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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2019
During the 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt explicitly committed himself to nearly all of what would become the important programs of the New Deal. In the months before his March 4, 1933, inauguration, he made his proposed policies even clearer. Yet many Americans have forgotten this clarity of purpose, led in large measure by histories of the New Deal and biographies of Roosevelt that echo old misconceptions of this critical election. Such texts are far more likely to describe Roosevelt's campaign as so devoid of substance and full only of “sunny generalities” that at the time he took the oath of office his “plans remained largely unknown to the public.” He had “no larger philosophy or grand design.” He stood only for “action, any action, with little or no thought given to the long-term consequences.” One historian recently declared, “The notion that when Franklin Roosevelt became president he had a plan in his head called the New Deal is a myth that no serious scholar has ever believed.”
1 The principal exception is public housing.
2 Brinkley, Alan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York, 2010), 25Google Scholar and 28.
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6 Herbert Hoover to David A. Reed, Feb. 22, 1933, Post-Presidential Subject file, “Banking,” Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA. On Hoover's fight against the New Deal in these months, see Rauchway, Eric, Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal (New York, 2018)Google Scholar.
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11 Kennedy, David M., Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999), 102Google Scholar.
12 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers, 95–8.
13 On the structure of Roosevelt's campaign, see, e.g., Peel, Roy V. and Donnelly, Thomas C., The 1932 Campaign: An Analysis (New York, 1935), 127Google Scholar.
14 “Text of the President's Final Campaign Address,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 1932, 30.
15 “Text of the President's Address Before Throng of 22,000 at Madison Square Garden,” New York Times, Nov. 1, 1932, 12.
16 “Text of Governor Roosevelt's Speech Opening His Presidential Campaign in Middle West,” New York Times, Aug. 21, 1932, 18.
17 “The Text of Gov. Roosevelt's Speech on Farm Relief at Topeka Yesterday,” New York Times, Sept. 15, 1932, 14. On the essential elements of the different methods for limiting far production see Slichter, Gertrude Almy, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Farm Problem, 1929–1932,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43, no. 2 (Sept. 1956): 238–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 244.
18 “Text of Governor Roosevelt's Speech at Portland, Oregon, on Public Utilities,” New York Times, Sept. 22, 1932, 16.
19 “Text of Governor Roosevelt's Speech at Sioux City on the Tariff and Agriculture,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 1932, 12. On the effects of the tariff in the Depression, see Irwin, Douglas A., Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression (Princeton, NJ, 2011)Google Scholar.
20 “Text of Governor Roosevelt's Address to Democrats in the Boston Arena,” New York Times, Nov. 1, 1932, 16. Compare Eccles's statement (without supporting evidence) that Roosevelt “in 1932 was still the good squire of Hyde Park who believed that local means could, in the main, relieve neighborhood suffering”; Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers, 96.
21 “Text of the Speech Delivered by President Hoover in Accepting Renomination,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 1932, 4.
22 “Text of the President's Final Campaign Address in the Capital of Minnesota,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 1932, 30.
23 “Text of the Speech Delivered by President Hoover in Accepting Renomination”; “Text of the President's Address Before Throng of 22,000 at Madison Square Garden.”
24 “Text of the Speech Delivered by President Hoover in Accepting Renomination.”
25 “Text of the President's Final Campaign Address in the Capital of Minnesota.”
26 “Text of the President's Address Before Throng of 22,000 at Madison Square Garden.”
27 “Text of the Speech Delivered by President Hoover in Accepting Renomination.”
28 “Text of the President's Address Before Throng of 22,000 at Madison Square Garden.”
29 “Text of the President's Final Campaign Address in the Capital of Minnesota.”
30 The standard essay on New Deal fiscal policy holds famously that it was not properly tried; see Brown, E. Cary, “Fiscal Policy in the Thirties: A Reappraisal,” American Economic Review 46, no. 5 (December 1956): 857–79Google Scholar, esp. 866. But see more recently Renaghan, Thomas M., “A New Look at Fiscal Policy in the 1930s,” Research in Economic History 11 (1988): 171–83Google Scholar. For a summary of recommendations made in early 2009, see Scheiber, Noam, The Escape Artists: How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery (New York, 2011), 27–8, 43Google Scholar.
31 “Text of Gov. Roosevelt's Address on Railways at Salt Lake City,” New York Times, Sept. 18, 1932, 32; “Text of the Speech Delivered By President Hoover in Accepting Renomination.”
32 “Throng Sees Notification: President Goes Beyond His Platform By Urging Dry Law Change,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 1932, 1; see also “Text of the Speech Delivered By President Hoover in Accepting Renomination.”
33 “Text of the President's Address Before Throng of 22,000 at Madison Square Garden.”
34 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers, 96.
35 “The Text of Governor Roosevelt's Speech to 30,000 in Pittsburgh Baseball Park,” New York Times, Oct. 20, 1932, 18.
