates, which was also useful for fertilizer, the question was referred to Norris’s Agricultural Committee. When the Coolidge administration tried to dispose of the complex by sale to Henry Ford, Norris, almost single handed, blocked the sale. Ford had the support of many farm state representatives who, like Norris, wanted cheap fertilizer for their constituents. There was no guarantee that Ford would produce cheaper fertilizer, Norris pointed out. If he did, it would be as a result of the work of government chemists, whose activities would benefit the public if the complex remained under federal control. Ford proposed to pay $5 million for the complex, borrowed from the government at 4%. In return, he would receive property worth over $100 mil-

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lion. Five million dollars was the value of the surplus land alone. This giveaway would make Teapot Dome look like a pinhead, Norris charged. And Ford did not intend to sell the dam’s electrical power to the public at a saving. He expected to develop a new industrial complex, using this cheap power. The potential of this site was so great that it would dwarf Ford’s automobile empire. The project could lead to Ford’s domination of the business of the world. Ford was a man he admired, Norris declared, ‘‘but I would not give away the heritage of the people even to a saint.’’ Norris not only succeeded in blocking the sale to Ford but in authorizing the completion of work on the Tennessee—irrigation, flood control, nitrate production, power generation and distribution—only to see it blocked by the executive.110 Norris persisted in his fight against the power trust: We are living in the dawn of an electric age. Nature has not only supplied us with electricity, this necessity of human happiness, but she has likewise furnished the means by which it can be made. Every drop of flowing water . . . possesses the power of converting, out of nothing as it were, this wonderful element of modern civilization. This is a property which belongs to all of us, a source of human happiness. It has become a necessity of modern life. Therefore it should never become a subject of private profiteering. . . . Like water, it should be supplied to our people at actual cost.

In an effort to profit from natural resources, the power trust had been perverting our education system, he charged, controlling newspapers, school boards, educators, preachers, boy scout organizations. They sent fraudulent material into American schools and influenced the choice of textbooks. They were undermining the training of a new generation of leaders.111 Finally, in the new atmosphere of the New Deal he won his great victory: the Tennessee Valley Authority was created. While he continued to press for the extension of tax-free, municipally generated power, the TVA remained the high point for public power advocates.112 It was in the power industry that financial techniques for industrial control and monopolization reached their peak, in evasion of the Sherman and Clayton Acts. The device for deception was the holding company, ‘‘the greatest evil of our civilized age.’’ Holding companies, Norris charged, were ‘‘parasites sucking by the millions the pennies out of the hand of labor’’; none beyond second remove were of any benefit to society. All those in public utilities should be abolished. They raised the cost to the consumer: ‘‘the little humble home with electric light is contributing to the payment for the oil to grease all their corporations.’’ Holding companies contributed to the collapse of the economy in 1929.113 Protection of the interests of all citizens, Norris felt, required substantial changes in the financial structure. After the stock market crash Norris sought to limit speculation in securities by restricting purchases with stock secured

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borrowed funds, whether through banks or stockbroker margin. A poker game was more respectable than buying stocks on margin.114 As bankruptcies mounted he tried to revise the bankruptcy laws: Bankruptcy was often declared by the controlling interests to squeeze out the small holders; judges often appointed as receivers sycophantic attorneys, granting them excessive fees.115 But while he showed some interest in these aspects of finance, his concern for reform of the banking system was persistent. In 1905 Norris called for competitive bank bids for government deposits, with the payment of interest of not less than 2%. The following year he indicated his opposition to currency based on bank assets. Yet, the ‘‘American Establishment’’ first became concerned with the need for major changes in the national banking system as a result of the panic of 1907.116 Norris voted for the Aldrich-Vreeland Act with hesitation. He wanted currency flexibility, but he disliked assets currency as dangerous to depositors if banks reduced their assets, and the bill did not embody significant currency reform. A postal savings bank would protect the funds of small depositors, but he preferred a guarantee of bank deposits in national banks backed by proportional assessment of national banks. Failure of a weak bank, he argued, would not then start a run on the strong ones. During the 1920s he suggested that a guarantee be financed through the profits of Federal Reserve Banks, instead of requiring a franchise tax. A bank, as a quasi-public institution, he insisted, should be regulated.117 Thus, when the Wilson administration instituted banking reform Norris favored the general conception. The original House bill was inadequate: He wanted government and not banker control of the reserve banks, with stock owned by the people. Four regional banks were preferable to twelve. The governing board should be non-partisan, with staggered twelve-year terms, so no single president could control membership. And, of course, he wanted deposits guaranteed. While he accused the Democratic caucus of creating a banker owned and controlled system, rather than one owned by the people, he voted for the bill.118 Overhauling the national banking system still did not resolve many problems related to banking. Because bankers used their control of the nation’s money to dominate business, concentration of economic power was reaching alarming proportions, Norris warned in 1933.119 The collapse of the economy caused a general rethinking of fiscal problems. Norris rejected the idea of Federal Home Loan Banks that would loan money to agencies to refinance mortgages. It made more sense to extend the loans directly to borrowers. In the name of the American home, monetary institutions would profit.120 On the other hand, Norris supported the New Deal Home Owners Loan Corporation.121 In addition, he supported further reforms of the banking structure. Again, he proposed insurance of deposits. Proper restrictions should be extended to small banks with but $10,000 capital. He insisted

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that state banks be investigated before receiving a loan. He questioned the validity of bankers pursuing any outside business that required borrowing money; a disinterested official should examine bank loans to bankers. While he feared that branch banking might give city banks a monopoly, Senator Vandenberg’s amendment requiring local bank approval before a branch could be opened was unacceptable. It could create a local bank monopoly. Generally, he supported New Deal banking reforms.122 The Great Depression so affected the Nebraska lawyer, who had remained true to the gold standard even in 1896, that he supported efforts at currency inflation. Reflecting the language of the populists that he had earlier rejected, he argued that farmers could not be expected to repay a mortgage contracted when wheat brought a dollar a bushel at a time when the market price was but twenty five cents. Creditors might balk. But following his earlier judicial logic, they would be hurt more if they were not repaid. And this payment would be in full in terms of goods, if not in dollars. Unpalatable remedies were sometimes necessary to preserve American civilization.123 Norris was always concerned with the government’s own bank balance. The national debt should be reduced and the budget balanced, he suggested repeatedly. Taxation should be restructured to lighten the burden on those with smaller incomes and to redistribute national wealth, he argued. Taxes paid the expenses of government. In 1914 Norris suggested that additional taxes could be avoided by defeating the Rivers and Harbors Bill (the ‘‘Pork Barrel’’).124 He vigorously opposed regressive taxes, such as levies on amusement and sales (except on luxuries). Government must receive its financial support from those who benefited most from our society.125 Therefore, he was an early advocate of a graduated income tax. After the passage of the Income Tax Amendment he worked to plug the loopholes in the law, insisting that undistributed corporate earnings should be taxed at the same rate as income. During the 1920s, appalled at the nature of the Mellon tax reduction, he fought to restore the excess profits tax, higher surtaxes on incomes, and taxes on dividends. He could not understand the Supreme Court decision exempting state and local securities from an income tax since the amendment permitted a tax on income ‘‘from whatever source derived.’’ And income tax publicity was necessary to prevent dishonest men from filing a false return and shifting the burden of taxation to those who were honest.126 While ‘‘in theory an income tax is the most equitable tax of any, but as a matter of practice it is the most difficult to collect,’’ Norris wrote in 1909, ‘‘the burden falling upon the honest man while the dishonest man escapes his just proportion of the tax.’’ While tax loopholes rather than evasion became the bane of the income tax, Norris never changed the preference for an inheritance tax that he expressed at this early date.127 It was ‘‘the least burdensome of any tax devised by the mind of man’’; it was inexpensive

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to collect, brought no hardship to beneficiaries and carried out Jefferson’s statement that the earth belongs to the living and reverts to society upon death. ‘‘Does a man owe nothing to the government under whose laws he was permitted to amass such an enormous amount of wealth, and can it possibly be an injustice to him, if after he has used it during his lifetime, at his death, when it can under no condition be of any further use to him, it is taken for the benefit of society-at-large?’’ No large fortune, if honestly acquired, is made entirely by the efforts of the owner, and no large fortune was amassed with the aid of ones children. Accumulation of large fortunes was socially undesirable, he contended, and should be prevented by an inheritance tax graduated to 75% over $50 million. It would not be necessary to pay it entirely in cash; land or stocks would be satisfactory. It would take funds from the estates of the wealthy, where they performed no real service for humanity, and return them, in the form of taxes, to the people from whom they were was originally taken. ‘‘Governments are destroyed, and civilizations are overthrown, when the accumulation of wealth in a few hands has brought starvation and misery into the land.’’ The redistribution of wealth through an inheritance tax was necessary for national survival.128 Though not as clearly drawn as by William Gibbs McAdoo, Norris had a firm conception that the rights of the propertied were limited and government needed to emphasize human rights: It is so difficult to draw the line between property and freedom, between the pocketbook and political ideals of liberty. Men frequently talk about profits and property as though they constituted the essence of freedom. Misuse or misunderstanding of wealth or property can destroy human liberty.129

Consequently, when property rights came into conflict with improved conditions demanded by organized labor, Norris could usually be found fighting for the working man. Like most progressives, he saw the need for government intervention to aid workers under certain circumstances. In 1906 he refused to commit himself to support the Gompers eight-hour bill. In that same year, he introduced a bill to limit railroad employees to an eight hour day and supported the eight hour day for postal employees, areas where congressional authority was clear. He included increased overtime pay: to make hours legislation really effective, a financial penalty should be exacted for working men overtime.130 In 1916 he insisted that railroad salaries should be set, as well as wages, for they were both included in rates.131 As the ranks of the unemployed swelled during the depression, Norris insisted that only a thirty hour week could solve the problem.132 He had decided that Congress could not only regulate hours, but it could legislate wages. He was a firm supporter of federal efforts to outlaw child labor. Otherwise, states that permitted exploitation would have a competitive advantage.

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Firms employing children ruined their health and ‘‘were practically coining the blood of innocent children into dollars.’’ Yet, he thought efforts to include agriculture would undermine the amendment. After all, farm labor was healthy.133 While he wanted to prevent the competition of convict labor with free labor, he was concerned about practical complications: Hadn’t the binder twine monopoly been broken by convict labor? What might prisoners do that did not compete with free labor?134 This same practical bent shaped his reaction to installment purchases; they tied workers to their jobs, whatever the wage, lest they forfeit their purchases.135 It conditioned his view of social security: Pensions were necessary only because of the inability to remedy poverty through tax reform. He rejected the feasibility of the Townshend Plan for retirees: The rates were too high. Compulsory spending provisions destroyed thrift. It was to be financed by a regressive sales tax. To permit exemptions would injure those who requested them. And we must be careful not to injure existing private systems. But, finally, the Social Security law effected ‘‘one of the noblest ambitions that ever moved the mind of man.’’136 During the depression, his pragmatic bent and generational bias led him to suggest that government services discriminate against married women with employed husbands in order to spread the work among as many families as possible.137 And he argued for the prevailing wage for the Works Projects Administration, rather than the lower security wage, for the latter would tend to depress area wages.138 Unlike some progressives, he did not fear the power of organized labor. He insisted that section 7 of the National Industrial Recovery Act would not be meaningful without a provision to bar company unions.139 When a nationwide political arm of organized labor was formed, he declared: ‘‘But why, after all, shouldn’t labor make its voice heard?’’ By the end of his career he looked to the CIO-PAC as a potential basis for a new coalition, not just an arm of labor.140 The Norris-LaGuardia Act culminated a long human rights struggle against the yellow-dog contract to forgo union membership and against anti-labor injunctions. Both led to involuntary servitude and were often used together, particularly in mining. Under the yellow-dog contract ‘‘the miner . . . surrendered his right to ask for increased wages, for better working conditions, or to associate with his fellow workers in giving effectiveness to any attempt to procure changes in these working conditions.’’ If he left one unsatisfactory job, his contract prevented his reemployment. He was tied to the inequities of the company store and the company physician. Yet, the injunctive process was used to bind him to the company.141 Generally, the injunction was intended as a property right to prevent irreparable injury. But here ‘‘the real object of the injunction is not to protect property but to restrain the constitutional rights of the individuals and thus to interfere

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with human liberty.’’ Injunctions were used to prevent dispersement of strike benefits, the appeal of eviction orders and publicity of employment conditions leading to the strike; in short, to cripple union activities. There was no protection for the enjoined: ‘‘This judge, who made the law, who issued the order, who fixed the penalty, and who tries the case, would be guided by no rule of evidence known to our system of jurisprudence.’’142 When rural America grew appalled at the sit-down strikes, Norris cautioned that the president and Congress remain silent on the question as long as it was being worked out privately. Roosevelt was right not to call out the army. While he opposed occupation of the factories, he supported a resolution that added condemnation of industrial spy systems, refusal to bargain collectively, and company unions to a censure of the sit down, though he only spoke on the company union provision. He wondered whether he might not resort to such a technique if he were an oppressed miner.143 Yet, labor did not escape his criticism. He vehemently opposed wartime strikes. Problems must be resolved while production continued. But he insisted that management was as often at fault as labor. In fact, some of the stoppages were wildcat strikes, over the protests of labor leaders.144 The split between the AFL and the CIO ‘‘Nearly broke my heart,’’ for individual selfishness would create a divided front against ‘‘an organized monopoly of human greed.’’ The hostile attitudes of the war years worried him, and he warned labor that wartime strikes, excessive initiation fees and communist elements in local labor unions might bring repressive legislation.145 This sense of humanity and practicality, which marked his reaction to labor-capital relations, also marked his reaction to the depression. The depression had been caused by the mishandling of technological change. It was intensified by the concentration of wealth and a heavy war debt that prevented a balanced budget. His solution to the depression was consumption oriented. Both the technologically unemployed and the overproducing farmers must be enabled to purchase the product of our society. When new machinery was introduced, prices should be reduced, wages increased, hours limited and we would have increased consumption and employment rather than technological unemployment. Unfortunately, this solution rested upon private initiative, and the crisis required governmental action. During the depression following World War One, he called for public works for the unemployed. An export corporation for agricultural products would improve purchasing power of farmers and create industrial demand and employment. He continued to favor these solutions during the Great Depression, but he accepted New Deal solutions to deal with the emergency. Opposed to the economics of scarcity, he nevertheless supported the AAA. Preferring the more expensive public works to direct relief, he supported grants-in-aid to state relief programs until the administration shifted to work relief: ‘‘It seems to me it would be much

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better to have our people earn the money necessary to support them, rather than to give it to them and get nothing in return.’’ The Civilian Conservation Corps was a worthwhile example of this viewpoint.146 National standards for the administration of relief should be set, for that insured more honest disbursal. Efforts by both the administration and Congress to keep politics out of relief impressed him.147 Norris was willing to modify his opinion of specific efforts to overcome the depression, to accept imperfection for the larger goal. His initial reaction to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was negative: ‘‘I thought we were commencing at the wrong end. Instead of commencing with big business, I thought we ought to commence with the laboring class and the farmers of America, and let prosperity climb up, rather than to take the charge of having a few crumbs brushed off the mahogany-top tables while we would grovel on the floor and pick them up.’’ He wanted corporate loans publicized and executive salaries reduced in firms that obtained loans, and he voted against the bill. Yet, once the bill was enacted, he felt that RFC notes to banks should be renewed, in order to extend farm mortgages and that, despite issuance of loans to corporations with watered stock, the RFC had done more good than harm in the depressed state of the country.148 When the depression began, he called for a balanced budget. By 1937 he was chafing at pressure on the administration to halt relief expenditures in order to balance the budget.149 While his initial reaction to the NRA was positive, he found that in operation it favored big businesses and injured the small. Nevertheless, he preferred to expunge the evil and to abandon the plan only if it could not be corrected.150 He was determined to find a solution for the depression and to aid the needy as long as it continued: in 1932 he tried to increase the RFC appropriation for public works from $500,000 to $3 million; he wanted the Farm Board to distribute its wheat stocks to the hungry; he showed impatience with those who quibbled over whether relief should be state or federal while people were starving.151 And he castigated those who, profiting from government largesse, then tried to prevent aid to those less fortunate: ‘‘I feel that this greedy, selfish being who disgraces the form of man is successful where a just God would compel him to be more thankful and more thoughtful of his brother.’’152 Such individuals should be warned that ‘‘the right to acquire property and make unlimited profits is not a sacred right.’’ It grew from specific economic conditions and when these conditions changed, when insistence upon vestigial rights brought starvation and the destruction of American government and civilization, then ‘‘new laws and rules must be enforced to protect the rights of humanity and save our civilization from annihilation.’’153 Unlike extremists on the right he did not find any threat to our civilization from espousal of unpopular ideas. Wartime hysteria, leading to the Espionage and Sedition Acts, disturbed him greatly. Muzzling the press was a curtailment of the liberties of the people. A provision permitting the post-

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master general to bar dangerous materials from the mails was the equivalent of destroying a man’s business without a trial; even worse, it intimidated newspapers that were not suppressed. The powers given to the postmaster general should not be granted to a saint, Norris insisted, for it interfered with the basic American concepts of human liberty and human freedom. When similar powers were suggested in peacetime, Norris was incensed. The bill did not even permit the truth of a statement or the motivation of the accused as a defense, he pointed out. Didn’t the advocates of the bill have confidence in the intelligence and patriotism of the American people, in the strength of the government to survive open debate and criticism? he queried. In the Palmer raids he found a subject for mockery; in the detention facilities provided Palmer’s captives he found a source of despair.154 He particularly disliked A. Mitchell Palmer’s appointee, J. Edgar Hoover, ‘‘the greatest hound for publicity on the American continent today.’’ Hoover tried cases in the newspapers, not the courts. Hoover lacked respect for human liberty. When he handcuffed sympathizers for the Spanish loyalist cause before they dressed, while arresting them on a minor charge, and then refused to allow them to inform their families, Hoover showed ignorance of the need to give Communists as fair a trial as Methodists. He paid no attention to the right of a man charged with a crime to be protected until conviction, just like a man against whom no charges have been made. When it was suggested that the immigration service be moved from the Labor Department to the Justice Department, Norris feared it might fall into Hoover’s hands.155 But even in this delicate area, Norris did not take a doctrinaire position: he saw neither a reason for a bill requiring a loyalty oath for teachers, nor an objection to it.156 This same refusal to take absolute positions permeated his attitude toward civil rights, not one of his more insightful areas. He did not examine American treatment of blacks on the basis of whether they had obtained equal rights, as many progressives did. He tried to measure how far they had come, how much more they were ready for. The progress made by blacks after years of servitude impressed him, and he recommended that they continue to rely on education for advancement. The Nebraska senator accepted the myths about Reconstruction and was pleased that southerners were lynching fewer blacks. After sixteen years of silence about anti-lynching bills he finally opposed the 1938 version, and not on constitutional grounds. He anticipated it might precipitate a revival of Reconstruction attitudes that would cause southerners to slip from ‘‘a record of which they have a right to be proud.’’157 On the other hand, he felt that in the half century since Reconstruction blacks had advanced sufficiently to be granted the right to vote. Therefore, he supported legislation to end the poll tax in 1942: how could Americans fight Hitler and fascism without broadening equality at home? he queried.158 While a conscious opponent of prejudice—‘‘There are good and bad peo-

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ple in all races, and there is as much sense in torturing one race as there would be in persecuting people with red hair, or every one with blue eyes’’— his attitude was fundamentally patronizing and paternalistic. At the same time that he scorned foreign exploitation of Liberian resources and people, he mocked the role of ‘‘dark colored statesmen,’’ who joined the allies late in the war, and accepted U.S. financing of their representatives to Versailles. In his autobiography, he illustrated his extreme poverty by describing a shack that he had occupied, by himself, that had previously housed an entire Chinese maintenance crew.159 This prejudice was reflected in his attitude toward immigration. He objected to the literacy test, for it excluded otherwise qualified immigrants. Yet, he supported a bill to establish immigration quotas based on a percentage of the nationality settled during a given period of years, with clear ethnic implications. When this bill failed in that session, he voted for a literacy test and inconsistently rejected an amendment by James Martine, progressive Democrat from New Jersey, to admit those literate in Hebrew or Yiddish.160 One reason for ethnic bias at that time was the cultural affinity of most immigrant groups for the social consumption of alcohol. While Norris was generally reluctant to see federal investigations in the area of individual rights, he had no qualms about the great experiment to reform character by prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Long a teetotaler, Norris at first evaded Prohibition as a political issue, but supported the Eighteenth Amendment in Congress. After passage, he condemned government officials who failed to enforce the Volstead Act as well as prohibitionists who voted against Al Smith on that issue alone. When repeal became imminent he fought a gentle rear guard action, suggesting an amendment of the Volstead Act to permit the manufacture of non-intoxicating beer, then any beer, and when these ploys failed, he tried to prevent saloons by prohibiting the consumption of alcohol where sold. Finally, he sought to bar advertising intoxicating beverages over radio and, with the onset of World War Two, he attempted to prohibit saloons from operating near army camps.161 Norris’s humanism, his pragmatism, his sense of democracy, led him away from the combative nationalist pose of Teddy Roosevelt and towards a lifelong endeavor for peaceful solutions: He preferred to employ national resources to solve internal problems, and he deplored military waste and industrial profits drawn from war. Always aware that international interchange precluded isolation, he endeavored to be a delegate to the Interparliamentary Union in Brussels in 1905 and supported the idea of a permanent court of arbitration to prevent the escalation of disputes into wars. He favored the Bryan arbitration treaties, which provided a cooling off period. Had they been pursued rather than military alliances, peace would have continued, he maintained.162 While he confused imperialism and patriotism in 1900, soon he actively

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opposed American imperial ventures. Very early, he advocated Philippine independence without mandating naval bases, coaling stations and a protectorate. The United States should not intervene in Mexico to protect property: ‘‘a man who invests his money in a foreign country takes the risks of war and must abide by the result.’’163 As the United States intervened repeatedly in Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua and Santo Domingo he mocked American motives angrily. While he was as moralistic as Wilson, and opposed recognition of Huerta, he vehemently rejected the seizure of Vera Cruz for failure to salute the flag. He would have wired Admiral Mayo to hide the flag, for fear the old butcher would disgrace it with a salute.164 U.S. arrogance in Latin America was a subject for his satire: ‘‘our marines will be directed to hold an election down in Cuba, and they will see that the right people get in office.’’165 ‘‘We have set ourselves up as the Colossus on this hemisphere,’’ he protested, ‘‘and are going to insist that all other governments shall follow our wishes not only in their relationship with other nations but in their internal affairs as well.’’166 He joined William Borah in a successful effort to negotiate a solution to the problem of American oil interests in Mexico, rather than to impose the will of American oil corporations on a weaker country.167 Norris was an early exponent of hemispheric cooperation, rather than American unilateral domination. If there was to be foreign supervision of elections, he suggested in 1928, it should be done in conjunction with other nations of this continent.168 U.S. ships in coastwise trade should not be exempt from payment of Panama tolls. Coastwide trade was already a monopoly and this was just a bonus to shipping companies, at taxpayer expense. While the United States had power to implement the change, since it built the canal, he moved to arbitrate the question.169 But Wilson’s efforts to pay conscience money to Colombia to forestall British domination of Colombian oil was mistaken. After all, Colombia had lost the opportunity by wrongfully rejecting the Hay—Herran treaty.170 He opposed American entrance into World War One partly because he thought U.S. neutrality was tainted and America was partial towards Great Britain. The United States was driving towards war, he pointed out, because it was entering a war zone declared by Germany, in which they had deployed submarines, while it recognized war zones established by Britain, which deployed more indiscriminate mines. German subs had taken human lives, but no one had yet been killed on an American vessel. To prevent confrontation, he announced, Australia, Canada and India had passed laws forbidding citizens from sailing into a danger zone. If the United States continued to send merchant ships into war zones, and armed them, he warned, it would lead to American entrance into the war. U.S. involvement in war was not inevitable, and its security was not involved. In opposition to the declaration of war he exclaimed: ‘‘You shall not coin into gold the life blood of my

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brethren,’’ and insisted that Europe solve its own problems and bear its own burdens.171 The profit motive in war preparation was a constant subject. He ridiculed a request for an increased navy to defend the United States from ‘‘the attacks of the cripples and the widows and the orphans that are coming over here from Europe at the close of the war . . . in rafts and rowboats . . . to annihilate us.’’ At the same time that additional naval funds were demanded, funds for government armories had been slashed and funds for ammunition had been increased threefold, but only after the bill had been amended to permit government purchase as well as manufacture of ammunition. ‘‘Would we not, in case these rifles were to be made by private individuals and corporations, be doubling the appropriation instead of cutting it in two?’’ If the government manufactured its own armorplate and projectiles, produced its own gunpowder, it would eliminate the greatest factor in building public sentiment for war production—the prospect of private profit.172 The attempt to achieve peace through military preparedness had been ineffective. The alternative was for all nations, by treaty, to accept for themselves that which they imposed upon their subjects, that they ‘‘submit their differences and disputes to tribunals and courts that have been organized under the forms of law.’’ General principles should be developed in time of peace and a permanent jurist panel created to apply these principles. Contestants should choose a judge, or a tribunal if they were unable to agree, and disputes should be settled, setting precedents for future cases. World opinion would be sufficient enforcement power.173 In an effort to find a safeguard against unnecessary conflagration, he recommended the establishment, in every republic, of a requirement for a referendum before a declaration of war, unless the nation was invaded.174 When the war came, he supported war measures for, like his attitude toward Panama Canal defenses, which he at first opposed, once involved, he believed it had to be done properly.175 But he was not an indiscriminate supporter of government wartime policies. We have already discussed his vehement opposition to wartime repression. Initially, he opposed conscription, but once it was in effect, he accepted overseas service for draftees. Logically, conscription of wealth should follow, he insisted. The war could be financed by bonds or taxes. Bonds were voluntary and would have to be repaid with interest. An inheritance tax and a graduated income tax, starting at incomes of $5,000 and rising to 50% over $1 million would disturb neither capital nor business. It would not oppress the poor as a sales tax would and would take the profit out of war: ‘‘Let it be known that war profits and large incomes must pay the bulk of the expense of the war and peace will come much sooner . . . war will become almost extinct.’’176 When Wilson rejected Austrian peace feelers, Norris was disappointed. He concluded, accurately, that the Allies would only consider unconditional surrender.177 After World War One, he was quick to protest military mistreatment of con-

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scientious objectors. He protested that court martial boards were chosen by the same officer who initiated the charges and who later recommended promotion of its members.178 Ten years after the declaration of war he summed up the wisdom of his initial opposition: We went to war to make an end to militarism, and there is more militarism than ever before. We went to war to make the world safe for democracy, and there is less democracy than ever before. We went to war to dethrone autocracy and special privilege, and they thrive every where throughout the world today. We went to war to win the friendship of the world, and they hate us today. We went to war to purify the soul of America, and instead we only drugged it. We went to war to awaken the American people to the idealistic concepts of liberty, justice and fraternity, and instead we awakened them only to the mad pursuit of money.179

While he remained anti-war and anti-military, Norris distinguished between the causes of World Wars One and Two, and reluctantly supported preparation for the latter. His recognition that the Axis was dangerous to the United States did not diminish his fear of an expanded military. He had long preferred a properly instructed, Jeffersonian militia—an improved National Guard—to a standing army. As late as 1940 he supported a bill authorizing the president to call up the National Guard to complete their training, hoping to derail universal military training. ‘‘Compulsory military training in time of peace,’’ he warned, ‘‘cannot long prevail in a democratic form of government, without leading that government into the realm of dictatorship.’’ Universal military training would train for murder and replace the finer sensibilities of peace and love. It would lead to reverence for the uniform, citizens deferring to officers, and a reluctance to resist military excesses, It was the first step towards aggression, similar to that of Mussolini in Ethiopia. To prevent a militarist culture, he endorsed a bill to make it clear that the Morrill Act only required that military training courses be offered and to end such state college requirements. For similar reasons, he opposed efforts to institute universal military training in Civilian Conservation Corps camps.180 Persistently, he attempted to prune military budgets and to eliminate the profit motive. He wanted to create a government airplane factory as a yardstick for prices and embraced the Nye munitions investigation.181 As late as 1938 he continued to oppose army expansion, even though he thought the only reason the United States was safe from Axis aggression was a strong army and navy.182 From 1910 on, he resisted rapid naval expansion. Norris warned that

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whenever a naval appropriation bill was reported, a war scare was created. At one point, he even suggested the substitution of transport ships for a battleship to be delivered to the Panama Railroad Company for use in times of peace. He vigorously and repeatedly protested government subsidies for the creation of a private merchant marine and the haste, in peacetime, to sell ships purchased during wartime for less than reconditioning costs. Instead, he proposed to expand the fleet of the government-owned Panama Railroad Company. After World War One, he suggested the transfer of the war surplus merchant marine and the lease of seized German boats. This efficient company could help reduce costs, expand our commerce and provide reserve resources in case of war. Fearful of the armed services, concerned about military expenditures at a time of great domestic need, insistent upon avoiding the mistakes that led to World War One, yet frightened of Axis aggression that threatened our very civilization, Norris gradually came to support New Deal rearmament and aid to the Allies. In 1936 he opposed presidential discretion in the embargo and felt the neutrality laws were not stringent enough. Still, he supported the loyalist cause in Spain. When France fell, he wanted United States shippers to transport German and Italian subjects who fought for Loyalist Spain to Mexico. By 1938 he supported a private boycott against Japan and was looking for ways to prevent Japanese purchases of scrap metal. Events led him to reexamine the question of military expansion, and he suggested an alliance with Britain, France and Russia to destroy fascism in its infancy. By 1939 he was a leading advocate of the ‘‘Cash and Carry’’ policy. He admitted that the embargo had been a mistaken policy that had aided Germany, which could trade through European neutrals, and had injured England. While ‘‘Cash and Carry’’ temporarily injured China, it aided European allies, short of war, and avoided the causes of World War One: It prohibited American vessels from carrying passengers and freight to belligerents. It forbade sales on credit. It precluded purchase of foreign bonds by American citizens. And it prevented arming merchantmen. Norris accepted subterfuges. He supported sale of naval reserve planes to manufacturers who could then sell them to the Allies; and he was a firm supporter of LendLease. While insisting that he still believed in a referendum on war, he rejected the one proposed as impractical. Instead of designing a substitute, he expressed his confidence in Congress. Initially opposed to selective service and to the convoy system, he reversed himself in both instances. He favored a firm hand in dealing with the Axis powers for they could not be appeased, and they did not want war with the United States. Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He supported the war.183 Even after the commencement of hostilities he hoped to prevent the use of troops overseas. Concerned about the effect of the war upon citizens, he insisted that emergency legislation be limited to the emergency. World War One had shown that legislation was hard to repeal. Security required industrial

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decentralization, he warned, and he was perturbed by further concentration on the coasts. The war, he argued, required sacrifice and pulling together: he considered wartime stoppages to be unpatriotic and asked employers to offer more and employees to accept less in order to avoid strikes; he supported requisitioning property needed by the government.184 While Norris supported national efforts in wars, once begun, he longed to end wars and hoped to use the experience of war to prevent their recurrence. Yet, after World War One, he was an irreconcilable foe of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles. Unlike most of its opponents, he was not concerned with League limitations on American sovereignty or its effect on our Monroe Doctrine claims in the Western Hemisphere. Before Wilson came home with a treaty, Norris realized that peace required a national ‘‘willingness to compromise with a willingness even to sacrifice some of his own cherished opinions.’’ He told the Senate that the war made nations likely to adjudicate questions that they would not have considered before. Renouncing some freedom of action in order to live in society did not endanger sovereignty. In fact, every treaty meant relinquishing some prerogatives. The Monroe Doctrine, he insisted, could be replaced by the abolition of conquests. He was unperturbed that small nations had equal votes with large, for the United States would sit on the Security Council. While he disliked entangling alliances, we had entered one during the war, we could not avoid European problems and a proper League could avoid entanglement for all nations. Its absence meant rearmament and wars of vengeance. The League needed amendment: better provisions for disarmament; prohibition of conquest, or territorial expansion without consent; arbitration of international disputes; and public pursuit of international business. No international military would be necessary if nations arbitrated in good faith. If not, economic boycott was an effective weapon. He was even willing to accept less than perfection in the League: ‘‘No man under any flag would sacrifice more according to what he had to sacrifice than I would to have brought about a league that was honest and honorable.’’ But Article 10 was damnable. It was the last nail in the coffin of selfdetermination for India, Egypt, South Africa and Korea. ‘‘When you start to build the temple of justice upon a foundation of sand, of crime, of dishonor, of disgrace, your temple will crumble and decay just as surely as history repeats itself.’’ And, worst of all, the League was tied to the infamous Versailles Treaty, which incorporated the secret treaties. Most inexcusable was the treatment of China. China was an ally. Yet, Japan was to receive German rights in Shantung. Wilson said this was a necessary agreement to bring Japan into the war. Japan entered in 1914. The treaty was signed in 1917. When corrected, Wilson thanked him, and continued misrepresenting the facts. Japan had marched through neutral China to attack German troops, just as Germany had driven through Belgium. China was forced to accept the Twenty-One Demands but never ratified them. In addition, Japan

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was bloodily repressing the Korean revolt, England imprisoning Egyptian allies—and the League would act as insurer for the Japanese and British empires. Norris felt forced into opposition.185 As late as 1934, Norris was still not reconciled to membership in the League.186 His attitude toward the World Court was different. Initially, he had favored a court to settle international problems. World War One taught him to have less faith in nations proclaiming the end of wars while carving up the world in secret treaties. After the United States had made sacrifices to accomplish their selfish ends, they refused to pay their debts. Consequently, he was reluctant to bind the United States to adjudicate disputes through a court whose members hated us for insisting upon debt repayment, whose votes were political, and over which a Japanese jurist presided while Japan invaded China. Even if the judges were honest they lived in a different civilization and held a different viewpoint. Only if the Senate were consulted before the United States submitted a question to the court could he support American adherence to the protocol.187 The war left a heritage of intergovernmental debts that seemed insoluble in the postwar world. The attitude of men like Norris towards these debts has been maligned. He opposed postponing interest payments—they just accumulated. If nations could pay interest on their domestic debts they could pay interest on intergovernmental war debts. We should neither reduce the debt nor the interest rate. The American taxpayer, rather than the European taxpayer, would then acquire these debts. There was no reason why the United States should pay its creditors higher interest than it collected from its debtors, especially when Britain, for whom a 3% interest rate was suggested, charged Persia 7% and Australia 5%. He was willing to fund the debt, await repayment, or accept payment in war materials but not to forgive debts while these nations used our money to maintain armies larger than prewar. It was not just that they borrowed the money. It was that they could afford to repay it.188 Norris was deeply concerned with the residual problems of the war. United States troops should return from their stations on the Rhine, he insisted, and he was ready to force their return by refusing appropriations.189 He vehemently opposed U.S. military intervention in Russia and was perturbed by reports that the United States was financing a Kerensky embassy. There was no logic in the policy of non-recognition: Evidence that Russia was trying to overthrow the American government did not exist. Statements by American Communists no more bound Russia than one Republican murderer made all Republicans murderers. The payment of imperial bonds was more likely if Russia was recognized and negotiations could proceed. Later, he was to point out that the Soviet Union repaid her own debts, while many of our allies did not. After all, we recognized many governments we did not approve of, many of them created by revolution. During the depression he extended the prospect of trade. Finally, when the Soviet Union invaded

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Finland and Senator Vandenberg suggested revocation of recognition, he countered with a proposal for private boycotts of both Russia and Japan.190 For war veterans, he favored compensation in the form of a bonus, paid immediately. As late as 1930, he supported payments of veterans’ certificates. The pretense that there were insufficient funds while taxes on the wealthy were being reduced angered him. By 1932, he could not vote for the bill, except to employ unemployed veterans, for the problems of all the unemployed had to take precedence.191 As a world tired of war sought means for ensuring the peace, Norris joined the feeble efforts of the 1920s. Naval arms limitation received his support, but distrustful, he added to the London Treaty that no agreement not present in the text of the treaty could be binding. He voted for the treaties that emerged from the Washington Conference and endorsed the KelloggBriand effort to outlaw war.192 As World War Two moved towards a conclusion, Norris set forth his proposals for a permanent peace. First, the Axis must submit to unconditional surrender. Second, they must be permanently disarmed, their armaments factories destroyed, with enforcement, even if it took fifty years of occupation. War criminals should be punished. Junkers and Japanese militarists should be eliminated as a class, he continued. The cost of the war should be borne by the Axis, to be paid gradually, annually adjusted according to ability. Yet, care must be taken that the vanquished not be humiliated. Eventually, they should be included in a League of Nations, a League rejecting any conception of racial superiority or control over another race, a League based on absolute equality of all nations. And, in the post war world, the United States should aid the hungry among our enemies as well as our allies.193 He did not live to see the postwar world. George Norris died in McCook, Nebraska on September 2, 1944. During his long career Norris adjusted his ideas to changing reality, never relinquishing his progressive vision. NOTES 1. Commonweal, 37(November 20, 1942), p. 108. 2. E. G. Lowry, ‘‘Norris—and His Type,’’ Colliers, 53(July 18, 1914), p. 20; ‘‘Norris,’’ Colliers, 65(January 31, 1920), pp. 14, 34; R. L. Neuberger and S. B. Kahn, Integrity, the Life of George W. Norris (New York, 1937), pp. 4–5. 3. George W. Norris, Fighting Liberal (New York, 1961), pp. 23–59; Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris, the Making of a Progressive, 1861–1912 (Syracuse, NY, 1963). 4. Norris, Fighting Liberal, p. 39. 5. Ibid., pp. 49–64. 6. Lowry, ‘‘Norris,’’ p. 34. 7. George Norris (GN) to John F. Cordeal, ca. 1929, quoted in Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 394–95.

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8. U.S. Congressional Record, 59 Cong., 1 Sess., 40(1906), pp. 8228–30. 9. Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 109–11, 121–32; Lowitt, Norris, pp. 100–101, 126–28, 132–45, 169–84; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 36; Alfred Lief, Democracy’s Norris (New York, 1939), pp. 58–107; David Sarasohn, Party of Reform (Jackson, MS, 1989), pp. 59–93; GN to Norman Hapgood, November 17, 1908; GN to Adam Greede, June 4, 1909; GN to A. C. Rankin, January 11, 1910; GN to Walter Locke, January 22, 1910; GN to Joseph Black, February 18, 1910; GN to William Owen Jones, May 8, 1910; George W. Norris Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (GN MSS); U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 43(1909), pp. 1056–58. 10. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 45(1910), p. 8444. 11. Lief, Norris, p. 117; Lowitt, Norris, pp. 209, 224–25; GN to R. R. Reed, February 9, 1914, GN MSS. 12. Norris, Fighting Liberal, p. 53. 13. George Norris, ‘‘My Party, Right or Wrong,’’ Colliers, 73(June 21, 1924), pp. 5–6, 31. 14. Lowitt, Norris, p. 15. 15. Speech by Norris, ‘‘If I Were President,’’ undated typescript (ca. 1920), GN MSS; Norris, ‘‘My Party, Right or Wrong’’; of his eloquent fellow Nebraskan, William Jennings Bryan, Norris wrote: ‘‘Mr. Bryan’s greatest weakness was his intense partisanship.’’ George W. Norris, ‘‘Bryan as a Political Leader,’’ Current History Magazine, 22(September, 1925), pp. 859–67. While Norris did suggest candidates to be appointed by the executive, he consistently opposed the use of patronage; he supported the Nebraska WPA administrator in his effort to keep patronage out of WPA appointments and promotions. Richard Lowitt, ‘‘George Norris and the New Deal in Nebraska, 1933–1936,’’ Agricultural History, 51(1977), pp. 396–405. 16. George W. Norris, ‘‘The Insurgents and the Party,’’ Metropolitan Magazine, 32(1910), pp. 656–62. 17. GN to Moses Clapp, September 23, 1911; GN to William B. Ely, September 24, 1911; GN to D. McLeod, January 5, 1912; GN to H. E. Larimer, January 25, 1912; GN to F. P. Corrick, February 19, March 18, 1912; GN to Ray McCarl, February 16, March 18, 22, 24, April 16, 1912; GN to John Yeiser, January 27, February 2, 1912; GN to J. F. Lawrence, June 29, 1912, GN MSS; cf., Lowitt, Norris, pp. 216–58; cf., Fred Greenbaum, ‘‘Teddy Roosevelt Creates a ‘Draft’ in 1912,’’ in Natalie Naylor, Douglas Brinkley, and John Allen Gable, eds., Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American (Interlaken, NY, 1992), pp. 433–43. 18. GN to William Culp, January 22, 1913, GN MSS. 19. George Norris, ‘‘Put Not Your Faith in Parties,’’ Nation, 118(April 2, 1924), p. 369. 20. Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 148, 155, 163–64, 174–78; GN to Z. B. Cutler, June 20, 1928; GN to John Cordeal, November 13, 1928, GN MSS; New York Times, June 17, 1928, October 25, 1928, October 18, 1932. 21. Statement by Norris, October 2, 1928, GN MSS. 22. George Norris, ‘‘The Pennsylvania Patriot’s Duty; Elect a Democrat,’’ Nation, 123(July 14, 1926), pp. 28–29; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 239–47. 23. George Norris, untitled article, Literary Digest, 118(October 13, 1934), pp. 8, 38; George Norris, ‘‘The One-House Legislature,’’ National Municipal Review, 24(February, 1935), pp. 87–89, 99; George Norris, ‘‘The One-House Legis-

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lature,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 181(September, 1935), pp. 50–58; Norris, Fighting Liberal, p. 337; Franklin L. Burdette, ‘‘Nebraska, a Business Corporation,’’ The American Mercury 34(March, 1935), pp. 360–64. 24. George Norris, ‘‘Coddling the Lame Duck,’’ Independent, 114(1925), pp. 213–14; George Norris, ‘‘Mr. Dawes and the Senate Rules,’’ Forum, 74(October, 1925), pp. 581–86; U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 46(1925), pp. 4008–9; George Norris, ‘‘Reform of the Senate Rules,’’ Saturday Evening Post, 198(February 13, 1926), pp. 27, 169–73; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 323–35; Lief, Norris, pp. 241–43; David Fellman, ‘‘The Liberalism of Senator Norris,’’ American Political Science Review, 40(February, 1946), pp. 27–51. He would never have believed that even a shortened lame-duck session could be used to ram through a presidential impeachment. 25. George Norris, ‘‘Mr. Dawes’’; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), p. 27; Congressional Digest, 32(February, 1953), pp. 63–64; Lief, Norris, p. 159; Fred Greenbaum, ‘‘The Anti-Lynching Bill of 1935: the Irony of ‘Equal Justice—Under Law’,’’ Journal of Human Relations, 15(1967), pp. 72–85. 26. George W. Norris, ‘‘Secrecy in the Senate,’’ Nation, 122(May 5, 1928), pp. 498–99. 27. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), pp. 1809–10; GN to O. Byron Copper, May 2, 1936, GN MSS. 28. George Norris, ‘‘Why I Believe in the Direct Primary,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 106 (March, 1923), p. 25; U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 45(1910), pp. 4930–31; New York Times, April 8, 1928, January 24, 1934; James A. Stone, ‘‘The Norris Program in 1924,’’ Nebraska History, 42(1961), pp. 124–39. Commenting on the election of Senator Newberry of Michigan, Norris declared: ‘‘They had an auction in the state of Michigan, and the thing they put on the block was a seat in the Senate of the United States.’’ Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 148. 29. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 3474–78; GN to John Leyda, April 30, 1938, GN MSS. 30. U.S. Congressional Record, 60 Cong., 1 Sess., 42(1908), p. 936. 31. Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 87, 98. 32. U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 45(1925), pp. 1539–40, 1668–72, 10635. 33. U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 1 Sess., 47(1911), pp. 1472–73. 34. GN to T. W. Barton, December 24, 1910, GN MSS. 35. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 2 Sess., 67(1930), pp. 3645–46; Lief, Norris, pp. 467–76. 36. Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 338–58; New York Times, September 23, 1937. 37. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., 46(1911), pp. 1433–34; GN to E. F. Baldwin, January 21, 1911, GN MSS. 38. GN to E. F. Baldwin, January 21, 1911; press release ‘‘Criminal Procedure in Our Courts,’’ June 24, 1928, GN MSS. 39. New York Times, April 22, 1928. 40. GN to E. F. Baldwin, January 21, 1911, GN MSS; New York Times, April 23, 1922. During the struggle of one group against the New Deal and another for

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federal anti-lynching legislation, Senator Austin of Texas proposed the extension of federal jurisdiction in civil cases. Norris queried whether the Constitution should be amended so that the federal courts could trespass to try a man for murder, or was the dollar more sacred than human life (U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 2019–21, 2031–36). 41. New York Times, June 3, 18, 1935; cf., Joseph Hernon, Hubris and Heroism in the United States Senate (New York, 1997), pp. 140–159. 42. New York Times, June 3, 18, 1935; Ronald A. Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives and the New Deal’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1970). 43. New York Times, February 6, 1937; L. H. Robbins, ‘‘Norris Restates a Liberal’s Credo,’’ New York Times Magazine, May 30, 1937, p. 25. 44. George Norris, ‘‘Why I Believe in the Direct Primary,’’ pp. 22–30; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 57(1922), pp. 8806–12; GN to Mrs. Amanda M. Lafferty, February 26, 1910, GN MSS; New York Times, May 31, 1941. 45. GN to Victor Rosewater, May 21, 1906, GN MSS; cf., U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 1 Sess., 47(1911), p. 2412. 46. GN to Governor Keith Neville, March 17, 1917, in Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 96–99; GN to the Editor, December 21, 1927, Nation, 126(1928), pp. 96–97. 47. GN to Frank Pettit, February 25, 1923, GN MSS; United States Law Review, 68(1934), pp. 287–91; U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 8935–53. 48. National Municipal Review, 33(October, 1944), p. 489. 49. Lief, Norris, p. 121. 50. New York Times, April 3, 1937. 51. U.S. Congressional Record, 58 Cong., 2 Sess., 38(1904), p. 728. 52. U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 2 Sess., 48(1912), pp. 8872–73; 62 Cong., 3 Sess., 49(1913), p. 1420; 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), pp. 3885, 5390– 96; 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 10402–5; cf., Ronald Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism (Baltimore, 1981), p. 92. 53. New York Times, April 3, 1937. 54. Lief, Norris, pp. 431, 478; Richard Lowitt, ‘‘George Norris and the New Deal in Nebraska, 1933–1936,’’ pp. 396–405. 55. Cf., GN to E. E. Emmett, November 19, 1900; GN to R. C. Orr, February 26, 1909, June 16, 1909; GN to G. A. Allen, May 9, 1910; GN to W. P. Warner, January 28, 1910; GN to Chester Aldrich, April 24, 1911; GN to John A Maguire, September 5, 1935; GN to Paul Appleby, August 23, 1935, GN MSS; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 141–52. 56. S. J. Woolf, ‘‘A Leader of Liberals Defines Liberalism,’’ New York Times Magazine, December 18, 1938, pp. 7, 15; New York Times, October 18, 1932; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 392, 396. 57. George Norris, ‘‘The Farmer’s Situation. A National Danger,’’ Current History Magazine, 24(April, 1926), pp. 9–13. 58. Lowitt, Norris, p. 89. 59. Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 86–87; Lowitt, Norris, pp. 46–54. 60. U.S. Congressional Record, 59 Cong., 1 Sess., 40(1906), pp. 6218–19; Lowitt, Norris, pp. 89, 97–98, 157–58, 233–34. 61. Lief, Norris, pp. 229–34; U.S. Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 47(1926), pp. 11241–45.

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62. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), p. 4386; GN to Ernest Pollard, January 24, 1926; GN to J. L. Baker, March 25, 1926; GN to William Hunneman, August 29, 1927, GN MSS. 63. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 16772–73. 64. U.S. Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), pp. 10902–4. 65. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 3645–46, 3692. 66. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 4043–50, 4374–92; New York Times, May 16, 1921; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 277–79. 67. George Norris, ‘‘The Farmers’ Situation,’’ pp. 9–13. With strong feelings that agricultural interests must be protected, he opposed government purchase of Argentine canned beef and was prepared to enact a raw cotton schedule if overseas production of cotton continued to grow. U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), pp. 3522, 5707. 68. U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), pp. 8128–30; 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 599–600, 694–98, 2560–68, 4676–88; GN to Ernest Pollard, January 24, 1926, GN MSS; George Norris, ‘‘Why the Farm Bloc,’’ World Tomorrow, 11(1928), pp. 255–57. 69. U.S., Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 4582–84, 4605–11; GN to Roy Swift, November 28, 1930, GN MSS. While he supported drought relief for Arkansas farmers by the Hoover administration, he was distressed that food provisions were stricken. He was unsuccessful in his requests for a moratorium on the collection of government loans to farmers, like the war debt moratorium, and for an exemption of farm cooperatives from taxes, U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1930), pp. 1114–18; 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1931), pp. 1121, 7162. 70. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1937), pp. 1386–87, 1548–52; GN to William Evjue, December 29, 1933, April 12, 1935; GN to Frank Arnold, May 4, 1934; GN to Charles Franklin, April 12, 1935; GN to S. K. Warrick, October 18, 1938; GN to A. R. Wallick, March 10, 1939, GN MSS. 71. GN to E. C. Warner, March 18, 1929; GN to John Robertson, telegram, September 29, 1933; GN to C. E. Hartz, December 29, 1933; GN to J. Boyd Allen, January 14, 1939, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), pp. 3167–69. 72. Norris, Fighting Liberal, p. 93; U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 2 Sess., 48(1912), p. 1288; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 3167–69. 73. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 1575, 1892– 97, 2050–51, 2155–56; GN to Mrs. Neil Dunlary, February 7, 1942; GN to E. W. Rossiter, July 22, 1942, GN MSS. 74. GN to Thomas Beall, June 24, 1911, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 52(1922) pp. 9889–90. 75. GN to A. T. Cornish, February 12, 1911, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 13849–50; 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), pp. 6099–6100. 76. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 4632–38. 77. George Norris, ‘‘The Insurgents and the Party,’’ Metropolitan Magazine, 32(1910), pp. 656–62; GN to E. F. Baldwin, February 11, 1911; GN to Thomas Beall, June 24, 1911, GN MSS; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 58. 78. GN to W. F. Buck, January 26, 1906; GN to Frank Arnold, May 4, 1934, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 78(1934), p. 6380.

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79. U.S. Congressional Record, 59 Cong., 1 Sess., 40(1906), pp. 1044–48; 62 Cong., 2 Sess., 48(1912), p. 3409; 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), pp. 3510–13; 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 4671–72; GN to J. Boyd Allen, May 26, 1930, GN MSS. 80. GN to Judson Welliver, June 22, 1929, GN MSS. 81. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), p. 1598. 82. Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 113–20; GN to Judson Welliver, June 22, 1929, GN MSS. 83. GN to F. M. Richard, June 29, 1931, GN MSS. 84. Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 58. 85. GN to C. Smith, June 11, 1906; GN to T. Jones, June 18, 1906, GN MSS. 86. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 2491–95. 87. U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 3 Sess., 49(1913), p. 2513; cf., GN to F. A. Good, June 15, 1914, GN MSS. 88. GN to E. H. Newhouse, May 15, 1912, GN MSS. 89. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), pp. 1269–87; 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 13973–74. 90. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), p. 14466; GN to E. R. Gurney, April 16, 1916, GN MSS. 91. GN to F. A. Good, June 15, 1914, GN MSS. 92. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), p. 16042. 93. Ibid., pp. 11533, 11596–97, 16042; 66 Cong., 3 Sess., 59(1920), p. 321. 94. George Norris, ‘‘Boring from Within,’’ Nation, 121(September 16, 1925), pp. 297–99; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), p. 2646; 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), pp. 5962–64; New York Times, July 27, 1925, p. 13. 95. GN to Clarence Westbrook, June 5, 1935; GN to F. H. Chapelle, July 9, 1933, GN MSS. 96. GN to F. H. Selleck, January 3, 1942, GN MSS. 97. U.S. Congressional Record, 58 Cong., 3 Sess., 39(1905), pp. 1744–45, 1787–88; Arthur Capper, ‘‘Curtis and Norris,’’ North American Review, 225(1923), pp. 521–29. 98. U.S. Congressional Record, 58 Cong., 3 Sess., 39(1905), p. 1413; GN to J. B. Cessna, April 6, 1905; GN to G. L. Day, January 22, 1906, GN MSS. 99. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 45(1910), pp. 4999–5002, 5514–15, 5575; GN to W. O. Jones, May 5, 1910, GN MSS. 100. Lief, Norris, p. 177. 101. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 2585–87; 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 2317–19. 102. U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 59(1919), pp. 122–26, 219– 23, 529–31; 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 66(1925), pp. 1080–81. 103. GN to John Cordeal, January 6, 1929, GN MSS. 104. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 4410–15, 4439. 105. GN to J. W. Crary, July 5, 1911; GN to Tim Baumgardner, July 29, 1911; GN to Peter Olson, March 20, 1912, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 2291–92. 106. U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), pp. 5518–19. 107. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 10072–74. 108. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 16590–94; 67

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Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1927), p. 8379; 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), pp. 3291–92; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 62. 109. Richard Lowitt, ‘‘A Neglected Aspect of the Progressive Movement: George W. Norris and Public Control of Hydro-Electric Power, 1913–1919,’’ Historian, 27(1965), pp. 350–65; U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), pp. 5463–70, 5485, 5495; 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 339–52, 16591–92; George Norris, ‘‘Pattern for the Welfare of All,’’ New Republic, 105(August 4, 1941), pp. 145–46; George Norris, ‘‘TVA on the Jordan, Nation, 158(1944), pp. 589–91. 110. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 8892–8904, 9463–65; 67 Cong., 4 Sess., 64(1923), pp. 737–44; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 204–29; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 249–75; George Norris, ‘‘Why Henry Ford Wants Muscle Shoals,’’ Nation, 117(1923), pp. 739–50; George Norris, ‘‘Shall We Give Muscle Shoals to Henry Ford,’’ Saturday Evening Post, 196(May 24, 1924), pp. 30–31, 54–60; (May 31, 1924), pp. 21, 125–30; George W. Norris, ‘‘Possibilities of the Completed Plant,’’ Current History, 28(1928), pp. 730–33. 111. George W. Norris, ‘‘The Power Trust in the Public Schools,’’ Nation, 129(1929), pp. 296–97. 112. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 5092–94; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), pp. 10418–21. 113. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), p. 15196; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 8491–8519. Cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives’’ pp. 106–112. 114. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 8198–8202, 8392–95. Cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ p. 71. 115. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 4886–89; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), p. 7906. 116. GN to Eugene Allen, January 29, 1906; GN to C. H. Boyle, April 16, 1908; GN to Bayard Paine, December 21, 1911, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 58 Cong., 3 Sess., 39(1905), pp. 327–28. 117. Lowitt, Norris, pp. 120–23; GN to Julius Goldzier, January 25, 1909; GN to Charles Arnot, November 19, 1921, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 60 Cong., 1 Sess, 42(1908), pp. 519–22, 1081–84. 118. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1913), pp. 679–80, 991– 93, 1136–37, 1972–75, 14861; Lief, Norris, p. 148. 119. George Norris, ‘‘Big Banks Are Swallowing Industry,’’ The World Tomorrow, 16(March, 1933), p. 224. 120. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 14558–59, 15633. 121. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), p. 5422. 122. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong. 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 1410–19; 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 801–5, 2515–16, 3727; GN to C. E. Arterburn, March 1, 1935; GN to William Hughes, April 17, 1935, GN MSS; cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ pp. 39–42. 123. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 2381–88; cf., GN to C. G. Wilcox, July 19, 1932, GN MSS; New York Times, June 11, 1937, p. 33.

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124. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 14641–42. 125. New York Times, February 17 1922, p. 2; GN to Louis Meyer, April 22, 1932; GN to J. R. O’Neal, May 12, 1932; GN to W. N. Youngclaus, May 14, 1932, GN MSS. 126. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong. 1 Sess., 50(1913), pp. 3809–10; 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 13853–54; 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), p. 6842; 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), pp. 1207–9, 8020, 8261; 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), pp. 3490–3508; GN to John Leyda, April 30, 1938, GN MSS; New York Times, November 13, 1923, p. 3. 127. GN to C. E. V. Smith, April 13, 1909; GN to B. H. Robison, July 20, 1909; GN to A. H. Burnham, July 26, 1909, GN MSS. 128. George Norris, ‘‘Redistribution of Wealth,’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1935), pp. 327–31; cf., U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., 46(1911), pp. 208– 10, 218–23, 228–29; 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), pp. 4422–28, 4562; 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), p. 11599; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 259; Lief, Norris, p. 144. 129. Norris, Fighting Liberal, p. 389. 130. GN to Edward Milliken, February 2, 1906; GN to F. N. Morwin, May 18, 1906, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., 46(1911), p. 1240; 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 13384–86, 13399, 13634–35; 64 Cong., 2 Sess., 54(1916), pp. 3745–46; 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), p. 3482. 131. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 13384–86, 13399, 13634–35. 132. GN to Carl Horn, May 21, 1938, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 4309–11; 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), p. 1293; 76 Cong., 3 Sess., 86(1940), p. 2653. 133. GN to J. D. Ream, December 31, 1924, GN MSS. 134. U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 3 Sess., 86(1940), pp. 12395–96. 135. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 2 Sess., 72(1929), p. 603. 136. GN to Dr. R. B. Mullins, September 20, 1934; GN to C. C. Galloway, December 6, 1934; GN to Dr. W. E. Lamb, January 18, 1935; GN to Otto FJEK, December 19, 1935, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), p. 5053. 137. GN to Mrs. Gladys Slemp, February 3, 1934, GN MSS. 138. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), p. 3699. 139. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 5279–84. 140. Robbins, ‘‘Norris Restates a Liberal’s Credo,’’ p. 25; GN to Freda Kirchway, Nation, 159(September 9, 1944), pp. 284–85. 141. Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 303–4. 142. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong. 1 Sess., 75(1932), 4502–11. 143. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 3126–30, 3244–46; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 253–58. 144. GN to Eric Wright, May 17, 1941, GN MSS; Norris, Fighting Liberal, p. 310. 145. GN to V. B. Kinnoa, November 3, 1939, GN MSS; New York Times, April 13, 1941; June 12, 1941, p. 14. 146. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 2649–51; 71

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Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1931), pp. 4239–42; 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 12147– 48; Lief, Norris, pp. 371–90; Robbins, ‘‘Norris Restates a Liberal’s Credo,’’ p. 25; Speech by Norris, ‘‘The New Civilization,’’ November 16, 1933; GN to E. Glenn Callen, February 7, 1935; GN to W. L. Albin, February 7, 1935; GN to J. E. Postwood, October 6, 1936, GN MSS. 147. GN to Grady Kennedy, February 17, 1934; GN to T. J. Sullivan, June 13, 1934; GN to A. R. Wallick, March 10, 1934, GN MSS; Ray Tucker, ‘‘Norris Surveys the Political Scene,’’ New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1935, pp. 3, 20–30. 148. U.S. Congressional Record, 71, Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 1705, 13255, 14983–85; GN to C. G. Wilcox, July 19, 1932; GN to W. F. Schilling, February 11, 1933; GN to RFC, April 14, 1933; GN to John Leyda, April 30, 1938, GN MSS. 149. GN to Frank Throop, May 8, 1933; GN to Andrew Soulek, December 27, 1937; GN to Joe Leedom, April 7, 1940, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 3163–65. 150. GN to Hugh Johnson, August 24, 1933; GN to Mercer Walker, March 6, 1935, GN MSS. 151. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 1191–91, 3662; New York Times, June 17, 1932. 152. GN to Dan Stephens, May 20, 1935, GN MSS. Norris attacked steel companies for raising prices a dollar a ton to profiteer from the public works program. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1931), pp. 175–77. 153. Speech by Norris, ‘‘The New Civilization,’’ November 16, 1933; GN to F. E. Mansfield, February 9, 1935, GN MSS. 154. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 2 Sess., 54(1917), p. 5004; 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 783–85, 7341–45; 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 4630, 4650, 5978–80; 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 59(1920), pp. 1253–57; 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), pp. 447–48; cf., Joseph Hernon, Hubris and Heroism. 155. U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 3 Sess., 86(1940), pp. 5642–65; New York Times, May 31, 1940, p. 10. 156. GN to August Biermann, January 7, 1925, GN MSS. 157. GN to Robert Smith, April 1, 1924, GN MSS; George Norris, ‘‘The Future of the Negro in Politics,’’ The Crisis, 38(September, 1931), p. 298; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 2208–9; cf., Hernon, Hubris and Heroism. 158. GN to James Morrison, September 12, 1942, GN MSS; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 349–59; Hernon, Hubris and Heroism. 159. New York Times, November 25, 1922, p. 20; S. J. Woolf, ‘‘A Leader of Liberals,’’ New York Times Magazine, December 18, 1938, pp. 7, 15; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 172; Norris, Fighting Liberal, p. 69. 160. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 3 Sess., 52(1914), p. 802; Lowitt, Norris, p. 231. 161. Lowitt, Norris, pp. 156, 223; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), p. 5643; 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 2414–17, 15671–72; 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 4154–63; 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), p. 529; 77 Cong., 2 Sess., 88(1942), pp. 8440–41; New York Times, December 28, 1929, p. 1; December 4, 1931, p. 2; December 18, 1931, p. 6; June 30, 1932, p. 19; GN to John Cordeal, January 6, 1929; GN to A. W. W. Woodcock, December 12, 1932,

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December 17, 1931; GN to W. W. Whitfield, December 2, 1931; GN to J. M. Douglass, January 17, 1933; John Robertson to Mrs. Chris Paules, July 3, 1940, GN MSS. 162. GN to Richard Barthold, April 25, 1905; GN to F. Milton Willis, April 20, 1910, GN MSS; Lief, Norris, p. 157. 163. GN to J. O. Hane, September 10, 1900; GN to M. Danielson, March 23, 1911; GN to R. E. Wright, September 4, 1935, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess. 53(1916), pp. 1792–95; 70 Cong. 2 Sess., 70(1929), p. 3837. 164. Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 86; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 6996–7000. 165. U.S. Congressional Record, 70 Cong., 1 Sess., 69(1928), p. 7195. 166. GN to Frank Roth, April 24, 1928, GN MSS. 167. U.S. Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), pp. 4753–54; New York Times, November 25, 1926, p. 2; March 21, 1927, pp. 1, 2; Lief, Norris, p. 296. 168. GN to John Parker, May 11, 1928, GN MSS. 169. Lief, Norris, pp. 155–57; New York Times, April 2, 1914, p. 2; April 10, 1914, p. 1; U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong, 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 7532–38. 170. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 166, 465–67. 171. U.S., Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 212–215; cf., Walter A Sutton, ‘‘Bryan, LaFollette, Norris: Three Mid-Western Politicians,’’ Journal of the West, 8(1969), pp. 613–630. 172. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 937–72; 63 Cong., 3 Sess., 52(1915), pp. 4694, 5237–38; 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 3485–87, 11480–81; 64 Cong., 2 Sess., 54(1917), pp. 5004–9; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 111–27; Lief, Norris, pp. 197–203. 173. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 10931–34. Norris thought that one of the great lessons of the war was that so-called military insurance against war eventually led to war. GN to H. T. Davis, January 4, 1927, GN MSS. 174. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 7453–55; 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 1735–36. 175. Lief, Norris, pp. 155–57, 204–7; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), p. 1623; Lowitt, Norris, p. 274. 176. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 933, 1464, 1623, 6130, 6157, 6659–62, 7001–2; Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, pp. 130–32. 177. New York Times, September 17, 1918, p. 2; November 12, 1918, p. 4. 178. GN to G. W. Timm, January 14, 1919; GN to Newton Baker, January 23, 1920; Baker to GN, February 2, 1920, GN MSS. 179. Frederick Babcock, ‘‘Norris of Nebraska,’’ Nation, 125(1927), pp. 705–6. 180. GN to Glenn Scott, April 12, 1911, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 4069–70; 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 5384– 87; 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 1412–15, 1502–6; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 3912, 3932, 4919–22, 6805; 76 Cong., 3 Sess., 86(1940), pp. 8065– 69, 9855–56, 10113–19. 181. John Robertson to Mrs. A. H. Fetters, July 16, 1935, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 3319–21; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), pp. 2216, 2371.

