The triumphant election in 1932 of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the liberal Democratic Governor of New York, was in the largest sense a profound reaffirmation of America’s continuing faith in the essential capacity of democracy to survive the crises of depression and economic instability. A generation devoted to the quest for security had witnessed the rise of Communist, Fascist, and Nazi dictatorships in other nations. And in the United States the Great Depression, with its long years of poverty and acute distress, its breadlines, its soup kitchens, and its ever-mounting unemployment rolls, led many Americans to question seriously the efficacy of the democratic process. Indeed, had the depression grown worse, and had the national government continued to deny its responsibility to provide for those of our citizens who had been overcome by disaster, then the counsel of extremists might have been heeded and democracy abandoned in despair. But Americans turned instead to a liberal statesman whose purpose was to strengthen rather than to destroy traditional American values and institutions, and who pledged himself to devote unstintingly the full resources of democratic government to the rehabilitation of the depression-worn nation.
Ultimately it was the reforms of the New Deal that preserved American democracy from immediate collapse and protected it against the threatened inroads of totalitarianism of both the Left and Right. Not only did the New Deal seek to maintain the essential fabric of America’s free economy, but its widely debated techniques of government regulation were entirely within the framework of a long-established American tradition of social control. Over a half century earlier state Granger laws had attempted rigorous control of railroad abuses; and the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 had committed the national government as well to a real, if rather limited, role in the regulation of industry. The Populists of the 1890’s had demanded specific reforms which predated much of the Roosevelt farm program. And the extensive governmental activities of Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal, his proposed New Nationalism, and Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom provided ample precedent for many of the New Deal’s experiments in liberal reform. Even Herbert Hoover’s minimal efforts at government intervention anticipated somewhat the substance, if not the spirit, of his successor’s bold acts.
Nevertheless the New Deal did reflect a significant change in the nation’s concept of the proper relationship between the State and the individual, and to many Americans it seemed that the election of 1932, as Jefferson had written of his own election in 1800, was “as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.” Government participation in the economic life of the country could no longer be considered an entirely novel response to national crisis, but in the Roosevelt administration such activity became the dominant pattern and government assumed a broad and continuous new responsibility for the social and economic well-being of all the people. In a 1932 campaign address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Roosevelt had stated very clearly his belief that the economic basis of the nineteenth century’s expansive, laissez-faire individualism had disappeared with the end of the last frontier and the completion of “our industrial plant” and that “our task now is not discovery or exploitation of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods.” The times called for a “reappraisal of values.” Now government must play a major role in “the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, of seeking to re-establish foreign markets for our surplus production, of meeting the problem of underconsumption, of adjusting production to consumption, of distributing wealth and products more equitably, of adapting existing economic organizations to the service of the people.” Leftist critics scored the New Deal as disorganized and haphazard, totally without plan or philosophy, but this new orientation towards the State as the active, permanent guardian of the general welfare actually formed the persistent central theme of the “Roosevelt Revolution.”
Yet the essence of the New Deal was as much in its spirit as in its ideology, for Roosevelt shrewdly sensed that a distressed and disheartened people needed most of all the strong moral conviction of his famous First Inaugural Address: “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. . . . The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Graced with a warm and winning personality, Roosevelt again and again employed the masterful device of radio “fireside chats” to report directly to an anxious national audience, and his calm assurance did much to restore Americans’ confidence in themselves and in their government. But brave words were not enough, and the exciting first hundred days of the Roosevelt Era saw an effective leadership translate the President’s Inaugural assertion that “we must act, and act quickly” into a rapid succession of dramatic measures. To avert the total collapse of an already badly shaken banking system, the President proclaimed a national “bank holiday,” closing the banks until steps might be taken to protect the savings of vast numbers of small depositors. A Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was created to make direct and immediate contributions to the states for relief purposes. A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) quickly put over a quarter of a million idle young men to the constructive task of preserving the nation’s natural resources. A Works Progress Administration (WPA) restored the self-respect of millions of older unemployed by taking them from the relief rolls and employing their talents on public projects of permanent value—whether they were unskilled laborers or writers, artists, historians or musicians. Like many of the alphabetical agencies created during the depression emergency, these work-relief projects were temporary and frankly experimental, but they thoroughly vindicated the New Deal’s assumption that needy Americans wanted work, not the dole, and they amply demonstrated the government’s new and continuing determination to provide for the underprivileged “forgotten man.”