36 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers, 98; Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933, vol. 1 of The Age of Roosevelt (Boston, 1957), 432Google Scholar; “The Text of Governor Roosevelt's Speech to 30,000 in Pittsburgh Baseball Park.”
37 “Text of the Speech Delivered by President Hoover in Accepting Renomination.”
38 Keynes, John Maynard, “How to Avoid a Slump” (1937), in Skidelsky, Robert, ed., The Essential Keynes (London, 2015), 402Google Scholar. Later, Roosevelt personally added statements summarizing this position to Henry Morgenthau Jr.’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee describing the role of deficit spending in meeting an economic crisis. See the transcript of a Treasury staff meeting, May 23, 1939 at 3pm, Henry Morgenthau Jr. Diaries, vol. 191, 94–133 esp. 106-9, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu (accessed June 3, 2018).
39 Zelizer, Julian E., “The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal: Fiscal Conservatism and the Roosevelt Administration, 1933–1938,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 30, no. 2 (June 2000): 331–58, esp. 335CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Harold James, “A Big Ask,” Times Literary Supplement, Apr. 13, 2016, https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/a-big-ask/ (accessed June 2, 2018). Roosevelt did not campaign on the gold standard. While he avoided saying publicly that he would erode it, so as not to spark a panic or expose himself to that line of attack from Hoover, he said “point blank” but privately to a panel of newspaper editors that he supported inflationary legislation. See Henry Wallace to George F. Warren, Aug. 26, 1932, Henry Wallace Papers, microfilm, reel 15, University of Iowa Libraries.
41 Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers, 132. Eccles is substantially wrong in this; Felix Frankfurter had read Keynes and recommended him widely, and Frankfurter advised Roosevelt that, “The budget will be balanced when business recovers rather than this foolish theory of magic that business will recover by balancing the budget.” Felix Frankfurter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Feb. 23, 1933, Felix Frankfurter Papers microfilm, reel 51, Library of Congress.
42 Warburg, James P., Hell Bent for Election (New York, 1935), 6Google Scholar.
43 Rauchway, Eric, The Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a Prosperous Peace (New York, 2015), 115–6Google Scholar.
44 Peel and Donnelly, The 1932 Campaign, 157.
45 Mary “Molly” Dewson, “An Aid to the End,” unpublished manuscript in the Mary Dewson Papers, vol. 1, 62–4 and flyers inserted between 63 and 64, Radcliffe Library, Cambridge, MA.
46 Roosevelt, Franklin D., Government—Not Politics (New York, 1932), esp. 48–50Google Scholar.
47 Arthur Krock, “Franklin D. Roosevelt Speaks,” New York Times, Aug. 7, 1932, BR1.
48 Henry Wallace to George Warren, Aug. 26, 1932, Henry Wallace Papers, microfilm, reel 15, University of Iowa Libraries.
49 Peel and Donnelly, The 1932 Campaign, 134.
50 “Text of Roosevelt's Address at Brooklyn Rally,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 1932, 10.
51 Slichter, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Farm Problem,” 249.
52 Peel and Donnelly, The 1932 Campaign, 124.
53 Roosevelt, Government—Not Politics, 29.
54 Katznelson, Ira, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York, 2013), 6–8Google Scholar.
55 Roosevelt, Government—Not Politics, 51.
56 Perkins, Frances, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York, 1946), 166Google Scholar. Perkins's reminiscences are known to be unreliable; see, e.g., Perry, Elisabeth Israels, “Critical Journey: From Belle Moskowitz to Women's History,” 79–96, in Alpern, Sarah, Antler, Joyce, Perry, Elisabeth Israels, and Scobie, Ingrid Winther, eds., The Challenge of Feminist Biography: Writing the Lives of Modern American Women (Urbana, IL, 1992), esp. 87–8Google Scholar.
57 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 101; see also 405 and 501.
58 Perkins, Roosevelt I Knew, 166–7.
59 Schlesinger, Crisis of the Old Order, 422–4.
60 Hofstadter, Richard, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (Chicago, 1968), 449Google Scholar. In a book about the progressives, Hofstadter offered this critique of consensus history by way of saying that he had come to appreciate the progressive view and now regarded consensus scholarship as problematic.
61 On this speech, see Hudson, Paul Stephen, “A Call for ‘Bold Persistent Experimentation’: FDR's Oglethorpe University Commencement Address, 1932,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 77, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 361–75Google Scholar.
62 Presidential Press Conference no. 13, Apr. 19, 1933, 10:38am, 5, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/ (accessed June 17, 2018).
63 Phillips, Sarah T., This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (Cambridge, UK, 2007), 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64 Leuchtenburg, William E., The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy (New York, 1995), 212Google Scholar (citing an interview of the late 1960s).
65 Leuchtenburg, William E., Herbert Hoover (New York, 2009), 143Google Scholar.
66 Leuchtenburg, William E., The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton (New York, 2015), 139Google Scholar.