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182. In 1905 he wanted to abolish the regiment in Puerto Rico. U.S. Congressional Record, 58 Cong., 3 Sess., 39(1905), p. 727; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 3104–5; 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 5526–27, 5853–54. 183. Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 381–85; Lief, Norris, pp. 523–40; George Norris, ‘‘American Neutrality,’’ Vital Speeches, 6(November 1, 1939), pp. 62–64; Richard Neuberger, ‘‘Prairie Senator,’’ Survey Graphic, 28(December, 1939), pp. 724–27, 773; John Robertson to Reverend Ray Turner, January 20, 1938; GN to H. G. Harris, February 17, 1939; GN to Harry Johnson, March 20, 1939, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), p. 5687; 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 85(1939), pp. 367, 994–96; 76 Cong., 3 Sess., 86(1940), p. 5637; 77 Cong., 1 Sess., 87(1941), p. 9978; New York Times, March 28, 1938, p. 3; April 20, 1938, p. 18; July 12, 1938, p. 6; March 7, 1939, p. 14; April 30, 1939, p. 32; May 13, 1940, p. 8; May 18, 1940, p. 6; June 7, 1940, p. 14; July 26, 1940, p. 1; October 4, 1940, p. 32; January 23, 1941, p. 10; May 12, 1941, p. 4; May 25, 1941, p. 30; May 26, 1941, p. 10; September 24, 1941, p. 10; October 19, 1941, p. 10. 184. George Norris, ‘‘Progressives Unite,’’ New Republic, 107(1942), pp. 377– 78; GN to Morris Cooke, June 26, 1941; GN to John Forsyth, June 1, 1942, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 77 Cong., 1 Sess., 87(1941), pp. 1975, 5024–69, 5387–88, 6176. 185. Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 209–19; Lief, Norris, pp. 216–22; GN to my dear friend, June 1, 1919 GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 3 Sess., 57(1918), pp. 77, 3749–51; 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 2592–2600, 3564– 76, 4361–63, 5158, 6788–6826, 7364–65, 7687–89. 186. GN to Gladys Slemp, February 3, 1934, GN MSS. 187. Lief, Norris, pp. 446–47; New York Times, December 28, 1925, p. 1; December 29, 1925, p. 2; GN to Ray Wetmore, June 21, 1929; GN to Carrie Chapman Catt, March 7, 1932, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 964–68. 188. H. A. Wallace to GN, December 18, 1931; GN to Wallace, January 21, 1932; GN to C. G. Wilcox, July 19, 1932, GN MSS; Lief, Norris, p. 447; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 3528–34; 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), p. 1966; 67 Cong. 4 Sess., 54(1923), pp. 3783–84; 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), p. 8198; 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 1121, 12687–88; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), p. 3374; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), p. 3514. 189. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong. 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 4002–3. 190. Neuberger and Kahn, Integrity, p. 190; Lief, Norris, pp. 226–29; GN to C. E. Hopping, December 30, 1920; GN to W. E. Borah, December 21, 1923; GN to R. W. King, January 6, 1924; GN to E. B. Hardemann, May 1, 1933, GN MSS; New York Times, January 4, 1921, p. 5; June 25, 1933, p. 2; U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), pp. 445–48; 76 Cong., 3 Sess., 86(1940), pp. 1978–79. 191. GN to John Thomas Taylor, June 13, 1924, GN MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), p. 6772; 71 Cong., 2 Sess., 72(1930), p. 11490; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 13254–56. 192. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 3792, 4497, 4621; 70 Cong., 2 Sess., 70(1929), pp. 1717, 2294, 2618–20; 71 Cong., Special Session, 73(1930), pp. 109, 362, 378; GN to E. W. Youell, November 30, 1928, GN MSS; New York Times, April 26, 1927, p. 8; July 12, 1920, p. 1.

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193. New York Times, July 26, 1942, p. 32; December 7, 1942, p. 16; November 8, 1943, p. 10; Norris, Fighting Liberal, pp. 371–80; GN to William Allen White, April 21, 1942, in New Republic, 107(1942), pp. 119–20; GN to Editor, New Republic, 110(1944), pp. 84–86; George Norris, ‘‘Germany After Defeat,’’ New Republic, 110(1944), pp. 703–5.

Chapter 3

William E. Borah: The Wisdom of Our Fathers While a pragmatic Norris sought to adjust American political institutions to meet new conditions, William E. Borah accepted the dominant myth that the Founding Fathers were superior in political wisdom to succeeding generations and sought to preserve their work. Within their vision, as expressed in the Constitution, enough power had been authorized to meet all modern exigencies. Emergencies did not create new powers; careful construction of legislation was sufficient. A Jeffersonian concern for checks and balances between state and nation and, nationally, between legislature and executive, shaped his thinking. He lacked Jefferson’s irreverence for established institutions, an irreverence with which Norris was amply endowed, and overlooked the Virginian’s caution that no generation had the right to bind its successors. Like Edmund Burke, Borah revered the traditional balances institutionalized at the time of his revolution—Burke’s in 1688, Borah’s a century later. In terms that echoed Burke’s rhetoric, Borah denied that revolutions could ignore experience-sanctified tradition. It was necessary to ‘‘preserve that which is best, separate things which are fugitive from things which are permanent’’ and patiently build for permanent advancement. His literary tastes reflected this respect for the past: Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray and especially Emerson. ‘‘Each time a new work is published I read an old one.’’1 Borah’s conception of progressive reform was always restricted by his perception of inherent constitutional limitations upon national and executive power. While his vision was tempered by practical considerations, this view led him to reject national legislation for women’s suffrage and abolition of child labor, and to oppose all New Deal legislation appearing to embody excessive executive discretion.

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These constitutional scruples came as naturally to this progressive lone rider from the West as they did to more conservative eastern aristocrats. Reverence for the American Constitution and traditions is an integral part of the American national epic, affecting the entire political spectrum, but often in dramatically different ways. If Herbert Croly tried to use Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends, Borah used conservative rhetoric for progressive ends. Just as typical of American mythology is the story of his rise to prominence. Born on an ordinary farm in Fairfield, Illinois, on June 29, 1865, he was one of ten children raised by hard-working, Bible-reading parents. Like many farm boys, he disliked the tedium of rural life. As soon as possible he left, selling cattle he had raised on his parents’ farm to finance his pursuit of legal studies at the University of Kansas. After sporadic efforts to work his way through college, he withdrew permanently; he had contracted tuberculosis. He read law and passed the bar. He attempted to establish a practice in Lyons, Kansas, but the family of a young woman he had impregnated pressured him into leaving town. On route to Seattle, a professional gambler arranged his first case and convinced him to take a chance with Boise, Idaho. A brilliant lawyer and orator, he soon had a flourishing corporate and police court practice, earning $30,000 a year when wages were less than a $1,000 per annum. He saved about $100,000, equivalent to almost $2 million today (by the end of his career he had expended half of his earlier savings). A philanderer throughout his adult life, he married the daughter of former Governor O’Connel after an aborted pregnancy that left the marriage childless. Borah came to national prominence in cases against labor leaders: He was a prosecutor on a specious murder charge growing out of the Coeur D’Alene strike; the prosecution was financed by the mine operators, evidence was lacking and only a stunt by Borah brought a conviction. His reputation was enhanced in the questionable and contentious trial of Haywood, Pettibone and Moyer for the murder of his friend, former Governor Frank Steunenberg. Borah was an imposing and able figure in court and Congress, with his square head, dark eyebrows almost meeting above his short nose, his penetrating but kindly blue eyes, strong upper lip, firm mouth and strong chin with a well-defined cleft; his thick dark brown hair was parted in the center and allowed to grow long. If his strong mellow voice combined the devotion of a preacher and the emotionalism of an actor, it must be remembered that his Calvinist Presbyterian father filled in for the minister, and the young runaway had played Marc Antony with a Shakespearean troupe for six weeks. Like Norris, he made opponents, not enemies; he debated issues, not personalities; and his statements were without malice or rancor. A sober, retiring man who neither nor smoked, nor drank, nor played cards, nor used coffee or tea, he absented himself from Washington’s social life, but not from female boudoirs. Among his lovers were two of the capital’s most powerful women. His influence came neither through per-

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sonal contact nor the skillful maneuvering of bills through Congress. Borah stirred the public conscience with his speeches and his delightful press conferences, raised and popularized the issues and left others to effectuate the mechanism.2 Both Borah’s personal life and his political philosophy were marked by a striking individualism. In 1896 he lost a race for Congress as a Silver Republican. Returning to the Republican party he sought a Senate seat. Though the popular choice, he was defeated in the legislative caucus. As a participant in the caucus, he refused Democratic votes that might have fulfilled his quest. Unsuccessful in his fight for a direct primary before the next election, the Boise orator forced a compromise for a preelection convention rather than a postelection legislative caucus. The machine now accepted him and, in 1907, he emerged as the senator from Idaho. Preceded by his reputation as a corporate attorney and prosecutor in two labor cases, the Idaho freshman was made chairman of the Committee on Labor and Education by Senate Leader Nelson Aldrich. Borah disappointed Aldrich. Working with President Theodore Roosevelt, he reported bills for an eight-hour day, for workmen’s compensation and employers’ liability for railroad employees, to establish a Children’s Bureau, and for a Department of Labor investigation of the twelve-hour day and seven day week in the steel industry. Aldrich tried to retaliate by denying him patronage and pressuring him through his law practice. Borah had no interest in patronage and had relinquished his practice. At the very beginning of his Senate career Borah established his independence.3 His cherished personal freedom became the basis of his political philosophy: freedom for all individuals. A concern for economic and political reform, for the independence of the judiciary, for states rights, for law and order and for a balance between executive and legislature were all subsumed under his interest in the freedom and development of the individual. ‘‘There is only one thing sacred in all mundane affairs,’’ he wrote, ‘‘and that is the individual, with his capabilities, possibilities, and his aspirations; and no government that does not found its right to exist upon this principle or this consideration is worth defending.’’ For ‘‘If the conscience and common sense, the moral purpose and the high devotion of the masses, linked with the ability and courage of leadership, cannot solve these problems, how can we hope to find solution elsewhere?’’4 Effective government depended upon the participation of the individual: ‘‘It is a remarkably short period from the time when a people cease to be active in the affairs of government until they are incapable of discharging the duties imposed by government, and no people incapable of self-government ever long bred a class of statesmen who were capable of governing them.’’ But the individual can only really participate in local government. The basis of all republican institutions is local self-government, ‘‘a principle of a complete faith in the integrity and judgement and self governing capacity

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of the masses.’’ Local self-government, as developed in Athens, drew the citizen close to the government, aroused pride and public spirit. But Athenian government could not expand. It lacked a concept of federal government and representative democracy. Rome had a similar start, but succumbed to the needs of empire. It became centralized, bureaucratized and lost the independence and self-reliance of local self-government. Consequently, Rome fell to Teutonic tribes who retained the political organization it had abandoned. Representative government was first effectively developed by the AngloSaxons; it permitted government over a sizable realm while retaining involvement in local affairs. Drawing upon centuries of experience, the founding fathers carefully balanced state and federal power to permit the federal government to function but retain the virtues of self-government. All local concerns were reserved for the states. Since the Constitution granted the central government no dangerous powers, they should be exercised to the fullest; but Washington should not try to assume powers reserved to the states if the citizens of a state choose not to exercise that power. Under the commerce clause the federal government could only regulate intrastate commerce when it obstructed congressional power to regulate interstate commerce, not when it simply affected interstate commerce. He recognized that industrialization might require a change in the balance of power between state and nation—by constitutional amendment—but states must continue to handle those functions which remained local. For this reason he became an outspoken enemy of the delegation of quasilegislative powers to centralized commissions (which the New Deal was to use extensively). Government by federal commissions was not better than government from Rome by satrapies, he charged. (Borah had launched a similar attack against the creation of the Federal Trade Commission.)5 At times, he opposed a national reform while he strongly endorsed the same action taken by a state. (Most advocates of states rights felt certain that they could prevent effective state action.) To assure that constitutional interpretations did not permit a no-man’s-land where neither federal nor state government could legislate for social welfare, he proposed repealing those sections of the Fourteenth Amendment that had been misinterpreted to permit the court to impose its economic views by substantive, rather than procedural due process. As a result of court decisions, industrial states were prevented from meeting different problems in their own way, and the same national rules were applied to states with wholly different social and economic conditions. (He tried to protect ‘‘any provision which has ever been successfully appealed to in behalf of the colored people.’’)6 To protect states from federal domination, Borah opposed the imposition of federal income tax on state officials.7 Federal aid to education was supported only with the greatest reluctance, and he wanted assurance that local control be retained. But local self-government is not inherent, he wrote while arguing for

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Puerto Rican internal autonomy. Democratic self-government was earned only after years of experience. To end American colonial rule, the United States should return to its original tradition of providing American dependencies every opportunity to acquire and enjoy democracy while preparing for statehood.8 He was vigilant to limit the federal government not only in the interests of states rights but also to retain law and order. This conservative rallying cry usually received different treatment in his hands, though occasionally he introduced conservative analysis: he declared that increased crime was due to confused humanitarians who pardon confirmed criminals.9 Bureaucrats, he argued, were always ready to violate law in the name of the people, to strain interpretations of the Constitution through executive decree and court interpretations. When departments make rules, the violation of which is a criminal offense, he warned, tyranny replaces constitutional government. If a bureaucrat can take away the individual’s right to grow cotton, it is only a matter of time before creeping paralysis permits stifling of the press. And who suffers from the loss of liberty, from the violation of law and order whether it is lynching, wiretapping, or bureaucratic usurpation of power? It is the common people, not the rich. The rich can secure their rights under any government: they can purchase protection, barter for their rights through influence or trickery. Only in a government of law and order could the rights and liberties of the average man be secured.10 Consequently, he could not support the conservative cry for economic liberty mounted by the Liberty League; their concern was too limited. Liberty for ordinary people required freedom from price fixing and exploitation by monopolies, not only protection against the excesses of bureaucrats.11 Similarly, he could not accept the conservative solution to radicalism, for it violated law and order: I have no use for the ‘‘reds,’’ nor for the lawless, nor for the anarchists, but I have infinitely more respect for the man who stands out and is willing to suffer and sacrifice for his cause than for the miserable hypocrite who professed to be an American and is at the same time perfectly willing that every guarantee in the Constitution shall be trampled under foot.12

Thus, he could support laws that punished acts of violence, or appeals to force. Those who defied officers of the law or incited to riot should be punished. But he could not support legislation that penalized opinions and beliefs, for these laws violated the Constitution. The test of truth in politics or religion is not in legislation or imprisonment but in appeal to the hearts and minds of men and women, in having one’s views accepted by the public opinion of the world, he insisted. When Wilson asked for a wartime espionage act, Borah was incensed: ‘‘I do not want any man telling me when I grant him dictatorial powers that he will

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not abuse them.’’13 Repression, he perceived, was more likely to lead to the spread of repressed ideas and to the stifling of reform efforts. The exercise of arbitrary power was the cause of violence and disorder, not its cure. You could not fight fascism and communism by subverting Americanism, by chiseling away at the rights of all Americans. He reminded his readers that the Alien and Sedition Acts had not been used to attack French influenced radicals, but the followers of Jefferson. ‘‘Isms,’’ he insisted, could not exist in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom.14 While eager to eliminate radicalism in open debate by enacting more just and humane laws and by more equitable distribution of prosperity, he took offense at most of the ‘‘Red Scare.’’ Prosecution should be limited to violations of reasonable laws. During World War One he seemed more willing to believe charges of treasonable radicalism than after, but he still insisted upon law, not force. In the postwar period, he called for the freeing of political prisoners, Wobbly and Socialist, and found the token pardon of Debs to be inadequate. He thought deportation of radical aliens was cowardly. Americans accepted them into the country; they should be treated according to any laws they violated. If they were to be deported, they should at least be granted jury trial, not just an executive hearing. In addition, there should be a clear definition of a communist. The Idaho senator opposed censorship of the mail by the postmaster general. It appalled him that a publication could be destroyed by barring the use of the mails before any injunctive relief could be obtained by the injured publisher. It ignored Anglo-Saxon law and tradition that required a hearing before levying an injurious judgment. He not only defended the right of duly elected Socialists to be seated, but he insisted that Socialists should not be barred from government employment as long as their work was adequate. His faith in the American political system was too great to allow it to be wrecked by erstwhile defenders who undermined its fundamentals while nominally protecting it from radicals.15 Borah felt he was protecting the individual from the encroachment of the federal government when he resisted entrusting legislative power to appointed commissions or to presidents. An opponent of delegation of powers in the salary reduction and banking bills being considered in March, 1933, he repeated the same argument against executive reorganization in 1938. In 1918 he appreciated that Wilson requested authorization for administrative overhaul, though he thought the president already had the power. By 1938 he no longer trusted the executive with authority to transfer executive responsibilities and bureaus. The president should request congressional approval for each specific change so that important ones could be given due consideration and others passed pro forma. The worldwide tendency toward executive aggrandizement had made him very wary. He was not even swayed by the imminence of war to grant emergency powers to the president to

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seize and confiscate property, to modify contracts, and to limit speech and press. Such bills reflected a lack of faith in constitutional democracy, he argued. At the same time that he tried to protect congressional authority against the executive, he sought to protect the prerogative of individual senators to filibuster: it had not prevented legislation the country thought should have been enacted, after reconsideration, and free debate had often killed bad proposals.16 To Borah, the bastion of the rights of citizens, the institution that upheld constitutional protections necessary for individual freedom, was an independent judiciary. A fairly consistent attitude towards the Supreme Court was wholly acceptable to neither the very conservative nor the very progressive. It was well expressed in his support for Willis Van Devanter in 1911: One could judge from his opinions that he regards the Constitution as made for man, and not man for the Constitution; accepting neither the theory that the Constitution does not admit of growth or progress nor the more recent faith that it has been outgrown and has become antiquated and out of date, and more or less embarrassing to the fuller realization of the ideals of our civilization.17

The court should uphold constitutional laws even if they reflected unwise economics and nullify unconstitutional laws that reflected wise policy. He was often disappointed that the Court did not broadly construe powers that he was convinced inhered in the Constitution, but his solution was constitutional amendment, not Court packing. At one point, he considered requiring a 7–2 vote to invalidate a law, for only three progressive jurists could supply a restraint, but later thought it unwise. ‘‘The Supreme Court is not always wholly exempt from the influence of politics,’’ he admitted. ‘‘But it is the most nearly perfect human institution yet devised by the wit of man for the dispensation of justice and for the preservation of liberty as defined by the people themselves in the charter under which they have declared their desire to live.’’ The Court was right, he told the New Dealers, when it stated that an emergency does not create power, that Congress alone can make law and that Congress must at least specify rules limiting executive departments. The Court was right when it said that the federal government could not regulate wholly internal affairs of the states. Remember, he said, a unanimous Court rejected the NRA. Remember, too, the Constitution was written during a great crisis and was adequate to resolve it; the excessive powers granted Chancellor Bruning, he warned, were used by Chancellor Hitler. A protective Constitution could not be the supreme law of the land if the Supreme Court could not invalidate legislation. Consequently, he opposed the influence of political parties in the choice of judges, or judges’ choices, and rejected judicial recall (nevertheless, he supported statehood for Arizona and New Mexico despite such a constitutional provision, for he would not

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interfere in a local matter). State judges should be responsive to citizens through election, but for a long term, and without political interference. While judges should retire at age 75, he thought, they should be independent until then.18 While the rights of the individual were to be protected by the courts, popular control of politics required direct democracy. A government run by the people required a faith in the people. In 1904 he declared that while leaders might have sinister motives, the mass of the people, Democratic or Republican, ‘‘act in accordance with what they believe to be the best interests of their neighbor, their county and state and the country at large.’’19 Thirty years later, with popular government being derided in some quarters, he reasserted his faith in democracy: Americans had chosen their leaders well, men suited to meet the great tasks, with few adventurers and demagogues. ‘‘Under what other form of government may be found the intelligence, the devotion, the ethical insight, the unselfish conduct and the moral and social earnestness that characterize citizenship?’’ he queried. What other people lived as well and retained such social mobility. We could handle the complex problems facing us without the sacrifice of liberty: ‘‘If the conscience and common sense, the moral purpose and the high devotion of the masses, linked with the ability and the courage of leadership, cannot solve these problems, how can we hope to find solution elsewhere?’’20 While he supported direct primaries, direct election of senators, publicity for campaign contributions and women’s suffrage, he believed that most of these questions were within the purview of the states and devoted less of his attention to these questions than most progressives. His examination of women’s rights was not only shaped by his concern for state’s rights, it was influenced by his embrace of the myth of the second sex. Where women possessed the vote, he said, they played an active political role. Twenty years of support for women’s suffrage did not lead to support for a constitutional amendment. That would enfranchise four million ignorant southern black women, he warned a correspondent. ‘‘Either the negro women will vote in the South and together with negro men control the situation . . . or they will be disenfranchised by fraud and deception.’’ And he disdained equal rights for women: He did not propose to keep women in the status of slaves, but of women, he argued. They were far superior to men in some things but far inferior to men in meeting the physical burdens of modern economic life. An equal rights amendment was a libel upon nature and an infringement upon the right of differing states to legislate codes of conduct for men and women. He insisted that federal intervention should only occur where state efforts alone would be inadequate: prohibition, or financing a highway system, not suffrage or aid to maternity and infant care.21 To Borah, unlike Norris, augmenting democracy did not mean bypassing the party structure. While never very partisan, his partisanship did not di-

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minish with time. In 1904, preparing for a party fight for nomination, he declared himself a very strong partisan, but then supported progressive candidates for governor without regard to political party. Yet, in 1926, he justified refusing to endorse progressive Republican Senator Brookhart in a primary, claiming to fear voter resentment of outside interference.22 Like Norris he refused to join the Progressive party; unlike Norris he condemned the Progressives as a ‘‘party which was born and swaddled in the back end of a trust organizer’s garage,’’ and he refused to consider Roosevelt’s bid for the Republican nomination in 1916, for he was the candidate for the nomination of another party. For him, there was no progressive party outside the Republican party.23 With persistence, he tried to shape the Republican party in his progressive image. He was proud that the national Republican convention had changed its structure after 1912 to seat certified primary winners automatically and to reduce the size of the southern delegations. Had these reforms been in place in 1912, Roosevelt would have been nominated, he wrote.24 In 1922, dissatisfied with both political parties, he called for realignment, but not a third party. The five million Progressive party votes in 1924 were a warning to the Republicans to reform. While Norris embraced the New Deal, Borah wanted to reshape the Republican party into an intelligent, liberal opposition, endorsing proper legislation and rejecting unwise proposals. ‘‘If we hold the lines for constitutional government, if we preserve personal liberty, and at the same time give men and women security and social justice,’’ he told the New York Young Republicans, ‘‘if under the Constitution we can work out a system which will give to labor and to the producers their rightful share of the wealth they produce, we will have performed a service to civilization.’’ The depression, he warned, was more than a business debacle. It was a notice that the inequities and injustices of our economy called for readjustment.25 Always a partisan, he constantly railed at the excesses of partisanship. The people, he said in 1923, are interested in issues, the party leaders in political patronage; the people: treasury funds to be used in the public interest; the party leaders: a fund to be tapped by every powerful political bloc. In 1935 he warned that partisanship was undermining constitutional liberties, checks and balances, for party members were whipped into line. While partisanship was more dangerous than party inspired waste and corruption, he vigorously opposed corruption; after Teapot Dome, he attempted to raise funds to return Harry Sinclair’s campaign contributions. Borah promoted corrupt practices legislation for both primary and general elections and pressed for publicity for campaign expenditures. It was more important to limit contributions from interested parties seeking benefits, than the amount donated by a wealthy candidate to his own campaign.26 Government must serve the populace. It was this concern that government serve the populace, and not the special interests, that led to another area of conflict with the New Deal. The

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New Deal, he insisted, was promoting monopolistic practices. Borah had spent a lifetime fighting such behavior. Monopoly, Borah said, was ten thousand times worse than slavery. It undermined government, established and enthroned classes. ‘‘The war between the republic and monopoly must be one of extinction—there is no neutral ground.’’ It was an irrepressible conflict. Monopoly assumed for itself the powers of an ancient sovereign: it determined the prices of necessities, divided territories, and administered fines and punishment for price cutting. He refused to accept the judgment of those progressives who despaired that monopolies could not be destroyed. To pass and enforce adequate laws was all that was necessary. It was no more valid to try corporations that were guilty of fraud for restraint of trade, than to prosecute a murderer for retarding the development of the human family. The law should be more specific: it should prohibit such acts as selective price reduction meant to destroy a competitor, agreement to limit output and division of territory. If the Sherman Act had shifted too much responsibility to the courts, then America must follow Justice Taney’s dictum that corporations were limited to powers granted by legislatures, and legislate accordingly. Instead, when the courts denied that one corporation could hold stock in another without express legislative authority, the states granted them that authority. If Congress barred corporations from interstate commerce when they attempted to vote the stock of another company, it would hasten the end of trusts. If interstate businesses were licensed and denied renewal when a corporation acted improperly, it would serve a similar function. ‘‘Upon what theory do we send men to prison for violating the law and permit corporations living in open defiance of the law to enjoy their grants of sovereignty from the states?’’27 Borah was disturbed that monopolies were not nipped in the bud, that they were permitted to grow until their dissolution could injure trade. The anti-trust decisions of the Supreme Court were unsatisfactory. He objected to the Standard Oil decision, for a contract at common law prohibited all restraint of trade, reasonable as well as unreasonable. The American Tobacco ruling was even more disturbing. Now there were four monopolies instead of one—cigarettes, smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco and licorice: We must either proceed to enjoin when we have notice of their formation and punish when we have notice of their existence, to confiscate their property when we find it in transit in violation of the law, to dissolve the corporations, to put them in the hands of receivers, and to wipe them out of existence, and not break them up like a joint snake, that they may come back after the enemy has left the scene, or else we are going to find that the Sherman anti-trust law is a delusion and a snare.28

Borah would not relinquish his determination to destroy trusts before they destroyed our form of government. Commenting on Teddy Roosevelt’s alternative of regulated monopoly, he said: ‘‘I think you can no more reg-

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ulate a monopoly than you can regulate a cancer. Before very long those who are to be regulated get possession politically of the regulators.’’ He understood that monopolies corrupt politics with campaign contributions. Regulatory commissions were proliferating, he added, but they transgressed our concept of government. The prime purpose of a commission was to investigate and report to an elected legislative body. The new commission violated separation of powers: ‘‘they exercise almost every conceivable kind of power which a government possesses.’’ George Perkins tried to use his control of the press to dupe people into thinking that they could be protected from monopolies, he warned; monopolists supported him in order to salvage their own theft. But regulation could not control monopolies. Instead, it only burdened the 98% of honest businessmen with blighting bureaucracy, cramped initiative and throttled the virtues needed for a democracy. Unfair competition, he complained, is too elastic a term; ‘‘it favors the lawless and embarrasses the honest.’’ And it was just this lawlessness that must be ended: ‘‘I want the same kind of punishment administered to theft, however it may be committed.’’29 While Borah was never reconciled to the Federal Trade Commission, he did praise their work in disclosing profiteering in meat packing during World War One.30 And it was his opposition to the regulatory concept that first sparked his rejection of the National Recovery Administration. Progressive senators had serious reservations about the NRA, except for the labor provisions. Borah, particularly, could not trust code authorities to operate in the national interest while the anti-trust laws were suspended. Unless the provisions of the codes were in restraint of trade, there would be no reason to suspend anti-trust laws. Business associations representing big business could set the terms of the code, burden consumers, and destroy small businesses. His fears were soon confirmed. NRA, he claimed, had become ‘‘a perfect machine for transferring the small holdings of the many to the possession of the few.’’ Endanger small businesses, and you endanger our way of life: ‘‘When you have destroyed small business, you have destroyed our towns and our country life, and you have guaranteed . . . concentration of economic power. . . . The concentration of wealth always leads to the concentration of political power.’’ Declining to accept a position on a proposed NRA small business board in order to be free to safeguard the interests of small businessmen under the codes, he stated that authority for the board could only come from Congress, not from the administration. And he applauded the Schecter decision terminating the experiment: ‘‘It seemed to revive the confidence and release the energy of the business world and the private citizens alike, and gave back some of that freedom of purpose and action without which recovery is impossible.’’31 At no point, for no reason, would he cease his attack on monopoly. When Donald Richberg said there were good and bad monopolies he retorted that one might as well speak of good and bad kidnappers. Such a notion would

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permit politically favored monopolies to prey upon the people.32 As late as 1937 he continued to insist that monopolies could be broken. They could be dismantled even under the Supreme Court concept of unreasonable restraint of trade, he argued, and certainly could be dealt with under new legislation. He tried to amend the wages and hours bill to bar products of manufacturers guilty of monopolistic practices from interstate commerce. If Congress failed to act, all welfare legislation could be negated by monopolistic price fixing, he warned.33 Yet his assault on monopoly was not aimed at all big business. His sally against regulatory commissions was not all inclusive. His attack on price fixing had important limitations. Although he insisted that trusts must be destroyed, Borah urged care that national industrial forces not be destroyed as well. It was not that he hated big business, he reiterated, but he intended to eliminate big business domination of government.34 Opposed, in general, to the delegation of power to regulatory commissions, still, he firmly supported the Interstate Commerce Commission and suggested that radio regulation be entrusted to a separate commission and be removed from the Commerce Department.35 While he opposed price fixing, he sometimes was willing to place this power in the hands of government when it seemed its opponents wanted monopolies to fix prices instead. And fair pricing bills, which he endorsed, protected small businessmen from the price competition of large retailers.36 In fact, he was as much motivated by the class interest of small businessmen and farmers as he was by constitutional scruples. For example, he vehemently criticized plans to subsidize a privately owned merchant marine: subsidies did not build virile permanent institutions and this new trust could borrow money at 2%, while farmers had to pay 8%. On the other hand, he embraced bounties to domestic sugar growers and the debenture plan to subsidize agricultural exports.37 Borah would have been the last to claim absolute consistency. Borah’s concern about monopoly was partially shaped by his respect for competition. It was essential to progress. Private individuals could extract more work from employees than the government. Yet, he could see situations in which other solutions were necessary. He often intimated that government should own natural monopolies, but he never made an outright commitment.38 In 1910 Borah argued that government could assure that railroads ran in the public interest, that it could suspend rates pending the completion of an investigation, even if it did not control or manage the roads. By 1914 he was disenchanted with the attitude of the ICC towards so-called unfair competition—which reduced costs to the consumer—and declared that the action of the ICC on a proposed rate increase was the last test for regulation. Inadequate performance, he warned, would lead to government ownership.39 The failure of the railroads during World War One led President Wilson to take them over by proclamation. Borah was bitter about the ensuing McAdoo compromise during this crisis: it provided for

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government operation with private ownership and guarantees of higher profits than most of the roads had earned over the previous twenty years. Unhappy with wartime management, he rejected McAdoo’s proposal to extend the experiment under peacetime conditions. In fact, in December of 1919 he mused that it would have been better to suspend restrictions and let the railroads solve the problem collectively. Subsequently, he opposed the EschCummins Act, which returned the railroads to private ownership, even though it provided more complete regulation than prewar legislation. By the 1920s he was disenchanted with government regulation of railroads, but he was not convinced that public ownership was the solution. Instead, he proposed the creation of waterborne competition by exempting coastal shipping from Panama tolls. By the mid-1920s he referred to government as the poorest of businessmen.40 Similarly, in 1910 he opposed even leasing Alaskan coal land, for leasing would eliminate small operators. But by 1922 he warned the coal industry that if it did not clean house, if it did not end chaos and waste, exorbitant prices coupled with idle facilities, sporadic employment and conditions that resulted in costly strikes, government management of the mines might be the only solution. We could not have the public at the mercy of operators and their employes.41 During World War One, and thereafter, he called for government ownership of munitions works; at first, for greater efficiency, later, to eliminate the profit in spreading rumors of war. Armament manufacturers, he declared in 1934, are ‘‘international criminals engaged in disseminating such false facts as are calculated to bring their fellow-man into war.’’42 When World War One ended, he opposed the policy of selling ships to private enterprise at a fraction of their value and then subsidizing the new owners. Instead, he suggested that $50 million be allocated to their overhaul, and then these ships should become an integral part of a new policy to develop a merchant marine.43 While at first he was not adverse to private development of Muscle Shoals, he spurned Henry Ford’s plan from the start, and he soon joined Norris in demanding that the government develop the facilities along broad lines.44 On the other hand, he rejected suggestions that the government operate the telegraph system during World War One, for the government could only hope to maintain its performance; it could not improve upon it.45 In this area he was neither consistent nor constant, but preferred solutions short of public ownership and operation. He was less pragmatic and very consistent in his attitude toward banking corporations. Like most agrarian progressives he resented eastern domination, the role of investment banks in industry, the scarcity of capital for farmers, the paucity of banks in rural areas and uncertainty about their solvency, and the high interest rates exacted for agricultural loans. Postal savings banks met a need to safeguard farmers’ deposits.46 When the nation prepared for its first major overhaul of the banking system since the Civil War, Borah expressed serious dissatisfaction with the

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new legislation. He favored a central bank of issue controlled by the government. The Federal Reserve System, he contended, was a central bank controlled by banks. Private banks would have the initiative for contracting and expanding our currency; expansion would depend upon their willingness to increase collateral. It created a monopoly by congressional decree. In the end, we would have to go to the same old banks and pay the same old interest rates. The new legislation could not even stop a panic, which might warrant its existence. Unlike Norris, he did not feel that progressive amendments had overhauled the Glass-Owens Bill sufficiently to warrant support, and he joined most progressive Republicans in voting no.47 After six years of operation, he found the FRB did not even fulfill the promise to decentralize the money of the nation.48 The New Deal modification did not satisfy him: It contained an unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive. It still did not create a government controlled central bank. Deposit guarantee features, which alone could justify the requirement to turn in gold certificates, were still lacking. Only New York banks were sufficiently liquid to benefit from its features, and they would prosper at the expense of state banks.49 He strongly resented the eastern banking establishment. During the course of World War One, profiteering became rife, and he found further cause to berate unfair corporations. They were insufficiently patriotic. He wanted corporations earning more than 15% profit placed in the glare of the public spotlight; and he championed a war profits tax.50 Profiteering continued into the postwar period, but he soon focused on the repercussions from the new capitalist malpractice—frenzied stock market speculation. Inflation, he feared, always preceded deflation, and he suggested means of curbing stock mania. Daily call money, subject to immediate recovery if prices fell, was lent for speculative stock purchases, and this practice endangered the financial stability of the world money market, he warned. Speculators, who borrowed at any cost, drew money from the Bank of England despite high rediscount rates. Corporations were venturing so much in stocks, rather than plant, that only one-third of the $6 billion dollars imported from England was for permanent investment. He supplemented his perceptive analysis with some suggestions. A more orderly deflation could be achieved by tempering stock gambling. The turnover of speculative funds could be decelerated by settling call money in London on a two week, rather than a daily basis, and by substituting fortnightly clearances, common on European exchanges, in place of the daily settlements of the New York Exchange.51 With the onslaught of the panic, he declared that speculation had deepened the depression. It not only inflated securities, but it drew investment capital from legitimate trade and stripped investors of their life savings.52 The Idaho senator responded to the New York State Chamber of Commerce’s call for confidence with a reminder that ‘‘nothing has shocked the confidence of this country like the doings of the great

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financial leaders in these recent years,’’ who ‘‘have been manipulating the whole banking business to their own utterly selfish ends.’’53 He suggested that President Roosevelt employ the war powers, used to close the banks, to shut the stock exchange ‘‘until it purges itself of its nefarious practices.’’ And he vigorously supported New Deal legislation to eliminate those holding companies that had contributed to the financial debacle, though he preferred to abolish all of them.54 Borah’s examination of the causes and cures of the depression helps to understand the economic philosophy that shaped his career. We just explored his ideas about the banking system and how it had assisted stock market speculators to draw funds away from production. His monetary analysis provides further insight. Down through the years, currency manipulation left too many without money, he complained. National tariff policies had prevented the free flow of goods. In its place, gold had been dispatched, and the world’s gold had been concentrated in a few countries. We should neither eliminate the gold standard, as many advised, nor reduce the gold content of the dollar, although he was to support the latter policy when it was proposed. His solution was to prevent demonetization of silver in the Orient, and to restore silver as currency to be minted, as freely as gold, at a ratio of sixteen to one. The senator from silver-producing Idaho was not satisfied with a silver purchase plan, for that only pegged the price of silver: ‘‘Silver is as good money as gold, and was so regarded until it was legislatively destroyed.’’ Half of the world’s population was accustomed to silver as an international monetary standard. Its 50% decline, relative to the value of gold, had reduced their purchasing power and increased the burden of their debt. Remonetizing silver would increase world trade, and rising prices would reflate the dollar, restoring it to its former worth at the time debts were contracted. He denied that he was proposing to inflate the dollar. Borah had not changed his position on silver monetization since the depression of 1893.55 ‘‘The exploitation of the great mass of the people by a very small number of the people,’’ ensuing from the continued existence of monopolies, prolonged the depression. Consequently, we did not have a problem of overproduction but of underconsumption, Borah insisted. But until we destroyed monopolies and eliminated government restrictions and thus released the free play of economic initiative, we must aid those in need. As early as 1917, Borah offered a resolution for federal aid to localities to relieve suffering with food and clothing.56 During the recession of 1921 he proposed providing work for the unemployed rather than just supplying food. We should employ the jobless in completing irrigation projects at a fair wage.57 He insisted that establishing overseas branch factories during the 1920s contributed to American unemployment in the 1930s.58 For the duration of the Great Depression, he retained his earlier approach—recognizing the necessity for relief, expressing a preference for employment pro-

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jects and voicing a distaste for make work. Throughout 1931 Borah was impatient with those who delayed relief measures. No one hesitated about drought relief, and now they balked, he complained. When proposals for direct relief were replaced with a loan, he demanded low interest rates and relief for those who could not obtain loans. Finally, when Senator Dill tried to limit the Senate conferees, Borah cried out in despair: ‘‘For God’s sake, let us get something done in order that we may feed some of those people who are hungry.’’59 The resulting legislation was disappointing. With low expectations of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, he was not surprised when relief programs helped banks and corporations, but insufficient aid reached the people. He feared the Home Loan Banks would be as disappointing as the RFC and the Farm Bank. In an effort to provide real relief, he joined most of the progressive Republicans in voting for the CostiganLaFollette Bill for federal grants-in-aid to state relief programs.60 As the New Deal shaped its relief program, Borah proved a sympathetic critic. He had already endorsed its principles, embodied in the CostiganLaFollette Bill, but asked that funds be appropriated according to need, not population.61 When Harry Hopkins was under attack, charged with using relief for politics and for not eliminating corruption in the program, Borah expressed faith in Hopkins ability to clean his own house. Still, he insisted that all waste be cut from the program and that the FERA be responsible for state programs, so as to remove patronage. And an investigation was necessary to determine whether relief funds were being used in the New Mexico election to defeat the progressive Republican, Bronson Cutting. Uncharacteristically, Borah was willing to permit discretion to the president in dispensing relief (though he had originally resisted relief appropriations for unspecified purposes). In return, relief administrators should supply to Congress as much information as was available. He resisted discretion in work relief, favoring earmarked congressional funds.62 Still, he supported New Deal work relief programs. The Civilian Conservation Corps should be a temporary measure; otherwise it had to be opened to all boys, not just a limited number. And, like other progressives, he supported a prevailing wage amendment to the WPA to preserve wage rates and purchasing power.63 But at all times he resisted wasteful expenditures. He even opposed the popular concept of a soldiers’ bonus as uneconomic, a strain on the taxpayer. The whole concept of pump priming was appalling to him. When it resumed, to counter the 1938 recession, he offered an alternative—enforcement of the Sherman Act.64 On the other hand, he was disturbed by the failure of the early efforts to aid home owners and home builders; funds were lacking, and management was too conservative. New Deal slum clearance and housing programs suited him, but he was perturbed that the bill might be too solicitous for banks and for those who sold materials for homes at monopolistic prices and not concerned enough for those who were to live in these houses.65 His caution about the expenditure of

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government funds while creating employment mirrored another progressive Republican with impeccable New Deal credentials—Harold Ickes. But Borah considered governmental extravagance and waste of public funds to be a cause of the crisis. It was an incentive to be careful in the expenditure of funds during the depression.66 He knew we needed to maintain consumption during the depression, but was concerned that government economize. Borah joined in the general drive to reduce government salaries but, like most progressives, he wanted to protect the poorly paid. The progressives disagreed on the size of the exempt income. Borah and Norris thought an exclusion of $2,500 was too much (Borah thought a $2,000 exemption was sufficient). Johnson and Costigan did not think that amount was too steep. Johnson, alone of the four, rejected an exemption of $1,000 as inadequate. Johnson and Costigan opposed graduated reductions, while Norris and Borah supported them. Costigan relented when income below $1,200 was exempted, but Johnson remained opposed to a graduated decrease in salary.67 This concern for the poorly paid was not limited to government workers. Could anyone have predicted in 1907 that an Idaho corporate lawyer, who had come to national attention as special prosecutor in the Coeur D’Alene and Moyer-Haywood cases, would create a senatorial labor record between 1907 and 1935 that paralleled the American Federation of Labor in 74.5% of the issues that concerned them? In fact, of the eleven votes he cast that differed from the AFL position, two votes concerned child labor legislation where he had constitutional scruples, five votes opposed the exemption of labor from the Sherman Anti-trust Act and against the Clayton Act, supposed to have incorporated this exemption, and two concerned the relationship between railroads and the government during and after World War One where their differences were minor. His support of organized labor, then, was even stronger than it would appear on the surface.68 A firm advocate of unions, he insisted: ‘‘It is not only the right, but, in my opinion, the duty of labor to organize.’’ Organized labor, he continued, not only benefited its members but raised the standard of living for all labor. He could not understand why so many workers remained outside of unions when business was so thoroughly organized. Part of his opposition to the labor and agricultural provisions of the Clayton Anti-trust Act was based on his reading of the Sherman Act. The Sherman Act did not prevent laborers from organizing and striking to raise wages, even if the strike incidentally restrained trade, as long as the strike was peaceful and lawful and all quit work voluntarily. Only if the major purpose of the strike was to restrain trade would it be unlawful. Thus, the provision would either be unnecessary or improper.69 Legislation that would have restricted the right to strike during an investigation would be an unconstitutional exercise of power.70 While he joined many progressives in advocating an open shop—the right of workers to be employed whether or not they joined a union—he vehemently

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opposed its misuse by Judge Gary of U.S. Steel, who insisted it meant that employers did not have to deal with labor organizations representing their employees.71 Borah repeatedly showed his support for organized labor. He called for an investigation of the activities of the state of Massachusetts during the Lawrence strike, and he pressed for an inquiry which disclosed the terrible conditions in the steel industry. He assailed the declaration of martial law in the West Virginia coal fields; it was a subterfuge to impose heavier sentences on strikers than they would have incurred under ordinary state law.72 At a time when the ‘‘Red Scare’’ was employed to discredit the trade union movement, he attacked the federal use of injunctions and troops in the mine strike and Judge Gary’s refusal to negotiate or arbitrate in the steel strike. The Idaho senator expressed his sympathy for the workers’ demands for recognition, higher wages and better working conditions, and called for a voice for labor in the control of business.73 While Borah felt certain that labor retained the legal right to organize and strike, judicial injunctions hampered labor’s efforts throughout the 1920s. Consequently, Borah supported the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which attempted to eliminate both the yellow-dog contract and injunctive abuses. He was quick to recognize the inadequacy of the National Labor Board under the NRA and, long before organized labor, he saw the weakness of the National Labor Relations Act.74 And when the New Deal coalition was being shattered by the sit-down strikes, Borah issued the following release: There can be no doubt, I assume, as to the illegality of the sit-down strikes. But what is labor to do? Sit still and be crushed by these rising prices brought about by monopolistic prices? Labor may, or may not, have determined just where it is going in this controversy, but instinctively, it is fighting for existence in an economic system dominated by monopoly. It is fighting with illegal methods, it is fighting illegal methods.

Like Norris, he was not terribly agitated by the seizure of property, though he insisted that the government must and would protect property. The workers, he informed Congress, saw the action from a different viewpoint. He agreed with Governor Murphy of Michigan that the strike could best be settled by peaceful means and hoped that Murphy could convince the strikers to resolve their controversy and obtain better rights. The nation had come a long way since the cordwainers were jailed for striking, he said, and industrial tranquility will come when the laborer’s right to his job is recognized.75 Borah’s vote against the Adamson Eight Hour Act, contrary to the position of organized labor, did not indicate opposition to government legislation in the field of wages and hours: ‘‘The measure was put through without consideration and without reflection and as the result of shameless

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cowardice and therefore carries all the evils such a law is calculated to carry.’’ That the law was enacted under the duress of a strike freed him to oppose it.76 But earlier he had sponsored a bill providing for an eight hour day for government employees and on government public works projects. As much, or more work, could be completed in the reduced time.77 When Senator Black of Alabama proposed to reduce the work week to thirty hours in order to reduce unemployment, Borah expressed his sympathy for the principle involved but could not overcome his constitutional scruples. Costigan, Johnson, McAdoo and Norris all supported the bill.78 During a long debate about the nature of a wages and hours bill, he never questioned the need for one for unorganized workers. He did want an exemption for agricultural laborers. Borah finally supported a bill that met his objections to a wages board (a little NRA) and to the lack of a date when the minimum wage would rise from thirty cents to forty cents an hour.79 Borah’s position on child labor was not wholly consistent. Throughout his career he argued that the question really belonged to the states, for different states required different laws. Although he opposed the employment of children, he opposed an amendment ‘‘turning over to the national government the right to regulate or prohibit the labor of persons up to eighteen years of age.’’ The federal government should gather information and investigate, but responsibility should remain with the states. In addition, he considered 18 much too high a cut off age, denying the right to work to young folks, and he amended New Deal legislation to reduce the age of prohibition to 14. But he supported the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, barring products of child labor from interstate commerce, for it was warranted by police power to promote health and welfare. Using the recently enacted white slave law as an example he declared: ‘‘If you can not use the channels of interstate trade for the purpose of effectuating a wrong, can you use the channels of interstate trade to carry a product which has been produced or effectuated by a wrong?’’ Despite his generic opposition, when it came to specific legislation he often supported federal regulation of child labor.80 Borah favored another labor issue that came to a head during the New Deal—old age pensions. He had supported the railroad retirement insurance legislation, and when Townshend presented his proposals, Borah insisted that the principle was sound, that it deserved fuller debate and not the treatment it was receiving, but he opposed the proposal’s inequitable sales tax base. When legislation was finally proposed, he balked at its provision of only $15 dollars a month, insisting upon a minimum of $30 a month, even if a state could not afford it; a matching grant-in-aid might not be sufficient for some states, he argued.81 Finally, Borah demurred on two issues close to labor’s heart. He rejected the idea of barring prison-made goods from interstate commerce. It was as unconstitutional as barring Ford open shop cars. But he did suggest that

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they might be labeled.82 And he thought employers had the right to hire labor spies to gather information but not to act as provocateurs.83 On labor, as on so many questions, Borah was a maverick. As a senator who had shown great concern throughout his entire career for the well being of the American farmer, Borah naturally felt that the depression could not be conquered without a solution of the farm problem. The farmers’ markets must be restored, their mortgages and debts scaled down, and their tax burden reduced. The United States could not restore true prosperity, he maintained, until the real producer was prosperous.84 Borah, like Norris, who also fled life on a farm, was influenced by Jeffersonian agrarianism: the great agricultural area was ‘‘the source of national wealth and contentment.’’85 Borah always argued that one of the major problems farmers faced was that they were confronted by various kinds of monopoly. Unless we broke up meat and other food monopolies, ‘‘The American purchaser will be pinched at one end of the transaction and the American producer robbed at the other.’’86 The farmer, he hoped, could free himself from the middlemen and bankers through organization and receive a sufficient share of agricultural prices paid by the consumer. He sought to establish a rural credit system, farmers’ banks or land banks that were independent of banker influence as represented by the Federal Reserve Board.87 In 1914 he offered a bill creating county associations of fifty or more farmers which would contract, as sole selling agent for the area, with a national association that graded and distributed farm products. The middle man would be eliminated.88 When it was suggested, during World War One, that food prices be set, he countered with a proposal to deal with hoarding, monopoly and speculators, ‘‘because speculators have placed their unconscionable toll upon everything which we eat and everything which we wear.’’ He particularly resented price fixing of staples while their substitutes and goods farmers purchased, like farm implements, were free from restraint.89 At this time he opposed price fixing when it would have meant limiting farmers’ incomes. In 1922 he opposed price fixing when it might have meant increased agricultural income. It had not proved useful in experiments dating back to 400 B.C., he said. Yet, the next year, under pressure from Idaho, he pledged support for a bill to set prices on wheat.90 During the 1920s, Borah recognized that the main problem farmers faced was the loss of the European market, formerly a customer for 20–25% of our foodstuffs. While willing to support other proposals, he focused on improving the European market. He recognized that European economic problems, as they existed in 1923, had to be resolved before they increased purchases. As a result, he suggested calling an international economic conference and proposed the use of intergovernmental debts to adjust the economic problems of the hapless continent: ‘‘The debt is really owed to the American people and if it can be used to bring prosperity and relief to the

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American people, I shouldn’t hesitate to use it that way.’’ Temporary advances in farm prices caused by unusual circumstances, like the simultaneous institution of the Dawes plan and a failure of the European crop, were insignificant. He sought a permanent solution.91 Like Norris, Borah thought a tariff on imports was of only limited use to exporting farmers. At best it could improve the domestic market, for wheat prices were determined in Liverpool. Nevertheless, like Norris, Borah sought to extend to farmers the benefit of tariffs. He seemed favorably inclined towards the Norris Bill, but, unlike Norris and Johnson, he opposed the McNary-Haugen Bill after initially indicating his support. Its economic feasibility was uncertain. The effort to reimburse farmers for the surplus would only bring new acreage into production and would create an increased surplus. He was willing to support government purchase through direct appropriation. But it was unacceptable to impose an equalization fee on producers to repay export farmers for losses incurred by selling on the lower priced world market. It was unconstitutional, confiscatory and selective (for it only involved wheat). In an argument later used repeatedly against the New Deal, he rejected entrusting discretionary power to a board of twelve men to levy a contributory tax. It established ‘‘too dangerous a power’’ over the farming interests of the country. In his opinion, any successful farm legislation had to have a voluntary base.92 Borah did not have the same reservation about the other major dual price farm proposal of the late 1920s, the export debenture proposal. A Treasury debenture for half the levy on an imported crop would be given to the exporter, transferable to an importer, acceptable as payment for import duties. He quoted Alexander Hamilton to show that the tariff was essentially a bounty. This plan was a more effective bounty for farmers than a tariff schedule. Agriculture should have the tariff protection that was given to industry. Norris’s modified form of debenture, with subsidies scaled down so as not to encourage overproduction, received his vote, and he continued to support the concept well into the New Deal.93 He had little faith that the Hoover Farm Board was a solution, but voted for it. The board confirmed his doubts when it stopped trying to stabilize the wheat market at a dollar a bushel, only to resume when prices, at forty-three cents a bushel, were so low that success would still ruin the farmers. He bitterly protested Hoover’s reluctance to consider drought relief in 1931 when he had led the postwar effort for European relief.94 As farm problems intensified during the prolonged depression, Borah sought immediate relief as well as long run solutions. He advocated a moratorium on farm mortgage payments, refinancing of farm mortgages, the scaling down of debts and the expansion of currency. This would enable farmers to retain their properties, even though they could not be farmed successfully by anyone under depression conditions.95 When the New Deal proposed its first Agricultural Adjustment Act, Borah

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swallowed very serious reservations about the allotment proposals, the limitation of the number of commodities and the elimination of provisions to cover the cost of production and voted for the bill.96 Yet, when given the opportunity to extend the AAA to the sugar industry with the JonesCostigan Act, he objected. He had earlier advocated the bill’s principle provision, a bounty to sugar growers in place of a tariff schedule, but he opposed some key provisions of the legislation: the reduction of domestic sugar acreage, the processing tax and the continuation of the Cuban sugar tariff differential. ‘‘The American market,’’ he wrote, ‘‘belongs to the American farmer to the full extent of his ability to supply it.’’ Later, he did accept the idea of external production controls, important if international production was to be stabilized.97 He was disturbed by the poor treatment of sharecroppers and farm tenants under the first AAA. Justifying his negative vote, he explained that both the cotton control and the tobacco control legislation hurt the small producers. And when the AAA came to its untimely end, he suggested that processing tax refunds for small claims should be eased; large claimants would obtain relief in court.98 Never pleased with a policy of scarcity, he balked when the New Deal tried to legislate reduced farm production. One-third of the nation was still in need. The soil conservation provision was an expedient. Since it would take land out of production to increase fertility, the other unconstitutional provisions could be scrapped. But he opposed production control as a long-range policy. Agriculture could be helped without putting the farmer in a straightjacket. He was concerned that so much discretion was given to even so able a secretary as Wallace. No principles were established to guide him. The task required omnipotence. In addition, Borah rejected the New Deal parity proposal: the periods chosen for the bill were not good years for farmers; in fact, farmers and laborers had never received a fair share of the national income. While the government could not provide equitable purchasing power for farmers and laborers, the condition of each could be improved by increasing the purchasing power of the other. He rejected the idea of an ever normal granary. The surplus could be distributed to the needy instead. Finally, reciprocal agreements to reduce international tariffs by opening the American market were unacceptable. The American market belonged to the American farmer, he reiterated.99 While Borah’s nationalism, his attitude that American needs had to be placed first, has led others to characterize him as an isolationist, he was never unaware of the international scene or of its implications for the United States. His pride in American tradition, his reservations about much in contemporary practice, led him to envision an America that was an example for the world. Unlike Woodrow Wilson, who had a similar vision, Borah did not envisage an America that intervened to reshape the world. The international scene received the same concern for decentralization that he applied to domestic politics. Unlike Theodore Roosevelt, he rejected the idea of a

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double standard—respect for powerful, industrialized and westernized nations and domination over weak and backward nations. He understood that America needed to recognize the concerns and interests of other nations. At the same time he championed a vigorous pursuit of its own interests. Wilson’s moralizing was not an attractive Mexican policy. Borah accepted General Huerta’s refusal to see an unaccredited emissary from Wilson, whom everyone knew had arrived to demand the general’s resignation. Conditions in Mexico, he felt, were no more deplorable than conditions in New York City. The Boise resident feared that the Vera Cruz incident was the beginning of a march of the United States to the Panama Canal. Nevertheless, when the young Carranza government could not protect the United States from the depredations of Pancho Villa, Borah called for a firmer policy. He applauded dispatching troops to capture Villa, even though it violated Mexican sovereignty.100 When the Mexican government sought to break up landed estates and restore to itself unused oil rights sold by earlier corrupt regimes, this same concern for American interests, while recognizing a Mexican national right to social reform, led him to call for negotiations or arbitration of the dispute over American investments in Mexico. Mexico, he insisted, had respected vested rights better than most nations trying to dismantle landed estates. He chided those who blamed the Bolsheviks whenever a small nation fought for freedom and independence, and he resisted intervention on the pretense of establishing free governments. If Mexico was willing to waive the question of sovereignty, this question was suitable for arbitration. (He would not want the United States to relinquish its jurisdiction.) Finally, he brought pressure on the Coolidge administration to negotiate, even requesting that the Calles government supply him with the information on American oil interests that Coolidge was withholding. A peaceful solution followed his efforts.101 In Mexico, and in the states further south, Borah challenged the misapplication of the Monroe Doctrine. In the absence of any threat to Latin American nations by other than an American power, he opposed our interference with Latin American sovereignty lest the Monroe Doctrine ‘‘becomes a dagger and not a shield to these people.’’ The United States should not war on powerless nations to establish protectorates or to force upon them loans they do not want and economic policies they think unwise. U.S. policy, he said, should not rest on mahogany and oil, not on warships and marines, but on justice. American taxpayers should not be called upon to protect the property of claimants who would submit neither to adjudication of rights, nor to the laws of the country in which they did business. He challenged the presence of American marines in Nicaragua, Haiti and Santo Domingo. The United States used disturbances that threatened American life and property as an excuse, Borah maintained. In reality, life and property was no safer in parts of this country with a record of robberies, murders and