Relief measures of necessity received highest priority in the grim early years of the Roosevelt administration, but recovery and reform ranked importantly too. The long-range objective of the New Deal was to place the American economy back on its feet, in good working order and with adequate safeguards against the inequities and maladjustments responsible for the tragic boom and bust of the twenties. Here again the Congress followed strong Executive leadership, adopting almost in its entirety each of the legislative proposals made by the President and his remarkable group of advisers known collectively—and sometimes derisively—as the “Brain Trust.” An expanded and “democratized” Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was authorized to lend enormous sums of Federal monies not only to the largest financial institutions—as it had under Hoover—but to smaller faltering industries as well. And a Public Works Administration (PWA) was created to “prime” the “pump” of national economic activity through an extensive program of government spending. The New Dealers were convinced that Hoover’s technique (as Roosevelt described it) of helping “only those at the top, in the pious hope that the few at the top would in their benevolence or generosity pass that help on” was inadequate to the times and that the key to recovery lay instead in increased consumer purchasing power. To this end an Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) brought about a program of crop curtailment and government-supported price levels, and a National Recovery Administration (NRA) attempted the same for the urban industrial worker.
It was, of course, in the realm of labor relations that the New Deal accomplished its most sweeping economic reforms. Formal guarantees of labor’s right to organize and to bargain collectively were written into Section 7(a) of the act which created the NRA and later into the National Labor Relations Act. And in 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act established a legal floor under wages and a ceiling over working hours for employees engaged in interstate commerce. These measures and the administration’s obvious eagerness to deal with labor as industry’s equal gave a tremendous impetus to the growth of organized labor. But labor’s gains were quickly challenged by management, and the mid-thirties were marred by a long series of sit-down strikes, boycotts, and lockouts that frequently were accompanied by violence and bloodshed. Besides, all was not well within labor’s own house. A long-standing conflict between the respective advocates of trade and industrial unionism had resulted in a schism within the venerable and rather conservative American Federation of Labor and in the creation of a rival Congress of Industrial Organizations. Inter-union struggles were particularly bitter and continuous jurisdictional disputes seriously threatened labor’s recent strides forward. But under the dynamic leadership of John L. Lewis the CIO proved remarkably successful in recruiting large armies of unorganized industrial workers, and by the end of the decade each of the giant labor organizations could claim a membership of 4,000,000.
Important reforms were enacted in other areas as well. The nation’s antitrust laws were enforced with renewed vigor in a concerted effort to control the trend towards monopoly and the concentration of wealth that was so clearly revealed in the reports of the Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC). A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created to guard against a recurrence of the fraudulent and speculative stock market practices that had contributed so much to the 1929 Crash. A generously conceived Social Security Act inaugurated a program of old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, and financial assistance for dependent children, the crippled, and the blind. And a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that was empowered not only to generate and to sell cheap electricity, but also to conduct flood-control, reforestation, community organization and educational programs for the impoverished people of the Valley, provided a daring experiment in social planning.
All of these measures for relief, recovery and reform were designed to insure a free, democratic society against the ravages of poverty and insecurity, for Roosevelt was firmly convinced that the “liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.” To critics who vigorously opposed the New Deal in the name of a Jeffersonian tradition of limited government, the President cogently replied that in twentieth-century industrial America the real threat to individual freedom lay not in the expanding services of democratic government, but rather in the irresponsible power of concentrated wealth. Now Americans’ liberties were seriously endangered by privileged, monopolistic economic power, and a limited Welfare State must supplant the Laissez-Faire State of the nineteenth century, not to hamper individualism, but to protect it.
