Wall Street Buys The New Deal

B.M. [Bernard Baruch] played a more effective role. Headquarters just didn't have any money. Sometimes they couldn't even pay the radio bill for the candidate's speeches. They had practically nothing to carry on the campaign in the critical state of Maine. Every time a crisis came, B.M. either gave the necessary money, or went out and got it.
Hugh S. Johnson, The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1935), p. 141. On FDR's campaign in 1932.

The 1928 Presidential campaign matched Governor Alfred E. Smith, a Catholic with backing from Tammany Hall and a collectivist coloring to his politicking, against Herbert Hoover, a Quaker with a professed leaning to traditional American individualism and self-help. Herbert Hoover won by 21,392,000 votes to Smith's 15,016,000.

Where did the Wall Street banker-philosophers place their support and influence in the Smith-Hoover election? On the basis of the accepted interpretation of the philosophy of financiers, their support should have gone to Herbert Hoover. Hoover promoted the dearly beloved trade associations, dearly loved, that is, by the financial and business community. Further, in American Individualism¹ Herbert Hoover made it clear that the ideal system for America was, in his own words, "no system of laissez faire" but, on the contrary, a regulated economy. On the other hand, the most vocally political member of the Wall Street financial establishment in 1928 was John J. Raskob, vice president of Du Pont and of General Motors and a director of Bankers Trust Co. and the County Trust Co. At the personal insistence of Governor Al Smith, Raskob became chairman of the Finance Committee of the Democratic Party. Raskob was also the largest single contributor, giving more than $350,000 to the campaign. What were the policy objectives sought by Raskob and his allies that made Al Smith so attractive a candidate?

In 1928 the key elements of what became the National Recovery program were given a public airing by John J. Raskob, Bernard Baruch, and other Wall Streeters. The promotion of Roosevelt's NRA actually dates from the 1928 Raskob speeches made in the Al Smith Presidential campaign. Although both Al Smith and Herbert Hoover depended heavily on Wall Street's "golden circle" for election funds, as we shall detail later in this chapter, the Du Pont-Raskob-Baruch money was heavily on Al Smith.
Smith, of course, lost the 1928 election for the Democrats, and Herbert Hoover became the Republican President. In spite of luke-warm Wall Street treatment, Hoover appointed many Wall Streeters to his committees and boards. Then in mid-1932, given the blunt choice between a National Recovery program in the form of the Swope Plan or less fascist policies, Hoover declined to institute corporate socialism, identified the Swope Plan for what it was, and brought the wrath of Wall Street down upon his head.

Consequently, we can trace and will trace in this chapter the Baruch proposals for NRA and the financial backing of the two Presidential candidates in each election by Raskob, Baruch, Du Pont, Rockefeller, and others of the financial élite. The main backing in each case went to the Democratic candidate willing to promote corporate socialism. In 1928 this was Al Smith, who was also a director of the Morgan-controlled Metropolitan Life Insurance Company; in 1930 it went to Roosevelt with the early bird pre convention contributions for the 1932 Hoover-Roosevelt contest. This was followed in mid-1932 by withdrawal of a great deal of Wall Street support from Herbert Hoover and the wholesale transfer of influence and money toward the election of Roosevelt.

Subsequently, FDR did not abandon his backers. The National Recovery Act with its built-in ability to coerce small business was promised and in June 1933 became law. Let's look then more closely at these events and the related evidence.

BERNARD BARUCH'S INFLUENCE ON FDR

According to his own statements Hugh Johnson, the Administrator of Roosevelt's NRA, went through a training program in the 1920s under Bernard Baruch's tutelage. Johnson records this experience as follows:

I doubt if anybody had any more direct or complete access to sources of information than B.M. and he always gave me a free hand in the consultation and use of such scientists and experts as I might need. I was for several years the only Research Staff which he permanently maintained. That and what went before was a great training for service in NRA because these studies covered a considerable segment of the whole of American industry and the experience with government linked the two together.²

Johnson himself views the Raskob speeches of September and October 1928 in the Al Smith campaign as the start of Roosevelt's NRA: "There was nothing particularly new in the essence or principles developed. We had worked out and expressed precisely the same philosophy in Al Smith's campaign in 1928. . . ."3

Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic Presidential candidate was, as we have noted, a director of Metropolitan Life Insurance, the largest life insurance company in the U.S. and controlled by J.P. Morgan, and the greater part of his campaign funds came from the golden circle in Wall Street. Bernard Baruch outlined the NRA plan itself on May 1, 1930— an auspicious day for a socialist measure—in a speech at Boston. The content of NRA was all there, the regulation, codes, enforcement, and the carrot of welfare for the workers. It was repeated in Baruch's platform of June 1932—the one that Herbert Hoover refused to adopt. The NRA was presented again by Baruch in testimony before the Senate and in speeches before the Brookings Institution and at Johns Hopkins University. In all, Hugh Johnson counts ten documents and speeches, all presented before the election of Roosevelt in 1932, in which "will be found the development of the economic philosophy of the 1928 campaign and of almost all that happened since. Of a part of this philosophy NRA was a concrete expression."⁴

The following extracts from Baruch's May 1, 1930 speech contain the core of his proposals:

What business needs is a common forum where problems requiring cooperation can be considered and acted upon with the constructive, non political sanction of government. It may have been sound public policy to forbid by law anything that looked to regulation of production when the world was in fear of famine but it is public lunacy to decree unlimited operation of a system which periodically disgorges indigestible masses of unconsumable products. No repressive, inquisitorial, mediocre bureau will answer—we must have a new concept for this purpose—a tribunal invested like the Supreme Court, with so much prestige and dignity that our greatest business leaders will be glad to divest themselves of all personal interest in business and there serve. Like the Supreme Court also it must be absolutely non-political.
It should have no power to repress or coerce but it should have power to convoke conference, to suggest and to sanction or license such commonsense cooperation among industrial units as will prevent our economic blessings from becoming unbearable burdens. Its sole punitive power should be to prescribe conditions of its licenses and then to revoke those licenses for infringement of such conditions.
Its deliberations should be in the open and should be wholly scientific, briefed like an engineer's report, and published to the world. Such a system would safeguard the public interest and should be substituted for the blind inhibitory blankets of the Sherman and Clayton Acts. . . .
It is not government in business in the sense which is here condemned. It is only a relaxation of the grip government has already taken on business by the Anti-Trust Acts. There is no fallacy in restricting ruinous excess production—a policy which the Federal Government is now vigorously urging on Agriculture. Yet if there is nothing in the change of concept from bureaucratic precedent to that of an open forum where business can practice group self-government, acting on its own motion under sanction of non-political, constructive and helpful tribunal —then the idea is not practicable. But that there is a possibility of such industrial self-government under governmental sanction was clearly demonstrated in 1918. Many difficulties suggest themselves. In the first place anything done in the elation and fervor of war must be accepted as a criterion only with caution.
In the regulation of production price is one consideration. That is a subject which is loaded with dynamite.
There are other obvious reservations. The thought is revived at this critical moment because it seems worthy of consideration as an aid in a threatening economic development 'of unusual extent' and as an alternative to governmental interference and vast extension of political powers in the economic field—an eventuality which, in the absence of constructive action by business itself, is almost as certain as death and taxes.⁵

Baruch wanted by his own words a resurrection of the trade associations, relaxation of anti-trust laws, and control of business leaders and casts the reader back to the War Industries Board of 1918. To be sure, Baruch suggests "no power to coerce" and "open" deliberations, but such protestations of good faith carry small weight in the light of economic history and past furious efforts to establish cartels and combinations in restraint of trade by this same group. It was to further this end that financial support for both Democrats and Republican candidates was forthcoming; the greater part of the financing originated in a relatively small geographical area of New York.

WALL STREET FINANCES THE 1928 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

The direction of political support can be measured and identified by related financial support. The origins of the financial contributions to the Smith and Hoover campaigns of 1928 can be identified, and we find, contrary to prevailing beliefs, that it was the Democrats who received the lion's share of funds from Wall Street; as we have seen, it was in the Democratic campaign that the outlines of the National Recovery Act were first promulgated by Baruch and Raskob.

After the 1928 Presidential election the Steiwer Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives investigated the sources of campaign funds funneled into the election⁶ The detailed information was published, but the Steiwer Committee did not probe into the corporate origins and affiliations of the contributors: it merely listed names and amounts contributed. Table XIII in the report is entitled "Persons contributing sums of $5,000 and over in behalf of Republican presidential candidate." The Republican Presidential candidate was, of course, Herbert Hoover. This table lists full names and the amounts contributed, but without the affiliation of the contributors. Similarly, Table XIV of the report is entitled "Persons contributing sums of $5,000 and over in behalf of Democratic presidential candidate." Again, full names and amounts are given, but the affiliations of the person are not stated.

