The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America by Marc Levinson

Author:Marc Levinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

17

DEFYING DEATH

For the first time since winning his congressional seat in 1928, Patman faced serious opposition in the July 1938 Democratic primary. He blamed the opposition on chain-store interests, but there was more to the story. Democrats in Texas, and in other parts of the country, had finally split over the New Deal, and conservative Democrats took on Roosevelt supporters in many of that year’s primary races. In Texarkana, though, Roosevelt remained highly popular. Patman portrayed himself as Roosevelt’s man, and his opponents made hay when the president failed to stop in the district on his train trip to California in early July. “This has reached the point I earnestly urge you to send me telegram of some sort as primary only few days off,” Patman telegraphed to Roosevelt in San Francisco on July 15. A frantic telegram to Marvin McIntyre, Roosevelt’s secretary, followed the next morning. Roosevelt, about to embark on a Pacific cruise, evidently had no desire to become entangled with the volatile congressman. Patman heard back from McIntyre, not Roosevelt: “The president asked me to wire you and express his regret that he could not come to Texarkana on his trip across Texas.” Patman used McIntyre’s tepid telegram as best he could, issuing a press release: “President Roosevelt Wires Personal Regards to Congressman Patman.”1

Patman won his primary, and immediately made known his desire to replace a defeated Texas congressman on the House Ways and Means Committee. The position was much coveted, for the committee had jurisdiction over all tax matters, including the chain-store tax bill. Patman’s Texas colleague Sam Rayburn, the House majority leader, controlled the appointment. Another Texas congressman also wanted the job, and Rayburn advised Patman to seek support from other members of the state’s delegation. Patman did so aggressively, writing to his colleagues, their supporters, and their local newspaper publishers. “It is very probable I will be a member of the Ways and Means Committee,” Patman wrote to a supporter in September. But there were problems. Several Texas congressmen strongly opposed the chain-store tax and refused their support. “It looks like the chains are trying to block my selection,” Patman wrote to the head of the Texas Wholesale Grocers’ Association in late October. Rayburn urged him to seek out Vice President John Nance Garner, another Texan and former Speaker of the House, who by this point had broken with Roosevelt and favored more conservative policies. “Dear Sam: I am not going to see Mr. Garner,” Patman rejoined. At the start of 1939, Rayburn and William Bankhead, the Speaker of the House, sent Patman a blunt rejection letter expressing “our desire that you not further consider becoming a member of the Committee on Ways and Means but remain a member of the Committee on Banking and Currency.”2

Someone more skilled in reading signals might have drawn certain conclusions from Roosevelt’s studied avoidance, Rayburn’s hesitation, and Bankhead’s remoteness. These men, occupying high positions in the national government, faced serious worries in 1938. In Europe, an aggressively expansionist

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