Though there were some who accused the President of creating a vast Federal bureaucracy merely to foster his own political ambitions, and though the cry of “dictator” was heard over and over again, most Americans heartily approved of the New Deal. In the Congressional elections of 1934 an already sizable Democratic legislative majority was substantially increased; and in the Presidential election of 1936 Roosevelt soundly defeated Alfred M. Landon, the “Kansas Coolidge,” who carried only Maine and Vermont for the Republican Party. But these handsome victories at the polls made no impression at all upon the judicial branch of the national Government, and it was in the rarified, though hardly unprejudicial atmosphere of a conservative and largely hostile Supreme Court that Roosevelt, as Jefferson before him, encountered his most formidable opposition. Here a majority of the “nine old men”—whose tenure had begun long before the “Roosevelt Revolution”— interpreted the Constitution in such a manner as to invalidate vital portions of the New Deal’s liberal legislative program. The Court had long been a bulwark of conservatism, but seldom before had the Justices so flagrantly flouted the will of the popularly chosen Congress and Chief Executive or so consistently read into the Constitution what Justice (later Chief Justice) Harlan F. Stone described as their own “personal economic predilections.” And when the NRA, the AAA, the Municipal Bankruptcy Act, the Farm Mortgage Act, and the Guffey Coal Act were all declared unconstitutional, then the President realized that the entire New Deal would suffer judicial emasculation if drastic action were not quickly taken. Thus, early in 1937 the administration proposed legislation which permitted Justices of the high court to retire on full pay at the age of seventy and which empowered the President to appoint an additional Justice—until the Supreme Court numbered fifteen—for each of the judges who remained on the bench after the retirement age. Roosevelt argued that his plan would “save our National Constitution from hardening of the judicial arteries,” but his opponents joined in attacking it as a “court-packing” measure, and when the Congress defeated the court reform bill the administration suffered a major political setback.
The Court was not unimpressed by this attack upon its prerogatives, however, and even as the controversial bill was being debated and defeated in Congress the Justices conceded that an aroused public might someday impose even more stringent limitations upon judicial review were the popular will further denied. Bowing to expediency, the Court very quickly became more receptive to social legislation, and in 1937 the New Deal was upheld in several particularly important decision. In N.L.R.B. v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation the Court sustained the National Labor Relations Act, despite the fact that distinguished lawyers who had studied the Court’s earlier decisions on related matters had strongly advised their clients that the law was unconstitutional. In Helvering v. Davis the Court sustained the Social Security Act in a decision which liberally construed Congressional power to tax for the general welfare. In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish the Court upheld the right of the State of Washington to pass minimum wage legislation, though less than a year before a similar law in New York had been invalidated, and though in 1923 a Federal minimum wage act for the District of Columbia had been set aside in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital.
The Supreme Court’s voluntary about-face was historic—some called it “the switch in time that saved nine.” But within a few years death and resignation permitted Roosevelt to remake the membership himself. Soon conservatives such as McReynolds, Sutherland, and Van Devanter were replaced by the liberals Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, and Robert Jackson, and the Court withdrew farther and farther from the realm of lawmaking. Besides, by the end of the decade comparatively few Americans entirely rejected the New Deal philosophy of social control. There were many who continued bitterly to criticize the President as incompetent or dictatorial, and even less partisan observers seriously questioned both the desirability of extreme centralization of power in the Federal government at Washington and the essential wisdom of continuously strengthening the power of the Chief Executive at the expense of the power and prestige of the Congress and the Supreme Court. But for the most part the “Roosevelt Revolution” had made its permanent impression upon national life and it seemed as if Americans would never again enjoy—or regret—an era of laissez-faire.
There is no permanence to historical interpretation, as changing opinions about Barack Obama’s presidency may themselves in time demonstrate, and as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., pointed out so wisely in “Folly’s Antidote,” his insightful Century Association–New York Times Op-Ed comments on history newly included in this book. Nor should there be.
RDH, 2009]
President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:
This is a day of national consecration, and I am certain that my fellow-Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our nation impels.
This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen, government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted that failure and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True, they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money.
Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.
They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.
The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow-men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.
Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.
It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this, we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in the redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.
The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities.
It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss, through foreclosure, of our small homes and our farms.
It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced.
It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character.
There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act, and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return to the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
These are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.
Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo.
Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy.
I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on the accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic.
It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in, and parts of, the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer.
It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never before, our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take, but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because, without such discipline, no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.
We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good.
This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people, dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.
Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors.
Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form.
That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.
The measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me.
I shall ask Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike.
We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.
We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action.