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lynchings. The United States ignored arbitration treaties and findings, and it sent troops to sustain unpopular American puppets. If U.S. citizens’ lives or property were really in imminent danger, military forces could be used without the consent of Congress. But congressional authorization was necessary in the event of a conflict with foreign troops or in an effort to control or interfere in the affairs of another country.102 His views on Panama, on the other hand, would gratify the most nationalistic. No wrong had been done to Colombia in the dispute over the Panama Canal. Panama had only a loose affiliation with Colombia, and the Colombian dictator had been warned by his own governor that the Panamanians would not tolerate the rejection of the Hay-Herran Treaty, he explained.103 On the issue of free passage through the canal for American ships he took a similar position, denouncing efforts to impose uniform tolls as a ‘‘shameless betrayal of American interests and the infamous surrender of American rights to English demands.’’ He denied that exemption violated treaties with Britain, and he opposed submission to arbitration as an embarrassing precedent. Besides, without this exemption, American Railroads would have a stranglehold on agricultural transportation.104 Borah’s attitude towards our posture in Asia was the same as his position on Latin America—protection of American interests, but no intervention in the affairs of other nations. He was distressed that the Versailles Treaty transferred German rights in China to Japan, insisting that China was forced to accept Japan’s Twenty-One Demands; this was one reason to oppose Versailles.105 In the late 1920s, with Chinese nationalism on the rise, Borah reminded Americans of China’s predicament: forty important cities and ports were under foreign control, her national resources were divided by foreigners, foreign warships patrolled her coast and rivers, foreigners were exempt from the administration of Chinese laws, in foreign factories Chinese children labored under unbelievable conditions, and thirteen foreign nations set her tariff duties, which were limited to a 5% rate, a level not even free trade nations would accept for themselves. China, he said, must be permitted self-determination without having to resort to force.106 But China did not achieve self-determination during his lifetime. Instead, she was invaded by Japan, ending a short interlude of peace in the Pacific. While he condemned Japanese actions in Manchuria, insisting that peace would prevail if great powers would only abide by treaties and international law (as they demanded of weaker nations), and while he asserted America’s right to remain in China, nevertheless, he thought the United States should do no more than to protect its citizens and interests.107 His resistance to overseas commitments, in part, guided his support for immediate independence for the Philippines. More important, he did not think the United States was fitted for imperialism. His government should not have subjects or dependents. Nor did he think the Filipinos would soon be ready for Anglo-Saxon style government. Climate was a factor. But more

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significantly, while the veneer of democracy was quickly established, real selfgovernment took centuries. Two to four years of American presence would be as beneficial as fifteen or twenty. It was in the interests of the Filipinos for the United States to remain until they were ready for self-government. Unfortunately, it was not in the interests of the United States. Until independence was granted, it was morally wrong for the United States to hamper the flow of goods from the Philippines.108 In keeping with this non-interventionist philosophy, Borah opposed the judgmental policies of Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes and called for the acceptance of de facto, effective governments. Consequently, he called for the recognition of the Soviet regime after it had essentially established control in Russia. He did not approve of Lenin and Trotsky but mistook them for mere revolutionary incidents who would pass from power. As the Bolshevik regime proved its durability he insisted that, at any rate, the government was less inimical to the American theory of government than that of the czars, that it was a basis for a future Russia, and that the United States should trade with them just as it had with czarist Russia. Soviet propaganda could not overthrow the United States government, he affirmed confidently, and he was appalled at an intervention that was without legal or moral justification. How could workers be expected to have regard for law and order if the government doesn’t? he queried.109 Even during the depression he exuded confidence in the ability of the United States to win in peaceful competition. In an open contest, he asserted, communism would be modified and ultimately disappear, for ‘‘we have the support of the most dominant and irresistible of human passions—the desire for property.’’ If communism opposed the concept of family and religion, religion survived the French Revolution and family was the center of society—both would survive. American values would stand and fall not on what occurred in Russia but on how we solved the problems of unemployment, automation, overproduction, crime and governmental corruption. In fact, ‘‘there is scarcely a matter of international importance that would not be favorably affected by the establishment of diplomatic relations between this country and the government of Russia.’’ While some spoke about the difficulty of trading with Russia, other countries had expanded trade with the communists. And how could Russia be ignored in any discussion of disarmament and the revival of the economy of the world?110 Conscious of the need to protect the real independence of small nations as well as large ones, confident of American values as conceived by its Founding Fathers, lacking Wilson’s zeal to missionize the world, Borah was more concerned with protecting the uniqueness of America and using its success to influence the direction of other countries. Nations should be free to determine their own destiny without interference by large states in the lives of the small ones. He hoped to apply the example of the United States to a world model. The architects of the Constitution had rejected the use

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of compulsion to entice states into complying with the majority will. They thought force would bring the dissolution of the union. Borah sought to reject the fetish of force on an international scale. Territorial acquisition through resort to arms was not lawful, he contended. It was a mistake for international law to be organized around war, just as nations were wrong to center their budgets and taxes on war. He was distressed that all nations, even his own, used arbitration panels and judicial processes only for minor questions, resorting to military power to settle all major issues. The most regrettable chapter in American international relations was its use of force in Latin America, even where it had arbitration treaties. The problems in Nicaragua, Haiti and Santo Domingo could all have been resolved without resorting to invasion, he asserted. The Monroe Doctrine had been perverted into an instrument of imperial aggression.111 It was these values that he applied to World War One and its aftermath. As the carnage continued in Europe, Borah wrestled with the problem of preparedness, which had come to the fore as a political issue, pressed particularly hard by Teddy Roosevelt. Borah saw the need for a large and efficient navy, though not necessarily the greatest in the world. That was consistent with our tradition of separation from European involvement.112 Raising and training an army to meet the possible contingency of being drawn into war presented a problem. That went counter to traditional antimilitary sentiment. He feared that a large professional standing army would be dangerous. But the militia was ineffective against trained regulars. And politically motivated governors and the political generals who commanded these forces were more dangerous than a man on a white horse. State militias had traditionally been used to curb strikes and had used martial law to exercise unconstitutional powers. Furthermore, union men would not serve in the national guard in case they were called up to attack their fellow workers the next day.113 For a while he toyed with the idea of universal military training as a resolution to his dilemma, but it could lead to militarism, more dangerous in a republic than a monarchy. A conscript army had been the basis of German militarism. Conscripts lacked spirit, he declared. He was confident that a call for volunteers would meet manpower needs.114 As World War One approached, Borah combined a distrust for European motives and a need to preserve American neutrality with an insistence on American rights on the seas. Neutrality meant the right to carry noncontraband goods to Germany, as well as continuation of trade with England. Unlike Norris, Borah insisted that Americans had the right to travel in war zones, even if merchantmen had to be armed to achieve this purpose. He refused to be carried away by periodic prowar hysteria. The sinking of the Lusitania, he reasoned, was not as serious as the murder and robbery of Americans in Mexico. At first, he suspected that the Zimmermann Note was a forgery. In January, 1917, he offered a resolution reaffirming the American policy of non-interference in European affairs. At the same time,

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he suggested a diplomatic break with Germany, with the limited purpose of enforcing America’s neutral rights. Still, he would not endorse a call for a referendum before entering war. And he voted for U.S. entrance into the conflagration, for German actions left no other recourse. This was not a war for democracy—the United States had as many kings on its side as on the other—but this nation was fighting to protect American institutions, rights and honor. Yet, when Germany and her allies sought an armistice, he supported the vindictive position that Germany must be brought to her knees.115 Even then, the idea of a Carthaginian peace repelled him. Wars, he insisted, originated from imperialism. Peace could only be maintained if each country could enjoy political and economic freedom, if the political and economic rights of small nations were conceded, if all lesser states had a voice at the peace conference. Peace could only be maintained if it were based on justice, not on the strategic interests of the strong. Peace could only be maintained if freedom of race, religion, language and conscience were granted, if exiles were repatriated and restitution were made for all damaged private property. In order to ensure a just peace, negotiations must be open so that provisions might be revised. It was inadequate to publish the text afterward. It would be too late to make changes. Secret negotiations, he charged, led to decisions wholly disassociated from the interest or welfare of the people concerned. It was used to oppress small nations.116 And when Versailles violated all of his precepts, and confirmed his fears, he became an irreconcilable. The Versailles Treaty was negotiated in secret session, from which all minor powers had been excluded. Its terms were based, not on justice, but on the strategic needs of the victors, he charged. Wilson rejected an equality of races provision. The rights of weak nations, even allies, were ignored. Nationalist refugees from imperial aggrandizement remained in exile. England prevented Egypt from presenting its case at Versailles; Japan thwarted Korea. The treaty left many nations dissatisfied: Korea, Egypt, India, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and China. Borah did not want the United States to participate in transferring German rights in Shantung to the Japanese; America’s Chinese allies had been forced to accede to this demand. And while Germany should have been punished for her role in starting the war, he wrote, she should not have been destroyed as an economic unit, undermining the European economy: The viciousness of the Versailles Treaty is that it does not punish intelligently nor does it punish with discrimination—its punishment results in mixing the guilty and the innocent, friend and foe alike. It dismembers nations with whom we have been friendly for a century, and now under the flimsy camouflage of mandates, it literally despoils and robs helpless people who fought by our side in the war.117

His most passionate opposition resulted from the distortion of the proposals of the League to Enforce Peace. Instead of the vision of its members,

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it emerged as Wilson’s version of collective security, the League of Nations; in reality, an entangling alliance requiring a large military establishment. As a result, we could neither cooperate to protect small nations, nor compel nations to submit disputes to an international court. In fact, arbitration treaties, which he generally favored, only failed because they were ignored when it suited great powers. In his reading of history, the United States had a stable republic since Washington had established a policy of nonentanglement. The military power required to sustain these alliances would have necessitated conscription, with all the dangers that entailed.118 And what sort of conflagration was America likely to police the world to prevent, he queried. Like the revolution in 1776? Or India in the future? Or the then-current Russian adventure? In fact, it was time to return American troops from the Rhine. If an Irish revolt against England was aided by foreign nations, or a revolt in Shantung against Japan received the support of China, then we would have to meet our responsibilities to League intervention to maintain the status quo. It would create a new Holy Alliance. While we were committed to intervene in Europe where our security was not at stake, the treaty would permit Europe to intervene in Latin America, where they had no interest, directly violating the Monroe Doctrine. And who knows what a revolution would lead to. A hundred years after a bloody revolution, France protected civilization at the Marne, he argued. ‘‘There has not been a crime committed in Russia in the last six months that had not its legitimate parent crime in the indescribable oppression of the bloody Romanoffs.’’ You could not standardize the human family, he insisted. ‘‘You cannot establish peace by force, by repression.’’ Proponents tried to sell the League as necessary for disarmament. But the treaty left the question of armaments to individual nations and mandated neither an end to conscription nor the freedom of seas. And England, for one, was planning the largest peacetime army in her history. The League did not mean disarmament. It meant increased armies to police the world, increased taxes to fund the military and an increased danger of Prussianism.119 The League, he argued, would eliminate national sentiment, national pride. It was undemocratic, for it placed the common people of the world under the control of a superstate, backed by military might, a state which people did not control. It was unrepresentative. With six votes, it gave the British Empire inordinate power. International bankers, he charged, using good progressive rhetoric, supported the League in order to have the United States underwrite their investments. In fact, the House of Morgan’s Thomas Lamont had purchased the New York Evening Post in order to create a proLeague organ. He warned of executive aggrandizement. Now, if the president committed troops without consulting Congress he could be impeached. If Congress endorsed the League, who could say he had not been authorized? And couldn’t the American representative on the council make decisions that were, in effect, binding on Congress?120 Borah was so

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offended by the Versailles Treaty that he rejected a separate peace with Germany. Once the United States claimed all Versailles’ advantages, as it did in the Berlin Treaty, it was tied to all the inequities of the treaty, he warned.121 The problems of the peace extended beyond the peace treaty. Borah was not satisfied to play the role of a spoiler, to think only in negative terms. A devastated continent required some emergency relief. Herbert Hoover’s performance had been inadequate. The Californian had too much latitude to spend too much money. Hoover had permitted food monopolies to set prices, resulting in excessive profits of 25–40%, with no guarantee of effective expenditure. Borah warned that the United States should not underwrite European profiteering. Rather, it should help Europe return to work by extending liberal credits. This would help both European consumers and American producers.122 Postwar vindictiveness did not suit Borah. The United States should not confiscate German investments, for investors were not responsible for the depredations of their government. Claims of American nationals against Germany did not negate our responsibility to restore seized patents, copyrights and funds to their German owners.123 At the same time, he felt U.S. allies should pay valid intergovernmental obligations to the United States. Reparations should not be tied to debts, he insisted. The Germans were helpless when they agreed to reparations, but the United States’ allies freely contracted these liabilities. Unfortunately, the U.S. allies could not meet their responsibilities until the reparations question was settled. Consequently, in late 1922 he called for a conference to settle the reparations question. This meeting could obtain repayment to the United States at the same time that trade, stifled during an international depression, was rekindled. After the crisis of 1929 he sought to use the problem of debts to revive the economy. He considered Hoover’s moratorium useless. It only postponed payment. That increased a debtor nation’s interest burden while injuring its credit. Reparations, he felt, should have been limited to direct damages. On the other hand, he greeted the Lausanne Settlement of 1932, which scaled down reparations and debts and converted reparations into bonds, as ‘‘the harbinger of peace and the hope of humanity.’’ But all expediencies, he argued, like reducing debts and lowering interest rates, were of limited long-run effectiveness without significant disarmament and changed economic policies: Reduction of tariffs, open markets for American farm produce, and sound currency were needed. If European nations could finance trade by extending credit to other nations, and if they could maintain armed forces larger than prewar, then American taxpayers could not be asked to assume another burden by forgoing debt repayment. He was willing to trade debts for disarmament.124 If an armaments race had led to war, he reasoned, then a disarmament conference would be a step towards peace. He feared that a naval race between Japan and the United States could repeat the catastrophic conclusion

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of the arms race between England and Germany. Naval expansion was expensive and undermined the search for peace. Consequently, in 1921 his resolution for a meeting to explore naval disarmament pressured the Harding administration to call the Washington Conference. In 1929 he called for a treaty that would limit the production of cruisers, avoid an arms race with England, and define the rights of neutrals in a way that protected commerce without an enlarged navy. In both cases, treaties limiting naval tonnage were agreed to.125 Yet, the program of the conference he had initiated was not sufficient. He had had high hopes that the meeting would ‘‘denote a new era in civilization.’’ A naval race and war between the United States and Japan, already divided by race, language and commercial interests, had to be averted. And the economic costs of war—93% of our budget— had to decrease. For the Washington Conference to succeed, he prophesied, it could not just be a meeting of a few men: ‘‘the great voice of humanity, heretofore excluded for such conferences, must be heard.’’ As the deliberations continued, he feared that the Berlin Treaty passed a cloud of Versailles over the meetings. The discussants, he charged, were not dealing with the weapons of the next naval war—aircraft carriers and submarines. While battleship limits was a wise economy, as weapons they were obsolete.126 Unhappily, this meeting produced a document soaked in the disease of Versailles, though more subtle, Borah complained. The Four Power Treaty diverted attention from disarmament, he insisted. It created an alliance that maintained the status quo in the Pacific with a moral commitment as strong as Article 10. It did not protect nations outside the treaty from actions such as Japan’s aggression in Russia. Yet, it was these signatories who were the imperialists and expansionists in the Pacific. Alliances beget counteralliances, he warned.127 By themselves, agreements to restrict naval growth could not be fully effective. It was time to end the need to dominate the seas. Law must replace force, as it had within nations, he insisted. A conference of the great naval powers must settle maritime law. It must reestablish the balance between neutral and belligerent in favor of neutral rights. The concept of contraband must no longer be defined by the dominant sea power, but be limited to war munitions. Only then could the United States assume that it did not have to raise a greater navy than Britain: What we protest against is not an English dictatorship, but dictatorship. We have no desire to wrest naval supremacy from them in order to exploit it for our own profit and glory. We desire a regime of law at sea—the Freedom which comes only from Law—which will render any dictatorship impossible.128

It was this concern for law that led Borah to his most quixotic quest: an effort to outlaw war. While he had long been contemplating this concept,

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it surfaced during an examination of the World Court; there, he thought, an opportunity to apply international law had been lost. The World Court was really an arbitration tribunal which could only exercise jurisdiction with the consent of both parties. Still, it was an instrument and counselor of the hated League of Nations. The court could be improved, he suggested, by making it an actual court of justice, with compulsory jurisdiction. It would have permanent judges, including an American judge, for foreigners could not understand American theories, ideals and methods of government. Divorce the Court from the League, codify international law and include a provision that outlawed war. The decisions of the court would be enforced by world opinion. After all, any nation that would withstand world opinion would feel so strongly that the court had erred that it would withstand the threat of arms.129 A seemingly naive idea, it had a strong rational basis if one assumes that human nature is really culturally determined patterns of behavior. He believed that people could not eliminate the causes of war— greed, ambition, commercial rivalry, love of power and territorial acquisition. It was necessary to eliminate the means traditionally used to fulfill these urges, the superstitious idolatry of force. But government was not sustained by force. It was not sustained by the sheriffs who chased a few criminals. It depended on the love and loyalty of the people, without which government would crumble, and the army and navy with it. Recognizing this, both Hamilton and Madison argued against coercing states. The United States prohibited war between the states. A judiciary, with only the power of public opinion, enforced it. In the absence of public support, as in the case of the prohibition amendment, law enforcement had been impossible. Laws of nations often differed. When citizens invested abroad, they were under obligation to submit to the laws, courts and institutions of the host country. While government must protect its citizens, it cannot interfere in other nations. For two thousand years, he argued, the worship of force has led to near bankruptcy of wealthy nations, hospitals crowded with the diseased, maimed and insane, families scattered, states dismembered, recurrent epidemics. The policy has failed. America took risks for war, but it was unwilling to take risks for peace. And peace was really in the hands of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy, France and Russia. If they succeeded in adjusting controversies amicably, if they threw their weight against war as an instrument of policy, there would be little danger of war from others. At times, he seemed to expect to limit not end war. He recognized that outlawing murder did not end murder; it illegalized it. The human family could no longer afford the dogma of force. It was destroying mankind. Self-preservation required outlawing war.130 While there were numerous small wars during the 1920s, the period looked peaceful when seen from the charged atmosphere of the 1930s. Borah regretted our participation in World War One and was determined not to make the same mistakes. That did not change his demand for ‘‘the unem-

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barrassed and unhampered and untrammelled political independence of this republic,’’ its ability to determine its own course in an international crisis, ‘‘untrammeled by previous commitments.’’ Independence was even more desirable than peace. At the same time, it was the only road to peace.131 Consequently, he continued to oppose any involvement with the League in any form. Despite the presumption of some, swifter transportation had not changed conditions and did not require a change in policy. ‘‘Familiarity does not necessarily breed respect and propinquity does not ordinarily beget confidence,’’ he reminded his readers. Isolated farms did not require locks, while city apartments did. In spirit, he insisted, Europe and Asia were no closer than they were for our founding fathers. Nationalism was too fundamental a concept to be readily replaced by internationalism. If the activities of the League were America’s business, it should participate, not send an unofficial observer. Since it was not, the United States was just meddling in affairs that did not concern it.132 The rise of fascism did not deter him. Fascism and communism were the enemies of every vital liberty. Even though some considered fascism a respectable ally against communism, they were both inexcusable dictatorships. Native fascists were un-American; fascism was based on duplicity. He accused fascists of butchery in Spain and Ethiopia. The real danger from fascism was when government employed its principles, ignoring the elected representatives of the people.133 The march of fascist armies across the world distressed him, but not enough to accept intervention to stop them. Nazism, though abhorrent, was not the cause of war. War was fought over power and territory. Once Versailles dismembered the Austrian Empire, it became inevitable that Austria would join with Germany, he insisted. The two would have merged peacefully, in 1931, before Hitler, if the World Court had not intervened.134 He rejected Britain’s feelers about a joint response against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Britain wanted to act, he claimed, since she held land near Ethiopia. Sanctions would be an act of war, he warned. An AngloFrench proposal to stop the war by partitioning Ethiopia was incredible. It would make the League a subservient instrument of imperialism.135 When civil war exploded in Spain, he favored the extension of the neutrality laws to civil conflict, though it was hard to define. The Neutrality Acts should be applied to Germany, Italy and other participants in the civil war as well.136 While Munich made violating treaties a tenet of diplomacy, the United States was not responsible for dismembering Czechoslovakia. In his eyes, Europe’s boundaries were Europe’s affair.137 In the Far East, he had applauded China’s efforts to free herself from foreign concessions in 1927. Japan’s invasion of China was appalling. He mocked England’s unwillingness to join the United States in refusing to recognize the crime. Still, a war was being waged in China, and the Neutrality Act had to be imposed. In fact, he opposed a boycott of Japanese products as dangerous and useless. When our commercial treaty with Japan expired, he thought we could ne-

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gotiate a new, reasonable treaty, without selling them any munitions.138 He was shocked beyond words by Russia’s attack on Finland but proposed that we continue normal relations with the warring powers.139 Even when war became general throughout Europe, Borah counseled complete neutrality. The war, he said, was caused by imperialism. England and France did not act to save Austria, Czechoslovakia, China, Ethiopia or Spain. They were not fighting for democracy, but to realize their own imperialist schemes. America’s role was to set its house in order, to end unemployment, to prove to the world that free enterprise and democracy work. ‘‘If we are not going to wholly surrender to a world governed by force, then we must establish somewhere a great power which speaks for and represents in act and deed the things which make for reason and justice.’’ The United States was to be a model, not a belligerent. It should protect freedom from its greatest enemy: war.140 At first Borah was not terribly happy with the United States’ neutrality laws. He preferred that it assert the historic American principle of freedom of the seas, the right of neutrals to trade in non-contraband goods.141 But as he applied the lessons of World War One to a very different situation, he thought the United States needed to modify this principle. Remembering the charged emotions as American lives were lost at sea, he insisted that it was not enough to warn citizens that they traveled on ships of belligerents at their own risk, but that such passage should be forbidden. To prohibit loans to belligerents was not enough, he thought. Somehow, as nations prepared for war, they should not be granted loans. But he wanted the legitimate business of American citizens to be protected by the flag. Thus, he sought permanent neutrality laws that embargoed arms to belligerents, that prevented Americans from traveling on ships of belligerents and that denied loans and credits to belligerents. Arming of merchant ships must be averted. In addition, he supported the Johnson Amendment to prevent government loans to nations that defaulted on World War One debts. In short, retroactively, he endorsed the proposals of Norris and LaFollette to prevent entry into World War One, proposals that he had not embraced at that time. He listed many reasons why ‘‘Cash and Carry’’ should not replace the embargo: It favored the nation with the largest navy—England in the Atlantic and Japan in the Pacific. If a neutral made a change that unequally affected belligerents while a war raged, such as repealing the arms embargo, it was equivalent to intervention and violated international law. Old debts had not yet been repaid by belligerents; ‘‘Cash and Carry’’ would soon lead to credit. Could a belligerent attack a U.S. arms plant if title passed before shipment? he queried? Sensing incremental changes in the nation’s attitude he asked: If we changed our policy to ‘‘Cash and Carry’’ to respond to changing events, would we stay off the battlefield if events changed? ‘‘Cash and Carry,’’ he snickered, says that immorality does not lie in selling munitions to belligerents, but in delivering them.142 Where Norris recognized

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that the United States could not avoid some degree of involvement in a major European war and supported ‘‘Cash and Carry,’’ Borah foresaw that involvement would lead to intervention. He did not live to see his fears realized. Throughout his career, Borah showed a strong reverence for the ideas of the founders of the nation. His reading of these ideas led him to a progressive view of political affairs, restricted by a need for decentralization, which he also applied to international affairs. In his view of state’s rights he was selective in choosing advice from the Founding Fathers. James Madison, at least in his Federalist No. 10, urged the importance of a political arena large enough that no single interest could dominate, where political policy would have to be shaped by compromise. In Borah’s time, the special interests could more easily dominate a state government than the federal government, where countervailing claimants might have influence. In addition, Borah brought to the debate a sense of American uniqueness, a strong dedication to separation of powers and resistance to executive aggrandizement. He never claimed to be consistent, yet in the essentials, he showed a remarkable constancy throughout his long career.

NOTES 1. William Borah, ‘‘American Foreign Policy in a Nationalist World,’’ Foreign Affairs, 12 (January, 1934), pp. iii–xii. 2. Borah had affairs with Cissie Patterson and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Marion C. McKenna, Borah (Ann Arbor, MI, 1961); Joseph Hernon, Hubris and Heroism in the United States Senate (New York, 1997), pp. 140–59; J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble (New York, 1997), pp. 149–300; Beverly Smith, ‘‘The Lone Rider from Idaho,’’ American Magazine, 113(March, 1932), pp. 39–40, 94–102; Samuel Woolf, Drawn from Life (New York, 1932), pp. 116–23; William Hard, ‘‘Borah and ’36 and Beyond,’’ Harper’s, 172(1936), pp. 575–83; David H. Grover, ‘‘Borah and the Haywood Trial,’’ Pacific Historical Review, 32(1963), pp. 65–77. 3. McKenna, Borah; Smith, ‘‘Lone Rider’’; Claudius O. Johnson, ‘‘When William E. Borah Was Defeated for the United States Senate,’’ Pacific Historical Review, 12(1943), pp. 125–38. 4. William Borah, ‘‘Democracy Has Not Failed,’’ in J. M. Bachelor and R. L. Henry, eds., Challenging Essays in Modern Thought, 2nd Series (New York, 1933). 5. William Borah, ‘‘Growing Menace to Integrity of States,’’ New York Times, July 2, 1922, VII, p. 1; cf., U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 10070–73; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 8241–45; William E. Borah (WEB) to John Glass, August 27, 1934, William E. Borah Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (WEB MSS). 6. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1938), pp. 2492–94; WEB to Shephard Edmonds, March 4, 1937, WEB to James Chappell, March 12, 1937, WEB MSS. 7. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), p. 10941; WEB to

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Stanley Easton, March 6, 1934; WEB to Charles Corker, Jr., December 28, 1934; WEB to J. L. Jones, May 29, 1939, WEB MSS. 8. WEB to Col. Angel Rivero Mendez, October 18, 1927, WEB MSS. 9. New York Times, October 4, 1937. 10. U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 57(1919), pp. 6076–85; New York Times, July 5, 1934, p. 13; April 21, 1935, p. 27; July 5, 1938, p. 5; William Borah, ‘‘The People,’’ Outlook, 143(1934), pp. 133–34; William Borah, ‘‘Constitutional Government,’’ Vital Speeches, 4(1937), pp. 4–7. 11. William Borah, ‘‘The Liberty League,’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1934), p. 64. 12. WEB to Frank Morison, May 3, 1921, WEB MSS. 13. WEB to J. H. Gibson, May 7, 1917, WEB MSS; William Borah, ‘‘Freedom of Speech,’’ in Irving White, ed., Essays in Value (New York, 1938), pp. 114–27. 14. William Borah, ‘‘Free Speech for Free Americans,’’ Christian Century, 52(1935), pp. 570–73; William Borah, ‘‘The Threat of Bolshevism in America— How to Meet It,’’ Current Opinion, 66(1919), pp. 152–53; William Borah, ‘‘The Spread of Intolerance,’’ Hearst’s International, 42(December, 1922), pp. 5, 112– 14. 15. WEB to W. A. Day, May 2, 1917; WEB to Charles Koelsch, December 22, 1919; WEB to Warren Beamis, January 5, 1920; WEB to H. H. Cummins, March 8, 1921; WEB to Dan Lindsley, January 17, 1922; WEB to Elmer Murphy, March 6, 1933, WEB MSS; Borah, ‘‘Threat of Bolshevism’’; William Borah, ‘‘Civic Righteousness,’’ Century, 114(1927), pp. 641–48; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 4561–69, 6083, 7231–32, 8562; 65 Cong., 3 Sess., 57(1919), pp. 2654–56; 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 59(1920), pp. 47, 67–69, 112–17, 1161–66; New York Times, April 19, 1917, p. 1; April 20, 1917, p. 1; March 22, 1918, p. 19; April 6, 1918, p. 7; January 11, 1920, pp. 9, 21; April 2, 1922, p. 10; cf., Leroy Ashby, The Spearless Leader (Urbana, IL, 1972), pp. 27–30. 16. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 4580–81, 5151–56, 7607; 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 3398–3402; WEB to M. C. Migel, February 22, 1933; WEB to R. B. Scatterday, March 27, 1933; WEB to Robert McFarland, November 27, 1934; WEB to Everett Hunt, March 20, 1939, WEB MSS; Christian Century, 57(1940), pp. 143–44. 17. William Borah, ‘‘Justice Willis Van Devanter,’’ Independent, 70(1911), pp. 457–58. 18. William Borah, ‘‘The Supreme Court,’’ Reader’s Digest, 28(March, 1936), pp. 1–6; William Borah, ‘‘The Supreme Court Decision,’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1935), pp. 586–89; William Borah, ‘‘Our Supreme Judicial Tribunal,’’ Vital Speeches, 3(1937), pp. 258–61; William Borah, ‘‘The Supreme Court,’’ Americanism, 1(February, 1938), pp. 9–11; U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 1 Sess., 47(1911), pp. 3681–83; 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), p. 1646; WEB News Release, June 1, 1937; WEB to T. D. Jones, May 25, 1937, WEB MSS; William Borah, ‘‘Five to Four Decisions as Menace to Respect for Supreme Court,’’ New York Times, August 5, 1913, p. 3; February 6, 1923, p. 4; February 18, 1923, VII, p. 1; January 8, 1936, p. 4; February 2, 1937, p. 1; March 1, 1937, p. 2; cf., Ashby, Spearless, pp. 30–35. 19. News clipping, October, 1904, WEB MSS. 20. Borah, ‘‘Democracy Has Not Failed,’’ WEB MSS. 21. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., 46(1911), pp. 2645–57; 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), p. 12934; 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 561–67; 67

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Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), p. 4212; New York Times, October 28, 1915, p. 5; May 14, 1916, III, p. 3; February 9, 1938, p. 3; news clipping, July, 1906; WEB to Mrs. Elizabeth Sykes, July 31, 1913; WEB to E. H. Dewey, January 29, 1918; WEB to Ray McKaig, May 22, 1918; WEB to Mrs. Thelma Mather, February 15, 1938, WEB MSS; cf., Ashby, Spearless, p. 251. 22. News clipping (ca. October, 1904), WEB MSS; New York Times, June 6, 1926, p. 1. 23. He was referring to George Perkins of the Harvester Trust. WEB to James Davis, January 3, 1914; WEB to Harry Sims, February 9, 1914; WEB to Will Hayward, July 22, 1914; WEB to Fred H Wood, March 27, 1916, WEB MSS. 24. WEB to Edward Carrington, December 18, 1913; WEB to James Davis, January 3, 1914, WEB MSS. 25. WEB to John Works, August 21, 1922; Borah speeches, December 13, 1934; October 16, 1936, WEB MSS; William Borah, ‘‘The Republican Victory, What Shall We Do with It?’’ Scribner’s Magazine, 77(1925), pp. 301–2; William Borah, ‘‘The Reorganization of the Republican Party,’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1934), pp. 199– 202; William Borah, ‘‘Issues Before the People,’’ Vital Speeches, 2(1936), pp. 412– 15. 26. U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 1 Sess., 47(1911), p. 2995; 62 Cong., 2 Sess., 48(1912), p. 11150; 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 8759–62; Literary Digest, 77(April 7, 1923), p. 10; 96(March 31, 1928), pp. 9–10; Borah speech, September 22, 1935, WEB MSS. 27. William Borah, ‘‘The War with Monopoly,’’ Independent, 74(1913), pp. 524–27; New York Times, February 27, 1914, p. 6; U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 50(1913), p. 3220. 28. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 45(1910), p. 5262; 62 Cong., 1 Sess., 47(1911), pp. 3216–20. 29. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 15946–58; 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 10070–73; WEB to O. C. Moore, April 1, 1914, WEB MSS; New York Times, June 19, 1921, p. 1. 30. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 10070–73. 31. Radio Address by Borah, CBS, December 7, 1935; WEB to H. H. Cummins, June 9, 1933; WEB to George Record, June 19, 1903; WEB to E. W. Hamman, October 7, 1934; WEB to J. S. Dyke, December 15, 1934; WEB to P. G. Liederback, September 11, 1934, WEB MSS; Congressional Digest, 13(1934), pp. 173, 175; U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 5162–66; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 871–77; New York Times, December 27, 1935, p. 20; June 3, 1935, p. 2; cf., David Horowitz, ‘‘Senator Borah’s Crusade to Save Small Business from the New Deal,’’ Historian, 55(1993), pp. 693–708; Ronald Feinman, Twlight of Progressivism (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 63–74. 32. New York Times, February 25, 1935, p. 2. 33. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 2393–94; New York Times, June 8, 1937, p. 8. 34. Speech seconding the nomination of William Howard Taft, 1908, Scrapbooks, WEB MSS; Theodore Knapper, ‘‘The West at Washington,’’ Sunset, 57(November, 1926), pp. 49, 81–83 35. New York Times, April 25, 1936, IX, p. 18. 36. WEB to M. Mattson, June 17, 1916; WEB to George Creighton, June 13,

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1916; WEB to R. O. Clayton, May 30, 1936; WEB to Don Whitehead, September 17, 1936, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 14064–65; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 6334–35, 6346–51. 37. WEB to Dante Pierce, July 8, 1933; WEB to C. G. Cromwell, November 29, 1922; Borah’s speech to the Conference of Progressives, March 11, 12, 1931, WEB MSS. 38. Victor Yarres, ‘‘Senator Borah and Monopolies,’’ Christian Century, 53(1936), pp. 262–63; U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 3 Sess., 49(1913), p. 4315. cf., Ashby, Spearless, pp. 76–85. 39. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 45(1910), pp. 3381–83, 5261–70, 6784–85, 7364; 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 11232–37; New York Times, July 4, 1914, p. 11. 40. WEB to W. P. Rice, July 29, 1918; WEB to T. W. Bartley, December 21, 1918, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 2568–70; 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 59(1920), pp. 3349–50. Cf., Ashby, Spearless, pp. 66–74; Harold U. Faulkner, The Decline of Laissez Faire, (New York, 1962), p. 219. 41. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 45(1910), pp. 8173–76; New York Times, April 2, 1922; April 5, 1922, p. 4; December 1, 1925, p. 2. Cf., Ashby, Spearless, pp. 40–48. 42. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), p. 4182; Congressional Digest, 13(1934), pp. 270, 272. 43. U.S.Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 59(1920), pp. 2827, 2941; WEB to the City Editor, New York American, February 12, 1920; WEB to W. C. Curtis, December 12, 1922, WEB MSS; Annie Pike Greenwood, ‘‘Bill Borah and Other Home Folks,’’ Nation, 116(1923), pp. 235–38. 44. WEB to James Sweinhart, November 20, 1922; WEB to H. G. Peckham, August 29, 1922; WEB to Paul Nash, November 26, 1924, January 30, 1925, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 66(1925), p. 1795; 70 Cong., 2 Sess., 70(1928), p. 392; New York Times, February 19, 1936. 45. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 8973–74. 46. U.S. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 Sess., 45(1910), pp. 2713–16. 47. WEB to J. J. Pence, December 9, 1913; WEB to F. R. Fouch, December 23, 1913; WEB to Henry Towner, January 23, 1914; WEB to I. Clark, January 20, 1914, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1913), pp. 761– 65, 1065–71; New York Times, December 13, 1913, p. 4. 48. WEB to Fred Holbrook, December 24, 1920, WEB MSS. 49. New York Times, March 11, 1933, p. 1; WEB to Emery Rice, March 27, 1933; WEB to J. R. Osman, telegram, May 24, 1933; WEB to Credit Adjustment Co., May 26, 1933, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 2513–24; cf., Ronald Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives and the New Deal’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1970), p. 43. 50. New York Times, June 1, 1918, p. 11; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 6825–26, 7231–32, 7420. 51. WEB to N. A. Jacobsen, December 12, 1919, WEB MSS; William Borah, ‘‘Call Money and Stock Gambling,’’ World’s Work, 58(June, 1929), pp. 33–34. 52. New York Times, March 15, 1931, p. 2. 53. Undated News Release (October, 1933), WEB MSS.

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54. News Release, March 11, 1933; WEB to C. C. Anderson, March 11, 1933, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 9049–50. Cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ pp. 106–112. 55. Congressional Digest, 10(1931), pp. 272, 2740; New York Times, October 12, 1932, pp. 1, 18; October 13, 1932, p. 4; April 27, 1933; November 18, 1933, p. 16; November 26, 1933; May 10, 1934, p. 1; July 5, 1934, p. 13; November 10, 1934, p. 2; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 1283–93; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 10794–99; WEB to Mike Duspira, December 26, 1932, WEB MSS. 56. New York Times, February 27, 1917, p. 7. 57. WEB to Herbert Hoover, September 1, 1921, WEB MSS. 58. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 2 Sess., 72(1937). p. 7801. 59. New York Times, February 2, 1931; February 3, 1931; February 8, 1931, IX, p. 2; September 8, 1931; U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1931), pp. 680, 5133, 6422. 60. WEB to S. J. Schreiber, March 14, 1932; WEB to Atlee Pomerene, September 10, 1932, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 4052, 14454–58; 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), p. 93. 61. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 12513–15. 62. New York Times, February 15, 1934, p. 2; November 10, 1934, p. 1; November 11, 1934; November 27, 1934, p. 5; Nation, 139(1934), p. 640; WEB to J. C. Jansen, January 20, 1934; WEB to Atlee Pomerene, November 26, 1934; Press Release, January 11, 1935, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 246–63. Cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ p. 92. If Congress earmarked funds, Norris thought, it would produce pork, not relief. 63. New York Times, May 21, 1937, p. 11; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 3709–10; 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), p. 8129; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), p. 8131. 64. WEB to Miss May Hall, May 14, 1938; WEB to Walter Olsen, April 18, 1938, WEB MSS; Current Opinion, 73(1922), pp. 370–73; New York Times, December 5, 1931, p. 1. Cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ p. 267. 65. WEB to Leon Molinelli, July 28, 1932; WEB to Herman North, December 30, 1933; WEB to Mrs. S. E. Hyde, November 7, 1937; WEB to William Huyette, January 14, 1938, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), p. 8261. 66. New York Times, October 12, 1932, pp. 1, 18; October 13, 1932, p. 4; July 5, 1934, p. 13. 67. Newspaper clipping, Scrapbook, October 15, 1904; WEB to Richard Strassburger, December 28, 1931, WEB MSS; New York Times, December 24, 1931, p. 38; December 30, 1931, p. 5; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 2981–84, 11958, 11970, 11976, 11979, 11980, 11984, 11985. 68. David Grover, ‘‘Borah and the Haywood Trial,’’ Pacific Historical Review, 32(1963), pp. 65–77; WEB to James Hawley, January 11, 1908; American Federation of Labor summary of the voting record of William E. Borah, WEB MSS. 69. U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 1 Sess., 5(1913), pp. 1107–11; 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 51(1914), pp. 13918–24. 70. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 13382, 13399; 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1918), pp. 4831–33.

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71. WEB to Thomas Stanford, November 10, 1919, WEB MSS; cf., Fred Greenbaum, ‘‘Ambivalent Friends, Progressive Era Politicians and Organized Labor,’’ Labor’s Heritage, 6(Summer, 1994), pp. 62–76. 72. U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 2 Sess., 48(1912), p. 2504; WEB to William Streich, April 29, 1914, WEB MSS; New York Times, January 5, 1914, p. 6. 73. WEB to Thomas Stanford, November 10, 1919; WEB to William Green, December 6, 1919, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 7540–41, 7748–50; 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 4956–58; William MacDonald, ‘‘The New United States,’’ Nation, 108(1919), pp. 272–74. 74. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), p. 5019; WEB to R. R. Alexander, December 27, 1933; WEB to C. L. Billings, May 21, 1935, WEB MSS.; cf., Fred Greenbaum, ‘‘A ‘New Deal’ for the United Mine Workers of America,’’ Social Science, 33(1958), pp. 153–59. 75. News Release, March 18, 1937, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 3063–67; New York Times, March 20, 1937, p. 1. 76. WEB to W. R. Armstrong, September 12, 1916, WEB MSS. 77. U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 2 Sess., 48(1912), pp. 6794–98; 63 Cong., 3 Sess., 49(1913), p. 4315. 78. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 1117–18, 1178–86; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1934), pp. 5235, 7681; WEB to George Hunt, May 11, 1933; WEB to Charles Schonburg, May 18, 1933; WEB to August Roquist, Secretary, Idaho Federation of Labor, April 23, 1935, WEB MSS. 79. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 7793–97; WEB to Miss Iona Brosius, November 20, 1937; WEB to Roy Smith, May 20, 1938; news release, May 30, 1938, WEB MSS; New York Times, June 1, 1938, p. 2; June 8, 1938, p. 12; June 15, 1938, p. 8; cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ p. 226. 80. William Borah, ‘‘The State and the Nation in Child Labor Regulation,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: Supplement, 38(1911), pp. 154–55; U.S. Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 2 Sess., 48(1912), p. 702; 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1918), pp. 12080–90; WEB to Mrs. C. E. Madden, December 16, 1924; WEB to George Bender, January 14, 1925; WEB to Mrs. Wallace Atwood, March 27, 1937, WEB MSS; New York Times, March 25, 1937, p. 1. 81. WEB to G. A. McClaffin, April 29, 1932, WEB MSS; New York Times, January 18, 1935; January 24, 1935, p. 8; June 18, 1935, p. 1; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1935), p. 9631; Richard Neuberger, ‘‘Political Notes from the Northwest,’’ Nation, 142(1936), pp. 610–12. 82. U.S. Congressional Record, 70 Cong., 2 Sess., 70(1928), p. 864. 83. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), p. 5011. 84. New York Times, October 14, 1932, p. 15; October 21, 1932, p. 2. 85. New York Times, January 8, 1924, II, p. 1. 86. WEB to E. E. Albert, May 26, 1917, WEB MSS. 87. Borah considered a system of farm credit to be more important than the FRB, although he was not too happy with the bill as it passed the Senate. WEB to F. R. Fouch, December 11, 1913; WEB to George Cottier, December 15, 1914; WEB to J. B. Hicks, April 15, 1916; WEB to W. W. Glasby, May 6, 1916; WEB to C. A. Valentine, November 9, 1921; WEB to J. C. Stubble, November 25, 1921, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 66(1925), pp. 1678–83.

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88. New York Times, January 18, 1914, III, p. 4 89. WEB to Reverend Robert Kern, May 5, 1917; WEB to E. E. Albert, May 26, 1917; WEB to A. Y. Satterfield, June 16, 1917; WEB to F. R. Gooding, June 27, 1917, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 3652–54, 8855–58. 90. WEB to Alfred Weeks, April 24, 1922, WEB MSS; Ashby, Spearless, pp. 84– 85. 91. WEB to Alfred Weeks, April 24, 1922; WEB to A. F. Tomchak, April 6, 1922; WEB to J. H. Johnston, March 6, 1923, WEB MSS; New York Times, March 28, 1924, p. 17; January 13, 1925, p. 1. 92. U.S. Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 2 Sess., 68(1927), p. 31518; 70 Cong., 1 Sess., 69(1928), pp. 6091–96; WEB to William Lambie, April 4, 1924; WEB to Z. Ballantyne, August 18, 1926, WEB MSS; New York Times, June 18, 1926, p. 36; December 2, 1926. Cf., Ashby, Spearless, pp. 221–27. 93. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 798, 2592–97, 4194; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), p. 2049; New York Times, May 9, 1929, p. 1; WEB to J. B Lanby, October 1, 1930, WEB MSS. 94. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 2661, 2886; 71 Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1930), pp. 1282–83; WEB to H. A.Lawson, February 23, 1931; WEB to H. V. Phelps, March 18, 1931; WEB to Sam Spahr, March 28, 1931, WEB MSS. 95. WEB to Don Whittle, August 23, 1932; press release, October 1, 1932; WEB to F. S. Stroebel, December 28, 1932; WEB to W. A. Foreman, December 29, 1932; WEB to Margaret Myers Mitchell, January 23, 1933; WEB to David Travis, March 21, 1933, WEB MSS. 96. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 1429, 1485, 1830–35, 1881–91, 3116–18. 97. U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 4665–70; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 6915–37; WEB to J. C. Jensen, December 15, 1934; WEB to John Snyder, August 17, 1935; WEB to Preston Ellsworth, December 20, 1938, WEB MSS; New York Times, July 21, 1929, p. 9; August 13, 1929, p. 10; July 21, 1937, p. 1. 98. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 5932–33; New York Times, January 15, 1936, p. 1; WEB to Harrison Baker, April 23, 1934; WEB to W. A. Teasley, June 18, 1924, WEB MSS. 99. WEB to Ruth Dun, February 15, 1937; WEB to C. M. Meikle, May 8, 1937; WEB to Mrs. May Neil, November 13, 1937; WEB to E. P. Edwards, December 22, 1937; press release, October 13, 1938, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 2034–37, 2049, 2157–58, 2924–25; 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), p. 8282; 75 Cong., 2 Sess., 82(1937), pp. 509–14, 803–12; New York Times, February 8, 1936; October 22, 1937, p. 11. Cf., Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism, pp. 96–97; cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ pp. 244–251. 100. New York Times, August 9, 1913, p. 2; October 30, 1913, p. 6; April 15, 1914, p. 2; April 18, 1914, p. 3; April 24, 1914, p. 4; January 13, 1916, p. 2; May 9, 1916, p. 4; WEB to L. R. Freeman, April 29, 1914; WEB to Frank Plaisted, May 15, 1915; WEB to Colonel George Harvey, June 1, 1915; WEB to C. M. Kiggins, June 3, 1915; WEB to F. A. Hutto, December 12, 1916, WEB MSS; U.S. Con-

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gressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), p. 4003; cf., Robert James Maddox, William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy (Baton Rouge, LA, 1969), pp. 5, 14. 101. New York Times, January 10, 1926, p. 3; November 25, 1926, p. 2; William Borah, ‘‘Neighbors and Friends,’’ Nation, 124(1927), pp. 392–94; John D. Hicks, Republican Ascendancy (New York, 1963), pp. 154–57; WEB to N. W. Murphy, November 29, 1926, WEB MSS; cf., Ashby, Spearless, pp. 209–214. 102. William Borah, ‘‘The Fetish of Force,’’ Forum, 74(August, 1925), pp. 240– 45; William Borah, ‘‘Leadership Is Needed Most,’’ International Digest, 1(April, 1931), pp. 36–38; WEB to Charles Welch, May 9, 1922; WEB to August Peterson, June 8, 1922, WEB MSS; New York Times, July 22, 1913, p. 2; May 2, 1922, p. 2; December 28, 1926, p. 1; February 21, 1927, p. 1; April 20, 1928, p. 24; April 24, 1928, p. 8; January 9, 1930, p. 9; January 3, 1931, p. 3; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 8941–45; Congressional Digest, 6(1927), pp. 124– 27. 103. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 243–48. 104. WEB to Lewiston Commerce Club, February 17, 1914; WEB to H. B. Cumrock, April 7, 1914; WEB to E. C., Stokes, June 11, 1914, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 63 Cong., 2 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 6164–67; New York Times, January 5, 1913, II, p. 2; June 12, 1914; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 7–14. 105. U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 3934–38, 4349–55; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 50–96. 106. China Weekly Review, 39(January 1927), pp. 120–22; Congressional Digest, 6(1927), pp. 160, 178. 107. New York Times, September 25, 1931, p. 1; Press Release, December 23, 1927, WEB MSS. 108. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 1538–47; 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 372–77; New York Times, January 25, 1916, p. 5; August 17, 1917, p. 4; July 21, 1929, p. 1; WEB to J. H. Gipson, February 24, 1916; WEB to E. J. Maidenheuer, May 7, 1932, WEB MSS. 109. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 9053–55; 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 4896–4902; 66 Cong., 3 Sess., 60(1921), pp. 1867– 68; 71 Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1931), pp. 4219–23; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 28–49. 110. William Borah, ‘‘Senator Borah on Russia,’’ NEA Journal, 20(1931), p. 285; Congressional Digest, 12(1933), pp. 238, 240; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 183–214. 111. William Borah, ‘‘The Fetish of Force’’; WEB to J. B. Hofflinger, WEB MSS. Cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 7–11. 112. WEB to Frank Plaisted, November 16, 1915; WEB to M. C. Turner, December 6, 1915, WEB MSS. 113. U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 5277–84, 5408–14, 8123–24; WEB to E. F. Caton, April 15, 1916, WEB MSS. 114. WEB to George Edgington, April 2, 1917; WEB to A. C. Boyd, March 9, 1920; WEB to Mrs. Bessie Gardner, July 24, 1922, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 1442–46; 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 56(1918), pp. 9462–66. 115. New York Times, May 9, 1915, p. 1; January 6, 1916, p. 1; December 13, 1916, p. 2; January 12, 1917, p. 2; January 13, 1917, p. 2; January 26, 1917; Feb-

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ruary 8, 1917, p. 5; March 2, 1917, p. 2; October 7, 1918, p. 2; WEB to E. M. Beers, March 16, 1916; WEB to Herbert Griggs, August 8, 1917, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., 53(1916), pp. 3409, 3470–71, 7453–54; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 16–28. 116. New York Times, February 1, 1918, p. 3; William Borah, ‘‘The Perils of Secret Treaty Making,’’ Forum, 66(1918), pp. 657–68. 117. WEB to Maurice Leon, September 29, 1925, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 3934–38, 4349–55; 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 59(1920), pp. 2696–99. 118. WEB to J. D. Rummel, April 29, 1914; WEB to W. J. Bryan, December 28, 1916; WEB to E. H. Dewey, January 8, 1917; WEB to M. G. Rebling, February 5, 1917; WEB to V. A. Dithmer, March 6, 1917, WEB MSS. 119. William Borah, ‘‘Militarism in a League of Nations,’’ Forum, 61(1919), pp. 297–306; U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 690–95, 1737–49, 2075–80, 3934–38; 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 4000–4001; WEB to W. D. Humiston, March 2, 1922, WEB MSS. 120. U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 2063–68, 6078–79, 7320–25, 7942–50; New York Times, August 20, 1919, p. 9; WEB to Reverend C. A. Varnum, December 21, 1918, WEB MSS. His fears of executive encroachment were confirmed when Truman used United Nations authority to fight a bloody undeclared war in Korea and Bush proclaimed his authority to dispatch American troops into the Gulf to restore Kuwait princes, with only UN sanction. 121. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 5776–81; New York Times, October 19, 1921; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 50–96. 122. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 3 Sess., 57(1919), pp. 1662–64; New York Times, May 20, 1920, p. 17; December 2, 1920, p. 7. 123. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 10443–44; New York Times, February 8, 1925, p. 1. 124. New York Times, December 23, 1922, p. 1; December 25, 1922, p. 1; January 23, 1923, p. 2; July 19, 1931, p. 16; New Republic, 48(1926), pp. 4–6; Literary Digest, 111(November 7, 1931), p. 7; William Borah, ‘‘Radio Address on the Results of the Convention and Their Possible Effect on America’s Foreign Debt,’’ International Conciliations, 282(1932), pp. 322–30; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 4251–54; 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 1284–93; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 4478–79; WEB to Charles Erskine Scott Wood, July 6, 1931; WEB to William Schwab, October 15, 1931; WEB to R. O. Barnsley, November 20, 1931; Radio Address, WJSV, April 29, 1933, WEB MSS; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 120–181. 125. U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 3 Sess., 60(1921), pp. 1189–90, 3316–17, 4043–48, 4142–43, 4168–70; 70 Cong., 2 Sess., 70(1929), pp. 2180–89; New York Times, July 25, 1929; WEB to Reverend Hugh Louke, May 5, 1938, WEB MSS. 126. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1921), pp. 229–30; William Borah, ‘‘The Ghost of Versailles at the Conference,’’ Nation, 113(1921), pp. 525–26; William Borah, ‘‘Will Humanity Be Heard at Washington,’’ Sunset, 117(December, 1921), p. 3; William Borah, ‘‘Why the Conference Must Act,’’ Sunset, 48(January 1922), pp. 18–19, 73. 127. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1921), pp. 231–36; WEB

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to Doremus Scudder, April 21, 1922, WEB MSS; New York Times, January 2, 1922, p. 3; cf., Maddox, William E. Borah, pp. 97–119; Ashby, Spearless, pp. 105–9. 128. ‘‘Senator Borah and the Freedom of the Seas,’’ Roundtable, 19(1929), pp. 280–94; William Borah, ‘‘The Freedom of the Seas,’’ Current History, 29(1929), pp. 922–27. 129. William Borah, ‘‘How the World Court Can Be Perfected,’’ Ladies’ Home Journal, 40(October, 1923), pp. 111–12; Christian Century, 42(1925), pp. 186–90; World’s Work, 58(June, 1929), p. 34; Walter Lippmann, Men of Destiny (New York, 1927), pp. 140–83; WEB to Errol Peckham, November 17, 1931, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 695–700. 130. Borah, ‘‘Civic Righteousness’’; William Borah, ‘‘Public Opinion Outlaws War,’’ Independent, 113(1924), pp. 147–49; William Borah, ‘‘How to End War,’’ Nation, 119(1924), pp. 738–39; William Borah, ‘‘The Renunciation of War,’’ Christian Century, 45(1928), pp. 166–68; Kirby Page, ‘‘Senator Borah, Outlawry and the League,’’ World Tomorrow, 11(1928), pp. 198–202; Borah, ‘‘Leadership is Needed Most’’; cf., John Chalmers Vinson, William E. Borah and the Outlawry of War (Athens, GA, 1957). 131. Christian Century, 48(1931), p. 1242. 132. Borah, ‘‘American Foreign Policy in a Nationalist World’’; cf., Charles Toth, ‘‘Isolationism and the Emergence of Borah: An Appeal to American Tradition,’’ Western Political Quarterly, 14(1961), pp. 555–68. 133. New York Times, January 3, 1936, p. 2; press release, November 9, 1937, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 6214–15; William Borah, ‘‘Fascism,’’ Vital Speeches, 3(1937), pp. 482–84. 134. William Borah, ‘‘Our Imperative Task: To Mind Our Own Business,’’ in Lew Sarett and William Trufant Foster, eds., Modern Speeches on Basic Issues (Boston, 1939), pp. 279–85. 135. New York Times, February 6, 1935, p. 10; September 17, 1935, p. 2; December 12, 1935, p. 19; WEB to Homer Quist, January 13, 1936, WEB MSS. 136. New York Times, December 30, 1936, p. 13; June 1, 1936. 137. New York Times, September 20, 1938, p. 16; October 30, 1938, p. 26. 138. Borah, ‘‘Imperative Task’’; New York Times, January 28, 1927, p. 2; August 31, 1927, p. 3; March 7, 1938, p. 3; November 24, 1939, p. 10; WEB to W. B. Langsdorf, January 8, 1940, WEB MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 85(1939), pp. 70–75. 139. New York Times, December 2, 1939, p. 7. 140. William Borah, ‘‘Retain the Arms Embargo,’’ ‘‘What Our Position Should Be,’’ Vital Speeches, 5(1939), pp. 397–99, 741–43; U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 85(1939), pp. 70–75. 141. New Republic, 86(1936), pp. 97–98; WEB to David Stern, November 26, 1935, WEB MSS. 142. New York Times, December 30, 1936, p. 13; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 7977–78, 13955; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 2298–99; 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 3959–61; 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 85(1939), pp. 70–75; Borah, ‘‘Retain the Arms Embargo’’; WEB to R. L. Buell, January 16, 1936, WEB MSS.

