Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T18:37:56.948Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Herbert Agar and Free America: A Jeffersonian Alternative to the New Deal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

William E. Leverette Jr  and
David E. Shi
William E. Leverette Jr
Affiliation:
William E. Leverette, Jr is Professor of History at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina 29613.
David E. Shi
Affiliation:
David E. Shi is Associate Professor of History at Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina 28036.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In analyzing the thought of the 1930s, historians have usually concentrated on the reactions of various liberal and leftist critics of Roosevelt's New Deal reform programs. A few, however, have stressed that in opposition both to the New Deal's regulated welfare capitalism and to the left's many-faceted demands for a more openly radical program, the period also witnessed some significant theorizing that remained conservative and even reactionary. Considerable attention, for instance, has been given to the Nashville Agrarians who in November 1930 published I'll Take My Stand, their ardent manifesto of Southern cultural independence from the capitalistic, urban-industrial north. Yet it is not so well known that the Jeffersonian social theory they espoused was the basis for a broader, national effort to promote the decentralization of American government and industry and to foster greater economic self-sufficiency through a wider distribution of property. For ten years, 1937–1947, the journal Free America served as an organ for this “decentralist” movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , August 1982 , pp. 189 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Alexander, Charles C., Nationalism in American Thought, 1930–1945 (Chicago, 1969)Google Scholar; Aaron, Daniel, Writers on the Left (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Conkin, Paul K., The New Deal (2nd ed., New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Lawson, R. Alan, The Failure of Independent Liberalism, 1930–1941 (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; Leuchtenburg, William, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Miller, Donald L., The New American Radicalism: Alfred M. Bingham and Non-Marxian Insurgency in the New Deal Era (Port Washington, N.Y., 1979)Google Scholar; Pells, Richard, Radical Visions and American Dreams (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

2 Crunden, Robert M., ed., The Superfluous Men: Conservative Critics of American Culture, 1900–1945 (Austin, 1977)Google Scholar, and From Self to Society, 1919–1941 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972)Google Scholar.

3 Rock, Virginia, “The Making and Meaning of I'll Take My Stand” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1961)Google Scholar, is the fullest treatment of the basic Agrarian book. Shapiro, Edward S., “Decentralist Intellectuals and the New Deal,” Journal of American History, 58 (03 1972), 938–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “American Conservative Intellectuals, the 1930's, and the Crisis of Ideology,” Modern Age, 23 (Fall 1979), 370–80Google Scholar. Shapiro covers some of the same issues as the present article but does not deal in detail with Free America as an organ devoted exclusively to decentralism. Rubin, Louis Jr, “Introduction” to Twelve Southerners, I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Baton Rouge, 1977)Google Scholar is a well-known commentary to the latest edition.

4 Conkin, pp. 97, 98–102.

5 Pells, pp. 282–364.

6 Belloc, Hilaire, The Servile State (London, 1913)Google Scholar; Clipper, Lawrence, G. K. Chesterton (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; McCarthy, John P., Hilaire Belloc: Edwardian Radical (Indianapolis, 1978)Google Scholar. Agar, Herbert, “Private Property or Capitalism,” American Scholar, 3 (Autumn 1934), 396–403Google Scholar.

7 The People's Choice: A Study in Democracy (Boston, 1933), pp. 51, 55Google Scholar.

8 Chamberlain, John, “The Presidents We Deserve,” Saturday Review, 9 09 1933, p. 93Google Scholar; Tate to Agar, 17 Nov. 1933, Allen Tate Papers, Princeton University (ATP); Agar to Tate, undated (1933), ATP.

9 Stone, Albert E. Jr, “Seward Collins and the American Review: Experiment in Pro-Fascism, 1933–1937,” American Quarterly, 12 (Spring 1960), 4–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Collins to Davidson, 8 March 1933, Seward Collins Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University (SCP); Tate to Collins, 26 March 1933, SCP; Rock, “The Making… of I'll Take My Stand”, p. 380. Representative examples of Agrarian contributions to American Review include Davidson, “‘I'll Take My Stand’: A History,” 5 (Summer 1935), 301–21; Frank L. Owsley, “The Pillars of Agrarianism,” 4 (March 1935), 529–47; John Crowe Ransom, “Happy Farmers,” 1 (Oct. 1933), 513–35; Tate, “What Is Traditional Society?”, 7 (Sept. 1936), 376–87.