These lists were taken and matched by the author to the Directory of Directors in the City of New York 1929-1930.⁷ Where the contributor as listed by the Steiwer Committee was identified as having an address within a one-mile circle of 120 Broadway in New York, the name and amount contributed were noted. No notation was made of persons not in the directory and most probably resident outside of New York City, but a record was kept of the sums of money contributed by the non New York residents. In other words, two totals were constructed from the Steiwer Committee data: (1) contributions from persons listed as directors of companies headquartered in New York and (2) contributions from all other persons. In addition, a list of names of the New York contributors was compiled. In practice, the research procedure was biased against inclusion of the New York-based directors. For example, in the Democratic Party list Van-Lear Black was listed by the author as a non-New York resident, although Black was chairman of the Fidelity & Casualty Co; the company had offices at 120 Broadway, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was their New York vice president in the early 1920s. However, Black was based in Baltimore and therefore not counted as a New York director. Again Rudolph Spreckels, the sugar millionaire, was listed in the Steiwer Committee report for a $15,000 contribution, but is not listed in the New York total, as he did not base himself in New York. Similarly, James Byrne contributed $6500 to the Smith for President campaign, but is not listed as a New York director —he was a director of the Fulton Savings Bank in Brooklyn and outside the one-mile circle. Jesse Jones, the Texas banker, contributed $20,000, but is not listed as a New York director because he was a Texas, not a New York, banker. In other words, the definition of a Wall Street contributor was very tightly and consistently drawn.

Major Wall Street Contributors to the Al Smith For President Campaign—1928

Source: Adapted from Louise Overacker, Money in Elections (New York: Macmillan, 1932), p. 155.

Under this restricted definition the total amount contributed by Wall Street directors, mostly connected with major banks, to the Al Smith 1928 Presidential campaign was $1,864,339. The total amount contributed by persons not within this golden circle was $500,531, which makes a grand total of $2,364,870. In brief, the percentage of the Al Smith for President campaign funds coming from persons giving more than $5000 and also identified as Wall Street directors was 78.83 per cent. The percentage from donors outside the golden circle was a mere 21.17 per cent. Looking at the total Al Smith contributors another way, the large contributors (over $5000) to the Smith campaign, those in the best position to ask and receive political favors, put up almost four dollars out of five.
The identity of the larger contributors to both the Al Smith campaign and the Democratic National Committee fund is listed in the attached tables.

Contributors of $25,000 or More to Democratic National Committee January to December 1928 (including contributions listed in previous table)

Source: Steiwer Committee Report, op. cit.

Contributions to the Democratic Presidential Primary

1928 by Directors* of the County Trust Company.

Notes: *The following directors of County Trust Company did not contribute (according to the records): John J. Broderick, Peter J. Carey, John J. Cavanagh, William H. English, James P. Geagan, G. Le Boutillier, Ralph W. Long, John J. Pulleyn, and Parry D. Saylor.
**Includes contributions to the campaign deficit.
***Excludes contributions by other members of the Lehman family to the Democratic Presidential campaign that totalled $168,000.

Looking at the names in these tables, it would be neither unkind nor unfair to say that the Democratic candidate was bought by Wall Street before the election. Moreover, Al Smith was a director of the County Trust Company, and the County Trust Company was the source of an extraordinarily large percentage of Democratic campaign funds.

HERBERT HOOVER'S ELECTION FUNDS

When we turn to Herbert Hoover's 1928 campaign, we also find a dependence on Wall Street financing, originating in the golden mile, but not nearly to the same extent as in Al Smith's campaign. Of a large donations total for Herbert Hoover of $3,521,141, about 51.4 per cent came from within this golden mile in New York and 48.6 per cent from outside the financial district.

Contributions of $25,000 or More to Republican National Committee, January to December 1928

Source: Steiwer Committee Report, op. cit.

