1. Mitchell, Lucy Sprague, Two Lives: The Story of Wesley Clair Mitchell and Myself (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953): 73Google Scholar.

2. Ward, Geoffrey C., A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York: Harper and Row, 1989): xvGoogle Scholar.

3. Compare Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (New York: Norton, 1979)Google Scholar.

4. Stephen Skowronek has recently argued that the New Deal was primarily a repudiation of the received constitutionalist tradition, but that FDR failed in his attempt to create a new model executive. These claims seem to me to be more interdependent than they first appear; to evaluate them, I believe we must assess them together in the light of the evidence of FDR's intention. I shall argue that Roosevelt intended to appropriate the received tradition by making it the instrument of a pragmatic liberalism. Compare Skowronek, , “Franklin Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency,” Studies in American Political Development 6 (Fall 1992): 322–358CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. For an earlier sketch of Roosevelt's rhetorical appropriation of these resources, see Abbott, Philip, The Exemplary Presidency: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

6. The principal accounts of FDR's executive in theory and practice are Karl, Barry D., Executive Reorganization and Reform in the New Deal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963)Google Scholar and Milkis, Sidney M., The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. The philosophical task political scientists face in coming to terms with the modern theory of executive power was first demonstrated in Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

7. For a recent attempt to understand the New Deal regime within the context of reform thought, compare Eisenach, Eldon J., “Reconstituting the Study of American Political Thought in a Regime-Change Perspective,” Studies in American Political Development 4 (1990): 169–228CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Anderson, Charles W., Pragmatic Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990): xGoogle Scholar.

9. Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991): 1–17, 193–208Google Scholar.

10. See Nichols, James H. Jr, “Pragmatism and the U.S. Constitution,” in Bloom, Allan, ed., Confronting the Constitution: The Challenge to Locke, Montesquieu, Jefferson and The Federalists from Vtilitananism, Historicism, Marxism, Freudianism, Pragmatism, Existentialism… (Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Nichols apparently assesses pragmatism somewhat differently than de Tocqueville did. He seems to equate the method of Deweyan pragmatism with the philosophical method of the Americans described by Tocqueville, and, further, with the American style in politics; “Pragmatism is the only philosophical school whose correlative adjective is used to praise political character and style of action” (369). By contrast, when Tocqueville described the philosophical method of the Americans as Cartesian, he believed himself to be describing a cast of mind that was antithetical to American pragmatism in public affairs, which Tocqueville praised. Unlike the French, who carried their Cartesian rationalism over into practical life, the Americans were capable of learning from experience and of correcting the vagaries of theoretical enthusiasm by reference to experience. The Americans were less inclined to let general ideas govern their deliberations than the French. They were in the habit of treating the particulars of practical life with respect and of giving them a weight that the French could not appreciate. The Americans were accordingly attentive to procedures and forms which enabled them to get down to particulars and to perceive the impact of a general proposition before they put it into practice. The pragmatism of American practice in politics was not antithetical, therefore, to respect or even to reverence for constitutional forms. See Democracy in America, vol. II, bk., 1, chaps. 1, 4.

11. John Dewey, “The Motivation of Hobbes's Political Philosophy” (hereafter “HPP”), Middle Works of John Dewey, vol. 11, 18–40. “Liberalism and Social Action” (hereafter “LSA”), Late Works of John Dewey, vol. 11, 6, 20–22, 23, 25–27, 39–40, 63. “Freedom and Culture” (hereafter “FC”), Late Works of John Dewey, vol. 13, 64–65. See also Later Works, vol. 3, 96–99, 102–103. For Dewey, the origins are always to be located in liberating knowledge and science; see “Justice Holmes and the Liberal Mind” in Frankfurter, Felix, ed. Mr. Justice Holmes (New York: Coward-McCann, 1931): 33–45Google Scholar.

12. For Rorty, Dewey's thought is “historicist to the core,” Consequences of Pragmatism, 46; see 81–82. On the “ideology” of the Declaration of Independence see Dewey, “FC,” 66; “LSA,” 6–7, 26–27. Nichols, op. cit. 372–373. In Rorty's account, the historicist dimension of Dewey's thought is justly stressed, but the centrality of science and correct method to Dewey's liberalism is unjustly suppressed.

13. As Dewey's essay on Hobbes's political philosophy makes clear, he located Hobbes at the origin of modern political philosophy and of liberal politics, stressing the continuity between Hobbes and Locke. See “HPP,” 23, 30, 38–40.

14. The problem is evident in “FC,” 65; Dewey's insistence on correct historical scholarship in treating the origins of modern liberalism is evident throughout FC and his Hobbes essay (“HPP”); Dewey made a great investment in the development of historical scholarship in promoting the social sciences.

15. See “Justice Holmes and the Liberal Mind,” equating prolonged sleep of the intellect with death: “reposing on a formula in a slumber that means death” (36; 39, 45).

16. One could argue the merits of Dewey's other writings vs. Individualism Old and New. Reconstruction in Philosophy is not in the genre, although it is intense. “Liberalism and Social Action” and “Freedom and Culture” are the primary contenders. I am not particularly concerned with ranking Individualism Old and New (ION) against these contenders; my comparativejudgment is with all of Dewey's formulations as against “On Progressive Government.” I shall therefore discuss sharper or better formulations from “LSA” and “FC” in the notes.

17. FDR wished to lay claim to this standing, but he had not yet earned it, and evidence of how much he had to prove is not hard to find: “It may be that Mr. Roosevelt is the best, but the fact is too plain to ignore that a good many party people do not think so.” Kent, Frank Richardson, “How Strong is Roosevelt?” Scnbner's Magazine, XCI (04 1932): 203Google Scholar. As Cripe observed, “It was in the 1932 campaign that Roosevelt firmly established his national reputation as an excellent speaker.” Cripe, Nicholas M., “A Critical Analysis and Comparison of Selected 1932 Presidential Campaign Speeches of Herbert C. Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Ph.D. dissertation, (Northwestern University, 1953, Microfilm Ann Arbor), xiiGoogle Scholar. Oliver, Robert T., “The Speech that Established Roosevelt's Reputation,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech, XXXI (10 1945)Google Scholar. On the purposes of the Western tour, see Samuel Rosenman, Working With Roosevelt, 41–42 and Cripe, 181–182.

18. Bullert, Gary, The Politics of John Dewey (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1983), 147–150Google Scholar. Douglas, Paul H., The Coming of a New Parly (New York: McGraw Hill, 1932)Google Scholar.

19. John Dewey The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. 6: 1931–1932, Jo Ann Boydston, ed., with an Introduction by Sidney Ratner. See also Dewey's policy statements, “The Irrepressible Conflict,” Xews Bulletin of the League for Independent Political Action 1 January 1931. “The Need for a New Party,” The Xew Republic (TXR), 66 (March/April 1931): 156–181; “The Place of Minor Parties in the American Scene and Their Relation to the Present Situation,” 231–238; and “Prospects for a Third Party,” 246–252. “Foreword” to Douglas's, Paul H.The Coming of a Xew Party, with a Foreword by Dewey, John (New York: McGraw Hill, 1932), 313–314Google Scholar. Dewey introduced Douglas's book by remarking, “If I knew any way to make this book compulsory reading for all citizens, especially for all young men and women, whose political minds are not closed to facts and ideas, I would gladly do so.” Not surprisingly, the book began as a reiteration of Dewey's Individualism Old and Xew.

Schwartz argues that Berle called “On Progressive Government” the “new individualism ” speech, to contrast his ideas with Frankfurter's “old individualism” and to usurp Frankfurter's efforts to make individualism a sole theme of the campaign. See Schwarz, Jordan A., Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 78Google Scholar.