Chapter 4

Hiram Johnson: Isolationist Hiram Johnson was square-shouldered, short-necked, rotund, and slightly under medium height. With his mobile face, deep-chested voice and appealing cadences, he stirred crowds. Though a stationary orator, Johnson punctuated his speeches, now with arms extended, palms faced in, or with a single clenched fist, then with a downward driven right arm, occasionally raising his limb straight overhead with the index finger upright. Rejecting the myth of laissez-faire, the Californian envisioned an America freed from domination by the few, its active, representative governments concerned with the commonweal, with limitations on the unassimilable, and unencumbered by international restraints or competition. Belligerent in style, filled with hates and convictions, observers felt he incited his audience to want to fight with him or against him. Nevertheless, this cantankerous, self-centered and ambitious politician, was often able to advance himself as a serious candidate for the Republican national ticket.1 The California senator was born into a political family. His father, Grove Johnson, had migrated to Sacramento, California, from Atchison, Kansas, and was elected to the state assembly and then the state senate as a Republican, after failing to be elected to the state senate as a Democrat. Grove and his two sons and law partners, Albert and Hiram, supported the Sacramento reformers in 1888. Elected to Congress in 1894, Grove soon became identified with the Southern Pacific Railroad, California’s dominant corporation. His two sons responded by withdrawing from his firm and continued to support reform. Hiram became Sacramento corporate counsel, declaring war on vice and gambling. During the reelection campaign of Mayor Clark, Hiram and Albert were the objects of bitter invective from their father. The two brothers moved their firm to San Francisco in 1902,

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where they were involved in a series of spectacular cases. As assistant district attorney, Hiram was a mainstay in high profile graft prosecutions. In 1909 Hiram became spokesman for the Direct Primary League and again clashed with his father. In 1910 he joined the new progressive Republican vehicle, the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, and was nominated as their candidate for governor. Their best orator, he had long been identified with reform. Eight years as counsel for the Teamsters endeared him to some leaders of organized labor. Despite a searing 1893 indictment, he had not yet antagonized wealth by his actions. During a Memorial Day address he had warned that the concentration of wealth was creating an aristocracy ‘‘arrogating to itself the rights and the privileges that belong to the aristocracies of the older world, and we have seen the poor becoming poorer, until in some parts of the country they are little better than serfs,’’ and that could lead to a bloody rebellion.2 The progressive’s candidate had advocated the direct primary as a worthwhile but cumbersome opportunity for ordinary members of a political party to choose a particular candidate, and he proved adept at competing in California’s first primary contest in 1910. He attached cowbells to an automobile driven by his son, extended the campaign into new areas not served by a railroad, made the Southern Pacific the issue and won the nomination and election.3 He proved equally skillful in enacting a progressive program. His first inaugural address stated his progressive agenda: ‘‘The first duty that is mine to perform is to eliminate every private interest from the Government, and to make the public service of the State responsive solely to the people.’’ He reported that government had been the economic interest of the arrogant few; he wanted a government that offered fair opportunity to all. To this end he called for the passage of the entire progressive platform. It had been influenced by European models, and bills had been prepared at a San Francisco conference called by Meyer Lissner. Most of the progressive agenda became law while Johnson was governor. To protect progressive changes from a future administration, he successfully promoted direct legislation, including initiative, referendum and recall, ‘‘whenever they desire to exercise that right,’’ including the recall of judges, controversial even among progressives: ‘‘The recall will make no weak judge weaker, and no strong judge less strong. It will only remove the corrupt judge.’’ ‘‘The people, with the ability, the intelligence, and the discrimination to pass upon their public officials, shall have the like ability, and the like intelligence, and the like discrimination to recall those public officials when they go wrong.’’ California enacted the Australian secret ballot, the short ballot to permit serious consideration to a smaller ticket, non-partisan primaries and judicial elections, and the Oregon plan for preferential choice of Senate candidates. He sponsored non-partisan campaigns on a state level, arguing that then officials’ loyalties would be undivided, providing meritorious service without attention to national issues; he failed to push it through the legislature in

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1915. An amendment for women’s suffrage was passed. (While he supported direct election of president and vice president, in 1924 he offered a constitutional amendment that required only a plurality of the Electoral College to preclude a choice by Congress.) In economic legislation, he called for a new Railroad Commission with the power to fix maximum rates based on physical valuation, classify all freight, provide uniform bookkeeping and extend its regulatory powers to privately owned public service corporations and pipelines. He wanted a railroad bill that granted relief ‘‘not only to the large shipper of San Francisco, but to the small one of the valleys, and to the consumer as well.’’ A newly created state conservation commission regulated undeveloped water resources in the state. He rejected a grant in perpetuity of water power on a public preserve to a private corporation; it was dangerous to the water level and the surrounding property. Real estate dealers were licensed and the state civil service widely extended. The state now possessed a superintendent of Weights and Measures, a State Market Commission, an Immigration and Housing Commission to provide sanitary labor conditions and establish a model labor camp and a Corporation Commission to protect the public from speculators. The government would regulate the interests, not the interests, the government. And he called for fairer taxation, shifting the burden from small householders and small businesses to large corporations. Johnson shared California prejudices against unassimilable Japanese, with whom farmers could not compete, and these were reflected in the final shape of a bill prohibiting alien land ownership: European corporations could own land while aliens, not eligible for citizenship, were barred. Japan, he pointed out, had its own ban on alien land ownership; the federal government had excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship and had a similar bar for the District of Columbia and the territories; so did the states of Washington and Arizona. He could not understand the criticism that followed, especially since he had been careful not to violate treaties. Efforts to enact labor legislation revealed underlying conflict amongst progressives. An eight-hour day for women was enacted despite serious progressive divisions. Workmen’s compensation was only enacted after modifications, but non-agricultural employer contributions were made compulsory in the next session. In the 1913 session they did pass minimum wage requirements for state contractors, child labor legislation and pensions for the aged and school teachers. At first, attempts to limit labor injunctions, yellow dog contracts not to join a union and the blacklist did not reach the floor of the assembly. And in the 1914 conservative resurgence voters rejected referenda for a statewide eight-hour law and a minimum wage for women and minors, just as they rejected Progressive candidates other than Johnson. Johnson was pleased with his accomplishments by 1914: Child labor had practically been eliminated, he boasted. A more effective Tenement House Act was in effect. Employment agencies could no longer prac-

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tice fraud upon impoverished job seekers. Blacklisting had been prohibited. Trains had to carry full crews, securing life, and trainmen had an eight hour day. Women worked no more than eight hours and the state sought to ensure a living wage for them. Workmen’s compensation had been enacted and businesses had to figure into the cost of business not only maimed machinery ‘‘but the maimed human being.’’ Additionally, he could proclaim: ‘‘today bold indeed would be the man who would deny the right of labor to organize’’ or ‘‘deny the beneficent results that have come from organized labor.’’ Still, he had challenged unions with a law providing prison labor to help prisoner rehabilitation and to make prisons selfsupporting, but to prevent competition with free labor, the products were to be used by the state. Johnson expressed discontent with the operation of reformatories, which he felt were governed by fear and force. He wanted ‘‘an effort in a different direction with our erring young, and by treatment of these children as children, . . . by teaching initiative and independence, and generally by regarding the inmates of these schools as human beings, not unlike the rest of us, they might be reclaimed and made useful members of society.’’ He did support the death penalty, although he conceded that it, like all forms of punishment, was barbarous; without its threat the McNamara brothers would not have confessed. Upon taking office he found an inefficient and ineffective government, running a deficit. ‘‘I have two ideas in the matter of patronage,’’ he wrote. ‘‘First, that the state shall receive the most efficient service; and secondly, that this efficient service shall come from the side where naturally it is to be found—our side.’’ Officials could not serve two masters: the people and the Southern Pacific. Realizing that many incumbents were not enforcing the laws, he replaced them, even changing laws that had protected them—for example, by abolishing their positions—and then covered his own appointees by widely extending the civil service. A Board of Control, reporting to the governor, established uniform accounting, and the state’s activities were ‘‘being conducted on a business basis, exactly as would be desired by any private enterprise.’’ As a result the new legislation was enforced, the state ran a surplus and funds were now available for free textbooks. His record carried him to a solid reelection as the candidate of the Progressive party in 1914, despite the collapse of the party in California and the nation. And in 1916 he narrowly won the Republican nomination for senator and easily carried the state while Charles Evans Hughes lost to Woodrow Wilson by 4,000 votes. Johnson, very much a national figure, moved to the national stage, but waited until March of 1917; the delay exacerbated progressive tensions and alienated his successor and his allies. He had written that reformers who had agreed on a common purpose might not agree neither on important details or the individual to carry out these principles and thus fall prey to their opponents. His own actions proved the validity of his fears.4

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Johnson arrived in Washington after Wilson had enacted his progressive program and the focus was now on the war in Europe. Although he had been Roosevelt’s running mate in 1912, he had not embraced his belligerence prior to our entrance in the war. He reacted to the sinking of the Lusitania by calling for ‘‘an absolute strict and real attitude of neutrality;’’ he refused to embarrass Wilson by commenting publicly; he did think a stronger response could help prevent war. While supporting the presidential candidacy of Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 he proclaimed: ‘‘We in California have learned that there is a different sort of preparedness from the drum and trumpet kind. . . . It begins with social justice, with social health, with social conditions that produce men who are good soldiers because they have had a fair chance to be good and contented citizens.’’ But in his farewell address in January of 1917 he commented that military events had shown that preserving administration achievements required an ability to defend them; shortly, he complained to Roosevelt that America’s peace-atany-price foreign policy had destroyed our national fibre. Arriving on the eve of our declaration of war, he was prepared to support American entrance and abandon our tradition of splendid isolation: ‘‘A nation, such as ours, dependent for its perpetuity upon the character of its citizenship, that dare not maintain its ideals, and will not protect the lives of its citizens sows within itself the seeds of dissolution’’; ‘‘democracy can not be ruthlessly destroyed in all the rest of the world and be secure with us.’’ He was impressed by LaFollette’s anti-war speech, and felt it had not been answered, but ‘‘with sorrow and regret,’’ to defend our honor, he voted for the war resolution, along with Borah.5 Support for our entrance into the war did not mean support for all of Wilson’s policies in prosecution of the war, particularly those he thought autocratic. In the emergency, he was willing to grant authority over food, but price fixing on wheat should be accompanied by control of flour and bread prices, for he was concerned about the cost to consumers as well as returns to farmers. Conscription was undesirable, but he accepted it; the government should call for volunteers until the draft machinery was ready. ‘‘We are destroying the last proud tradition that made us a Nation of sovereign free men, instead of a nation of mere military units.’’ Wilson’s penchant for pushing legislation with war as its only justification, disturbed Johnson: ‘‘no one man has ever had such arbitrary and despotic sway as our President,’’ he warned. A progressive conference at Gifford Pinchot’s home produced a fourteen-point program: universal industrial service for both men and property, universal military service, a federal guarantee to buy all agricultural products offered, government control of the price of necessities, a federal guarantee that wage earners’ rights shall not be lost, a graduated income tax, a limit upon profits from government orders and a supertax on excess profits due to war conditions, conservation of grain for food purposes, using current revenues to pay for as much of war’s costs as possible, equal

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suffrage, retention and control of natural resources by the government and preparation for postwar unemployment. He told the advertising clubs of St. Louis that service and sacrifice were required of business, not great profits or speculation in essentials, for their sacrifices were only transitory; ‘‘the human lives sacrificed are lost forever.’’ The Californian informed Congress that it was necessary to tax war profits, to conscript, not only men, but ‘‘the part of the wealth of this nation that is coined out of its blood.’’ His amendment would have claimed 73% of war profits. He expected the rich to demand peace when the war became costly to them. He complained of the failure to supply airplanes to the troops. The Hog Island shipbuilding fiasco was described as an unlimited diversion of public funds to private individuals who overpaid for the land and, despite overruns, did not provide the ships. And he protested when war fever led to the violation of the rights of individuals.6 When the Espionage Bill was presented to Congress he expected it to pass even though it was ‘‘the most outrageous, shameful and tyrannical measure. . . . I am burning with indignation.’’ Measures like the Sedition Bill ‘‘Do not unite a people,’’ he warned. ‘‘They cause suspicion to stalk all through the land; . . . they take a great, virile, brave people and make that people timid and fearful.’’ He worried that Congress had already yielded its independence to the executive; such legislation would allow functionaries to stifle legitimate war news and prevent criticism of dishonesty and ineptitude; enabling them to define what is seditious or treasonable, without concern for intent. The war was three thousand miles away; the press had been responsible and would not give aid or comfort to the enemy. Indictment was equivalent to conviction when prosecutors asserted that defendants were enemies of the country and called upon juries to do their patriotic duty. ‘‘An excursion into autocracy in America . . . cannot be justified or excused by our desire to destroy autocracy in Europe.’’ These laws imply that democracy could not be trusted in a crisis. And it was particularly in a crisis, ‘‘whenever there are enthusiasms in which we lose our judgement, that we should protect these fundamentals of democracy.’’ Still, he made an exception for the Industrial Workers of the World which ‘‘could not be tolerated by any organized society’’ and bragged that Congress had passed a law ‘‘sufficient utterly to destroy their organization’’ and to jail ‘‘every man professing its doctrine.’’ Earlier, as governor he had been more tolerant: He had bitterly characterized as simple lawlessness an attack on Wobbly organizers in Wheatland and proclaimed the same abhorrence for the mob of ‘‘respectables’’ as he did for their victims. He had sent the attorney general to aid in the prosecution of the vigilantes, and he had confirmed IWW rights in the San Diego free speech fight.7 Johnson thought the Bolshevik revolution was a ‘‘fantastic economic revolution,’’ led by the disgusting Lenin and Trotsky, with economic materialist dogmas that were not only a menace but a challenge to ‘‘the Christian

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conscience and the political democracies of the world’’ but, unlike the Wobblies, he did not recommend repression. If they violated public law, or violently assailed institutions or property, then force was necessary. Like Lloyd George, Johnson feared not revolution but reaction. Radical oratory would not overturn this government, he argued, but the suppression of assemblage and free speech could begin our dissolution. ‘‘The only answer to the aspiration for a better human life,’’ which led to Bolshevism, ‘‘is a better human life,’’ not a medieval witch hunt. ‘‘The curse of the laborer’s home, is the fear of unemployment, of sickness and accident unprovided for, of old age without a competence, and of sudden death without adequate protection for the home.’’ The proper response to Bolshevism was to recognize ‘‘the right of labor to organize and share in making the terms and conditions under which labor gives its life, a day at a time, to feed and house and clothe the people,’’ a position not universal among progressives. He was distressed by America’s anti-Bolshevik intervention in Russia, without a declaration of war. Initially portrayed as reconstructing the Eastern Front and saving Czech war prisoners, soon it was being argued that it was necessary to rescue the Russian people from bloody revolution. Intervention never stabilized the country, he insisted, but it created Bolshevik supporters. Johnson decried the use of military power to impose on others America’s kind of government, quenching self-determination. He feared the United States was trying to save the world from anarchy. A ‘‘League of Nations,’’ thus motivated, would degenerate into a ‘‘Holy Alliance.’’ On January 13, 1919 he introduced a resolution to withdraw our troops from Russia. He insisted that the blockade not only starved the Russian people but kept the Bolsheviks in power. To his son, he confided that the real reason for intervention was to ensure payment of the debt owed to French and American bankers.8 The success of the Bolsheviks in Russia, Johnson wrote, has led to increased talk about peace, for the combatants feared that revolution could spread if the war continued. He was shocked when Wilson’s fourteen points followed Prime Minister Lloyd George’s statement of war aims, giving the appearance of collusion. Focusing on the territorial aspects of Wilson’s speech, Johnson insisted America went to war because its rights were invaded, not to add territory to Italy, or to restore Alsace Lorraine to France, or to recreate an independent state of Poland or to wrest provinces from Austria and Germany. Such aims could only be achieved with total victory. He suspected that Wilson knew about the secret treaties at least by the time he made his fourteen points speech, and the senator thought the fourteen points were meant to replace these agreements. Wilson had clarified neither why he was needed in Europe nor the meaning of the fourteen points. During the negotiations, he was pleased Wilson had refused to recognize the secret treaties involving Fiume. But he was disappointed that, from the first, Wilson was ‘‘enmeshed in the entanglement of secret European diplomacy.’’ It quickly became apparent to him that Wilson had abandoned all

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of the fourteen points, except the League: freedom of seas, removal of economic barriers, reduction of national armaments; impartial adjustment of colonial claims had been replaced by the secret treaties. And ‘‘the Germans, for whom it is impossible to have much sympathy, are put in economic bondage for generations’’ through reparations. A treaty aimed at breaking a trade rival could lead to many future wars. Johnson described the transfer of German rights in Shantung to Japan, rather than returning them to China, as transferring forty million Chinese to Japan; because you could not prevent a burglary did not mean that you joined the burglars and protected their loot. Inequity could not be justified by the expectation that the League of Nations, controlled by those who drafted the treaty, would correct the infamy. He was skeptical about the League of Nations from the beginning but expressed willingness to support one that did not abridge U.S. sovereignty and would really prevent future wars; he did not respond to a question about how such a league could be created. The idea of a league fired his imagination, he confided to Meyer Lissner, but not after he studied it. Unfortunately, the League underwrote the provisions of the treaty. While he supported self-determination he refused to guarantee the political independence and territorial integrity of other nations. American troops and money could not be used to resolve European problems, to turn Europe into the ward of her daughter; European salvation required American isolation. He did not want to send American troops, especially under foreign command, to frustrate self-determination, to help Japan put down a revolt in Korea or to maintain an expanded British Empire; he saw the ghost of Prince Metternich and the Holy Alliance suppressing internal revolts. Johnson realized ‘‘that this country has never been isolated, financially, commercially or socially,’’ but it was geographically by God-given oceans. Reservations would be ignored once the United States entered the League; and a revised treaty would still infringe upon U.S. autonomy. There could be no limitations on the Monroe Doctrine. And he would not accept limitations on American society, like allowing Japan to challenge California’s race policies before the League. The League could not prevent war, for it was a war trust, maintaining the unjust provisions of the treaty, placing ‘‘the chains of tyranny upon millions of people and cements for all times unjust and wicked annexations.’’ He expected the treaty to pass, with amendments. His opposition, he thought, would cost him political support. Unlike Borah, when the peace treaty was defeated, he supported the separate Berlin Treaty, even though he failed to obtain explicit provisions that the United States assumed no obligations under the Versailles Treaty. He realized that postwar America would never be the same, which perplexed him, and he feared an undemocratic future.9 The struggle over the League took place in the middle of national hysteria, the Red Scare. While he continued to boast that California’s criminal

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syndicalist laws were effectively and impartially applied against rich and poor, political boss and bribing wealthy corporate leader, he was disturbed by the reaction to postwar tensions. Race riots and mob violence showed how thin was the veneer of civilization and ‘‘the naked fiendishness of mob brutality.’’ He spoke out against efforts to curb unpopular ideas, as opposed to illegal actions. A righteous public opinion was based on a free press, free speech and the right of peaceable, lawful assembly. Sinister forces, garbed in patriotic raiment, endangered these rights under the cry of law and order. Law and order could not mean that one person could regulate other men’s opinions to conform to a particular interpretation of the law. These men ‘‘fondly hug the delusion that by jailing men’s bodies they forever imprison their opinions.’’ The nadir of the Red Scare was New York State’s refusal to seat Socialist legislators only because they were Socialists, though many had served earlier. ‘‘Socialists, acting within the Constitution, have the right to preach their doctrine,’’ Johnson wrote. ‘‘When they are elected by their constituents they must be protected.’’ The next step would be to debar anyone whose views the majority opposed. New York’s action discredited the ‘‘Red Scare’’ and led to its decline.10 Anti-foreign sentiment, intensified by the war, made it easier for persistent advocates to limit immigration drastically. He did not then oppose the new system of quotas. Political and religious refugees should be exempt, but not those who preached violent overthrow of government. His major concern was to extend immigration exclusion to the Japanese. Secretary of State Colby’s effort to renegotiate the ‘‘Gentleman’s Agreement’’ was unacceptable, for it failed to prevent the growth of California’s Japanese population. They brought in brides and had five children each. He rejected Ambassador Morris’s proposal tying exclusion to a grant of citizenship to residents. It was not a question of race superiority but of assimilation. Japanese loyalty would always be to Japan. And ‘‘the Japanese are the Prussians of the Pacific. They are as insidious, as cunning, and more treacherous and more cruel.’’ In 1924 he achieved his goal of Japanese exclusion. By 1929 he was ready to suspend the national origins quota. He was now concerned with Mexican and Philippine immigrants; America should no longer restrict people from across the Atlantic, who were like Americans, while admitting a very different sort of person. As late as 1943, no longer able to mount a fight, he voted against lifting Chinese exclusion.11 Johnson’s racial prejudices did not lead him to believe that Americans could control other people’s destinies. He generally opposed intervention in Latin America, although he never criticized Roosevelt’s adventure in Panama. In fact, he opposed a payment of $25 million to Colombia in 1921, for it implied that Roosevelt had done wrong; if the purpose was to protect the oil interests, it was blackmail, and to pay it had been a mistake when William Jennings Bryan negotiated the treaty and remained a mistake, for to yield to thugs only emboldened them. He even opposed selling arms to

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the repressive Obregon government of Mexico, attempting to stifle a revolution; the United States was born in revolution and had such a Metternich policy of intervention been followed then, it would still be a dependency of England’s. But what could be done once it had intervened? This was his dilemma when the United States reoccupied Nicaragua after its withdrawal precipitated chaos. Here was a government for which he had no respect, not inclined to protect its own citizens, propped up by our marines. If the United States withdrew it would lose prestige, and Mexico would dominate a nation adjacent to the Panama Canal. He repudiated ‘‘the BorahLaFollette view that at the first time of trouble we should run,’’ but offered no policy to replace it, except to accept an unpalatable status quo. He rejected perceived pacifism, but he detested ‘‘the militaristic class.’’ Nevertheless, he was moderately favorable to a few of Borah’s foreign policy initiatives. Initially, he thought the Washington Conference on naval limitation had some success with the Nine Power Treaty on China and Five Power Treaties on arms limitations, though he had some misgivings. He was less sanguine about the unexpected four power treaty which emerged ‘‘out of the secrecy of the conference.’’ He called it a new Quadruple Alliance which froze the status quo, protected the parties in their insular possessions and could require force to carry it out. Johnson muttered that the Kellogg-Briand Pact to outlaw war would do no harm, even if it did no good; still, he had to be reassured by Borah that the treaty would not oblige the United States to enforce a breach of peace if the League voted sanctions and the signatories were League members. Consistent with his fear of entanglement and his need for American independence, Johnson was a big navy man: a ship was ‘‘an emblem of sensitive sovereignty.’’ He wanted a fleet that was balanced in relation to other nations and raised to treaty levels. While the United States had scrapped battleships in response to the Five Power Treaty, other nations had expanded in permitted categories. In 1927 he complained that the U.S. Navy was underbuilt, inefficient and ‘‘so far inferior as to . . . imperil the national safety.’’ The conference of that year, he reported, concentrated on submarines, not cruisers, for that met the needs of the British. He felt partially responsible for raising the level of the navy by pressuring President Coolidge to begin construction of three cruisers. But when the London Naval Treaty dealt with cruisers, he led the opposition. Great Britain had rejected a greater range for cruiser guns; the United States permitted too few cruisers; it confirmed domination in their waters to the British and Japanese, and the building program required to meet its terms could escalate in tense times. In 1922 Johnson rejected another of Borah’s initiatives, for an international economic conference. That would lead the United States into the reparations commission, the worst aspect of Versailles, and could result in ‘‘the use of our money and our armed force abroad.’’ This commission, like

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a secret super government for Germany, made decrees on payments that ‘‘the German government must pass and execute.’’ He opposed initiatives to resolve the problems of reparations and the intergovernmental debt; these were separate problems. He wanted the interest on intergovernmental debts paid and complained that England collected interest from the United States on small loans while not paying their obligations on large ones. Why should interest for Italy be reduced to .25%, while Italian diplomats had argued that Italy was financially sound when they negotiated a loan from the House of Morgan for 7%? Further, why should England receive a higher interest rate from Italy than the United States did as well as first payments on principal, while such payments to the United States were deferred. And he jealously guarded Congress’s right to determine any debt settlement. When the Dawes Plan was adopted he worried that, in the event it failed, bankers would insist that the United States participate in the collection of European debts. The one area of international cooperation that was anathema was affiliation with the League, under any guise. Consequently, he opposed efforts to join the World Court. There was the Hague Tribunal, which was voluntary and had no sanctions, he argued. Aggressors would not submit to the World Court, for decisions to go to war were made to fulfill national interests. To join would be to ‘‘meddle and muddle’’ in European controversies. He insisted that the United States should not become part of Europe’s past, with her hates. The United States could not solve Europe’s problems; it must be true to its tradition and speak alone in its own voice.12 An end to war did not resolve many of its domestic ramifications, and Johnson was not satisfied by any administration’s resolution of most of the issues. Five months after the armistice he wanted a return to considerations at home. He expected the government to take economic responsibility, to provide justice and work for demobilized soldiers and to stimulate business activity, for it was unemployment that provided a fertile field for foreign agitators. Large fortunes were growing and small businesses becoming more precarious. Wartime prices continued and ‘‘the high cost of living hits the salaried man hardest.’’ In his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination he admitted there was no panacea, but he promised to investigate and eliminate speculation and profiteering in necessities. The Californian rejected ‘‘the oft-repeated statement that the probable cause of the soaring living costs has been the increased wages of labor.’’ Wage increases lagged behind price increases; workers were worse off than before the war. Inflation was largely caused by increased profits. Johnson castigated those of great wealth and power whose exploitation undermined society. And he complained that the Supreme Court had decided that stock dividends were not taxable as income. He was disturbed that the burden of taxation was shifted away from those the Court decision had favored. He called Secretary of the

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Treasury Mellon’s tax reductions ‘‘unequal, inequitable, unjust and discriminatory.’’ Its complications required an army of people to teach the honest how to obey and another army to teach the dishonest how to cheat; in private correspondence his vehement anti-Semitism surfaced: ‘‘The Bill ought to be designated ‘An Act for the Relief of the Jews’ for generally speaking, the Jews cheat at it.’’ (He even charged the Jews with commercializing Christmas.) Throughout the 1920s his concern for workers was unflagging. In 1920 he proposed a minimum wage law for government workers; in 1925 he tried to overturn a Supreme Court decision against an Arizona minimum wage for women by introducing a constitutional amendment to permit states to legislate minimum wages. In 1921 he called for an investigation of the West Virginia coal fields where, he charged, the companies had arrogated unto themselves to powers of government and where deputy sheriffs were private detectives, strikers had become armed guerillas, and civil rights were suspended. In 1928 he again called for an investigation of the coal fields, where railroads were violating union contracts and were using the courts and police to oppress evicted miners who were starving; if unions violated contracts the courts punished them. When, in 1922, the Supreme Court held the child labor law unconstitutional, he proposed a constitutional amendment, even though it would infringe on the rights of states, for the welfare of little children was at stake. In 1932 he called a 10% movie admissions tax ‘‘a wretched assault on a poor man’s amusement.’’ In his 1920 canvass of New York he called upon the state to adopt the direct primary to control the agenda and endorsed the fight for public power.13 Johnson was disturbed by how the government handled the railroad question. The Californian had long been an advocate of government ownership of public utilities, even providing municipally owned facilities with tax advantages and loans with favorable rates. Under wartime pressures ‘‘the boasted private control of railroads has broken down’’ and the government had to take charge, he wrote. He was not pleased with McAdoo’s stewardship. Railroad compensation was not to be based on physical valuation and the railroads were being terribly overpaid by the government, he informed the rough rider. He contrasted the projected 20% returns with the $30-amonth income of draftees. Johnson was unwilling to measure the principle of government ownership by wartime management of the railroads. At the war’s end he remained committed to government ownership, but ‘‘the inefficiency of the Wilson administration has retarded government ownership for more than a generation.’’ Had he not been absent, he would have voted against the Esch-Cummins Act, which returned railroads to their previous management: ‘‘it is a mere scheme for enriching the railroads at the expense of the people.’’ He offered a bill to ensure that the railroads met the needs of the public before they declared dividends.14 In his eyes, the sale of ships by the United States Shipping Board was

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even more pernicious than the return of the railroads. The decline of sea power had always led to the decline of the nation. A privately owned merchant marine had failed. American trade had grown to equal that of Great Britain, while the American merchant fleet had declined. The United States could no more distribute our goods all over the world in the ships of trade rivals than a department store could continuously distribute its goods through its rival’s conveyances. The efficiency of government-owned dry dock, hotel and railroad in Panama showed the efficacy of government ownership and operation. A merchant marine was as important a part of transport as a railroad, and the government must build and maintain it. Although he failed to convince the political establishment, he continued to express his concern with the matter. In 1932, in an effort to achieve impartiality by common carriers, he asked the Shipping Board to prevent these vehicles from carrying products of their owners, for they had been charged with cutting rates on their own cargoes. Two years later he presented a bill to establish a Merchant Marine Board to adjust differences between owners and seamen on wages and conditions and to provide employment offices. He could not reverse this postwar casualty.15 The war had promoted agricultural production and resulted in excessive capacity. In 1919 Johnson opposed an appropriation for food for Europe, stating that its purpose was to get rid of the packers’ surplus, protect profits and increase prices; the government should help unemployed American veterans first, he concluded. But the Prosperity Decade included a long run agricultural depression, and Johnson was an ally of the farmers. Returning to an old villain, he argued that the first step in the relief of farmers was lower freight rates. He was not enthusiastic about government price controls, but he felt government should aid in establishing marketing cooperatives, as they had in California, for there were too many farmers to act together. Like many progressives, he supported the McNary-Haugen Bill for subsidized exports and a tariff protected domestic market to return prices to prewar parity, albeit with little confidence in its efficacy. ‘‘The Farmer . . . is entitled to the same generosity the Government extends to manufacturers and railroads.’’ He complained that the same people who wanted to stabilize Europe rejected an attempt to stabilize American farmers by raising ‘‘the old bogey-man of constitutionality’’ and he was angry that Borah was playing with the administration on this question; he mockingly expressed delight in listening to constitutional expounders, no two of whom agree on any measure or any construction of any provision of the Constitution. While continuing to support the export debenture principle, he accepted the administration’s proposal for a Stabilization Corporation to purchase surplus crops. He insisted that fruit cooperatives be included and chided conservatives for not seeing that this took government into business. If some relief could be obtained, he was not willing to prevent any action at all and compromised, as he had done with the Packers Bill of 1921.16

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The war had made heroes of businessmen who had produced the weapons of victory. During the 1920s they had a much freer hand; conservative administrations packed regulatory commissions with pro-business appointees and cut funding to hamper regulation. Johnson opposed the reduction of funds for the Federal Trade Commission. It had ‘‘done a monumental work and has been of lasting and permanent benefit to the Government in its research and its economic lines.’’ When the telephone company asked for what he considered to be exorbitant increases, he asked for investigation of the company by the Interstate Commerce Commission as to the growth of capital assets, securities and commissions paid, other holdings of stockholders, service and rates. And when the Harding scandals broke, he was already seeking the presidential nomination and leaped to the attack and called for the removal of Secretary of the Navy Denby for allowing the system ‘‘to exploit for individual gain what belongs to all,’’ and Attorney General Daugherty because the Justice Department could not be trusted. ‘‘The Republican Party is dominated by the unholy alliance between crooked big business and crooked politics.’’ Democracy requires confidence of the public, and that must be restored. He wanted the Teapot Dome oil leases cancelled immediately, without legal niceties, for they had been obtained by bribery. The postwar decade was one of selfish materialism.17 One issue to come out of the war was prohibition, an issue that Johnson would rather have avoided. Asked about local option, he responded that people had the right to pass on any question. When the issue came to a head nationally, he said that he believed in direct government and California had twice voted against prohibition. He tried to get an exemption for wine and beer but, failing that, voted to submit the amendment to the states; the submission, he said was without expression of opinion on the question. Privately he wrote: ‘‘Damn the liquor question, anyway. If yesterday’s action will take it out of the domain of politics for a brief period, something will have been accomplished.’’ By 1932 he had long desired repeal and attempted to eliminate the enforcement appropriation in the interest of economy. And when the first effort was limited to producing 3.2% alcohol content, he informed the Senate that would not produce drinkable wine. Prohibition had marked a decade, and as late as 1931 he thought its repeal a major domestic problem; but other issues now came to the fore.18 In 1929 an already unstable economy crashed when a hugely inflated stock market faced economic reality. The Stabilization Corporations exhausted their funds with scarcely a dent in the agricultural surplus. Industrial production plummeted; unemployment soared. City streets hosted the homeless, while the roads and boxcars carried desperate job seekers. Through all of this President Hoover rejected governmental actions that he feared would inhibit personal initiative and, according to Johnson, ‘‘called in conference the men who have much, and who have lost little’’ to report that ‘‘everything is charming and delightful.’’ In contrast, Johnson grew

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concerned as the depression endured: farmers, who normally loved law and order, were defying legal processes, and if they ever united with the disorderly spirit of the cities, a conflagration was not impossible. Herbert Hoover of California had been a rival of Hiram Johnson; his challenge in the 1920 state presidential primaries might have cost the senator whatever chance he had for the nomination. But even had the two Californians been allies, their differing reactions to the crisis and different philosophies of government would have led to a rupture. For example, Johnson thought Hoover’s appointees to the Federal Power Commission benefited the power trust. Hoover’s approach was to support every request from those on the top and forget those on the bottom. Johnson recognized that the government consisted of all of the people, and where emergency relief could be granted to one class, it ‘‘may be accorded to the other class as an emergency, too.’’ The same assistance, justified by war powers should ‘‘be extended to women and children as has been given to banks and railroads.’’ His first reaction to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was a suspicion that it was a scheme for New York banks to unload their frozen assets on the federal government; later he saw that the self liquidating feature of its projects separated it from politics. After prating for years about ‘‘individual initiative,’’ about keeping government out of business, these great financiers came ‘‘whining to Washington for government relief.’’ He was disgusted that the Democrats bowed to Hoover’s threat to veto relief legislation, while the progressives followed Borah, who came on strong and then petered out. How could Senate Majority Leader Robinson justify aid to his drought-stricken Arkansas and then join Hoover in denying sustenance to the unemployed by blocking aid for the unemployed provided by the Costigan-LaFollette Bill for grants in aid to state relief programs? In the postwar period Hoover had rejected rigid restraints when aiding foreign children; Johnson demanded the same flexibility be applied to American offspring. In 1932, when Hoover finally agreed to provide loans to state relief programs, Johnson considered the measure a drop in the bucket and legally unsound but was pleased that government responsibility for plain people was recognized at last. American Indians were plain people and too scattered to provide adequate federal facilities for education, health and welfare; the Swing-Johnson Bill permitted Indians to use community facilities instead. Hoover had rebuffed subsidized exports proposed by farm representatives; his alternative, a crop purchase program, had resulted in ‘‘the loss of a couple of hundred of millions of dollars to the taxpayers of the nation, and ruinous agricultural prices.’’ Johnson was not happy with Hoover’s economy bill: the senator had supported higher compensation for veterans in 1924 at a time of budget surplus and opposed subsequent cuts at a time of deficit. Reduced salaries were ‘‘about as conducive to prosperity and happiness . . . as it would be conducive to the health of a human being to let all the blood from his body.’’ But he could not embrace the Bonus Army,

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despite their obvious distress, for justice required dealing with the larger problem of those who needed work and bread and those who were losing their farms. In a time of heavy unemployment he endorsed Hugo Black’s bill to spread the work with a thirty hour work week. And he introduced a resolution to distribute coal to the needy. Discouraged, he decided to be a bloc of one and did not join the Progressive Conference.19 A standard Republican solution to economic crises was to raise the protective tariff, and the Hoover administration boosted rates with the HawleySmoot Act. Johnson never quite endorsed the progressive Republican call for a tariff that reflected the difference in the cost of production between domestic producers and their foreign competitors. He was much more interested in preserving the American market for American producers. Initially, California farmers, could not have grown citrus fruit without protection. Once he had fought for the needs of California farmers, he could not then oppose duties pursued by others. During the depression, he suggested that farmers purchase American fertilizer. The Department of Interior should favor American electrical turbines, rather than German, as long as it was economically feasible. Domestic materials and supplies should be used in post offices and treasury buildings. And there should be an embargo on oil imports. In 1912 he had complained that the Democratic party was returning to its free trade policy. In 1922 and 1929 he had opposed legislation providing a flexible tariff: some power to set rates would be transferred to the president, after recommendations by the Tariff Commission, encouraging political decisions. During the early New Deal, still supporting FDR, he opposed reciprocal tariffs: some executive subordinate would negotiate the schedules. In any event, he insisted that California citrus products be exempted. Besides, he suspected that Secretaries Hull and Wallace were really free traders, and they ‘‘will fix California’s tariffs.’’20 He was no happier with Hoover’s foreign policy than his domestic policy. Eight marines were killed in Nicaragua on New Year’s Eve, 1930. Johnson objected to Secretary of State Stimson’s policy of gathering Americans at coastal towns to protect them. Enough marines should be sent to do the job or America should withdraw. When the hated Japanese invaded Manchuria ‘‘with machine like precision evincing long and careful preparation,’’ he asked where was the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. There still remained the World Court ‘‘with its distinguished Japanese president,’’ he sneered. Stimson was left ‘‘holding the bag,’’ refusing to recognize any infringement on Chinese territorial integrity. But he certainly did not want cooperation with the League. The London Naval Treaty of 1930 was the worst outrage ‘‘since the League of Nations.’’ Hoover’s internationalist solutions to the depression—a moratorium on the payment of intergovernmental debts and the London Economic Conference—offended Johnson’s isolationist soul. At a time when the United States government had a serious budgetary shortfall, Hoover wanted to cancel interest pay-

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ments equivalent to a quarter of the deficit. A tax burden would be placed on American citizens to relieve Europe; any action without congressional approval would be the first step towards a dictatorship. A moratorium and then cancellation of the intergovernmental debt met the need of American International Bankers, who wanted to stabilize their holdings of foreign securities and controlled both political parties. Bankers neither forgave their European debtors nor reduced their interest rates; despite the depression’s misfortune, Americans had to meet the finance charges of these financiers, on the dot. The participants in the London Economic Conference did not appreciate our offer to scale the debt back by 50%; Johnson was willing to forgive those unable to pay, but wanted full payment from countries with the economic capacity, like Britain. With the ‘‘pathetic lines of the unemployed’’ it was time for ‘‘our peripatetic government to come home and give its first thought to America.’’21 Johnson was also concerned that bureaucratic wiretapping, proposed by Hoover as a tool to investigate crime, could be used for political purposes. Support for Hoover seemed unlikely. To Johnson, party loyalty had always been ‘‘a fetish for the mentally weak.’’ He had only refrained from endorsing LaFollette in 1924 because he felt obliged to remain with the Republican party after contesting the nomination. He thought the approaching Coolidge triumph would be a victory ‘‘for Henry Ford, the Ku Klux Klan, . . . the great Jewish financiers . . . and incidentally the House of Morgan.’’ Thus, it was not a surprise that Johnson capped a series of hints with open support of Franklin Delano Roosevelt late in the campaign. As early as July he told the New York Times that he was exhilarated by Roosevelt’s scrapping of tradition and flying to the Democratic convention. Yet, his speech of endorsement emphasized the shortcomings of the Hoover administration rather than the promise of his challenger, whom he did recognize as a progressive.22 Initially, the second Roosevelt was the first president of whom Johnson approved since Eleanor’s uncle. He did not expect miracles; nor did he expect that the president-elect had ‘‘with clarity thought out a fixed definite program for national relief, . . . but no one else has.’’ The California maverick told the New York patrician that trial and error was necessary. He was willing to experiment even with billions of dollars ‘‘endeavoring to find a solution for relief.’’ He wrote to his eldest son that Roosevelt presented ‘‘as fair a hope for us as during my political career has been presented by any man.’’ Flattered by an offer of the Interior Department, he preferred to retain his independence. He was pleased with Roosevelt’s inaugural speech, particularly his assault on moneychangers. The first hundred days was ‘‘a marvelous accomplishment, an accomplishment of which the President may well be proud.’’ Congress should be delighted with its participation ‘‘whether it was particularly familiar with the details or not.’’ The National Recovery Act had caused

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mumbling and grumbling beneath the surface and might injure some businesses; the ‘‘blue eagle’’ and all that ballyhoo was ridiculous, ‘‘but who would tremble and hesitate and timidly falter in this vast undertaking?’’ Roosevelt’s handling of the moneychangers satisfied him, although he would have preferred a real overhaul of the banking establishment; at one point he commented that a fast one had been put over on Americans. He had been pleased by the earlier senatorial investigation ‘‘of the men who brought on the horrible panic.’’ He liked the security bill and its protection of investors in securities, but he wanted those who had been swindled to be able to go to the government and salvage something. Following an obsession, he wanted to add a prohibition of the private sale of securities of governments that defaulted on their debts to the United States government and to create a commission to redress the grievances of default victims. (Johnson even wanted a higher tax on liquor imported from defaulting nations than on domestic spirits.) He was concerned that the Home Owners Refinancing Act helped the holder of a mortgage rather than the man who owed the mortgage. Subsequently, he supported the Holding Company Act. And he hoped for a new Federal Reserve Board where bankers were controlled, not in control. The senator had qualms about inflationary solutions. Inflation injured wage and salary earners, but he felt that this dangerous experiment could be controlled by granting presidential discretion, something he was usually loathe to do. He voted against the bill to cancel the gold clause in all federal and private obligations, since it retroactively violated a pledge. During the emergency of the hundred days, the Californian endorsed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, even though he did not like to permit the secretary of agriculture to levy a processing tax, normally a legislative power. He was disturbed that this power was used to tax jute in order to aid the cotton growing states, for it hurt the West. He sought an exemption for asparagus and fruit grown for canning—California products. And he tried to protect his state by opposing the Jones-Costigan Sugar Act, even though there was no economic justification for the California sugar crop. Subsequently, he pressed to increase the American and Hawaiian quotas. Still, Johnson was gratified that ‘‘our farmers are in better shape than for some years past, and that business generally improving,’’ yet disturbed that relief rolls were not diminishing. On balance, he was sufficiently pleased with the early New Deal to chide his Republican colleagues who attacked the New Deal: ‘‘It is not necessary to agree with all that has been done in every conceivable particular, but unfair and unjust would be the individual who would not emphatically concede that with an enlightened audacity the President has acted, and has accomplished amazing results.’’ By 1934 he announced that the administration had surpassed the Progressive party platform of 1912. And he was

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particularly impressed with how Roosevelt clarified Muscle Shoals with one statement.23 The Wilson Dam at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River was begun as a wartime measure in 1918, following engineering surveys dating back almost to the beginning of the federal government and the erection of some inadequate structures during the nineteenth century. The dam was completed in the 1920s. George Norris had fought vigorously to retain it for the nation, and Johnson was a firm supporter of this dreamer of dreams. The government had expended $150 million for the benefit of all the people, not to serve the power trust, he noted. And they succeeded in their struggle, so that it was available to be the centerpiece of Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority at Norris, Tennessee. The Swing-Johnson Act, harnessing the Colorado River at Boulder Canyon, was of more specific importance to California. Imperial Valley farmers depended upon water provided by a series of irrigation canals drawn from the river. The river had become silted, lifting its level above the plain, and levees were becoming inadequate, Johnson reported. Since much of the network ran through Mexico, an international agreement provided as much water for Mexico as for the United States. In addition, political turbulence in that southern neighbor made many in the Imperial Valley uneasy. This legislation provided for an entirely American canal, a more adequate dam, improved navigation and electricity as well. It was opposed by the power trust and American interests with land in Mexico, Johnson charged in an effort to break a filibuster in 1927, even attempting a cloture move that he would otherwise have opposed on principle. He reported that he was fighting the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic parties and a tidal wave of telegrams inspired by the trust. The proposal was enacted in 1928; seventeen years later he threatened the State Department with a congressional inquiry in order to block a treaty with Mexico that shared water rights. His struggle with the power trust continued into the New Deal. Public utilities delayed implementation of state regulatory decrees with appeals of rulings by state courts in federal district courts. Johnson offered legislation barring federal district courts from considering state rate cases. Such decisions would only be subject to review by the Supreme Court. Without his suggestion FDR endorsed his bill at a regular news conference. Johnson responded to the endorsement by saying, ‘‘I can’t imagine any other president during my time who would have done a thing like this, and have done it of his own volition.’’24 It is not surprising, then, that Johnson swallowed his reservations and continued to support the administration, but from the left. Before the hundred days he proposed that military camps be used for unemployed youth wandering through the country. He wanted to fund the Public Works Administration with three times the proposed appropriation. Early in the New Deal, his amendment ensured that the prevailing wage applied to military

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contractors. When the Works Progress Administration was formed, he joined other progressives in insisting upon the maintenance of a prevailing wage, as in the Tennessee Valley Authority and in the laws of twenty states. The administration had requested a security wage: above relief, but below the prevailing wage, as an incentive to leave the rolls. Half the money was to be devoted to material, he noted; there was no suggestion the profits of manufacturers should be comparably reduced.25 His reservations about Roosevelt were troubling and eventually led him into opposition. Some were merely political—such as a note to Harold Ickes that California was not getting its fair share of public works and to a supporter that recommendations for appointments were being ignored, despite promises. Others were serious matters of ideology and character. Even before the inaugural he was uncertain about Roosevelt’s position on intergovernmental debts; as the first session drew to a close he feared that the New York squire had not been frank. He had qualms about where the president’s ego might take America. In June of 1933 he complained that Roosevelt had ‘‘undertaken altogether too much,’’ that he needed to continue his conquests. ‘‘Alexander wept because he had no more worlds to conquer.’’ He feared that FDR’s unexpected swift strikes, ‘‘in defiance of his previous utterances,’’ would lead him into world ambition and break ‘‘the hearts of those who love him in exchange for the praise of those who hate him.’’ He was particularly disturbed about what the treatment of Bronson Cutting told about the president’s character. Cutting was a progressive Republican senator from New Mexico who had endorsed Roosevelt in 1932 and supported many New Deal policies. In Johnson’s opinion, Cutting had embarrassed the administration over veterans issues and caused resentment and a desire for vengeance. Not only did New Dealers work for his opponent in 1934, but the administration sponsored a challenge to his election; he lost his life in an ill-fated flight back home with exculpating documents. When Dennis Chavez, his successor, was presented to the Senate, Johnson and other progressives walked out. The Californian continued his support despite discretionary tariff making, a sugar bill that was wretched for his state, a questionable cotton bill and an effort to drag us into the World Court.26 When he finally realized that Roosevelt was behind the World Court fight, his support for New Deal policies was shaken. Johnson had told Paramount News that America should not join the League’s World Court, with or without reservations. Any dispute with another nation could be settled by arbitration. The United States had no international problem to submit to a foreign judge. Instead, it should devote itself to solving its own pressing problems. The president had assured him that his interest in the World Court was only a perfunctory fulfillment of the platform, and there was to be no personal intercession. Then the Hyde Park aristocrat brought the full force of the administration against him. Johnson won the fight but devel-

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oped a growing distaste for FDR’s tactics. And he made more frequent private comments about FDR’s violating ‘‘the fundamental principles of parliamentary government’’ by appropriating large sums of money over extended periods of time, ‘‘thus yielding the purse of the nation.’’ This caused the legislator, who had attempted to treble the PWA appropriation the previous year, to propose that the appropriation for the new Works Progress Administration be halved and its duration be limited to one year. Now, he zealously guarded the prerogatives of municipalities, states and Congress. Although it granted too much discretionary and centralizing power, he voted for the bill since it ‘‘may be worse if we do not do anything for the relief of the present situation.’’ Earlier, he had been sufficiently concerned about the separation of powers to decline a place in the London International Economic Conference; as a senator he would have to vote on the resulting treaty. Nevertheless, in January of 1936 he called the annual message to Congress ‘‘a bully speech,’’ and in May he could ‘‘see nothing else to the ultimate result than Roosevelt.’’ On the one hand, that election would be a class war with the Liberty League making Al Smith ‘‘the hero and savior of wealth and entrenched dishonesty.’’ On the other hand, while he expected a second term, ‘‘I am greatly concerned about what will happen thereafter.’’ His wife was even more worried about a potential dictatorial bent and supported Alf Landon, even though ‘‘Mr. Landon does not know what it is all about.’’ She hoped to save a few things and prevent ‘‘the plans of the other fellow.’’ The victim of a stroke that summer, Johnson was isolated with ‘‘The Boss,’’ away from the excitement of New Deal Washington. Unable to decide on a course of action as late as August, he had his wife inform Harold Ickes that he was too ill to issue a statement on the campaign. But he quietly voted for the Democrat.27 The scope of Roosevelt’s victory led Johnson to fear that there was no one to stop FDR from giving ‘‘free reign to his imagination. . . . All sorts of experiments we may see, some of which will give us the cold shivers.’’ And the rush of events that followed confirmed his private misgivings. His public reputation as a stalwart partisan of organized labor had been enhanced during the Hoover Administration by his struggles to eliminate the ‘‘yellow dog’’ contract, which a man would only sign if faced with poverty and hunger, and ‘‘the inhuman and outrageous injunctions that have been granted in the past against workingmen,’’ as well as his fight in the early New Deal for the Black thirty-hour bill and the prevailing wage. That there always had been limitations to his support was clear from his treatment of the Industrial Workers of the World and the corrupt Union Labor Party of San Francisco. Privately, he objected to Samuel Gompers setting forth ‘‘the iniquitous doctrine that the courts should not be permitted to force labor to keep its contracts.’’ He never adjusted to the CIO, either as a committee or a congress of industrial organizations; the labor disturbances

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of 1936, over 7,000 stoppages, including general strikes, culminating in the sit-down at General Motors, severed his last emotional tie to the New Deal. The apparent friendliness of the administration to the radical Harry Bridges of the San Francisco longshoremen was unnerving; he practically ran the city’s labor union, Johnson charged. ‘‘There are too damned many Bridges, John L. Lewises, Dubinskys, and Zaritskys and others in this fight.’’ It was during his castigation of the sit-down strikes that he went public with his fear of the possibility of dictatorship. The sit-down strike was not in the long run interest of labor, he warned, and was too blatant an attack on property rights for him to absorb: ‘‘I am opposed to the idea that any body of men can come into my house . . . and say they will keep possession of our homes during the time while we are determining whether we will yield to some demand of theirs.’’ He reminded the nation that there were laws for the suppression of insurrection and violence under which the president could react after the request of a governor. Roosevelt could end the strikes by saying he would not tolerate them. The president remained silent, he suspected, to repay Lewis for a $600,000 campaign contribution: ‘‘If the sit-down strike is carried on with the connivance of the public authorities, then the warning signals are out, and down that road lurks dictatorship.’’ Explaining this phrase to his son after its sensational reception, he wrote that Mussolini had grasped power while the factories were occupied by the workers. Hitler’s rise to power was similar. And the same malaise was destroying the Blum government in France. He commented that Robinson’s effort to temper an attempted senatorial condemnation of the sit-down strikes by adding disapproval of industrial spy systems, company unions and unfair collective bargaining was of no real value and could even be taken as approval of the strikers. He stood apart from other progressives by supporting the Byrnes amendment to the Guffey Coal Bill, condemning the sitdown strike. For the first time in his career Johnson found himself out of harmony with organized labor. He expressed outrage when the governors of Pennsylvania and Ohio intervened in labor disputes in favor of the unions. He felt Roosevelt was moving too swiftly to implement maximum hours and minimum wages. Localities had varied interests; the question was too complicated for ‘‘a couple of weeks of investigation by a blatherskite committee.’’ A year’s study by disinterested economists was necessary. When the LaFollette Committee investigated anti-union activities of the Associated Farmers of California, Johnson openly asked for a fair hearing; privately, he fumed, accused the subcommittee of anti-employer bias and charged that Senators LaFollette and Thomas ‘‘were representatives of John L. Lewis and Earl Browder.’’28 The public break with Roosevelt was not over labor. It came, with apparent suddenness, in February of 1937, immediately after his return from three months in Miami. Relations fractured over the Supreme Court Bill. Johnson had never shown affection for the judiciary. When the Court de-

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clared the NRA unconstitutional, he reported genially that Roosevelt’s modern, progressive, sensible policies had been foiled by a constitutional clause suited to interstate commerce in the 1780s as interpreted by ‘‘nine old men’’ who, like Hollywood stars, dramatize themselves for their big day. Even at the height of the Court fight he did not think its members worth the effort, except to prevent the executive from swallowing a coordinate branch: ‘‘yet the proposal of the President was a distinct shock to me.’’ He believed Roosevelt had ‘‘mapped his course immediately after the NRA decision.’’ Neither the president’s supporters nor his opponents accepted the stated purpose of the bill, to increase the Court’s efficiency by expanding its size. Everyone knew Roosevelt wanted a New Deal Court. When Justice Van Devanter was enticed into retirement with an increased pension, Johnson was furious. Hugo Black, Roosevelt’s first appointee was characterized as temperamentally unsuited, and ineligible, since he had voted to increase the Justices’ retirement. And the shift of Justices Hughes and Roberts nauseated him, even though he agreed with some of the new decisions; they had bowed to Roosevelt. Still, the passage of the bill would have been worse. Despite his anger, he expressed sorrow to Raymond Moley that Roosevelt’s actions had driven him into opposition, for he knew that the gap would widen with time. But once in opposition, he fought with as much of his customary vigor as his health would allow. He wrote to his son at the beginning of the Supreme Court fight that he would try to prevent the president’s sinister grasp for power. In Johnson’s view FDR’s sympathy for the sit-down strike, his persistent pressure on Congress to give him discretion over decisions that could lead to war and his efforts to pack the Court intensified the Senator’s fear that ‘‘we’re on the road to fascism.’’ Before long, he had decided that only the form of the coming dictatorship was in question.29 Once trust in FDR was gone, he was no longer willing to tolerate the discretion he had supported in the currency bill but had generally made him wary. Johnson lost patience with the New Deal farm program, for it was suspended on the twin pillars of compulsion and discretion. He had reluctantly voted to lend the power of the purse to Henry Wallace in 1933 because of the dire emergency. At first he was willing to accept the farm bill of 1937, providing there was a clear time limit. Parity was too vague a concept to suit him; parity with what products? If Senator Frazier thought 1909–1914 was an unjust base, how could he dispute Frazier’s firsthand knowledge? Most farm organizations opposed it. It was ‘‘a production straight-jacket,’’ ‘‘a regimentation of farmers, a control of them with the largesse of the State, and a determination to do what I could never subscribe to, scarcity.’’ By 1938 he thought Wallace was requesting ‘‘more power . . . than any one man has ever been given.’’ How could one man make decisions concerning all of the variegated soils of America? He claimed to have voted for every farm bill for twenty years, but this bill ‘‘will be the beginning of

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regimentation of industry in this country.’’ It penalized soil fertility; it was a pill, sugar-coated with money, that would begin ‘‘administering the noxious dose to all our people.’’30 Despite half a decade of administration efforts in agriculture and industry, the nation slipped back into an economic valley in 1938 after a period of ascent. Johnson recognized that ‘‘ten to fifteen millions, mostly unemployed, require assistance,’’ and desired to aid the unfortunate ‘‘because government cannot permit its people to starve;’’ nevertheless, Johnson opposed a pump-priming WPA appropriation, to prevent Roosevelt and Ickes from priming the polls. He agreed with Borah that it reflected a bankruptcy of New Deal policy. There was no rule of law restraining those who dispensed these funds. He wrote to Harry Byrd, in surprisingly conservative tones: ‘‘Thinking people are very strongly opposed to the Roosevelt policies, while the recipients of the bounty of government are enthusiastically in favor of them;’’ the ‘‘ballyhoo’’ for the relief bill was reminiscent of Hoover’s prosperity-predicting optimism. The next year Johnson proudly reported that he had helped reduce WPA appropriations by $150 million.31 By this time almost any action by the New Deal became a subject for criticism. He opposed the choice of Harry Hopkins as secretary of commerce, for he had used relief for politics, securing the votes of relief recipients. He joined the attack by the anti-New Deal coalition on the executive reorganization bill. Here Johnson’s opposition was more deeply rooted. Always reluctant to grant discretionary power to the executive for purposes that were not clearly defined, he had submerged his reservations during the crisis of the early New Deal. Yet, while in the Senate scarcely two years he had cast his vote against Wilson’s executive reorganization plan, for it failed to supply a detailed analysis. In 1926 he had attacked a Supreme Court decision permitting the president to remove executive officials regardless of how they obtained their office: it penalized independent service to the people. Already fearful of Roosevelt’s intentions, he strongly challenged the Executive Reorganization Bill of 1938: ‘‘I speak sir, against giving any authority all the rights and the powers and the duties of the Congress of the United States, no matter how highly I may regard that authority,’’ he trumpeted. He identified the prerogatives of Congress with ‘‘the common liberty of the common man.’’32 The attempt by a frustrated president to rid Congress of some of its conservative leaders presented Johnson with clear evidence of a pattern of executive aggrandizement. Johnson’s vehement opposition to this purge drew him towards the congressional conservatives.33 But he never drew close enough to the southern conservatives to embrace their form of racism, and he had supported every anti-lynching bill since 1922, without supporting the cloture necessary to bring the bill to a vote; no real effort had ever been made to break these filibusters, he argued. He was furious when Governor Rolph of California endorsed a lynching in

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1933: ‘‘the lynching was a horrid and hideous thing; but to me no less hideous and horrid were the statements made by lawyers, judges and officials generally of this state.’’34 Still, it was for the increasingly international flavor of Roosevelt’s foreign policy that Johnson reserved his strongest and most persistent attacks. Johnson was an isolationist who envisioned his homeland as a protected enclave: a large navy would inhibit potential enemies; a high tariff would restrict the American market to American producers. Cooperation with any international organization was forbidden. It would only lead to entrance into the hated League of Nations, a commitment to collective security and consequent participation in conflicts that did not concern America. An international body could then interfere in wholly American affairs. European diplomats stood poised to seize any opportunity that would place American troops and resources at their disposal. He reluctantly supported American entrance into World War One; after that, he suspected each succeeding administration of conspiracy to involve us in the European mess. While suspicious, at first he believed that Roosevelt agreed with him but responded to pressure from internationalists in his administration. Johnson’s successful battle against an administration effort to join the World Court changed his perception of the Hyde Park patrician. Subsequently, he complained that the Good Neighbor policy was ‘‘a horrible hodge-podge’’ that allowed Mexico to expropriate American property without protest. Efforts to grant a greater Panamanian voice in the Panama Zone were unwise; fires were burning all over the globe and Panama could not help to defend the canal; he resented an administration attempt to slip an agreement through as a bill rather than risk the two-thirds vote required for a treaty. South American dictators should not receive Export-Import Bank loans, for they never repaid; their purchases created jobs, but at the American taxpayer’s expense.35 His greatest concern, however, was to prevent a recurrence of the circumstances that had drawn us into the Great War. The Johnson Debt Default Act attempted to deter American financiers from developing an economic stake in participating in another war. It prohibited private loans to, and purchase of securities from, any foreign government in default to the United States. Our former allies had defaulted. At the same time, he hoped to protect small investors from iniquitous governments and unscrupulous financiers. As late as 1945 he fought repeal of this legislation. While he was convinced we would not enter the Ethiopian War of 1935, he questioned the neutrality of a law that refused arms to both sides, when only one side could manufacture its own weapons. Still, he favored its policy of ‘‘minding our own business,’’ keeping out of Europe, European controversies, foreign wars and the like. In 1935, 1936 and 1937 he labeled Roosevelt’s desire for discretionary flexibility as a veiled seizure of the war making power: for the president to label an aggressor and

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only supply the victim was an act of war, he charged. In 1936 Costigan and Norris were willing to let the 1935 act lapse, while permanent legislation was formulated, but Johnson joined Borah and McAdoo in voting for continuation of the policy. The latter three opposed a subsequent amendment permitting trade at the exporter’s risk, while only Costigan supported it. In 1937 Johnson opposed ‘‘Cash and Carry,’’ for it did not take the profit out of war, only the risk. It would not prevent war. It would make the United States the ally of the strongest navy: the British in the Atlantic and the Japanese in the Pacific. It would take a generation to overcome their opponents’ resentment. He was convinced that a movement to repeal the embargo in 1939 was sparked by the profit motive of companies like the airplane manufacturers, for they were pressuring him. Jews, Jewish newspapers and the Jewish movie moguls were shouting for repeal. Repeal after war had begun would not be neutral, would favor the Allies, and would lead to our involvement.36 His fears were confirmed when the hated Japanese benefited from our policy during their invasion of China. Thus, he was jolted by Roosevelt’s ‘‘quarantine the aggressors’’ speech. Later, he dated this statement as the beginning of his opposition to New Deal foreign policy. The speech triggered an economic boycott which, he noted, differed little from warlike economic sanctions. No action followed the ‘‘quarantine’’ speech; he reminded Congress that a nation should not utter a threat it was not willing to carry out. After the Japanese sank the Panay he denied the right of anyone to sink an American gunboat as long as they apologized, but he refused to suggest an alternative. None would have been consistent with an effort to prevent American involvement. As so often in dealing with foreign affairs, he was torn by two emotional commitments: he deeply resented the affront to American pride, and he strongly sympathized with China and the Western democracies, but he resisted any response that might eventuate in American entrance into another false crusade. Consequently, he could support a resolution condemning the bombing of civilians but not an investigation that intended to blame one of the parties.37 With a crisis in the Far East, with Japanese repudiation of the Washington agreement, Roosevelt requested a larger navy. Johnson was in a quandary. Long an advocate of a large, two-ocean navy, he favored the bill. Long an opponent of entangling alliances, he feared a rumored arrangement to build a navy that complemented that of England, creating virtual dependency. After all, a gentleman’s agreement, withheld from the House of Commons, had resulted in British entrance into World War One. And America did not need a larger air corps, for it could not be attacked from the air. Not only did he oppose American entangling alliances but any ‘‘commitments, understandings, or agreements by which it might be taken into the vortex of war.’’ Even after the blitzkrieg in Europe and the fall of France he rejected major increases in the army. Maybe Roosevelt was not preparing the nation

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for war, he mocked, and a 4 million-man army was to be sent down to Tierra del Fuego.38 By 1939, thoroughly disillusioned, he mused about repealing the neutrality statute and returning to international law but continued to fight for non-involvement. When Roosevelt suggested that aggressive nations be inhibited by methods short of war but stronger than war, Johnson anticipated economic sanctions. He preferred a warrior grandson to starving unarmed and unprotected women and children. Shocked to discover that a secret French military mission shared our aeronautical secrets, he told the nation that while self-defense was necessary, the defense of England and France was not. War in Europe was no reason to repeal the embargo, he argued. Once hostilities had begun, terminating the embargo would be equivalent to intervention in favor of England and France. Ultimately, it would result in a repetition of 1917. It was a time to maintain our guard and not succumb to ‘‘the cajolery of those within and the blandishments of those without.’’ No one knows what the war is about, he decided, and by its end Hitler would be too exhausted to bother us. Peace could only be preserved by a mandatory embargo, impartial to both sides. As World War Two progressed, he denied that he was an appeaser or a Hitlerite: ‘‘I want to see Hitler whipped and Britain triumphant.’’ Still, his resolve to remain uncommitted strengthened. Lend-lease denuded us of protection. To aid Russia, whose recognition he had supported, was to select one of two cutthroats who might turn borrowed weapons on us. And there was no expectation of repayment of these new loans ‘‘filched from our taxpayers, and given to bloody Joe Stalin.’’ The ‘‘Four Freedoms’’ and the Atlantic Charter were not meaningless but committed us to war and to a postwar alliance to shape the world in Roosevelt’s image. Convoying ships was an abandonment of freedom of the seas. To grant emergency authorization to seize property, even with compensation, was to endow Roosevelt with all the powers possessed by Hitler, he charged. Challenging Roosevelt to request a Congressional declaration of war, he accused the administration of deliberately seeking a war-creating incident. A month before Pearl Harbor, opposing the termination of the neutrality laws, he warned that we were being carried into the war by deceit and subterfuge.39 Nor did he approve of manpower mobilization. An army of 1.5 million, which the generals would increase, was not necessary. A voluntary program should be tried before conscription, he suggested, as he had during World War One. The soldiers, he complained, were underpaid and were not guaranteed their jobs in the postwar period. To avoid war, their service should be limited to hemispheric defense. He expressed shock that the administration did not intend to exempt seminary students from conscription. Finally: ‘‘it is the most sinister bill that ever was passed during my long service as a United States Senator.’’ Not even Pearl Harbor ended his resistance to overseas commitment of

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troops. He only relented after Germany and Italy declared war on December 11. Even then, he opposed the conscription of 18-year-olds, for England’s draft began at nineteen and a half. Recalling his experience during the War to End Wars, he warned Congress that this time they must remember the Bill of Rights when events occurred that they did not like, or we would have ‘‘denied the very thing for which we say we are fighting.’’ He hesitated to endorse evacuation of Japanese from the West Coast until he had examined its constitutionality. As the war drew to a close Johnson, consistent to the end, barely able to read or speak, addressed the Senate, called upon God to preserve America and fought the creation of a new league. One of three senators to condemn the United Nations Charter, he cast the only negative vote on the Foreign Relations Committee. He announced his intention to vote against the UN charter from his hospital bed.40 After three years of opposition, it was no surprise that Johnson campaigned vigorously against Roosevelt’s bid for a third term. (Teddy’s effort was different; it was not for a third consecutive term.) He announced that, as in the days of Coolidge, he would support a senate resolution against a third term. Roosevelt’s renomination was a product of patronage. He had manufactured a war scare to appear indispensable. Democracy was incompatible with perpetual power, Johnson warned. With the abandonment of the two-term tradition, nothing would prevent the office from becoming hereditary—renomination of a sitting president could not be blocked. Consequently, he was even able to swallow his reservations and support the internationalist Wendell Wilkie. Finally, Johnson could say of that man who had once given flight to his expectations: ‘‘Power is a heady wine . . . The gentleman who seeks it now . . . has gathered unto himself more power than any ruler on earth has, save in the totalitarian governments. . . . All of the forebodings of Washington, Jefferson and Jackson are fulfilled and justified.’’ In 1945, at the age of 78, the old curmudgeon died, still resisting the use of American troops to invade Japan.41 NOTES 1. Hampton’s, 27(1911), pp. 91–96; Current Literature, 53(1912), pp. 156– 159; Independent, 73(1912), pp. 355. 2. Quoted in Richard Coke Lower, A Bloc of One (Stanford, CA, 1993), pp. 10– 11; Irving McKee, ‘‘The Background and Early Career of Hiram Johnson, 1866– 1910,’’ Pacific Historical Review, 19(1950), pp. 17–30; George Mowry, The California Progressives (Chicago, 1963), pp. 111–134; cf., Spencer Olin, California’s Prodigal Sons (Los Angeles, 1968). 3. Burton J. Hendrick, ‘‘Johnson of California,’’ World’s Work, 33(1917), pp. 289–94; Hiram Johnson (HJ) to R. W. Nuttall, April 21, 1910, Hiram Johnson Collection, University of California, Berkeley (HJ MSS); U.S. Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), p. 11265.

