FAHY, CHARLES (1892–1972). Born in Rome, Georgia, and educated at Notre Dame University and Georgetown University Law School, Charles Fahy qualified as a lawyer in 1914. After serving as a navy pilot during World War I, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., until 1924, and then in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1933, he became assistant solicitor in the Department of the Interior; in 1935 general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board; in 1940 assistant U.S. solicitor general; and in 1941 solicitor general, a position he held until 1945. After holding several other government appointments, including legal adviser to the American Military Government in Germany, in 1949 he was appointed chair of the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services established by President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981 in 1948, with responsibility for overseeing the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces. In 1949, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals on the D.C. circuit and later took senior status as a federal judge.
FAIR DEAL. The title given to President Harry S. Truman’s program announced in his State of the Union Message to Congress in January 1949, after he said, “Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.” The Fair Deal included civil rights, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, income support for farmers, federal education reform, a housing bill, and national health insurance. Although there was some progress in housing reform and civil rights, the program amounted to very little due to the conservative opposition and Republican domination of Congress or because of the influence of powerful lobbying groups like the American Medical Association, which labeled national health insurance “socialized medicine.”
FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES COMMITTEE (FEPC). The FEPC was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Executive Order 8802 on 25 June 1941. The order was issued in response to the threat of a March on Washington by African Americans led by A. Philip Randolph to protest the discrimination in defense industries, scheduled for July 1. The president ordered an end to discrimination and established the FEPC to oversee the order. Although limited in size and funding, the FEPC held a series of widely-publicized hearings on discrimination in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Birmingham, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Portland. The hearings in Birmingham, Alabama, angered southern politicians, and the FEPC was transferred to the War Manpower Commission in July 1942. A further Executive Order 9346 enlarged the committee and its field staff in 1943. In 1946, Congress failed to approve further appropriations for FEPC due to a southern filibuster in the Senate, and the committee came to an end. It had heard more than 6,000 cases of discrimination and brought almost 2,000 cases to a satisfactory conclusion. Influenced by the federal initiative, a number of states and cities established their own fair employment practice bodies during World War II.
FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT, 1938. Becoming law on 25 June 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act was one of the major reform measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Minimum wage provision had originally been included in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, but when the act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, it was clear that further measures were necessary. The Fair Labor Standards Act set a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour in 1938, increased to 30 cents in 1939, and a maximum working week of 44 hours, reduced to 40 by 1940, for all workers engaged in interstate commerce. Agricultural workers, domestic servants, seamen, fishermen, and street rail workers were excluded.
FAMINE EMERGENCY COMMITTEE. The Famine Emergency Committee was established by President Harry S. Truman in February 1946 in response to the food crisis that affected Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In addition to issuing conservation orders diverting grain and dairy products to famine relief, Truman established a committee headed by former president Herbert Hoover to assess the situation and recommend solutions. In keeping with his approach to previous problems, Hoover believed that the main role of the committee was to “educate and inform,” and he did so mainly through personal visits to Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Bonus payments to farmers for wheat increased production and made it possible to ship 6 million tons to Europe by the summer of 1946. See also AGRICULTURE.
FARLEY, JAMES ALOYSIUS (1888–1973). Born in Grassy Point, New York, James Farley was employed in the family businesses before qualifying as a bookkeeper. He worked for the Universal Gypsum Company in a variety of capacities until 1926. Farley entered politics in 1912 as town clerk for Stony Point, New York, and became involved in the Democratic Party. He was a supporter of Alfred E. Smith in the gubernatorial contest in 1918, and he held a number of party positions in the early 1920s before being elected to the State Assembly in 1922. Farley voted against prohibition and was defeated in 1924. In 1925, Smith appointed him to the State Boxing Commission. He also established his own General Building Supply Company in 1926 and was its president until 1933. In 1928, Farley helped manage Franklin D. Roosevelt’s gubernatorial campaign and provided crucial support for his presidential nomination in 1932. When Roosevelt was elected, Farley was appointed postmaster general. He was also chair of the Democratic National Committee, and he managed Roosevelt’s 1936 campaign. Farley was not one of Roosevelt’s inner circle of advisers, by 1940 he was opposed to the president seeking a third term. He put his own name forward for nomination but was easily defeated by Roosevelt. Shortly afterward Farley resigned from the cabinet and from his position in the Democratic Party. He made two unsuccessful attempts to win the New York gubernatorial nomination in 1958 and 1962. He became chair of the Coca-Cola Export Corporation, a position he held until 1973.
FARM CREDIT ACT, 1933. The Farm Credit Act was passed on 16 June 1933 to make loans to farmers available through production credit corps, and it established the Farm Credit Administration to oversee its operation. See also AGRICULTURE.
FARM CREDIT ADMINISTRATION (FCA). Established by executive order in March 1933 and confirmed by the Federal Credit Act on 16 June 1933 as part of the legislation introduced in the “First Hundred Days” of the New Deal to tackle the agricultural crisis, the FCA established a central bank for cooperatives and 12 regional banks that could make loans to provide production credit, refinance farm mortgages, and repurchase properties. By 1940, the agencies supervised by the FCA had lent some $6.87 million. In 1939, the FCA was transferred to the Department of Agriculture.
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (FSA). Established by Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace in 1937, the FSA was to supervise the work of the Resettlement Administration and programs established under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenancy Act. The FSA provided funds for rural rehabilitation loans, grants to those affected by natural disasters, and loans to establish farm cooperatives. Between 1937 and 1947 the administration made loans of $293 million to 47,104 farmers. It also established almost 100 camps for migratory workers and medical cooperatives for the rural poor. In 1946, the Farmers Home Administration took over the FSA programs and began to terminate loans and other obligations.
An important aspect of the FSA’s work was to continue collecting the photographic material for the Historical Section directed by Roy Stryker. Some 77,000 photographs were made available to the press or used in exhibitions to publicize the plight of the rural poor. See also AGRICULTURE; DUST BOWL; EVANS, WALKER; LANGE, DOROTHEA; LEE, RUSSELL WERNER; ROTHSTEIN, ARTHUR ; SHAHN, BEN.
FARMING. See AGRICULTURE.
FARM-LABOR PARTY. The Farm-Labor Party was a third party formed in 1919 by John Fitzpatrick and members of the Committee of Forty-Eight, a group of progressives led by Amos Pinchot in an attempt to unite farmers and the labor movement under a reform program. The party first nominated Robert M. La Follette Jr. as their presidential candidate, but when he rejected the nomination, the party turned to Parley P. Christensen of Utah. In the 1920 election, he received 260,000 votes. In 1924 the Farm-Labor Party supported La Follette’s Progressive Party. By the mid-1920s, the party was only the Minnesota Farm-Labor Party, and in 1930 their candidate, Floyd Olson, was elected state governor. The party supported the New Deal and defeated the local Republicans until 1938. In the 1940s, the Minnesota party merged with the Democrats to form the Democratic-Framer-Labor Party of Minnesota.
