HISTORY OF THE USA – CHAPTER 6

A RENDZEVOUS WITH DESTINY

1. The New Deal at High Tide

1.1. Court-packing: FDR’s plan

In early February 1937, FDR submitted the Judiciary Reorganization Bill to

Congress
 It increased the number of justices on the Supreme Court and in the lower
federal courts by providing that if a justice or federal judge reached his
seventieth birthday and failed to retire within six months, the president
could nominate another to work beside him

The court-packing bill, as it became known, marked the end of Roosevelt’s long
honeymoon with the American people
 He told Americans in a fireside chat on March 9, 1937, that the Supreme
Court deserved much of the blame for the continuing Depression
 + Adding six New Dealers to the nine sitting justices looked like a
presidential power grab

With Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House, the Judiciary
Reorganization Bill marked the first sign of considerable legislative resistance to
FDR’s initiatives
 Some southern Democrats had long opposed New Deal programs that
treated African Americans as full citizens; now they worried that a more
liberal court might rule against Jim Crow laws

1.2. Court-packing: from defeat to victory

A 1937 report pointed out that, with authoritarian governments on the rise
elsewhere, an independent judiciary mattered more than ever

Nonetheless, because of events that unfolded concurrently with the Judiciary

Reorganization Bill’s failure, the Supreme Court began to uphold New Deal
programs

Roosevelt won the court and lost the Congress

 Anti-New Deal Democrats began openly to oppose FDR’s leadership and
New Deal principles
 The loss of support left him weakened just when an unexpected economic
collapse waited in the wings, and it undermined his confidence in his
ability to lead American public opinion
1.3. The “Roosevelt recession”

Mauled by the court-packing fight and worried about fascist aggression, at least
FDR could take some cheer from his partial victory over the Great Depression
 In a speech in August 1937, he implied to Americans that the worst was
over

With such promising news, Roosevelt moved to fulfill his 1936 campaign promise
to balance the budget
 He lacked the political capital to continue huge deficit spending, even if he
had wanted to
 In 1937 he asked Congress for a public works budget 66% smaller than
that of 1935, cutting much of the WPA and PWA funding
- Cutting 2$ billion from public works programs resulted in layoffs and
directly reduced consumer spending

Wage gains, long overdue and often won by the CIO, increased some unionized
worker’s purchasing powers, but at the same time they reduced the capital
available for business investment

The prosperous summer of 1937 turned back to the future to relive the
devastating fall of 1929
 The stock market crested in August and proceeded to lose over one-third
of its value by December
 The Republicans and anti-New Deal Democrats sneeringly named the
downturn the “Roosevelt Recession”, as the administration fell into disarray

Faced with recession, like Hoover in the dark days of 1932, Roosevelt urged no
action
 But with the president quiet, the conflicting opinions that underlay the New
Deal’s experimentation deepened into ideological trenches from which
administrations sniped at one another
 Advisers offered conflicting remedies to stanch the downturn
- Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, promoted a balanced
budget to restore business confidence
- Others argued for increased government spending
- Anti-monopolists wanted to break up big business and more closely
regulate finance

In November, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress and introduced

legislation to bolster the economy
 But Congress figured that it could blame this recession on FDR and
defeated all but one of his proposals

1.4. Implementing a national economic policy

Despite Roosevelt’s congressional troubles, two crucial pieces of New Deal
legislation passed in 1938: the Fair Labor Standards Act and a revised
Agricultural Adjustment Act
 Together with the Social Security Act, they set federal policy for the
remained of the century and became the New Deal’s major legacies

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the wage and hour policies that
henceforth served as the foundation of governmental labor regulation
 In the final law, states had to adopt a minimum wage, but each state
could determine the amount, provided it was above twenty-five cents an
hour
 The maximum workweek began at 44 hours and then dropped to 40 in
three years
 The bill’s principles – no child labor, a minimum wage, a standard
workweek, and overtime pay – became rights to which workers felt
entitled

2. Fascist Ambitions, American Neutrality

The Neutrality Act of 1935 prohibited US companies from trading in war materials
with nations at war and warned that any American traveled at his own risk on the
ship of a belligerent nation

2.1. Japanese aggression

By late 1938 it became clear to Roosevelt that Japanese ambitions in the Pacific
and the spread of fascism in Europe mandated that the US prepare to defend
itself