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4. HJ, speech in Berkeley, October 14, 1910; HJ to A. E. Yoel, March 25, 1910; HJ to R. W. Nuttall, April 21, 1910; HJ to W. H. Davis, July 11, 1910; HJ speech, October 14, 1910; HJ to J. M. Eshleman, November 22, 1910; HJ to Meyer Lissner, November 25, 1910; HJ to Marshall Hale, December 27, 1910; HJ, Inaugural, January 3, 1911; Message to the Legislature, January 30, 1911; HJ to Philander Knox, January 6, 1911; January 14, 1911; January 31, 1911; HJ to C. B. McLaughlin, January 8, 1911; HJ to the President of the United States, February 15, 1911; HJ speech, Los Angeles, September 27, 1911; February 12, 1914; HJ speech, San Francisco, October 7, 1911; September 1, 1914; HJ to Ben Lindsey, October 27, 1911; May 17, 1915; HJ to Leslie Hewitt, January 12, 1912; HJ to I. Martin, July 8, 1912; HJ to H. T. Corey, August 15, 1912; HJ, Biennial message to the Legislature, January 6, 1913; HJ to President Wilson, April 22, 1913; HJ to T. Roosevelt, April 29, 1913; June 21, 1913; HJ to E. E. Knott, May 11, 1913; HJ to Mary Potter, September 30, 1913; HJ speech, East Orange, NJ, October 25, 1913; HJ, speech, ca. 1913; HJ to D. A. Schweitzer, August 13, 1915; HJ speech, September 24, 1915; HJ Press Release, January 27, 1917; HJ to W. J French, February 1, 1917, HJ MSS; New York Times, April 23, 1913, p. 1; October 29, 1915, p. 12; Outlook, 100(1912), pp. 313–19; 109(1915), p. 158; 114(1916), pp. 639–44; Literary Digest, 46(1913), pp. 991–93; Review of Reviews, 52(1915), pp. 607–8; World’s Work, 33(1917), pp. 289–94; Nation, 110(1920), pp. 642–44; Mowry, California Progressives, pp. 135–57; U.S. Congressional Record, 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 66(1924), p. 643; cf., Fred Greenbaum, ‘‘Ambivalent Friends, Progressive Era Politicians and Organized Labor,’’ Labor’s Heritage 6(Summer, 1994), pp. 62–76; Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 1–45. 5. New York Times, May 9, 1915, II, p. 7; January 9, 1917; April 1, 1917, I, p. 1; April 4, 1917, p. 2; HJ speech, San Francisco, July 8, 1916; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, January 25, 1916; April 7, 1917; HJ to T. Roosevelt, February 7, 1917; HJ to Joseph Scott, April 9, 1917; HJ speech, St. Louis, June 3, 1917. Commenting on Wilson’s domination of Congress, he wrote: ‘‘If Wilson had declared for peace at any price he would have practically the same majority in Congress for that as he did for his belligerent policy.’’ HJ to James Johnston, April 16, 1917, HJ MSS; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 97–100. 6. New York Times, March 27, 1918, p. 1; September 6, 1918, p. 24; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 1481, 4403, 5327; 65 Cong., 3 Sess., 57(1918), p. 442; HJ to Chester Rowell, April 21, 1917; HJ speech, St. Louis, June 3, 1917; HJ to Archibald Johnson, July 12, 1918, HJ MSS; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 100–117. 7. U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., 55(1917), pp. 780, 784, 840, 1868–70, 2097–99; New York Times, May 3, 1917, p. 1; May 25, 1917, p. 1; May 26, 1917, p. 4; May 28, 1917, p. 4; April 5, 1918, p. 24; April 10, 1918, p. 8; April 25, 1918, p. 12; May 5, 1918, p. 7; New Republic, 21(1920), pp. 382–85; HJ to C. C. Haskell, June 3, 1912; HJ to E. W. Scripps, June 3, 1912; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, April 21, 1917; June 3, 1918; July 16, 1918; HJ to Mrs. Amy Johnson, January 12, 1918; April 19, 1918; HJ to Boys, April 23, 1917, HJ MSS; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 35–37. 8. New York Times, December 13, 1918, p. 13; New Republic, 21 (1920), pp. 382–85; Literary Digest, 53(April 3, 1920), pp. 51–56; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 3 Sess., 57(1918), pp. 342–47, 932, 1313, 2261–66, 3258; HJ

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speech, ca. November, 1917; HJ to Arch Johnson, Christmas, 1918, HJ MSS; cf., Richard Coke Lower, ‘‘Hiram Johnson: The Making of an Irreconcilable,’’ Pacific Historical Review, 41(1972), pp. 505–26, argues that our intervention in Russia was instrumental in Johnson’s opposition to the Treaty of Versailles. 9. U.S., Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 3 Sess., 57(1919), pp. 71, 130, 2261– 62; 66 Cong., 1 Sess., 58(1919), pp. 157, 501–9, 5971, 7002, 7355–60, 8753–54; 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 4813–14, 6408–10; New York Times, December 3, 1918, p. 2; January 18, 1919, p. 2; April 25, 1919, p. 3; September 12, 1919, p. 5; September 14, 1919, p. 2; September 17, 1919, p. 3; June 8, 1920, p. 1; October 22, 1920, p. 5; July 5, 1921, p. 1; Hiram Johnson, Speech to the Commonwealth Club of California, Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California, 14(1919), pp. 414–32; HJ to Mrs. Amy Johnson, December 29, 1917; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘Should the United States Join in Reconstituting the League of Nations,’’ Congressional Digest, 22(1943), pp. 214–17; HJ to HJ, Jr., December 7, 1918; February 24, 1919; May 8, 1919; May 22, 1919; May 31, 1919; June 22, 1919; August 1, 1919; HJ to A. H Boynton, C. C. Moore, and M. H. Esberg, March 12, 1919; HJ to Meyer Lissner, March 14, 1919; HJ to Archie, January 8, 1918; August 7, 1919; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, January 8, 1918; April 7, 1919; April 12, 1919; HJ to Albert Beveridge, July 21, 1919; HJ to Chester Rowell, July 31, 1919; HJ to HJ, Jr. and Arch, August 23, 1919; HJ to F.P. Doherty, October 21, 1921, HJ MSS; HJ to William Allen White, April 11, 1918, William Allen White Collection, Library of Congress; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 116–174. 10. HJ, notes for articles in Sunset Magazine, 1919; January, 1920; HJ, speeches, January 13, 1920; 1920, HJ MSS 11. New York Times, January 30, 1921, p. 4; February 1, 1921, p. 10; September 6, 1922, p. 14; May 1, 1924, p. 4; May 27, 1924, p. 2; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 930, 965; 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), pp. 5951– 52, 8087; 71 Cong., 2 Sess., 72 (1930), pp. 2593–94, 6924, 7126; HJ to C. C. Tinckler, February 12, 1917; HJ to Mrs. Amy Johnson, March 9, 1918; HJ to Roland S. Morris, January 21, 1924; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, June 24, 1929; HJ, Statement before Senate Immigration Committee, November 2, 1943; HJ to HJ, Jr., November 14, 1943, HJ MSS. 12. New York Times, January 5, 1922, p. 2; February 18, 1922, p. 2; March 9, 1923, p. 1; January 4, 1924, p. 3; January 7, 1924, p. 7; July 21, 1926, p. 2; June 9, 1930, p. 3; June 27, 1930, p. 6; Outlook, 134(August 8, 1923), p. 534; U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 305–10, 7536; 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 1679, 1752–56, 2638, 3607, 3775–84; 67 Cong., 4 Sess., 64(1922), pp. 1046–49, 1223, 1471; 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 66(1925), pp. 2984–93; 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), pp. 913, 1561–62, 2349–55, 6248–49, 6568–69; 69 Cong., 2 Sess., 68(1927), pp. 990–97; 70 Cong., 2 Sess., 70(1929), pp. 1066, 1069, 1728; 71 Cong., Special Sess., 73(1930), pp. 25–32, 248–60; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 479–90; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘Should the London Treaty Be Ratified?’’ Congressional Digest, 9(1930), p. 167; HJ, notes in Foreign Relations Committee, ca. 1925; Sunset, 58(June, 1927), pp. 49, 76; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, October 5, 1921; January 15, 1922; March 5, 1923; January 14, 1927; December 31, 1927; HJ to HJ., Jr. and Arch, January 17, 1927; February 11, 1927; HJ to Franklin Hichborn, January 17, 1922; February 8, 1927; February 9, 1927; HJ to Emily Dobbin, ca. 1927; HJ to Harold Ickes, May 2, 1931, HJ MSS. Cf., Lower,

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Bloc of One, pp. 175–97, 224; Leroy Ashby, The Spearless Leader (Urbana, IL, 1972), pp. 105–109. 13. New York Times, April 5, 1919, p. 2; December 31, 1919, p. 7; March 31, 1920, p. 2; April 2, 1920, p. 17; April 24, 1920, p. 17; May 25, 1920, p. 6; May 20, 1922, p. 18; January 19, 1924, p. 5; November 3, 1915; May 17, 1932, p. 12; Notes for an article in Sunset Magazine, May 14, 1920; U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 2 Sess., 59(1920), pp. 7281–82; 66 Cong., 3 Sess., 60(1921), p. 1698; 67 Cong., 1 Sess., 61(1921), pp. 2476–82, 2797, 7294; 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), p. 9417; 70 Cong., 1 Sess., 69(1928), pp. 2299–2306; Nation, 110(1920), pp. 748–49; 115 (1922), pp. 142–44; HJ to HJ, Jr., January 24, 1919; October 1, 1921; December 24, 1928; HJ statement, May 20, 1922; HJ speech, Chicago, November 27, 1923, HJ MSS. 14. New York Times, March 11, 1915, p. 13; August 2, 1918, p. 15; HJ to A. D. Hill, March 17, 1915; HJ to Victor Murdock, April 3, 1915; HJ to Meyer Lissner, December 20, 1917; HJ to T. Roosevelt, March 16, 1918; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, May 20, 1919; HJ to HJ, Jr. and Arch, September 10, 1921; July 15, 1922; HJ to F. P. Doherty, July 15, 1922; HJ Press Release, December 22, 1922, HJ MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), p. 5086; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 8721–23, 8735–37. 15. U.S. Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 2 Sess., 68(1926), pp. 248–49; 70 Cong., 1 Sess., 69(1928), pp. 2126–30; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), p. 177; New York Times, February 12, 1932, p. 43; HJ to T. Roosevelt, December 19, 1922; HJ to F.P. Doherty, January 11, 1923; HJ to T.V. O’Connor, August 18, 1931, HJ MSS. 16. New York Times, February 16, 1924, p. 22; U.S. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 3 Sess., 57(1919), pp. 1797–99, 1907; 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), p. 11427; 69 Cong., 2 Sess., 68(1927), p. 5888; 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71 (1929), pp. 854, 989–92, 2642–46; HJ to HJ, Jr., January 24, 1919; June 18, 1921; HJ speeches, November 27, 1923; January 3, 1924; June 29, 1926; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, June 22, 1926, HJ MSS; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 208–24, 246–48. 17. U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 3 Sess., 60(1921), p. 2781; 68 Cong., 1 Sess., 65(1924), pp. 2242, 9273; 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 66(1925), pp. 2137–38; New York Times, February 15, 1924, p. 3; March 9, 1924, p. 9; January 31, 1928, p. 34; HJ to F. R. Havenner, April 10, 1924, HJ MSS. 18. New York Times, April 19, 1932, p. 3; U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., Special Sess., 77(1933), pp. 527–28; HJ to D. M. Gandier, July 29, 1910; HJ to I. Martin, July 29, 1914; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, August 2, 1917; December 11, 1932; HJ Press Release, ca. August, 1917; HJ speech, Senate, August 1, 1917; HJ to Harold Ickes, March 8, 1931, HJ MSS. 19. Marty Hamilton, ‘‘Bull Moose Plans an Encore: Hiram Johnson and the Presidential Campaign of 1932,’’ California Historical Society Quarterly, 41(1962), pp. 211–21; U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 2 Sess., 72(1930), p. 4034; 71 Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1931), p. 1742; 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 3810, 11738, 12529–30, 13590; 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), p. 4914; 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 1293, 6003; Nation, 110(1920), pp. 642–44; New York Times, January 18, 1924, p. 2; February 13, 1932, p. 30; HJ speeches, Chicago, January 18, 1924; San Francisco, October 28, 1932; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, June 17, 1929; February 8, 1931; March 5, 1931; October 9, 1931; February 14, 1932; June 19,

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1932; HJ to F. P. Doherty, November 23, 1929; HJ to Harold Ickes, March 8, 1931; HJ to HJ, Jr. and Arch, May 14, 1932; January 29, 1933; HJ, News Release, June 1932, HJ MSS. 20. U.S. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 3 Sess., 60(1921), p. 2055; 71 Cong., 1 Sess., 71(1929), pp. 4118–23; 71 Cong., 3 Sess., 74(1931), pp. 6708–9; 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), p. 2867; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 8996–97, 9959–64; Pamphlet, 1910 primary, ‘‘Hiram Johnson’’; HJ to E. P. Clark, July 22, 1910; HJ to T. Roosevelt, July 8, 1912; HJ speech, July 14, 1916; HJ to A. P. Moore, May 2, 1922; HJ to Oswald Wilson, September 2, 1931; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, February 4, 1933; March 11, 1934, HJ MSS. 21. New York Times, January 6, 1931, p. 12; April 20, 1931, p. 3; April 19, 1931, p. 1; Congressional Digest, 10(1931), p. 247; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 1077–86, 15082–84; 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 2547, 6002; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, May 3, 1930; HJ to F. P. Doherty, June 27, 1931; HJ to Mary Connor, September 22, 1931; HJ to S. D. Meysenburg, October 28, 1931; HJ to Elizabeth Moore, October 7, 1937, HJ MSS. 22. Hamilton, ‘‘Bull Moose Plans an Encore,’’ pp. 211–21; New York Times, September 26, 1924, p. 4; July 5, 1932, p. 1; October 29, 1932, p. 1; HJ to F. P. Doherty, October 9, 1924; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, October 31, 1924; March 8, 1931; HJ speech, San Francisco, October 28, 1932, HJ MSS. 23. New York Times, March 4, 1934, p. 29; December 16, 1934, p. 10; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), p. 13559; 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 1824, 2987–94, 4982; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 333, 5740, 5895, 6917, 6924; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 11029, 11078–79; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, February 4, 1933; March 25, 1934; HJ to HJ, Jr. and Arch, March 5, 1933; March 12, 1933; April 1, 1933; April 23, 1933; June 4, 1933; February 24, 1935; HJ to P. D. Swing, April 20, 1933; HJ to F. D. Roosevelt, December 4, 1934, HJ MSS; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 259–82; Ronald Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives and the New Deal’’ (Ph.D.diss., University, Michigan, 1970), pp. 39–42, 59. 24. U.S. Congressional Record, 67 Cong., 2 Sess., 62(1922), pp. 3344, 3775; 68 Cong., 2 Sess., 66(1924), pp. 816–18; 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 67(1926), pp. 8139–42; 69 Cong., 2 Sess., 68(1927), pp. 4301–7; New York Times, March 12, 1927, p. 2; March 22, 1928, p. 2; April 12, 1945, p. 7; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘The Boulder Canyon Project,’’ American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals, 135(1928), pp. 150–65; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘Converting the Colorado River into a National Asset,’’ Current History, 29(1929), pp. 786–92; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘Should Uncle Sam Operate Muscle Shoals,’’ Congressional Digest, 10 (1930), pp. 147–50; HJ to HJ, Jr. and Arch, March 5, 1927; March 11, 1927; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, March 5, 1927; July 21, 1927; February 23, 1934, HJ MSS. Cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 231– 37, 271. 25. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 76(1933), p. 3948; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 3706–7; HJ to Constructing Quartermaster, Chief of Air Corps, War Department, November 9, 1933; HJ to HJ, Jr., February, 25, 1934; February 24, 1935, HJ MSS. 26. New York Times, March 21, 1935, p. 13; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, February 4, 1933; June 4, 1933; June 16, 1933; March 25, 1934; HJ to HJ, Jr., February

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25, 1934; December 22, 1934; HJ to Mary Connor, November 8, 1934, HJ MSS; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 283–330. 27. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 1919–20, 2211, 3706–7; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 8494–95; Newsweek, January 26, 1935, p. 15; New York Times, January 4, 1936, p. 9; HJ to HJ, Jr., January 31, 1935; February 10, 1935; April 7, 1935; May 5, 1935; May 26, 1935; February 2, 1936; March 1, 1936; May 15, 1936; May 31, 1936; August 26, 1936; March 20, 1937; HJ to I. Martin, May 28, 1933; HJ, statement to Paramount News, January 14, 1935; HJ to HJ, Jr., April 19, 1935; Mrs. HJ to Edward G. Lowry, September 15, 1936, HJ MSS; Harold Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, The First Thousand Days (New York, 1953), pp. 693, 697–98; cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ p. 153. 28. Browder was the chairman of the Communist party. Harold Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, The Inside Struggle (New York, 1954), p. 69; Mowry, The California Progressives, p. 93; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘Should Congress Outlaw the Sitdown Strikes?’’ Congressional Digest, 16(1937), pp. 146–47; U.S. Congressional Record, 71 Cong., 2 Sess., 72(1930), p. 8102; 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), p. 4938; 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 2337, 3021–22, 3070–71; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), pp. 11041–47; HJ to C. K. McClatchy, April 27, 1922; HJ to HJ, Jr., November 2, 1936; November 15, 1936; March 20, 1937; March 26, 1937; May 29, 1937; June 23, 1937; HJ to Raymond Moley, March 13, 1937; HJ to Frank Doherty, March 13, 1937; November 9, 1939, November 11, 1939; November 22, 1937, HJ MSS; cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ pp. 218–20. 29. Ickes, The Inside Struggle, p. 69; New York Times, February 9, 1937, p. 1; February 27, 1937, p. 1; May 28, 1937, p. 6; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 8075–76, 8732, 9101; HJ to HJ, Jr., June 2, 1935; February 6, 1937; March 20, 1937; April 9, 1937; April 16, 1937; HJ to J. F. Neylan, February 24, 1937; February 26, 1937; March 26, 1937; April 13, 1937; HJ to R. Moley, March 13, 1937; HJ to F. P. Doherty, March 13, 1937; HJ to F. Hichborn, November 16, 1940, HJ MSS. 30. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), p. 5895; 75 Cong., 2 Sess., 82(1937), pp. 431, 823, 986–87, 1243–45, 1767–68; 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 1871–73; HJ to HJ, Jr., May 29, 1937; December 18, 1937; February 12, 1938, HJ MSS. 31. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 7461, 7815, 7826–27; HJ to HJ, Jr., April 16, 1938; June 4, 1938; January 28, 1939; HJ to Harry Byrd, July 12, 1938; HJ to R. Thompson, July 23, 1938, HJ MSS; cf., Mulder, ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives,’’ p. 267. 32. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 8732, 9101; 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), p. 3462; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), p. 619; New York Times, November 7, 1926, p. 5; March 31, 1938, p. 1; January 13, 1939, p. 6; January 14, 1939, pp. 1, 3; HJ to Mrs. Amy Johnson, May 5, 1918; HJ to E. A. Dickson, June 1938, HJ MSS. 33. HJ to E. A. Dickson, June 10, 1938; HJ to Charles McNary, September 7, 1938; HJ to Walter George, September 13, 1938, HJ MSS. 34. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 2204–5; HJ to F. P. Doherty, June 30, 1922; November 29, 1933; HJ to J. E. Barber, September 26, 1925, HJ MSS.

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35. U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), pp. 9838–41, 9904, 10478; 77 Cong., 2 Sess., 88(1942), p. 9320; New York Times, April 11, 1936, p. 9; HJ to John Bassett Moore, June 26, 1937; HJ to Redwood Export Company, August 6, 1938, HJ MSS. 36. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 14283, 14430– 32; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 2292, 2306; 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 1878–84, 3942; New York Times, January 14, 1936, p. 3; January 26, 1936, 28; September 21, 1939; November 23, 1940, p. 4; June 8, 1945, p. 10; HJ to E. M. Borchard, September 24, 1935; HJ to J. B. Moore, January 2, 1936; HJ to HJ, Jr., November 5, 1939; July 6, 1941, HJ MSS; cf., Lower, Bloc of One, pp. 308–32. 37. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 2 Sess., 82(1937), p. 1357; 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 1326–27, 9525; 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 84(1939), 2130–39; New York Times, January 11, 1941, p. 1; HJ to Elizabeth Moore, October 7, 1937; HJ to R. Moley, October 11, 1937, HJ MSS. 38. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), p. 1765; New York Times, March 4, 1937, p. 18; December 30, 1940, p. 7; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘Propaganda for War,’’ Vital Speeches, 5(1939), pp. 348–52; HJ to HJ, Jr., January 29, 1938; HJ to M. Boddy, August 15, 1940, HJ MSS; cf., Ronald Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 187–202. 39. U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 1 Sess. 84(1939), pp. 1015–16, 2130– 39; 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 85(1939), pp. 628–32; 77 Cong., 1 Sess., 87 (1941), pp. 6848–50, 7206–8, 8670–71; Vital Speeches, 5(1939), pp. 348–52; New York Times, April 24, 1932, p. 7; December 5, 1940, p. 12; January 11, 1941, p. 1; June 6, 1941, p. 8; Hiram Johnson, ‘‘Let’s Declare Ourselves,’’ Scribner’s Commentator, 11(1941), pp. 93–97; HJ, Press Release, September 1, 1939; HJ to J. M. Moore, September 24, 1939; HJ to HJ, Jr., November 8, 1941, HJ MSS. 40. U.S. Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 3 Sess., 86(1940), pp. 10091, 10106–7, 10501, 11777; 77 Cong., 1 Sess., 87(1941), pp. 6847, 9653, 9765; 77 Cong., 2 Sess., 88(1942), p. 8566; New York Times, December 11, 1941, p. 4; December 12, 1941, p. 34; November 6, 1943, p. 2; July 1, 1945, p. 9; July 15, 1945, p. 18; July 29, 1945, p. 1; Los Angeles Examiner, February 12, 1942; Newsweek, July 23, 1945, p. 25; August 13, 1945, p. 24; HJ to M. Boddy, August 15, 1940, HJ MSS. 41. New York Times, December 23, 1938, p. 2; Vital Speeches, 7(1940), pp. 52– 55; Current Biography, 1941, pp. 439–41; Congressional Digest, 23(1944), pp. 148– 50; Newsweek, July 23, 1945; August 13, 1945, p. 24; HJ to F. P. Doherty, September 1, 1940; October 22, 1940, HJ MSS.

Chapter 5

William Gibbs McAdoo: Business Promoter as Politician William Gibbs McAdoo was always the practical businessman in politics: pragmatic and non-ideological. Acknowledged to be a progressive entrepreneur, his position on the tariff, his sense of justice and an idealistic streak led him into the progressive wing of the Democratic party. Still, a nonideological American politician is not without tenets; he just lacked a wellconceived system of thought to apply rigidly to governmental problems. Despite his strong commitment to capitalism, McAdoo did not accept the myth that the interests of capitalists could be promoted at the expense of all other segments of the economy to the ultimate benefit of all. He fervently pursued American trade abroad, but favored cooperation with weaker nations over imposition of American will. Even where his own experience suggested otherwise, he preferred private ownership and operation, but he was willing to substitute the government if the private sector proved inadequate. His pragmatic framework led him to adjust to the situation and embrace different solutions to similar problems. McAdoo came from Scottish stock, long resident in this country. His parents, William Gibbs McAdoo, Sr., and Mary Faith Floyd, were both from eastern Tennessee. William, Sr., educated in East Tennessee University, was elected to the legislature before graduation. During the Mexican war he served as lieutenant of the volunteers he raised; subsequently, he was twice elected attorney general for the Knoxville circuit. He was uncomfortable with slavery, believed in gradual, compensated emancipation and thought secession unsound policy. Still, he considered the nation a league of states and joined the secessionists; his section was strongly unionist. Consequently, he moved to Marietta, Georgia, outside Atlanta, where Mary owned a slave powered estate. This was William, Jr.’s birthplace. Stranded in Georgia after

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the war, unable to practice law as a former Confederate officer, William returned to his roots to become a professor of history and English at the University of Tennessee. William, Jr., attended the university, worked at odd jobs to make ends meet and in 1882, still in school, became a deputy United States circuit court clerk. He helped the Richmond and Danville Railroad win a county bonus and became their attorney. During the first four years of his marriage he saved $25,000, accumulated largely through land speculation. McAdoo bought control of the Knoxville Street Railway, hoping to electrify it. He overpaid for the road, misjudged the amount needed to complete the job and learned the details of the process, since his technicians were incapable of making decisions. The trolley line failed. Not yet thirty, he was so deeply in debt that the income from a small town practice would not restore solvency. New York City beckoned. Arriving in the metropolis in 1892, McAdoo’s appearance reminded observers of Abraham Lincoln (whom he greatly admired). Six foot one and only 140 pounds, with blue-black hair, a broad high forehead that sloped sharply back, he looked gaunt. The influential William McAdoo (no relation), a former New Jersey congressman, assistant secretary of the navy and police commissioner of New York, became his law partner. Travel on the New Jersey ferry convinced him to undertake a project that had previously foiled others. With the aid of major New York financiers, whom he convinced to serve on his board of directors, he raised $70 million. Utilizing novel construction techniques, his company built the Hudson tubes for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad and added a twenty-two story terminal building. He was soon reputed to be a progressive businessman, a publicbe-pleased magnate, concerned with customer comfort; he insisted upon affable service from his employees and institutionalized complaint and suggestion procedures.1 Throughout his career, calling upon his excellent memory, his grasp of details and his capacity for work, he was to prove himself adept at imaginative solutions to particular problems. His personal charm, his reputation for fairness and his known sympathy for ordinary citizens enabled him to resolve disputes without a bitter conflict at lower costs than might otherwise have proved possible. There was not much indication of his affinity for progressive politics in the early part of the century. In 1905 he supported Theodore Roosevelt, not because he was more progressive than Alton B. Parker, as he was to remember three decades later, but because Roosevelt was a sound money man. Despite Parker’s statements, the majority of the Democratic convention rejected the gold standard and, McAdoo argued, a Democratic president should not be elected until the party endorsed monometallism. (Despite the seventeenth-century admonition by Thomas Mun that gold was only a commodity that you would never lack as long as you had an equivalent, as late as the Great Depression, the myth of gold was still so powerful that Ramsay MacDonald, the Labor prime minister of England, chose the

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gold standard over the interests of his working class constituents and was expelled from his own party.) In addition, McAdoo took exception to the Democratic platform provision for a jury trial in contempt of court cases: without swift punishment for contempt, court authority would not be respected. ‘‘It would simply mean anarchy’’ to substitute the judgment ‘‘of the mixed and often unintelligent jury’’ for ‘‘that of the intelligent, learned and just Judge.’’ He praised Roosevelt as idealistic, strenuous, honest and courageous but only applauded his handling of the Panama Canal affair, not exactly the president’s most progressive accomplishment. Like Roosevelt he enjoyed his vacations, cowboy style, in the sage brush plains of Arizona.2 McAdoo’s friendship with Woodrow Wilson began with the attendance of his sons at Princeton. One of the more progressive of Wilson’s early backers, he was instrumental in securing his nomination, became secretary of the treasury, a dominant figure in the cabinet, and Wilson’s son-in-law. Faced with problems of a flood in Ohio, the dislocations of the European war and a resultant depression, he acted swiftly and imaginatively. To alleviate money shortages and to facilitate crop movement, he bypassed Wall Street, moved government deposits to the south and west, charging 2% when most government deposits were not accumulating interest. He secured the deposits by accepting approved commercial paper. Reasonable interest rates to farmers were secured with the threat of removing funds from banks that overcharged. Next, to prevent a flood-induced crisis, he deposited $2 million in Ohio banks, secured by local government bonds, with the provision that only flood victims would receive these loans. Finally, without precedent, the secretary drew upon the Aldrich-Vreeland Act to issue emergency currency, accepting warehouse receipts as security. ‘‘So long as the government has the power to intervene in a beneficent and unselfish way the danger of panics and of unjust practices will be largely, if not wholly destroyed,’’ he announced. McAdoo even forced banks to pay interest on all government deposits and developed the reputation of freeing the Treasury Department from the influence of New York finance. He was an important factor in the evolution of the Federal Reserve Act. He joined forces with progressives like Bryan to secure public, not banker, control of the board and district reserve boards, rather than total centralization. McAdoo wanted the system controlled by the Treasury Department to prevent domination by Wall Street at the expense of the entrepreneur. In addition, he hoped to employ this new structure to enhance exports and international economic penetration, particularly in Latin America, by either establishing overseas branches or permitting purchase of an interest in local banks. An advocate of low tariffs to promote competition between foreign and domestic firms and thus hamper the development of trusts, he was involved with drafting legislation for the Underwood Tariff and the Tariff Commission, and in choosing its personnel. Reduced rates and the onset of World War One resulted in a decline of income from the tariff; the budget was

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balanced with regressive excise taxes. The military buildup that he supported had to be financed. His proposal to lower the income tax exemption from $20,000 dollars to $10,000 was stalled by congressional progressives; he compromised and raised the surtax on higher incomes. The Federal Farm Loan Board, an effort to reduce the cost of sufficient agricultural credit, was crafted with his contribution. The onset of the war in Europe highlighted a serious problem in American international trade. America’s once mighty merchant marine had so deteriorated that, outside of the coastal trade, American vessels carried less than 10% of our sea-borne commerce. Maritime insurance was provided by Europe. Wartime dislocations brought soaring shipping and insurance rates, with no coverage available for trade with Germany. McAdoo successfully initiated a War Risk Insurance Bureau of the Treasury Department. But he considered the ship registry legislation, easing transferring to American registration, only a temporary expedient. Concerned not only with the war emergency but with the long run need for transportation to Latin America and the Pacific, recognizing an extended absence of adequate private investment, he promoted a Shipping Corporation, with the government as the major or even sole stockholder. It would purchase a large fleet of ships and rebuild America’s merchant marine. Amid cries of socialism the proposal failed. Nonplussed, McAdoo tried another route. Using the politically unassailable cry of preparedness, he suggested an increased navy and a permanent Shipping Board. The board could purchase freighters as a naval auxiliary, to be leased, chartered or run by the government, and in a new departure it could regulate rates and service. New lines, servicing Latin America and Asia, would be established. Watered down, the measure passed. In another effort to enhance exports, he sponsored the Pan American Financial Conference. The conference produced the International High Commission, loans to Latin American governments and an effort to create a steamship company to carry this trade, jointly financed by American governments. Other administration initiatives in which he participated were the Liberty Loan and the Child Labor Bill. He was instrumental in Wilson’s choice of Brandeis for the Supreme Court and led the battle for his confirmation. At the same time that he served in the cabinet he was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank System, chairman of the International High Commission, chairman of the Federal War Loan Board and director-general of the railroads. He excelled in each role.3 As Wilson’s second term drew to a close, he became a logical candidate for the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately, Wilson’s indecision as to whether he would seek a third term undermined McAdoo, and he was unable to control the New York delegation. Consequently, he did not enter the race. He moved to Southern California, a political climate more congenial to his ambitions and the home base of an important client, the oil magnate, Edward Doheny.

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The years that followed seemed to confirm Walter Lippmann’s evaluation of him. He described him as fundamentally liberal but with no deep commitment, a man who sensed public opinion just before it was formed, an entrepreneur in politics, bold and decisive, with an agile mind. Yet, Lippmann concluded, McAdoo had length and breadth, but not depth.4 Although advised by Joseph Tumulty that it was politically unwise, McAdoo accepted a retainer to represent Doheny’s Mexican oil interests while his father-in-law was still president. His justification was twofold: Doheny then appeared to be potential competition to The Standard Oil trust, and he was just continuing his efforts to create a positive atmosphere for investment and trade with Latin America. This rationale did little to separate him from the Teapot Dome scandal, which encouraged Al Smith to enter the presidential race in 1924.5 With his earlier challenge to Thomas Fortune Ryan’s subway monopoly, McAdoo had clashed with Tammany Hall; closely identified with prohibition and rural America, supported by the Ku Klux Klan, he was not acceptable to the increasingly important urban east.6 His failure to win the nomination in 1924 and 1928 seemed to end his career. But he came to the fore in California politics in 1932 and led the Garner delegation to the national convention. That year he was elected to a term in the Senate where he did little to distinguish himself. Though he was sympathetic to the plight of the depression’s victims and largely supported the New Deal, his analysis of these particular problems was neither penetrating nor original. Still, he gave considerable thought to the fundamental political question of the relationship between the individual and the state, reaching well reasoned conclusions. He perceived a polarization of opinion between those who saw government ‘‘as an instrumentality for the accomplishment of everything without understanding of its necessary limitations,’’ yet, unclear as to concrete ways and means, and those ‘‘who look upon it with appreciation as a sort of unnatural element in the life of the community’’ and were reluctant to give it anything important to do. Both ‘‘conceive of government as something external, some power existing above and outside of the community,’’ not as the servant of the people. He had a strong faith in the instinct or common sense of the people when they were adequately supplied with the facts, which furnished them with a comprehension of complex questions ‘‘second only in its accuracy to mathematics or an exact science.’’ Like many politicians, he attempted to ‘‘update’’ the Jeffersonian myth. Jefferson, he insisted, was not dogmatic about governmental activity but felt that government existed for the welfare of the whole people, ‘‘in the preservation and maintenance of human interests and human rights. Where it is necessary for government to act to preserve and maintain these rights, government must obviously act; and where the maintenance and protection of these rights is better furthered by governmental inaction, government must remain inactive.’’ In Jefferson’s day, men were independent and

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could protect themselves, he romanticized. In McAdoo’s day, they were interdependent and government was needed to preserve the individual’s rights and interests. To argue that Jefferson would still want weak government, he insisted, indicated a concern with his transitory means, not his permanent objectives. Jefferson was most concerned that government refrain from interfering with political and civil liberties. In this area, no good could ever come from government intervention.7 This does not mean that McAdoo was always consistent in his espousal of political rights. During the ‘‘Red Scare’’ he asserted his confidence in the American system: American ideals may break down bolshevism, he insisted, but the obverse was unlikely as long as we guaranteed freedom of press, assemblage, speech and trial by jury. Bombings resulted from lack of education; the remedy was training in the ideals and privileges of American citizenship. As the repressive spirit mounted he warned that ‘‘We did not fight to de-Prussianize Germany in order to Prussianize America!’’ He agreed that ‘‘lawless elements which are trying to carry out their views and ideas by force or resort to crime’’ must be crushed, but first ‘‘they must be given a fair trial and found guilty according to law.’’ He had no sympathy with the suppression of speech and press intended by the Espionage and Sedition acts.8 Yet, during the war he labeled peace orations as traitorous and insisted that opponents of the war bond loan should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, especially those who tried to intimidate banks. Since God wanted the United States to rescue civilization from German military despotism, we could not temporize with shirkers and seditionists or tolerate spies and traitors. Each man with the red blood of freedom in his veins must qualify with ‘‘absolutely selfless Americanism.’’9 If property rights were to be safe, he continued, human rights could not be violated. But to maintain the economic rights of all it was sometimes necessary to interfere with the economic privileges of some: ‘‘economic activities bring men into relations where the unrestricted economic activity of some leads inevitably in a developed industrial society to the servitude of others.’’ In his time Jefferson resisted economic domination by the government aided Bank of the United States. In the twentieth century, McAdoo prophesied, he would be fighting the ascendancy of big business. He would not allow corporations to hide behind state’s rights theory. States rights, he said, was a basic concept of local self-government. ‘‘Every community is entitled to decide matters which are exclusively its own concern and which involve no other community, without interference from the outside,’’ but it is not ‘‘entitled to interfere with matters which are of vital concern to other states or to the whole Nation.’’ ‘‘Today the economic life of the nation is a unity.’’ States were no longer a match for ‘‘the great combinations.’’ If the people were to have any control over their economic life it must be done through the nation. Some warned about the danger from bureaucracy. If the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Re-

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serve Bank were to be abolished we would only transfer power from government to corporate bureaucracies. Besides, corporations had no sincere interest in states rights. When states tried to control them they sought refuge in the Fourteenth Amendment.10 They pretended that a normally valid exercise of the state’s police power became a wrongful invasion of private rights when exercised for the public welfare. McAdoo went beyond a challenge to the corporate interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. He denied that property was a natural right! In so doing, he not only rejected a central tenet of capitalist mythology but also the essence of seventeenth-century Whig philosophy, which underpinned Enlightenment political thought and the rationale for the American Revolution. John Locke had repudiated an ordered society headed by a monarch who ruled through divine right. In its place he postulated the existence of a benign state of nature (supplanting Thomas Hobbes state of war) from which the community emerged through a social contract entered into to more fully protect the natural rights of life, liberty and property. McAdoo dissented. Property was a social right: ‘‘The only limitations on the authority of the community are self-imposed ones.’’ If the community had not enacted a constitutional guarantee of private rights, the courts could not ‘‘recognize its validity as against the action of the Government.’’ Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are general aims, not legal rights. No one has the right to pursue a criminal life. ‘‘The individual can enjoy liberty only in so far as he is protected by law from the lawless liberty of others; and therefore only in so far as he is willing to surrender his own freedom to do acts which the community judges to be inimical to the freedom of others.’’ In his fervor for enforcement of Prohibition, he accepted greater restraint on the individual and drew a strained interpretation of Jefferson which was not essential to his main argument. ‘‘Jefferson believed in inherent natural rights as belonging to communities or societies, but not to private individuals as against the community of which they formed a part.’’ Consequently, Jefferson drafted the Bill of Rights, without which Americans lacked these stated protections.11 Basically, this argument extended his strong challenge to corporate assertions of freedom from restraint. He was deeply disturbed by the political influence commanded by giant corporations and wealthy individuals. During the 1920s he accused the Republican party of ‘‘plutodemocracy,’’ the sway of money under the form of democracy; the power of money brought the Harding scandals and the Mellon tax reduction, while the child labor amendment and measures for women’s economic equality were ignored.12 But he was not only engaged in partisan rhetoric. He believed that despite overlapping, the Republicans were primarily conservative, concerned with property, and the Democrats were humanistic and progressive, solicitous for people.13 Nevertheless, in 1934 he endorsed the Republican, Hiram Johnson, and when the Democrats swept into power in the 1930s he wanted progressive Republicans to

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retain their committee chairmanships.14 Still, in 1921 he had reported a deep feeling that the national conventions of both parties had been dominated by the interests and opposed to the welfare of the masses; the people might bypass the parties to install someone in the White House who would dispense justice and a fair deal.15 Parties were ‘‘only instrumentalities of service in carrying out the popular will.’’ If they evaded issues, if their platforms failed to touch ‘‘the vital everyday problems of men and women,’’ their justification ceased. It was necessary to ‘‘consider the deeply rooted defect of our civilization which makes a part of our people extravagantly rich, and another part of them desperately poor; and which causes cycles of economic depression.’’ He feared that lobbyists excessively influenced legislation. Yet, they could not be suppressed without injustice to citizens who wished to present their views. He sought to reduce the role of money in politics. The direct election of president and vice president, he postulated, would reduce the possibility of corruption in presidential elections and decrease campaign expenditures through private subscriptions. More important, presidential candidates should be financed from the public treasury, for private contributors, with an axe to grind, furnish large quantities of money in order to control a political party.16 And he had an extended feud with Tammany Hall, though he was not as harsh with other bosses, and practiced party building through patronage.17 His most fervent attack on political machines was made in reference to Prohibition. The machine center was the saloon; it was engaged in a bipartisan violation of the Eighteenth Amendment, he insisted, with ties to criminals and the lawless. It was a graft ridden, greedy, systematic organization aimed at control of government so as to sell the powers of the state ‘‘to whatever interests will pay the price. . . . It is perfectly willing to sell immunity on the one hand to criminals and on the other to the great selfseeking organizations which desire to secure the aid of government in making profits or securing privilege at the expense of the people.’’18 As he worked towards Wilson’s nomination he hoped to create a ‘‘broader and nobler humanitarianism’’ reflecting ‘‘the deep underlying feelings and aspirations of the masses of the people.’’ A decade of progressive agitation reflected the people’s determination ‘‘to restore and improve, if possible, ethical standards in politics and business,’’ while realizing a greater equality of opportunity. He reflected the optimism of the decade when he wrote that it had been only a short time since the American republic had been established, expecting ‘‘to confer not only upon its own people, but, by its example, upon the people of the whole world, the inestimable blessings of human liberty. The world is growing better, and the Twentieth Century will lift the mass higher in the scale of civilization, progress, and happiness than the combined efforts of all the twenty centuries which have preceded it.’’19

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Within two short decades he was disillusioned with his aspiration for America as a redemptive force:20 The stream of European ideas flowed into this overseas land without a pause or break. We are transplanted Europeans, not only in the matter of speech and customs, but also in respect to fundamental ideas. To me this thought has always been depressing. I wish it were not so. Here, in a new world, with all the defects and stupidities of an antique civilization behind us, it does seem to me that we might have struck out on a new and better road with all the land on the continent at our service we might have built more spacious and more beautiful cities; we might have achieved some effective method of industrial cooperation; we might have done something to smooth away the infinite injustices that come from the unequal distribution of wealth; we might have conceived a form of land tenure and land ownership that would have been more in conformity with the needs of modern society; we might have thought of a plan which would eventually raise the great mass of men to a better grade of thinking and a higher level of citizenship. That we did none of these things is one of the tragedies of history. On the contrary, we came to the new world carrying our wornout fallacies and ancient ideas, like travelers who burden themselves with bundles of threadbare clothes. Upon arriving here we put on our old garments and have worn them ever since, except for a few minor changes to fit the climate.

He found that some of the assumptions of the American revolution had to be modified. It had been a triumph of individualism, of individual rights, of a philosophy that government did enough if it secured life, family, and property. But the Founding Fathers had not protected against economic power, had not anticipated the rise of big business. Placid economic individualism ‘‘allowing every man a maximum of liberty to conduct his own affairs in his own way . . . meant a maximum of greed; and . . . intolerable confusion and inefficiency. . . . The statesmen of the future will have to give most of their attention to measures for the regulation of economic power and the enactment of laws to promote social welfare.’’21 The problem of corporate economic power was a recurring theme in his political analysis. While he was not wholly consistent in the means he chose to curb their power, he persistently attacked the greed of corporate managers, advocated competition through more reasonable tariff rates and urged some sort of regulation. As a corporate president he rejected the idea of a soulless corporation. Corporations reflected the attitudes of their dominant officers. Hiding behind anonymity, they did things they would not have done if they were held personally accountable. And there was no reason for their indifference and contempt for public grievances, most of which were remediable. There was no reason for unreliable and inconvenient service or rebates to favored customers. In an article, ‘‘The Soul of a Corporation,’’ he proclaimed the policy of his Hudson and Manhattan Railroad as a public-

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be-pleased policy, a belief that that railroad is best which serves the public best. He felt that when the public was decently treated and its rights were recognized, the public reciprocated in its response to the railroad. When an increase in rates was necessary, he placed advertisements to explain the reasons for the increase and called in consumer organizations to clarify his position. He instructed his employees to be civil to travelers even when customers were not and to ignore precedents if they interfered with better operation and service. A square deal for the public meant a square deal for the corporation.22 In 1910 he endorsed two palliatives for the problem of the trusts: commissions for the protection of the public must be continued, but they must regulate, not manage, and they should not be given the potentially confiscatory power of setting rates. The problem with railroads were not excessive rates, he maintained, but discriminatory practices and insufficient and inefficient service. The most serious grievance against other corporations, the Democrat insisted, was the undue privilege they obtained from ‘‘an excessive and wholly indefensible high protective tariff.’’ Trusts would disappear if they were forced into wholesome international competition.23 He denied that trusts were born of economic necessity. Big business shunned mutual suicide through competition. ‘‘Every one of them had their inception in the greed and ambition of certain men to profit by their organization.’’ And they charged all they could, without regard to the public welfare or the value of their services or commodities. If further combination of firms in interstate commerce was prevented by the federal government, it would benefit the country by stimulating healthful competition among businesses, each of which grew in its own proper and legitimate way. The management of each concern would be more alert to producing new and better products, at lower prices, than if there were a single management. A merger of General Electric and Westinghouse, for example, would not come from economic necessity but from a promoter’s financial greed and to enable the companies to exact higher profits. He denied that monopolies increased wages—unions did.24 By January 1911 he felt that regulated monopoly was only better than unregulated monopoly, that unregulated competition was better than any monopoly, but regulated competition was best. Regulated competition would prevent monopoly, avoiding the barbarities of competition, while preserving its virtues. It would prohibit those unfair practices and dishonest methods that created monopolies, such as destroying competitors by sales below cost in one locality, while recouping with higher prices elsewhere.25 In his own business career he tried to promote competition. He offered to build a subway to compete with Thomas Fortune Ryan’s IRT, trumpeting not destructive rate wars but the advantage of constructive competition in the quality and character of service. He was blessed with a favorable press but withdrew when New York received another offer that he could not surpass.26

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He differentiated between the legitimate and improper roles of businessmen. Wall Street provided an indispensable service in raising capital through large flotations, he wrote. But legitimate profits were not enough for them. They were obsessed with the idea of getting something for nothing through overcapitalization and cleverness. They dreamed of empire, of plutocratic control of government. Therefore, they argued, organized labor was a national menace but, somehow, associations of organized bankers and manufacturers were beneficent. The capacity to manage a firm in an orderly and profitable manner constituted business sense, he insisted, echoing Thorstein Veblen. Money making, on the other hand, was the expression of an acquisitive instinct. This drive for money and power was extraneous to popular democracy. The misuse of economic power was the greatest single menace to the security of the nation. Big business was not an aristocracy of wealth, for it lacked aristocratic repose and dignity. The view of life of a money getter was more dangerous to democracy. The improper, aggressive use of wealth to control the press through advertising and to shape public opinion through publicity agents threw democratic institutions out of balance and would eventually destroy them. As he wrote his memoirs he concluded that repressive legislation would stunt the development of business, while adequate supervision could just eliminate unearned profits.27 Yet, only a few years later, he complained to a correspondent that there had never been a criminal conviction under the anti-trust laws, and he called for a ‘‘fine set of new teeth.’’28 The solution to the problem of monopoly in a economic system of private enterprise remained elusive. In fact, he never joined other progressives who had drawn upon his wartime experience with railroads and shipping to support peacetime government ownership and operation of some key industries. By 1916 he saw an American rail system short of cars, its rolling stock in poor repair, its equipment badly maintained and antiquated. Everywhere there were signs of disorganization and overpaid, inefficient management. There was a shortage of 150,000 cars and an equal number accumulated in eastern yards waiting for a return cargo. He wanted executive seizure. If they waited for Congress, he warned, the railroad directors would have themselves constituted as a committee, would burden the treasury, and would continue to think of their individual units and not of a unified system dedicated to the war effort. Under his leadership, the railroads were reorganized and improved, their service vastly ameliorated. At the end of the war the railroad operators attempted to discredit both his efforts and government operation. McAdoo proposed a five-year extension of government operation to effectuate those long-term improvements that would make the railroads serviceable. He was confident that they could then be returned to private ownership, but under centralized regulation. If an extension was not possible, he suggested an immediate restoration of the roads, rather than their retention for the legislated twenty-one months. Nec-

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essary improvements would be difficult while directors acted in anticipation of future private control, he warned. Meanwhile, the railroads would pocket their guaranteed income for twenty-one months, blame all the shortcomings on the government and discredit government control. By immediate restoration, he confided to the president, legislation could then be enacted while ‘‘the faults and defects of private management . . . will again be brought glaringly to the public consciousness by the return of private control.’’29 The Republican solution, the Esch-Cummins Act, became anathema to him. It instituted the palliatives desired by the special interests and ignored fundamental problems, he insisted. Within the year, instead of paying the debt they owed for wartime improvements, the railroads were making heavy demands on the government. ‘‘The trouble with the railroads is that they have arteriosclerosis from long injection of watered stock and the waste and inefficiency of so-called competitive managements.’’ The result was decayed lines and an obsolete and inadequate system. His solution was to eliminate incompetent management, which protected petty kingdoms and excessive salaries. If railroads were to modernize they needed to unify and consolidate their facilities and credit. The act resulted in large rate increases and losses greater than wartime, he reported. As to the clause providing recapture of excess earnings, it was nullified when strong railroads concealed profits through extravagance and unnecessary and collateral operations. Even if it had worked, weak railroads would only have increased their debt by borrowing from the fund.30 Still, unlike Norris, he did not advocate government ownership and operation of the railroads. Similarly, he reluctantly endorsed government initiatives in ocean transport. He was certain that the United States could have averted a prewar crisis in shipping and negated the British blacklist if we had possessed an adequate merchant marine. Still, it took a wartime crisis and the failure of private capital to alleviate American reliance upon British bottoms for him to propose purchases by a shipping board. In his memoirs he summed up his philosophy: ‘‘I do not believe in government ownership of any industry or commercial concern that can be carried on efficiently and honestly, with due regard to the public interest, by individual enterprise. But I do believe in government regulation of commercial activities that impinge in a powerful manner on the social economy of the nation.’’ When the dispute over electric power erupted during the 1920s it seemed less important to him whether the Ford or Norris proposals were followed than that a multipurpose project be constructed. In fact, during a discussion of a potential Colorado River project he suggested the creation of a large independent corporation to coordinate public and private companies throughout the region.31 Firmly convinced of the efficacy of private enterprise, he supplemented his legal practice with investments in oil, stocks and the Florida land boom.32 During the New Deal, he opposed the elimination of the oil depletion allowance and had grave constitutional questions

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about the holding company divorce bill. There was a legitimate field for holding companies, and Congress could not compel a state chartered corporation to divest itself of stock in another corporation, especially when the provisions were only applied to gas and electric companies. Nevertheless, he voted for the measure; inherently evil empires, like that of Insull, had to be outlawed, not regulated.33 He continued to hope that corporate managers would follow his example and show greater concern for economic equity. The practices of a contemporary hero, Henry Ford, did not impress him. Ford had turned out a cheap motor car at higher than current wages and made a fortune. That meant that either the car was too expensive or wages were too low. The excessive profits, he concluded, should have been shared, in part, with labor. America’s economic order would be safer from fanatics and extremists when a formula to reform distribution between labor and capital could be applied nationally.34 The strong support for McAdoo within the labor movement did not mean that he favored labor, but rather that unlike political Neanderthals, he tried to be fair. ‘‘I believe that labor is entitled to a full and just share of the rewards of industry and that we must face and solve the problem of industrial democracy.’’35 He considered the eight-hour day a basic social and economic principle, insisted that the suppression of labor organizations did violence to progress and defended collective bargaining; workers had as much right as employers to be represented by agents of their own choice. But labor agreements were as binding on employees as on employers. A worker should be paid sufficient wages to support his family and to save for old age and emergencies, he insisted. The employer must assume the occupational risks of his employees and promptly pay just compensation for injury and death. In theory and practice he accepted the idea of equal pay for equal work for women and blacks and insisted upon healthful working conditions for all. When railroads were given a guaranteed return on their investment, he contended that their workers should be given a guaranteed minimum wage. As an alternative to strikes, he proposed that labor adjustment boards settle industrial differences and institute a degree of democratization in industry. In addition, he suggested that corporations establish a reserve fund to share surplus earnings with labor.36 Yet, in running the railroads he kept the work force content with pep talks rather than high settlements. A speech on railroad labor reflected his attitude. He described a discouraged army that retained capacity and energy but whose general had failed. By calling upon their patriotism and the need to take the public into account, he managed to retain their support and improve morale. At the same time, he used the need to increase efficiency for the war effort to convince them to relinquish negotiated work rules. Finally, he granted them wage increases closer to the recommendations of

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railroad executives than those requested by labor and somewhat less than those won in other fields.37 There were definite limits to his support for labor. In 1919, while he felt that the striking miners had legitimate grievances and that the controversy should have been adjusted by giving the men a reasonable proportion of the huge operator profits, yet, he opposed the strike.38 And he was distressed by the labor militancy of 1937. He warned that no government could survive for long if the indifference to constituted authority reflected in the seamen’s strike spread and became general. In addition, the sit-down strikers assumed a power that the United States government did not possess, to take possession of private property without due process of law. Such illegal actions, if carried to their logical conclusion, would result in anarchy and demoralization of organized society. Lawless methods only injured labor’s struggle for better conditions, he warned. Nevertheless, he did not believe the problem was solved by denouncing these actions. It would be helpful if the Supreme Court recognized the validity of the Wagner Labor Relations Act, but not sufficient. He returned to the importance of developing a formula to govern labor–capital relations through negotiations, with government guidance.39 Still, he favored achievable labor legislation: the child labor amendment, old age benefits and unemployment insurance. While he supported the wages and hours bill, he wanted to ensure the exclusion of farm labor.40 The desire to exempt farm workers from labor legislation reflected the agrarian bent of many progressives, including those from an urban background. During the Wilson administration he pressed for the Federal Farm Loan Act to make long term credit available to farmers on the security of their own land; it was modeled on the Federal Reserve Act, substituting cooperative farm loan associations for commercial banks. By 1921 he charged the Federal Reserve System with favoring commerce and not supplying sufficient short term capital to farms. He wanted to amend the legislation to enable the farm loan banks to advance short-term credit, based on agricultural paper. Credit, by itself, was not a solution. He advised that farmers be encouraged to go forward with cooperative marketing, cooperative warehouse and grain elevators, uniformly regulated and operated.41 In 1922 he accused the Harding administration of causing the farm depression. It had restricted farm credit, thus forcing sales at low prices; it followed a foreign policy that reduced exports by 40%, and it pursued a railroad policy which raised rates. He repeated his previous solution; Norris was already calling for subsidized exports.42 In 1926 he continued to emphasize farm cooperatives. Business interests, he pointed out, had learned the lesson of cooperation; but they had used their increased power to the disadvantage of the farmers and consumers. The formation of a farm bloc indicated that farmers had finally learned from businessmen. But they remained at a relative disadvantage, and to redress the balance, government had to act ‘‘to pre-

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serve social, political, and economic equality.’’43 When the long run agricultural recession merged with a worldwide depression, McAdoo searched for new solutions: the wheat held by Hoover’s Farm Board should be distributed free to hungry Americans; there was no prospect of marketing it even at the purchase price, much less at the higher sale price projected by the law.44 He began to promote a variation of progressive proposals of the 1920s. The steel industry, he explained, sold its surplus on the world market for what it could get. It remained prosperous because its domestic price was protected by the tariff. Similarly, wheat, cotton and, to a lesser degree, tobacco were export industries. He called for new legislation to determine the proportion of the crop that was sold on the domestic and foreign market and to set a tariff protected domestic price. Grain elevators could then offer adequate compensation, based on the proper mix of the world and domestic prices, enabling farmers to earn the cost of production plus a profit. While he had always been opposed to excessive tariffs, they had become imbedded in the economic structure and farmers should reap some of their benefits. The New Deal plan to control acreage, he anticipated, would only lead to more intensive farming. The proposal was too complicated to administer and was of doubtful constitutionality. Under his plan production could be controlled by a flexible tariff. To provide an incentive to reduce production, rates would be raised if output was reduced and reduced if output increased.45 He had reservations about the constitutionality of the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act but resolved his doubts ‘‘in favor of the farmers, and in favor of the economic necessities of the situation.’’ At the same time, he offered a constitutional amendment to satisfy the courts.46 When the second AAA was proposed, he found it wanting and voted against it. Acreage allotment could be thwarted by intensive farming unless fertilizer usage was restricted, and that would be an imposition on farmers. The ever normal granary was impractical, but he did not oppose it. His substitute amendment provided that a domestic price be based on the cost of production, including a wage competitive with industry, plus the cost of maintenance, depreciation of equipment and 4% on the value of farms. Unlike the parity program, he offered no subsidy. The farmer would be allotted acreage as his share of the domestic market; anything else that he planted would be a risky investment of time and money, for the treasury would only pay the farmer the price it received for his surplus. Surplus cotton could be supplied to mills at a low cost to stimulate that industry. He thought that his proposal would lead neither to economic isolation nor interfere with reciprocal agreements. Borah and Johnson voted for his substitute, while Norris remained loyal to the administration. When his amendment failed, he supported the administration measure, joining Norris, and then voted against the conference report, with Johnson and Borah; many progressives were disturbed by the restrictions on production incorporated into the con-