20. See Rosen, Elliot A., Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: From Depression to Xew Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

21. I take the descriptive term from Coleman, Peter J., “The World of Interventionism, 1880–1940,” in Eden, Robert, ed., The Xew Deal and Its Legacy: Critique and Reappraisal (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 49–75Google Scholar. Schwarz, 70:

The use of professors in government had its roots early in the century with the popularization of the Wisconsin idea—when the governor of that state, Robert M. La Follette, ventured a mile from the state capitol in Madison to the state university to borrow the expertise of its professors in fashioning a re-form program.

The controversy most studied in this connection was between Berle and Frankfurter, or more broadly between the advocates of central planning and the advocate of decentralization, Brandeis. See Tugwell, Rexford G., In Search of Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Schwartz, 70–71, 76–79; and Rosen, Elliot A., Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: From Depression to Xew Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

22. See Schwarz, 2–9, 13–17. Such rivalry was an element in his testy relations with Felix Frankfurter. See Schwarz, 14–15, and correspondence with Frankfurter in FDR Library (FDRL) Berle Papers box 15.

23. Cf. Sidney Ratner, Introduction to Dewey's Late Works, vol. 6, quote xviii, xix. Schwarz mentions Dewey as antagonist (66) but does not consider the tension with Dewey in interpreting the Commonwealth Club Address (70).

24. The second draft was even more heavily indebted to Dewey, although without the connection that is so obvious in the title of Berle's first draft.

25. Berle, Beatrice Bishop and Jacobs, Travis Beal, eds., Xavigating the Rapids 1918–1970: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 62Google Scholar.

26. The first draft discussed a long list of regulatory programs as precedents for vigorous intervention to show that Hoover was himself implementing the kinds of programs that FDR advocated. Thus it provides grist for interpreters who have stressed the continuity between Hoover's policies and those of the New Deal. Sec the work of Elliot Rosen cited above, and Hawley, Ellis, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar; Hawley, , “The NewDeal and Business,” in Braeman, John, Bremner, Robert H., and Brody, David, eds., The New Deal, 2 vols. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975), I: 50–82Google Scholar. See also the essay and remarks by Hawley in Huthmacher, J.Joseph and Susman, Warren I., eds., Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1973), 3–33Google Scholar.

27. In a paper given in December 1929, six days after the Wall Street crash, before the American Economic Association: “A Machiavelli writing today would have very little interest in princes, and every interest in the Standard Oil Company of Indiana… And he would be right; because the prince of today is the president or dominant interest in a great corporation.” Schwarz, 56; see 57, Schwarz entitles his section on Berle's The Modern Corporation and Private Property (MCPP), “The Marx of the Shareholder Class” (62, 66, 68). For Schwarz, clearly, Berle was the Marx of the New Deal Revolution. “… these Machiavellians survived the campaign because their principles were compatible with those of their prince” (75). Beard called it “the most important work bearing on American statecraft” since the Federalist Papers (60). Jerome Frank wrote that “This book will perhaps rank with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations as the first detailed description in admirably clear terms of the existence of a new economic epoch” (Schwarz, 60; 74 on Marx).

28. See Beard, Charles A., “The Frontier in American History,” TNR, (16 02 1921): 249–350Google Scholar; Keynes, J.M., “The End of Laissez Faire,” TNR, 25 (08 1926): 13–15Google Scholar; (1 September 1926): 37–40. TNR editorial, “Liberalism Today” (25 November 1925): 3–6. Compare Tufts, James H., “Individualism and American Life,” in Essays in Honor of John Dewey on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, October 20, 1929 (New York: Henry Holt, 1929), 389–401Google Scholar (Tufts' comments on Hoover's Individualism, 390–391.

29. For evidence of collaborative effort see the Tufts article in the note preceding. Douglas, PaulH., The Comingofa New Party (New York: McGraw Hill, 1932)Google Scholar. Westbrook, Robert B., John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

30. Individualism Old and Sew (ION), 64. The tract is not yet the wholesale condemnation of the old individualism that became so common later, but it assembles most of the elements of that condemnation. Bourgeois individualism is not directly blamed by Dewey for making democrats into the unassertive, “apathetic” many, the beneficiaries rather than the asserters of freedom, solely concerned with a rise in their standard of living. But it is clear that Dewey's pragmatic liberalism places the professional intellectuals at the service of saving democrats from this fate. The democrats are to become something very different from what they are content to be or what they aspire to be under the old individualism.

31. ION, 56–57; see Schwarz, 56, wherein Berle's lecture of December 1929 endorses Veblen on the corporation as “the master instrument of civilization.”

32. Schwarz 45–54. Sandilands, Roger J., The Life and Political Economy of Lauchlin Currie: Sew Dealer, Presidential Adviser, and Development Economist (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; McCraw, Thomas K., Prophets of Regulation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 153–169 (on James M. Landis)Google Scholar.

33. But although Dewey's book [Experience and Nature] is incredibly ill written, it seemed to me after several rereadings to have a feeling of intimacy with the inside of the cosmos that I found unequalled. So methought God would have spoken had He been inarticulate but keenly desirous to tell you how it was.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to Sir Frederick Pollock; quoted in Ralph Ross, “Introduction” to John Dewey, Middle Works, vol. 12, i.

34. Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, Fehrenbacher, Don E., ed. (New York: Library of America, 1989), 426–434Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., 426.

36. See Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, vol. IV, chap, iii, “Democratic Split and Republican Opportunity,” 160–225.

37. For Dewey's development of the initial, axial theme, of the irrepressible conflict or the house divided against itself, see ION, 56, 64, 76, 77, 78, 87, 109; see further, “The Social-Economic Situation and Education,” on Jefferson and Lincoln, Dewey Late Works, vol. 8, 51–61.

38. Unlike Berle, who made his fame on a kind of conspiracy thesis regarding corporate concentration, and loved intrigue. See his unpublished typescript, “The Princes of Property,” FDRL Box 166.

39. More particularly, it was the orientation in considerable part of the most conservative wing of the Progressive movement, as represented by Albert Beveridge. See Morison, Samuel Eliot, “Beveridge's Lincoln,” TNR (12 12 1928): 117–120Google Scholar.

40. The vitality of Lincoln's prestige in the New England reform tradition represented by The New Republic prevented Dewey from embracing Ulrich B. Phillips's historicist depreciation of the moral significance of Lincoln's politics. See “The American Intellectual Frontier,” (TNR 30, 1922) in Middle Works, vol. 13, 302. See also Morison, Samuel Eliot, “Beveridge's Lincoln,” TNR (12 12 1928): 117–120Google Scholar; Wyant, Edith. “Lincoln at Home, TNR (17 03 1926): 116–117Google Scholar; TNR editorial, “The Living Lincoln” (11 February 1925): 298–299. Littell, Robert, “Lincoln,” TNR (18 02 1925): 336–338Google Scholar. Cf. Late Works, vol. 7, 148, quoting Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on American Nation and Declaration of Independence, Dewey, Ethics, pt. 1, chap. 1. Unlike Hofsladter, Dewey went back to Civil War roots; he did not buy the Democratic line we find in Hugh Johnson about slavery. Johnson, Hugh S., The Blue Eagle From Egg to Earth (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1935)Google Scholar.

41. Compare Dewey, “The Social-Economic Situation and Education,” in Later Works, vol. 8, 43–76, esp. 48–49.

42. ION, 90–98. In the consensus draft for the Brain Trust on “the nature of the difficulty,” written in July 1932, Berle wrote:

the true antithesis just now is not, as commonly stated, between the American system and the Russian system. At the present rate of trend, the American and the Russian systems will look ver) much alike within a comparatively short period—say twenty years. There is no great difference between having all industry run by a committee of Commissars and by a small group of Directors.

