NDN  |  Photo Gallery  |  Documents  |  Classroom  |  Search

    Publishing Information

    Roosevelt Fights Back

    By Robert S. Allen

    The Nation
    August 21, 1937
    Vol. 145, No. 8, P. 187

  1. Exactly one year ago Mr. Roosevelt began the election campaign that was to return him to the White House by the greatest victory in the history of the presidency. With him he carried into office Democratic Congress of unprecedented proportions. In a few days the first session of that Congress will come to a close. It will leave behind it a sordid record of broken promises and shattered hopes. With the single exception of the $1,500,000,000 relief appropriation, every major item of the President's legislative program has been slaughtered or mutilated beyond recognition.

  2. The court bill that finally emerged from the wreckage of his six-judge plan is a travesty on the far-reaching reforms he sought. It is true that under the threat of the President's attack Chief Justice Hughes and Justice Roberts, performing the miraculous feat of reversing themselves in mid-air, forced the Court, by the hairline margin of a five-to-four count, to go "liberal." It is also true that under the same pressure Justice Van Devanter, one of the reactionary hatchet-men, was prevailed on to retire to his Maryland acres. But the real essence of the President's assault on the judicial oligarchy was destroyed. That oligarchy remains unchanged and unbroken.

  3. The wage-hour bill, after being whittled down to a wraith in the Senate, was garroted in the House Rules Committee by a coalition of reactionary Southern Democrats and Republicans. The action of the committee in refusing to give the measure a rule so it could be considered by the House, where its passage was certain, was an infamous and sinister usurpation of power. Never before in the history of the House has the Rules Committee blocked a bill sought by the President and the majority party in office. After three years of heart-breaking struggle, a feeble caricature of the Wagner low-cost housing bill was finally adopted. Led by Senator Harry Byrd, millionaire orchardist of Virginia, a combination of Southern Democrats, Republicans, and renegade Western progressives, including Wheeler of Montana, Nye and Frazier of North Dakota, and Johnson of California, sabotaged the measure in the Senate by limiting construction costs to $1,000 a room. This restriction eliminates any possibility of slum clearance in the great industrial centers which need it most. In the House Banking Committee the legislation was still further aborted by a reduced appropriation. The record in agriculture is a complete blank. And the same may be said of the President's government reorganization plan.

  4. This audacious rout of his whole program has left the President angry and embittered. Men close to him say they have never seen him so aroused. The capital abounds with reports of his ire. The story is told that when Roy Howard, head of the Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers, recently called on the President, he took his caller sharply to task for abandoning the liberalism of "old man Scripps" and going reactionary. It is related that Senator Tom Connally, long-haired bellower from Texas, and Senator "Cotton Ed" Smith, Tory chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, ran into unexpected tongue-lashings when they hot-footed it to the White House to demand government loans after the break in the cotton market. Even the newspapermen have been caustically rebuked.

  5. What the President is going to do about his rebuffs and mauling at the hands of the reactionaries in Congress besides bawling out the Howards, Connallys, and "Cotton Ed" Smiths is a subject in which they as well as his liberal supporters are intensely interested. In the opinion of this writer he is going to do a lot about it. He has already begun to hit back. The appointment of Senator Black to the Supreme Court vacancy was the first blow.

  6. The hard-hitting Alabama liberal was not seriously considered for the place until the President's fury against the reactionary Southern Democrats boiled over. When the House Rules Committee completed the wreckage of his legislative program by autocratically blocking consideration of the wage-hour bill, he brushed aside his previous plan to make a middle-of-the-road appointment and turned to the one leader in the South who had gone 100 per cent down the line for him. Black's selection is an excellent one. He is comparatively young, he is a good lawyer, he is a liberal of proven courage, and he has had twelve years of exceptional experience in national affairs.

  7. Had the Southern coterie not destroyed his legislative program and challenged his continued leadership of the Democratic Party, the President would not have named Black. But angered to fighting pitch by obstructionism and revolt, he threw the Alabama New Dealer into their faces as the first gauge of battle. The President first began seriously thinking of appointing Black after Vice-President Garner betrayed him by surrendering on the court fight. When the Southerners came within an ace of defeating the wage-hour bill and later crippled the housing measure, this impulse developed into a definite intention. The day after the housing bill crept out of the Senate a mangled wreck, a White House emissary asked Black if he would accept the Supreme Court appointment if it was given him. The answer was yes. A week later, on the night of the day that the Rules Committee turned thumbs down on the wage-hour bill, the President made up his mind. He told no one that he had done so, not even his personal secretaries. At 10 o'clock the following night he summoned Black to the White House and informed him of his decision.

  8. What the President's next move in the struggle will be remains to be seen. Some of his militant advisers have urged him to jerk Congress back into special session this fall and demand that it enact his program. Other counsellors have cautioned patience and a more deliberate counter-attack. They favor taking advantage of the four-month interim before the next regular session by a campaign of "education" over the radio and sorties about the country. Such tactics, they contend, would enable the President to build local fires under his opponents and at the same time reinforce his own popular support. Whatever line of action the President follows, one thing is certain. The fight is on. Its consequences are incalculable, but they are sure to be far-reaching. A completely new political realignment, with Mr. Roosevelt seeking a third term at the head of a remodeled Democratic Party, is not at all improbable.

  9. The Old Guard axemen are riding high at the moment. The President has taken a very severe beating at their hands. But their triumph is pretty much a "palace revolution." The President has not lost his popular following. Even his enemies admit that. Further, he is angry and really aroused. And when Mr. Roosevelt hates, he hates deeply and vengefully. The President never forgets an affront or injury. And the reactionary politicos know that. This accounts for their well-grounded fear of reprisals and their clamorous yapping for assurances that none will be taken against them. Big Jim Farley has soothingly promised the boys that everything will be all right; but Mr. Roosevelt, very significantly, has said nothing. Finally, there is a highly important tactical factor that is playing into the President's hands. His reactionary enemies have overreached themselves. Had they stopped with the smashing of his court plan and let the remainder of his program go through he would have been hard put to raise the cry of obstructionism. They could have claimed that he had gone too far on the court issue, and pointed to the enactment of his other measures as proof of their patriotism and loyalty. But in scuttling his entire program they have created a situation exactly similar to that which one year ago enabled him, despite the opposition of most of the newspapers of the country, the frenzied howls of the Liberty League, the millions of the Du Ponts, Raskobs, Rockefellers, Morgans, and Mellons, and the walk-outs of the Al Smiths, Jim Reeds, and other turncoats, to sweep forty-six states, to the tune of 27,000,000 votes.

  10. The Old Guard in its berserk stupidity has put all the trump cards in the President's hands. He can annihilate it if he has the guts and intelligence to play them right.