They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
In this dedication of a nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us! May He guide me in the days to come!
Members of the Democratic Convention, my friends: Here, and in every community throughout the land, we are met at a time of great moment to the future of the Nation. It is an occasion to be dedicated to the simple and sincere expression of an attitude toward problems, the determination of which will profoundly affect America. I come not only as a leader of a party, not only as a candidate for high office, but as one upon whom many critical hours have imposed and still impose a grave responsibility.
For the sympathy, help and confidence with which Americans have sustained me in my task, I am grateful. For their loyalty I salute the members of our great party, in and out of political life in every part of the Union. I salute those of other parties, especially those in the Congress of the United States who on so many occasions have put partisanship aside. I thank the Governors of the several States, their Legislatures, their State and local officials who participated unselfishly and regardless of party in our efforts to achieve recovery and destroy abuses. Above all I thank the millions of Americans who have borne disaster bravely and have dared to smile through the storm. America will not forget these recent years, will not forget that the rescue was not a mere party task. It was the concern of all of us. In our strength we rose together, rallied our energies together, applied the old rules of common sense, and together survived. In those days we feared fear. That was why we fought fear. And today, my friends, we have won against the most dangerous of our foes. We have conquered fear.
But I cannot, with candor, tell you that all is well with the world. Clouds of suspicion, tides of ill will and intolerance gather darkly in many places. In our own land we enjoy indeed a fullness of life greater than that of most Nations. But the rush of modern civilization itself has raised for us new difficulties, new problems which must be solved if we are to preserve to the United States the political and economic freedom for which Washington and Jefferson planned and fought. Philadelphia is a good city in which to write American history. This is fitting ground on which to reaffirm the faith of our fathers; to pledge ourselves to restore to the people a wider freedom; to give to 1936 as the founders gave to 1776—an American way of life.
That very word “freedom,” in itself and of necessity, suggests freedom from some restraining power. In 1776 we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy—from the eighteenth-century royalists who held special privileges from the crown. It was to perpetuate their privilege that they governed without the consent of the governed; that they denied the right of free assembly and free speech; that they restricted the worship of God; that they put the average man’s property and the average man’s life in pawn to the mercenaries of dynastic power; that they regimented the people. And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own Government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.
Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution—all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free. For out of this modern civilization, economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed-of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.
There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man. The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor—these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-business man, the investments set aside for old age—other people’s money—these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.
An old English judge once said: “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for. For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness. Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people’s mandate to end it. Under that mandate, it is being ended. The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.
Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the overprivileged alike.
The brave and clear platform adopted by this Convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that Government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster. But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them. For more than three years, we have fought for them. This Convention, in every word and deed, has pledged that that fight will go on.
The defeats and victories of these years have given to us as a people a new understanding of our Government and of ourselves. Never since the early days of the New England town meeting have the affairs of Government been so widely discussed and so clearly appreciated. It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle.
We do not see faith, hope and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a Nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization. Faith—in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships. Hope—renewed because we know so well the progress we have made. Charity—in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves.
We seek not merely to make Government a mechanical implement, but to give it the vibrant personal character that is the very embodiment of human charity. We are poor indeed if this Nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude. In the place of the palace of privilege, we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.
It is a sobering thing, my friends, to be a servant of this great cause. We try in our daily work to remember that the cause belongs not to us, but to the people. The standard is not in the hands of you and me alone. It is carried by America. We seek daily to profit from experience, to learn to do better as our task proceeds.
Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warmhearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy. I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and previous form of government for ourselves and for the world.
I accept the commission you have tendered me. I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war.
In a proceeding under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the National Labor Relations Board found that the petitioner, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, had violated the Act by engaging in unfair labor practices affecting commerce. . . . The unfair labor practices charged were that the corporation was discriminating against members of the union with regard to hire and tenure of employment, and was coercing and intimidating its employees in order to interfere with their self-organization. The discriminatory and coercive action alleged was the discharge of certain employees. . . .
Contesting the ruling of the Board, the respondent argues (1) that the Act is in reality a regulation of labor relations and not of interstate commerce; (2) that the Act can have no application to the respondent’s relations with its production employees because they are not subject to regulation by the Federal Government; and (3) that the provisions of the Act violate Section 2 of Article III and the Fifth and Seventh Amendments of the Constitution of the United States. . .
