The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance, David T. Beito, 2023. Beito discusses his book here.
The reader should know that FDR was elected to an unprecedented 4 terms, from 1932 to 1945, having died a couple of years into his 4th term.
1792, The Post Office was created.
FDR’s NEW DEAL [First New Deal, 1933-1934; Second New Deal, 1935-1938; Third New Deal?]
1. David Gordon reviews a book by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, titled Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939. It compares FDR’s New Deal with Hitler’s Fuhrerprinzip and Mussolini’s central planning bonanzas in Germany and Italy that sprung at the same time. This is a decent article by David Boaz at the CATO Institute that reviews Schivelbusch’s book.
2. Funny. FDR wrote the book Looking Forward, FDR, 1933. I wonder. Is that where the Progressive’s phrase or the criticism to it of “forward-thinking people” comes from? I wonder.
3. Jim Powell asks “Why did FDR triple federal taxes during the Great Depression, 1929-1939?”
4.
5.
NEW DEAL PRESIDENT, FDR
1933, Year the TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, was enacted.
The issue with TVA was eminent domain.
From History Channel,
The newly created Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) would serve as a federally owned and operated electric utility company and a regional economic development agency for the Tennessee Valley. Running through seven states in the Southeast—Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee—the region was one of the poorest in the country and one of the hardest-hit by the Depression.
“It’s a multi-state regional economic development authority with all of the powers that implies,” says Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California, Davis and author of Why the New Deal Matters. “[The TVA] is authorized to build dams both to improve navigation and to generate hydroelectricity, to create networks to distribute that electricity as public power…as well as to deal with basically every aspect of common life in the region.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the TVA Act, on May 18, 1933. Standing over FDR’s left shoulder is Senator George Norris, whose bill to modernize the Tennessee Valley through electricity generated by a major dam at Muscle Shoals was vetoed by both Presidents Coolidge and Hoover. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s first project started the ‘Muscle Shoals’ dam, changing its name to ‘Norris Dam’.
1948, On the TVA, or Tennessee Valley Authority, Donald Davidson’s 1948 book, The Tennessee Volume II: The New River Civil War to TVA, was recommended. The one who recommended it said that it “is a good source for the ‘fascist destruction’ of the Tennessee River.”
1949, TVA Idea, Dean Russell, 1949.
“How Capitalists Help Build Socialism,” Frank Chodorov, 1962.
Tim Carney on the TVA:
During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt created the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was supposed to create jobs and electrical power at the same time. The TVA originally was in the business of building and operating dams, which would use water to generate electricity. By 1954, however, it was in the business of coal-run power plants. This made it the largest coal customer in the country.
In 1954, the TVA bought 8 million tons of coal from the “dogholes in the mountains” as Lewis called the small coal mine operators.3
1933, NRA, National Industrial Recovery Act, [Declared unconstitutional in 1935]
This commentary by Westley on the NRA and the Blue Eagle was good. It also connects to Henry Hazlitt’s larger article, “Fallacies of the NRA.”
[General Hugh Johnson] began with a blanket code which every businessman was summoned to sign–to pay minimum wages and observe maximum hours of work, to abolish child labor, abjure price increases and put people to work. Every instrument of human exhortation opened fire on business to comply–the press, pulpit, radio, movies. Bands played, men paraded, trucks toured the streets blaring the message through microphones. Johnson hatched out an amazing bird called the Blue Eagle, which was a badge of compliance. The President went on the air: “In war in the gloom of attack,” he crooned, “soldiers wear a bright badge to be sure that comrades do not fire on comrades. Those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance. That bright badge is the Blue Eagle.” “May Almighty God have mercy,” cried Johnson, “on anyone who attempts to trifle with that bird.”
This essay by Karen De Coster is excellent.
Who can forget the heroic Henry Ford, when he was the only major manufacturer in the auto industry to not sign Hugh (Old Ironpants) Johnson’s Automobile Code under the National Industrial Recovery Act?