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ference report.47 But none of these progressive critics of the New Deal farm program foresaw the corporate future of American agriculture. The Great Depression had as great an impact upon McAdoo as upon most of his contemporaries. ‘‘The old civilization, as it existed prior to 1929 is dead and . . . a complete reorganization, economic and political, of the United States, if not of the whole world, must be brought about,’’ he confided to W. E. Woodward.48 At an early date he challenged both those economists who considered the depression just an inevitable phase of the business cycle, and those who considered overproduction and market glut to be the cause. Even in 1930, he recognized that financiers had failed to maintain a normal pace of industrial expansion.49 He rejected Hoover’s excuse that the depression started in Europe. It started in America, he insisted, and Americans did not have to wait for Europe to recover. The United States could take steps towards recovery itself.50 He refused to believe that the crisis and unemployment would end quickly. State or federal relief funds were necessary to supplement private charity, he insisted. Hoover’s failure to act was ‘‘as callous as it is incomprehensible.’’ ‘‘In ordinary times I would be opposed to any direct federal relief,’’ he asserted, ‘‘but when people are starving, I care nothing for theories of government.’’ Self-liquidating projects or public works were preferable, and he hoped to avoid a ‘‘dole,’’ but relief was necessary ‘‘in any circumstances.’’51 He suggested that Farm Board wheat be exchanged with bakers or millers for bread or flour to distribute to the needy. Food or monetary relief was necessary immediately, before any employment plan could be set into effect. To refuse to relieve those ‘‘reduced to want and poverty, through no fault of their own’’ with food bought with the people’s money was ‘‘heartless and indefensible.’’52 He felt that the resurrection of the War Finance Corporation and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, as some proposed, was unjustified; it would aid only favored interests by relieving them of their frozen assets.53 He preferred a peace industries board of a national economic council, composed of management, agriculture and labor, with investigatory, not legislative, power. It would determine national needs in advance, so that production and consumption could be balanced and the economy stabilized.54 The year 1932 presented an opportunity to bring about a change in federal policy. McAdoo had been willing to help FDR run for the Senate in 1914, but Roosevelt had played a key role for Smith in the 1924 convention. McAdoo, the former New Yorker, argued that New Yorkers had led the party to defeat in 1924 and 1928 and insisted that Democrats choose a candidate divorced from Tammany. He supported Garner but helped switch California to Roosevelt.55 While he was a fairly consistent supporter of the New Deal, he had many reservations. Against his better judgment, despite doubts about its constitutionality, he voted for the National Recovery Act. He feared that it was too ambitious: ‘‘It would have accomplished more if we had confined ourselves to fewer and simpler formulas.’’56 While he had

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been anxious to inaugurate federal relief, its administration in California was so disillusioning that he considered proposing an investigation. Yet, he defended the projects of the WPA and the PWA and supported local initiative in drafting projects.57 He could not understand New Deal fiscal policies but still voted for enabling legislation. While willing to accept inflation, within reasonable limits, he disliked the discretionary gold provision and the manipulation of the gold content of the dollar. Resulting uncertainty hampered business recovery. It would have been sufficient to admit that the nation was off the gold standard. And the greenback provisions were unsatisfactory.58 He supported conservation proposals. His only concern with public power was that the Bonneville Dam not produce power for less than the Boulder Dam, for it would put California at a disadvantage.59 While he felt that public psychology was improved by experimentation, by 1935 he wanted relief from legislation: ‘‘the whole country seems to be obsessed with the idea that a piece of national legislation will cure any and every ill.’’ Before the advent of the New Deal, he had hoped to cut appropriations to the bone. Now he was worried about the national credit, enormous appropriations and an unbalanced budget. Legislation was being enacted in favor of some classes, or interests, and against others, he complained, with no concern for its effect upon the common welfare.60 Nevertheless, he continued to support some of the most controversial New Deal programs. Even before Roosevelt’s ill-fated Supreme Court plan, he had raised questions about the judiciary. But his concerns had been specifically in relation to its excess discretion and favoritism in bankruptcies and receiverships. He would not have limited judicial discretion. Instead, he would have authorized a tribunal of judges of higher courts to remove judges of inferior courts for misconduct. At the same time, he defended the Supreme Court without defending its decisions. Majority decisions can be unfortunate in the judiciary, just as in the legislature, he argued. But majority decisions are the basis of American government. If unanimity were required on constitutional questions, as Norris had suggested, then a single judge could uphold an unconstitutional violation of the bill of rights.61 Nevertheless, he denied that Roosevelt intended to use this legislation to pack the Supreme Court. No qualified lawyer would accept appointment if he first had to clear his constitutional ideas with the president; once a judge assumed office, there was no way for the chief executive to influence his decisions. The nine-man Court was established in 1869, when the population was about one-third that of the 1930s, and the current Court could not hear all deserving litigants, he argued. There were 700 to 800 applicants for writs of certiorari. He thought it a proper proposal to offer enhanced retirement income to superannuated judges; those who refused to retire should be supplemented by younger jurists who could keep the docket clear. In fact, McAdoo was ready to amend the bill to set the Court at fifteen judges, for the following twenty-five years and to provide for voluntary re-

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tirement at age 70 and compulsory retirement at age 75. Despite his emphasis on the work of the court, he was disturbed by its record on constitutional questions. When four judges dissented from a majority opinion, it was not clear that the legislation was unconstitutional. No law should be voided unless the Court was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. Listing court decisions upholding the New Deal, he stated: ‘‘These decisions clearly show that the Constitution of the United States is right if the Supreme Court will properly interpret it.’’62 Nor did he see any peril in the controversial proposal for executive reorganization of departments and independent agencies. There had been growth and duplication. One man had to be in charge. As long as his power was limited, McAdoo could see no more objections than to Wilson’s earlier reorganization. He asked only that a westerner be appointed to the reorganization board.63 And in 1940 he declared: ‘‘The third-term dogma has no terrors for me,’’ and announced his support for FDR’s renomination.64 As he confided to W. E. Woodward, ‘‘I consider a large part of what he is trying to accomplish in the way of social and economic reform as indispensable to the security of the Republic.’’65 Under such circumstances many minor reservations could easily be stilled. McAdoo’s long political career came to an abrupt end during the 1938 recession when he was defeated in the California Democratic primary by Sheridan Downey’s campaign for pensions for all over fifty. A businessman who entered politics, McAdoo career had peaked during a decade dominated by business interests. Not unexpectantly that decade was also one of Republican ascendance, and he was a lifelong Democrat. He outlived his political career by only three years. He died in February, 1941, still involved in managing a business as chairman of the board of the government owned American President Lines. NOTES 1. William Gibbs McAdoo, Crowded Years (Cambridge, MA, 1931), pp. 1–108; William Inglis, ‘‘Celebrities at Home: William Gibbs McAdoo,’’ Harper’s Weekly, 53(October 16, 1909), pp. 10–12, 32; Current Opinion, 54(April, 1913), pp. 286– 88; Burton J. Hendrick ‘‘McAdoo,’’ World’s Work, 26(1913), pp. 626–37; Robert Watchorn, ‘‘The Builder of the Hudson Tunnels,’’ Outlook, 90(1908) p. 909; cf., John J. Broesamle, William Gibbs McAdoo (Port Washington, NY, 1973), pp. 1–32. 2. Statement by William Gibbs McAdoo, 1904; WGM radio address, October 25, 1932, William Gibbs McAdoo Collection, Library of Congress (WGM MSS); Current Opinion, 54(1913), pp. 286–88. 3. New York Times, April 8, 1913, p. 10; April 22, 1913, p. 17; August 1, 1913; August 2, 1913; December 14, 1913, p. 14; April 7, 1914, p. 12; August 3, 1914, p. 3; August 5, 1914, p. 4; August 8, 1914, p. 5; August 19, 1914, p. 11; August 26, 1914, p. 11; October 7, 1914, p. 13; November 19, 1914, p. 14; Hendrick, ‘‘McAdoo’’; Nation, 100(1915), pp. 466–67; James C. Hemphill, ‘‘William Gibbs

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McAdoo,’’ North American Review, 206(1917), pp. 80–89; Edwin Wildman, ‘‘William Gibbs McAdoo—the Man behind the Treasury,’’ Forum, 58(October, 1917), pp. 391–402; Literary Digest, 64(February, 28, 1920), pp. 44–49; Current Opinion, 64(February, 1918), pp. 94–95; Joseph M. Shaffer, ‘‘McAdoo—the Man,’’ Independent, 97(1919), pp. 200–201, 237; cf., Broesamle, William Gibbs McAdoo, pp. 76–236. 4. Walter Lippmann, ‘‘Two Leading Democratic Candidates: McAdoo,’’ New Republic, 23(June 2, 1920), pp. 10–11; Men of Destiny (New York, 1927), pp. 12– 20. 5. J. P. Tumulty to WGM, November 20, 1919; WGM to Tumulty, November 21, 1919, WGM MSS; Literary Digest, 80(February 23, 1924), p. 13. 6. Lee N. Allen, ‘‘The McAdoo Campaign for the Presidential Nomination in 1924,’’ Journal of Southern History, 29(1963), pp. 211–18; Robert E. Hennings, ‘‘California Democratic Politics in the Period of Republican Ascendancy,’’ Pacific Historical Review, 31(1962), pp. 267–80; David H. Stratton, ‘‘Splattered with Oil: William G. McAdoo and the 1924 Democratic Presidential Nomination,’’ Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 44(1963), pp. 62–75. 7. Speech by William Gibbs McAdoo, ‘‘States Rights and the Jeffersonian Idea,’’ May 25, 1926; speech by McAdoo at the New York City Press Club, January 21, 1911, WGM MSS. 8. New York Times, June 6, 1919, p. 4; February 12, 1920, p. 15; September 24, 1920, p. 5; Speech by WGM to the Pan American Society, January 27, 1920; WGM to T. W. Gregory, June 2, 1917, WGM MSS. 9. New York Times, September 22, 1917, p. 9; October 19, 1917; speech by WGM, April, 12, 1918, WGM MSS. 10. Speech by William Gibbs McAdoo, ‘‘States Rights and the Jeffersonian Idea,’’ May 25, 1926; speech by McAdoo at the New York City Press Club, January 21, 1911, WGM MSS. 11. William Gibbs McAdoo, The Challenge (New York, 1928), pp. 106–90. 12. Address by WGM, April 7, 1924; McAdoo, The Challenge, pp. 222–242. 13. McAdoo, Crowded Years, pp. 113–14. 14. New York Times, February 7, 1934, p. 10; cf., WGM to Martin J. Wade, July 15, 1916; WGM to Francis H. Collins, August 4, 1916; WGM to T. J. Walsh, December 3, 1932, WGM MSS. 15. New York Times, December 19, 1921, p. 6. 16. McAdoo, Crowded Years, pp. 165, 261–62; speech by WGM, January 4, 1933, WGM MSS. 17. McAdoo, Crowded Years, pp. 157–59; New York Times, February 27, 1915, p. 13; cf., WGM to Alan D. Jones, January 2, 1913; WGM to John Skelton Williams, January 13, 1913; WGM to Daniel Roper, May 2, December 13, 1933; WGM to James O. Farley, May 2, August 17, 1933; WGM to W. H. Neblett, April 13, 1935, WGM MSS. 18. McAdoo, The Challenge, pp. 24–31. 19. WGM to Arthur Brisbane, February 15, 1910; WGM to G. Grosvenor Dawe, February 28, 1911, WGM MSS. 20. McAdoo, Crowded Years, pp. 62–63. 21. Ibid., pp. 60–63. 22. William G. McAdoo, ‘‘The Soul of a Corporation,’’ World’s Work, 23(1912),

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pp. 579–92; William G. McAdoo, Public Service Corporations and the Public (New York, 1910). 23. McAdoo, Public Service Corporations. 24. McAdoo, Crowded Years, p. 303; WGM to Byron R. Newton, June 7, 1911. He did not feel that Supreme Court decisions settled the trust problem. WGM to Louis T. Hosmer, June 7, 1911, WGM MSS. 25. Speech by McAdoo, ‘‘The Subway Problem,’’ January 19, 1911, WGM MSS; W. G. McAdoo, ‘‘Colonel Roosevelt and Monopoly,’’ New York Evening Journal, October 31, 1912. 26. McAdoo, ‘‘The Subway Problem’’; Burton J. Hendrick, ‘‘McAdoo and the Subway,’’ McClure’s Magazine, 36(1911), pp. 484–500; cf., Broesamle, William Gibbs McAdoo, pp. 38–40. 27. McAdoo, Crowded Years, 102, 111–13, 240–42; New York Times, June 20, 1938, p. 9. 28. WGM to W. H. Neblett, December 31, 1936, WGM MSS. 29. WGM to Woodrow Wilson, December 6, 1917; November 24, 1919; February 25, August 6, 1919, WGM MSS; McAdoo, Crowded Years, pp. 440–91; New York Times, December 12, 1918; January 5, 1919, p. 1, VII, p. 3; Review of Reviews, 59(1919), pp. 206–7. 30. New York Times, October 20, 1920; speech by WGM, Atlanta, GA, March 14, 1924; WGM to Joseph H. O’Neil, July 30, 1921; cf., WGM to Joseph B. Eastman, May 5, 1921, WGM MSS. 31. WGM to Harry Chandler, April 26, July 6, 1921; WGM speech, March 14, 1924, WGM MSS; cf., Broesamle, William Gibbs McAdoo, pp. 212–36. 32. Cf., WGM to A. Heckscher, November 21, 1925; WGM to Thomas Hamilton, April 29, 1929, WGM MSS. 33. Draft of WGM letter to FDR, June 11, 1935; WGM to Thomas M. Storke, June 11, 1935; WGM to William H. Neblett, June 13, 1935; WGM to Edwin W. Pauley, July 22, 1937, WGM MSS. 34. WGM to Samuel Crowther, September 13, 1934, WGM MSS. 35. Donald Wilhelm, ‘‘If He Were President,’’ Independent, 100(1920), pp. 145– 48. 36. New York Times, September 7, 1920, p. 3; October 19, 1920, p. 2; June 30, 1934; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 3235–40. 37. WGM addresses, September 12, 1918; December 2, 1923, WGM MSS; Samuel Gompers, ‘‘How Malignity Has Found Its Waterloo—McAdoo Disproves R.R. Managers’ Falsifications,’’ American Federationist, 29(1922), pp. 161–76; New York Times, July 24, 1918, p. 14; November 12, 1918, p. 20. In a letter to the president he reported his effort to head off a large increase in wages in shipyards for it would be too expensive to match it for railway labor. WGM to Woodrow Wilson, October 3, 1918, WGM MSS. 38. New York Times, December 12, 1919, p. 2; WGM to Carter Glass, December 20, 1919, WGM MSS. 39. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 3235–40; WGM to John T. Antwell, January 27, 1937; WGM to Orlando F. Weber, March 23, 1937, WGM MSS. 40. Speech by WGM, March 14, 1924, WGM MSS; New York Times, November

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8, 1934, p. 2; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 7927– 49. 41. New York Times, January 8, 1917, p. 13; March 2, 1917, p. 15; WGM to Samuel White, July 10, 1916; WGM to E. M. House, July 17, 1916; WGM to C. S. Whitman, May 5, 1917; WGM to A. C. Wiprud, August 12, 1921, WGM MSS. 42. New York Times, October 19, 1922, p. 4; April 28, 1924, p. 2; WGM to E. L. Doheny, November 14, 1922, WGM MSS. 43. William G. McAdoo, ‘‘States Rights and the Jefferson Idea,’’ speech, May 25, 1926, reprinted from U.S. Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 1 Sess., Doc. no. 121. 44. New York Times, October 20, 1930, p. 12. 45. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 6525–28; WGM to E. M. House, December 12, 1932, WGM MSS; New York Times, January 23, 1933, p. 2. 46. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 2043–45; WGM to R. G. Franklin, March 6, 1936, WGM MSS. 47. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 2 Sess. 82(1937), pp. 442–43, 1703– 18; 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 1863, 1881, 8100–8102; WGM to FDR, August 25, 1937; WGM to Henry A. Wallace, October 6, 1937, WGM MSS; Ronald Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 138–39. 48. WGM to W. E. Woodward, May 1, 1933, WGM MSS. 49. New York Times, October 25, 1930, p. 11. 50. WGM, speech, October 27, 1932, WGM MSS. 51. New York Times, October 25, 1930, p. 11; January 24, 1931, p. 11; WGM, speech, October 11, 1932, WGM MSS. 52. WGM to Frank E. Gannett, January 5, 1931, WGM MSS. 53. WGM to George Fort Milton, January 19, 1932; WGM to Jesse Jessuf, July 18, 1932, WGM MSS. 54. New York Times, June 5, 1932, p. 4. 55. New York Times, February 19, 1932; April 12, 1932, p. 3; WGM to F. D. Roosevelt, August 15, 1914; WGM to Brice Clagett, February 13, 1933; WGM to Daniel Roper, February 13, 1933, WGM MSS. 56. WGM to Charles Horner, August 29, 1933; September, 24, 1934; WGM to George Creel, September 9, 1933; WGM to F. R. Wilson, November 14, 1933; WGM to Carter Glass, November 17, 1933, WGM MSS; New York Times, May 28, 1935, p. 20. 57. WGM to George Creel, January 13, 1934; WGM to John Elliot, telegram, January 15, 1934; WGM to Althea Warren, July 1, 1939, WGM MSS; New York Times, September 30, 1936, p. 18; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 5289–90. 58. WGM to W. E. Woodward, April 24, May 1, 1933; WGM to Carter Glass, November 17, 1933; WGM to W. R. Hearst, May 5, 1934; WGM to Robert Elbert, August 14, 1935, WGM MSS; New York Times, July 13, 1935, p. 17. 59. WGM to Benton Fremont, June 9, 1937, WGM MSS; U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 1 Sess., 81(1937), pp. 8535–37. 60. WGM to Winston Churchill, January 22, 1934; WGM to Thomas Storke, February 12, 1935; WGM to Robert Elbert, August 1, 1935, WGM MSS. 61. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 2043–45, 5933– 40.

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62. WGM to J. G. Boswell, March 30, 1937; WGM to Rodney Yoell, February 9, 1937; WGM to J. O. Davis, March 16, 1917; WGM to Thomas Storke, April 12, 1937, WGM MSS; Congressional Digest, 16(1937), pp. 82–83; New York Times, March 6, 1937, p. 2; March 7, 1937, p. 17. 63. U.S. Congressional Record, 75 Cong., 3 Sess., 83(1938), pp. 3647, 4192–93. 64. WGM to Sherman Minton, June 1, 1940; WGM to Henry Ashurst, June 3, 1940, WGM MSS. 65. WGM to W. E. Woodward (ca. 1937), WGM MSS.

Chapter 6

Bainbridge Colby: Conservative as Progressive Described as typically New York, Bainbridge Colby was typically an immigrant—from St. Louis, Missouri—though related to old New York families. Elegant, well dressed, well spoken, with a melodious voice and distinction of diction, he presented his argument with a classic expression of thought, picturesque and simple. Educated at Williams College, he married Nathalie Sedgewick of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, but not until he had completed his law studies at Columbia and had begun a successful legal career in the burgeoning metropolis.1 If, in 1912, Woodrow Wilson had been ‘‘a progressive (of a certain kind) about eighteen months,’’2 Bainbridge Colby was an even more recent convert. Elected to the New York State Assembly in 1902 as a RepublicanFusion candidate, he was considered to be in the traditional wing of the Republican party and his endorsement of Theodore Roosevelt in March of 1912 came as a surprise to some. For example, he had said about the direct election of United States senators that no man of political sensibility would seek office ‘‘from every Tom, Dick and Harry.’’ The New York Mail speculated that he supported Roosevelt as the only electable Republican candidate.3 But once he cast his lot with the progressives he was consistent in his support. Direct government now had its appeal. The direct primary was no longer an experiment; its opposition in New York came from ‘‘little spoonfed politicians’’ who wanted to retain the convention despite the voice of the people. The initiative and referendum now provided a means of maintaining representative government, not a tool for its demise; at the same time essential reforms prevented by outworn institutions could be obtained. He endorsed thorough conservation and blamed the rising cost of living on ‘‘the fraudulent appropriation of our public lands and the greedy exhaustion

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of our natural resources.’’ He could find no valid argument against women’s suffrage, and was proud of his small part in its realization during the Wilson administration. Although Secretary of State Colby signed the Amendment in private, displeasing suffragettes, he stated ‘‘that every salutary, forward and upward force in public life will receive fresh vigor and reinforcement from the enfranchisement of the women of America.’’ The one progressive reform that appalled him was Prohibition. It was a proposal by ‘‘anaemic and evangelistic people,’’ while representatives permitted ‘‘the steamroller of bigotry and fanaticism to roll over us.’’ He insisted that ‘‘it is a very serious thing to impose your own ideas of what is good upon some other man.’’4 (Similarly, a few years later he saw the Ku Klux Klan as a ‘‘misguided and furtive political conspiracy,’’ an ‘‘un-American,’’ ‘‘poisonous’’ and ‘‘alien thing in our midst.’’)5 Even as a leader of the Progressive party he publicly commended the changes in tariff and currency, joining Wilson administration Progressives in preferring a central bank governed by the government to regional banks. He opposed all efforts at fusion with the Republicans, and in 1916, when Roosevelt rejected the Progressive presidential nomination and tried to deliver the party to Charles Evans Hughes, Colby endorsed Wilson. The New Yorker enumerated the progressive legislation that Wilson had enacted: Federal Reserve, rural credit, income tax, Federal Trade Commission, Clayton Act, federal aid to road building, the Smith-Lever Agricultural Education Act and support for a child labor bill.6 He no longer feared that the Democratic party was tied to state’s rights, ‘‘a survival of outgrown conditions,’’ applying ‘‘dead thinking to live conditions.’’7 Yet, even as a progressive there was often a conservative cast to his thinking: There are few sources of socialistic unrest so prolific as the check which the commercially powerful put upon legislation that is social in its proper sense. Interests that would prevent an income tax and use a high tariff to increase the privileges, not of infant industries, but of the most powerful corporations in the world breed discontent, and then turn this discontent to the most dangerous and ill-considered forms of socialism.8

Responding to a perceived menace during the ‘‘Red Scare,’’ his statements reflected Edmund Burke. America was ‘‘trying to regain our poise, trying to recover . . . temperate and moderate processes,’’ he commented. To set a course in unsettled times one has to know one’s destination. ‘‘We are trying to get back to the Constitution, to our institutions that have spelled security to the decades . . . from which we have derived our happiness and well being.’’9 Yet, in such times, he was unwilling to extend the protection of these institutions and the Constitution to those men ‘‘who have no respect for America, . . . who are abusing our hospitality,’’ who, like the Com-

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munist party, ‘‘openly advocate the overthrow of our Government.’’ They ‘‘must be put down’’.10 This conservative cast placed limits upon his attitude towards wage earners. He joined most progressives in opposing child labor, supporting a minimum wage for women, workmen’s compensation in case of industrial accidents, legislation to safeguard the health of employees, an eight hour day and the creation of a separate cabinet Department of Labor. Roosevelt’s call for a conservation of human resources inspired him. Colby wanted to sweep away the old abuses and build a new and nobler commonwealth. He had little patience for subtle theories claiming legal inability to enact appropriate social and economic legislation.11 Strikes by organized labor were a little more troublesome. In a speech supporting the Adamson Act he warned that ‘‘we cannot compete upon an equality with a world renewed unless we find some escape from these recurring conflicts between capital and labor.’’ He supported arbitration ‘‘simply because we don’t know anything else.’’ In this 1917 address Colby emphasized that a statute would be enacted in which ‘‘the right to strike will be subjected to definite qualifications’’ to protect the public interest from complete breakdowns resulting from quarrels ‘‘not of public making.’’ A new statute would force employees and employers to submit their grievances, not to arbitrators, but to a tribunal enjoying public confidence, capable of ascertaining the public interest, which would ‘‘impose justice upon contending classes.’’ Typically, he perceived the public interest to be larger than its component parts. Yet, he saw a menace to railroad prosperity, not in the demands of wage earners, but rather in ‘‘the fiscal jugglery of railroads by bankers of high repute.’’ He insisted that the loss to a railroad caused by a strike would be worse than satisfying demands but that railways were led by men with ‘‘a deeply ingrained and intense class prejudice.’’12 By the second Wilson administration Colby had become a Democratic supporter of Woodrow Wilson, later to become secretary of State. The postwar strike wave caused him some trepidation, for he saw a fundamental struggle. He feared that the tactics of labor ‘‘were really those of a belligerent,’’ attempting to undermine a system that deprived them of ‘‘that freedom of life and self expression to which the workers aspires,’’ a system which they believed to be doomed. On the other hand, management wanted greater production; worker’s indifference to executives’ goals resulted in a desire to liquidate labor, he reported to Woodrow Wilson. The Democratic party had to keep a balance and ‘‘interpret the highest practical conception of justice to the manual worker.’’13 And he continued to tilt towards organized labor for a while. For example, in 1926 Albert Weissbord, the organizer of the Passaic textile strike, was arrested for inciting to riot, inciting against the government and introducing communist matter. Despite police brutality, the strike was unpopular. Nevertheless, attorney Colby appeared for the defendant, with-

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out charge, and argued that high bail struck at the roots of American liberty.14 It was not until the Great Depression that Colby began to shift away from organized labor’s interests. In 1934, while he still believed the Constitution protected rights, not property, strikes and unions worried him much more than in the past. He insisted that the San Francisco general strike was a threat to the well-being, livelihood and even life of the residents. Confident that the Communists behind the strike would be defeated and the strike broken, he warned that the resentment caused by the strike would injure labor’s legitimate rights. He felt threatened by legislative provisions meant to protect the right of workers to organize. Section 7 of the National Industrial Recovery Act was an attempt by organized labor to ‘‘take possession of industry, and to rule and regulate it’’; it contained ‘‘the principle that a majority of employees can direct the conduct of a business enterprise,’’ which was a ‘‘curtain raiser to a revolution.’’ The specter of one big union, reminiscent of the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World, troubled him, and it encompassed the possibility of factory seizures as in Italy, before Mussolini. In his opinion, the successor Wagner Bill threatened recovery, deprived employers of all managerial freedom, and subordinated them to the National Labor Relations Board. It created an imbalance in bargaining power between employers and employees, in favor of workers; it did not provide for judicial rules of evidence, and allowed only employees to bring complaints. And it was not necessary to add the prevailing wage amendment to the Works Projects Administration, for employers could be trusted not to lower prevailing wages to the relief wage.15 By 1942 he mocked the drive for a forty-hour week, parroting Nicholas Murray Butler’s wish for a forty-hour day.16 On issues important to labor he had returned to his conservative roots. Similarly, Colby had a mixed attitude towards big business. A successful lawyer, he was a counsel and investor in businesses. At the same time, he served as a counsel for investigations of New York transit and of a newsprint conspiracy to increase prices by limiting output.17 His reaction to the Standard Oil decision of 1911 defined his position: He was pleased that this conservative decision softened the Sherman Anti-trust Act by using the term unreasonable restraint of trade. He accepted ‘‘economic principles that are basic, immutable and non-injurious,’’ even if there were some technical trade restraints in their implementation. Other impediments, he argued, were ‘‘vicious in conception, and aim at results detrimental to legitimate commerce.’’18 However, Colby saw corporations at the root of tolerance for organized crime that plagued urban America (almost ignoring the role of Prohibition.) He was appalled that streets were swept by gunfire, creating casualty lists that resembled wartime. ‘‘A working alliance between crime and the forces upon which society relies for crime repression’’ was to blame. Judges, after all, were the tools of ‘‘corrupt political domination’’; ‘‘almost

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everybody has his Congressman except Uncle Sam.’’ Urban politics was corrupt, he charged, because money and wealth ‘‘dwell more happily under a corrupt system in which money can purchase privileges and immunities.’’19 Yet, corporations were a necessary modern convenience, especially for international commerce, with a responsibility to serve the public, (even though a divorce between ownership and management had developed.) Publicity would reveal irregularities and imperfections, he hoped.20 Consequently, he examined actions by businesses with specificity. The maritime industry is a good example of his thinking. Having been a member of the wartime shipping board, he had requisitioned American vessels and then returned them to the original owners to operate them. He rejected suggestions by other progressives that the government continue control of shipping in the postwar world. Colby echoed the myth that ship management required a shrewd sense of trade that presupposed personal initiative and individual enterprise. The role for government should be supportive: to build enough ships to stabilize work in shipyards, to develop the skilled labor and reduced unit costs that made it practical for private enterprise, to pioneer new trade links, not competitive with private shipowners, and to absorb the initial costs until regular lines for freight could be established; in short, to take all the financial risks until it was profitable.21 With the advent of the New Deal he insisted that national safety and prosperity demanded an adequate merchant marine, which America had allowed to decline. In 1928 an effort to rebuild through subsidies and loans had been made, without attracting private capital. Nevertheless, he argued that constructing a larger merchant marine would give employment; it could be promoted by patronizing American ships and granting more consistent aid.22 In contrast, the New Yorker often fought the Interborough Rapid Transit. Their 1913 contract with the city deprived New York of full rental value and ran too long, he argued. Two decades later he attacked the proposed municipal purchase of the subways for offering twice its value.23 He clearly believed that government should play a role in business. He wanted more effective regulation of public utilities; by 1931 he included oil as a public utility. Commenting that the power trust bragged that it regulated the regulators, he demanded scientifically determined rates. While he was willing to support a bill to permit municipal ownership and distribution of power, he insisted that utilities should recognize that adequate regulation was in their interest, lest people lose faith in regulation.24 Railroad and public utilities were in trouble for they could not ‘‘carry the capitalized plunder of the past.’’ He no longer feared the rapacity of railroads, but their collapse. They suffered from regulation that was excessive, unintelligent and conflicting; regulation should be limited to supervision of accounts, control over finance, safety and discriminatory practices, he insisted.25 He supported Franklin Roosevelt’s plan, as governor, for publicly owned water power, since partnership with private corporations always resulted in public loss. During Roo-

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sevelt’s presidency, he endorsed the multipurpose development of the Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas and Columbia Rivers, as commensurate with the nation’s problems. Later, he opposed the New Deal RayburnWheeler Utilities Bill, divesting holding companies, as confiscatory, as part of a revolution by ruse.26 While an early supporter of much of the New Deal economic policies, his support was selective, and his opposition grew within a short time. When the depression began, siding with progressives, he charged that a selfabsorbed America permitted the indulgence of financial and industrial interests under the cover of apparent prosperity and handed undisputed power to those who were privileged and predatory. As a result, holding companies, chain banks and power companies had evaded regulation in the public interest and consolidated banking power. Americans, he warned, would not remain insensitive, for principle was as important a motivation as material gain. He chided the crafters of a Democratic manifesto for forgetting principle and trying to allay ‘‘the justified apprehensions of the privileged and exploiting interests.’’27 Greater flexibility in dealing with the depression was necessary: ‘‘we are like a man who fights with one hand tied behind his back. We are tied thus by blind prejudice.’’ These political, economic and social prejudices caused the failure of Herbert Hoover. Unable ‘‘to envisage the misery of the masses,’’ setting ‘‘his face like flint’’ against federal payments to starving Americans, he offered only ‘‘an individualism so rugged . . . that it includes even the right to starve.’’ Hoover was only moved by the plight of banks, railroads and great corporations, he charged.28 Reversing his Progressive Era opposition to an indiscriminate dole as an artificial stimulus injurious to recovery, he supported William Randolph Hearst’s request for a $5 billion prosperity loan by the federal government, not only for relief, but to be used as a national credit for the revival of industry.29 On the other hand, trusting neither the effectiveness of government regulation nor the honesty of business, Colby was leery of Gerard Swope’s plan to stabilize prices and employment with government regulated, centralized and coordinated business; this plan inspired the National Recovery Act.30 Certain that he had found a candidate with sufficient flexibility in Governor Roosevelt, he helped to institute the National Progressive League, to marshal progressive speakers for the Democratic campaign.31 With the success of the campaign Colby was pleased with, but wary about, the early New Deal. He approved the nationalist turn of Roosevelt at the 1933 World Economic Conference. Colby had previously sought a halt to the gold drain caused by the exchange of Europe’s paper currency for American gold: ‘‘Perhaps the best contribution a nation can make to world rehabilitation is to put its own house in order.’’ By bringing American prices, wages, fixed charges and debts into a rational equilibrium, the New Deal restored the purchasing power of the nation without the artificial help of international accords, he reported.32 In September of 1933, the New Yorker

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told the Maryland Bar that the administration was engaged ‘‘in bold experiment and courageous innovation,’’ not ‘‘dogmatic and theoretic revolution.’’ The executive branch had sworn to uphold the Constitution and it would not be dismantled. ‘‘The New Deal will be found to be not so new after all, from the standpoint of the lawyer.’’ The goal was recovery, not revolution.33 But he had already joined Borah in expressing concern that Congress was delegating its constitutionally reserved legislative powers to the president. Even while he still supported the New Deal, he was suspicious of untested expedients and novel proposals.34 And he liked neither Donald Richberg’s arrogant assumption that only his group had brains, nor the National Recovery Administration itself. Under that plan wages, costs and prices were to rise first and then production was to follow: it had not; other countries were recuperating more swiftly. The NRA had become an obstacle to recovery. It reduced emphasis on the need for profits, the driving force of business. In the meantime the income tax provided too many legal exemptions, spared inherited wealth, while it destroyed the profit motive and incentives for thrift; it encouraged excessive government expenditures. Nuisance taxes were throttling business; they should be replaced with a manufacturers’ sales tax. He was particularly disturbed by the newsprint board which, by restricting prices and ending competition, upset a 1917 decree he had obtained and threatened to create a ‘‘monopoly which menaces the freedom of the press.’’ Colby believed in a human nature that could not ‘‘be regimented nor will it submit itself to a planned economy.’’ He worried that small businesses were being injured and recovery forestalled by ‘‘visionary theorists and inexperienced experimenters.’’ These bureaucrats threatened liberty. He acclaimed the Supreme Court decision declaring the NRA to be unconstitutional; it had stopped the country before it overstepped ‘‘the landmarks of democracy.’’35 The New Yorker was no happier with the first Agricultural Adjustment Act. While it had benefited farmers with bounties, it had created no new purchasing power and had only transferred income from urban to rural areas. ‘‘No country has improved its condition by curtailing production, but only by increasing it.’’ When the New Deal attempted to overcome constitutional objections to production control by amending the legislation, he saw no improvement; regimentation of farmer’s markets by politicians should be buried with the AAA.36 Before the midterm elections Colby had become a vehement critic of the direction the New Deal had taken. When Roosevelt began his first term, Colby commented, ‘‘the dangers of incaution were far less than the dangers of inaction.’’ Roosevelt remained too conscious ‘‘of the source from which governmental power springs’’ to be accused of usurpation. But the police power of the states had been transferred to the federal government. Federal regulation of banking excluded states. A vast bureaucracy had imposed rules ‘‘down to the smallest and most intimate activities that enter into our daily

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lives.’’ Emergency measures, which had failed to promote prosperity, were now to be made permanent as reforms. The Constitution had been dismissed as irrelevant; but it was a protector, not of property, but of the rights even of the least among Americans. The 1932 platform had been ignored: in place of a balanced budget and sound currency, there was a huge growing debt, currency manipulation and debasement, and such gargantuan government expenditures that it had a ‘‘lethal effect upon the investment of private capital.’’ While he had earlier said that the old economics was not true to the facts, he now felt that ‘‘impractical and claptrap theorists’’ had ignored time tested economic principles, increasing the burden of caring for the unemployed and those in social distress. He feared the advent of state socialism and warned that government always failed when bureaucrats ran businesses. In fact, Hallie Flanigan was boring within, using government funds expended in Works Progress Administration theater projects to stage left wing propaganda.37 Yet, he still felt municipalities should build their own power plants if private utilities attempted to obtain higher prices by challenging the TVA in court.38 By the middle of 1935 he was deeply involved in an effort to form an anti–New Deal third party.39 With the approach of the 1936 presidential election, Colby continued to distance himself from the New Deal. Communists were working for FDR, he charged. They were applying Marx’s dictum that they should work with the most advanced revolutionary group. Roosevelt had created debt, squandered money, weakened the United States and made revolution easier. He had failed to end unemployment, had centralized control of agriculture and industry, and set class against class. New Dealers were hostile toward business: ‘‘gouges them, taxes them stupidly and outrageously . . . and abuses all engaged in it as if they were pickpockets.’’ While dishonest businessmen should be weeded out, only business could create jobs and end unemployment. It was not an inadequate constitution that caused New Deal legislation to fail the judicial test, but impatience and sloppy legislation. In any event, they could amend the Constitution.40 By the time FDR attempted to pack the Court, Colby had long considered the question of the judiciary. As a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, he had denied that judges had legal authority to substitute their own legislative policy for the views of the people of a state. Roosevelt, like Lincoln after Dred Scott, did not accept the judgment of the Court as final, and believed in flexible institutions, he reported. Judicial recall was not to apply to the Supreme Court, he hedged, but to ‘‘incapable or recreant judges,’’ to courts where corrupt interests had found sanctuary; impeachment had become a meaningless alternative. Recall of judicial decisions was only meant to restore the police power of the states to pursue the general welfare, correcting courts that substituted their own prejudices for law.41 During the Progressive Era he came to oppose the recall of judicial decisions, while continuing to insist that the Constitution was not a fetish, but a flex-

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ible document that should be more easily, but not lightly, amended.42 By 1924, commenting on the program of a different Progressive party, his analysis changed: ‘‘We are not prepared to substitute the passing whim of Congress for the sober reasoning and steadfast loyalty of our Judges.’’43 By January of 1936, he had concluded that only Supreme Court decisions were saving the nation from the New Deal. Senate rejection of the Court-packing bill did not make him content; he still feared for the safety of the Constitution, for the executive lacked respect for the courts.44 In 1940, when Roosevelt ignored ‘‘an almost hallowed tradition’’ of two terms, which had acquired a moral constitutional limitation, he called for a constitutional change. When an incumbent resisted being dislodged, there was a lack of elective accountability. Over time, the power of the president had been so augmented that he worried when any man held such power for more than a limited and fixed period. And when Roosevelt won, Colby was ‘‘alarmed for the future.’’45 The events of the 1940s continued his distress. What was being taught in the name of academic freedom offended academic decency. The Bill of Rights had gone to seed. Now, parents found they had to protect their own children from contamination. ‘‘We victorians did not capitulate to depravity and lust.’’46 The wartime seizure of Montgomery Ward for refusing to obey an order of the War Labor Board was appalling; it was an ‘‘extension of the pretensions of Government beyond anything in our history.’’47 By 1948 he supported the candidate of the Republican Right, Douglas MacArthur. Truman’s victory disheartened him: ‘‘Perhaps we can get back to . . . sound policies—perhaps not.’’48 During the early depression, Colby supported the New Deal’s economic nationalist approach, but he never thought we could isolate ourselves from the world. He was aware that the progressive program followed the tradition of the British liberalism.49 His attitude towards the tariff fluctuated. In 1914, as a Progressive, he espoused a tariff that reflected the difference in the cost of production of America and its competitors.50 As a Democrat, during the 1920s, he considered the Republican tariff to be an ‘‘instrument of robbery which enriches the producer and ignores the consumer,’’ that shifts costs from those who benefited to the general public. The economic isolation caused by the tariff and the chloroforming of the merchant marine were not a policy but a predicament. Surplus products could not find a market, he argued. ‘‘We cannot sell if we will not buy.’’ As a creditor the United States must be concerned for the rehabilitation of its debtors. England, which had suffered more, had recouped its international economic position.51 The depression brought varied responses from him. During the Christmas season of 1932 he recommended buying American; not even the Hawley-Smoot Tariff was high enough; America had to shut out alien competition. But within a week he was attracted to Pan American reciprocity, so that new world nations could help each other.52 Until 1936 he supported reciprocal

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tariff adjustments, but then, during the campaign, he attacked Cordell Hull’s reciprocity treaties. These treaties enabled the president, unconstitutionally, to tax, legislate and regulate commerce with foreign nations without further congressional approval, he charged.53 Colby felt that economic factors were central to international relations and explored the economic myths that were used to justify imperialism: Industrialized countries lacked sufficient food and raw materials and needed colonies as a source of supply and as a market, they argued. Colonial ‘‘people are lacking either in industry or ambition’’ and ‘‘the more progressive and colonizing nations’’ marshaled the productive capacity of their lands. National rights cannot stand against such imperious necessities, they concluded. ‘‘Here is the motive of wars, here is the menace to world peace,’’ he warned. Only the ‘‘open door’’ can establish an international community of economic interest, remove the economic root of war and end its perennial menace.54 He understood the delicacy of these relations in Latin America. Colby was disturbed by our blundering into the occupation of Vera Cruz and was relieved by the intervention of the ABC powers. Mexican hatred for the United States derived from our conquest of a ‘‘great area from her domain.’’ To requite the past we must ‘‘conduct ourselves with scrupulous good faith towards her.’’ We were no longer big brother, tranquilizing Mexico. As secretary of state he dealt with Mexico as one friendly nation to another and attempted to get her to offer what we wanted without insisting upon it.55 In 1920 he denied that National City Bank controlled Haitian finances; we were only there for her benefit, with her agreement, and would leave as soon as we finished the job. Pan American friendship must be based on equality and mutual self-respect, not paternalist condescension and the Monroe Doctrine. ‘‘You will not buy from a merchant whom you dislike.’’ He reminded businessmen that South America had an older civilization, with long established business and legal practices. We had to overcome both the burden of those previous exporters who had not understood traditional business methods and vestigial suspicions.56 And he approved FDR’s extension of Colby’s Latin American policy: the Declaration of Lima reaffirmed the absolute sovereignty of American states and provided for consultation when the peace, security or territorial integrity of any state was threatened.57 He had a special sympathy for the plight of the Irish. Britain’s only claim to Ireland was an imperfect conquest. Her rule was marked by rapine, repression, corrupt justice—racial extermination. He empathized with the wartime Irish uprising and felt the court martial executions of fifteen leaders created many sympathizers. Yet, he withdrew from a committee to promote Irish Home Rule when he suspected that too many German interests were involved. As secretary of state, he denounced women who picketed the British embassy to promote Irish independence. He did suggest to Wilson that while there was neither a legal or humanitarian grounds for our interfering

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with the imprisonment of the mayor of Cork for a political fast, we might informally suggest that a successful martyrdom was bad for public opinion.58 But his biggest foreign policy discussion concerned a war raging across the Atlantic, and its aftermath. Wilson’s efforts to maintain a stance of neutrality was tested with the sinking of the Lusitania. Colby called for a firm policy from Wilson and a statement of contrition from the Germans. He considered the advertised warning of a war zone by Count Bernstorff to be as great a violation of propriety as that by Citizen Genet’s efforts to use the United States as a base of operations against Spain and Britain during the French Revolution. Wilson’s notes in response reflected ‘‘temperate firmness’’ and ‘‘sound logic,’’ he concluded. After all, Germany and Austria were the aggressors. Since we might be forced into the struggle ‘‘as the solitary champion of neutral rights and humanity’’ we needed to construct a large navy for defense. When the Arabic was sunk, he called for ‘‘final and peremptory measures.’’ Colby’s resolution asked Wilson to cooperate with the National Security League for Preparedness. As 1916 began he accused the president of failure to protect Americans from the lawless acts of belligerents. During the campaign he drew closer to Wilson. He charged Hughes with proposing an embargo that he knew would violate neutrality. Roosevelt was doubly jealous: of Wilson’s genius and of being denied an opportunity to be President during an eventful period.59 As World War One drew to a close, he praised Wilson’s speeches and notes to Germany, preparatory to an armistice.60 The former Republican and Progressive approved of the President’s call for unity behind Democratic candidates. Wilson could not function with a Congress planning his downfall. When Roosevelt protested, he attacked ‘‘the gyroscopic inconsistency of the Great Denouncer.’’61 In the United States, the most controversial outcome of the war was the League of Nations. Colby was its ardent proponent. The Senate opposition was ‘‘characterized by a vast illiteracy’’ of ‘‘very provincial’’ advocates of a ‘‘hermit kingdom.’’ He tried to counter their arguments with his correction of historical myths: America had never been isolated. It had never succeeded in avoiding a worldwide war, not in 1812 and not in 1917. The Monroe Doctrine was British in origin and had been maintained by the European balance of power, despite our military weakness. Napoleon III abandoned Mexico when Prussia moved against Austria. Jefferson realized that if the French occupied New Orleans, the United States would have to marry itself to the British fleet. When Washington spoke against entangling alliances, he referred to ‘‘family compacts between different dynasties rather than treaties between nations.’’ Finally, our honor was at stake. When we invited other nations to join an experiment, which they had since ratified, ‘‘it is unAmerican to suppose that this country will not carry at least her full share of that burden.’’ The Covenant of the League, though imperfect, was a superior initial approach to a problem than our Constitution seemed when it was adopted. Collective effort had to replace ineffective shifting alliances,

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he argued. The League was the only alternative to war, its covenant was clear, and the United States should ratify it without reservations. ‘‘Let us not say yes in terms of no; let us not promise to do something with the reservation of the right not to do it.’’62 Three years after the battle was lost, Colby still argued for the League, where study and consideration would cool the blood (in a few years he was to mock Bryan’s ‘‘cooling off’’ treaties); ‘‘the oppression of the weak by the strong would quail before the concerted opinion of the world.’’63 On the other hand, Colby, who in 1916 had been chosen a member of the board of governors of the World Court Congress, by 1933 opposed adherence to what he now perceived to be a moribund League of Nations World Court.64 In the short term, his most significant accomplishment as secretary of state was to deny recognition to the Soviet Union. One of his arguments in support of the League was that the Third International hoped its defeat would create a disunited and distrustful world.65 The Bolshevik government could not be recognized for it had destroyed democracy and did ‘‘not rule by the will or the consent of any considerable proportion of the Russian people.’’ They had held no elections since seizing power. At the same time, he delayed recognition of the successfully seceding Baltic states, insisted on the territorial integrity of Russia and Poland during their war and requested that the Polish armies not cross the Russian border. He continued to oppose the recognition of the Soviet Union during the New Deal and remained unhappy with that action even in 1948.66 After his service as secretary of state he continued to comment on American foreign policy. Generally, he supported efforts to reduce the possibility of war, even if flawed. In 1921 he described Hughes’ ideas about the reduction of navies as bold and sincere and commanding respect. By 1929 he suggested combining the American navy with that of Britain, rather than negotiating about who should have more cruisers, for we were morally, intellectually and historically English. He thought the resultant London Treaty was more disabling than the League. Naval parity was still ‘‘naval rivalry in a dead heat.’’ Still, despite its flaws, in the long run it would reduce the burden of armaments and improve international relations. While he wished the Kellogg-Briand Agreements success, he feared they were only ‘‘paper beatitudes.’’67 World War One left burdens: a heritage of greater military expenditures, the problem of reparations transfers from losers to victors and debts between allied governments. When reparations were not forthcoming, France backed her claims with a show of force. As secretary of state, he advised that we delay our reaction to the French occupation of Frankfurt. Later, as a private citizen, he justified the French occupation of the Ruhr: even though German reparations had been scaled down, they had delayed payment so long that it resembled repudiation.68 When our indebted allies called for a moratorium in 1931, they tried to tie reparations to intergovernmental debts. Colby

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reminded the nation that, in conference, Wilson had refused to substitute Germany as our debtor nation. We neither accepted reparations nor equated them with intergovernmental debts. The debts had been scaled down sufficiently to be easily paid. Not only was the franc strong, but France was making international loans. Armaments now cost eight times the debt, he commented, and any forgiveness would be swallowed up in an arms race. American bankers would be thrilled. There was to be no moratorium on obligations they held. They would be able to collect German industrial and municipal debts at the expense of the American taxpayer. This debt problem could be solved by creating a consortium to issue fifty year bonds to pay the debts. Each debtor nation would contribute a percentage of its defense budget to a sinking fund to repay the bonds.69 The international issues of the 1920s were gradually superseded by those of the 1930s. He was an early opponent of German fascism. Hitler’s attack upon Jews in 1933 was an attack of a madman on civilization, a madman capable of brutality, cruelty and injustice. Colby had long expressed concern for the plight of Jews. In 1913 he had chaired a meeting protesting the treatment of Jews by the King of Rumania. The next year he was appointed delegate to the Berlin Congress to denounce violations of the Berlin Treaty of 1878, which had guaranteed Jews full rights of citizenship. During the 1920s he joined other gentiles in a memorial remonstrating against antiSemitism, and he attacked anti-Semites as disgruntled persons possessing lesser talents. Jews had fought in every American battle, he declared, and there was no field in which they had not won distinction. ‘‘Prejudice is an infirmity. It never damages its object. It only corrodes its possessor.’’70 He feared that prejudice amongst hyphenated Americans would be exploited by politicians. Worried about their ability to assimilate, he called for immigration restriction in 1914. Immigrants, he later said, must adapt by learning the significance of our institutions and the meaning of our history.71 Opposition to fascism did not automatically translate into a clear program to deal with aggression. He characterized the Stimson Doctrine to refuse recognition of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria as meddling, universal interference and illegal. To designate an aggressor might be an act of war, he warned. The incident showed that international covenants had become worthless and we had to prepare our national defenses. ‘‘An inadequate navy is no navy; an inefficient army is no army; and air force, not abreast of the latest scientific advance in its field, is no force.’’72 As war in Europe approached, he opposed involvement in any war that did not concern American interests or the Monroe Doctrine. Europe had a history of constant warfare and the New Yorker did not want to become entangled again. He was concerned that Roosevelt was posturing and wanted more mature behavior by the government. Colby was no more willing to grant discretion to the president in foreign affairs than on the domestic scene. He was not convinced that the neutrality laws had been effectual. If the United States

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had relied on international law, there would have been interpretative disputes and aggressor defiance, but at least Americans would have known their rights. By 1939 he had concluded that U.S. participation in World War One had been a mistake. To embargo munitions to stay out of another war, and then to sell the ingredients for their manufacture, was not effective. Still, he rejected an end to the arms embargo. The United States was not sufficiently prepared for its defense that it could export arms. As the world war continued, his opposition to U.S. involvement dissipated. By the end of April, 1941, he declared that the United States needed to convoy ships, as in the last war. After America entered, he returned to an earlier theme, the importance of shipping, which could win the war.73 While he continued to express complex and changing opinions on foreign policy, on most domestic issues, Bainbridge Colby had returned full circle to his conservative Republican origins. NOTES 1. Current Opinion, 68(April, 1920), pp. 479–82; New York Times, January 15, 1922, VI, p. 5. 2. Robert M. LaFollette to Gilbert Roe, July 8, 1912, Robert Marion LaFollette Collection, Library of Congress (RML MSS). 3. New York Mail, March 23, 1912; Current Opinion, 68(April, 1920), pp. 479– 82. 4. New York Times, April 22, 1919, p. 7; February 29, 1920, p. 2; August 17, 1920, p. 1. 5. Gaelic American, August 9, 1924. 6. Fred Israel, ‘‘Bainbridge Colby and the Progressive Party, 1914–1916,’’ New York History, 40(January, 1959), pp. 33–45; Pittsburgh Leader, September 3, 1912; New York Times, June 14, 1913, p. 2; August 6, 1914; June 16, 1916; July 13, 1916, p. 20; July 21, 1916, p. 4; August 11, 1916, p. 3; Burlington Suburban List, December 4, 1913; Omaha World-Herald, January 7, 1914; Omaha Daily News, January 8, 1914; New York World, October 13, 1914; Bangor Daily Commercial, September 8, 1916; BC to John Gerdes, August 1, 1916; Colby speech, Polis Theater, August 26, 1920, Bainbridge Colby Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (BC MSS). 7. Watertown Daily Times, February 22, 1914. 8. Pittsburgh Leader, September 3, 1912. 9. Current Opinion, 68(1920), pp. 479–82. 10. New York Times, October 13, 1919; New York American, November 29, 1934. 11. Pittsburgh Leader, September 3, 1912; Watertown Daily, February 22, 1914; New York World, October 18, 1914. 12. Bainbridge Colby, ‘‘The Adamson Law: The Public Viewpoint,’’ Academy of Political Science Proceedings, 7(January, 1917), pp. 185–88. 13. Bainbridge Colby to Woodrow Wilson, March 27, 1922, BC MSS. 14. New York Times, April 17; 1926, p. 1; April 18, 1926, p. 1; New York World, April 18, 1926; Nation, 122(May 5, 1926), pp. 500–501.

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15. New York American, July 17, 1934; February 27, 1935; April 26, 1935; New York Times, December 20, 1934, p. 29. 16. New York Times, April 1, 1942, p. 20. 17. New York Times, February, 1916, p. 1; February 21, 1916, p. 1; April 13, 1917, p. 22. He was an investor in the Inglaterra Mining Company and a director of the Industrial Development Corporation, and he sued an investment company for denying him his share of profits. BC to Harry M. Alexander, March 20, 1920, BC MSS; New York Times, October 10, 1923, p. 30; February 3, 1926, p. 1. 18. New York Evening Post, May 16, 1911. 19. New York Times, March 18, 1931, p. 4; August 25, 1931, p. 2; August 25, 1931, pp. 1, 12; February 23, 1932, p. 2. 20. Watertown Daily Times, February 22, 1914; New York Times, September 29, 1926, p. 35. 21. New York Times, July 25, 1917, p. 1; October 17, 1917, p. 2; December 21, 1918, p. 22; Bainbridge Colby, ‘‘Some Thoughts on Our Shipping Policy,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 82(March, 1919), pp. 338– 41. 22. New York American, January 17, 1933; January 18, 1933; January 21, 1933. 23. New York Northside News, February 2, 1913; New York American, March 6, 1913; November 16, 1915; New York Times, April 19, 1933, p. 12. 24. New York American, January 22, 1931; February 6, 1931; February 19, 1931; April 17, 1931; February 3, 1936; New York Times, October 24, 1931, p. 15; February 21, 1934, p. 8. 25. New York Times, December 2, 1931, p. 4; February 23, 1932, p. 2. 26. New York American, January 22, 1931; February 6, 1933; June 11, 1935. 27. Banks must return to their role as custodians of people’s money, not highpowered salesmen of securities. New York Times, December 29, 1929, p. 16; November 12, 1930, p. 13; October 11, 1931; New York American, February 11, 1931. 28. New York Times, January 17, 1932, p. 25; October 7, 1932, p. 12. 29. New York American, October 17, 1914; August 14, 1931. 30. New York American, October 3, 1931. 31. New York Times, September 26, 1932, p. 1. 32. New York American, March 4, 1933; Address by Bainbridge Colby to the Chautauqua Institute, July 4, 1933, BC MSS. 33. New York Times, September 3, 1933, p. 15. 34. New York American, March 7, 1933; May 4, 1933; January 11, 1934. 35. New York American, March 21, 1932; March 24, 1932; July 11, 1932; August 4, 1933; August 11, 1933; February 4, 1934; July 6, 1934; New York Times, April 11, 1934, p. 13; April 15, 1934, IV, p. 4; August 4, 1934, p. 26; September 7, 1934, p. 4; June 9, 1935, p. 28. 36. New York Times, October 25, 1934, p. 17; New York American, March 29, 1935; June 18, 1935. 37. Speeches by Bainbridge Colby: Economics Club, Hotel Astor, New York, May 24, 1934; Portland, ME, September 6, 1934; ‘‘The American System of Government, April 25, 1935; ‘‘The Tax Crisis,’’ East Orange, NJ, October 18, 1935; before the American Coalition over NBC, Blue Network, January 29, 1935, BC MSS; New York Times, September 18, 1934, p. 2; October 25, 1934, p. 17; December 20,

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1934, p. 24; April 14, 1935, p. 6; April 26, 1935, p. 7; September 14, 1935, p. 18; New York Journal, October 24, 1935. 38. New York Times, December 16, 1936, p. 39. 39. New York Times, June 1, 1935, p. 7; August 28, 1935, p. 5. 40. Speeches by Bainbridge Colby: May 7, 1936; September 16, 1936; ‘‘The New Deal and the Communists,’’ NBC, October 6, 1936, BC MSS. 41. Pittsburgh Leader, September 3, 1912. 42. Daily Mining Journal, Marquette, MI, April 3, 1913; Watertown Daily News, February 22, 1914; New York World, October 18, 1914. 43. New York Times, October 16, 1924, p. 4. 44. New York American, January 12, 1936; Bainbridge Colby, ‘‘Some Aspects of Constitutional Government in the United States,’’ speech, November 22, 1937, BC MSS. 45. Statement of Bainbridge Colby before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, September 25, 1940; BC to Preston Davie, December 2, 1940, BC MSS. 46. New York Times, April 17, 1940, p. 24. 47. New York Times, April 30, 1944, p. 40. 48. BC to Nicholas Conrad, November 20, 1948; undated typescript, BC MSS. 49. Michigan Bull Moose, January 23, 1913. 50. New York World, October 18, 1914. 51. New York Times, October 8, 1920, p. 4; April 25, 1923, p. 2; October 16, 1924, p. 4. 52. New York American, December 26, 1932; January 2, 1933; January 10, 1933. 53. New York American, July 28, 1932; July 3, 1933; June 8, 1936. 54. Bainbridge Colby, ‘‘The Democratic Ideal in International Relations,’’ Academy of Political Science, Proceedings, 7(July, 1917), pp. 313–15. 55. Brooklyn Progressive, May 8, 1914; New York Times, October 8, 1920; July 3, 1921, VII, p. 1. 56. New York Times, September 21, 1920, p. 16; December 5, 1920, p. 16; December 20, 1915, p. 15; BC to Harry Knapp, ca. 1920; speech by Colby to the Pan American Advertising Association, Hotel Astor, New York, February 28, 1921, BC MSS. As Secretary of State, Colby triumphed in his relations with Latin America, instituting restraint and diplomacy, and overcoming Argentinean hostility with his knowledge of Latin American affairs, Daniel M. Smith, ‘‘Bainbridge Colby and the Good Neighbor Policy, 1920–1921,’’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 50(June, 1963), pp. 56–78. 57. New York Times, January 12, 1939, p. 40. 58. New York Times, January 17, 1917, I, p. 7; April 3, 1920; April 4, 1920; Colby speech, Irish Memorial Meeting, Carnegie Hall, May 14, 1916; BC to Daniel F Cohalan, May 20, 1916; BC to Woodrow Wilson, September 2, 1920, BC MSS. 59. New York Times, May 11, 1915, p. 6; June 16, 1915, p. 4; November 4, 1915, p. 6; January 11, 1916, p. 6; New York Herald, June 1, 1915; Washington Post, June 3, 1915; New York World, August 21, 1915; speech by Colby, 1916, BC MSS; Bainbridge Colby, ‘‘Roosevelt: The Story of an Animosity, His Hostility to Woodrow Wilson,’’ Current History, 32(August, 1930), pp. 857–63. 60. BC to Woodrow Wilson, October 24, 1918, BC MSS. 61. New York Times, November 1, 1918, p. 13.

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62. New York Times, February 6, 1919, p. 4; February 16, 1919, p. 16; April 5, 1919, p. 2; February 29, 1920, VI, p. 2; June 22, 1920, p. 1; Colby speeches: New York Press Club, May 1, 1920; Chicago Bar Association, May 13, 1920; San Francisco Commercial Club, June 30, 1920; Detroit, MI, October 8, 1920, BC MSS. 63. New York Times, November 15, 1923; March 7, 1926, III, p. 24. 64. New York Times, May 3, 1916, p. 3; New York American, March 30, 1933; April 3, 1933. 65. Colby statement, ca. 1920, BC MSS. 66. New York Times, June 16, 1920, p. 7; August 19, 1920, p. 1; August 26, 1920, p. 1; October 18, 1920, p. 17; January 30, 1921, VII, p. 4; March 2, 1933, p. 18; Congressional Digest, 12(October, 1933), p. 253; S. J. Woolf, ‘‘Should the United States Recognize Russia,’’ Rotarian, 43(October, 1933), pp. 12–13, 50–51; BC to the London Embassy, August 2, 1920; BC to Camillo Avezzona, August 10, 1920; BC to Frank Kent, March 15, 1947; BC to Joseph Callan, October 12, 1948, BC MSS; cf., Ronald Radosh, American Labor and Foreign Policy (New York, 1970). 67. New York Times, November 14, 1921, p. 4; March 1, 1929, p. 8; August 10, 1920, II, p. 1. 68. BC to Woodrow Wilson, April 7, 1920; Colby speech to the Detroit Banker’s Association, November 14, 1923, BC MSS. 69. New York Times, July 9, 1931, p. 15; October 11, 1931, p. 3; April 14, 1932, p. 16; December 4, 1932, p. 2; Radio Address, WEAF, October 11, 1931, BC MSS; Bainbridge Colby, ‘‘Should War Debts Be Cancelled?’’ Academy of Political Science, Proceedings, 15(May, 1932), pp. 65–72. 70. New York Times, October 1, 1913, p. 5; May 3, 1920, p. 13; June 17, 1921, p. 11; May 21, 1923, p. 11; Martin Glynn, To Whom This May Concern, ca. January, 1914; Colby speeches: May 20, 1923; May 11, 1933. 71. New York World, October 11, 1914; Bainbridge Colby, ‘‘Our Country,’’ Outlook, 112(January 26, 1916), pp. 235–38; New York Times, October 17, 1920, p. 9; Colby speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution, April 19, 1920, BC MSS. 72. New York American, February 1, 1932; August 15, 1932; Colby speeches: Institute of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, July 14, 1933; ‘‘Peace,’’ CBC, September 26, 1935, BC MSS; Vital Speeches, 2(February 24, 1936), pp. 314–18. 73. New York American, January 17, 1936; New York Times, April 13, 1939, p. 10; May 5, 1939, p. 9; October 5, 1939, p. 15; May 21, 1940, p. 14; April 30, 1941, p. 20; May 3, 1942, p. 37; Colby speech, ‘‘The Talk of War,’’ April 12, 1939, BC MSS.