FAULKNER, WILLIAM CUTHBERT (1897–1962). William Faulkner was one of the greatest southern writers of the 20th century. Born William Cuthbert Faulkner in Mississippi, he had a desultory education, worked in the family bank, and spent some time at the University of Mississippi. Rejected by the U.S. Army, Faulkner joined the British Royal Air Force in Canada in 1918. After the war, he studied at the University of Mississippi from 1919 to 1921 and published various poems and reviews. He earned a living as postmaster at the University until 1924. His first book, The Marble Faun, was published that year and was followed by many others, including Soldier’s Pay (1926), Sartoris (1929), The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951), and The Reivers (1962). In many of his novels, he traced the decline of the Old South through the stories of fictional families in “Jefferson,” a composite Mississippi town in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha.
Despite his prodigious output, Faulkner was not widely known for some time but regarded as a southern “regional” writer. He supplemented his income from royalties by writing film scripts, contributing to the Howard Hawks’s movies To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946). The publication of The Portable Faulkner in 1946 brought him to a wider audience. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 “for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.” A Fable (1954) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, and The Reivers received the same award in 1963.
FECHNER, ROBERT (1876–1939). The first director of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Robert Fechner was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and educated in Georgia. He became an apprentice on the Georgia Central Railroad in 1892, joined the army in 1898 but did not see action, and later worked in mining in Mexico and Central and South America. He returned to Georgia in 1905 and became a labor organizer. From 1913 to 1933 he was executive officer of the International Associations of Machinists. During World War I, he served as an adviser on labor policy, where he met Franklin D. Roosevelt, then as assistant secretary to the navy. In 1933, President Roosevelt made him head of the CCC. Fechner rejected proposals that the corps become an educational program, and he also resisted the implementation of military training in the camps. He was reluctant to include African Americans, particularly as officers. As a consequence, there were only two officers in the CCC, and African Americans were segregated. Fechner died of a heart attack in 1939 and was succeeded by James J. McEntee.
FEDERAL ANTILYNCHING BILL. Drafted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1933 in response to the increasing number of lynchings after 1930, and presented by Republican congressman Edward Costigan from Colorado and Senator Robert Wagner, the bill failed in 1934. It was reintroduced in 1935 following the widely publicized lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in July. In the face of southern opposition, and lacking the support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who did not wish to jeopardize other reform measures, pressure in support of the bill decreased, and it was abandoned in 1938. See also ANTILYNCHING BILL.
FEDERAL ART PROJECT. The Federal Art Project was established as part of the Works Progress Administration under Federal One to provide work for artists. By 1936, it employed 6,000 people, more than half of them directly producing works of art, including more than 42,000 paintings and 1,000 murals on public buildings. Among those employed at different times were Ben Shahn, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI). The FBI began in 1908 as a corps of special agents within the Department of Justice to investigate crime at a federal level. In 1909, it was named the Bureau of Investigation. Following U.S. entry into World War I, the bureau became responsible for investigating violations of the Selective Service Acts, Espionage Act, and Sabotage Act. The Justice Department widened its brief with the creation of a General Intelligence Division headed by J. Edgar Hoover. The Federal Bureau was created in 1924 to investigate violations of federal law with Hoover as its head, a position he held until his death in 1972.
During the 1930s, the FBI grew in national prominence following the implementation of an anticrime program to combat the apparent rise in gangsterism publicized by such people as John Dillinger, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde (Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow), criminals who were often seen as “Robin Hood” figures by the public. Justice Department media campaigns showed FBI agents (“G-men”), including Hoover, in action against “public enemies.” By the end of the decade the bureau had more than 750 agents and offices in 42 cities and a budget that had doubled to more than $6 million. In 1935, it was officially named the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
With the rise of Nazism in Europe and the approach of World War II, the powers of the bureau were extended to provide surveillance of subversive organizations and after 1941 to safeguard against acts of espionage and sabotage. The FBI was responsible for the apprehension of eight Nazi saboteurs who landed in 1942, and they were also involved in the internment of Japanese Americans, a policy Hoover disagreed with.
During the Cold War, the bureau was involved in the investigation of communist subversion at home, including the breaking and entering into the offices of the journal Amerasia. Agents arrested six people in 1945, providing material for the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and later for Joseph McCarthy and in the trials of Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The concern for security led to the agency’s expansion, and by 1952 the FBI had a force of more than 7,000 agents.
In later years, the FBI was involved in surveillance of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr.; antiwar demonstrators and their supporters during the war in Vietnam; and organized crime. The agency’s reputation was increasingly tarnished by revelations of illegal activities, institutional racism, and conservatism, and in the mid-1970s it was increasingly subjected to congressional oversight. It was further damaged following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September 2001, and the subsequent discovery that the bureau had failed to coordinate with other agencies or follow up on reports from its own field agents of suspicious activities that might have prevented the attacks. Nonetheless, at the start of the 21st century it remains the most important federal domestic investigative branch of the Department of Justice, with a staff of more than 10,000 agents and a budget of almost $3 billion.
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (FCC). Established by the Communications Act in June 1934, the FCC replaced the Federal Radio Commission (1927) and consisted of seven commissioners who were empowered to regulate interstate and international radio, wire, telephone, telegraph, and cable communication (later extended to television) in the national interest. It was able to issue or withdraw licenses for broadcasting, allocate wave lengths, and oversee the communications industry.
FEDERAL DANCE PROJECT. The Federal Dance Project was one of the projects funded under Federal One to provide employment for out-of-work dancers. It established three dance units in 1936 to employ 185 dancers. Despite its many internal and external difficulties, the project did bring dance performance to a wider public and also provided dance lessons for many people. Charges of left-wing sympathies led to the end of the project in 1940.
FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION (FDIC). Created under the Banking Act of 1933, the FDIC was established to insure deposits of member banks in the Federal Reserve System and restore public confidence in the banking system. By 1935, 14,400 banks had joined, and the number of bank failures was more than halved in two years.
FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ACT, 1933. Part of the first program of the New Deal to bring relief to the approximately 17 million unemployed, the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933 established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration with a budget of $500 million for national emergency relief. This work came to an end with the Social Security Act of 1935.
FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMINISTRATION (FERA). Established in May 1933 by the Federal Emergency Relief Act, FERA was empowered to distribute $500 million in relief, matching every $3 of local money with $1 of federal funds. Headed by Harry Hopkins, FERA established a Works Division with federal work programs that gave work directly to more than 2 million people, distributed funds, and provided for rural rehabilitation. By 1935, FERA had distributed more than $2 billion in relief. However, it was viewed by many as extravagant, a threat to the authority of the states, and an encouragement for the idle. Increasingly seen as a political liability, FERA came to an end in 1935, but some of its functions were later taken over by the Works Progress Administration.
FEDERAL HOUSING ADMINISTRATION (FHA). The FHA was established with the National Housing Acts of 1934 and 1937. The intention of the legislation was to provide work for unemployed building workers by tackling problems of poor housing. The administration was empowered to provide loans to banks for relending to individuals to build or repair homes and to provide insurance for lending institutions. Limited leadership initially restricted the amount of assistance for poorer areas, but amendments to the original act in 1938 led to a doubling of the number of new homes financed. By 1939, 275,000 small homes had been constructed with FHA financing, and more than 1.5 million homes had been repaired or improved.
FEDERAL LOAN AGENCY. Established in 1939, the Federal Loan Agency replaced various existing temporary loan agencies to “supervise and coordinate the functions and activities” of all federal lending bodies, other than those in agriculture. The agencies covered included the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Federal Housing Administration, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, and others.
FEDERAL LOYALTY PROGRAM. In response to Republican charges that the Democrats were “soft on communism,” in November 1946 President Harry S. Truman established a Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty. Following their recommendations, Truman issued Executive Order 9835 on 21 March 1947 establishing a Federal Loyalty Program. The program was intended to remove “any disloyal or subversive person” from the federal civil service. Disloyal activities were listed as including sabotage, espionage, treason, sedition, the advocacy of revolution or violent overthrow of government, passing secret information to another party, and “membership, affiliation, or sympathetic association with” any group or organization “designated as totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive.” These organizations were listed by the attorney general and included the Communist Party of the United States of America, Socialist Workers’ Party, Ku Klux Klan, National Negro Congress, Silver Shirts, and various groups involved in the Spanish Civil War.
The Civil Service Commission was required to establish a Loyalty Review Board, and federal workers were vetted through federal loyalty boards. Almost 3 million people were checked during the Truman administration, and between 400 and 1,200 were dismissed (precise figures are unclear) and between 1,000 and 6,000 resigned rather than face investigation. The process continued under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the definition of disloyal was widened to include “security risk” from 1953 onward. Rather than silence the attacks from conservatives as intended, information from the Loyalty Review Board was used by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others to demonstrate that there was indeed a threat of subversion. In this respect, the loyalty program was a precursor to McCarthyism.
FEDERAL MARITIME BOARD. Established within the Department of Commerce in 1950 to replace the U. S. Maritime Commission, the Federal Maritime Board was to regulate shipping and provide subsidies for the construction of merchant shipping, maintain the National Defense Reserve Fleet, and direct merchant shipping in wartime. It was abolished in 1961.
FEDERAL MUSIC PROJECT. The Federal Music Project was created in 1935 under the provisions of Federal One in the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It provided work for more than 15,000 unemployed musicians who gave thousands of live concerts, performances, and radio broadcasts, as well as more than 1.5 million music classes. It subsequently became the WPA Music Project and lasted until 1943.
FEDERAL ONE. Federal One was the name for a group of projects created by the Works Progress Administration to provide work for those unemployed in the arts. The projects included the Federal Art Project, Federal Dance Project, Federal Music Project, Federal Writers’ Project, Federal Theater Project, and Historical Records Survey.
FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION. Under the Federal Power Act of 1935 the authority of the Federal Power Commission, which had been created in 1920 to manage hydroelectric power, was amended to enable it to regulate all electric energy no matter how it was generated. This power was further increased in 1938 when it was extended under the Natural Gas Act to include natural gas production. In 1977, the Federal Power Commission became the Department of Energy.
FEDERAL PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY. The Federal Public Housing Authority was created within the National Housing Agency in 1942 and replaced the United States Housing Authority. Its function was to fund slum clearance and encourage the building of low-cost public housing, particularly during the war emergency. It built a total of 840,000 homes at a cost of $2.3 billion. See also FEDERAL HOUSING ADMINISTRATION (FHA).
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY (FRG). See GERMANY, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF (FRG).
FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD (FRB). First established under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the Federal Reserve was a system of 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks that could hold cash reserves for national banks, state banks, and trust companies that entered the system. However, the FRB had limited powers and exercised little monetary control. The Banking Act of 1935 provided more centralized control through the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, particularly with regard to interest rates and credit management and the ability to buy or sell government securities. See also BANKING.
FEDERAL SAVINGS AND LOAN INSURANCE CORPORATION. Established under the provisions of the National Housing Act of 1934, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation provided insurance for loans and the equivalent security as that offered to banks through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It offered insurance on individual accounts of up to $5,000 and by 1940 had insured more than 2,000 accounts. The corporation went insolvent during the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s and was incorporated into the FDIC.
FEDERAL SECURITIES ACT. See SECURITIES ACT (FEDERAL SECURITIES ACT).
FEDERAL SECURITY AGENCY. Established under the Reorganization Plan of 1939, the Federal Security Agency brought a number of agencies, including the Social Security Board, Public Health Service, U.S. Office of Education, National Youth Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and U.S. Employment Service, together under one body, headed by Paul V. McNutt. In 1953, the Federal Security Agency was subsumed within the cabinet-level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
FEDERAL SURPLUS COMMODITIES CORPORATION. The Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation was created in 1935 and replaced by the Farm Surplus Relief Corporation established in 1933 to purchase surplus farm produce to distribute among the needy. By 1940, 3 million families had received food through this assistance program.
FEDERAL THEATER PROJECT. Created under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935, the Federal Theater Project, led by Hallie Flanagan of the experimental theater at Vassar College, was established to provide employment for those in theater. At its height, the project employed almost 13,000 people nationwide. The biggest concentration, with 31 production units, was in New York City, but plays and broadcasts were put on in almost all parts of the country. In total, 250,000 performances were given in 110 cities to audiences totaling 150 million people. Among the most famous productions was the 1936 Negro Peoples’ Theater version of Macbeth directed by Orson Welles and set in Haiti. The Living Newspaper provided dramatic comment on current events and developments. The production of Sinclair Lewis’s antifascist play It Can’t Happen Here was shown successfully in 22 cities. Always controversial, the project was often attacked by its critics as an extravagant, left-wing organization, and it was finally ended by Congress in 1939. See also FEDERAL ONE; LITERATURE AND THEATER.
FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY (FWA). The FWA was established in 1939 to supervise the care and maintenance of public buildings and coordinate federal housing projects. Among others, it brought together the activities of the Works Progress Administration, the Public Works Administration, and the United States Housing Authority. The FWA was abolished in 1949 and replaced by the General Services Administration.
FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT. Created in 1935 as part of Federal One, the Federal Writers’ Project provided work for some 6,600 unemployed writers, including Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, and Richard Wright. The writers produced local histories and 48 state guides as part of the “American Guide Series” between 1935 and 1943.
FIELDS, WILLIAM CLAUDE (W. C.) (1880–1946). Vaudeville film and radio comedian W. C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His early theatrical career began as a juggler, and in the 1890s through 1915 he toured America and Europe. In 1915, Fields joined the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway and appeared in a successful Broadway musical, Poppy, from 1923 until 1924. The film version of Poppy, Sally of the Sawdust appeared in 1925 (and in sound in 1936), and Fields also appeared in numerous other silent movies in the 1920s developing his comic persona as the con man or harassed husband, both with a strong disliking for children and a liking for alcohol. In the 1930s, he moved to Hollywood, where he wrote scripts and starred in several films, including It’s a Gift (1934), David Copperfield (1935), and The Bank Dick (1940). Other successful films included You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), and My Little Chickadee (1940), which also starred Mae West. Fields also had a successful radio career on The Chase & Sanborn Hour starting in 1937. In 1940, he authored a spoof political campaign program, Fields for President. His last film was Sensations in 1945, released shortly before his death. See also CINEMA.
FIRESIDE CHATS. On 12 March 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation in a radio broadcast to explain why he declared a bank holiday. It was the first of his presidential “fireside chats,” a term used by the head of CBS in Washington to describe Roosevelt’s second address on 7 May 1933. Roosevelt used the radio while governor of New York to talk to his constituents in an informal fashion, and now, sometimes speaking to the audiences as “my friends” and always speaking in a personal tone, he used the same method to good effect as president. Estimates of his audience ranged from 25 percent to almost 40 percent of the American population. Altogether Roosevelt gave 28 “fireside chats,” 30 including recordings of addresses to Congress. The last broadcast was on 12 June 1944 to launch the fifth War Loan Drive.
FIRST HUNDRED DAYS. The first three months of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from 9 March to 16 June 1933, known subsequently as the “First Hundred Days,” began with Congress being called into emergency session and ended with an unprecedented 15 major pieces of new legislation being passed to tackle the problems of the Great Depression. The “First Hundred Days” was a defining moment in the New Deal that set a benchmark of achievement against which all subsequent presidencies were to be judged.
FIRST NEW DEAL. From about the mid-1930s on, the New Deal was often seen in two parts, the First New Deal and the Second New Deal. Although the lines of demarcation are not precise, the First New Deal is generally seen as covering the period 1933 to 1934—the “First Hundred Days” and beyond. The primary focus of the First New Deal was tackling the immediate problems of the Great Depression and providing relief and stimulating recovery. It came to an end in 1934 and 35 with mounting criticism from both left and right and with the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate early legislation, like the National Industrial Recovery Act.
FISH, HAMILTON STUYVESANT (1888–1991). Born in Putnam County, New York, and educated at Geneva and Harvard University, where he graduated in 1909, Hamilton Fish followed in his father’s footsteps and served as a Republican in the House of Representatives from 1920 until 1945. Prior to this he worked in insurance before entering politics as a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party. Fish served in the New York State Assembly from 1914 to 1916. A member of the New York National Guard, he became an officer of the 369th U.S. Infantry Regiment, the all-black unit known as the “Harlem Hellfighters.” After the war, Fish was active in the formation of the American Legion and introduced the resolution providing for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
As a firm isolationist, Fish opposed the Versailles Peace Settlement and U.S. membership of the League of Nations. In 1939, he met and was entertained by various German Nazi officials and as a result was accused of being both pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic in the United States. He helped to establish the Committee to Keep America Out of Foreign Wars and spoke in support of the America First Committee. Fish opposed any modification of the Neutrality Acts and also resisted the introduction of Selective Service in 1940. Although he had been a long-time friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he became an outspoken critic of the New Deal, particularly of the Works Progress Administration and the attempted “court packing.” As a result, he was listed in a chant by the president with Bruce Barton and Joseph Martin as “Barton, Martin, and Fish” in the 1940 election campaign. However, he held onto his seat until 1945. During the war, he called for the full utilization of African Americans in all branches of the military. After the war, he continued his many business interests but also spoke and wrote in opposition to communism.
FLOOD CONTROL ACTS, 1936, 1944. Following a series of major floods, including one in Mississippi in 1927 and Ohio in 1933, and concern about soil erosion, flooding was recognized as a national issue requiring federal involvement. This led to the passage of the Flood Control Act in 1936 authorizing studies in water control. Further amendments in the 1930s required state and local flood control measures. The Flood Control Act of 1944 established the Missouri River Basin Project, a series of 112 dams and hydroelectric plants serving 10 states. The program is ongoing.
FLYNN, EDWARD JOSEPH (1891–1953). Born in New York City, Edward Flynn became a major political figure in the city. After graduating from Fordham University Law School in 1912, he was admitted to the bar and practiced law for five years. He was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1918 and in 1921 was elected sheriff of Bronx County. Flynn was also chair of the Bronx County Democratic Committee. In 1926, he was elected chamberlain of New York City, and in 1929 he became secretary of New York. As a major political boss, Flynn had considerable influence. He was also a personal friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a supporter of the New Deal. Roosevelt appointed Flynn as regional administrator to the National Recovery Administration. From 1940 to 1942, Flynn was chair of the Democratic National Committee, replacing James A. Farley. In 1943, Roosevelt nominated Flynn as minister to Australia, but charges of corruption over a minor issue forced him to withdraw and resign. Nonetheless, he accompanied the president to the Yalta Conference in 1945, and he continued to be influential during the administration of Harry S. Truman.
FLYNN, ERROL (1909–1959). Born Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn in Hobart, Tasmania, the future movie star worked as a lifeguard, model, boxer, miner, and sailor before entering acting in London, England, in 1933. After playing roles in theater and small films in Great Britain, Flynn came to the United States in 1934. His breakthrough came in Captain Blood (1935), which established him as a swashbuckling romantic hero. Flynn went on to make 60 films, the most successful produced between 1935 and 1942. He starred in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Prince and the Pauper (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Sea Hawk (1940), and They Died with Their Boots On (1942). He became an American citizen in 1942, and in the same year he was charged with statutory rape for having sexual relations with two underage girls. The trial pushed the war off the front pages. Flynn was acquitted, but his career never recovered. He made several war films, including Dive Bomber (1941) and Objective Burma (1945). After the war, he had some success with Don Juan (1948), but his performances were increasingly affected by alcoholism and poor health. He starred in The Sun Also Rises in 1957, based on the Ernest Hemingway novel, and he made only two other films before his death.