Herbert Hoover was, of course, elected President; his relationship to the rise of corporate socialism has been misinterpreted in most academic and media sources. The bulk of liberal-oriented literature holds that Herbert Hoover was some kind of unreconstructed laissez faire Neanderthal. But this view is rejected by Hoover's own statements: for example:

Those who contended that during the period of my administration our economic system was one of laissez faire have little knowledge of the extent of government regulation. The economic philosophy of laissez faire, or "dog eat dog," had died in the United States forty years before,
when Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Sherman Anti-Trust Acts.⁸

Murray Rothbard points out ⁹ that Herbert Hoover was a prominent supporter of Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party and, according to Rothbard, Hoover "challenged in a neo-Marxist manner, the orthodox laissez-faire view that labor is a commodity and that wages are to be governed by laws of supply and demand."¹⁰ As Secretary of Commerce Hoover pushed for government cartelization of business and for trade associations, and his "outstanding" contribution, according to Rothbard," was to impose socialism on the radio industry," while the courts were working on a reasonable system of private property rights in radio frequencies. Rothbard explains these ventures into socialism on the grounds that Hoover "was . . . the victim of a terribly inadequate grasp of economics."¹¹ Indeed, Rothbard argues that Herbert Hoover was the real creator of the Roosevelt New Deal.
Although the evidence presented here suggests that Baruch and Raskob had more to do with FDR's

New Deal, there is some validity to Rothbard's argument. Hoover's practical policies were not consistent. There are some pro-free market actions; there are many anti-free market actions. It seems plausible that Hoover was willing to accept a part, possibly a substantial part, of a socialist program, but had a definite limit beyond which he was not willing to go.

During the course of the 1920s, in the years after the formation of the American Construction Council, more than 40 codes of practice compiled by trade associations were adopted. When he became President, and in spite of his early association with the A.C.C., Herbert Hoover promptly ended these industrial codes. He did this on the grounds that they were probably illegal associations to police prices and production and that no government could regulate these in the interest of the public. Then in February 1931 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce formed a group entitled the Committee on Continuity of Business and Employment under Henry I. Harriman. This committee came up with proposals very much like those of the New Deal: that production should be balanced to equal consumption, that the Sherman anti-trust laws should be modified to allow agreements in restraint of trade, that a national economic council should be set up under the auspices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and that provision should be made for shorter hours in industry, for pensions, and for unemployment insurance. This was followed by yet another Hoover committee known as the Committee on Work Periods in Industry under P.W. Litchfield, president of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Then still another committee under Standard Oil Company of New Jersey president Walter Teagle recommended sharing work, a proposal endorsed by the Litchfield Committee. Then came the Swope Plan in 1931 (see Appendix A). The plans were forthcoming, but Herbert Hoover did very little about them.

So, under Herbert Hoover, while big business was prolific in publicizing plans designed to modify the Sherman anti-trust act, allow self regulation by industry, and establish codes in restraint of trade. President Herbert Hoover did nothing to encourage these ventures.

In fact, Hoover recognized the Swope Plan as a fascist measure and recorded this in his memoirs, along with the melancholy information that Wall Street gave him a choice of buying the Swope plan—fascist or not—and having their money and influence support the Roosevelt candidacy. This is how Herbert Hoover described the ultimatum from Wall Street under the heading of "Fascism comes to business—with dire consequences":

Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933. The origins of this scheme are worth repeating. These ideas were first suggested by Gerard Swope (of the General Electric Company) at a meeting of the electrical industry in the winter of 1932. Following this, they were adopted by the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was pure fascism; that it was merely a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part, proved true.¹²

WALL STREET BACKS FDR FOR GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK

The chief fund raiser in FDR's 1930 reelection campaign was Howard Cullman, Commissioner of the Port of New York and a director of the County Trust Company. Freidel¹³ lists the campaign contributors in 1930 without their corporate affiliations. When we identify the corporate affiliations of these contributors, we find once again that County Trust Company of 97 Eighth Avenue, New York had an extraordinarily large interest in FDR's reelection. Apart from Howard Cullman, the following major contributors to FDR's campaign were also directors of the County Trust Company: Alfred Lehman, Alfred (Al) E. Smith, Vincent Astor, and John Raskob. Another director was FDR's old friend Dan Riordan, a customer from Fidelity & Deposit days at 120 Broadway, and William F. Kenny, yet another FDR supporter and director of County Trust. To place this list in focus, we must remember that Freidel lists 16 persons as major contributors to this campaign, and of this 16 we can identify no less than five as directors of County Trust and two other unlisted directors as known FDR supporters. Other prominent Wall Streeters financing FDR's 1930 campaign were the Morgenthau family (with the Lehmans, the heaviest contributors); Gordon Rentschler, president of the National City Bank and director of the International Banking Corporation; Cleveland Dodge, director of the National City Bank and the Bank of New York; Caspar Whitney; August Heckscher of the Empire Trust Company (120 Broadway); Nathan S. Jones of Manufacturers Trust Company; William Woodin of Remington Arms Company; Ralph Pulitzer; and the Warburg family. In brief, in the 1930 campaign the bulk of FDR's financial backing came from Wall Street bankers.