Respondent says that whatever may be said of employees engaged in interstate commerce, the industrial relations and activities in the manufacturing department of respondent’s enterprise are not subject to federal regulations. The argument rests upon the proposition that manufacturing in itself is not commerce. . . .
The Government distinguishes these cases. The various parts of respondent’s enterprise are described as interdependent and as thus involving “a great movement of iron ore, coal and limestone along well-defined paths to the steel mills, thence through them, and thence in the form of steel products into the consuming centers of the country—a definite and well-understood course of business.” It is urged that these activities constitute a “stream” or “flow” of commerce, of which the Aliquippa manufacturing plant is the focal point, and that industrial strife at that point would cripple the entire movement. Reference is made to our decision sustaining the Packers and Stockyards Act. The Court found that the stockyards were but a “throat” through which the current of commerce flowed and the transactions which there occurred could not be separated from that movement. . . .
We do not find it necessary to determine whether these features of defendant’s business dispose of the asserted analogy to the “stream of commerce” cases. The congressional authority to protect interstate commerce from burdens and obstructions is not limited to transactions which can be deemed to be an essential part of a “flow” of interstate or foreign commerce. Burdens and obstructions may be due to injurious action springing from other sources. The fundamental principle is that the power to regulate commerce is the power to enact “all appropriate legislation” for “its protection and advancement”; to adopt measures “to promote its growth and insure its safety”; “to foster, protect, control and restrain.” That power is plenary and may be exerted to protect interstate commerce “no matter what the source of the dangers which threaten it.” Although activities may be intrastate in character when separately considered, if they have such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that their control is essential or appropriate to protect that commerce from burdens and obstructions, Congress cannot be denied the power to exercise that control. Undoubtedly the scope of this power must be considered in the light of our dual system of government and may not be extended so as to embrace effects upon interstate commerce so indirect and remote that to embrace them, in view of our complex society, would effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a completely centralized government. The question is necessarily one of degree. . . .
It is thus apparent that the fact that the employees here concerned were engaged in production is not determinative. The question remains as to the effect upon interstate commerce of the labor practice involved. . . .
Giving full weight to respondent’s contention with respect to a break in the complete continuity of the “stream of commerce” by reason of respondent’s manufacturing operations, the fact remains that the stoppage of these operations by industrial strife would have a most serious effect upon interstate commerce. In view of respondent’s far-flung activities, it is idle to say that the effect would be indirect or remote. It is obvious that it would be immediate and might be catastrophic. We are asked to shut our eyes to the plainest facts of our national life and to deal with the question of direct and indirect effects in an intellectual vacuum. Because there may be but indirect and remote effects upon interstate commerce in connection with a host of local enterprises throughout the country, it does not follow that other industrial activities do not have such a close and intimate relation to interstate commerce as to make the presence of industrial strife a matter of the most urgent national concern. When industries organize themselves on a national scale, making their relation to interstate commerce the dominant factor in their activities, how can it be maintained that their industrial labor relations constitute a forbidden field into which Congress may not enter when it is necessary to protect interstate commerce from the paralyzing consequences of industrial war? We have often said that interstate commerce itself is a practical conception. It is equally true that interferences with that commerce must be appraised by a judgement that does not ignore actual experience.
Experience has abundantly demonstrated that the recognition of the right of employees to self-organization and to have representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of collective bargaining is often an essential condition of industrial peace. Refusal to confer and negotiate has been one of the most prolific causes of strife. This is such an outstanding fact in the history of labor disturbances that it is a proper subject of judicial notice and requires no citation of instances. But with respect to the appropriateness of the recognition of self-organization and representation in the promotion of peace, the question is not essentially different in the case of employees in industries of such a character that interstate commerce is put in jeopardy from the case of employees of transportation companies. And of what avail is it to protect the facility of transportation, if interstate commerce is throttled with respect to the commodities to be transported!