Chapter 7

Edward P. Costigan: Urban Progressive Edward Prentiss Costigan was born in the Virginia tidelands in 1874, the second son of George Purcell Costigan and his Spanish wife, Emilie Sigur. In 1876 George moved his family to the southwestern mining country of the new state of Colorado. A successful lawyer and mining investor, he resided for a time in Lake City, Ouray and Telluride. In the 1880s he moved the family to Denver where Edward became an outstanding student and orator at East Denver High. Edward entered Harvard in 1892, but his studies were interrupted by a long illness, after which he traveled in Europe, studied law and entered the bar in Utah, returned to Harvard and graduated in 1899. That year he opened a practice in Denver. In 1903 he married his high school classmate Mabel Corey, a lifetime personal and political companion. Mabel Costigan became prominent in the National Consumer’s League and the Progressive party of 1924. Edward Costigan was successively an orthodox Republican, a progressive Republican, a Progressive and a New Deal Democrat. Costigan did not make an impressive appearance. He was asthmatic, short and slender, with shoulders that were large for his size. Even in his youth his sharply etched features could not be described as handsome. Edmund Wilson referred to ‘‘his Spanish hatchet-face and dry yellow skin.’’ Yet, an exceptional orator, he was one of the three best speakers on radio in the New Deal capital. His voice was deep, his accent precise, his speeches meticulously crafted, his arguments guided by an incisive mind. A gentleman in every sense, a man of talent and integrity, he left an indelible impression upon all who were associated with him. As a principled politician, he campaigned with his brother for the gold standard in the silver states of Colorado and Utah, defended the United Mine Workers in the mine strike of 1914, even though

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his stance injured his gubernatorial campaign, voted to reduce the sugar tariff although Colorado was then the nation’s leading producer of beet sugar, and sponsored anti-lynching legislation in a state with few Black residents. He was a politician governed by a political philosophy. Costigan was a proponent of an active government, working for the interest of the commonweal. Government should regulate industry to serve America’s citizens, not just the concerned corporations. He refused to be bogged in the mire of narrow constitutionalism. The Constitution was an elastic, liberating document. If the Supreme Court disagreed with his interpretation, amendment was always a remedy. Comfortable with the twentieth century, he felt comfortable with the New Deal. He understood that an industrial society had social needs, that the nation could not rely on individual effort alone. Consequently, he supported a wide range of welfare legislation, as well as municipal ownership of municipal facilities, conservation of natural resources for contemporary and future generations, and public control of natural water assets. Thus, he challenged political bosses for whom government existed to dispense favors to political workers and to those special interests that financed political campaigns: Through the dramatic course of these years the battle lines of self-government in this state have wavered back and forth over such elementary issues as honest elections, reasonable law enforcement, popular control of cities and states, the lawless usurpation, without compensation, of public franchises of untold value by utility corporations, and, generally, the assertion by our large public service and quasi-public service companies of an untrammeled right to interfere with and control the agencies and operations of government by the corrupt, bribe-getting and bribe-taking methods of the political boss, for private profit and regardless of the public welfare.1

Thus, too, he challenged classical liberalism. This ideology, which called for minimal government, arose in reaction to a monopoly-granting English parliament. If we followed their logic, he declared, we should eliminate the courts, the police and the army, suspend all laws for education, sanitation and control of transport and return ‘‘to the evils of uncontrolled liberty.’’2 He recognized that all societies had centers of power; if government did not protect those who lacked organized influence, power would concentrate in the hands of the economically dominant: Unless our government is greater than any special interest, and under the general welfare is superior to the contending elements involved in industrial controversy, and is able to impose its mandates for their settlement, then that government and our civilization are alike in peril. . . . The highest service to be rendered the cause of law and order is one which fully establishes justice between man and man, rich and poor, influential and weak, without fear and without favor, everywhere and all the time.3

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If the public did not demand a government in its own interest, political bosses would govern for the special interests. The great corporations, national and local, who subsidized the party machinery, would ensure that legislative and judicial decisions protected their privileged positions. The elective officials, he told a gathering at the South Broadway Christian Church in Denver in 1905, ‘‘do not represent and are not responsive to the people in general, but on the contrary . . . they are the creatures of certain private and selfish interests, at the head of which are certain men who have been designated tonight as ‘bosses’.’’ He charged ‘‘that these so-called representatives are for the most part mere puppets, dancing at the end of more or less invisible strings.’’4 Costigan rejected any Hamiltonian notion that man was not capable of governing himself, that the hand that held the purse-strings must govern. Despite disillusioning setbacks like the election of 1914, he had a quiet optimism, a faith in the ultimate good sense of the people. ‘‘The people, once they know the truth, will apply the surgery of the ballot, remorselessly and with the nicest discrimination,’’ he declared.5 Then the best government would be one which the people controlled most directly. All barriers to popular control of government must be removed. Did the professional politicians use their political control to limit the choice of the electorate? Then direct primaries would allow the voters of each party to choose their candidates; let candidates be nominated by petition, lest the professionals decide who was to run in the primaries. Did professional politicians try to influence the voters? Let there be an Australian secret ballot; let there be vigilance to prevent stolen elections by the use of floaters, repeaters and stuffed ballot boxes; let senators, the president, and vice president be elected directly by the people, women as well as men. Did politicians promote incompetent officeholders? The electorate should recall them. Did legislators fear to enact controversial legislation? Legislation could be initiated by petition. Were the legislators uncertain about a public attitude? Let the issue be referred to the electorate for a decision. Nothing should frustrate the will of the people.6 Costigan’s dedication to direct government rested upon his deep faith in the capacity of man to rise above narrow self-interest, to grow and mature, to adapt government and society to changing times and the evolving human race. While he was deeply concerned with the role of man’s economic wellbeing in enhancing his general happiness and was fully aware of ‘‘the very considerable influence economic causes have thrown round our general national development,’’ nevertheless, he emphasized man’s ability to rise above the purely economic. He recognized a higher aspiration in man; indeed, his own sympathy for prohibition and civil rights was based on moral grounds. Material conditions, historically dominant, were a diminishing factor, he insisted:

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The economic motive is only one of the weapons in the human arsenal. Alone it does not and cannot explain either the sacrifices of love or the self-denying achievements of science, literature and the wonderful arts.

Christ, he continued, was no mere protest against poverty in Palestine, and ‘‘Socrates was no automaton played on by economic ancestry or environment. . . . To explain the heroic courage of Columbus by the commercial call of India, is to libel the indisputable heroism of mankind.’’7 The roots of democracy could not be discovered in purely economic soil. In a statement supporting the desire of Jews for a homeland in Palestine he declared: To the Jewish Biblical emphasis on divine fatherhood and human brotherhood, even more than the Grecian devotion to free minds, may be fundamentally traced the deepest impulses from the past toward the modern acceptance in government of the civilized standards of human equality, welfare, peace and good will.8

Fully aware of the debt that the present owed the past, he feared an unimaginative satisfaction with the past; that would limit the fullest development of man’s capabilities and prevent a complete realization of a better life for all mankind. Precedent, he felt, was rooted in the same psychology as habit and without habit, man would waste all of his energy in relearning. Yet, precedents could become stultifying. When one failed to apply in a given situation, it was necessary to return to the original principle upon which it was based. Precedents, he declared in 1910, are aids to man and do not exist for their own sake; the norms and maxims of the privileged must give way to justice and equality of opportunity. ‘‘Human life in its best attainable form is the thing most worthwhile, and every precedent must be tested by life and life evolving, rather than stationary, to determine its validity in a progressive world.’’ He emphasized how damaging illconsidered precedent and ritual could be: One generation, in its essential reverence for things of the spirit, creates temples, statues and glorious pictures, as the evidence of its heartfelt religion; and the next generation turns from the worship of the things of the soul to a jealous regard for these treasures as the sufficient end form of religious manifestation.9

He refused to close his mind to new ways of doing things. Some people were too conservative to enjoy the new moon, he complained. The repression of progress would only lead to calamitous upheaval; the only way to check radicalism was through gradualist progressivism.10 ‘‘The old order changes,’’ Costigan responded to conservatives who invoked the Founding Fathers. Like Francis Bacon rejecting Renaissance reverence for Classical

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science, as conceived in the infancy of man, he commented: ‘‘The fathers of this Republic saw, as through a glass, darkly. We see face to face.’’11 Consequently, Costigan protested whenever judges interpreted the Constitution so as to prevent progress. The decision overturning minimum wage legislation, he declared in 1923, reflected ‘‘18th Century constitutional inelasticity, which is hopelessly at variance with the rapidly changing social and economic conditions and needs of the 20th Century.’’12 He invoked Lincoln’s position on Dred Scott: the decision of the majority of the Supreme Court was not final.13 But it was impractical to wait for a more favorable court. That year Costigan proposed a constitutional amendment that would enable the government to legislate in the general welfare and thus cope with twentieth-century economic problems. Lacking adequate support, he helped to draft a constitutional amendment to outlaw the labor of children in factory and field.14 When the Supreme Court struck down New Deal statutes, he proposed a New Deal amendment which would have permitted regulation of wages, hours and conditions of employment and production; it would have limited the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to procedural safeguards.15 Electing good state judges would prevent adverse decisions. Poor choices could be corrected by the recall of judges, or any judicial decisions that clearly frustrated the will of the people.16 A few men with static minds must not be permitted to prevent the efforts of others to improve their lives. But even the will of the people had limitations. Each individual was precious. Each had the right to express unpopular ideas. Each was entitled to a fair trial, free from the pressures of popular prejudice. Every person, every minority, deserved equal treatment and the civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the first ten amendments, without regard to religion, race or beliefs. Consequently, Costigan asked Franklin Delano Roosevelt to issue an amnesty proclamation freeing all conscientious objectors from the Great War.17 And he agreed with the Holmes dissent in the Schwimmer case, insisting that Rosa Schwimmer should have been naturalized despite her pacifism.18 Similarly, he fought to obtain reconsideration of the conviction of Tom Mooney of a bombing on Preparedness Day, 1916; the Wickersham Committee had condemned the laws under which Mooney had been tried and convicted as ‘‘shocking to one’s sense of justice’’; he demanded the release of committee files.19 Finally, Costigan sponsored anti-lynch legislation, even though Colorado had few Blacks and many voters of Southern extraction: ‘‘The struggle for justice under law, as for liberty is ever recurring. . . . At this hour 13,000,000 people in this country practically dwell from sun on under the unlifting shadows of potential mob violence.’’20 Just as direct government did not ensure civil liberties, it did not, in itself, ensure legislation in the public interest. To secure the public welfare an informed and interested electorate was necessary. Costigan emphasized par-

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ticipatory democracy. ‘‘Above all,’’ he said, ‘‘Pericles emphasized the uselessness to Greece of citizens who did not participate in public life, thereby superbly stressing the importance of treating private and public duties as inseparable.’’ He insisted that active citizens of a democracy are developed by the educational process, broadly defined: By education presumably we mean the full development, fit for practical use, of our human faculties and powers; by the general welfare, the harmonizing of all those faculties and powers, aided by nature’s inexhaustible resources, for the common good. If that fairly states the basic elements, then life is all, education is all but all.

If each generation was to be educated to meet new responsibilities, schools must be adaptable. ‘‘We refuse to accept any education which claims to be ‘finished’.’’ Education must progress, ‘‘inspired by our world’s evolutionary plan.’’ As early as 1910 Costigan warned against ‘‘a too general method in our public schools,’’ which would lose sight of the individual scholar and crush individuality and initiative.21 Education must serve the complete needs of the community, preparing citizens for democracy without stultifying individual development. The public schools were training grounds for citizenship. Fraternities and sororities were anti-democratic, Costigan argued, and should not be introduced into the public schools of Denver; at a plastic and impressionable age, when brotherhood, equality and democracy were most liveable, they substituted the particular for the general, social rivalry and exclusiveness for social betterment. They tended to subordinate education to social life. These cliques were contrary to the interests of the community.22 With schools so important to the nation, he became a firm advocate of federal aid to education, especially as the depression of the 1930s sapped the ability of communities to cope adequately with their educational needs. After all, science, invention and economic forces passed state lines without impediment. The nation was becoming the unit of common life. National aid had become necessary to maintain minimum national educational standards.23 Not only did Costigan support federal aid to school construction, but he supported aid from that source to high school and college students who would otherwise be unable to attend schools, even after facilities had become adequate.24 To secure a government chosen directly by an educated, aware and publicspirited electorate, however, was purely preliminary.25 Costigan proposed that that government should actively pursue a better life for all its citizens. ‘‘Political betterment will assist economic improvement and will promote the advance our people are entitled to expect toward equality of opportunity for all sons and daughters of man.’’26 He castigated the Republican party of 1914 for enthroning and idolizing property, for governing ‘‘from the standpoint of property rather than from the rights of man.’’ The Democratic

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party of 1914 was equally inadequate. It had ‘‘exalted the doctrine of state’s rights and so called liberty above the welfare of the general community. . . . Liberty to do what they please has permitted the special interests to seize and abuse the privileges of property.’’ Costigan commended his Progressive party, which placed ‘‘the welfare of the whole public above property on the one hand and license on the other.’’27 He did not oppose the accumulation of wealth as such: ‘‘It still remains true that labor and capital perform supplementary services, and that allowance must be made for reasonable differences in honestly accumulated private means.’’28 But in any conflict of interest, human rights must always have priority over property rights. Protected by a property rights interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, whole industries had become dominated by a single firm or a few companies. Consequently, many progressives insisted that the Sherman Anti-trust Act be strengthened and enforced. Costigan, however, like Teddy Roosevelt, took issue with indiscriminate trust busting: ‘‘Great combinations of capital, subject to due regard for public safety and welfare, should be fostered rather than annihilated by the government.’’29 He fully agreed with George Perkins’s contention ‘‘that the regulation of ‘big’ business is superior to dissolution under the Sherman Anti-trust Act.’’30 Trust control, not trust busting, was the solution. Accepting the reality of big business, Costigan supported the early New Deal effort to tackle the depression by organizing industry under the National Industrial Recovery Act. Yet, he was not satisfied that industry was carrying out its part of the bargain. Gerard Swope of General Electric had implied that if the anti-trust laws were suspended, with no restrictions on profits, trade associations would be willing to guarantee adequate minimum wages, old age pensions and other benefits to employees. From the very beginning Costigan wanted assurances that the public would benefit. He joined George Norris in his effort to reword section 7 of the NIRA to prevent the use of company unions to evade real collective bargaining. He offered an amendment to protect the regulatory powers of the Federal Trade Commission. To safeguard the interests of labor and consumer he called for industrial, consumer and labor analysis of all codes which employed price fixing in any form. A firm supporter of the recommendations of the Consumer Advisory Board, he read their statements into the Congressional Record. The purpose of the NRA, the Consumer Advisory Board had declared, was, through planning, to utilize the productive and natural resources of the nation to increase consumption. The codes were only to eliminate harmful competition, not all competition, the Board insisted. The purpose of the regulation of natural resource industries was to promote the public interest, not to increase profits at the expense of the consumer. If monopolies did not pursue the public interest, monopoly-creating patents could be revoked, protective tariffs removed, profits taxed or public competitors established. The Labor Advisory Board demanded that a labor board be created with

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sufficient power to force industries to adopt acceptable labor codes. Only twenty-three of 500 code authorities had adequate representation for labor, they charged; labor was entitled to a real right to organize and bargain collectively and to an equal voice in the administration of the codes.31 Although Costigan had serious reservations about the NRA before its demise, he proposed a constitutional amendment to empower Congress to achieve its goals. Congress would be enabled to establish maximum hours and minimum wages and to determine conditions of employment, as well as to regulate production, industry, business, trade and commerce in order to prevent unfair methods and practices.32 Government, he insisted, must have the power to deal with the problems of the modern economic system. Similar principles should apply to financial institutions. If an unregulated securities market had precipitated the crisis, then the market must be investigated and the securities exchange must be controlled to prevent a repetition of 1929.33 If people with limited resources had lost their savings as a result of bank failures, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation must be formed to secure the funds of small depositors. If the central government was to guarantee deposits, it must establish minimum standards for banks. If banks failed because of speculative management, then it was necessary to examine the role excessive salaries may have played in the shortage of bank funds.34 Financiers must not be permitted to endanger the stability of the economy again. One group of enterprises of great concern to Costigan was the public utility industry: railroads, street railways, electrical, lighting, water and gas companies, and electric power producers. The public utilities were natural monopolies. They required government permission for franchises and rights of way. As a result, they stood to gain most from an alliance with the political machine. To Costigan, they were foremost among those who attempted to frustrate the will of the people by substituting their private concern for the public interest. The Denver progressive consistently fought their efforts to influence government. He called for anti-pass legislation, lest legislators be swayed by free transportation. He opposed franchises that would enrich the corporations at the expense of the public.35 Costigan persisted in demanding tighter government regulation of public utilities, with public ownership wherever necessary. He wanted state commissions that would determine rates on the basis of physical valuation.36 If regulation failed, then government ownership would be necessary. ‘‘You do not suggest your remedy,’’ he wrote to a progressive colleague in 1911, ‘‘but I assume it to be government ownership of all railroads. The failure of state and interstate railway regulations undoubtedly tends directly to such a solution of the transportation problem, but I have felt that the public will first require to be convinced that regulation has in fact failed.’’37 The degree of government ownership or control, he felt, must be worked out pragmatically. The Non-partisan League’s experiments with state owned business

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inspired him. ‘‘It is as vital in business as it is in personal relations that anarchy shall give way to law,’’ he declared. ‘‘Particularly where public interest is paramount, for example in transportation, the distribution of food and the use of natural resources, speculation and monopoly must be made to yield to a governmental trusteeship.’’ He did not expect perfection from these efforts. ‘‘Certainly in such governmental experiments the people who have suffered from the mistakes of others ought not to be unqualifiedly condemned if they themselves happen to fall into occasional error.’’38 Because they were natural monopolies, municipal utilities required municipal ownership. Throughout his career, Costigan emphasized the advantages. Charges to consumers were reduced, while the profits from the operation absorbed a portion of the costs of government. Despite all their efforts, private utilities could not cite municipally owned failures, he insisted. During the Progressive Era he fought for public ownership of the Denver water plant.39 It was natural for Costigan, with his background in government regulation, municipal ownership and conservation of resources, to become a firm advocate of the extension of public power. ‘‘The last and mightiest of our natural resources which remains in the hands of our people is the ‘white coal’ of our waterways, out of which spring electric light, heat and domestic and commercial power,’’ he said. ‘‘They should never be permitted to pass into the unregulated hands of profiteers.’’40 When it appeared that President Hoover wanted to sell Muscle Shoals, Costigan came to the defense of public power: ‘‘Our streams and rivers can easily be coined into human happiness by government, as surely as they can be transformed into gold by monopoly.’’ Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam could be used to determine what private electrical charges were reasonable and by their competition help to regulate the electric power industry.41 A yardstick to compare rates was becoming necessary. Costigan pointed out that private power companies were increasing their debt structure and thus their prices and profits. They used holding companies to mask real costs, thus nullifying ‘‘the paramount right of the public to reasonable rates, based upon prudent investments.’’ During the early New Deal, with an eye to ensuring fair rates, he submitted a resolution to the Senate requiring that the Federal Power Commission report on the relative costs of electrical generation, transmission and distribution.42 Following his ideas, government could guarantee that utilities were to be operated in the public interest; it would employ regulatory control and compare rates charged by government owned yardsticks, while utilizing competitive public ownership. Public power was an aspect of conservation. Not only did conservation prevent monopolization of our natural resources by the few and extend the benefits to all citizens, but it prevented the present generation from cheating future generations, Costigan insisted. Federal conservation ‘‘permits use without destruction,’’ he declared in a debate in 1912. It ‘‘avoids monopoly

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and monopolistic prices.’’ While respecting the Colorado pioneers, he rejected an ideology which regarded public land as private possession. Such land was a trust for all of the people, to be developed in the interest of all the people. Since states had never been able to finance reclamation projects, conservation had become a federal concern. Federal regulation of grazing on the public domain had prevented recurrences of range wars between shepherds and cattle ranchers; ‘‘by preventing the destruction of soil surfacing it reserved the flow of waters and made reclamation and irrigation of farming areas possible.’’ Those who objected to federal control, Costigan charged, wished to monopolize the water sites of the state. ‘‘Government conservation is necessary to protect the people from monopoly, great forest fires and the waste of resources, and for the betterment of the men, women and children of the state.’’43 To Costigan, ‘‘the conservation of men, women, and children, and their welfare,’’ was more important than even the conservation of natural resources. The myth of ‘‘laissez-faire’’ allowed the strong to prey upon the weak. Such conservation, then, required the active and positive intervention into economic and social relations by a government freed from corporate influences, enacting laws that protected the welfare of the individual.44 Such conservation required a concern for those overlooked, even by many progressives: sharecroppers, field hands, children and other agricultural employees. As a senator he tried to extend the benefits of the Agricultural Adjustment Act to this group.45 Of all employees, helpless children were most in need of legislative protection. To obtain this protection in the hostile judicial environment of the 1920s, he sought the remedy of constitutional amendments.46 ‘‘Children who work for gain,’’ he protested ‘‘are deprived in the dawn of life of the opportunity to pursue happiness in ways fitting their minds and years.’’ As cheaper labor, they displaced their parents in workshops, becoming ‘‘often stunted in body and mind by early hire.’’ ‘‘The child is really the state,’’ he cried out, ‘‘for he is the torchbearer who stamps the future with the folly or wisdom of the present.’’47 Neither children nor adults could protect themselves from powerful corporations. Minimum standards must be legislated by the government: Factories must be made safe and healthful, with proper machine safeguards and adequate lighting and ventilation. Injured workmen must be given compensation, not legal confusion, ‘‘throwing the burden of industrial accidents on organized industry, rather than on its victims.’’ Maximum hours must be set. A minimum wage was necessary, ‘‘making honest living and respectable dying alike possible.’’ Children must be removed from the factories. Hazardous occupations must be carefully regulated to reduce the dangers. When the Supreme Court negated protective New Deal legislation, he proposed an enabling constitutional amendment.48 Costigan was aware of the limitations of industrial legislation, that large corporations often evaded laws

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regulating their operations; he was aware of the efficacy of strong unions in maintaining basic standards. In a world of collective capital, Costigan argued, it was necessary for workers to organize and bargain collectively, lest they be forced to accept ‘‘the mere largesse of big business.’’49 ‘‘Ethically,’’ he declared, ‘‘collective capital has no right to decline to confer with collective labor.’’ In disputes between management and labor, Costigan usually sided with labor. ‘‘As I regard it, the human right to work or to quit work ought to be held higher than any convenience of the employer, and this human right should always be considered.’’50 And strikes could be made effective. The law, he declared, clearly permitted peaceful persuasion to keep the industry closed during a strike. Although how much more than speech comprised peaceful persuasion was still undecided, he insisted that the legal benefit of the doubt should be given to unions, for they represented ‘‘morality, education, and American standards of living.’’51 When a mine strike resulted in violence in 1914, and ‘‘law and order’’ Progressives challenged his leadership of the Progressive party for serving as counsel to the union, he did not hesitate to choose human rights over property rights. While ‘‘the rights of society are supreme over every and any special interest whatsoever, whether of labor or capital,’’ yet ‘‘labor represents manhood, womanhood, and childhood. Capital represents machinery and earnings. Labor is therefore more important.’’ It was no surprise that he did not shrink in the face of violence during a mine strike. He understood the pent up resentments that had contributed to the outbreak: the years lived under corporate lawlessness when miners were short weighed in the mines, short changed in the company stores, underpaid and overworked under hazardous conditions, in total disregard of state industrial laws; they were bullied by mine guards at any sign of protest.52 Nor did he change as he aged. During the New Deal, Senator Costigan supported Bronson Cutting’s amendment to permit the distribution of relief to strikers.53 In a Labor Day address in 1932 he declared that ‘‘among the stabilizing forces of modern civilization, organized labor ranks with government and the home.’’ He favored organized labor in comparison with business: ‘‘The goal of business is profit; of organized labor, better and happier men, women, and children.’’ He wanted unions to expand their traditional role: ‘‘Brain workers and hand workers belong together. All men and women who serve social well-being with their mental or physical powers should carry union cards. The doors should swing open for them, and they should unhesitatingly enlist.’’54 Organized labor could count Costigan among its friends. Farmers could also depend upon his support. The federal government must actively strive for economic equity for farm and labor, Costigan declared. When farm income lagged during the prosperous 1920s, Costigan promoted efforts to subsidize the export of farm products; he consistently

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sought to moderate American tariffs to open foreign markets to surplus American production. During the depression he voted for the Agricultural Adjustment Act and succeeded in enacting a law to extend the benefits of an organized program to the sugar industry. Overcoming domestic resistance from sugar beet producers, who had been protected by a two and a half cents a pound tariff schedule at the expense of American consumers, the Jones-Costigan Act traded access to the American market for sugar producing countries that accepted production controls. This proposal intended to stabilize the industry worldwide, to ensure the survival of our largest suppliers (producers based in Cuba) and to enable the island to continue to be an important market for American foodstuffs. Despite his concern for the husbandman, however, he refused to accept the agricultural entrepreneurs’ blindness to the needs of farm laborers. He fought to end the exploitation of children by the sugar beet farmers, although these farmers constituted an important voting bloc in Colorado. He insisted that the field hands receive a fair share of the benefits of the Jones-Costigan Sugar Bill.55 A consistent New Dealer, Costigan nevertheless criticized New Deal programs that failed to aid those who were politically defenseless. He supported protests to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration that sharecroppers and day laborers received no portion of the benefits. Only about 30% of the cotton farmers (owners and large tenants) were collecting payments. Not even sharecropper occupancy was being protected, he charged.56 He expressed a similar concern that government aid should be given to the largest number of needful recipients, not to a politically powerful pressure group. Consequently, he opposed the demands of veterans for a bonus. After World War One, he protested against veterans’ preference for civil service positions: ‘‘Such a measure is in the nature of class legislation, is vicious in principal as it would be in practice.’’57 When the veterans marched on Washington in the early years of the depression, the freshman senator sympathized with their predicament without endorsing their demands. In a nationwide radio address he castigated those who cried out against the marchers while overlooking the quieter, more effective special interest lobbies. He supported the veterans’ right to present their demands peacefully and to obtain consideration equal to that given to other organized groups.58 He even endorsed a move to defray the expenses of the bonus marchers.59 Yet, he felt that while a veterans’ bonus would do little to stimulate the economy, it could serve to deflect legislation for 12 million unemployed in order to aid 3 million veterans. All the unemployed needed assistance, not just unemployed and employed veterans.60 Costigan insisted that government had a responsibility to aid those citizens denied a share in the fruits of our society. When the industrial machinery of the United States ground to a halt during the 1930s, Costigan became the leading proponent of federal grants-in-aid to bankrupt state

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relief programs. He denounced those who insisted that the nation rely upon inadequate private donations. Philanthropists did not impress him. ‘‘Social, industrial, and Governmental justice,’’ he said in a summary, ‘‘are more important than charity.’’61 Costigan firmly supported New Deal Social Security legislation since modern society was uncertain. In fact, he pointed out, the United States was twenty years behind Europe in this regard.62 But what about those not covered by Social Security? The self-employed and professionals had been omitted from the new legislation. If the sums were too small for private insurance companies to underwrite, the nation could provide them with low value annuity bond insurance.63 Government should meet the needs of individuals who could not provide for themselves. If an active government, responsive to the public will, enacted legislation for the public weal, the program would have to be financed out of government revenues. Costigan favored taxation that was closely related to ability to pay. Thus, during the Progressive Era, he endorsed a progressive income tax. In addition, he supported a tax on the unearned increment from land, an idea inspired by David Ricardo and Henry George.64 During the depression, local administrators proposed to fill treasuries depleted by increased expenditures and reduced revenues by resorting to a sales tax. Costigan resisted. The sales tax not only ignored ability to pay but was levied in inverse proportion to income. He preferred to increase the more equitable income and corporation taxes.65 Income tax loopholes, he insisted, should be closed as well. He proposed a constitutional amendment to permit levies on tax exempt securities—on federal, state and municipal bonds. Exempt securities, he declared, freed the wealthy from taxation. In their place, those with moderate incomes bore the strain of an additional burden to fund the government.66 Similarly, he supported Robert M. LaFollette, Jr.’s fight for income tax publicity, in order to prevent tax evasion by concealing income. When this proposal failed, he successfully championed a compromise: Federal income tax data was supplied to state officials to aid in assessing state and local taxes.67 Finally, in 1935 Costigan firmly supported Roosevelt’s efforts to finance anti-depression measures through the controversial wealth tax. This plan was ‘‘the most notable, best balanced, fundamentally just and constructive tax program in our history.’’ Large individual fortunes did not result from unassisted individual effort but from individual effort combined with community participation, he declared; the many silent partners did not benefit. Thus, the government was right to enlist this wealth for the community’s good. The taxing power should be used for social ends. Concentrated wealth endangered freedom and lessened equality of opportunity. Therefore, the nation’s taxing power should be employed to disperse excessively concentrated corporate power. A progressive corporate income tax would not only aid business decentralization but it would drive idle surpluses into active

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investment. Thus, economic democracy would be vitalized and the economy stimulated. Such a levy would reduce imposts on small businesses; it would help furnish that nationwide market which makes mass production possible. To prevent corporate tax evasion by dividing into smaller operating companies, all dividends received by corporations would be taxed. The dual purpose of redistributing wealth and financing the costs of the depression would be served by taxes on inheritance, legacy, succession and gifts, by increasing taxes on large incomes, and by implementing taxes on the income from state and local securities.68 Those who benefited most from society would bear the largest share of the costs of restoring that society to prosperity. Increased corporate concentration caused progressives to reconsider not only domestic laissez-faire policy but also the traditional Republican demand for a protective tariff. Increasingly, Costigan realized that tariffs, as constituted, served special interests at the expense of the public. The classic rationale for the tariff—that it was necessary to maintain an American wage, while domestic competition reduced prices to the lowest feasible level compatible with that cost of labor—was no longer persuasive in an age of trusts and non-competitive pricing. Early in his career, Costigan was an ardent advocate of a protective tariff.69 By the Progressive Era, however, he was convinced that schedules should be based on comparative costs of production, drafted by a scientific, non-partisan tariff commission; while this process was far more complex than it might appear, it was expected to produce lower rates.70 As a Progressive member of the Tariff Commission he fought to prevent Coolidge appointees from increasing already excessive rates and perverting the purpose of the commission. Their differences came to a head in an examination of the sugar schedule in 1924. A minority report recommending an increase in the schedule required an imaginative justification: A carefully selected single year, rather than the traditional weighted average, was chosen as an economic base. The cost of land was artificially computed by capitalizing the rate of profit per acre, a cost four times comparable farmland. Costigan led a successful public battle to prevent its adoption. By 1926 Costigan had precipitated a congressional investigation. In 1928 he resigned in disgust. Almost all of the schedule changes had raised already high rates.71 Increasingly he became aware of the domestic and international limitations of the tariff. He insisted that ‘‘effective tariffs are in substance taxes on consumers, paid in higher prices. They may be termed subsidies, or, to use a temporarily unpopular word, doles.’’ He realized that higher wages did not rest on tariffs (child labor was pervasive in the highly protected sugar beet industry) but ‘‘on our rich natural resources, our mechanical and inventive talents, our exceptional organizing skill, and in the efficient application of human and other power.’’ After all, highly protected industries,

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like textiles, often paid lower wages than industries without tariff protection, like automobiles.72 By 1931 he reported that an excessive tariff had not only failed to maintain an American standard of wages but had weakened the American economy. ‘‘It follows that higher tariffs than competitive conditions reasonably require tend to restrict the sales of our own commodities abroad, reduce the demand for our surplus products, and by throwing back on our hands our excessive production, result in lower prices and profits in our various fields of surplus production; increase unemployment; and widen business and farm distress.’’73 Of course he did not think that the tariff was the sole cause of the depression. He knew that the feverish prosperity of the 1920s had not been based on a sound economy; he was aware of continuing unemployment, the increased concentration of wealth, the inadequate income of the American workers (especially when compared with rising productivity), the deficient revenue of American farmers, who could not be helped by tariffs, since they produced a surplus commodity, and the weakness of the textile and coal industries.74 But he knew that the tariff had contributed to world economic dislocation. Not only did Costigan object to the adverse effect of excessive tariff rates on the national and international economy, but he feared the grave and divisive effect of the tariff on foreign relations. ‘‘There are mutual advantages in trade and commerce by which all who participate may gain and none should lose.’’75 Antagonism inspired by tariffs was deplorable: It is demonstrable that by our tariff policies and administration we are doing much to alienate foreign sympathy, understanding and trade relations; and no one who has traced the intimate connection between commercial policies and war can view this aspect of the problem without grave apprehension over America’s international future.76

A flexible policy was necessary to prevent tariff wars. Immediately after World War One, he proposed that the president be authorized to raise and lower tariff schedules. In an economic world increasingly resorting to protective tariffs, rates could be negotiated.77 The Fordney-McCumber Act gave flexibility to the president, upon recommendation of the Tariff Commission. Protectionist appointees prevented tariff reductions and sought increases. Costigan first resisted and then resigned. During the New Deal he reiterated his proposal for a flexible tariff: the administration might then bargain to reduce tariff schedules in return for tariff advantages in foreign markets, without economic injury.78 His thinking paralleled Cordell Hull’s reciprocal trade agreements, an idea proposed by Republican Senator James G. Blaine in the late nineteenth century. Costigan’s interest in international problems was by no means limited to the tariff. If competitive tariffs were warlike, war itself was a catastrophe.

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Although Costigan felt in 1916 that ‘‘preparedness on a colossal scale is bound to be our inheritance from Europe’s unprecedented and heartbreaking war,’’ he did not follow Roosevelt’s belligerent lead. He wanted ‘‘private profit cut from arms and armaments through government control of the whole organization of preparedness’’ so that pressures for war could be contained. He endorsed the Wilson administration’s policy in Mexico and Europe, for ‘‘when the easy way led straight towards useless conflict, it did not take us there.’’79 Years later he declared: ‘‘we entered that war with reluctance; we look back on it now with regret.’’80 War, he declared, is ‘‘the sum of all villainies.’’ ‘‘War and Civilization have always been implacable enemies. War has menaced every civilization that ever existed. . . . No Romantic glorification of courage, self-sacrifice and patriotism can longer hide war’s universal threat. . . . History is a race between education and catastrophe . . . between civilization and war.’’81 Costigan was appalled by the cost of war. The First World War One, he declared, cost $400 billion and 30 million lives. Its financial cost was equivalent to the total wealth of the United States in 1929. With this enormous sum every family in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Belgium, Germany and Russia could have been given a five-acre plot at $100 per acre; in addition, every family could have built a $2,500 home on this plot and put $1,000 worth of furnishings into it. With part of the remainder, all the property of France and Belgium could have been purchased at 1914 prices. The interest on the rest, at 5% would pay 125,000 teachers and 125,000 nurses $1,000 a year for all time to come.82 In a world gripped by a depression this was a powerful reason not to blunder into future wars. Why then did wars take place? One by one former incitements to war have disappeared—enslavement of labor; plundered treasuries and lands: and racial and religious rivalries. Yet from their sowing of dragon’s teeth newly armed warriors are ever springing; blind nationalism, economic misery and inequality; mighty armies, navies, and armaments stimulating the very fear and competitive hostility they are presumably intended to allay; and, most modern and subtly dangerous of all, insidious propaganda, inspired by limitless greed, checked by no principle of truth, honor, or respect, individual national or international.83

Of these causes the most dangerous was probably ‘‘the legal doctrine of lawless national sovereignty.’’ Nations refused to settle disputes that affected their self-determined national interests, he reported. They insisted ‘‘on the privilege of being as anarchistic as they choose.’’ While civilized man had been forced to surrender his ‘‘unhampered license to kill,’’ nations could still ‘‘legally murder, unrestrained.’’ To prevent war, some limitations on national sovereignty must be accepted: ‘‘The age old flaw and continuously fatal defect in international relations has been the absence of authoritative agencies for determining issues in the war-breeding no man’s land between

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sovereign states which, because of their conceded theoretical independence, have felt free to proceed against other sovereign states with lawless aggression.’’84 If America supported the League of Nations and joined the World Court, it would promote settlement of international problems without resort to war. Since wars were eventually settled at a conference table, he queried, why not go there first?85 ‘‘Peace will never be permanently gained until men and women are organized for fraternity, not hostility; disinterestedness, not prejudice; science, not wanton waste.’’86 The world must organize for peace, not war. Costigan felt war could be averted by preventing war-breeding military mobilization. Consequently, when Congress mandated an increase in the size of the military rather than give Roosevelt the discretion requested, Costigan voted against increased appropriations; he complained that one shot from a battleship was equal to 20,000 loaves of bread. He feared that a munitions race would repeat 1914–1917, another drift towards war.87 War could be prevented by voluntary proportionate disarmament, by eliminating all profit from war. He insisted that we must resist all warmakers.88 When war broke out in Asia, Costigan declared: ‘‘As in the days of Washington and the French Revolution, neutrality, in fact, as well as name, in so far as it is possible to practice it, is sound American policy.’’ For neutrality to be true neutrality, citizens must be barred from the war zone, arms and ammunition must not be shipped to belligerents, and warring powers must be supplied neither contraband nor loans and credits. Americans traveling in warring countries should be warned that they did so at their own risk. The lesson of the Lusitania was that American nationals must not travel on ships of belligerents.89 The mistakes of the First World War One must not be repeated. Nor was it acceptable to use war or other expansionist techniques in order to subjugate other people. Even as a student he had disdained imperialism. He rejected such boasts as ‘‘the flag not coming down again wherever once raised,’’ and opposed the acquisition of the Philippines. Neither colonies nor the trade wars that they inspired were of any advantage to the mother country, he insisted;90 to the contrary, colonies were war breeding and undemocratic. Once the treaty with Spain had been ratified, Costigan reluctantly decided it was too late to prevent imperialism: ‘‘what remains to be done is to change its nature as far as possible by the introduction of a new principle in it, namely colonial government by the consent of the governed.’’ While America had practiced imperial expansion into its West, the territories had become self-governing. The Philippine Islands must be prepared for self-government.91 As a senator he continued to press for Philippine independence. Independence must be considered on its own merits, not as a means to relieve beet growers of the competition of Philippine sugar.92 He did not live to see Philippine independence granted. Thus, Costigan’s view of foreign policy reflected his conception of do-

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mestic policy. It was based on a square deal for all persons. He could no more tolerate the use of government to exploit people outside continental United States than he could quietly accept the abuse of Americans. Government policy, he felt, should not be shaped by the narrow minded or selfinterested; it must not promote inequity. He was as concerned with the welfare of Filipinos and Cubans as he was with the welfare of Coloradans. Costigan believed in a flexible, responsive government that initiated actions to improve the lives of its citizens. He refused to be hampered by the ideas and constitutional interpretations of a dead era. Consequently, he embraced both the progressive movement and the New Deal. He recognized the increasingly corporate nature of society and the vulnerability of the solitary individual. Thus, he proposed to tame the corporations by encouraging the expansion of organized labor and by the actions of a government, directly controlled by its citizens, which used its power to broadly enhance the commonweal. He truly believed in Jefferson’s famous idea that the object of government is to secure the pursuit of happiness for all its citizens. NOTES 1. Address by Edward Costigan (EPC), Montrose, CO, September 9, 1911, in Colin B. Goodykoontz, ed., The Progressive Papers of Edward Prentiss Costigan (Boulder, CO, 1941), p. 164. 2. Address, EPC, October 1, 1934, in Edward Prentiss Costigan, Public Ownership of Government, ed. George Creel (New York, 1940), pp. 319–21. 3. Address, EPC, June 8, 1914, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 269. 4. Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 18. 5. Ibid., p. 19. 6. Goodykoontz, Costigan, has a good sampling of Costigan’s views on these questions in Chapter I. 7. Address by EPC, February 6, 1908, in Costigan, Public, pp. 49–62. 8. Statement by EPC, February 2, 1936, in Costigan, Public, p. 329. 9. Address by EPC, March 17, 1910, in Costigan, Public, pp. 35–46. 10. Address by Costigan, KOA, Loveland, CO, October 28, 1930, Edward Prentiss Costigan Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO (EPC MSS). 11. Statement by Costigan, March 11, 1912, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 105. 12. EPC to Ethel Smith, May 15, 1923, EPC MSS. 13. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 1971–74. 14. EPC to Ethel Smith, May 15, 1923, EPC MSS. 15. Costigan, Public, p. 315. 16. Goodykoontz, Costigan, pp. 216–20. 17. EPC to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, November 2, 1934; Roosevelt to EPC, December 4, 1934, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Personal Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Library, Hyde Park, NY (FDR MSS). 18. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), p. 3844. 19. New York Times, December 20, 1931, p. 26; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), p. 1655; Tom Mooney to EPC, telegram, January 11,

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1932; EPC to G. Alexander, January 12, 1932; Mary Mooney to EPC, March 4, 1932; Marguerite Owen to Roger Baldwin, July 16, 1932, EPC MSS. 20. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), p. 2167. 21. Addresses by Costigan, March 17, 1910; July 2, 1935, in Costigan, Public, pp. 19–32, 43. 22. EPC to the Superintendent and Principals of Denver Public Schools, January 28, 1909, EPC MSS. 23. Edward Prentiss Costigan, ‘‘Education and the General Welfare,’’ National Education Association Journal, 73(1935), pp. 73–83. 24. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 3593, 4059–60. 25. Address by Costigan, September 9, 1911, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 164. 26. Letter of acceptance by Costigan of the nomination for Governor of Colorado, August 15, 1912, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 218. 27. Address by Costigan, April 10, 1914, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 254. 28. Costigan radio address, September, 1931, in Costigan, Public, p. 7. 29. Address by Costigan, April 10, 1908, in Costigan, Public, p. 58. 30. EPC to George W. Perkins, January 7, 1914, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 249. 31. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 5372–84; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 876, 1441, 1545. 32. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 104, 1243–46; 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), p. 2410; EPC to F. D. Roosevelt, February 29, 1935, FDR Personal File; Robert M. LaFollette, Jr. and EPC to F. D. Roosevelt, June 20, 1935, FDR Official File, FDR MSS. 33. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 1074, 4458, 5061. 34. Ibid., pp. 2514, 2966. 35. Costigan’s argument before the Supreme Court of Colorado, June 13, 1906, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 28. 36. Costigan statement, August 15, 1912, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 218. 37. EPC to William Daniels, October 23, 1911, EPC MSS. 38. Interview with Costigan on the Non-partisan League, undated, EPC MSS. 39. Clyde Lyndon King, The History of the Government of Denver with Special Reference to its Relations with Public Service Corporations (Denver, 1911), pp. 280– 97; EPC to J. C. Ralston, May 22, 1909; EPC to W. M. Gilpatrick, March 28, 1931; EPC to W. M. Gilpatrick, March 28, 1931, EPC MSS; Ben Lindsey to E. V. Cochems, March 19, 1914; Ben Lindsey to Fred Spellman, April 1, 1914, Benjamin B. Lindsey Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (BBL MSS); Rocky Mountain News, May 21, 1910; September 7, 1910; November 1, 1911; December 27, 1911; February 5, 1914; June 2, 1916; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 8852–57. 40. Labor Day address by Costigan, 1932, EPC MSS. 41. Release of speech by Costigan, August 15, 1930, EPC MSS. 42. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 1 Sess., 77(1933), pp. 3388, 4013, 4475; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 8399, 8505, 8552–57. 43. Debate between Costigan and Senator Ammons, October 30, 1912, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, pp. 229–246.

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44. Debate between Costigan and Senator Ammons, October 30, 1912, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, pp. 229–246. 45. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 3960–61, 6696, 6792–6817, 6903–15. 46. Florence Kelley to Costigan, June 28, 1922; Grace Abbot to Costigan, telegram, January 14, 1923; EPC to Ethel Smith, May 15, 1923, EPC MSS. 47. Radio address by Costigan, Feb. 20, 1934, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, pp. 309–11. 48. Goodykoontz, Costigan, pp. 216–20; Costigan, Public, p. 315. 49. Statement by Costigan, February 2, 1915, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 74. 50. New York Times, February 3, 1915; Costigan Labor Day address, 1932, EPC MSS. 51. Costigan to J.V.N. Dorr, May 20, 1914, EPC MSS. 52. Statement by Costigan, December 16, 1914, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 74. 53. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), p. 2210. 54. Labor Day address by Costigan, 1932, EPC MSS. 55. EPC to Albert Dakan, January 30, 1917; EPC to Edward Keating, February 13, 1917; EPC to Walter Walker, May 26, 1932, EPC MSS; Fort Collins Express, October 28, 1932; Costigan, Public, pp. 246–55; U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 3960–61, 6696, 6792–6817, 6903–15. 56. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79 (1935), p. 2210. 57. EPC to Dudley Strickland (ca. 1919), EPC MSS. 58. Costigan, Public, pp. 303–6. 59. New York Times, May 31, 1932, p. 14. 60. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), p. 13260. 61. New York Times, February 3, 1915, pp. 1, 5. 62. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), p. 9354. 63. Ibid., pp. 9634–40. 64. Goodykoontz, Costigan, p. 339. 65. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1935), pp. 10112, 10114. 66. Costigan, Public, pp. 299–300; U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), p. 59. 67. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 4442–45, 4526– 30, 5427. 68. Edward P. Costigan, ‘‘Taxes on Wealth,’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1935), pp. 673– 76. 69. As late as 1908 he recommended a tariff on picture postcards to stimulate the industry. EPC to Robert W. Bonynge, December 4, 1908, EPC MSS. 70. Would foreign competitors be willing to disclose their cost of production? How do you determine cost of production? Firms have different costs of production, and there is usually a marginal firm where it roughly equals the price. Increase the tariff schedule and a less efficient firm can be profitable. If average costs are employed, some marginal firms will fail and the average cost of production will be reduced. With a high enough price, oranges could be produced in Maine hothouses. 71. EPC to John Pugua, August 20, 1914; EPC to Denver Post, September 8, 1924, EPC MSS; U.S. Congress, Senate Select Committee, Hearings of S. R. 162, to Investigate the U.S. Tariff Commission, 69 Cong., 1 Sess., 1926; New York Times,

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December 30, 1924, p. 8; January 17, 1926, p. 1. For a more complete examination of his role on the Tariff Commission, see Fred Greenbaum, Fighting Progressive: A Biography of Edward P. Costigan (Washington, DC, 1970), pp. 88–103. 72. Address by Costigan, October 27, 1929, EPC MSS; address by Costigan, March 11, 1931, in Costigan, Public, pp. 237–44; cf., Greenbaum, Fighting Progressive, pp. 102–3. 73. Costigan, Public, pp. 237–44. 74. Radio address by Costigan, September, 1931, ibid., pp. 5–14. 75. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 76(1933), pp. 3176–77. 76. EPC to Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., May 13, 1929, EPC MSS. 77. Address by Costigan, December 29, 1917, in Costigan, Public, pp. 217–34. 78. U.S. Congressional Record, 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), pp. 7674–75. 79. Statement by Costigan, 1916, in Goodykoontz, Costigan, pp. 320–30. 80. Address by Costigan, July 2, 1935, in Costigan, Public, p. 20. 81. Address by Costigan, November 11, 1935, in Costigan, Public, pp. 333–36. 82. Ibid. 83. Fireside chat between Costigan and Norman Hapgood, May 19, 1935, in Costigan, Public, pp. 339–47. 84. Ibid., pp. 339–40. 85. U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess, 79(1935), p. 1049. 86. Address by Costigan, November 11, 1935, in Costigan, Public, pp. 333–36. 87. Fireside chat between Costigan and Norman Hapgood, May 19, 1935, in Costigan, Public, p. 346. 88. U.S. Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1 Sess., 75(1932), pp. 9700, 9709, 9711; 73 Cong., 2 Sess., 78(1934), p. 3813; 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 79(1935), pp. 3106, 3190, 3214, 13785–86. 89. Ibid.; U.S. Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 2 Sess., 80(1936), pp. 2287– 2306. 90. EPC to George Costigan, Sr., October 30, 1898, EPC MSS. 91. EPC to Emilie Sigur Costigan, February 9, 1899, EPC MSS. 92. Statement by Costigan, in Costigan, Public, p. 325.

Chapter 8

Progressives: An Analysis Historians’ interpretations of the progressive movement are sometimes reminiscent of blind persons describing an elephant by touch. One feels the tail, another the leg, another the tusks and still another the trunk. Each portrays a different creature with some accuracy, but none depicts the elephant. Some decades ago one of the leading young historians of his generation reported to a convention panel that progressives were imperialists, citing Theodore Roosevelt and Albert Beveridge as examples. The paper accurately described some progressives. It ignored the progressive irreconcilables, noninterventionists, isolationists and those who distinguished each situation. William E. Borah, in the context of the 1930s, has often been labelled an isolationist. Yet, he was a catalyst for many of our internationalist enterprises of the 1920s: the Washington Conference, the negotiated settlement with Mexico and the Kellogg-Briand treaties. Edward P. Costigan opposed our imperialist adventure in the Philippines. George Norris filibustered to prevent our involvement in World War One and supported all of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to curb fascist aggression. Hiram Johnson voted for our entrance into World War One and, thereafter, led legislative efforts to keep us isolated from contamination with European affairs. William Gibbs McAdoo and Bainbridge Colby endorsed the Versailles Treaty, convinced it was the only hope for permanent peace; Edward Costigan advocated the League and the World Court as late as 1935. Robert LaFollette, George Norris, William E. Borah, Hiram Johnson and Charles S. Thomas were progressive irreconcilables, certain that collective security diverted the war-making power into the hands of the executive or an outside agency and ignored the constitutional role of Congress: this new ‘‘Holy Alliance’’ would employ American troops to protect the British and Japanese empires from the as-

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pirations for self-determination by Ireland, India, Egypt and Korea. It is clear that when Teddy Roosevelt ‘‘took Panama’’ he had strong support from progressive Republicans, and he was quick to intervene in Latin America. But many progressives were non-interventionists. Norris satirized marines settling elections and insisted that ‘‘a man who invests his money in a foreign country takes the risks . . . and must abide by the results.’’ American taxpayers, Borah argued, should not pay for military deliverance of investors who would neither abide by the laws of the host country nor submit to arbitration; the United States should seek justice, not force. Once it had intervened, Johnson was in a quandary: intervention was wrong; withdrawal repeatedly created chaos. There was no progressive foreign policy. Progressives sought a painless social solution, some have argued. Efficient production, following Frederick Taylor’s time and motion studies, would provide a higher standard of living to the poor, without cost to the economically advantaged. Aside from the fact that Taylor manipulated his evidence, this fascinating idea that spawned a cult seems to have sparked little interest among progressive politicians. Regardless of the attraction to a few intellectuals, nowhere in a total examination of seven progressives’ speeches, correspondence and writings is this mentioned as a solution to poverty in a society of plenty. References to the relationship between power and income distribution were far more common. Another theory, drawn from a Pittsburgh study, asserted that urban progressives wanted to replace the more democratic ward system with citywide elections in order to elect more widely known middle- and upper-class progressive candidates. A subsequent Wisconsin inquiry revealed that reform was achieved through a broad coalition, with varying alliances in each city; the Pittsburgh pattern did not prevail, nor was it valid for my earlier study of Denver. One influential analysis postulated that progressive politicians first attempted to reform cities. Urban reform often required state approval; as governors they found that our problems were national and moved on. The careers of Joseph Folk of Missouri and Hiram Johnson of California were illustrations. Grover Cleveland, mayor of Buffalo, governor of New York, and president of the United States, could just as easily been cited—except that he was conservative. It was a natural progression of ambitious politicians. And it ignores many progressive careers, including Norris and Borah, who were involved in neither urban nor state reform. How does it explain rural progressives? Edward Costigan and Benjamin Lindsey of Denver, amongst others, campaigned on all three levels at the same time. Historians sometimes reach beyond their evidence. What the evidence does indicate is that progressives understood that government had a continuous involvement in the life of the commonwealth since the colonial period, particularly in its economic life. Government had almost invariably favored those who already had access to power. Progres-

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sives sought reforms of government that permitted greater access, greater equity and an improved life for the entire society. But they lacked unanimity. Prohibition is considered a progressive reform, sparked by a concern for negative social and medical results of alcoholism. But it was embraced by numerous conservatives. Bainbridge Colby dismissed it as a proposal by ‘‘anaemic and evangelistic people.’’ Hiram Johnson just wanted it to vanish as an issue and tried to exempt wine and beer. Norris was a teetotaler who evaded the question at first, then supported the Eighteenth Amendment and then sought to discourage consumption when repeal appeared inevitable. For Costigan it was a central commitment. Some observers, examining the careers of Robert LaFollette, George Norris and Edward P. Costigan, might conclude that progressives were champions of labor. After all, Woodrow Wilson was the only president to send federal troops to protect strikers from a state militia. But this view would be imprecise. Theodore Roosevelt twice sent troops into mine strikes, and they were misused by management. Progressives did promote protective factory legislation, particularly for women and children, state minimum wage and maximum hours laws and old age pensions. Still, they differed in their reaction to unions and to the role of government during strikes, particularly when strikes became violent. Southern California progressives were often anti-union. Many progressives supported the open shop, though some insisted it should not be closed to union men. But strikes, and most particularly the sit-down strikes, revealed the tension between their separate commitments to property rights and human rights. A large segment of the Colorado Progressive party challenged Edward Costigan during the Ludlow strike, trumpeting the issue of ‘‘law and order,’’ even though management violation of laws regulating mine operations was a major cause of the conflict. Norris, Borah, Costigan and Johnson embraced the protection of the right to organize in the National Recovery Act, section 7. ‘‘Collective capital has no right to refuse to confer with collective labor,’’ Costigan remarked. Bainbridge Colby, who for years had looked more kindly on labor than management, viewed section 7 as a threat to free enterprise; he had long suggested limiting the right to strike by instituting mandatory submission of issues to a public interest tribunal that would ‘‘impose justice upon contending classes.’’ In 1938 Norris and McAdoo endorsed federal minimum wage and maximum hours bills, while Johnson and Borah were opposed. Though they thought it illegal, Borah, Norris and McAdoo were sympathetic towards the sit-down strikers. Borah contended that labor was fighting illegal methods with illegal methods. Johnson, on the other hand, never adjusted to the Congress of Industrial Organization or the labor disturbances of 1936 and thundered against factory seizures; it was Mussolini’s excuse to seize power; When FDR failed to dispatch troops, he warned: ‘‘down that road lurks dictatorship.’’ Labor issues divided the progressives.