Although Schwarz attempts to heighten the contrast between Dewey's socialism and Berle's position in 1932, the evidence he cites belies him on this critical point: the alternatives for Berle in 1932 were precisely between “capitalist socialism and public socialism.” Cf. Schwarz, 66, on Dewey.

43. ION, 90–98.

44. See the review by Thomas Reed Powell of Cooley's, Thomas M.Constitutional Limitations, TNR (27 06 1928): 152–153Google Scholar.

45. TXR, “Justice Holmes,” by Cohen, Morris R., 2 02 1921, pp. 294–296Google Scholar. “The Supreme Court as Legislator,” TNR (31 March 1926): 135–138. “Our Censors,” TNR (23 May 1928): 12–15.

46. ION, 48; compare 80. John Dewey, Middle Works, vol. 13, “The American Intellectual Frontier.” p. 302.

47. ION, 75.

48. ION, 49.

49. ION, 90–98. Schwarz, 56.

50. ION, 77–79.

51. ION, 48. Compare TNR editorial, “Liberalism Today” (25 November 1925): 3–6.

52. Hofstadter's judgement is worth recalling:

The whole reformist tradition, then, displayed a mentality founded on the existence of an essentially healthy society; it was chiefly concerned not with managing an economy to meet the problems of collapse but simply with democratizing an economy in sound working order.

Hence the Progressive mind was hardly more prepared than the conservative mind for what came in 1929.

Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955), 304Google Scholar.

53. William Allen White conveys a clear image of how Progressives viewed their position in the twenties:

“The spirit of our democracy has turned away from the things of the spirit, got its share of the patrimony ruthlessly and gone out and lived riotously and ended by feeding among the swine. [Perhaps if TR had lived] he would not have permitted public sentiment to sag as it has sagged. The nation has not yet been shocked out of its materialism. Of course, Coolidge is a tremendous shock absorber. His emotionless attitude is an anaesthetic to a possible national conviction of sin … We have just got to grind along and develop a leader and it is a long, slow task calling for all our patience. How long, Oh Lord, how long!” When this [1926] editorial, more than a decade later, was published in an anthology, my father added the following footnote: “Well, six years brought the man! And when he came, I some way did not 'get out and raise the flaming banner of righteousness.'”

White, William Allen, The Autobiography of William Allen White (New York: MacMillan, 1946), 632–633Google Scholar.

54. For Dewey's brief remarks on the economics of depression see ION, 63–64. Dewey evidently thought that a political change in the climate of opinion, produced by the policies of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations during the twenties, would simply cancel what had previously been thought to be economic laws based upon permanent cause-and-etfect relationships. It did not occur to him that actions taken in deference to this new climate of opinion might deepen and lengthen the depression. Dewey here reflects the state of liberal opinion. Compare George Soule's question, to which institutional economics had no answer as of 1929: “How is it then that we have not had a slump?” in TNR (2 February 1926), “How Long Prosperity?” (p. 290). Frederick C. Mills, “Tides in the Affairs of Men” (on business cycles, arguing that causes are unknown), TNR (2 June 1926): 66–67. “Fading Prosperity,” editorial TNR (19 January 1927): “We see no stop to a gradual slide downhill” (p. 236). Finally, George Soule, on “Hoover's Task at Home” (27 February 1929): “Mr. Hoover will be lucky if a Wall Street crash brings stock prices down and keeps them down far enough” (p. 35). Compare Hugh S. Johnson, The Blue Eagle, 136ff On “new era” economics, see Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare, 209–213.

55. ION, 48–49, 53–54, 71–72, 117–123.

56. It would be difficult to overestimate the despair of American liberals as the 1920s unfolded. The pages of The New Republic record an unrelieved sequence of smashing defeats. Even the good news for Americans was bad news for liberals: in 1927, TNR rather gloomily observed that American employers had become so humane and considerate to their workers that liberals were deprived of the brutality and oppression on which protest movements depend. A partial list of the setbacks: The complete end of the Progressive movement, which Dewey emphatically dated at 1918. Unprecedented Republican victories in 1924 and un-precedented era of good feeling under Coolidge; popularity of Andrew Mellon; rise of the Ku Klux Klan; rise of fundamentalist antiintellectualism under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan; the liberal movement united and threw all its resources and energy into the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, a complete defeat: ”American liberals united on a sound cause only to be defeated,“TNR (28 September 1927): 138. When Progressive and liberals united behind Al Smith, they fell to Hoover's overwhelming victory in the 1928 election. Finally, consider Sidney Hillman's initial apprehension of what the 1929 crash would probably mean: “all the social gains of twenty years swept away in this national calamity!” quoted in Josephson, Matthew, Infidel in the Temple: A Memoir of the Thirties (New York: Knopf, 1967), 57Google Scholar.

57. For the statement of the problem and development of the resolution, see ION, 56–57, 64–65, 75, 76, 80–81, 87, 100, 105, 106, 109.

Just how far away from effective influence liberals and public-interest Progressives seemed to be in 1932 may be gauged by Nock's prediction:

The next actual business of politics will be the looting of water-power; and this, I predict, is the one thing that will not be mentioned by anyone. Water-power is the only natural resource, the only remaining scrap of valuable public property that has not been knaved into the grasp of private monopoly, and now is the time for it to go the way of the rest.

Nock, Albert Jay, A Journal of These Days, June 1932–December 1933 (New York: William Morrow, 1934), 18Google Scholar. That TV A might be just around the corner never occurred to Nock; not that the thought would have made him any happier.

58. Bullert, Gary, The Politics of John Dewey (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1983), 21–33, 147–151Google Scholar. Westbrook, Robert B., John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 429–452Google Scholar. Douglas, Paul H., The Coming of a New Party (New York: McGraw Hill, 1932)Google Scholar; of. Paul Douglas's hopes for proportional representation: “Effective Voting,” TNR (5 October 1927): 183–184.

59. Rockefeller, Steven C., John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; compare Dewey, “Motivation of Hobbes' Political Philosophy,” and “The American Intellectual Frontier.”

60. CompareLindemann, E.C., “Adult Education: A New Means for Liberals,” TNR (22 02 1928)Google Scholar.

61. ION, 107, 83–84, 86, 104, 115, 119.

62. The abandonment of inquiry into business cycles, for all practical purposes, is indicated in Frederick C. Mills, “Tides,” in TNR, op. cit. Anderson, Cf. Benjamin M., Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911)Google Scholar:

My chief obligations at Columbia University are to Professors Seligman … John Dewey and Giddings. My debt to Professors Seligman and Dewey, is, in part, indicated in the course of the book, so far as points of doctrine are concerned. Both have been kind enough to read and criticize the provisional draft … [p. x.] I am indebted to Professor John Dewey for many valuable suggestions and criticisms in connection with this part of my study. My more general obligation to him will be manifest to any one who is familiar with his epoch-marking point of view. Economic, sociological, and political philosophy have in my judgment, more to learn from him than from any other contemporary philosopher.

Dewey evidently learned nothing during the 1920s from his most distinguished student in economics; see Anderson, Benjamin M., Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914–1946 (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1979, c1949)Google Scholar.

63. The lack of secure objects of allegiance, without which individuals are lost, is especially striking in the case of the liberal. The liberalism of the past was characterized by the possession of a definite intellectual creed and program; that was its distinction from conservative parties which needed no formulated outlook beyond defense of things as they were. In contrast, liberals operated on the basis of a thought-out social philosophy, a theory of politics sufficiently definite and coherent to be easily translated into a program of policies to be pursued. Liberalism today is hardly more than a temper of mind, vaguely called forward-looking, but quite uncertain as to where to look and what to look forward to. For many individuals, as well as in its social results, this fact is hardly less than a tragedy. The tragedy may be unconscious for the mass, but they show its reality in their aimless drift, while the more thoughtful are consciously disturbed. For human nature is self-possessed only as it has objects to which it can attach itself. Dewev, ION, 70; see also 66, 80, 96.

