The ‘Tea Party’ of the 1930s
The past year’s tea party movement is not the first popular uprising against an overtaxing, encroaching, economy-stifling government. Though its past version seems not to have involved much in the way of street demonstrations, it may have been even stronger than the modern phenomenon, at least so far. As noted later, it will be difficult to exceed its electoral performance.
No less a luminary that Michael Barone rediscovered this largely forgotten history while creating his latest book, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan. Barone, correctly described as “one of the most learned political observers of our time,” was the first person to characterize the Obama administration’s modus operandi as “Gangster Government” when he wrote in May of last year about how it bullied and shortchanged disfavored secured creditors during Chrysler’s bankruptcy proceedings. His April 21, 2010, column (“Gangster Government becomes a long-running series”) excoriates the so-called financial regulation bill currently under consideration in the Senate as “the channeling of vast sums from the politically unprotected to the politically connected.” One look at the expected workings and powers of the Financial Services Oversight Council the bill envisions confirms Barone’s assessment.
Visits to various items published during 1937 and 1938 reveal that the anti-New Deal sentiment Barone learned of had legs — and impact.
President Obama’s stimulus bill passed in February of last year is what ignited an initial storm of protest that has been followed by a growing wave of political activism. In 1937, the equivalent spark was newly reelected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s February 1937 proposal, buttressed by a March fireside chat, to pack the Supreme Court with six additional justices friendly to the New Deal’s statism and hostile to the original intent of the Constitution. The fighting words from his address were these: “We have, therefore, reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself.” He didn’t lack nerve, did he?
It wasn’t long before it became obvious that FDR had vastly overplayed his hand, as Obama would do 72 years later. After an initial lull, public reaction was furious. The proposal was denounced by much of the press, in letter-writing campaigns that ran 9-to-1 against, and even by Gallup polls that never showed majority support. This was a first for a president who had gotten his own way, except with the Court, during the previous four years. A formerly invincible politician had become a bit vulnerable, releasing more than a little pent-up frustration.
It’s virtually impossible without having been there to determine which outrages most set off anti-New Dealers — a group, by the way, that included plenty of Democrats as well as conservatives and Republicans. Here are a few that probably were near the top of the list:
- There was the utopian community of Greenbelt, Maryland, which was promoted as a place where “the profit motive does not exist,” and “Uncle Sam is everybody’s landlord.” In a foreshadowing of the current stimulus plan’s cost per job “created or saved” excess, spending on the supposedly “low cost” project worked out to be more than $16,000 per house, or $250,000 in what’s left of today’s dollars.
- The government had gone headlong into many industries, either co-opting or crowding out private players. A Victoria, Texas, newspaper in June 1938 noted that “10,000 WPA (Works Progress Administration) units are making clothing, and … more than 100,000,000 garments have been produced.” It was also going to extraordinary lengths to prop up markets, buying “31,500 tons of dried prunes, 500,000 cases of grapefruit juice, and perhaps even enough wheat to cut down somewhat the tremendous surplus that looms.”
- You want corruption? Apparently there was plenty of it. A Google News Archive search on ["New Deal" corruption] (typed as indicated within quotes) for 1937-1938 returns 246 items, many with dozens of “related” items. The Day of New London, Connecticut, carried an August 17, 1937, story by David Lawrence describing “‘the Teapot Dome scandal’ of the Roosevelt administration,” where “everything possible is being done by the Democratic chieftains to prevent an investigation of the ‘racket’ by which corporations were shaken down and forced to pay tribute to the Democratic national committee in violation of the corrupt practices act.”
FDR’s “new deal” was largely Hoovers policies which were held up in committee by a democrat controled congress and did not help much. As I see it what brought the nation out of the depression was WWII which gave the nation a national debt which the nation has not recovered from to this day. As I see it FDR was not the great leader which most claim he was. FDR’s policies were for the most part the Carter policies which were the Clinton policies and the Bush policies and now the Obama policies. As I see it if one goes all the way back to 1913 as government gets bigger and bigger the problems get worse and worse. Not to mention all the lives lost at the Battle of the Bulge while FDR waited for his Russian friends to build up arms.
Not even close Lloyd. Sending millions of your most productive citizens into battle and gearing your entire economy to produce unproductive armaments, most of which were either exploded or left to rust, does not a strong economy make. What finally got us out of the Depression was the quiet downplaying of the worst aspects of the New Deal to fight the war (which was necessary to win it, after all), followed by the wholesale dismantling of most of the New Deal once the Republicans achieved Congressional majorities. Unfortunately, the idea that WWII saved our bacon has maintained mythical status over time, which is why ignorant politicians continue to try spending us out of economic downturns that they cause in the first place.
First off, Lloyd agreed with you. Second, WWII left us with a monopoly on manufacturing, because the rest of the world had been bombed out. WWII did get nigh everyone working, even if there wasn’t much to buy until the war was over. The thing about war is that patriotism will cause people to do things during wartime that they’d never accept during peacetime (such as very long hours and low wages). Meanwhile, a little thing called the Manhattan project created a brand new industry after the war.