These questions have frequently engaged the attention of Congress and have been the subject of many inquiries. The steel industry is one of the great basic industries of the United States, with ramifying activities affecting interstate commerce at every point. The Government aptly refers to the steel strike of 1919–1920 with its far-reaching consequences. The fact that there appears to have been no major disturbance in that industry in the more recent period did not dispose of the possibilities of future and like dangers to interstate commerce which Congress was entitled to foresee and to exercise its protective power to forestall. It is not necessary again to detail the facts as to respondent’s enterprise. Instead of being beyond the pale, we think that it presents in a most striking way the close and intimate relation which a manufacturing industry may have to interstate commerce and we have no doubt that Congress had constitutional authority to safeguard the right of respondent’s employees to self-organization and freedom in the choice of representatives for collective bargaining. . . .
Our conclusion is that the order of the Board was within its competency and that the Act is valid. . . .
The Social Security Act is challenged once again. . . .
The purge of nation-wide calamity that began in 1929 has taught us many lessons. Not the least is the solidarity of interests that may once have seemed to be divided. Unemployment spreads from state to state, the hinterland now settled that in pioneer days gave an avenue of escape. Spreading from state to state, unemployment is an ill not particular but general, which may be checked, if Congress so determines, by the resources of the Nation. . . .
But the ill is all one or at least not greatly different whether men are thrown out of work because there is no longer work to do or because the disabilities of age make them incapable of doing it. Rescue becomes necessary irrespective of the cause. The hope behind this statute is to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey’s end is near. . . .
A recent study of the Social Security Board informs us that “one-fifth of the aged in the United Sates were receiving old-age assistance, emergency relief, institutional care, employment under the works program, or some other form of aid from public or private funds; two-fifths to one-half were dependent on friends and relatives; one-eighth had some income from earnings; and possibly one-sixth had some savings or property. Approximately three out of four persons 65 or over were probably dependent wholly or partially on others for support.” We summarize in the margin the results of other studies by state and national commissions. They point the same way.
The problem is plainly national in area and dimensions. Moreover, laws of the separate states cannot deal with it effectively. Congress, at least, had a basis for that belief. States and local governments are often lacking in the resources that are necessary to finance an adequate program of security for the aged. This is brought out with a wealth of illustration in recent studies of the problem. Apart from the failure of resources, states and local governments are at times reluctant to increase so heavily the burden of taxation to be borne by their residents for fear of placing themselves in a position of economic disadvantage as compared with neighbors or competitors. . . .
A system of old age pensions has special dangers of its own, if put in force in one state and rejected in another. The existence of such a system is a bait to the needy and dependent elsewhere, encouraging them to migrate and seek a haven of repose. Only a power that is national can serve the interests of all.
Whether wisdom or unwisdom resides in the scheme of benefits it is not for us to say. The answer to such inquiries must come from Congress, not the courts. Our concern here as often is with power, not with wisdom. Counsel for respondent has recalled to us the virtues of self-reliance and frugality. There is a possibility, he says, that aid from a paternal government may sap those sturdy virtues and breed a race of weaklings. If Massachusetts so believes and shapes her laws in that conviction, must her breed of sons be changed, he asks, because some other philosophy of government finds favor in the halls of Congress? But the answer is not doubtful. One might ask with equal reason whether the system of protective tariffs is to be set aside at will in one state or another whenever local policy prefers the rule of laissez faire. The issue is a closed one. It was fought out long ago. When money is spent to promote the general welfare, the concept of welfare or the opposite is shaped by Congress, not the states. So the concept be not arbitrary, the locality must yield. Constitution, Art. VI, Par. 2.
Ordered Accordingly.
This case presents the question of the constitutional validity of the minimum wage law of the State of Washington.
The Act, entitled, “minimum Wages for Women,” authorizes the fixing of minimum wages for women and minors. . . .
The appellant conducts a hotel. The appellee Elsie Parrish was employed as a chambermaid and (with her husband) brought this suit to recover the difference between the wages paid her and the minimum wage fixed pursuant to the state law. The minimum wage was $14.50 per week of 48 hours. The appellant challenged the act as repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court of the State, reversing the trial court, sustained the statute and directed judgment for the plaintiff. . . .
The case is here on appeal.
The appellant relies upon the decision of this Court in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, which has held invalid the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Act which was attacked under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. . . .
