• excerpt from The Truth about The New Deal (1936)

Preface

When the material which appears in this book had been collected, there appeared a magazine article of very great importance.

In it the man who, earlier, might almost have been called the "Second New Dealer" spoke out bis mind on the New Deal.

In substance, he found that the New Deal of today is not the New Deal for which he fought — and cursed — during so many hectic months. Something has happened to it. It has been warped, twisted, changed — almost, he seems to say, beyond recognition by him.

It is not the intention here — nor would it be permissable — to give any account in detail of the article, "Think Fast, Captain!" by Gen. Hugh S. Johnson, appearing in the Saturday Evening Post of Oct. 26, 1935. But a short quotation appears to be pertinent to the issues variously discussed in the pages which follow.

The former chief of the NRA discusses "who" happened to the New Deal in the following characteristic terms:

"Even during the planning of the New Deal, there began to appear—faintly and litde considered at first— pressures, and vetoes in advice, from a group then sometimes called "The Harvard Crowd,' but later, on account of its leader, Prof. Felix Frankfurter, irreverently yclept the 'Happy Hot Dogs.'

"Shortly after election there began to occur one of the cleverest infiltrations in the history of our Government, There was no noise about it. The professor himself has refused every official connection. His comings and goings are almost surreptitious. Yet he is the most influential single individual in the United States.

"His 'boys' have been insinuated into obscure but key positions in every vital department—wardens of the marches, inconspicuous but powerful. Wherever to know, check, influence or control what goes on in government it would be a good thing for a Big Happy Dog to have a Little Happy Dog planted, there is one there, alert and quietly active. . .

"They have had a guiding hand in the drafting of nearly all legislation except the NRA, from which they were excluded with difficulty, by a tour de force. . .

"Their idea is that government is the nucleus of a vast collectivism in which business or any private enterprise are just elements to be absorbed. . .

"The presence and the obvious influence of such a group is an intimidation to administrators and legislators alike. The knowledge of their power colors all legislation and action. . . "Now, this is not government on the American plan. These pundits represent nobody and nothing but their own 'advanced* ideas. Nor do they ever put themselves in any exposed position of personal responsibility. They are borers from within."

An overwhelming majority of us have thought, I am quite sure, that President Roosevelt was "the most influential single individual in the United States." But the General appears to be saying that the government which we elected, and saw appointed, is not the real, de facto government of the United States! And that Professor Frankfurter is the chief of the New New Deal!

If this is true, and has been true almost from the beginning, one wonders at the tardiness with which the alleged fact is brought boldly into the open. Is it a charge about which there should have been silence by the General himself, or by all but a few of the 492 accredited correspondents in Washington? Isn't even the faintest suspicion that a government may have been "stolen" a news tip worth probing?

The allegations now made openly by Gen. Johnson have been discussed widely in many places — including Washington — for well over a year. But they have been discussed privately, and with incredulity. I mean, men have been reluctant to believe.

Beneath the surface, behind the headlines, there have been other kinds of discussion; wondering discussion, and alarmed. I can testify that men of intelligence, ability, integrity, and who have a high sense of social responsibility, have been literally afraid to speak out their convictions. In America!

To Professor Frankfurter, in a letter of Dec. 17, 1917, former President Theodore Roosevelt said:

"You have taken, and are taking, an attitude which seems to me to be that of Trotsky and the other Bolsheviki leaders in Russia; an attitude which may be frought with mischief for this country."

The phantom government which Gen. Johnson portrays he finds composed of "collectivists," or Marxians.

Karl Marx, in his "Manifesto of the Communist Party," developed the theory that revolution could be brought about by making a people "proletarian minded." They were to be made that way by general impoverishment.

Lenin added that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was by debauching the currency. Continuing:

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at the confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflation has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates widely from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery."

There you have some fundamental text-book instruction which was studied long ago by such men as are said to have been "insinuated into obscure but key positions in every vital department — wardens of the marches, inconspicuous but powerful."