What I disagreed with Lloyd about (re-read both posts) was that WWII got us out of the Great Depression. By your logic, we can re-live the glory days of post-war prosperity by bombing the rest of the world’s industrial capacity back to the Stone Age. Economic prosperity is about the production of goods and services, either those produced for immediate consumption or those used to enhance the production of even more consumer goods in the future. Economies that are less encumbered by government interference are more productive than those that are heavily encumbered (e.g., USA vs USSR), or do you not believe that?
“WWII left us with a monopoly on manufacturing, because the rest of the world had been bombed out”
Hmmmmmm….will WW3 do the same? Wanna try it folks? What do we have to lose since it’s China that we’ll have to….get even with. Or was that WalMart aka China Mart?
Walmart is not in bed with China, they are in bed with whoever can put stuff on their shelves more cheaply.
Just exactly as they ought to be.
I think what led to economic prosperity was the fact that at the end of WWII the United States had the only major industrial base left on earth. Canada South America and Australia were mostly agriculturally bases economies and everyone else was bombed back to the start of the industrial revolution.
Unemployment was greatly reduced by the those killed in the war, and economic expansion was to some extent due to the use of military technology that was applied to the civilian market.
The government spending during WWII was of secondary importance. FDR was forced to allow the business community a lot more freedom. He had to call off his New Deal ideologues. Many of them were sent home packing.
WWII had nothing to do with getting the nation out of the depression. FDR was forced to eliminate the vast majority of his regulations and restrictions on business so that the arsenal of democracy could start creating the weapons needed to fight the war. He died before the war was over, so he never had the chance to reinstate his beloved regulations.
ITS THE DEMOGRAPHICS STUPID. Not the economy, not the balance of the parties in Congress.
Its the massive human tidal wave that is going to erase the cultural foundations of this
country.
Its 30 million illegal aliens that Obama and the Democrats are trying to legalized and get into the voting booths. In 2008 Obama won by 4 million votes..whats it going to be like in a few years when they have 30 million uneducated Third Worlders who will always vote for the Welfare State?
The article talks about “Gangster Politics” of FDR. Would the writer care to comment on
what politics is like in South America? Mexico? The political model and mindset that
the South Ameirican tidal wave is washing into our country?
Gangster Politics never changes down there does
it? In fact corruption apathy and exploitation and ignorance goes wherever
Hispanic Culture goes. Its always the same round of stupified peasants exploited by promises of goodies and welfare handed out by a ruling cabal. FDR and New Deal? European Socialism? What nonsense..look at Los Angeles..look at the bankruptcy of California. Thats is the FUTURE..
huge masse
I completely understand what Obama and the Democrats are trying to
accomplish with amnesty for illegals but it might not work out like
they wish. What makes anyone think illegals will actually vote once
they are given citizenship? Many of the illegal population is
uneducated; civic responsibility is hardly at the top of the list
for those who so casually violate our immigration laws. Even
more important, the number of current American citizens who don’t
bother to vote easily dwarfs the possible illegal immigrant flood.
Approximately 125 million voters turned out for the last Presidential
election. In a country of over 310 million, there must be well over
100 million people who are eligible to vote but don’t. Nothing
could motivate current recalcitrant American voters than watching
Obama and Co. trash our immigration laws in an attempt to hijack
our country.
Now the damage amnesty for illegals would do to the U.S. entitlement
system is another matter altogether…..
American Democracy is the perfect growth medium for Third World Demagoguery.
One of the reasons why South America is so politically paralyzed is that ruling elites have very good reason to deny power to a mass electorate of
uneducated and ineducable peasants. When the lower classes get power in these countries its Castro, Che, Chavez, Ortega that take the reins and what little that does work…stops altogether. These same peasants once in the USA with its “free” social services, open elections, and abundant leftist Demagogues..
will wreck destruction on an unbelievable scale. The country will be have 1 Billion Mestizos in 100 years..and will resemble India in its poverty and hopelessness. The America of our forefathers will be as inscrutable and distant as the Aztecs are to the present day Mexicans. A few ruins in a jungle of chaos and poverty
What you are saying is..lets play Russian Roulette and look on the bright side…. but in this game there is no long run and the game eventually always ends the same.
The key is..dont play at all.
I’m not being pollyannish nor am I interested in ‘playing the game’. I would
love to send all of the illegals packing and I believe it can be done (Eisenhower
was very successful at curtailing illegal immigration). All I am saying is even
if Obama is able to force an amnesty thru Congress it in no way would guarantee
an electoral lock on the country by the Democrats. There are far more eligible
American voters who don’t vote than illegals who might profit from an amnesty.
Many of these Americans are going to be ticked off at the Democrat’s attempt to
hijack the country and will be motivated to actually get off their asses and vote
accordingly.
