Books: Capital Ship

THE NEW DEALERS—Unofficial Observer—Simon & Schuster ($2.75). A capital ship for an ocean trip Was the Walloping Windowblind! No gale that blew dismayed her crew Or troubled the captain’s mind; The man at the wheel was taught to feel Contempt for the wildest blow, Tho’ it often appeared when the weather had cleared, That he’d been in his bunk below. —Charles Edward Carryl

In such a boisterously ironic tone, well calculated to soothe skeptics into pleased attention, does “Unofficial Observer” launch his Who’s Who of the New Deal. Plain citizens will be impressed by his breezy air of impartiality and impatient candor. But this hard-boiled patter thinly cloaks an earnest enthusiasm for the Administration and most of its works. More effective as propaganda for the New Deal than would be the paean of a paid publicity man, The New Dealers well deserves the Order of the Blue Eagle, first class.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Chief Croupier” of the New Deal, is “essentially the product of four very important factors: a good family, a good digestion, a good education and a bad illness.” The revolution in U. S. political psychology that rode him into power in 1932 had been coming a long time. “Theodore Roosevelt, who knew little or nothing of economics, sensed it; Woodrow Wilson, who knew little or nothing of finance, strove to anticipate it; the World War attempted to postpone it; Harding and Coolidge tried to destroy it, and Hoover to ignore it. … Roosevelt is simply a symptom of that process and not its cause.” The Old Deal is dead. “Whatever happens, the New Deal will go on—as either a peaceful revolution or a bloody one—for ten, 20 or 50 more years, until it has achieved its purpose.” Even most Republicans would agree with the anonymous Observer that Roosevelt has political “it” and that he has given the U. S. hope, action and self-respect, that he “is not a political cardsharper . . . [but] follows the play rather than any system.” Roosevelt likes to talk, says the Observer, has no sense of the passage of time. One of the periodic jobs of his secretaries is to break up Cabinet meetings when they have reached the story-telling stage, shunt the President off to his next appointment. Mrs. Roosevelt, “the most natural and energetic person . . . who has lived in the White House in generations,” gives herself so much to do that “even today, at the age of 49, she often moves at a trot.” Though “extraordinarily ignorant and even gullible in the academic sense,” Mrs. Roosevelt gets around so much, meets so many people, that the President relies to a great extent on her reports of the public pulse.

Of Postmaster General James Aloysius Farley the Observer remarks that “as a statesman, he is an excellent chauffeur,” but gives him full marks as a politician. “Next to Roosevelt, he has the best glands in Washington.” But the coming man of national Democratic politics, says the Observer, is little-known Edward J. Flynn, boss of The Bronx. “Mystery man of Roosevelt’s Black Chamber” is Frank C. Walker, until lately treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. “Together with Farley and Flynn, he is a tacit reminder that Roosevelt’s strongest single element of strength is the Catholic Church. . . .” Observer casts his vote for “slickest politician in the Cabinet and probably in the entire country, Roosevelt alone excepted,” to Daniel C. Roper, Secretary of Commerce.

Of the Democratic Old Guard Observer speaks with a certain condescension. Vice President Garner is “that imaginary point in the center of the Democratic Party. . . . He is against Big Business, but only because it interferes with small business, and if the New Deal should ever fall into his hands, God help the New Deal and Heaven save the country.” Secretary of State Hull is “our grey-haired Prince of Wales.” Secretary of the Navy Swanson’s presence in the Cabinet “is, in part, the South’s vengeance” for the loss of the Civil War.

But Secretary of Agriculture Wallace is “one of the three or four men of real stature in the Cabinet.” and fast-ripening Presidential timber. Observer thinks Rexford Guy Tugwell “a genuine conservative who would save the profit system and private ownership of property by adapting them to the technical conditions of the power age,” says Tugwell’s theory that the Depression was due to psychological rather than to natural causes “is the basis of the New Deal.” Budget Director Lewis Douglas, advocatus diaboli in the Administration, “is not a New Dealer at all. . . . As a watchdog of Government expenditure there could be no better man; as a maker of policy there could be no worse. He has long since ceased to enjoy Roosevelt’s confidence.”

With the Administration’s two financial wizards, Professors Warren and Rogers, Observer is mockingly reverent: “It is awe-inspiring and a little gruesome. Nobody knows where they are or what they do. From time to time a voice is heard from behind the smoke of the unholy fires or a figure is scrawled on a little piece of paper and lo! there are earthquakes in Lower Manhattan, waterspouts sweep across the desolate waters of international commerce, and cracks that are more ominous than wide appear in the pillars of society. For Rogers and Warren are engaged in the diabolical task of summoning the commodity dollar from the vasty deep and are making veal-loaf of the Golden Calf.” To Madam Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins Observer tips his hat, says “she belongs with Hopkins, Tugwell, Wallace, Ickes and a handful of others as one of the deepest thinkers and boldest strategists of the New Deal.” Hopkins, whose bite, unlike General Johnson’s, is worse than his bark, uses the word “lousy” oftener than any other New Dealer. Though Raymond Moley is no longer an official member of the Administration he “is still ace-high at the White House and still an important member of the Privy Council. . . . His absence explains some of the terrifying lurches and wobblings of Administration policy.” The NRA is a “mediocre organization . . . needs a complete overhauling in personnel.” But it filled a temporary need for “a combined punitive expedition, hog-calling contest, and torchlight parade.” (Observer reveals that NRAdministrator Johnson stood at the foot of his West Point class for four years in deportment— “Cause: chronic insubordination.”) Johnson “can back down more aggressively than any man in the country.” The three greatest threats to the New Deal, says Observer, are: war, international bankers, a rigid interpretation of the Constitution. The New Deal’s real victims are “obsolete ideas and irrelevant ideals. . . . For the New Deal is a laughing revolution. It is purging our institutions in the fires of mockery and it is led by a group of men who possess two supreme qualifications for the task: commonsense and a sense of humor.” That this sense of humor is fairly serious may be seen by his anecdote of the White House visitor who said: “Mr. President, if your program succeeds, you will be the greatest President in American history. If it fails, you will be the worst one.” ” ‘If it fails,’ said F. D. R., ‘I will be the last one.’ ” The Author hints that he is a Washington correspondent, explains his “unaccustomed” anonymity on the ground that the New Dealers are “in the mass, my friends and associates. … It is impossible to write candidly of even your best friend without losing him, and I have no desire to lose the friendship or cooperation of the New Dealers.” The New Dealers first appeared in serial form in Eugene Meyer’s Washington Post. When General Johnson had read parts of it in print he exploded as follows over the radio: “Of late, professional criticism has degenerated into scurrilous and personal appraisements of, and assaults on, officials. A conspicuous recent instance is by a writer who dared not sign his name. . . . With a little less than libel, a trifle more than backstairs gossip, this writer in whose veins there must flow something more than a trace of rodent blood, exalts some who are weak and throws mud at some who are strong. … All this is published by a dying newspaper, recently purchased at auction by an Old Dealer—a cold-blooded reactionary—who was one of the principal guides along the road to the disaster of 1929 [TIME, March 5].” Few anonymous commentators on the political scene have received better advertising out of Washington.

Whoever the author may be, he was pleased that his book was taken as the April choice of the Literary Guild.