FDR's Hundred Days: Two books

As we near the completion of President Obama's first hundred days in office, I've just read two books about Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous hundred. Of the many volumes written about FDR, only these two focus on those first days. One is worth reading; the other is infuriating.

Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment details the events of Roosevelt's first 100 days in a lucid and objective manner. What struck me above all is the impression that FDR's task was less challenging than what Obama faces today.

For one thing, FDR came into office unencumbered by foreign military commitments. At that point the nation had been in a Depression for three years, so there was no debate over the severity of the problem. When banks closed, their depositors' savings were wiped out. Lacking deposit insurance and unemployment compensation, people stood in bread lines. Angry homeless and unemployed veterans marched on Washington. Mussolini and Hitler were addressing their nations' economic emergency by claiming dictatorial powers. Accordingly, it was widely expected that Roosevelt might need to use "broad executive powers"— a phrase FDR himself used in his inauguration address.

A private army?

Alter reveals how FDR considered, then rejected, mobilizing a private army of American Legion veterans on his first day in office. Instead of circumventing Congress, the president called it into special session to pass legislation. Consequently, anything he asked for seemed moderate in comparison with what was feared. A frightened Congress enacted everything he requested.

I find interesting how Roosevelt zigged and zagged and experimented, with less of a thought-out plan than the sort Obama has announced. FDR's radio chats contained little detail about policy and concentrated on feel-good homilies. Roosevelt had no need to tell the public (as Obama has) that things would get worse before they got better. Instead, FDR told the country that everything was going to be swell.

Bank reform, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Civilian Conservation Corps were enacted quickly. FDR established a Public Works Administration to "put people back to work" constructing roads, buildings and dams. And he established the National Recovery Administration, which wrote hundreds of restrictions on business hours, wages and working conditions"“ something that Obama hasn't proposed. Some of the important programs associated with Roosevelt were not introduced until much later than the Hundred Days "“ such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The luxury of hindsight

In contrast to Alter's open-minded book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes, is a polemic that could have been co-authored by today's Republican Congressional leaders.

Shlaes contends that the Great Depression would have ended sooner if the government hadn't interfered with the natural workings of the business community. But she never attempts to prove her thesis; she simply states it as if everyone knows it to be true. She blithely asserts that Roosevelt's actions exacerbated the Depression. She obviously didn't speak to my parents and grandparents (among others), who found hope and relief with Roosevelt's New Deal.

Milton Friedman's mantle

Shlaes's own website proclaims, "Amity Shlaes has brilliantly supplied a fresh appraisal of what the New Deal did and did not accomplish." No doubts from her. No modesty, either. "Were John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman to spend a century or two reconciling their positions so as to arrive at a clear view of the Great Depression," her website continues, "this would be it."

One has to question the arguments of an author who cannot even describe her own book accurately. Most of The Forgotten Man is devoted to detailed biographies of certain officials, advisers and emerging politicians during that period. Nothing wrong with that, but it isn't what Shlaes advertised. Most prominent among her subjects is Wendell Willkie, a lawyer who represented power companies during most of the 1930s and became the Republican nominee for president in 1940.

Shlaes didn't know Willkie but purports to know his feelings, using phrases like: "Willkie worried that..." She judges the worthiness of people, calling one (Rexford Tugwell) "more honest than most radicals." Her stories about these men may or may not interest you. Either way, their feelings, as channeled by Shlaes, don't prove that Roosevelt was a failure. Even Willkie, for all his criticism of FDR, didn't make that claim.

What statistics can't show

FDR's efforts buoyed the psyche of Americans, a significant fact that can't be demonstrated on graphs. Nevertheless, statistics demonstrate that unemployment was indeed reduced on FDR's watch. As Shlaes herself acknowledges, unemployment was 25% when Roosevelt took office, 21% after he was president for one year, 15% after four years. That strikes me as a considerable achievement.

The best part of The Forgotten Man is the very human story about the family of kosher butchers from Brooklyn who challenged what they considered to be restrictive regulation of their business. The Schecter family's lawyers contended that Congress had no power to regulate local business. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor and overturned a major chunk of New Deal legislation. The Schecters, incidentally, continued to support Roosevelt.

Shlaes's personal predilection is revealed in a column she wrote for Bloomberg News this past February 6, setting forth her personal economic program: "Cut the tax rate on capital gains to 5%. Halve the corporate tax rate... Make Social Security solvent by curtailing the annual growth in benefits. Forget one S word: stimulus." If you're willing to read history written by someone with such a present-day agenda, at least be forewarned before you check it out of a library.

Both books left me with one unanswered question. I'd like to know what the Republican opposition members of 1933 said in reaction to FDR— whether they offered an alternative plan, and whether they voted "no" on each of Roosevelt's bills, as today's Mitch McConnells and John Boehners have done. This is a rare omission in Alter's book, and it's missing from Shlaes's book as well. â—†


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