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But there were issues that united the progressives, at least in part. The initial state and federal regulatory commissions attempted to moderate transport costs and practices. Progressives sought legislation to empower the Interstate Commerce Commission to more effectively serve the public interest: the Elkins Anti-Rebate Act, the Hepburn Act, the Mann-Elkins Act, and the Physical Valuation Act. When railroads failed to meet the transportation needs of the war effort, a number of progressives questioned private ownership and operation. Borah repeatedly criticized railroad management without actually committing himself to government ownership. Norris clearly made that commitment. Johnson thought McAdoo’s wartime stewardship was a poor test for government as proprietor; when the progressives Albert Cummins and John Esch drafted legislation to return the railroads to private management, he described the bill as ‘‘a mere scheme for enriching the railroads at the expense of the people.’’ While McAdoo, the efficient manager, perceptively criticized inadequate private management of railroads and wanted to continue the wartime experiment, he, like Borah, never quite endorsed government ownership. When the war highlighted the collapse of the American merchant marine, Norris proposed a government-owned shipping corporation to open up new trade routes and to restore America’s carrying trade. Johnson felt that a privately owned merchant marine had failed and described the sale of government-owned ships by the Shipping Board as pernicious. Regulation of transportation had not met expectations, but McAdoo considered unregulated industry an undesirable alternative. Control of transportation was linked to an economic issue that strongly aroused the progressives, since Standard Oil had used railroad rebates to consolidate its power. Most of the trusts that John Moody identified came into existence between 1898 and 1904, dominating specific economic fields, closing up economic opportunity and abusing the political system with their vast wealth. McAdoo described ‘‘plutodemocracy,’’ the domination of money under the form of democracy. Progressives agreed that trusts had too much economic and political power, that they exploited their workers and that government had helped to build their wealth and power through subsidies, excessively protective tariffs, anti-union injunctions and strained court decisions. Progressives concluded that government could be employed to restrain their power and influence, and to improve the commonweal. Progressives fought the political machine as an instrument of trust domination. This does not mean that the political machine necessarily opposed progressive reform: New York’s Tammany boss Charles Murphy was more responsible for progressive social and economic legislation than selfproclaimed progressive politicians; similar machine support could be found in New Jersey and Boston. Irony is not absent in history. Progressives called the protective tariff the ‘‘Mother of Trusts.’’ The tariff had most continuously divided the two major political parties. It remained a persistent issue during progressive careers. McAdoo was a consistent Dem-

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ocrat in wanting a reduced tariff; wholesome international competition would make monopolies disappear. The progressive Republicans had advocated a protective tariff, contending that it maintained an American standard of living for workers. Costigan, Norris, Borah and Colby joined LaFollette in his insistence that the trusts had distorted the economic bargain behind the tariff, that competition would keep prices at the lowest level commensurate with an American wage. Trusts had eliminated competition and prices had risen sharply during the height of business mergers. Norris complained that the protective tariff had created monopolies and millionaires without safeguarding American wages; in fact, tariff swollen profits were invested abroad, fostering competition from cheap labor; throughout a long career he routinely rejected protective tariffs. Borah considered tariffs an impediment to the free flow of goods and a factor in the Great Depression but insisted that the American market belonged to the American farmer. A flexible tariff, progressive Republicans argued, adjusted by a scientifically professional commission, would set rates at the difference between the cost of production of American firms and their overseas rivals; this would allow foreign competition to reduce prices, but only to a level that still protected American workers. Edward Costigan became one of these commissioners and was distressed to find that political appointees could undermine the entire process. Bainbridge Colby, disturbed that tariffs protected powerful corporations, not infant industries, still rejected the New Deal version of flexibility, reciprocity agreements. Borah spurned reciprocal treaties while calling for reduced tariffs. While Hiram Johnson endorsed tariff reduction, since he could not justify opposing the desires of other economic interests after he had obtained a shield for California, he voted for every protective tariff. The most interesting progressive initiative on the tariff was the effort to obtain tariff protection for export crops by establishing a dual price system. Norris was one of the earliest leaders in drafting such legislation; Borah and Johnson endorsed some of these attempts. Borah warned that monopoly had assumed the power of ancient sovereigns, powers constitutionally denied our governments. All of our progressives agreed that the influence of trusts in the political process could be countered by direct democracy: direct primary, initiative, referendum, recall. Recall of judges or judicial decisions was more controversial. It was supported by Costigan. Colby hedged and shifted on this question. To Borah, the Supreme Court was ‘‘the most nearly perfect institution yet devised by the wit of man,’’ and he rejected judicial recall. The most difficult problem they undertook, one that certainly has not been solved today, is how to stem the economic power of monopoly and oligopoly. Norris, for example, complained that trusts stifled competition, ruined small businesses, raised prices and influenced government. Too often the significance of their differences on this matter is overlooked. Amos Pinchot so firmly advocated more effective enforcement of the Sherman Anti-

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trust Act that he broke with Theodore Roosevelt in 1914. Progressives were generally disturbed by the Standard Oil decision, which found only unreasonable restraints of trade to be illegal. Bainbridge Colby was delighted with a proper decision: some economic restraints were non injurious and others vicious; regulation had to be selective. Despite some commentators, regulated monopoly and regulated competition have significantly different assumptions. Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Croly felt that trusts resulted from efficient business practices, that this efficiency was necessary in international competition, and in the phrase of C. Van Hise, concentration and control were appropriate. Louis Brandeis argued that monopolies were created by unfair means of competition; they used power to drive out competition or purchased competitors at an inflated cost, floating watered stock. To return a profit to investors, despite mountainous debt, higher prices had to be charged. Eliminate unfair competition and trusts would fall from their own bloat and inefficiency. He convinced Robert LaFollette, William Gibbs McAdoo and Woodrow Wilson of the validity of his views. By enacting the Clayton Anti-trust Act and the Federal Trade Commission the Wilson Administration did not shift from the New Freedom to the New Nationalism, but fulfilled Brandeis’s vision; Clayton defined unfair competition, and an expert Federal Trade Commission was to regulate and ensure fair competition. Borah agreed with Brandeis when he said ‘‘you can no more regulate a monopoly than regulate a cancer’’; the regulated will control the regulators. But he opposed the effort by the Clayton Act to define unfair competition as too vague and burdensome for small, honest businessmen. (His solution was interesting: the nation should license corporations and remove licenses or bar products from interstate commerce if monopolistic practices were followed.) As the courts were later to remind progressives, the details of the Clayton Act made it less effective than anticipated, and hostile appointments undermined the FTC. But conservatives never dared to repeal the legislation. Progressives grew up during a generation of struggle over the fiscal policy of the government. At the nation’s beginning Alexander Hamilton copied the European model, creating a private Bank of the United States, granting it a monopoly over government deposits and transfer of federal funds, with the power to rediscount currency issued by private state banks to ensure consistent value to disparate bills. Jackson’s veto of the renewal of the charter of the second Bank of the United States resulted in decades of erratic state banking, during which government funds were cared for by the subtreasury. Salmon P. Chase, during the fiscal crisis of the Civil War, drafted a clever system. National banks would be chartered, with the power to issue currency based upon government bonds, creating a market for war bonds and providing bankers with interest both on the bonds and the loans they made with the new currency. The scheme was flawed. It was inflexible and unresponsive to periodic change; as bonds were retired, the currency of the

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nation declined during a spectacular economic boom, deflating prices, increasing the real value of outstanding loans and the difficulty of repayment. Government action had favored bankers over farmers and other debtors. It was not until the Wilson administration that the Federal Reserve System seriously addressed the question of a flexible currency. While the idea appealed to progressives, and Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo was influential in drafting the legislation and tried to insure government, not Wall Street, control over the system, the bill’s reception by progressives was less than enthusiastic. Norris fought for an independent, non-partisan governing board with fewer regional branches and government control of the central bank. Although he voted for the bill, he accused the Democratic caucus of creating a banker owned and controlled system. For Borah, progressive amendments were insufficient to warrant support; it was still a central bank controlled by banks. During the 1930s, Johnson called for a new FRB where bankers were controlled, not in control. Progressives were aware of the historic economic role of government. It had been the subject of most of our political struggles. Nascent states followed the European pattern and granted legislative largesse to favored businessmen through specific acts of incorporation. Early in the Jacksonian period, New York advanced economic democratization with a general incorporation act, followed by a free banking law, permitting access to corporate advantages to those who could meet legislated criteria. The catalyst for the economic booms of the nineteenth century was government-aided road, canal and railroad construction, which created an infrastructure that enabled the American economy to become unusually internalized. The disproportionate economic benefits and injury resulting from a protective tariff led to the nullification controversy. The struggles over the two Banks of the United States had implications relating to opportunity for local bankers, availability of credit and ease of repayment of debts. Without federal troops the West would not have been opened. If government did not provide slave codes, a territory would effectively be free of slaves. Without government subsidy of the merchant marine the industry would give way to subsidized English bottoms; the cost of subsidies had to be borne by taxpayers, who might not benefit. The placement of new transportation routes had enormous local economic implications; to stand pat favored established interests. There is no government neutrality; action or inaction helps some and hurts others. Control of governmental generosity had always been of great importance to specific economic interests. Norris saw that the powerful took care of themselves; the struggle was to protect the weak from exploitation by the strong. Progressives wanted to use government to help those who lacked power. They recognized that all societies had a locus of power, and in their time, power rested in the hands of great corporations. They considered government to be a counter weight. Some, like Costigan and Norris, expected organized workers to balance organized capital. Progressives often

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disagreed about what tools government should use to achieve more equitable social ends, what were the constitutional limits of government, and what was the constitutional balance between state and nation, legislature and executive. Through their efforts the role of government was changed. Never again was government to favor the controlling interests quite as openly as it had before the Progressive Era. Rhetoric now had to mask intentions and pretend broader concern.

Chapter 9

Power at the Millennium The progressive movement, New Deal and organized labor transformed America. Economic equity was enhanced. Workers moved into suburban homes, aided by government backed FHA and VA loans, riding on the Eisenhower interstate network, paying their bills with the increased income won by union power. Children of the working class employed higher education as a means of upward mobility, freed from the need to contribute to the family by their parents’ union wages. An explosive growth of colleges followed, fueled by the GI Bill. Technological complexity drew upon enriched education. An increased government presence in the economy protected the consumers, their savings, and cushioned their senior years, almost eliminating the fear of an impoverished retirement. Progressive ideology may have been imperfect and conflicted, but it influenced the state to commit to the welfare of all its citizens, not just the privileged few. In the eyes of conservatives, government had lost its bearings. It had retreated from its traditional role of serving as a means of transferring wealth from those who had little to those who had too much. Their efforts at a frontal assault kept them in a minority status for decades, even within the Republican party. The wealthy among them began to finance ‘‘think tanks’’ to repackage old, failed ideas between new attractive covers. Liberal journals were purchased by conservative publishers. Conservative talk shows were sponsored by conservative corporations and foundations, and television roundtables reflected the gamut of conservative and moderate thought, with rare liberals and no radicals. Nevertheless, to silence the handful of media outlets that they could not control, they railed against the liberal media. Four of the five most cited think tanks are conservative. The Washington press corps is more conservative on economic issues than the general public.

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Approximately twenty giant corporations control most of the media, and they are almost uniformly conservative. PBS shows are sponsored by corporations, while union underwriting is not accepted. Conservative rhetoric reflects little contact with factual reality. McAdoo warned of the danger to democratic institutions of the use of wealth to control the press and shape public opinion. The conservative attack is really aimed at the organs of the ‘‘Eastern Establishment,’’ socially liberal but economically moderate or conservative. In ‘‘Establishment’’ journals editorials are penned attacking labor unions for excessive demands and errant leaders. Under the next heading, editors call for fiscal responsibility while justifying corporate bailouts. In this context fiscal responsibility means moderately reduced taxes, limited social expenditures and increased military spending, even when real threats are nonexistent. Costigan had compared neglected essential civilian needs during a depression with extravagant military expenses, like shots from a battleship. He would have a field day with multi-million dollar cruise missiles, more expensive than the destroyed targets, and multi-billion dollar stealth bombers too delicate to be deployed under battlefield conditions; meanwhile the homeless roam the streets in prosperous times and the progressive legacy of public housing fades away. Now, with conservative control of the agenda, a media blitz ensued. Organized Labor, which Norris, McAdoo and Costigan recognized as a necessary counterweight for organized capital and responsible for higher wages, was discredited. Socialism was identified with communism, liberalism with socialism, and ‘‘liberal’’ was never uttered without a sneer. An intellectual opening was needed. When OPEC stunned the Western world with an oil shock, inflation skyrocketed, the U.S. balance of payments went from positive to negative and America began the shift from a creditor to a debtor nation. Nixon used Keynesian tools, identified with liberals, for conservative ends. Interest rates were raised to cool the economy, create a pool of unemployed, reduce real wages, lower the price of exports and reverse the trade imbalance. Depending on wage reductions to restore prosperity, Hiram Johnson commented in contrast, was ‘‘as conducive to prosperity and happiness . . . as it would be conducive to the health of a human being to let all the blood from his body.’’ To prevent inflation, conservative economists invented an artificial minimum level of unemployment, based on neither the factual nor historical record. It was finally tested and proven false in the late 1990s when unemployment fell below 6% without inflation. Totally ignored by their mythology was the historical record that, as Johnson pointed out in post–World War One America, wages have trailed inflation and have not been its cause, and higher profits and higher prices are more commonly mated; rising wages and low inflation have often been paired. Facts are irrelevant as long as you know the truth. Worker discontent rose as stagflation boosted them into higher tax brackets and

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property assessments, further reducing their real income. Where Norris had believed that the welfare of unborn generations was dependent on government and ‘‘government, in its true sense, is a religion,’’ now faith in government solutions, already undermined by duplicity during the Vietnam War and racist stereotyping in reaction to the civil rights movement, declined to a new low. The media could now proclaim the revised old ideas of the 1870s as the ‘‘New Ideas’’ of the 1980s. Government was declared the enemy, even by those who benefited from its largesse. North Carolina senators, guardians of price supports for affluent tobacco farmers, thundered against life support for the destitute victims of the free market. Welfare, a phrase expressing concern, was demonized by Ronald Reagan as the refuge of the mythical ‘‘welfare queen,’’ driving her shiny Cadillac. How different the concern of Norris, Borah, Johnson, McAdoo and Costigan that the destitute be protected. Costigan initiated legislation for federal support for state relief programs, welfare’s predecessor, with the endorsement of Norris, Borah and Johnson. Still, conservatives denied an intention to shred the safety net, only to ‘‘reform welfare’’—to death. Inner-city residents were ‘‘freed from welfare dependency,’’ to search in their communities for non-existent jobs, without child care programs or the state assuming the role of employer of last resort. Conservatives, like Mayor Giuliani in New York, showed their concern for the aspiring poor by pulling students on welfare out of college classrooms in Queens to spear trash in Staten Island parks, while under mayoral pressure, the City University of New York became the first public system of higher education to deny remediation to entering freshman, a service provided by its Ivy League counterparts, like Columbia. Language was distorted. The ‘‘public interest,’’ a phrase used by progressives like Bainbridge Colby for a transcendent national concern, not a narrow economic group, suddenly became synonymous with transnational corporate interests. ‘‘Special interests,’’ reserved for railroads, monopolies and public utilities by Norris, Borah, Johnson, McAdoo, Colby and Costigan, became the new terminology for advocates for women, workers, minority groups—anyone who pursued the interests of the majority of the populace. The meaning of ‘‘reform’’ was changed. It became a subterfuge to destroy programs not susceptible to direct attack. Social Security, a progressive program Norris called ‘‘one of the noblest ambitions that ever moved the mind of man,’’ was subjected to prolonged assault as socialist by spokesmen such as Ronald Reagan, only to encounter resentment. On a nationally televised debate with President Carter, candidate Reagan, with a straight face and a smile, denied his oft repeated statements and changed the dynamics of the campaign. Conservatives now pretended they would save Social Security by reform. Nixon’s secretary of Commerce, Peter Peterson, has initiated a national campaign of hysteria, claiming that the Social Security fund would be bankrupt when the baby boomers retired. The con-

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servative solution was to privatize social security, to change it from a guaranteed income into a speculative gamble whose only certain beneficiaries were the stockbrokers. To justify this change it was necessary to forecast a lower economic growth rate (1.5%) than any historical experience would warrant (realistically 2.4%, which would eliminate the deficit for the statutory seventy-five years) in order to underestimate the future Social Security trust fund. At the same time, during the same period, they projected a higher than normal growth rate when predicting prospective stock prices. Quietly buried were decades in which stock prices were stagnant, the 44% decline in stock prices between 1966 and 1982, as well as the high cost of transition to a privatized system, which would necessitate both increased payroll taxes and postponement of retirement. Of course, the Social Security ‘‘reformers’’ ignored the fact that most of a realistic shortfall could be averted by lifting the cap on Social Security payroll taxes, withholding the same percentage of income for the chief executive officer as the employee on the factory floor, investing a portion of the reserve in higher yielding, guaranteed bonds of federal agencies and extending coverage to newly employed, currently exempt, state employees. The threat to Social Security was used as a subterfuge to raise payroll taxes on workers at the same time that substantial tax cuts were granted to the wealthy. Equity is not a conservative goal. It is more important to assure that government programs benefit the right people. Economic reform is an international conservative cry. In Germany it means lower wages for workers, increased hours, reduced social benefits and assurance that corporations be exempted from taxation, allegedly to be competitive with Asian dictatorships where unions are not permitted. Daimler Chrysler, which in 1998 paid no taxes for the protection and services provided to them by government and society, has threatened to abandon the country that had nourished it. In Russia it meant ending government responsibility for the commonweal. Free market ideologues designed the transition. An ineffective government was denied progressive regulatory tools. As McAdoo had advised in his time, deregulation only shifted power from government to corporate bureaucracies; ‘‘the unrestricted economic activity of some leads inevitably in a developed industrial society to the servitude of others.’’ Still, magical privatization of industry was embraced. Public managers, who had inefficiently run state-owned industries, were to be transmuted into efficient executives of the same companies when they became private firms. But democracy and efficiency were not enhanced. Instead, production in Russia has collapsed. Currency has plummeted. Inflation has swallowed savings. Corruption reigns supreme. Criminals dominate the economy. Inequality has been magnified. Who could have believed that there would be nostalgia for the Soviet Union? But privatization of government functions has often been accompanied by graft. Throughout history hungry businessmen have bribed politicians. The French Panama Canal scandal toppled governments and stained a future

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premier. In the United States there was the corruption of the Gilded Age; Costigan fought urban corruption in Progressive Era Denver; during the Prosperity Decade LaFollette unearthed Teapot Dome—Borah raised funds to return Harry Sinclair’s campaign contributions, Johnson called for immediate cancellation of the leases and Norris said ‘‘Sinclair has too much money to be convicted’’—while its fallout put a roadblock in McAdoo’s clear path to the 1924 Democratic presidential nomination; the New York parking meter scandal caused the suicide of a borough president; and there was a history of road building and school contractors who dilute concrete and endangered lives. Magic, after all, is the basis of conservative economics. There is magic in the marketplace. In the late eighteenth century intellectuals searched for laws of society and economy that were as eternal, immutable and universal as Newton’s cosmology. Searching for science, they found alchemy. The natural laws discovered by classical economic thinkers lacked only one ingredient—a contact with the real world. Wages are not determined by supply and demand, always tending towards subsistence, but by power, as McAdoo understood, by the ability of the employer to impose his will versus the possibility of workers to unite and use their strength to wrest a living wage from reluctant management. The income of chief executive officers is not set in the marketplace but by their ability to control salary levels through their command of the economic hierarchy. As a result, with similar responsibilities in firms of comparable revenues, CEOs in the United States have average compensation packages of over a million dollars, their Korean counterparts, $150,000, with German and Japanese equivalents hovering about $400,000. Can anyone believe that a shortage of talent exists in the United States and a surplus in Korea, France, Germany and Japan? When Adam Smith suggested that prices were set by supply and demand, he assumed that no seller would be large enough to affect supply and no purchaser large enough to influence demand. Can anyone seriously maintain that that describes modern economic conditions? The law of supply and demand was repealed in the late nineteenth century by the creation of the Standard Oil trust, and the danger of trusts to a free economy was the major issue for all our progressives. The transmutation of base metals to gold has more rational basis than these ‘‘natural’’ laws. Adam Smith asserted another natural law, one governing international trade. In the absence of protective tariffs each nation would concentrate on those items it produced most efficiently. An invisible hand would guide capital to the most efficient, most profitable industries, without protective tariffs artificially enhancing profit margins of non-competitive firms. Eliminate tariffs and international production would be vastly stimulated, to the benefit of all. Smith sought to counter the influence of tariff-protected, legislatively created monopolies. Nineteenth-century English economists, confident of their nation’s ability to undersell the world, proclaimed the virtues

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of free trade until Germany and the United States surpassed them. The United States industrialized behind protective tariffs. McAdoo, a Democrat, insisted upon the economic advantages of a markedly lower tariff. Norris, Borah and particularly Costigan pressed the virtue of a flexible tariff, administered by a professional tariff commission. Beginning in the period after World War Two, when the United States had no real international economic competition, a global marketplace became an attractive option, and American governments initiated efforts to reduce or eliminate international barriers to trade. Transnational corporations soon saw the advantage of free market access for goods they could now produce with cheap Asian labor. International capital abandoned democratizing Asian countries in search of the lowest labor costs guaranteed by dictatorial regimes. For company owners, profits soared; for their workers, Progressive Era sweatshops would be an improvement. Loans to national governments have always facilitated international movements of capital. In the century before World War Two when nations refused to repay international bankers, a show of force, a landing of marines, at taxpayer expense, usually had beneficial results. Many progressives railed against these actions and expenditures. Norris, Borah and Johnson derided the practice of using marines to rescue unwise Wall Street investors at the taxpayer’s expense. Borah insisted that we should not impose loans or economic policies on unwilling nations. However, force is no longer necessary. The International Monetary Fund, with taxpayer resources, accomplishes the same ends. To insure repayment it imposes free market solutions that make the conditions of those already impoverished absolutely desperate. Profits are privatized but risks are still socialized. Global economics has only benefited a limited population. Nevertheless, with the North American Free Trade Agreement (Colby’s improved hemispheric relations reflected in a funhouse mirror), Canadian, Mexican and United States governments promised an economic bonanza for all. But all the assurances of its proponents have proven false and all the warnings of its opponents have proven true. A United States trade surplus with Mexico has turned into a $13.2 billion deficit. Many of our exports are actually parts to be assembled in Mexico to be sold here, so that the real deficit is disguised. Rather than creating new employment, NAFTA has cost Americans 215,000 jobs. The income of Mexican workers has declined: While productivity of labor in Mexico has increased by 36.4%, wages have declined 29%. The level of poverty from 1984–1994 was 34%. Five years after NAFTA the poverty rate is 60%. Eight million Mexicans have fallen into poverty; the middle class has declined as 28,000 small businesses, unable to compete with transnationals, have failed. Farmers, displaced by corporate competition, flood into the cities’ slums. Environment and public health has deteriorated as provisions of NAFTA have been used to permit suits nullifying environmental and health laws. Food imports into the United

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States have increased (a nightmare for Borah and Johnson), inspections have declined and unsafe foods are being imported along with smuggled drugs. Despite this record, the Clinton administration has promoted the extension of the agreement to Chile, with attempts at fast-track approval through Congress, so that current results could not be broadcast by debate. Facts continue to belie conservative economic theory. Yet, conservatives repeatedly assert the magic of the marketplace. Remove all government controls, defund services for the poor and unfortunate, privatize all government functions, and the marketplace will resolve all economic ills. They close mental institutions, diminished subsidized low-cost housing, and the homeless roam the cities and suburbs, many of them talking to themselves and cursing bystanders. They remove government restraints on savings and loans institutions; consequently, directors were able to fleece their firms or run them into bankruptcy with speculative investments. In an era of tight budgets and large deficits, enormous resources were expended to bail out savings and loans, unevenly. Johnson complained that Hoover supported emergency aid to those on top that was denied those on the bottom; similarly, today’s Resolution Trust gave an extension of time to an association with well-to-do Boston depositors and denied a similar request to one in Harlem serving churches. No one is happy with contemporary municipal management of low-cost housing, a program earlier supported by Borah. Privatize! Two million dollars in federal subsidies to maintain Noble Drew Ali Plaza in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was illegally diverted between 1989 and 1996 by the owners, Leon Mochkin and Chaim Fishman; in the meantime, citations for a thousand building code violations for perilous and unsanitary conditions were ignored, including sewage backups, rodent and insect infestation and carbon monoxide fumes from a cracked boiler flue. Nursing care for the elderly is not well performed by government. Privatize! But privatization has produced companies like Beverly Enterprises, owners and operators of 561 nursing homes: bottom-line economies produced treatment of the elderly so atrocious that the company was banned in the state of Washington, forced out of Maine after investigations, had its Medicaid payments suspended in Texas and was fined $724,000 in California and put on probation. Skimping on necessary qualified employees is the secret of financial success throughout the industry, often with painful and deadly results. Medicare funding in the future may face a shortfall. Privatize, suggests an advisory commission, even though the additional administrative expenses to be paid by the taxpayer will require removing from Medicare the cost of training medical personnel. It is no secret that profits for private insurers depend upon withholding services, to the point that corrective legislation has been proposed; some private insurers have already withdrawn from the supplementary market.

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Inner-city schools have been destructively underfunded, ignoring Costigan’s admonition that if ‘‘life is all, education is all but all’’; meanwhile suburban counterparts prosper. Privatize! Where private firms have assumed responsibility for inner-city schools, they have either performed more poorly, or no better. None have achieved the level of public schools run by the most imaginative principals. In Albany and elsewhere, where vouchers have been employed, private schools receiving vouchers have refused to supply data that would permit an evaluation. At best, vouchers could help a few students chosen by the private schools but would do nothing for those students who remain in underfunded schools, housed in deteriorating buildings. The power of the myth of the marketplace is very strong. But the prospects do not look promising. And the danger to the historical role of public education as an aid in the socialization process and as a vehicle for social mobility portends a frightening reversion to the early nineteenth century. ‘‘Tax reform’’ is more conservative economic magic. When Norris spoke of ‘‘tax reform’’ he emphasized an inheritance tax, the least burdensome of taxes, which would prevent the accumulation of wealth that induces national misery and has caused the collapse of civilizations. Norris, Borah and Johnson wanted a more steeply progressive income tax to lighten the burden on small incomes, with dividends taxed at the same rate as income. Johnson, Costigan and McAdoo insisted that large corporations bear more of the cost of maintaining government services, the opposite of current trends. They all desired more equitable taxation. They expected those who benefited most from society to carry a fair share of the costs of society and proposed a tax structure that would restrain the growth of an hereditary plutocracy. Conservatives do not mean the same thing by ‘‘tax reform.’’ But whether they advocate a flat tax or the elimination of the capital gains tax, they intend for those who benefit most from society to benefit most from a tax cut and for the burdens of the tax cut to be shifted to those least able to bear it, either by increasing their portion of assessments with a value added tax or by decreasing beneficial services. In order to reduce the income tax for her wealthy friends and contributors, Governor Whitman of New Jersey raided employee pension funds, caused an increase in property taxes and tripled the state debt. Johnson would have identified conservative tax schemes with the Mellon tax cuts of the 1920s which he castigated as ‘‘unequal, inequitable, unjust’’; in fact, he called a motion picture admissions tax ‘‘a wretched assault on a poor man’s amusement.’’ Our progressives would have recognized the value added tax as a variation of unacceptable regressive sales taxes. Shifting the burden of taxes from the rich requires intellectual justification to become politically palatable. The Laffer supply-side curve was drawn on a dinner napkin, absent of factual data. It postulated that a reduction of the marginal tax rate on the rich would so stimulate investment and the economy that increased tax returns would permit greater military expenditures while balancing the budget. It defied all logic and history, for it was only a

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variation of the old ‘‘trickle down’’ myth, dismissed by Norris as ‘‘having a few crumbs brushed off the mahogany-top tables while we would grovel on the floor and pick them up,’’ rather than favor farmers and laborers and ‘‘let prosperity climb up.’’ Reagan tax reductions resulted in reduced real national investment (as opposed to transfers of wealth such as stock market speculation and corporate acquisitions). Three trillion dollars of debt later it was discredited. Another new conservative technique was to draw upon Borah’s use of conservative rhetoric for progressive ends and to quote from liberal icons for conservative ends. The martyred John Kennedy’s justification of a small tax cut was quoted: ‘‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’’ This clever phrase, that assumes equitable economic power and distribution, was proven untrue in the 1990s when the rising tide lifted all yachts and does not describe what really happened. That small federal tax cut was swamped by large increases in state and local taxes to pay for the cost of educating the baby boom generation. The economic upturn was actually stimulated by total government expenditures—for unnecessary military expansion, for increased educational facilities from kindergarten to graduate school and for the construction of the Eisenhower interstate network that inspired huge private expenditures to create suburbia. What is the picture two decades after the resurrection of corporate mythology? Corporate concentration, to a degree and in areas inconceivable during the Progressive Era, has gone unchecked, although Borah had warned that ‘‘the war between the republic and monopoly must be one of extinction.’’ All progress towards a more equitable distribution of income since the crash of 1929 has been wiped out and the direction reversed. The share of national income of the wealthiest 5% has risen between 1969 and 1996 from 15.6% to 20.3%, while that of the poorest 20% has declined from 5.6% to 4.2% in the same period. Compared to the early 1970s, median family income has not risen, although the average wife is working fifteen more hours per week. Real wages for 80% of the male work force have dropped. Real earnings for skilled workers have declined, only at a slower rate than that of the unskilled. Real income for many workers has plunged to the point that 40% of families using food banks have at least one adult with full-time employment. In contrast, 90% of the stock market gain has gone to the top 10% of the households, while the bottom 60% owns no stock. Where productivity growth until 1973 averaged 2.5%–3% a year, it declined to little more than 1%. Despite supply sider promises, there was a negative rate of savings in supposedly prosperous 1998. The family farmer, the hero of the Jeffersonian myth of a small landholder’s republic, whom Borah described as ‘‘the source of national wealth and contentment,’’ without whom, Norris insisted, ‘‘prosperity cannot always last,’’ has vanished as an economic force and is rapidly disappearing as a reality. There are 300,000 fewer farmers than there were twenty years ago and 75% less than 1960. Those who remain receive only nine cents of every

210

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retail food dollar as compared to forty-one cents for their 1910 counterparts. The capital requirements of the ‘‘Green Revolution’’ and the changes in federal subsidies, almost half of farm income, have favored corporate farming. Two percent of farms supply half of all food sales. Six percent of farms in the United States receive 59% of all farm income. Four big companies control 82% of the nation’s beef cattle market, while five major packers control 50% of the hog industry. Overproduction by corporate hog producers and imports from Canada under the NAFTA agreement have caused agricultural income to plummet. The price per hog paid to producers has declined from $110 to $29, while supermarkets continued to charge $3.99 a pound, or $304 per animal. Packing houses, often with partial ownership of corporate hog producers, have paid these firms higher prices under longterm contracts, in possible violation of the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. Desperate producers have accepted capital to prepare their farms to produce pigs under contract feeding arrangements with agricultural corporations. Hogs, and feed, come from out of the state, are fattened, and shipped back for slaughter. Farmers are left with polluting manure and a feeling that they have become serfs on their own farms. Everywhere there are signs of discontent, but this discontent is not aimed at the cause of public problems. Voting is at an all time low. In Minnesota a professional wrestler was elected governor as an independent. Anger is aimed at those who are different: gays, immigrants, Blacks, Latinos, the poor. From every outlet corporate mythology is broadcast. All the pundits offer corporate solutions. Instead of muckraking journals, magazines portray personal sensationalism. Cities that once boasted of thriving competition from diverse dailies now are reduced to one or two outlets owned by media moguls, delivering a similar message, possibly from a jointly owned printing press. It is hard to see how the public spotlight can be focused on the danger posed by transnationals to our social, economic and political health as long as there is no effective means of presenting a progressive alternative to corporate mythology. New techniques must be developed to broadcast a message aimed at serving the entire commonweal, as progressives and radicals did at the beginning of this century. Otherwise, it might not be long before we look back at the Gilded Age with nostalgia.

Selected Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES Manuscript Collections Library of Congress, Washington, DC William E. Borah Collection Bainbridge Colby Collection William Gibbs McAdoo Collection George W. Norris Collection Other Collections Edward Prentiss Costigan Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder Hiram Johnson Collection. University of California, Berkeley

Published Materials Borah, William E. ‘‘American Foreign Policy in a Nationalist World.’’ Foreign Affairs, 12(January, 1934), pp. iii–xii. ———. ‘‘Call Money and Stock Gambling.’’ World’s Work, 58(June, 1929), pp. 33– 34. ———. ‘‘Civic Righteousness.’’ Century, 114(1927), pp. 641–48. ———. ‘‘Constitutional Government.’’ Vital Speeches, 4(1937), pp. 4–7. ———. ‘‘Democracy Has Not Failed.’’ In J. M. Bachelor and R. L. Henry, eds., Challenging Essays in Modern Thought. New York, 1933. ———. ‘‘Fascism.’’ Vital Speeches, 3(1937), pp. 482–84. ———. ‘‘The Fetish of Force.’’ Forum, 74(August, 1925), pp. 240–45. ———. ‘‘Freedom of Speech.’’ In Irving White, ed., Essays in Value. New York, 1938. ———. ‘‘The Freedom of the Seas.’’ Current History, 29(1929), pp. 922–27.

212

Selected Bibliography

———. ‘‘Free Speech for Free Americans.’’ Christian Century, 52(1935), pp. 570– 73. ———. ‘‘The Ghost of Versailles at the Conference.’’ Nation, 113(1921), pp. 525– 26. ———. ‘‘How the World Court Can Be Perfected.’’ Ladies’ Home Journal, 40(October 1923), pp. 111–12. ———. ‘‘How to End War.’’ Nation, 119(1924), pp. 738–39. ———. ‘‘Issues Before the People.’’ Vital Speeches, 2(1936), pp. 412–15. ———. ‘‘Justice Willis Van Devanter.’’ Independent, 70(1911), pp. 457–58. ———. ‘‘Leadership Is Needed Most.’’ International Digest, 1(April, 1931), pp. 36– 38. ———. ‘‘The Liberty League.’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1934), p. 64. ———. ‘‘Militarism in a League of Nations.’’ Forum, 61(1919), pp. 297–306. ———. ‘‘Neighbors and Friends.’’ Nation, 124(1927), pp. 392–94. ———. ‘‘Our Imperative Task: To Mind Our Own Business.’’ In Lew Sarett and William Trufant Foster, eds., Modern Speeches on Basic Issues. Boston, 1939, pp. 279–85. ———. ‘‘Our Supreme Judicial Tribunal.’’ Vital Speeches, 3(1937), pp. 258–61. ———. ‘‘The People.’’ Outlook, 143(1934), pp. 133–44. ———. ‘‘Public Opinion Outlaws War.’’ Independent, 113(1924), pp. 147–49. ———. ‘‘The Renunciation of War.’’ Christian Century, 45(1928), pp. 166–68. ———. ‘‘The Reorganization of the Republican Party.’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1934), pp. 199–202. ———. ‘‘The Republican Victory, What Shall We Do With It?’’ Scribner’s Magazine, 77(1925), pp. 301–2. ———. ‘‘Retain the Arms Embargo.’’ Vital Speeches, 5(1939), pp. 397–99. ———. ‘‘Senator Borah on Russia.’’ NEA Journal, 20(1931), p. 285. ———. ‘‘The Spread of Intolerance.’’ Hearst’s International, 42(December, 1922), pp. 5, 112–14. ———. ‘‘The State and the Nation in Child Labor Regulation.’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: Supplement, 38(1911), pp. 154– 55. ———. ‘‘The Supreme Court.’’ Reader’s Digest, 28(March, 1936), pp. 1–6. ———. ‘‘The Supreme Court.’’ Americanism, 1(February, 1938), pp. 9–11. ———. ‘‘The Supreme Court Decision.’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1935), pp. 586–89. ———. ‘‘The Threat of Bolshevism in America—How to Meet It.’’ Current Opinion, 66(1919), pp. 152–53. ———. ‘‘The War with Monopoly.’’ Independent, 74(1913), pp. 524–27. ———. ‘‘What Our Position Should Be.’’ Vital Speeches, 5(1939), pp. 741–43. ———. ‘‘Why the Conference Must Act.’’ Sunset, 48(January, 1922), pp. 18–19, 73. ———. ‘‘Will Humanity Be Heard at Washington.’’ Sunset, 117(December, 1921), p. 3. Colby, Bainbridge. ‘‘The Adamson Law: The Public Viewpoint.’’ Academy of Political Science Proceedings, 7(January, 1917), pp. 185–88. ———. ‘‘The Democratic Ideal in International Relations.’’ Academy of Political Science, Proceedings, 7(July, 1917), pp. 313–15.

Selected Bibliography

213

———. ‘‘Roosevelt: The Story of an Animosity, His Hostility to Woodrow Wilson.’’ Current History, 32(August, 1930), pp. 857–63. ———. ‘‘Should War Debts Be Cancelled?’’ Academy of Political Science, Proceedings, 15(May, 1932), pp. 65–72. ———. ‘‘Some Thoughts on Our Shipping Policy.’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 82(March, 1919), pp. 338–41. Costigan, Edward P. ‘‘Education and the General Welfare.’’ National Educational Association Journal, 73(1935), pp. 73–83. ———. Public Ownership of Government, ed. George Creel. New York, 1940. ———. ‘‘Taxes on Wealth.’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1935), pp. 673–76. Goodykoontz, Colin B., ed. The Progressive Papers of Edward Prentiss Costigan. Boulder, CO, 1941. Johnson, Hiram. ‘‘The Boulder Canyon Project.’’ American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals, 135(1928), pp. 150–65. ———. ‘‘Converting the Colorado River into a National Asset.’’ Current History, 29(1929), pp. 786–92. ———. ‘‘Let’s Declare Ourselves.’’ Scribner’s Commentator, 11(1941), pp. 93–97. ———. ‘‘Propaganda for War.’’ Vital Speeches, 5(1939), pp. 348–52. ———. ‘‘Should Congress Outlaw the Sit-Down Strikes?’’ Congressional Digest, 16(1937), pp. 146–47. ———. ‘‘Should the London Treaty Be Ratified?’’ Congressional Digest, 9(1930), p. 167. ———. ‘‘Should Uncle Sam Operate Muscle Shoals?’’ Congressional Digest, 10(1930), pp. 147–50. McAdoo, William Gibbs. The Challenge. New York, 1928. ———. ‘‘Colonel Roosevelt and Monopoly.’’ New York Evening Journal, October 31, 1912. ———. Crowded Years. Cambridge, MA, 1931. ———. Public Service Corporations and the Public. New York, 1910. ———. ‘‘The Soul of a Corporation.’’ World’s Work 23(1912), pp. 579–72. Norris, George W. ‘‘American Neutrality.’’ Vital Speeches, 6(November 1, 1939), pp. 62–64. ———. ‘‘Big Banks Are Swallowing Industry.’’ The World Tomorrow, 16(March, 1933), p. 224. ———. ‘‘Boring from Within,’’ Nation, 121(September 16, 1925), pp. 297–99. ———. ‘‘Bryan as a Political Leader.’’ Current History Magazine, 22(September, 1925), pp. 859–67. ———. ‘‘Coddling the Lame Duck.’’ Independent, 114(1925), pp. 213–14. ———. ‘‘The Farmer’s Situation. A National Danger.’’ Current History Magazine, 24(April, 1926), pp. 9–13. ———. Fighting Liberal. New York, 1961. ———. ‘‘The Future of the Negro in Politics.’’ The Crisis, 38(September, 1931), p. 298. ———. ‘‘The Insurgents and the Party.’’ Metropolitan Magazine, 32(1910), pp. 656–62. ———. ‘‘Germany After Defeat.’’ New Republic, 110(1944), pp. 703–5. ———. Literary Digest, 118(October 13, 1934).

214

Selected Bibliography

———. ‘‘Mr. Dawes and the Senate Rules.’’ Forum, 74(October, 1925), pp. 581– 86. ———. ‘‘My Party, Right or Wrong.’’ Colliers, 73(June 21, 1924), pp. 5–6, 31. ———. ‘‘The One-House Legislature.’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 181(September, 1935), pp. 50–58. ———. ‘‘The One-House Legislature.’’ National Municipal Review, 24(February, 1935), pp. 87–89, 99. ———. ‘‘Pattern for the Welfare of All.’’ New Republic, 105(August 4, 1941), pp. 145–46. ———. ‘‘The Pennsylvania Patriot’s Duty; Elect a Democrat.’’ Nation, 123(July 14, 1926), pp. 28–29. ———. ‘‘Possibilities of the Completed Plant.’’ Current History, 28(1928), pp. 730– 33. ———. ‘‘The Power Trust in the Public Schools.’’ Nation, 129(1929), pp. 296–97. ———. ‘‘Progressives Unite.’’ New Republic, 107(1942), pp. 377–78. ———. ‘‘Put Not Your Faith in Parties.’’ Nation, 118(April 2, 1924), p. 369. ———. ‘‘Redistribution of Wealth.’’ Vital Speeches, 1(1935), pp. 3327–31. ———. ‘‘Reform of the Senate Rules.’’ Saturday Evening Post, 198(February 13, 1926), pp. 27, 169–73. ———. ‘‘Secrecy in the Senate.’’ Nation, 122(May, 5, 1928), pp. 498–99. ———. ‘‘Shall We Give Muscle Shoals to Henry Ford.’’ Saturday Evening Post, 196(May 24, 1924), pp. 30–31, 54–60. ———. ‘‘TVA on the Jordan.’’ Nation, 158(1944), pp. 589–91. ———. ‘‘Why Henry Ford Wants Muscle Shoals.’’ Nation, 117(1923), pp. 739–50. ———. ‘‘Why I Believe in the Direct Primary.’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 106(March, 1923), pp. 22–30. ———. ‘‘Why the Farm Bloc.’’ World Tomorrow, 11(1928), pp. 255–57. U.S. Congressional Record, 1906–1946.

SECONDARY SOURCES Dissertations and Theses Mulder, Ronald A. ‘‘The Insurgent Progressives and the New Deal.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1970.

Published Materials Allen, Lee N. ‘‘The McAdoo Campaign for the Presidential Nomination in 1924.’’ Journal of Southern History, 29(1963), pp. 211–18. Ashby, Leroy. The Spearless Leader. Urbana, IL, 1972. Babcock, Frederick. ‘‘Norris of Nebraska.’’ Nation, 125(1927), pp. 705–6. Broesamle, John J. William Gibbs McAdoo. Port Washington, NY, 1973. Burdette, Franklin L. ‘‘Nebraska, a Business Corporation.’’ The American Mercury, 34(March, 1935), pp. 360–64. China Weekly Review, 39(January, 1927), pp. 120–22. Commonweal, 37(November 20, 1942), p. 108.

Selected Bibliography

215

Feinman, Ronald. Twilight of Progressivism. Baltimore, 1981. Fellman, David. ‘‘The Liberalism of Senator Norris.’’ American Political Science Review, 40(February, 1946), pp. 27–51. Gompers, Samuel. ‘‘How Malignity Has Found Its Waterloo—McAdoo Disproves R. R. Managers’ Falsifications.’’ American Federationist, 29(1922), pp. 161– 76. Greenbaum, Fred. ‘‘Ambivalent Friends, Progressive Era Politicians and Organized Labor.’’ Labor’s Heritage, 6(Summer, 1994), pp. 62–76. ———. ‘‘The Anti-Lynching Bill of 1935: The Irony of ‘Equal Justice—Under Law’.’’ Journal of Human Relations, 15(1967), pp. 72–85. ———. Fighting Progressive: A Biography of Edward P. Costigan. Washington, DC, 1970. ———. ‘‘A ‘New Deal’ for the United Mine Workers of America.’’ Social Science, 33(1958), pp. 153–59. ———. ‘‘Teddy Roosevelt Creates a ‘Draft’ in 1912.’’ In Natalie Naylor, Douglas Brinkley, and John Allen Gable, eds., Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American. Interlaken, NY, 1992. Greenwood, Annie Pike. ‘‘Bill Borah and Other Home Folk.’’ Nation, 116(1923), pp. 235–38. Grover, David H. ‘‘Borah and the Haywood Trial.’’ Pacific Historical Review, 32(1963), pp. 65–77. Hamilton, Marty. ‘‘Bull Moose Plans an Encore: Hiram Johnson and the Presidential Campaign of 1932.’’ California Historical Society Quarterly, 41(1962), pp. 211–21. Hard, William. ‘‘Borah and ’36 and Beyond.’’ Harper’s, 172(1936), pp. 575–83. Hemphill, James C. ‘‘William Gibbs McAdoo.’’ North American Review, 206(1917), pp. 80–89. Hendrick, Burton J. ‘‘Johnson of California.’’ World’s Work, 33(1917), pp. 289–94. ———. ‘‘McAdoo.’’ World’s Work, 26(1913), pp. 626–37. ———. ‘‘McAdoo and the Subway.’’ McClure’s Magazine, 36(1911), pp. 484–500. Hennings, Robert E. ‘‘California Democratic Politics in the Period of Republican Ascendancy.’’ Pacific Historical Review, 31(1962), pp. 267–80. Hernon, Joseph. Hubris and Heroism in the United States Senate. New York, 1997. Horowitz, David. ‘‘Senator Borah’s Crusade to Save Small Business from the New Deal.’’ Historian, 55(1993), pp. 693–708. Inglis, William. ‘‘Celebrities at Home: William Gibbs McAdoo.’’ Harper’s Weekly, 53(October 16, 1909), pp. 10–12, 32. Israel, Fred. ‘‘Bainbridge Colby and the Progressive Party, 1914–1916.’’ New York History, 40(January, 1959), pp. 33–45. Johnson, Claudius O. ‘‘When William E. Borah Was Defeated for the United States Senate.’’ Pacific Historical Review, 12(1943), pp. 125–38. Knapper, Theodore. ‘‘The West at Washington.’’ Sunset, 57(November, 1926), pp. 49, 81–83. Lief, Alfred. Democracy’s Norris. New York, 1939. Lippmann, Walter. Men of Destiny. New York, 1927. ———. ‘‘Two Leading Democratic Candidates: McAdoo.’’ New Republic, 23(June 2, 1920), pp. 10–11. Lower, Richard Coke. A Bloc of One. Stanford, CA, 1993.

216

Selected Bibliography

———. ‘‘Hiram Johnson: The Making of an Irreconcilable.’’ Pacific Historical Review, 41(1972), pp. 505–26. Lowitt, Richard. ‘‘George Norris and the New Deal in Nebraska, 1933–1936.’’ Agricultural History, 51(1977), pp. 396–405. ———. George W. Norris, the Making of a Progressive, 1861–1912. Syracuse, NY, 1963. ———. ‘‘A Neglected Aspect of the Progressive Movement: George W. Norris and Public Control of Hydro-Electric Power, 1913–1919.’’ Historian, 27(1965), pp. 350–65. Lowry, E. G. ‘‘Norris.’’ Colliers, 65(January 31, 1920), pp. 14, 34. ———. ‘‘Norris—and His Type.’’ Colliers, 53(July 18, 1914), p. 20. Lukas, J. Anthony. Big Trouble. New York, 1997. Maddox, Robert James. William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy. Baton Rouge, LA, 1969. McKee, Irving. ‘‘The Background and Early Career of Hiram Johnson, 1866–1910.’’ Pacific Historical Review, 19(1950), pp. 17–30. McKenna, Marion C. Borah. Ann Arbor, MI, 1961. Mowry, George. The California Progressives. Chicago, 1963. National Municipal Review, 33(October, 1944), p. 489. Neuberger, Richard. ‘‘Political Notes from the Northwest.’’ Nation, 142(1936), pp. 610–12. ———. ‘‘Prairie Senator.’’ Survey Graphic, 28(December, 1939), pp. 724–27. Neuberger, Richard L. and Kahn, Stephen B. Integrity, the Life of George W. Norris. New York, 1937. New York Times, 1906–1946. Olin, Spencer. California’s Prodigal Sons. Los Angeles, 1968. Page, Kirby. ‘‘Senator Borah, Outlawry and the League.’’ World Tomorrow, 11(1928), pp. 198–202. Radosh, Ronald. American Labor and Foreign Policy. New York, 1970. Sarasohn, David. Party of Reform. Jackson, MS, 1989. ‘‘Senator Borah and the Freedom of the Seas.’’ Roundtable, 19(1929), pp. 280–94. Shaffer, Joseph M. ‘‘McAdoo—the Man.’’ Independent, 97(1919), pp. 200–201, 237. Smith, Beverly. ‘‘The Lone Rider from Idaho.’’ American Magazine, 113(March, 1932), pp. 39–40, 94–102. Smith, Daniel M. ‘‘Bainbridge Colby and the Good Neighbor Policy, 1920–1921.’’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 50(June, 1963), pp. 56–78. Stone, James A. ‘‘The Norris Program in 1924.’’ Nebraska History, 42(1961), pp. 124–39. Stratton, David H. ‘‘Splattered with Oil: William G. McAdoo and the 1924 Democratic Presidential Nomination.’’ Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 44(1963), pp. 62–75. Sutton, Walter A. ‘‘Bryan, LaFollette, Norris: Three Mid-Western Politicians.’’ Journal of the West, 8(1969), pp. 613–30. Toth, Charles. ‘‘Isolationism and the Emergence of Borah: An Appeal to American Tradition.’’ Western Political Quarterly, 14(1961), pp. 555–68. Vinson, John Chalmers. William E. Borah and the Outlawry of War. Athens, GA, 1957.

Selected Bibliography

217

Watchorn, Robert. ‘‘The Builder of the Hudson Tunnels.’’ Outlook, 90(1908), p. 909. Wildman, Edwin. ‘‘William Gibbs McAdoo—the Man Behind the Treasury.’’ Forum, 58(October, 1917), pp. 391–402. Wilhelm, Donald. ‘‘If He Were President.’’ Independent, 100(1920), pp. 145–48. Woolf, Samuel. Drawn From Life. New York, 1932. ———. ‘‘Should the United States Recognize Russia.’’ Rotarian, 43(October, 1933), pp. 12–13, 50–51. Yarres, Victor. ‘‘Senator Borah and Monopolies.’’ Christian Century, 53(1936), pp. 262–63.

Index Adamson Act, 70, 155 Agricultural Adjustment Act, 20, 31, 73, 74, 114, 145, 159–60, 180, 181– 82 Agriculture, 8, 16, 54, 66, 84, 206, 209–10; and myth, 2–5, 19; problems and government, 19–21, 23, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31, 64, 72–74, 81, 99, 101, 109–12, 114, 119–20, 133, 144–46, 159, 160, 180, 181–82, 184, 199, 206, 209–10 Aldrich, Nelson, 11, 21, 27, 55, 133 Aldrich-Vreeland Act, 27, 133 Alger, Horatio, 4 American Tobacco Case, 62 Aristotle, 1, 2 Bellamy, Edward, 4 Bill of Rights, 124, 137, 148, 161 Black, Hugo, 15, 71, 112, 118, 119 Bolshevik: government, 164; regime, 77; revolution, 102; supporters, 103 Bonneville Dam, 147 Borah, William E., 6, 53–86, 101, 104, 106, 109, 111, 122, 159, 193–94, 195–99, 203–9; agriculture, 72–74; background, 53–55; banking, 65–67; foreign affairs, 74–86; judiciary, 59–

60; labor, 69–72; monopoly, 61–67; New Deal, 61–69; party and political reform, 60–61; railroads, 64–65; ‘‘Red Scare,’’ 57–59; relief, 67–69; small business, 64–65; state and nation, 55–60; tariff, 67, 73, 76, 81; women, 60 Boulder Dam, 142, 147, 179 Brandeis, Louis, 134, 198 Burke, Edmund, 53, 154 Butler, Pierce, 15 Canadian Reciprocity Treaty, 21 Cannon, Joseph, 8–10 Capitalism, 2–6, 131 Carnegie, Andrew, 4 ‘‘Cash and Carry,’’ 38, 85–86, 122 Clark, Champ, 10 Clark, John Bates, 5 Civilian Conservation Corps, 32, 37, 68 Clayton Anti-Trust Act, 23, 26, 69, 154, 198 Colby, Bainbridge, 6, 153–66, 193, 195, 197–98, 203, 206; background, 153; corporations, 156–62; depression, 158–62; electoral reform, 153– 54; foreign affairs, 162–66; judiciary, 160–61; labor, 154–56; New Deal,

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Index

158–62; prohibition, 154; radicals, 154; Shipping Board, 157; tariff, 161– 62; Woodrow Wilson, 154–55 Congress, 97; and agriculture, 19, 21, 72–74, 114, 159–60, 181–82; and business, 23–28, 32, 62, 66, 114, 134, 141–43, 159, 177–78, 183–84, 196, 207; and immigration, 99; as institution, 8–10, 12–14, 15, 16, 56, 58–60, 63, 68, 106, 119, 120, 156, 161, 162, 163, 165–66, 193; and labor, 29–31, 69–72, 108, 115–18, 197; and prohibition, 34; and war, 37–39, 76, 80, 101–3, 121–24 Conscription, 36, 80, 102, 123–24 Conservation, 74, 99, 145, 153–54, 172, 179–80 Coolidge, Calvin, 21, 25, 75, 106, 113, 184 Corporate, corporations: and agricultural exports, 20, 31, 109, 206; control by, 13, 15, 35, 36, 62–68, 97, 99, 114–15, 137–39, 146, 154, 162, 172–73, 177, 178, 180, 196, 197, 199, 203–4, 206, 209–10; control of, 6, 22–23, 26, 62–68, 139–40, 142–43, 159, 162, 177–81, 188, 197–99, 201–2; as federal yardstick, 22; and judiciary, 3; law practice, 54, 55, 132, 156, 171; leadership, 4; and legislators, 13; mythology, 2; taxation, 28, 102, 183–84, 208–9 Costigan, Edward P., 6, 122, 171–88, 193, 194–97, 199, 202–3, 205, 206, 208; agriculture, 181–82; background, 171; conservation, 172, 179– 80; corporations, 176–85; depression, 185; education, 176; finance, 178–85; foreign affairs, 185–88; human nature, 172–74; judiciary, 172–75; labor, 177–78, 180–82, 188; lynching, 175; New Deal, 177–84; political reform, 172, 173–76; precedent, 174– 75; public utilities, 178–79; relief, 182–83; role of government, 171–85; tariff, 182, 184–85; tax, 183–84 Costigan-LaFollette Relief Bill, 68, 111 Cutting, Bronson, 68, 116, 181

Darwin, Charles, 4, 5 Direct Primary League, 98 Doheny, Edward, 135 Economic law, 2–6, 8, 57, 66–67, 81, 102, 137, 139–43, 156–60, 172, 184–85, 205–9 Electric power, 25–26, 111, 115, 116, 142–43, 147, 157–58, 160, 179 Ely, Richard, 5 Enlightenment, 1, 2, 137 Esch-Cummins Act, 24, 67, 108, 142, 196 Esch-Townshend Bill, 24 Espionage and Sedition Act, 32, 57–58, 102, 136 Export Debenture Bill, 20, 73, 109 Farm Board, 20, 32, 73, 145, 146 Federal Power Commission, 111, 179 Federal Reserve, 23, 27, 66, 72, 114, 133, 136–37, 144 Federal Trade Commission, 22, 23, 56, 63, 110, 154, 177, 197 Fifth Amendment, 175 Flexible tariff, 112, 145, 185, 197, 206 Ford, Henry, 25, 71, 113, 142, 143 Fourteen Points, 103 Fourteenth Amendment, 3, 56, 137, 175, 177 Frazier, Lynn, 11, 119 General Strike, 1, 118, 156 George, Henry, 4, 183 Good Neighbor policy, 121 Hamilton, Alexander, 54, 73, 83, 173, 198 Harding, Warren, 12, 16, 82, 110, 137, 144 Hawley-Smoot Act, 112 Haywood, William, 54, 60 Hepburn Act, 24, 196 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 175 Home Owners Loan Corporation, 18, 27 Hoover, Herbert, 20, 23, 73, 81, 111– 13, 120, 142, 146, 158, 179, 207

Index Hoover, J. Edgar, 33 Hopkins, Harry, 68, 120 Hughes, Charles Evans, 15, 16, 77, 81, 100, 118, 154, 163, 164 Ickes, Harold, 18, 69, 117 Immigration, 33, 34, 99, 105, 165 Industrial Workers of the World, 58, 102, 156 Injunction, 15, 31, 70 Interstate Commerce Commission, 20, 23, 64, 110, 136, 196 Jefferson, Thomas, 2, 9, 19, 29, 37, 53, 54, 58, 72, 131, 135, 136, 137, 138, 163, 188, 209 Johnson, Hiram, 6, 97–124, 137, 145, 193–99, 202–5, 206–8; agriculture, 109–11, 114; background, 97–98; depression, 110–21; government and economy, 107–21; foreign affairs, 105–7, 121–24; governor, 98–100; immigrants, 105; labor and unions, 98, 99–100, 102, 108, 117–18; New Deal, 113–21; race, 105, 121; ‘‘Red Scare,’’ 104–5; tariff, 109, 112, 116, 121, Versailles, 103–4; World War One, 101–3 Jones-Costigan Act, 20, 74, 114, 182 Judiciary, 14–17, 55, 59, 83, 118–19, 147–48, 156, 160–61, 197 Kellogg-Briand Pact, 41, 106, 164, 193 Ku Klux Klan, 113, 135, 153 Labor and unions, 2, 4, 6, 15, 29–32, 54, 55, 61, 63, 68–72, 74, 76, 78, 98–100, 102, 103, 108, 117–18, 133, 137, 140–41, 143–45, 146, 155–56, 175, 177–78, 180–82, 185, 188, 195–96, 201, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209 LaFollette, Robert M., Jr., 11, 118, 183 LaFollette, Robert M., Sr., 11, 85, 101, 106, 113, 193, 195, 197, 198, 205 Lame-duck amendment, 12

221

League of Nations, 39, 40, 41, 80, 83, 84, 103–6, 107, 112, 117, 121, 163, 164, 187, 193 League to Enforce Peace, 79 Liberty League, 57, 117 Lincoln-Roosevelt League, 98 Lusitania, 78, 101, 163, 187 Lynching, 33–34, 57, 120–21, 175 Madison, James, 9, 10, 83, 86 Mann-Elkins Act, 24, 196 Marx, Karl, 1, 160 McAdoo, William Gibbs, 6, 131–48, 193, 195–99, 202–6, 208; agriculture, 144–46; background, 131–32; corporate power, 137–43; depression, 146–48; judiciary, 147–48; labor, 143–45; prohibition, 137; New Deal, 144–48; ‘‘Red Scare,’’ 136; role of government, 135–48; tariff, 133, 139, 140, 145; Teapot Dome, 135; as treasurer, 133–35 McNary-Haugen Bill, 20, 73, 109 McReynolds, James, 15 Merchant Marine, 37, 64, 65, 109, 134, 142, 157, 161, 196, 199 Monroe Doctrine, 39, 75, 78, 80, 104, 162, 163, 165 Morgan, J. P., 22, 106 Muscle Shoals, 25–26, 65, 114, 179 Myth, 1–6, 19, 20, 23, 24, 33, 53, 54, 60, 97, 131, 132, 137, 157, 162, 163, 180, 202, 205, 208–10 National Labor Relations Act, 70, 156 National Progressive League, 158 Neutrality, 35, 78, 101, 163, 166, 187 Neutrality Acts, 37, 84–85, 121–23, 165 Newton, Isaac, 2, 205 Norris, George, 6, 7–41, 53, 54, 61, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 78, 85, 114, 122, 142, 144, 145, 147, 177, 193–99, 202–6, 208–9; agriculture, 19–22; background, 7–8; congressional reform, 8–10; corporations, 22–28; depression, 32; election reform, 11–14; foreign affairs, 34–41;

222

Index

judiciary, 14–17, 19; labor, 29–32; prohibition, 34; race, 33–34; ‘‘Red Scare,’’ 32–33; tariff, 20–22; taxes, 28–29 Norris-LaGuardia Act, 15, 70 Ordered society, 1, 137 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 33 Parker, John J., 15 Patten, Simon, 5 Payne, Sereno, 10, 11, 21 Payne-Aldrich Tariff, 11, 21 Perkins, George, 63, 177 Philippine: acquisition, 187; immigrants, 105; independence, 34, 187; tariff schedule, 21 Pinchot, Amos, 197 Pinchot, Gifford, 11, 25, 101 Populist ideas, 4, 9, 11, 28 Power, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 16, 18, 23, 27, 30, 53, 56–57, 58, 59, 60, 62– 64, 66, 70, 71, 73, 75, 78, 80, 83, 86, 99, 103, 107, 114, 117, 118–30, 133, 135–38, 139, 140, 144, 146, 148, 154, 156, 159, 160, 161, 164, 172, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 188, 193, 194, 196–98, 199, 201, 204, 205, 209 Preparedness, 36, 78, 101, 134, 163, 175, 186 Progressive Party, 61, 99, 114, 154, 177, 181, 195 Prohibition, 34, 83, 110, 137, 138, 195 Public Works Administration, 115, 147 Reciprocal tariffs, 112, 161–62 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 32, 68, 111, 146 ‘‘Red Scare,’’ 58, 70, 104–5, 136 Relief, 19, 31–32, 67–69, 111, 113, 115, 117, 120, 146–47, 158, 181, 182, 203 Ricardo, David, 4, 183 Roberts, Owen, 16, 118

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 11, 15, 18, 31, 67, 113–30, 146–48, 157–62, 165–66, 175, 183, 187, 193, 195 Roosevelt, Theodore, 11, 22, 24, 34, 55, 60, 63, 74, 78, 101, 105, 132– 33, 153, 154, 155, 160, 163, 177, 186, 193, 194, 195, 198 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 8 Serf, 1, 98, 210 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 177 Shipping Board, 20, 108, 134, 142, 157, 196 Shipstead, Hendrik, 11 Slavery, 2, 60, 61, 71, 131, 186, 199 Small business, 6, 61, 64, 99, 107, 159, 184, 198, 206 Smith, Adam, 205 Smith, Alfred, 34, 117, 135 Smith-Lever Act, 154 Social Security, 30, 182–83, 203, 204 Sorel, George, 1 Spencer, Herbert, 4, 5 Stabilization Corporation, 109, 110 State, 3, 5, 6, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 26, 28, 32, 53, 56, 57, 60, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 78, 86, 97, 98–100, 108, 111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 142, 146, 153, 159, 172, 175, 176, 178, 180, 183, 194–95, 196, 199, 203, 204, 208, 209, 210 States’ rights, 55–57, 136, 177 Steunenberg, Frank, 54 Stone, Harlan, 15, 16 Taft, William Howard, 11, 18 Tariff, 2, 6, 9, 11, 20–22, 67, 73, 76, 81, 109, 112, 116, 121, 131, 133, 139, 140, 145, 153, 154, 161–62, 172, 177, 181, 182, 184–85, 196– 97, 199, 205, 206 Tariff Commission, 21, 22, 112, 133, 184, 185, 197, 206 Teapot Dome, 14, 15, 26, 61, 110, 135, 205 Trust and monopoly, 5, 6, 8, 16, 21– 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 35, 61–67, 70,

Index 72, 104, 110, 115, 133, 135, 140– 41, 156–58, 159, 172, 176–79, 184, 195–98, 205, 209–10 Tumulty, Joseph, 135 Underwood Tariff, 133 United Nations, 124 Vera Cruz, 35, 75, 162 Versailles, 34, 39, 79–81, 82, 84, 104, 106, 193 Wallace, Henry, 74, 112, 119 War, 6, 14, 19, 20, 24, 25, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35–41, 57–59, 65, 72, 75, 78– 86, 100–109, 112, 121–24, 131, 133–34, 136, 141–43, 155, 161–66,

223

175, 182, 186–87, 193–94, 196, 198, 203, 206 Washington Conference, 41, 82, 106, 193 Webster, Daniel, 2 Wheeler, Burton K., 11, 158 Whig philosophy, 137 Wilson, Woodrow, 14, 16, 17, 23, 24, 27, 35, 36, 39, 58, 59, 64, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 100, 101, 103, 109, 115, 120, 133, 134, 138, 144, 154, 155, 162, 163, 165, 171, 186, 195, 198, 199 Women’s suffrage, 54, 60, 99, 155 Works Progress Administration, 18, 68, 116, 117, 120, 147, 160 Zimmerman Note, 78

About the Author FRED GREENBAUM is Professor of History at Queensborough Community College, City University of New York. Professor Greenbaum has published widely on reform in America, including Fighting Progressive: A Biography of Edward P. Costigan and Robert Marion LaFollette.