FLYNN, JOHN THOMAS (1882–1964). John Flynn was born in Maryland. After studying law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he became a journalist, first with the New Haven Register, and after moving to New York City in 1920, with the New York Globe. From 1923 onward, Flynn was a freelance journalist and became a well-know political commentator through his articles in the New Republic, Harper’s Magazine, and Collier’s Weekly. Many of his articles were critical of bankers and industrialists, and Flynn was initially a strong supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. However, in 1934 he became an adviser to the Nye Committee, and his work on the links between the munitions industry and American involvement in World War I made him an outspoken isolationist. He was critical of the president’s attempts to involve the United States in European affairs and was one of the founders of the America First Committee. With American entry into World War II in 1942, Flynn became increasingly unpopular, a trend that continued with his critical study of Roosevelt, As We Go Marching (1944). After the war, he supported claims that the New Deal had been soft on communism, and his book, The Roosevelt Myth (1948), suggested that communists had been included in the Roosevelt administration. He developed this position further in supporting Joseph McCarthy and in his publications, The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution (1949), While You Slept (1951), and The Lattimore Story (1953). Other targets for Flynn’s attacks included the United Nations and even President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eventually he alienated even fellow conservatives, and he retired from public life in 1960.
FONDA, HENRY (1905–1982). Born in Grand Island, Nebraska, Henry Fonda abandoned study at the University of Minnesota to become an actor. After working in theater in Omaha, he moved to New York and through the 1920s performed in a variety of roles in productions with the University Players Guild Falmouth and the National Junior Theater. His first appearance on Broadway was in 1929, but his first major role was in The Farmer Takes a Wife in 1934, and he starred in the film version the following year. Fonda subsequently combined theater and movie acting and in 1939 starred to some acclaim in John Ford’s Mr. Lincoln. This was followed by Drums along the Mohawk. It was, however, as Tom Joad in the film version of John Steinbeck’s powerful novel about the “Okies,” The Grapes of Wrath (1940), that Fonda was nominated for an Academy Award.
Fonda made a number of films for 20th Century Fox in the early 1940s, perhaps most notably The Ox Bow Incident in 1943. He then enlisted in the navy and resumed his acting career in 1946 with the film My Darling Clementine and The Fugitive in 1947. His theater performance in Mr. Roberts in 1955 won him a Tony Award, and he was also praised for his performance as a juror in the film 12 Angry Men in 1957. Fonda won an Oscar for his last film, On Golden Pond, made in 1981. The Academy of Arts awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1978, and he was given a special Tony Award in 1979 for his contribution to theater. See also CINEMA.
FOOD STAMPS. In 1939, the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation introduced a system than enabled people on relief to purchase stamps that could be used to buy surplus food stuffs. Introduced first in Rochester, New York, by 1940, 100 cities were included in the program, and by the time it ended in 1943, 20 million people had benefited. A similar program was established in 1961.
FORD, HENRY (1863–1947). Synonymous with the development of the automobile from the first appearance of his mass-produced Ford Model T in 1909, Henry Ford was a major figure in American industry and politics from World War I through World War II. Ford built his first car in 1896 and in 1899 established the Detroit Automobile Company. For a time, he concentrated on building race cars, and his company became the Cadillac Motor Car Company in 1902.
Ford returned to automobile manufacturing when he established the Ford Motor Company in 1903. He first began production of the Model T in 1909 using the concept of mass-produced standardized parts and developed it further at his new Highland Park factory in 1910. In 1913, Ford developed the moving assembly line method of production enabling an enormous increase in production. In 1914, he introduced a profit sharing scheme and a five-dollar, eight-hour work day for his employees and later the five-day week. However, he also attempted to control workers through a personnel department that implemented mandatory English lessons for immigrant workers and a no smoking, no drinking, nonunion policy.
Ford personally funded a “peace ship,” Oscar II, in 1915 in an attempt to end World War I, but once America entered the conflict, the Ford Company turned to producing engines, tractors, and vehicles for the government. Ford opened the world’s largest single manufacturing plant at River Rouge, Dearborn, near Detroit, in 1916. Such was Ford’s public stature that in 1916 he won the Republican presidential primary in Michigan without campaigning. In 1918, he was persuaded by Woodrow Wilson to run for the Senate but was defeated. There were attempts to persuade him to stand for the presidency in 1920 and 1923, but Ford supported Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. During the early 1920s, Ford’s magazine, the Dearborn Independent, published a series of anti-Semitic articles, and in 1938 the German Nazi government honored him.
Ford expanded his operation after World War I to develop luxury cars and airplanes. In 1927, he ceased production of the out-of-date Model T and began producing the Model A. Sluggish sales of the new car are seen by some economists as a contributory factor leading to the Great Depression. Certainly unemployment was exacerbated in 1931 when Ford began to layoff workers to retool for the new V-8 engine. In March 1932, 3,000 unemployed workers marched on the Dearborn plant protesting wage cuts and unemployment. They met a violent response from the police and Ford Company security, who fired into the protestors killing four and wounding 60. The company also held out against the trade union drives of the 1930s, and when Walter Reuther led a rally of United Automobile Workers outside the Dearborn plant in 1937, they too were met with violence, although there were no fatalities. Union recognition was only granted in 1941.
During World War II, the Ford Company converted entirely to war production and built a huge aircraft production plant at Willow Run outside Detroit. Ford himself was increasingly unwell, and in 1945 he passed control to his grandson, Henry Ford II, who was company president until 1960. The company continued to grow and by the 1960s was a multinational organization.
FORD, JOHN (1895–1973). Born Sean Aloysius O’Fearna (or Feeney) in Maine, the famous movie director was the son of Irish immigrants. After brief attendance at the University of Maine, he joined his brother in California and took the name Ford while working as a film extra. He starred in The Tornado (1917), which he also wrote and directed. He began listing himself as John Ford in movie credits beginning with the much-acclaimed film The Iron Horse. He made several more successful silent movies and then did equally well in the medium of sound with Men without Women (1930), Arrowsmith (1932), and The Lost Patrol (1934). In 1935, he won an Academy Award for Best Director for The Informer. A succession of major films followed including, Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Drums along the Mohawk (1939), and The Long Voyage Home (1940). Four of his films won him Oscars: Stagecoach in 1939, starring John Wayne; The Grapes of Wrath based on John Steinbeck’s major novel of the Great Depression and starring Henry Fonda in 1940; How Green Was My Valley in 1941; and The Quiet Man, again with Wayne, in 1952.