Contributors to the Pre Convention Expenses of FDR ($3,500 and Over)

Shortly after FDR's reelection in 1930, these backers started to raise funds for the 1932 Presidential campaign. These "early bird" pre convention contributions have been described by Flynn: "These contributors, who helped early when the need was great, so thoroughly won Roosevelt's devotion that in most instances they ultimately received substantial returns in public offices and honors."14

WALL STREET ELECTS FDR IN 1932

In 1932 Bernard Baruch was the key operator working behind the scenes—and sometimes not so much behind the scenes—to elect FDR, with the money and influence of big business (see epigraph to this chapter). Further, Bernard Baruch and Hugh Johnson collected numerous statistics and materials over the 1920s decade supporting their concept of national economic planning through trade associations. Johnson recounts how this information became available to FDR's speech writers. During the Roosevelt campaign of 1932:

Ray Moley and Rex Tugwell came up to B.M.'s house and we went over all the material that B.M. and I had collected and summarized in our years of work. They, with Adolph Berle, had long before worked out the subjects of what they thought would be an ideal scheme of economic speeches for a Presidential candidate, but they had few facts. From that moment we joined Ray Moley's forces and we all went to work to find for Franklin Roosevelt the data which he welded into the very remarkable series of simply expressed speeches on homely economics which convinced this country that here was the leader upon whom it could rely.¹⁵

In rereading the FDR campaign speeches, it becomes obvious that they lack concreteness and specific facts. Presumably the Moley-Tugwell team set out the general theme and Baruch and Johnson introduced supporting statements in such areas as credit expansion, the consequences of speculation, the role of the Federal Reserve system, and so on. It is remarkable, but perhaps not surprising, that these Baruch-influenced speeches took the reader back to World War I, cited the contemporary emergency as greater than that of the war, and then subtly suggested similar Baruchian solutions. For example, at the Jefferson Day Dinner speech of April 18, 1932 Roosevelt said, or was prompted to say:

Compare this panic stricken policy of delay and improvisation with that devised to meet the emergency of war fifteen years ago. We met specific situations with considered, relevant measures of constructive value. There were the War Industries Board, the Food and Fuel Administration, the War Trade Board, the Shipping Board and many others.¹⁶

Then in May 22, 1932 Roosevelt addressed himself to the theme "The Country Needs, the Country Demands, Persistent Experimentation" and called for national economic planning. This speech was followed on July 2, 1932 by the first hint of the New Deal. Finally, in accepting the nomination for the Presidency at Chicago, FDR said "I pledge you—I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American People."

Footnotes

1. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1922.

2. Hugh S. Johnson, The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1935), p. 116.

3. Ibid., p. 141.

4. Ibid., p. 157

5. Ibid., pp. 156–7. Italics in original.

6. United States Congress, Senate Special Committee investigating Presidential campaign expenditures, Presidential Campaign Expenditures. Report Pursuant to S. Res. 234, February 25 (Calendar Day, February 28), 1929. 70th Congress, 2nd session. Senate Rept. 2024 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1929). Cited hereafter as Steiwer Committee Report.

7. New York: Directory of Directors Co., 1929.

8. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1923 (London: Hollis and Carter, 1952), p. 300.

9. New Individualist Review, Winter, 1966.

10. Ibid., p. 5.

11. Ibid., p.10.

12. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 420.

13. Freidel, The Ordeal, op. cit, p. 159.

14. John T. Flynn, "Whose Child is the NRA?" Harper's Magazine Sept. 1932, pp. 84-5.

15. Hugh S. Johnson, The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth, op. cit., pp. 140-1.

16. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Vol. 1, The Genesis of the New Deal, 1928-1932 (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 632.

17. Freidel, The Ordeal, op. cit., p. 172.