Conservative revisionist hones in on FDR
I suppose that since many members of The Greatest Generation have passed on, or are about to, conservative columnists like George Will figure that now’s as good a time as any to trash the legacy of one President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Will did just that in this very space yesterday, doing his best to characterize Roosevelt’s “New Deal” as a failure, one that gave rise to big federal government and “interest-group politics.” Tsk, tsk, Franklin. Whatever were you thinking? Repeating a mantra of conservatives that’s certain to make many eyewitnesses to history – and I mean those who actually lived through it – laugh out loud, Will makes the diversionary claim that, “The war (World War II), not the New Deal, defeated the Great Depression.”
Pre-Roosevelt Republicans, says Will, “had long practiced limited interest-group politics on behalf of business with tariffs, gifts of land to railroads and other corporate welfare.” I suppose in Will’s mind, much was fine and dandy when the captains of industry were the only special interest group. I guess the apple cart of nirvana that existed before FDR got upset only when other groups in society, including workers, decided that they, too, wanted to have a say.
I could pick apart nearly every sentence of Will’s attempt to discredit FDR, but that would fill this entire page. But I’ll tell you what I do know about what life was like for working people in southwestern Pennsylvania before and after the New Deal, as told to me many times by my late grandmother.
To her, FDR was a great man, one who grew up in a family of wealth and privilege, but who was sympathetic and wanted to help people of much lesser economic stature, who had no jobs and, in many cases, nothing to eat. That’s right, nothing to eat. Many people were hungry during the Great Depression, and even though they wanted to work, there were no jobs.
The captains of industry, the Andrew Carnegies and the H.C. Fricks, had done a pretty good job of amassing great wealth for themselves in the pre-FDR era. They lived in mansions and had servants. But for the average person working in a coal mine, like my grandmother’s father, things weren’t quite so good.
There was no United Mine Workers of America back before part of FDR’s New Deal allowed workers to collectively bargain. If the company found out that you had pro-union leanings, they fired you. And then they blackballed you, meaning you couldn’t get a job anywhere. This was relatively easy to carry out, because prior to the New Deal, labor laws as later generations know them simply didn’t exist. You should be reminded of that.
As I said, my grandmother’s father worked in the coal mine. Many days he’d work all day, digging slate to get to the coal. But he didn’t get paid, because prior to FDR and the New Deal, and its related freedom to unionize, you only got paid for loading coal. This is how the economic system treated a man who’d served in World War I and had been gassed by the Germans in France.
Back in Will’s halcyon days, before FDR came along and messed everything up, when coal miners went on strike for decent wages and safe working conditions, the company immediately evicted them from their homes (which the company owned) and put all their furniture out on the street. That just makes you long for Herbert Hoover, doesn’t it?
As part of his “big government” agenda, FDR created the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration, which provided work for people and gave them at least a modicum of economic dignity. Members of my family participated in both, and I’m not ashamed to admit that.
The New Deal also included Social Security, another FDR creation. That system has grown to have its problems, but who among us, save the very rich, can honestly say that they’d be able to financially provide for elderly parents or disabled family members if Social Security didn’t exist?
FDR’s legacy is a positive one.
Paul Sunyak is editorial page editor of the Herald-Standard. He can be reached at 724-439-7577 or at psunyak@heraldstandard.com