Forgotten Man, The (53 page)

Pecora had made a stunning start
The Pecora hearings were extensively covered by the press, as in “Pecora Appointed for Stock Inquiry,”
New York Times,
January 25, 1933, or “Senators Question Him,”
New York Times,
May 24, 1933.

The same day that Mellon went free, Insull gave himself up
“Insull Put in Jail,” and “Mellon is Cleared of 1931 Tax Evasion,”
New York Times
, May 9; “Insull Released,”
New York Times
, May 12.

Keynes, the British economist, visited
Perkins describes Keynes’s visit in
The Roosevelt I Knew
(New York: Viking Press, 1946).
a Democratic sweep
“Democrats Hold 69 Seats in Senate,”
New York Times
, November 8, 1934.

“a sweeping victory of immense importance”
“First Felony Case Is Won under NRA,”
New York Times,
November 2, 1934.

“ever tasted worse champagne”
This material comes from the published diaries of Tugwell and Ickes.

“Previous to the last national election”
“M.S. Eccles Heads Federal Reserve,”
New York Times,
November 11, 1934.

8

The Chicken Versus the Eagle

the Brooklyn Schechters
The quotes from the Schechters are drawn from testimony of their trials in the lower courts. Because the Supreme Court heard the Schechter case, that material is readily available; I found it in New York University’s library. In
Quarrels That Have Shaped the Constitution
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1988) John Garraty treats the Schechter case. G. Neil Reddekopp’s “The Schechter Case and the Constitutionality of the NIRA,” an unpublished paper (Department of History, University of Calgary, 1977), proved useful. Drew Pearson sketches a hostile portrait in
Nine Old Men
(New York: Doubleday, 1936). The
New York Times
covered the case from the local and national angles.

Early Willkie material can be found in several biographies, including Joseph Barnes,
Willkie
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952), and Steve Neal,
Dark Horse
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984). On Dorothea Lange and Roy Stryker, Milton Meltzer’s
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000) provides details.
the firing of Jerome Frank
In recent decades the declassification and analysis of the Venona code papers has shown that Hiss was a Soviet spy. Jerome Frank, however, was more like Tugwell, a romantic. See John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr,
Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999).

Her cheerful mood accorded with that of the country.
The 1935–36 rally was the longest of the decade, and the most significant in terms of point increases, going from 110 or so to 190 in 1937. Rallies and declines in this instance are measured in the classic way: from bottom point to top, or top to bottom. The “FDR Rally” that came at the time of FDR’s first election was greater in percentage terms, but did not last as long, and did not come close to recovery levels. For more, see John Prestbo,
The Market’s Measure.
Prestbo also notes that the Dow of the 1930s was the most volatile of decades on record
for the century. This clearly has to do with monetary policy and international changes, but also with an unpredictable White House.

9

Roosevelt’s Wager

Felix Frankfurter moved in
Max Freedman, ed.,
Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1967) proves very useful in understanding the relationship between the law professor and the president. So does Elliott Roosevelt’s compilations of his father’s letters. Harold Ickes’s
Secret Diary
gives a good feeling for the 1936 campaign. Perkins’s
The Roosevelt I Knew
provides many details.

“we should consider the truth”
McReynolds’s written dissent in
Ashwander
can be found in Court records; his statement about the power of government to compete with utilities was reported in “Deliberateness of Chief Justice Keeps Court Room Throng in Long Suspense,”
New York Times,
February 18, 1936.

Now Tugwell had an idea
Meltzer,
Dorothea Lange
, is useful for details on the photographers and their work.

By November, the new CIO had opened an office
Brophy’s work at the K Street office is detailed in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren van Tine,
John L. Lewis: A Biography
(Champaign: University of Illinois, 1986).

The TVA paid no taxes, he noted
Some of this material comes from Barnes,
Willkie
.

In September, Roosevelt spoke at Harvard See
Freedman,
Roosevelt and Frankfurter.

10

Mellon’s Gift

Mellon’s paintings must be spared
David Finley’s
A Standard of Excellence
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1973) sheds light on Mellon’s collection habits, as does Paul Mellon’s memoir. Two
biographies of Duveen are also helpful, S. N. Behrman’s
Duveen
(New York: Little Bookroom, 2002) and Meryle Secrest,
Duveen: A Life in Art
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

“I built a temple”
Paul Mellon published the poem in his memoirs,
Reflections in a Silver Spoon.

Mellon,
David Cannadine’s outstanding biography of Mellon, came out as I was just finishing this manuscript; it contains all details of the tax and National Gallery stories.