The Supreme Court of Washington has upheld the minimum wage statute of this State. It has decided that the statute is a reasonable exercise of the police power of the State. In reaching that conclusion the State court has invoked principles long established by this Court in the application of the Fourteenth Amendment. The State court has refused to regard the decision in the Adkins case as determinative and has pointed to our decisions both before and since that case as justifying its position. We are of the opinion that this ruling of the State court demands on our part a re-examination of the Adkins case. The importance of the question, in which many States having similar laws are concerned, the close division by which the decision in the Adkins case was reached, and the economic conditions which have supervened, and in the light of which the reasonableness of the exercise of the protective power of the State must be considered, make it not only appropriate, but we think imperative, that in deciding the present case the subject should receive fresh consideration. . . .
The principle which must control our decision is not in doubt. The constitutional provision invoked is the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment governing the States, as the due process clause invoked in the Adkins case governed Congress. In each case the violation alleged by those attacking minimum wage regulation for women is deprivation of freedom of contract. What is this freedom? The Constitution does not speak of freedom of contract. It speaks of liberty and prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law. In prohibiting that deprivation the Constitution does not recognize an absolute and uncontrollable liberty. Liberty in each of its phases has its history and connotation. But the liberty safeguarded is liberty in a social organization which requires the protection of law against the evils which menace the health, safety, morals and welfare of the people. Liberty under the Constitution is thus necessarily subject to the restraints of due process, and regulation which is reasonable in relation to its subject and is adopted in the interests of the community is due process. . . .
The minimum wage to be paid under the Washington statute is fixed after full consideration by representatives of employers, employees and the public. It may be assumed that the minimum wage is fixed in consideration of the services that are performed in the particular occupations under normal conditions. Provision is made for special licenses at less wages in the case of women who are incapable of full service. The statement of Mr. Justice Holmes in the Adkins case is pertinent:
This statute does not compel anybody to pay anything. It simply forbids employment at rates below those fixed as the minimum requirement of health and right living. It is safe to assume that women will not be employed at even the lowest wages allowed unless they earn them, or unless the employer’s business can sustain the burden. In short the law in its character and operation is like hundreds of so-called police laws that have been upheld. . . .
What can be closer to the public interest than the health of women and their protection from unscrupulous and overreaching employers? And if the protection of women is a legitimate end of the exercise of state power, how can it be said that the requirement of the payment of a minimum wage fairly fixed in order to meet the very necessities of existence is not an admissible means to that end? The legislature of the State was clearly entitled to consider the situation of women in employment, the fact that they are in the class receiving the least pay, that their bargaining power is relatively weak, and that they are the ready victims of those who would take advantage of their necessitous circumstances. The legislature was entitled to adopt measures to reduce the evils of the “sweating system,” the exploiting of workers at wages so low as to be insufficient to meet the bare cost of living, thus making their very helplessness the occasion of a most injurious competition. The legislature had the right to consider that its minimum wage requirements would be an important aid in carrying out its policy of protection. The adoption of similar requirements by many States evidences a deepseated conviction both as to the presence of the evil and as to the means adopted to check it. Legislative response to that conviction cannot be regarded as arbitrary or capricious and that is all we have to decide. Even if the wisdom of the policy be regarded as debatable and its effects uncertain, still the legislature is entitled to its judgment.
There is an additional and compelling consideration which recent economic experience has brought into a strong light. The exploitation of a class of workers who are in an unequal position with respect to bargaining power and are thus relatively defenceless against the denial of a living wage is not only detrimental to their health and well being but casts a direct burden for their support upon the community. What these workers lose in wages the taxpayers are called upon to pay. The bare cost of living must be met. We may take judicial notice of the unparalleled demands for relief which arose during the recent period of depression and still continue to an alarming extent despite the degree of economic recovery which has been achieved. It is unnecessary to cite official statistics to establish what is of common knowledge through the length and breadth of the land. While in the instant case no factual brief has been presented, there is no reason to doubt that the State of Washington has encountered the same social problem that is present elsewhere. The community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unconscionable employers. The community may direct its law-making power to correct the abuse which springs from their selfish disregard of the public interest. . . .
Our conclusion is that the case of Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, supra should be, and is overruled. The judgment of the Supreme Court of the State of Washington is affirmed.