64. What we call the middle classes are for the most part the church-going classes, those who have come under the influence of evangelical Christianity. These persons form the backbone of philanthropic social interest, of social re-form through political action, of pacifism, of popular education … It has been the element responsive to appeals for the square deal and more nearly equal opportunities for all, as it has understood equality of opportunity. It followed Lincoln in the abolition of slavery, and it followed Roosevelt in his denunciation of 'bad' corporations and aggregations of wealth … It has never had an interest in ideas as ideas, nor in science and art for what they may do in liberating and elevating the spirit … The net result is social and political liberalism combined with intellectual illiberality. Of the result Mr. [William Jennings] Bryan is an outstanding symbol. John Dewey, Middle Works, vol. 13, 301–302.

This was published in TNR in 1922. Dewey was discussing character and custom, which do not change rapidly; we may assume he thought the American “middle class,” or Middletown, was essentially the same seven years later, when ION was written.

65. Berle, Adolf A. Jr, Studies in the Law of Corporate Finance (Chicago: Callaghan and Co., 1928), vGoogle Scholar.

66. ION, 75, the starting point for understanding what Dewey had in mind is his essay “Corporate Personality,” Late Works, vol. 2, 22–43, first published in Yale Law Journal, 35 (April 1926): 655–673. This is perhaps the place to discuss Westbrook's account of Dewey's relation to the New Deal “technocrats” such as Tugwell and Berle. Westbrook is, I think, reading the dichotomies of the 1960s back into Dewey's thought, and rather seriously narrowing his politics; for Westbrook, participatory democracy and technocratic social engineering by experts are polar opposites; one must choose between them. But Dewey argues that one does not have to choose between them, in part because he thinks that corporate managers, civil servants, and other professional technocrats can share in the shaping of a democratic culture that includes significant elements of participatory democracy. In this regard, Dewey prepares the way for the New Deal, and shares the essentials of FDR's attempt to Jeffersonianize or republicanize both the corporate executive and the bureaucratic social engineer. Westbrook, Robert B., John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991): 455–457Google Scholar.

67. ION, 84.

68. ION, 106.

69. ION, 105. Eden, Robert, “Dealing Democratic Honor Out: Reform and the Decline of Consensus Politics” in Harris, Richard A. and Milkis, Sidney M., eds., Remaking American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), 52–85Google Scholar. Schwarz, 66–67.

70. ION, 106. Schwarz, 66–67.

71. This interdependence might have become more visible to Dewey as a possibility, and as a solution to the practical problem of his essay, had he followed the lead later taken by New Deal jurisprudence (as, for instance, in Ten Broek's studies). Dewey came very close to identifying the plight of TNR liberals with the predicament of the Abolitionists during the antebellum period, when they rejected the Constitution as a pact with the devil. Ten Broek was later to argue that Abolitionists became most effective when they responded in kind to Southern constitutionalist defenses of slavery by developing their own constitutional doctrine. By abandoning their early anticonstitutional animus, the Abolitionists not only helped to bring “the crisis of the house divided” to a showdown; Ten Broek sought to demonstrate that they laid the foundation for the Civil War amendments and hence for bringing union under a common constitutional order. These were among the most important lessons that TNR readers learned during the New Deal under FDR's guidance. Berle would have been justly doubtful of Dewey's competence in matters of constitutional interpretation; for example:

Not till the second half of the nineteenth century did the idea arise that government might and should be an instrument for securing and extending the liberties of individuals. This latter aspect of liberalism is perhaps foreshadowed in the clauses of our Constitution that confer upon Congress power to provide for “public welfare” as well as for public safety. Prob-ably in the minds of the framers of the Constitution not much more was contemplated by this clause than the desirability of permitting Congress to make appropriations for roads, rivers and harbors. In subsequent practice, the power has not been used much beyond provision of limited social services for those at an economic disadvantage.

LSA, 8.

72. Cf. “Corporate Personality” for Dewey's only work along these lines. Schwarz, 45, 52–53, 55, 58, 64.

73. ION, 107.

74. ION, 108. Compare Berle, Adolf A. Jr, and Means, Gardiner C., The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), 350Google Scholar:

Just what motives are effective today, insofar as control is concerned, must be a matter of conjecture. But it is probable that more could be learned regarding them by studying the motives of an Alexander the Great, seeking new worlds to conquer, than by considering the motives of a petty tradesman of the davs of Adam Smith.

75. At first reading, the exception to this judgment would appear to be Dewey's remarkable essay commemorating Theodore Roosevelt, first published in Dial 66 (1919): 115–117. In that essay, however, while characterizing TR's activist style, Dewey mentions no action of TR.

76. Schwarz, 45, 56. In draft 1, however, Berle's emphasis on historical realism was stock Deweyan argumentation: “my answer will take the form of a close examination of the facts of our history in order that a new picture, the real picture, may be drawn of the role played by our American spirit throughout our inspiring history.” “I shall see our history in its true light and realistically interpret that history in terms of the baffling problems of the present and the future.” Berle Papers, FDRL Box 16. As Leo Strauss observed, there is no more appropriate way to combat the doctrine that all human thought is historical than to study history. Strauss, Leo, On Tyranny: Revised and Expanded Edition Including the Strauss-Kojeve Correspondence, Gourevitch, Victor and Roth, Michael S., eds. (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 27Google Scholar.

77. When one gathers together all of Dewey's reservations about Roosevelt in his essay on TR–which today reads remarkably well as a description of FDR–one gets a fairly clear idea of just how high this threshhold was for Dewey. Berle, by contrast, was infatuated with the Gewaltmensch:

In still larger view, the modern corporation may be regarded not simply as one form of social organization but potentially (if not yet actually) as the dominant institution of the modern world. In every age, the major concentration of power has been based upon the dominant interest of that age. The strong man has, in his time, striven to be cardinal or pope, prince or cabinet minister, bank president or partner in the House of Morgan. During the Middle Ages, the Church, exercising a spiritual power, dominated Europe and gave to it a unity at a time when both political and economic power were diffused. With the rise of the modern state, political power, concentrated into a few large units, challenged the spiritual interest as the strongest bond of human society. Out of the long struggle between church and state which followed, the state emerged victorious; nationalist politics superseded religion as the basis of the major unifying organization of the modern world. Economic power still remained diffused.

The rise of the modern corporation has brought a concentration of economic power which can compete on equal terms with the modern state–economic power versus political power, each strong in its own field. The state seeks in some aspects to regulate the corporation, while the corporation, steadily becoming more powerful, makes every effort to avoid such regulation. Where its own interests are concerned, it even attempts to dominate the state. The future may see the economic organism, now typified by the corporalion, not only on an equal plane with the state, but possibly even superseding it as the dominant form of social organization. The law of corporations, accordingly, might well be considered as a potential constitutional law for the new economic stale, while business practice is increasingly assuming the aspect of economic statesmanship.

Berle, Adolf A. Jr, and Means, Gardiner C., The Modern Corporation and Private Properly (1932), 357Google Scholar.

78. Compare White's doubts in 1933:

Far be it for the Gazette to carp. We are supporting the administration and the whole alphabet thereunto appertaining. But are the American people ready for the revolutionary change, the fundamental break with our American past that is necessary if this revolution takes hold permanently? Today, it is a palace revolution which has captured Washington. How far and hoiu deeply in the hearts of the American people has it gone? These questions are not asked by an impertinent enemy but by a sincere friend whose fond and fervent hope is that the day he long sought is really here.

White, William Allen, The Autobiography of William Allen White (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 637 [emphasis added]Google Scholar.