11

Roosevelt’s Revolution

Having learned the importance
The construction of the speech is detailed in Samuel Rosenman’s
Working with Roosevelt
(New York: Harper Brothers, 1952).
legislation that would increase the number of justices
McKenna’s
Franklin Roosevelt
is extremely useful. For insight into the justices, I liked Hutchinson and Garrow,
Forgotten Memoir of John Knox
. Frankfurter’s correspondence with his wife, Marion, on the court-packing plan can be found in H. N. Hirsch,
The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter
(New York: Basic Books, 1981).

Power,
the play
Rosenman,
Working with Roosevelt,
p. 144.
http://newdeal.feri.org
has some material on
Power.

One of the sources for the economic part of the chat was a piece by Stuart Chase
The February 15, 1937, submission by Chase to the
Times
is published in Freedman’s edition of Roosevelt and Frankfurter’s correspondence.

“the Court’s processes had integrity”
Frankfurter’s note to Roosevelt is in Hirsch,
Enigma of Felix Frankfurter.

Ogden Mills, the treasury secretary
These thoughts come from Ogden Mills,
The Seventeen Million
(New York: Macmillan, 1937).

“trick way of finding loopholes”
Roosevelt’s exchanges with Morgenthau on taxes are in Blum,
Morgenthau Diaries.

“I am wholly unable to figure out”
Roosevelt’s tax return and his letter to Commissioner Helvering are publicly available at taxhistory
.org. Joseph Thorndike, the creator of the history project, has also posted the returns of several other presidents.

12

The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt

“But don’t ask me about cotton”
Rex Tugwell’s start at American Molasses was covered in “Tugwell Bit Hazy about His New Job,”
New York Times,
January 5, 1927. Some of the detail on Tugwell in this period comes from Michael Namorato,
Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography
(New York: Praeger, 1988). More, including the story of Tugwell’s separation from Columbia, can be found in
Diary of Rexford G. Tugwell
.

“we believe that the Soviet Union”
The source for this is Peter Filene,
American Views of Soviet Russia
(Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1968); the petition and signatories are reprinted on p. 117.

Stuart Chase still wrote
Richard Vangermeersch,
Life and Writings of Stuart Chase
(New York: Elsevier, 2005) contains the material about Harvey Chase’s correspondence with Roosevelt. Chase’s
The Tyranny of Words
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938) marked the beginning of a new stage for the author.

Betty Glan
Douglas writes about his discovery of Betty Glan’s death in
In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul Douglas
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).

Mary McCarthy typified
Mary McCarthy’s own writings, especially her
Intellectual Memoirs
(New York: Harvest, 1993), give a feel for the period. Steve Neal,
Dark Horse
, covers this period in Willkie’s life especially well.

“Wendell told me, rather explicitly”
The Lilienthal remark is from his diary, also quoted in Neal,
Dark Horse.

A new respect for conservatism New York Times,
“Bestsellers of the Week, Here and Elsewhere,” July 5, 1937; “Sellers of the Week, Here and Elsewhere,” July 12, 1937.

“There was no real place for me”
This material is from
Diary of Rexford G. Tugwell
.

13

Black Tuesday, Again

On an August evening at his daughter’s
“Andrew Mellon Dies at Age of 82,”
New York Times,
August 27, 1937.

Wall Street already knew that
The concept of regime uncertainty developed by the scholar Robert Higgs helped me enormously in understanding the period 1937–38. Both Morgenthau’s and Adolf Berle’s diaries and papers are useful for these years, as are
Beckoning Frontiers
, Eccles, and Anderson,
Economics and the Public Welfare
. Anderson’s insights are astonishing.

At Casa Grande
Crucial to the story of Casa Grande is Edward C. Banfield’s book
Government Project
(Chicago: Free Press, 1961). Banfield, a young scholar, detailed every stage of the Casa Grande project, and its sorry outcome; Tugwell wrote an ambivalent introduction. Herb Stein’s explanation of the monetary environment is also important. Some of the details from Roosevelt’s fishing trip appear in Robert Jackson,
That Man
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Currie was also a Soviet spy
Currie was one of the few Roosevelt Administration figures who actually served as a genuine spy for Moscow. The federal government’s Venona Project, made public only in the 1990s, showed that Currie had reported to the KGB. But for the moment this mattered less than the more immediate problem of the U.S. economy.

“Eccles was in the doghouse”
The source for this is a 1981 interview with Lauchlin Currie on London Weekend Television, reprinted in
Journal of Economic Studies
31, no. 3 (2004).

“more differently colored glasses”
The transcript of the debate between Jackson and Willkie appears in
This Is Wendell Willkie
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1940). Ray Moley’s
After Seven Years
is also important when it comes to understanding the state of mind of business.
the Supreme Court had ruled
See, for example, “Decision of the Supreme Court on PWA,”
New York Times,
January 4, 1938, or “Utilities’ Grief,”
Time
, January 10, 1938.

14

“Brace Up, America”

Bill Wilson was struggling
Francis Hartigan,
Bill W.
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), sheds light on this stage in Wilson’s life.