During World War II, Ford joined the navy and became chief of the Field Photographic Branch of the Office of Strategic Services. He was wounded at the Battle of Midway, and his film, The Battle of Midway, won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 1942. He won another award for the propaganda film, December 7th. He was awarded the Purple Heart, Legion of Merit, and Air Medal for his war services.
Returning to Hollywood in 1946, Ford made a succession of Westerns that became classics in the genre: My Darling Clementine, (1946), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Other films included They Were Expendable (1945), What Price Glory (1952), the Academy Award-winning The Quiet Man (1952), and Mr. Roberts (1955). Many of these also starred Wayne.
His later films in the 1960s were not as successful, but his previous movies were “rediscovered,” and in 1973 the American Film Institute awarded Ford its first Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Richard M. Nixon. See also CINEMA.
FOREIGN POLICY. The 1930s and 1940s witnessed the final resolution of the struggle between internationalism and isolationism that had been the dominant motif of U.S. foreign relations since World War I. Having struggled and failed to keep out of the developing world conflict that developed in the late 1930s, the United States became the leading partner in the Grand Alliance with Great Britain and the Soviet Union in the war against Germany and Japan. Furthermore, having rejected participation in the League of Nations in 1919, the United States now led the way in establishing a United Nations organization. The onset of the struggle to combat the spread of Soviet-inspired communism in the Cold War after 1945 led to the total abandonment of George Washington’s advice to avoid “entangling alliances” as the United States became a member of the Organization of American States in 1948, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949, the Australia-New Zealand-United States Alliance in 1951, and later a party to both the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in 1954 and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955. By the mid-1950s, America’s role not just as a world power but as the leading world power was firmly established in terms of military and economic might and political influence.
The Great Depression had an enormous impact on international relations, increasing nationalism and bringing new elements to power in Germany and Japan that destabilized the existing world order. Economic nationalism was evident at the London Economic Conference of 1933 in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s refusal to have the United States remain on the gold standard. Economic interest was undoubtedly partly behind Roosevelt’s reiteration of Herbert Hoover’s “Good Neighbor” Policy with Latin American countries that led to trade agreements and a trebling of U.S. exports to Latin America in the 1930s. Trade agreements were also reached with the newly recognized Soviet Union.
While such measures helped improve international relations, the United States maintained its essentially isolationist position during much of the 1930s. Convinced that entry into World War I had been a mistake, many Americans supported the passage of Neutrality Acts from 1935 onward, imposing first a trade embargo with belligerent powers, then prohibiting the travel by U.S. citizens on belligerent vessels and forbidding loans to belligerent powers. In 1937, the laws were extended to include nonmilitary goods that could be sold to belligerent nations only on a “cash and carry” basis. These laws were applied during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, even though it was not a conflict involving warring nations. However, Roosevelt refused to invoke the legislation when Japan attacked China in 1937, instead calling for aggressor nations to be quarantined. His speech angered isolationists and following the Japanese sinking of the USS Panay on the Yangtze River in 1937, support grew for an amendment requiring a declaration of war to be subject to national referendum. The resolution was only narrowly defeated in Congress in 1938.
In Europe, the reluctance of Great Britain, France, and the United States to risk war enabled Adolf Hitler to reoccupy the Rhineland, forcibly establish a union with Austria, and in 1938 acquire the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. German troops occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia in 1939. However, when Hitler next demanded territory from Poland, the British and French guaranteed their support to the Polish government, and when Hitler invaded on 1 September 1939, World War II began.
Although support among the American people was overwhelmingly behind the Allies, this backing was outweighed by the desire to avoid direct involvement in the war. The Neutrality Acts were amended to allow the sale of munitions, but only on the cash and carry basis. Nothing was done to stop the German armies from overrunning Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and most of France, but in the summer of 1940 Roosevelt established a Destroyers-for-Bases Agreement with Britain to strengthen U.S. security in exchange for outdated ships. In the election campaign of 1940, Roosevelt still promised that American males would not be sent into foreign wars, but having secured reelection, he bypassed the restriction on loans to belligerents with the passage of the Lend-Lease Act of 1941. When the Germans began to sink British ships carrying much-needed supplies, Roosevelt extended the American security zone into the mid-Atlantic and provided U.S. naval support. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, lend-lease was extended to the Russians. Not only was this short of war, but in August 1941 Roosevelt agreed on the principles on which a postwar world should be based in the Atlantic Charter signed with Winston Churchill in August 1941.
Despite increasing U.S. involvement in the conflict in Europe, American entry into World War II came in Asia. As Japan continued its aggression against China, the Roosevelt administration responded by placing embargoes on iron, steel, copper, and brass products in 1940 and 1941. Following the breakdown of negotiations and further Japanese moves against Indo-China and the Dutch East Indies in the spring and summer of 1941, the United States stopped all oil shipments to Japan and froze Japanese assets in America. Japanese requests to pursue their expansionist policy and for the restoration of trade were met with proposals for a resumption of trade in return for a withdrawal. Reluctant to withdraw and needing to expand to secure raw materials, the Japanese anticipated war with a preemptive strike on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, a day which, Roosevelt said, would “live in infamy.” On 8 December the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States in line with their agreements with Japan.
With Great Britain and its Allies, together with the Soviet Union, the United States was now part of the Grand Alliance. While the Soviet Union called for an early second front to relieve the pressure caused by the German invasion of Russia, Britain and the United States wanted to delay an invasion of Europe until they had sufficient personnel and material. Instead, in November 1942 an invasion was launched in North Africa to divert German troops and open up the Mediterranean and provide a base for an attack on Europe’s “soft underbelly.” Having successfully defeated German and Italian forces in Africa by spring 1943, the invasion of Sicily was launched on 10 June 1943, and on 8 September Italy surrendered. However, the campaign on the Italian mainland continued until the war’s end in 1945.
The Allied invasion of northern Europe began on D-Day on 6 June 1944, when British, Canadian, and U.S. troops landed on five beaches in Normandy. The German forces were pushed back, and, despite a counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, the Allies crossed the Rhine into Germany in March 1945. Meanwhile, Soviet forces, having defeated German armies at Stalingrad in 1943, had been steadily driving forward from the east and entered Berlin in April 1945. Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, and the German forces surrendered on 8 May.