11 On Borsodi see Issel, William H., “Ralph Borsodi and the Agrarian Response to Modern America,” Agricultural History, 41 (1967), 155–66Google Scholar; Leverette, William E. Jr and Shi, David E., “Agrarianism for Commuters,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 79 (Spring 1980), 202–18Google Scholar. On Cram and Babbit see Crunden, From Self to Society,

12 Owsley to Davidson, 5 Aug. 1933, Donald Davidson Papers, Joint University Libraries, Nashville (DDP); Owsley to Collins, 29 July 1933, SCP; Agar to Tate, 10 Dec. 1934, ATP.

13 Agar to Collins, 10 Dec. 1934, SCP.

14 Tate to Davidson, 28 Sept. 1935, DDP; Agar to Davidson, 16 Sept. 1935, DDP; Agar to Owsley, 25 Sept., 6 Oct. 1935, FOP; Agar to Tate, 11 Oct. 1935, ATP; Davidson, , “The ‘Mystery’ of the Agrarians,” Saturday Review of Literature, 26 (23 08 1943), 6–7Google Scholar.

15 Who Owns America? A Declaration of Independence (Boston, 1936), pp. vi–xGoogle Scholar.

16 Agar to Collins, 15 Feb. 1936, SCP. See also Agar to Tate, 15 Feb. 1936, ATP.

17 Collins, , “The Sunny Side of Fascism,” New Republic, 19 06 1936, pp. 131–32Google Scholar; Tate, , “Fascism and the Southern Agrarians,” New Republic, 27 05 1936, p. 75Google Scholar; Tate to Davidson, 23 Feb. 1936, DDP. See also Tate to Collins, 23 May 1936, Collins to Davidson, 21 May 1936, Malcolm Cowley to Tate, 28 Feb. 1936, SCP.

18 Tate to Davidson, 28 Sept. 1935, DDP. On the Catholic rural life movement see Shapiro, Edward S., “Catholic Agrarian Thought and the New Deal,” Catholic Historical Review, 65 (10 1979), 583–99Google Scholar.

19 Tate to Agar, 9 Dec. 1936, ATP.

20 By correspondence with Chauncey Stillman and Agar in 1978, the authors learned that neither kept any records from their Free America associations. The Collins Papers include an Agar file, and the Tate, Davidson, and Owsley Papers also contain correspondence relating to the magazine and its contributors. (Most of the Agrarians other than Tate, Davidson, and Owsley did not contribute to Free America.)

21 Tate to Collins, 27 Jan. 1937, SCP; Tate to Agar, 7 Jan. 1937, ATP; Tate to Owsley, 20, 26 Nov. 1937, FOP; Collins to Belloc, 11 Feb. 1937, SCP.

22 Borsodi made clear his opposition to government-sponsored back-to-the-land movements, a favorite aim of the New Deal, under several agencies. See Conkin, Paul, Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program (Ithaca, 1959)Google Scholar; Dorn, Jacob H., “Subsistence Homesteading in Dayton, Ohio, 1933–1935,” Ohio History (Spring 1969), pp. 75–93Google Scholar.

23 Free America, 1 (01 1937), 12, 14–16Google Scholar. (Hereafter FA.)

24 “Editorials,” FA, 1 (03 1937), 3–5Google Scholar, and 4 (Dec. 1940), 2, 14; Borsodi, “Fallacy of Mass Production,” 1 (Feb. 1937), 1–2; “Democracy, Plutocracy, Bureaucracy,” 3 (Aug. 1939), 10–11; “Family or Factory,” 2 (Nov. 1938), 3–6; Graham Carey, “Sufficiency, Security and Freedom,” 3 (Jan. 1939), 3–5; Raymond Parsons, “The Garden City Plans,” 4 (April 1940), 12; Thomas H. Haile, “The Cause and Cure of Unemployment,” 4 (May 1940), 7–9; Agar, “A Time for Greatness,” 6 (Sept. 1942), 6.

