The United States Farm Security Administration-Office Of War Information Archive: A Latent Nexus Of Truth About The New Deal Era

Since the conclusion of World War II, the ethos of the Roosevelt administration (1933-1945) and the achievements of the New Deal era have been celebrated by official rhetoric.

The United States Farm Security Administration-Office Of War Information Archive: A Latent Nexus Of Truth About The New Deal Era

Since the conclusion of World War II, the ethos of the Roosevelt administration (1933-1945) and the achievements of the New Deal era have been celebrated by official rhetoric.

Wartime Crises

This chapter considers how Rahv’s Marxism and anti-Stalinism shaped his timid response to fascism. It presents the loosening of his ties with Marxism and move toward the American identity manifest in “Paleface and Redskin,” which divided American writers into plebian redskins (Steinbeck, Dreiser) and patrician palefaces (Eliot, James). The muted response to the Holocaust by major newspapers, the Roosevelt administration, and Jewish groups sets the stage for a discussion of how Partisan Review responded, including publishing Eliot despite his alleged anti-Semitism. A discussion of the complexities of Rahv’s marital status and military record is followed by a consideration of “Under Forty,” essays on Jewish identity by eleven young Jewish writers which Rahv published as editor of Contemporary Jewish Record in February 1944 and which reflected his evolving identity as an American Jew. The chapter closes with reactions to the Holocaust—by Rahv, New York intellectuals, and in my own life.

Censorship at Sea

In the first months of 1942, the navy exerted tight control over its war correspondents. While allowing them access to ships, it placed so many restrictions on what they could write about that a group of them, led by Robert Casey of the Chicago Daily News, began to complain vociferously. Stanley Johnston of the Chicago Tribune ultimately became the biggest troublemaker. After escaping from the USS Lexington before it sank during the Battle of the Coral Sea, Johnston used the slow journey home not only to write about this experience but also to learn that the navy had received advanced knowledge of the Japanese attack on Midway. His stories on both battles created a major sensation. With the navy convinced that the Tribune had divulged its secret codebreaking operation, the Roosevelt administration even made a failed bid to prosecute it under the Espionage Act.

The Churches Do Their Part

This chapter shows how mainline Protestant religious leaders, often working in conjunction with Jewish and Catholic groups, were instrumental in building popular support for New Deal programs including unemployment insurance, the National Recovery Administration, and the Wagner Act. It shows that Protestant elites offered the Roosevelt administration a variety of tangible forms of assistance—from local educational sessions to letter-writing campaigns to “NRA Sundays”—that went well beyond their public expressions of support. Arguably the churches’ greatest contribution to the construction of the New Deal-era welfare state, however, was to serve as a bulwark against attacks from a growing cadre of proto-libertarian entities on the far right. So long as most Protestants attended mainline churches, and so long as mainline leaders were monolithic in their support of social welfare programs, claims that there was something un-American about redirecting resources to aid the downtrodden remained an exceedingly tough sell.

United Fronts for Women’s Rights and for Human Rights

This chapter illustrates how Latin American popular front feminists seized leadership of the Inter-American Commission of Women at the 1938 Eighth International Conference of American States in Lima and continued to expand the movement. Drawing on the groundwork paved by Ofelia Dom쭧uez Navarro, Clara Gonzoz, Paulina Luisi, Bertha Lutz, and Marta Vergara, who continued organizing in these years, the Unión de Mujeres Americanas, the Confederación Continental de Mujeres por la Paz, and a new force of Mexican poplar front feminists united. They promoted women’s social and economic rights, anti-fascism, anti-racism, and anti-imperialism as interconnected struggles. A leader in this network, the communist feminist Esperanza Balmaceda, who was appointed to the Mexican delegation to the Lima conference, collaborated there with Latin American feminists, the U.S. State Department, and U.S. female reformers in the Roosevelt administration to remove Stevens as chair of the Commission. At the same time, they mobilized a broader defense of what the Lima conference called “derechos humanos.” There and at the Congreso de Democracias in Montevideo, Uruguay, co-organized by Paulina Luisi, feminists asserted the need for a grassroots movement, for women’s rights treaties, and for broad commitments to human rights in the Americas.

Triumphs and Setbacks

Chapter 4 examines TR’s attempt to implement the Roosevelt Corollary in the Dominican Republic. Roosevelt avoided acting in 1904 in order to avoid any controversy that might harm his prospects in the upcoming election, and his actions after the election continued to be affected by resistance in Congress and the press. Many Republicans and Democrats were critical of an accord that arranged for the United States to take control of Dominican custom houses, the Dillingham-Morales agreement, and opposed efforts by the Roosevelt administration to secure ratification by the Senate. This confrontation occurred amid tension between TR and conservative, Republicans as well as growing concerns about TR’s expansion of the powers of the presidency. The chapter argues that this episode reinforced the president’s belief that the public could be a vital counterweight to elite opinion and Congress and that skilled political leadership was essential for an effective foreign policy.

Coughlin, Charles E. (October 25, 1891–October 27, 1979)

Father Charles Coughlin was an influential American Catholic priest who became famous for his controversial but extremely popular radio program, which aired from October 1926 to September 1940. Coughlin’s program was mainly devoted to political and economic issues such as the plight of the American worker, the need for nativist nationalism, and the growing threat of Jewish bankers and communism. He supported Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1932 presidential election but later turned against Roosevelt administration policies enacted during the Great Depression, which he felt were too generous to big capitalists. In 1934, Coughlin promoted the creation of the National Union for Social Justice (NUSJ), which he based on Catholic social justice principles intended to protect the rights of workers. After Kristallnacht in 1938, some major radio stations began to cancel Coughlin’s programs due to his increasing sympathy for Nazism and anti-Semitism. With the beginning of WWII in 1939, new licensing restrictions imposed by the Roosevelt administration and changes within the Catholic Church pushed Coughlin off the air. He was increasingly marginalized following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.