Another question privately discussed during many months, and with incredulity, has been:

Can it be possible that there are men strategically placed in government who are manipulating measures and projects, not for recovery, but for destruction?

They could try. In the light of their teachings, they should try.

Think about that. And do you like it?

Earl Reeves

THE AUTHORS

Howard E. Coffin is a descendant in direct line from Tristram Coffin, of Nantucket, who emigrated in 1630 from England, seeking religious, social and economic freedom in America.

His years of patriotic service under both Democratic and Republican presidents are nationally known and absolve him from any charge of partisan politics.

He was born on a farm in Ohio, is now a resident of Georgia, and has attained eminence in engineering and in business in Michigan, New York and in the South.

He was founder and first president of the National Aeronautical Association and president of the Society of Automotive Engineers ; member of the Council of National Defense, and of the Morrow Board ; and member of the Navy Consulting Board, 1915-32.

Robert L. Lund is Executive Vice-President and General Manager of the Lambert Pharmacal Company. He is a Kentuckian but has lived in St. Louis for twenty-five years. A graduate of Vanderbilt University of Nashville, Tennessee, he was a member of the engineering faculty for some years after receiving his degree. Mr. Lund practised as a consulting engineer in Tennessee and Arkansas, later turning to manufacturing. Hie was a director and division manager of the International Shoe Company and has had the management of the Lambert Pharmacal Company since shortly before the change in its financial setup in 1926.

He was elected president of the National Association of Manufacturers in 1931, serving two terms. In 1933 he became chairman of the Board.

Mr. Lund was a member of the first Industrial Advisory Board of the National Reco'very Administration and was in the thick of the melee during the stirring early days of the NRA. Later he became a member of the Business Advisory Council appointed by Secretary Roper and served until the spring of 1935 when he joined other prominent industrialists in resigning from the Board. Mr. Lund is also a member of the Executive Committee of the National Business Conference Committee. He was among the first of the nation's leading industrialists to raise his voice against regimentation and control of industry by the Federal Government, and through his writings and speeches over a period of two and one- half years has gone before the nation to demand the maintenance of constitutional and sound principles based upon the lessons of experience as the only sure road to recovery.

Dr. Charles W. Burkett, owner of a farm and partner in a large orchard in Ohio, has been a Professor of Agriculture in New Hampshire and North Carolina and Director of the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station. He was also for fifteen years Editor of the American Agriculturalist and is the author of several technical books on farming. During 1934 he was director of a federal agricultural survey of "potential products capacity" drawing up a "balance sheet" for American agriculture. He is vice-president of the Farmers' Independence Council.

Earl Reeves, A.B., Indiana; M.A, Columbia, has been a reporter, editor, war correspondent and press association executive. During more than a dozen years of independent writing he has been a contributor to leading magazines, a chief interviewer for the Hearst General Management, and author of "This Man Hoover," "Lindbergh Flies On," "Aviation's Place in Tomorrow's Business," and, with General R. L. Bullard, "American Soldiers Also Fought."

Table of Contents

PART I

New Deal Performance, by Howard E. Coffin

1. Socialism 1
2. Communism 8

PART II

Truth about the American Productive System, by Robert L. Lund

1. Achievement 14

2. Charges — and Facts 21

3. Errors 28

PART III

Beaucracy and Confidence, by Howard E. Coffin

1. Destroying Confidence 36
2. Confusion and Conflict 42

PART IV

Truth about the New Deal, by Robert Lund

1. What We Wanted — and What We Got 49

2. No Mandate 56
3. Debt 63
4. Dangers Ahead 69
5. Do You Like It? 75
6. Looking Ahead 81

PART V

Truth about the AAA and Our Food Supplies, by Dr. Charles W. Burkett

1. Creating Scarcity 87
2. Believe It or Not 93
3. Giving Jobs to Foreigners 99
4. Putting America on "Emergency Diet" l05
5. Why Shortages and High Prices must Continue 111