There is no reason for conservatives to commit hara-kiri just yet, if an amnesty
does pass. This could backfire on Democrats big time and probably will. The
fight is just beginning.
“What makes anyone think illegals will actually vote once
they are given citizenship?”
Someone will vote. ACORN 2.0 will cast the votes.
Haven’t you heard, some people are pushing for internet voting. The civic minded ACORNites would cast votes for uncivic minded uneducated new voters. What they need are the new names, and the numbers. Afterall, even ACORNites are not very comfortable casting more than 100% of the votes for their candidates.
Can today’s Tea Party movement “movement outdo its 1930s counterpart”?
If you expect that the Tea Party thing outdoes the picayune effect of the 30s scattered opposition “movements”, you have your sights on the horizon, not the skies.
Small expectations if you think the Tea Party business has to merely reach as high as the Liliputian resistance to Roosevelt.
Just a note:
The links at the end of the article: “dingbats on the right” http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-tea-party-of-the-1930s/blog/bigots-to-the-left-of-me-dingbats-on-the-right/?singlepage=true
Appears to be broken. PJM has either moved that link, or it is no longer there.
(Hey PJM, before you move an internal link, perhaps you should check to ensure it isn’t being linked to from a front-page story!)
Wearyman,
Thanks. It should be working now — Ed.
“Why, if historians are correct about the population’s general reverence for Roosevelt when he served, did Congress pass the 22nd Amendment only 19 months after the end of World War II, thereby ensuring that no future president could ever run for a third term in office?”
I remember wondering about that when I was a kid. I don’t think my history textbooks ever answered that question directly, but they seemed to imply that it was meant to honor FDR somehow—to prevent any future Presidents from making his presidency less “special” by replicating his feat of winning a third term.
It took fifteen years for the cognitive dissonance in that idea to fully register.
The convenient urban legend of Roosevelt’s unwavering popularity is a result of history being controlled by progressives. Liberal progressives are generally the authors of school history books, in charge of curriculums, etc. Look what Bill Ayers is doing now- he is in charge of educating many of our children with his own warped curriculum. Liberals are already working on erasing the Tea Party movement from history; notice how Time magazine omitted the Tea Party from its 2009 yearbook.
“No less a luminary that Michael Barone rediscovered this largely forgotten history while creating his latest book, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan.”
The link to Amazon leads to an edition from 1990. I think Michael’s written a few books since then…
Tom Blumer asks:
“Why, if historians are correct about the population’s general reverence for Roosevelt when he served, did Congress pass the 22nd Amendment only 19 months after the end of World War II, thereby ensuring that no future president could ever run for a third term in office?”
I’m sure part of it had something to do with discomfort at FDR breaking Washington’s precedent, but you’re leaving out an important part of the story. The 22nd amendment was passed in 1947. In the 1946 elections, Republicans took control of Congress in a landslide, gaining 13 seats in the Senate and 55 seats in the House. It was an electoral massacre and, in fact, Barone has talked about the upcoming election resembling 1946 more than 1994. (From his lips to God’s ears!) Anyway, while the Rs didn’t have a two-thirds majority in either chamber, the initiative they had from their great win, plus an alliance with conservative Democrats (the congressional Democratic caucus was reduced to almost nothing more than the old Confederacy, and thus mostly conservative) allowed them to push this anti-FDR amendment through. No 1930s conservative-populist Tea Party required.
The question of ratification is an interesting one, and it would be worth looking into the changes in the composition of state legislatures to see if the Republicans had come to dominate a majority outside the old Confederacy, thus making ratification much easier.
Anyway, rather than a 1930s Tea Party, I think the 22nd is best explained as a result of the Republican Party desire to never face another FDR. Ironically, the Republicans shot themselves in the foot, because Ike could easily have won a third term in 1960.
The problem is FDR, our First American Fascist President (Reagan termed the New Deal Fascism, and he was dead on right about that one) might have encountered resistance which stopped the New Deal (Steal) from going all the way, but it was NEVER REPEALED and most of the problems we have today stem from that period including the continued veneration of an inept President who took advantage of a period of instability (Obama) and exploited and created crises for his own power grab. He too had an administration stuffed with communist sympathizers and fellow travelers. It’s no wonder Obama looked to FDR for a road map to glory. Abe Lincoln for the SECOND CIVIL WAR he has begun and FDR for the chance to complete the total transformation of America.
who would rather empty their treasuries than see genuine sensible conservatives prevail.
—
Translation: “conservatives” who are willing to sell their souls to the Democrat Party.
Unlike 1938, where narrowing the Democratic majorities helped stem the New Deal, Republicans will have to outright win one or both houses. Today’s Democrats observe no rules, and have shown contempt for a majority of Americans. Even if they have slim majorities, Democrats will continue to find ways to pass their legislation and foster massive corruption. Even a very narrow win by Democrats will leave them insufferable and more arrogant then ever.