2.2. European fascism, US neutrality

Some Americans and Europeans saw fascist power as a counterweight to

European Communist movements in Spain, France, and Germany

With concerns about Japan and fascist Europe rising, the 1937 Neutrality Act
incorporated the language of the 1935 and 1936 acts, but included a cash and
carry policy for nonmilitary-related materials that Roosevelt had requested
 The federal government could sell US arms and materials to warring
nations if they pai cash and arranged for transportation
 All this was hypothetical since no nations, not even Japan and China, had
actually declared war

2.3. Aggression and appeasement

Hitler believed that the US would never intervene, even as his aggression eroded
Americans’ isolationist proclivities from 1938 to 1941

2.4. The outbreak of war in Europe

Alarmed by fascist aggression and appalled by the condition of the US military, in

mid-November 1938 Roosevelt called for the construction of “airplanes and lots
of them”

On the morning of August 23, 1939, the world awakened to discover that
Germany and the Soviet Union has signed a Nonaggression Pact, despite the
USSR’s strong antifascist stance

At the dawn of September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west,
north, and south, its tanks rolling over the flat Polish plains
 By October 2, the occupation was complete, and Hitler’s ambition
unbounded
 Roosevelt responded to these events with the promise that the nation
would remain neutral, but he added, “even a neutral cannot be asked to
close his mind or his conscience”

In November 1939, Congress authorized the cash and carry provision to make
war material available to Britain and France, and anti-interventionists made
peace with it, hoping that selling arms and equipment would prevent sending
troops

2.5. The conundrum of preparedness

In May 1940, Roosevelt asked for over 1$ billion in new military spending to
support increased aircraft and naval production

The debate over the US response reached clamorous levels: the New York Times
summarized US obligations as threefold:
1) Saving the Allies by “material aid”
2) Keeping the US out of the war
3) Quickly building US defenses to “keep the totalitarian threat out of this
hemisphere”

In the fall of 1940, FDR sent US naval forces to Hawaii to deter the Japanese
from following Hitler’s example and taking Pacific islands

3. Preparing a Neutral Nation

FDR decided that the war in Europe mandated that he run for an unprecedented,
but not unconstitutional, third term

3.1. Strengthening the military

After Congress’s May-June appropriation of an additional $17.6 billion for defense

spending, two accomplishments in September allowed Roosevelt to harness the
anti-interventionists’ own strong defense rhetoric to move forward
1) First, he knew that Britain simply would not be able to defend itself if the
Germans breached the Channel, as its decrypted cables promised
2) The Selective Training and Service Act: every man between 21 and 35 had
to register for the draft

The America First Committee (AFC) argued that the US should discontinue its
fruitless aid to Britain, since when the British went down in defeat, they
reasoned, the Germans would hold the US accountable for trying to help
 Better to build US forces to protect its own citizens against totalitarianism
after Britain fell

4. The March to War

4.1. The arsenal of democracy

Roosevelt had accomplished the destroyer-bases deal through an executive

order, but in January 1941 he turned to Congress to approve a Lend-lease bill to
supply war material to Britain (without charging “rent”)
 With the Lend-Lease in place, any vestige of American neutrality fell away,
and it seemed a foregone conclusion that the US would fight if Britain fell
to the Germans

4.2. Human rights and the march on Washington movement

Philip Randolph organized the March on Washington Movement to demand

defense jobs and equal treatment in the armed forces for African Americans

Executive Order 8802, issued June 25, 1941, banned discrimination in defense
industries or governments, and it formed the Committee on Fair Employment
Practices to review complaints

4.3. The German invasion of the USSR

Neutrality and disarmament had produced an inertia that hampered US
preparedness and bitterly divided the American public
 Now staying out of war depended on arming the Allies with weapons that
the US might need for defense in the immediate future

4.4. Mobilizing in peacetime

On July 16, Roosevelt signed an executive order requiring governmental approval

on oil shipments from American companies to the Japanese
 The order effectively embargoed Japan’s oil

5. The Shock of Attack in the Air

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor damaged US Pacific forces and deeply
frightened the American people
 The Japanese used the advantage of surprise to fan out quickly over the
Pacific and secure sorely needed rubber and oil resources
 The dramatic opening of WWII put aside isolationist/interventionist
arguments and galvanized Americans’ determination to win the war

5.1. Declaring war, uniting America

A state of war with Japan had existed since eight a.m. December 7, and now FDR
asked Congress officially to declare war

On December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the US and named

themselves the Axis Powers

The Japanese government’s attack on Pearl Harbor allowed Americans to enter

the war as a unified nation, leaving behind the isolationist and anti-
interventionist arguments that had impeded mobilization