79. Bullert, GaryThe Politics of John Dewey (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1983), 21–32Google Scholar.

80. Compare the TNR editorials “Realistic Liberalism” and “Socratic Liberalism” (23 November 1927, 28 November 1927).

81. ION, 82, 83.

82. See Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, xxix (and n. 31, xlvi), p. xlvi, 78, 80, 162.

83. Cf. Dewey, “The Motivation of Hobbes's Political Philosophy.”

84. Rorty, Richard, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982)Google Scholar:

Heidegger distinguishes Europe's destiny from Russia's or America's, regions of the Earth which have presumably passed beyond recall (as of 1936). See [Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 45], “Europe lies in a pincers between Russia and America which are, metaphysically speaking, the same.” The vulgarity of the remark should not lead one to underestimate its importance. Heidegger's intense political consciousness, which led him to make the remarks reprinted by Guido Schneeberger in Nachlesz zu Heidegger (Bern, 1962), needs to be recognized when trying to see what he thinks “Thought” might do, just as Dewey's must be remembered in understanding why he urged “reconstruction in philosophy,” p. 55, note 14.

What Rorty means by “vulgarity” might be volkische –signifying a widely popular way of viewing America and Russia that Heidegger shared with other Germans. If an interpreter as sympathetic as Richard Rorty urges us to reason from Dewey's “intense political consciousness” as a way toward understanding his advocacy of reconstruction in philosophy …

85. Compare Rorty, Consequences, xxxi, xxxiii, 52.

86. Rorty, Consequences, xiv, xvii, xix, xxix–xxx, xxxiv, xxxviii, 52, 161, 163, 164.

87. Cf. Sidney Ratner, John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley: A Philosophical Correspondence 1932–1951, 15.

88. Rorty, Consequences, xviii, 42, 45–46, 63–64, 74, 76, 160–161, 164–165.

89. If Richard Rorty's judgment is to be credited, “The best thing about Dewey … is that he did not, like Plato, pretend to be a spectator of all time and eternity, but used philosophy (even that presumably highest and purest form of philosophy–metaphysics itself) as an instrument of social change“ (Consequences, 74). Precisely if this is so, the ranking of pragmatists must be by their respective skill in effectuating social change, and the conclusion that FDR is to be ranked higher than Dewey is merely an historical judgment on the social change wrought by the New Deal.

90. McCraw, Thomas K., “The New Deal and the Mixed Economy,” in SitkofF, Harvard, ed., Fifty Yean Later: The New Deal Evaluated (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985), 62–63Google Scholar.

91. The best-known account of FDR as a broker is by James MacGregor Burns. His treatment of the Commonwealth Club is cursory and inconsistent. In The Crosswinds of Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1989), 16–17, Burns gives a rather jaundiced account of the speech as an incoherent effort. He seems to have forgotten what he himself had w ritten earlier of the substantial content of the speech, in his The Lion and the Fox, 142–143:

One speech in particular excited observers on the left. At the Commonwealth Club Address in San Francisco Roosevelt talked eloquently about the need for an economic constitutional order, about the role of government as umpire, with federal regulation as a last resort. Although the implications of these ideas for a specific program were left vague, the speech was studded with phrases about economic oligarchy, the shaping of an economic bill of rights, the need for more purchasing power, and every man's right to life, which Roosevelt defined as including the right to make a comfortable living. But these ideas seemed to fade away later in the campaign as the candidate turned to other notions, some of them more orthodox than those of Hoover himself.

92. Andersen, Kristi, The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928–1936 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

93. Romasco, Albeit U., The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt's Xew Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

94. CompareMansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), 255–257Google Scholar.

95. See de Tocqueville, Alexis, “Some Characteristics Peculiar to Historians in Democratic Ages,” translated by Lawrence, George, Mayer, J.P., ed., Democracy in America, vol. 2, bk 1, chap. 20, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 493–496Google Scholar.

96. Compare Mansfield, xvi, 16–20, 129–130, 139–142.

97. Thus it ought to be a starting point for realignment studies as affected by the New Deal. As I see it, the task of Government in its relation to business is to assist the development of an economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional order. This is the common task of statesman and business man. It is the minimum requirement of a more permanently safe order of things …

Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may by sloth or crime decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him. We have no actual famine or dearth; our industrial and agricultural mechanism can produce enough and to spare. Our government formal and informal, political and economic, owes to everyone an avenue to possess himself of a portion of that plenty sufficient for his needs, through his own work.

98. FDR, Public Papers I, 753–754.

99. FDR, Public Papers I, 754.

100. FDR, Public Papers I, 746.

101. FDR, Public Papers I, 754.

102. FDR, Public Papers I, 756.

103. FDR, Public Papers I, 753. Sidney M. Milkis first drew my attention to the importance of this passage. Although he has not written on the argument of the speech in detail, Milkis has gone further than any other scholar in exploring Roosevelt's understanding of the presidency as an institution for redefining rights. See Milkis, Sidney M., The Modem Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. As Milkis notes, this passage was not in Berle's draft but was added by Roosevelt and Moley in the final version. Compare The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. I, Samuel I. Rosenman, editor (New York: Random House, 1938), 753, with Berle, Beatrice Bishop and Jacobs, Travis Beal, eds., Navigating the Rapids 1918–1970: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berk (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 68Google Scholar. As will be seen, however, this revision is fully consistent with Berle's argument, brilliantly articulating an implication that Berle had not made explicit. Morton Frisch treats the second doctrine of the speech, specifying the content of FDR's redefinition, without remarking or analyzing the first doctrine. See ,Diamond, Martin and Frisch, Morton J., eds., The Thirties (De Kalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1968): 70, 74–75, 80Google Scholar.

104. FDR, Public Papers I, 742. The roots of FDR's doctrine of liberal statesmanship lie in Woodrow Wilson's initiative. See Kesler, Charles R., “The Public Philosophy of the New Freedom and the New Deal,” in Eden, Robert ed., The New Deal and Its Legacy: Critique and Reappraisal (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 155–166Google Scholar. Also Kesler, Charles, “Woodrow Wilson and the Statesmanship of Progress,” in Silver, Thomas B. and Schramm, Peter W., eds., Satural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984), 103–127Google Scholar. Milkis, Sidney M., The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Eden, Robert, Political Leadership and Nihilism: A Study oj Weber and Nietzsche (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984), 2–15Google Scholar.

105. FDR, Public Papers I, 753.

106. Leuchtenberg, William, In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United Slates (New York: Norton, 1979)Google Scholar. Milkis, Sidney M., The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. Hamby, Alonzo L., Liberalism and Its Challengers: FDR to Reagan (Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar. Frisch, Morton J., Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Contribution of the Sew Deal to American Political Thought and Practice (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975)Google Scholar. Cramer, Richard Ben, What It Takes (1992)Google Scholar.

107. Savage, Sean J., Roosevelt: The Party Leader, 1932–1945 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1991)Google Scholar. Andersen, Kristi, The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928–1936. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

108. “It may be that Mr. Roosevelt is the best, but the fact is too plain to ignore that a good many party people do not think so.” Kent, Frank Richardson, “How Strong is Roosevelt?” Scnbner's Magazine, XCI (04 1932): 203Google Scholar. Compare Kent, Frank R., “The Battle Lines Are Drawn,” Scnbner's Magazine, XCII, #3 (09 1932): 135–139Google Scholar. Kent observed that “The Democrats, in a convention dominated by radical senators from the South and West, nominated Governor Roosevelt” (p. 135). “It is worth noting that the strategy of the Roosevelt campaign as mapped out injuly is toward placating the Eastern conservatives, convincing them that there is no danger in the Roosevelt election, that the Hearsts, Garners, and MacAdoos are not to be taken seriously.” Crucial for FDR's success was the effort led by George Peek in the agricultural Midwest to insure that no repeat of 1928 would occur, see Johnson, Hugh S., The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1935), 142–143Google Scholar, and Fite, Gilbert C., George N. Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954)Google Scholar. Compare Harry T. Williams, Huey Long: A Biography. Huey turned to FDR in convention as “the only Democratic aspirant who showed any inclination toward progressivism” [my emphasis] (572). Burton K. Wheeler urged Huey to support FDR; so did George Norris. For the role played by Long in securing nomination for FDR: 576–582. Effect of Huey's statement on 5 May 1932 in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. See also Weeks, O. Dougla, The Democratic Victory of 1932, Arnold Foundation Studies in Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3 (Winter 1933)Google Scholar.