25 FA, 2 (10 1938), 17Google Scholar. Lewis Corey also commented, from a Marxist perspective, on the illusory nature of paper holdings. He claimed that of the 3.3 million stockholders in the United States in the 1920s, only 0.5% were wage workers. See his The Decline of American Capitalism (New York, 1934), 335Google Scholar.

26 Corey, , “A Marxist Looks at Distributism,” FA, 1 (03 1937), 8–10Google Scholar; Agar, “The Marxian Myth,” ibid., 11–12. For defenses of distributism from charges of fascism see Nickerson, Hoffman, “Distributism or Democracy?” 1 (08 1937), 5–7Google Scholar and Borsodi's rebuttal, ibid., 7–9. On Corey, see Pells, , Radical Visions, pp. 91–95Google Scholar; Agar, , The Land of the Free (Boston, 1935), p. 264Google Scholar.

27 Day, Dorothy, “Catholic Agrarian Notes,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 13Google Scholar; Stringfellow Barr, “Freedom Through Discipline,” ibid., 6 (Sept. 1942), 7–10; Arthur Morgan, “Design for a Small Community,” ibid. (Feb. 1942), 3–6.

28 ibid., 1 (June 1937), 3.

29 Agar, , A Time for Greatness (New York, 1942), pp. 169, 170Google Scholar.

30 On the Bankhead bill see “Editorial,” FA, 1 (04 1937), 4Google Scholar. Representative articles on the New Deal include: Davidson, , “An Agrarian Looks at the New Deal,” 2 (12 1938), 3–5Google Scholar; Borsodi, , “Planning: For What?” 3 (12 1939), 16–18Google Scholar, and “The Changing Order,” 4 (Jan. 1940), 18. On attitudes about the implications of electrical power for rural life see Brown, D. Clayton, Electricity for Rural America: The Fight for the REA (Westport, Conn., 1980)Google Scholar. Borsodi was a great champion of domesticated, small scale technology and electricity. See Leverette and Shi, “Agrarianism for Commuters.” The Agrarians themselves had mixed reactions toward the TVA, as Shapiro, Edward indicates in “The Southern Agrarians and the Tennessee Valley Authority,” American Quarterly, 22 (Winter 1970), 791–806CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Borsodi, , “Homestead Notes,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 12Google Scholar.

32 “Editorials,” ibid. (Feb. 1937), 5.

33 Chamberlain, John P., “Principles of Decentralization,” FA, 3 (12 1939), 6Google Scholar.

34 Agar, , Land of the Free (Boston, 1935), p. 262Google Scholar; “Editorials,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 3–4Google Scholar. On the uses of technology see Van Dresser, Peter, Free America's leading writer on the subject: “Growing Up to Technics,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 9–12Google Scholar; “The Technics of Decentralization,” 2 (June 1938), 10–12; “An Agrarian Looks at Planning,” 3 (April 1939), 13–15; “Humanizing the Machine,” 3 (June 1939), 13–15.

35 See, for example, “Editorial,” FA, 5 (05 1941), 2Google Scholar; 5 (June 1941), 2–17.

36 “Editorial,” FA, 6 (05 1942), 15Google Scholar.

37 See Fowler, Bertram, “Food for Victory,” FA, 6 (03 1942), 3–6Google Scholar; Dorothy Thompson, “The Volunteer Land Corps,” 6 (June 1942), 3–7; Lewis Mumford, “Decentralization: The Outlook for 1941,” 5 (Jan. 1941), 15; Wright Patman, “Post-War Domestic Economy and Decentralization,” 7 (Winter 1943), 16–17.

38 Chamberlain, John P., “Looking Backward: Ten Years of Free America,” FA, 10 (Winter 1946–1947), 12Google Scholar.

39 See, for example, The Price of Union (Boston, 1950)Google Scholar; Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; The Price of Power: America since 1945 (Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar.

40 “Editorial,” FA, 9 (Winter 1945), 2Google Scholar.

41 On the contemporary trend toward decentralism and agrarianism see Elgin, Duane and Mitchell, Arnold, “Voluntary Simplicity: Lifestyle of the Future,” Futurist, 11 (08 1977), 200–10Google Scholar; Henderson, Carter, “Living the Simple Life,” Human Resource Management, 16 (Fall 1977), 23–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sale, Kirkpatrick, Human Scale (New York, 1980)Google Scholar; Schumacher, E. F., Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.