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FDR and the Supreme Court
March 8, 1937
This letter is against your proposal for changing the Supreme Court and I trust your secretary will get it in the right category since my newspaper states you have received only approvals in your mail so far.
Living in the Dust Bowl I am unable to see that the Supreme Court has prevented the federal government from doing something about our dust. My soil conservation check isn't quite as large as my AAA one but it comes just as regularly and my compliance terms do emphasize soil conservation and better land use rather than simply curtailment of production as AAA did. And welcome as the check is, I can't help but know that agricultural benefit checks have encouraged the continuance in production of a lot of this cheap western land that would have gone back to grass these last six years, had the government program not made it profitable to continue seeding it. So, to me at least, who lives here, the argument that the Supreme Court's veto prevented you from doing anything about the Dust Bowl doesn't seem to be a very good one.
I do not know so much about the Ohio River flood and perhaps should not therefore express myself upon it. But just as the TVA dams prevented flood damage on the Tennessee, did not other government engineering also prevent flood damage along the Missippi [sic]? And did not the Supreme Court approve the building of dams on the Tennessee" And on all these other rivers?
Certainly a great deal can be done and has been done within the framework of the constitution even as interpreted by the present court. The practice of changing the judge because you don't like his decision is a precedent too dangerous to be set by the president of the United States. We shudder to think what fun some of your election supporters, Pendergast of Kansas City for instance, could have following such a precedent. And his candidates can always claim an overwhelming mandate from the people.
My family has been honest Democrats for generations and I am jealous for the integrity of the Democratic Party. I should have been glad had you carried this issue, which now seems so close to your heart, frankly and openly to the people during the last campaign instead of avoiding it. I should have been glad if you had introduced it to congress straight forwardly instead of hiding it in a judicial reorganization plan, I hope you will strive to honestly learn the attitude of the country on it rather than to obtain its passage by political pressures.
Sincerely yours
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