109. Berle, Beatrice Bishop and Jacobs, Travis Beal, eds., Navigating the Rapids 1918–1970: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 57–59Google Scholar.

110. Hoover, Herbert, The State Papers and other Public Writings of Herbert Hoover, collected and edited by Myers, William Starr (New York: Kraus Reprints, 1970), vol. II: 247–265; see p. 264Google Scholar.

111. On Republican progressives see Silton, Tom, John Randolph Haynes: California Progressive (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

112. Burner, David, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918–1932 (New York: Knopf, 1968), 244–251Google Scholar.

113. Independent: A Biography of Lewis W. Douglas (New York: Knopf, 1986), 40–83.

114. Leuchtenberg, William E., “Franklin D. Roosevelt's Court 'Packing' Plan,” in Hollingsworth, Harold M. and Holmes, William F. eds., Essays on The New Deal (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), 109–115.Google ScholarMilkis, Sidney M., “Presidents and Party Purges: With Special Emphasis on the Lessons of 1938,” in Harmel, Robert, ed., Presidents and Their Parlies: Leadership or Neglect? (New York: Praeger, 1984), 151–175Google Scholar.

115. William Allen White framed the key question regarding the permanence of the New Deal in the 1933 editorial quoted earlier, in note 78.

116. One difficulty in Kesler's account is the source of the evidence for his claim that FDR was working within the Wilsonian genre of “public philosophy,” and concurrently that the speech is at a lower level of intellectual accomplishment than Wilson's writings. The evidence he cites is circumstantial or analogically deduced from Wilson's work; Kesler's inference that the Commonwealth Club Address actually follows the Wilsonian model is, so far, an assertion rather than a reading of the speech itself; and the presumption of intellectual inferiority discourages a closer study. My suggestion is that Berle supplied the scholarly and scientific acumen to match Wilson. Compare Kesler, “Public Philosophy.”

117. Hoover, Herbert, Memoirs: The Great Depression, vol. 3. (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 331.Google ScholarBannister, Robert C., Ray Stannard Baker: The Mind and Thought of a Progressive (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Perhaps for this reason, Baker refused to see anything in FDR's response to his letter, and ever after he lost interest in FDR, according to his biographer (pp. 290–292). Lewis W. Douglas, The Liberal Tradition. The Choice Before America: A Balanced Budget or Inflation: The Constitution or Dictatorship. A Challenging Analysis of These Vital Issues and the Sew Deal by the Former Director of the Bureau of the Budget. The Godkin Lectures, May 6–10, 1935, Harvard University (New York: Van Nostrand, 1935); Douglas, Lewis W., There is One Way Out (Boston, Atlantic Monthly Co. 1935)Google Scholar; Browder, Robert Paul and Smith, Thomas G., Independent: A Biography of Lewis IV. Douglas (New York: Knopf, 1986).Google ScholarMills, Ogden L., Liberalism Fights On (New York: Macmillan, 1936Google Scholar) and The Seventeen Million (New York: Macmillan, 1937). Harry T. Williams, Huey Long: A Biography, 600–603, 602, 603, 620, 625, 629, 630–632, 637, 639. Davis, Kenneth W., FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933–1937 (New York: Random House, 1986), 508–513Google Scholar. On the exchange with Ray Stannard Baker see Milkis, Sidney M., “New Deal Party Politics, Administrative Reform, and the Transformation of the American Constitution,” in Eden, Robert, ed., The New Deal and Its Legacy: Critique and Reappraisal (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 134–135Google Scholar.

118. Davis, Kenneth S., FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny 1882–1928 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1971), 296–301Google Scholar.

119. Roosevelt's strenuous effort to prevent such a confrontation with Douglas is indicative; see Browder, Robert Paul and Smith, Thomas G., Independent: A Biography of Lewis W. Douglas (New York: Knopf, 1986), 99–116Google Scholar.

120. The tension between executive discretion and the requirements of opinion leader-ship has been explored by political scientists in the literature on “the rhetorical presidency.” See Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

121. Berle, Beatrice Bishop and Jacobs, Travis Beal, eds., Navigating the Rapids 1918–1970: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 57–59Google Scholar. It is unclear when Berle's first draft, “Individualism Romantic and Realistic,” was composed and whether (or to whom) it was submitted. It is entirely possible that Berle composed it along with his memo.

122. Compare Berle's letter to E.C. Branson, 7 September 1932, Navigating the Rapids, 60–61.

123. One peculiarity of the last draft by contrast to the first and second (especially to the first) was the omission of the specifics of the New Deal interventionist program. Interventionism appears here in such a novel guise as to be disorienting: nothing quite like it had ever appeared in American public life.

124. The public-philosophy gambit was one that played to Hoover's strength in public relations. It should also be remembered that Hoover had been strongly identified with Woodrow Wilson at the beginning of his political career and had himself helped to shape Wilson's reputation by writing about it.

125. FDR's singular venture in making a major speech without speechwriters was one of his murkiest and sneakiest speeches: his announcement of the Court-packing plan.

126. Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar: Cramer, Richard Ben, What It Takes (New York: Random House. 1992)Google Scholar.

127. Schwarz, Jordan A., Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 46, 48, 78Google Scholar.

128. The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. I, The TV A Years 1939–1945 (New York: Harper 1964), 13 October 1932 entry, pp. 28–32:

Berle had been very keen for Newton Baker before the convention, and very “lukewarm” about Roosevelt, as I recall in his remarks when he was in Madison, particularly one night when he and Phil La Follette were together at our home; but he seems to be quite converted to the capacity and the native intelligence, political and governmental intelligence, of Governor Roosevelt, and I rather think that he now prefers him to Baker. He intimated that Baker had much the finer and more precise intelligence, but that Roosevelt's ability to knock out a situation was amazing …

Apparently, Roosevelt is a man who goes his own way once he makes up his mind, a different picture than that of a vacillating man such as the Republicans in New York suggest that he is. For example, I have heard from two sources close to the Governor that all of his advisors were dead set against his Western trip; Farley, especially, was convinced that it would be a mistake, (pp 30–31)

In Berle Box 15 there is in multiple copies a typewritten letter, obviously meant for mass distribution, imploring Newton Baker to announce his candidacy in April 1932. See Schwarz, 71–72, 74. “The Princes of Property,” Box 166. Although it says “no date” on the front page, not in Berle's hand, it looks to me to be a draft for The Modern Corporation, written in spring 1932. The last page concludes:

Hope has been expressed that the present depression will last long enough so that its lessons will be thoroughly learnt. This may help. There are men coming forward in public life–Mr. Newton Baker is one of them–who thoroughly understand the problems and have good working ideas in their handling.

129. “Causative”–see Schwarz, Liberal, 1–17.

130. See Schwarz, Liberal, 80; Lilienthal in n. 128 above.

131. However, as Flynn observed, FDR could become interested in notions that a speechwriter had supplied, appropriate them, and forget they were not his inventions. See Flynn, John T., The Roosevelt Myth (New York: Devin Adair, 1948): 103Google Scholar.