Entrepreneurs who kowtowed to FDR’s “voluntary” codes could place the State logo, the NRA blue eagle symbol, in their windows and on the packaging of their goods. Said Ford of the atrocious Blue Eagle: “Hell, that Roosevelt buzzard. I wouldn’t put it on the car.” The National Industrial Recovery Act was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but Ford held his ground against Roosevelt, even as FDR led a boycott against Ford products.
She cites the book from David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and his Company, 1987.
Hugh S. Johnson’s book on the NRA, The Blue Eagle, Egg to Earth, 1935.
1935, SOCIAL SECURITY, Enacted in the U.S. on August 14, 1935
1. The Anatomy of Social Security and Medicare, Edgar K. Browning, Summer, 2008.
2. David Gordon reviews a book by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, titled Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939. It compares FDR’s New Deal with Hitler’s Fuhrerprinzip and Mussolini’s central planning bonanzas in Germany and Italy that sprung at the same time. This is a decent article by David Boaz at the CATO Institute.
3.
4.
5.
1935, WPA, Works Progress Administration, 1935-1943.
Here are the lyrics:
Now wake up, boys, get out on the rock
It ain’t daybreak, but it’s four o’clock
Oh, no, no, no, Pops, you know that ain’t the play
What you talkin’ ’bout? It’s the W.P.A.
The W.P.A.
The W.P.A.
Sleep while you work, while you rest, while you play
Lean on your shovel to pass the time away
T’ain’t what you do; you can’t die for your pay
The W.P.A.
The W.P.A.
The W.P.A.
Now don’t be a fool; working hard is passe
You’ll stand from five to six hours a day
Sit down and joke while you smoke; it’s okay
The W.P.A.
I’m so tired, I don’t know what to do
Can’t get fired, so I’ll take my rest until my work is through
The W.P.A.
The W.P.A.
Don’t mind the boss if he’s cross when you’re gay
He’ll get a pink slip next month anyway
Three little letters that make life okay
The W.P.A.
There were several new deals during the Roosevelt Administration.
The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within World War II, Thomas Fleming, 2002.
The New Deal in Old Rome, H. J. Haskel, 1939.
New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, Burton Fulsom, Jr. 2008.
Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, 2006.
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes, 2008.
Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom organized this list:
It took academic economists and historians nearly three-quarters of a century to begin questioning the conventional wisdom about Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Why, they rescued the economy from the Depression!, said the old view. These days, even mainstream economists like Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian have published a substantial corpus of peer-reviewed material that takes the conventional view through the shredder. And even most mainstream historians — even the execrable Doris Kearns Goodwin — now concede that the New Deal did not cure the Depression. The new story is that FDR’s initiatives “gave people hope.” And that World War II saved the economy from the Depression — another grotesquely false view.
Someone on my Facebook page who was looking for a dissenting view on the Depression asked me for some book suggestions. Here are some popular-level treatments that do a good job:
Robert P. Murphy, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal.
Jim Powell, FDR’s Folly. (Not entirely sound on the Fed, but very good otherwise.)
Burton Folsom, New Deal or Raw Deal? (Again, not completely sound on the Fed, but excellent otherwise.)
John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth. This one is from 1948. A very interesting read. Flynn is not entirely sound on economics — he has a soft spot for Hoover, who was just Roosevelt lite — but you’ll find a lot of useful information here.
I recently read on a libertarian site that the reason this book never became a national bestseller is that it took direct aim at both the welfare state and the warfare state. Actually, The Roosevelt Myth hit number two on the New York Times bestseller list.
The New Deal section of David Stockman‘s book The Great Deformation has plenty of excellent material you won’t find in any of these other books, and I highly recommend it.
Finally, I don’t include Amity Shlaes‘ book The Forgotten Man because, although it is an absorbing and non-worshipful discussion of the material and critical in places, it isn’t really a critique of the New Deal.
Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, 2007. Thanks to this tweet by Brion McClanahan. Posted Saturday, March 23, 2024.
[For contemporaries] Hitler and Roosevelt were both charismatic leaders who held the masses in their sway–and without this sort of leadership, neither National Socialism nor the New Deal would have been possible.” Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals, 2006. https://t.co/6PAEWBETPi
— Brion McClanahan (@BrionMcClanahan) March 23, 2024
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
from Easy Dave.
San Gabriel Tutor 