In the Pacific, the seemingly inexorable Japanese advance was finally halted following naval battles in the Coral Sea and Midway in May through June 1942. With Australia secure, U.S. forces were able to begin their “island hopping” campaign, taking New Guinea in January 1943, Guadalcanal in February 1943, the Marianas in June 1944, Iwo Jima in March 1945, and Okinawa in June 1945. From these positions, the U.S. Air Force was able to launch bombing attacks on mainland Japan. Rather than a costly invasion of Japan, President Harry S. Truman approved the dropping of the new atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and a second on Nagasaki three days later. The Japanese agreed to U.S peace terms on 14 August and formally surrendered on 2 September 1945.
During the war, the Allied leaders held several meetings to discuss military strategy and plan for the future. Roosevelt and Churchill met in Washington, D.C, in 1942 and Casablanca, Morocco, in January 1943. They met with the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, Egypt, in November 1943 before meeting the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Tehran. The next and most crucial meeting took place between the Big Three at Yalta in the Crimea in February 1945. There agreements were reached about the future military occupation of Germany, the issue of reparations to the Soviet Union, and the future of Poland, although these were vague on certain aspects that were to be problematic once the war was over. Agreement was reached about Soviet entry into the war against Japan. The final meeting took place in Potsdam, Germany, in July 1945. By then, Truman had succeeded Roosevelt, and Churchill was replaced during the conference by Clement Attlee. While Truman was happy that Stalin reaffirmed his intention to enter the war against Japan and agreement was reached on the new frontiers of Poland and the denazification of Germany, there was only vague agreement on the issue of reparations payments to the Soviets, and questions about the composition of the Polish government remained unresolved. There was also disagreement about the nature of the Soviet-imposed governments in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania.
In January 1942, plans to establish a United Nations (UN) organization to replace the League of Nations had been approved, and details were further agreed on by the wartime leaders at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944. The UN was formally established at a conference in San Francisco in April 1945. However, the UN was unable to prevent the growing conflict between the Soviet Union and its former Allies as relations quickly deteriorated. Stalin’s declaration to the Russian people in February 1946 that capitalism and communism faced inevitable conflict was countered on the U.S. side by George F. Kennan’s analysis that accepted the premise of inevitable conflict and called for a policy of containment.
Encouraged by Churchill’s statement in 1946 that an “iron curtain” had fallen across Eastern Europe, and in response for requests for aid to resist left-wing elements in a civil war in Greece, Truman adopted Kennan’s position in announcing the Truman Doctrine to a joint session of Congress on 12 March 1947. This was reinforced shortly afterward with the introduction of the Marshall Plan to provide economic assistance in rebuilding Western Europe. For the Western powers, Germany was central to economic recovery. As they moved toward unifying the West German currency, the Soviet Union responded by imposing a blockade on Berlin, the jointly occupied capital, in June 1948. The challenge was met by a combined U.S. and British airlift that kept the city supplied for almost a year before the blockade was lifted, but the fear of future Soviet aggression led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1949. Under NATO, U.S. troops now committed to the defense of Europe.
The Cold War, as the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union came to be known, was increasingly played out on many different fronts as the respective rivals competed for influence in different parts of the world. The Cold War was a major factor leading to the continuation of the “Good Neighbor” Policy and the hemispheric defense treaty agreed on with Latin American countries in the Rio Pact in 1947. This was followed by the formation of the Organization of American States at Bogota in 1948. In 1949, the conflict spread to Asia when Mao Zedong’s communist forces defeated Chiang Kai-shek, who was forced to relocate to the island of Taiwan. The United States withheld recognition from communist China until 1978. Following the loss of China, in April 1950 the National Security Council produced National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), arguing that given the clear intention of the Soviet Union to expand in Europe and Asia, the United States should build up its military strength through increased defense spending. This argument was strengthened when North Korean forces crossed into South Korea on 25 June 1950.
Korea had been annexed by Japan in 1910, but following its defeat, Soviet troops had occupied the northern areas, while U.S. troops were based in the south. A temporary divide was established along the 38th parallel, and following the creation of separate governments, Russian and U.S. troops withdrew. Believing that the invasion was Soviet-inspired, Truman secured a UN resolution calling for members to resist the attackers. Without benefit of a declaration of war, Truman committed U.S troops to what he called a “police action.” When the U.S.-dominated UN forces pushed toward the border with China in November 1950, the Chinese sent troops to aid North Korea, and the war settled into a stalemate that lasted until 1953.
The Korean War cost the United States the lives of 34,000 men. It contributed to rise of McCarthyism and the defeat of the Democrats in the 1952 election. In the long run, it also confirmed U.S. commitment to the policy of containment in Asia, ultimately leading to the tragic involvement in Vietnam. See also ACHESON, DEAN GOODERHAM; AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE (AFC); BYRNES, JAMES FRANCIS; CHAPULTEPEC AGREEMENT; EVIAN CONFERENCE; HULL, CORDELL; ISRAEL; STETTINIUS, EDWARD REILLY, JR.; VANDENBERG, ARTHUR HENDRICK.
FORMOSA. See TAIWAN.
FORRESTAL, JAMES VINCENT (1892–1949). James Forrestal was born in New York and attended both Dartmouth College and Princeton University but left without graduating. He found work on Wall Street as a bond salesman and during World War I worked in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, D.C. After the war, he resumed work on Wall Street and became a successful executive. In 1940, Forrestal was appointed as an assistant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and then became undersecretary of the navy with responsibility for procuring and distributing raw material. In 1944, he was appointed secretary of the navy after the death of Frank Knox. He was a firm supporter of the policy of containment and advocated sending the U.S. fleet to the eastern Mediterranean during the crisis in Azerbaijan in 1946. In 1947, he was appointed the first secretary of defense under the terms of the National Security Act. Forrestal faced criticism for some of the problems in the new department and also for his perceived pro-Arab and anti-Israeli views. In 1949 President Harry S. Truman asked for his resignation. Suffering from depression, Forrestal committed suicide shortly afterward.
FOSTER, WILLIAM ZEBULON (1881–1961). Born in Taunton, Massachusetts, William Foster grew up in poverty in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Having traveled the country as an itinerant worker, he joined the Socialist Party of America in 1901 but left to join the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Foster gradually gravitated away from the IWW in favor of converting existing trade unions to syndicalism. In 1912, he established the Syndicalist League of North America, which became the Independent Trade Union League in 1914. During World War I, he helped mobilize the meatpacking workers. The American Federation of Labor then appointed him to lead the drive to unionize the steel industry in 1919. The resultant strike ended in defeat, partially because Foster’s past affiliations were used to brand the strikers as revolutionaries. Foster converted to communism in the early 1920s and was the candidate for the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) in the 1924, 1928, and 1932 presidential elections.