132. “Individualism Romantic and Realistic,” Berle Papers, FDRL Box 16. In making the disciples of Brandeis the exclusive target of Berle's speech, Schwarz overlooks Dewey. Schwarz, Liberal, 78.

133. I take Berle's remarks about Bismarck in the memo as a hopeful analogy or flattery, not as an indication of his estimate of Roosevelt's grasp of executive power. Cf. Schwarz, Liberal, 71–72, 80–82.

134. FDR had considerable experience in being ridiculed and underestimated by the liberal intelligentsia. The New Republic editors had belittled him scathingly in “The Great Jefferson Joke,” ' on FDR's New York World interview, quoted at p. 73, 9 June 1926. He had no reason to take his bearings from this quarter.

135. Compare Schwarz, Jordan A., Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 74–76, 78Google Scholar.

136. “Individualism Romantic and Realistic,” Berle Papers FDRL Box 16. Draft 3 version:

Woodrow Wilson, elected in 1912, saw the situation more clearly. Where Jefferson had feared the encroachment of political power on the lives of individuals, Wilson knew that the new power was financial. He saw, in the highly centralized economic system, the despot of the twentieth century, on whom great masses of individuals relied for their safety and their livelihood, and whose irresponsibility and greed (if they were not controlled) would reduce them to starvation and penury. The concentration of financial power had not proceeded so far in 1912 as it has today; but it had grown far enough for Mr. Wilson to realize fully its implications. It is interesting, now, to read his speeches. What is called “radical” today (and I have reason to know whereof I speak) is mild compared to the campaign of Mr. Wilson. “No man can deny,” he said, “that the lines of endeavor are more and more narrowed and stiffened; no man who knows anything about the development of industry in this country can have failed to observe that the larger kinds of credit are more and more difficult to obtain unless you can obtain them upon terms of uniting your efforts with those who already control the industry of the country, and nobody can fail to observe that every man who tries to set himself up in competition with any process of manufacture which has taken place under the control of large combinations of capital will presently find himself either squeezed out or obliged to sell and allow him-self to be absorbed.”

FDR, Public Papers (1932), 749–750.

137. FDR Public Papers I, 749–750.

138. Ibid.

139. Ibid.

140. The second draft had no title, but was actually much closer than the first to Dewey's argument. As an essay on Adam Smith it was modeled on bk. IV, chap. III of The Modern Corporation. For Berle's views on Woodrow Wilson during the Versailles negotiations, see Schwarz, Liberal, 31–36. This second draft was evidently written after the first speech of the campaign, in Columbus, Ohio (20 August 1932); it begins as an expansion of a passage (on individualism) from that speech. I have found no evidence of its submission or vetting; it was never used.

141. Draft 2, p. 21, FDRL Berle Papers Box 16.

142. Draft 2 p. 21. Keynes was a frequent contributor to TNR in the twenties: “The End of Laissez Faire,” 25 August 1926 and 1 September 1926. Berle considered resigning dramatically after Keynes did in protest against the Versailles Treatv, but he was too insignificant a member of the American delegation to make a splash by doing so. Schwarz, Liberal, 29, 32, 62, 74.

143. FDR, Public Papers I, 749–750.

144. The turn away from Wilson was more forceful in Berle's draft than in the final speech. Berle's peroration spoke of “Washington, Madison, Jefferson and Jackson” as the agents who brought the Jeffersonian vision to realization. FDR substituted “Jefferson, Roosevelt and Wilson” and emphasized by changing Berle's wording, that the vision had yet to be realized. The vision had never been “brought to realization,” but they had instead “sought to bring [it] to realization.” Compare The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel I. Rosenman ed. (New York: Random House, 1938–), vol. I, 756 with Navigating, p. 70. Here FDR was both more precise and more consistent with Progressive notions of “the living Constitution” and with the evolutionary jurisprudence of pragmatic liberalism than Berle.

145. Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), xxiii, 13–14, 129–130, 185–187Google Scholar.

146. Compare Eden, Robert, “Opinion Leadership and the Liberal Cause,” in Political Leadership and Nihilism: A Study of Weber and Nietzsche (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984), 2–15Google Scholar. Marini, John, The Politics of Budget Control: Congress, the Presidency, and the Growth of the Administrative State (Washington, DC: Crane Russak, 1992)Google Scholar.

147. Milkis, Sidney M., The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

148. FDR, Public Papers I, 744.

149. FDR, Public Papers I, 744–745.

150. FDR, Public Papers I, 744.

151. FDR, Public Papers I, 747.

152. FDR, Public Papers I, 752.

153. The distinction between formal liberalism and pragmatic liberalism is most obviously visible in Berle's distinction between “formal, office-holding government” on the one hand and “the informal economic and business government” on the other. Navigating, 68. See Eden, Robert, “The New Deal Revaluation of Partisanship,” in Schramm, Peter, ed., American Political Parlies and Constitutional Politics (University Presses of America and the John Ashbrook Center 1993, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

154. Navigating, 63.

155. Roosevelt, Public Papers I, 745. In this vicinity, the contrast between Berle's draft and FDR's version shows how careful and thoughtful Roosevelt was in revising his speech-writers' drafts. He struck out Hamilton's provocative remark and substituted a weightier and more reasonably phrased argument: “There were those who because they had seen the confusion which attended the years of war for American independence surrendered to the belief that popular Government was essentially dangerous and essentially unworkable.”

156. Compare Erler, Edward J., “The Great Fence to Liberty: The Right to Property in the American Founding,” in Paul, Ellen Frankel and Dickman, Howard, eds., Liberty, Property, and the Future of Constitutional Development (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 43–63.Google ScholarMcDonald, Forrest, Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 3Google Scholar.

157. Roosevelt, Public Papers I, 745–746. This passage is identical in Berle's draft and FDR's final version.

158. Navigating, 62; Roosevelt, Public Papers I, 743.

159. Ibid.

160. In working up statements for FDR from Jefferson, Berle evidently used Chinard, Gilbert, Thomas Jefferson: The Apostle of Americanism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Originally published in 1929, with a second edition in 1939. But while Chinard misled Berle by attributing a statement of Thomas Paine to Jefferson, Berle's use of the evidence Chinard supplied was quite high-handed. In draft 1, p. 3, Berle moved a statement from the period of 1814 backward in time, but only as far as 1800. In the final draft, he conflated this with the other statement, but used it quite emphatically to describe social conditions at the time of the Declaration, and indeed made it appear that the letter he knew to be from 1814 had been written just after the composition of the Declaration in 1776. See draft 2, p. 8:

Jefferson, in other words, foresaw the day when the unthinking pursuit of property, Mr. Hoover's rugged individualism, would have to end because individuals engaged in the pursuit of property would endanger the safety and security of the property of the great mass of the citizens.

161. FDR, Public Papers I 745–746.

162. See draft 2. p.8.

163. Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on the State of Virginia, Pedeu, William, ed. (New York: Norton, 1954, 1982): XIII, 121–122Google Scholar.

164. Navigating, 63; Roosevelt, Public Papers I, 744.

165. Eden, Robert, “Partisanship and the Constitutional Revolution: The Founders' View is Newly Problematic,” in Thurow, Sarah Baumgartner, ed., in Constitutionalism in Perspective: The Constitution in Twentieth Century Politics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 51–65Google Scholar.

166. Jefferson, Thomas, Writings, Peterson, Merrill D. ed. (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1984), 493Google Scholar.

167. Eden, Robert, “The New Deal Revaluation of Partisanship,” in Schramm, Peter W., ed., Political Parties and the Constitution (Lanham, MD: University Presses of America, 1993, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

168. As Sidney Milkis has argued, FDR sought to institutionalize the New Deal program so that it could not easily be dismantled when the conservative opposition controlled the national government. Milkis, Sidney M., The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992). He also sought to discredit constitutionalist or formal partisanship and thus to shape a loyal oppositionGoogle Scholar.

