The Crisis of the Old Order by Arthur M. Schlesinger

Author:Arthur M. Schlesinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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By February 1932, the crisscross of maneuver was becoming more intense than ever. Roosevelt’s strategy was clear. It was to keep his lines open to the old Bryan-McAdoo wing of the party, now partly committed to the Garner candidacy, and to dissuade the Garner group from reaching an agreement with Smith. He was assisted in this project by the ancient hatreds that still divided Smith from McAdoo and from Hearst, as well as by the natural distaste of southern and western agrarians for eastern business. And he resolved now to take further steps to propitiate Hearst as the moving force behind the Garner movement. Baker’s repudiation of the League had left Roosevelt exposed as the most internationalist of the candidates. Colonel House tried to persuade Hearst privately that there was no reason to worry about Roosevelt’s views on foreign policy, but Hearst demanded a public statement. Early in February, Roosevelt accordingly declared that the League was no longer the League conceived by Woodrow Wilson; it might have been had the United States joined, but “the fact remains that we did not join.” In present circumstances, he said, “I do not favor American participation.”25

For the rest, Roosevelt continued to pound home his social and economic views. In a radio speech early in April he renewed his call for planning. In a slap at the Smith-Baruch enthusiasm for public works, Roosevelt said that, even if billions could be raised and useful works could be found, public works could only be a stopgap. “A real economic cure must go to the killing of the bacteria in the system rather than to the treatment of external symptoms.” A first necessity, he said, was to restore purchasing power to the farming half of the country. Then there must be a program of saving farms and homes from mortgage foreclosure; the government could “provide at least as much assistance to the little fellow as it is now giving to the large banks and corporations.” Another need was tariff revision “on the basis of a reciprocal exchange,” allowing other nations to pay for our goods by sending us their goods. The government must begin to think in terms of “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”

The reference to the “forgotten man” struck an immediate response. A few days later, speaking at a Jefferson Day dinner in St. Paul, he expanded on the dangers of class government. He cited the electric power field where, as a “result of our blindness, of our failure to regulate, and of our failure to say that if private capital will not operate for a reasonable profit, Government will have to operate itself,” Americans must pay “vastly more for that very necessary part of our modern life—electricity—than they should be paying.” Not only must states reassert the public authority over private interests, but the country must recognize that the economic problem was national in scope and could be solved “only by the firm establishment of national control.” What the nation

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