As leader of the demonstration in New York’s Union Square in March 1930, which turned into a riot, Foster was jailed for six months. The jailing did not stop him from running for president, and in 1932 he won more than 100,000 votes. He resumed leadership of the CPUSA following the ideological differences between the established executive led by his long-time rival, Earl Browder, and Moscow in 1945. In 1948, Foster was one of 11 communist leaders indicted by the government under the Smith Act of 1940. He was not jailed due to his ill health, but his codefendants were. Foster, who was unswervingly loyal to the Soviet Union, died in Moscow and received a state funeral there before his ashes were flown back to the United States.
FOUR FREEDOMS. Preparing the nation for the future possibility of war, in his State of the Union Address on 6 January 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that the United States should “look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.” These four freedoms were freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Artist Norman Rockwell was so influenced by the speech that he produced four paintings illustrating the freedoms that were used as cover illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post (20 and 27 February and 6 and 13 March, 1943). The paintings were exhibited by the Office of War Information and turned into war posters to raise money for war bonds.
FRANKFURTER, FELIX (1882–1965). Born in Austria, Felix Frankfurter’s family moved to the United States in 1894. Frankfurter gained a law degree at City College of New York and went on to Harvard University, where he graduated in 1906. He practiced briefly in New York and then became an assistant to Henry Stimson, a U.S. attorney in New York. Frankfurter became a professor at Harvard Law School in 1914, a position he held until 1939. During World War I, he became assistant secretary of labor and served as secretary for the President’s Mediation Commission that investigated the labor unrest in the West in 1917. In 1916, Frankfurter headed the investigation into the convictions of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, labor leaders sentenced to death for a bombing in San Francisco in which 10 people were killed. Frankfurter reported that there were several grounds for a retrial, and as a consequence, the death sentences were commuted. In 1918, he was appointed to chair the War Labor Policies Board to unify labor standards used by federal agencies.
After the war, Frankfurter called for recognition of the Bolshevik regime in Russia, joined the American Civil Liberties Union, defended immigrant members of left-wing groups against deportation, and called for a retrial in the case of Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Frankfurter was a close friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt and influential in drawing up various pieces of New Deal legislation. Many of his students went to work in New Deal agencies. In 1938, Roosevelt nominated him to the Supreme Court, where he served until 1962. Frankfurter was not consistently “liberal” as a justice but believed in “judicial restraint” and the importance of precedent. He is most remembered for his majority opinion in Minersville School District v. Gobitis in 1940 and his dissents in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette in 1943 and Baker v. Carr in 1962. In the first case, he ruled that the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses could be expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag. When this was over-turned in West Virginia State Board of Education, he rejected the argument that the First Amendment barred mandatory flag salutes. In Baker v. Carr, he rejected any judicial remedy for malapportioned legislatures.
Frankfurter also upheld the government’s actions in interning Japanese Americans during the war in cases like Korematsu v. United States. He was, however, conspicuous in his support of African Americans, and he wholeheartedly supported the decision against segregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. He did not, though, support picketing by African Americans to secure employment in supermarkets (Hughes v. Superior Court of California for Contra Costa County, 1950), nor did he approve of sit-ins or other militant tactics. Frankfurter retired in 1962. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.
FROST, ROBERT LEE (1875–1963). Perhaps the greatest American poet of the 20th century, Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, but brought up in New Hampshire after his father’s early death. He was educated in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and went to Dartmouth College in 1892. He did not complete his university education but for a while divided his time between farming, teaching, and writing poetry. In 1912, he sold his farm and moved to England, and in 1913 he published his first collection of verse, A Boy’s Will. His second collection, North of Boston, was published in 1914. Having achieved some critical success, Frost and his family returned to the United States in 1915. Mountain Interval was published in 1916, and Frost was appointed to a teaching post at Amherst. He left his post in 1920, established a summer study program at Middlebury College, and was “poet in residence” at Ann Arbor. In 1923, Selected Poems and New Hampshire appeared. New Hampshire won the first of four Pulitzer Prizes that Frost was awarded. For the rest of his career, he divided his time between teaching appointments at different colleges.
Frost produced several more volumes of poetry. His Collected Poems (1930), A Further Range (1936), and The Witness Tree (1942) were awarded Pulitzer Prizes, but the 1930s were marked by personal tragedy with the deaths of his daughter and wife and suicide of his son. Although not particularly politically engaged, Frost was fairly critical of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. After World War II, he wrote two plays in blank verse, A Masque of Reason (1945) and A Masque of Mercy (1947). Comparatively, he wrote very little after 1948. His last collection of poems, In the Clearing (1962), was well received. He was appointed as consultant on poetry at the Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959, and in 1961 he read one of his poems, “The Gift Outright,” at President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural and was awarded the Congressional Medal. Frost is remembered for his variations on blank verse and use of rural images and references to New England in a language easily accessible to the layperson. See also LITERATURE AND THEATER.
FUCHS, KLAUS (1911–1988). Klaus Fuchs was a German-born nuclear physicist who fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and worked in British universities before moving to the United States in 1943 to join the Manhattan Project. Named as a spy by a Soviet defector in 1945, he confessed to espionage in 1950 and was sentenced to 14 years in jail in Great Britain. His information led to the convictions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in the United States. Fuchs was released in 1959 and returned to the German Democratic Republic.
FULBRIGHT, JAMES WILLIAM (1905–1995). J. William Fulbright was born in Missouri, but he was raised in Arkansas and graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1925. He then studied at Oxford University, England, as a Rhodes Scholar until 1928. Upon his return to the United States, he taught at George Washington Law School and the University of Arkansas. In 1939, he became president of the University of Arkansas and the youngest college head in the country. In 1942, Fulbright began his political career when he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1944, he was elected to the Senate and joined the Foreign Relations Committee. A committed internationalist, he supported the United Nations (UN) and in 1946 sponsored the educational exchange program, which was named after him. He also supported the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan. Fulbright was a critic of Joseph McCarthy and right-wing groups like the John Birch Society. However, he opposed racial integration and in 1956 signed the Southern Manifesto against the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and he took part in the filibuster that tried to prevent passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1959 until 1975, Fulbright was an influential voice on foreign affairs. Although he initially supported the Tonkin Resolution granting President Lyndon Johnson the power to increase U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, he subsequently came to regret it and wrote a critical study of U.S. policy in Asia, The Arrogance of Power, published in 1967. Fulbright supported the passage of the War Powers Act in 1973 limiting presidential war-making powers. He lost his seat in 1974 and worked in a law firm in Washington, D.C., also traveling and speaking widely on foreign affairs. In 1993, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Medal of Freedom in recognition of his work.