NDN  |  Photo Gallery  |  Documents  |  Classroom  |  Search

    Publishing Information

    F. D. R. Under Two Flags

    By Paul Y. Anderson

    The Nation
    February 5, 1938
    Vol. 146, No. 6, p. 147-149

    Washington, January 31

  1. To say the Administration hasn't the slightest notion whether it is coming or going might be stretching it. Chances are it still thinks it is going, but doesn't know where. It is not pleasant thus to concur in a censure which seems to be on the tongue of nearly every fathead and porch climber at large, but the truth must be recognized regardless of the company in which it is found. The most discernible quality of the Administration today is its lack of direction. Roosevelt needs a domestic policy. He has listened to his warring counselors long enough. He cannot continue to fight under two flags. At the moment his uncertainty is most painfully apparent, perhaps, in connection with government activity in the power field and the regulation of industry general. In one instance it is illustrated by his attitude toward the struggle between the TVA and Wendell Willkie's Commonwealth and Southern system; in the other, by his position between the irreconcilable philosophies of Robert Jackson and Donald Richberg. Sooner or later the President has got to decide how much government ownership he favors, and whether he wants the anti-trust laws enforced or discarded for some form of "voluntary self-regulation." It's simple, if not easy.

  2. In the matter of power there is substantial evidence that the President knows his own mind, but hesitates to speak it for fear of the possible effect on business. In the end he may elect to damn the torpedoes and go ahead, but he isn't gathering any headway. Indications are that he favors the program of Senator Norris, which, to put it roughly, is to have the government generate, transmit, and sell electricity wherever such a course would serve the essential purposes of flood control, navigation, soil conservation, and other public ends to which private companies cannot, by their very nature, give a passing thought. Yet he persists in repeating that only about 1 per cent of the private power industry is in actual or potential competition with the TVA, thus conveying an impression that competition on a much greater scale is not contemplated. Having recently accompanied the President on his visits to Bonneville, Grand Coulee, and Fort Peck, and listened to his speeches at each, I cannot, I am glad to say, be impressed by any such hints. I am convinced that he contemplates government competition on a very wide scale—or did before the recession sneaked up on him. He shouldn't let it divert him. This is no time to be pulling a Hoover. Willkie's grandstand play of offering to sell out to the government should not deceive even the bleacherites. Willkie is enough of a lawyer to know there isn't a chance in a million the Supreme Court Would appoint one of a commission of three to fix the price.

  3. That Donald Richberg continues to play around with the quaint idea of self-regulation by big business is evidence of his optimism and perseverance, or something. Unlike some, I do not ascribe it to his old immersion in the NRA. One of the most effective persuaders who ever hypnotized a bankers' convention, he is a conciliator by nature, and since Henry Ford and General Motors replaced labor unions in his clientele he finds the quality more useful than ever. That is not to disparage his ability or his good intentions, for both of which I have a high respect. Nevertheless, his faith in the intelligence and civic spirit of men of the type of Torn Girdler, Eugene Grace, and James Rand has grown immeasurably since the days when he was fighting Sam Insull in Chicago. Perhaps he has been unduly influenced by "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

  4. Richberg's views undoubtedly carry weight at the White House, as they should, but how much they would carry in Congress on this issue is the more important question. The NRA is still an unpleasant memory there. Senator Borah had lunch at the White House last week. Asked later what he thought of the prospects for a loosening of the anti-trust laws to permit industrial self-regulation, the Senator emulated Little Audrey. He just laffed and laffed.

  5. How big business and journalistic spokesmen feel over the prospects may be divined from the howls of lamentation which greeted the conviction of sixteen oil companies and thirty company officials in the conspiracy trial at Madison, Wisconsin. The indolence and lack of precision of armchair correspondents and commentators are no excuse for the gross inaccuracies about this case which have flooded the papers. A large part of the public probably believes these officials were prosecuted and convicted for having patriotically done what the government had asked them to do. This is because most of the published comment simply stated as facts what the defense had contended during the trial—and what the government refuted and the jury disbelieved. I pass over what may have been written by Dorothy Thompson or Boake Carter since I seldom read either. Let us consider, instead, the observations of the impeccable Arthur Krock in the impeccable New York Times. On January 27 he stated: "For proceeding to stabilize price conditions in the demoralized crude-petroleum fields under the powerful pressure of one branch of the Roosevelt Administration, thirty oil-company managers now stand as convicted criminals, a result of prosecution by another branch." As the chief basis for this remarkable declaration he averred that "the jury was not permitted to take into consideration" a certain letter from Secretary Ickes, administrator of the NRA petroleum code, to Charles Arnott, one of the defendants. The facts are: Although the letter showed on its face that it did not and could not refer to the crude-oil "buying program" which constituted the heart of the conspiracy, it was introduced in evidence by the prosecution itself. The original "buying program" was publicly terminated by Secretary Ickes in November, 1935. Subsequently another such program was undertaken in the face of a warning by Ickes. Activities under it were carried out secretly, and the defense made every attempt to conceal them from the jury. To one who was present at the trial it seemed clear that the law was violated both before and after termination of the code. It was clear enough for the jury. In the case yet to be tried evidence of guilty knowledge on the part of the defendants is considered much stronger. For men engaged on a patriotic mission, they certainly spared no pains to cover their tracks.

  6. Events in Washington, where the United Mine Workers are in convention, and in Miami, where the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor is enjoying the sun, seem to demonstrate that peace in labor's civil war is no nearer. John Lewis again has stated the terms on which the C. I. O. would enter the A. F. of L., and again they have been rejected. To explain this impasse solely as the product of wilful stubbornness or personal vanity or ambition on either side is a shallow exercise. The conflict is fundamental. If the C. I. O. unions are allowed to enter the A. F. of L. intact they are certain to dominate the full organization soon if not immediately. They either have the necessary numbers or would have them in a short time. On the other hand, for Lewis to accept terms which would mean dissolution of the huge new industrial unions and the arbitrary distribution of their members among the two-and-seventy jarring craft unions would be a horrible betrayal—and Dave Dubinsky knows it. A vast majority of these people would promptly cease to be union members, because it is a demonstrated fact that mass-production industries cannot be organized on craft lines. In view of what has been said about Lewis's "obduracy," his "unreasonableness," and his "unwillingness to see any side except his own," I should like to record what he said to me recently concerning the attitude of the rank-and-file craft unionists.

  7. "These men," he said, "have built up their unions. Through them they have gained a position of advantage in comparison with other workers, and a certain measure of security. In trying to preserve those unions they feel they are fighting for home and fireside, and you can't blame them much. Now, the C. I. O. would not wish to disturb them in the enjoyment of those advantages, but we can't guarantee them against the action of some future national convention. We can't give a bond for posterity. Unless they can bring themselves to yield to the historical logic and the obvious necessities of the situation—a situation created by the development of mass-production industry and technique—it is difficult to see how the conflict be reconciled. Obviously we cannot abandon the very principle for which we elected to fight." Pollyanna editors and labor politicians please note.