169. The Roosevelt tradition demands inquiring minds, not minds that blindly accept or blindly oppose every new proposal. We believe in a two-party system and if that system is to function properly, the opposition party ought not to be either a me-too or a view-with-alarm party. It should seek out the vulnerable points in the position of the majority. Its concrete and intelligent criticism should keep the majority party alive and alert and on its toes … But unfortunately we do not get that sort of constructive opposition from a party that couches its criticism in fatuous words breathing sound and fury and signifying nothing. The absence of an opposition party willing to face up to the facts of American life and destiny in the twentieth-century world threatens the effective functioning of the two-party system.

Address of Benjamin V. Cohen at the Second Annual Roosevelt Day Dinner of Americans for Democratic Action, Chicago, Illinois, January 27, 1950. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Joseph Lash Papers, “Ben Cohen Speeches and Articles.”

170. The boundaries established by the revolutionary founding, federalism and the Constitution–as well as the values of republicanism, popular sovereignty, and limited government–constitute an intellectual problem to be solved by each regime's founding ideas. Without this requisite, no coherent story of American political thought or, for that matter, American political history, can be told. Eisenach, Eldon J., “Reconstituting the Study of American Political Thought in a RegimeChange Perspective,” Studies in American Political Development, 4 (1990): 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

171. FDR, Public Papers I, 743.

172. FDR, Public Papers I, 746.

173. See Milkis, Sidney M., The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992) on Roosevelt's mimicry of JeffersonGoogle Scholar.

174. FDR, Public Papers I, 744.

175. Ibid.

176. FDR, Public Papers I, 745.

177. Ibid.

178. FDR, Public Papers I, 746.

179. FDR, Public Papers I, 747.

180. FDR, Public Papers I, 749.

181. FDR, Public Papers I, 749.

182. FDR, Public Papers I, 751.

183. FDR, Public Papers I, 745.

184. See Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), 189Google Scholar.

185. In his critique of this speech, Kesler protests FDR's adoption of the Lockean or Jeffersonian idiom to counteract its rhetorical effect, but does not sufficiently explain its rhetorical purpose. See Kesler, “Public Philosophy.”

186. See Milkis, Sidney M., The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System (Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

187. Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, Laslett, Peter, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1963), sections 161, 164, 168Google Scholar.

188. Jefferson, Thomas, Writings, Peterson, Merrill D., ed. (New York: Literary Classics of America, 1984), 1138–1139Google Scholar.

This treaty must of course be laid before both Houses, because both have important functions to exercise respect it. They. I presume, will see their duty to their country in ratifying and paying for it, so as to secure a good which would otherwise probably be never again in their power. But I sup-pose they must then appeal to the nation for an additional article to the Constitution, approving and confirming an act which the nation had not previously authorized. The constitution has made no provision for holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The Executive in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution.

Letter to John C. Breckenridge, 12 August 1803.

189. See Part 1 of this essay, above.

190. West, Thomas G., “The Classical Spirit of the Founding,” in Barlow, J. Jackson, Levy, Leonard W., and Masugi, Ken, eds., The American Founding: Essays on the Formation of the Constitution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), 1–56.Google ScholarWallin, Jeffrey D., “John Locke and the American Founding,” in Silver, Thomas B. and Schramm, Peter W., eds., Xatural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. faffa (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984), 143–167Google Scholar.

191. de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, translated by Lawrence, George, Mayer, J. P., ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), vol. 1, part 2, chap 10Google Scholar.

192. FDR, Public Papers I. 747–748.

193. Compare Part 1 of this essay, on Lincoln.

194. I have adopted the distinction between what is chosen and the act of choosing from Mansfield, Taming the Pnnce, 187. By a striking volte-face, Berle makes the financial and industrial titans of muckracking fame into models for pragmatic liberal statesmanship. Moley and FDR drew back a bit from this audacious ploy in the final draft. By inserting “Insull” in Berle's sentence on reckless promoters, they allowed FDR to wax indignant about such titans; but of course, Samuel Insull was indeed a model of pragmatic liberal statesmanship of the kind Berle described. Compare Navigating, 69, with FDR Public Papers, vol. I, 755, and Forrest Mcdonald, Insull (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962): 55–73.

195. FDR, Public Papers I, 744–745.

196. I find it difficult to choose here: Berle would be inclined to “constitutionalize” private executive power; Louis Brandeis would be inclined to “republicanize” it, and both strains of thought shaped New Deal practices. The depth of the difference may be explored, albeit analogically, by comparing chaps. 8 and 10 of Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

197. FDR, Public Papers I, 752.

198. SeeHolt, Michael F., The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: Norton, 1978)Google Scholar.

199. See Rahe, Paul A., “John Locke's Philosophical Partisanship,” The Political Science Reviewer, XX (1991): 1–43Google Scholar.

200. FDR, Public Papers I, 747–748.

201. FDR, Public Papers I, 744–745.

202. FDR, Public Papers I, 747.

203. “Enlarging an old phrase, I hold that private economic power is also a public trust; and that continued enjoyment of that power by any individual or group must depend upon the fulfillment of that trust.” Navigating, 68; FDR, Public Papers I, 753.

204. One may say without much exaggeration that Berle's reformulation of the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence requires FDR's specific redefinition of rights: if it is true that the system of government exists to serve individual men and women, then it cannot be sufficient for the system of government to secure their rights; government must henceforth be centered on the results of their exercise of rights. What FDR calls for in the speech is not a second Bill of Rights but our first Schedule of Entitlements.

205. FDR, Public Papers I, 749.

206. As Mansfield explains, Locke's account is not really abstract, since he makes his model constitution merge seamlessly with English constitutional practice and precedent. Taming the Prince, 190–192. Locke, Second Treatise, sections 161, 164, 168.

207. FDR, Public Papers I, 748.

208. Compare FDR, Public Papers I, 744–745.

209. FDR, Public Papers I, 746.

210. Draft 1, FDRL Berle Papers Box 16.

211. See Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, “Impartial Representation,” in Goldwin, Robert A., ed., Representation and Misrepresentation, (Chicago: Rand, McNally, 1968), 91–114; Mansfield, Taming the Pnnce, xx–xxiiGoogle Scholar.

212. Berle, Adolf A. Jr and Means, Gardiner C., The Modern Corporation and Private Properly (1932), 52–55Google Scholar.

213. Berle, , Studies in the Law of Corporation Finance (Chicago: Callaghan, 1928) 189–294Google Scholar.

214. “The Princes of Property,” Berle Papers, FDRL Box 166. Although it says “no date” on a front page, not in Berle's hand, it looks to me to be a draft for the MCPP first edition, written in spring 1932. 24 pp. This is a legal brief giving a verdict on the old system.

[p. 1]: Responsibility for what happened is better fixed by the deadly figures than by philosophical speculation, [p. 8]: The market crash ended the profitable side of most of these adventures–the investors taking the loss–but the power accumulated through them largely remains with the princes or lesser nobles who conducted the forays. In that aspect, the results were permanent. Some of the machinery grows rickety, but, for the most part, economic power once attained remains in the hands of the conqueror, no matter who pays the bills for its acquisition.

It is not seriously open to question that the use of a great quantity of American savings has been (and still is) to forward the individual desire of the economic princes for power, rather than to subserve, either a general economic development or the specific interests of the owners of these savings,

[p. 22]: Just or unjust, the verdict is adverse.

It is, of course, too soon to pass final judgment. If, knowing what we now know, the events of the past five years are repeated, thejudgment will be final–and more severe. Ignorance accounts for much of the past. Only deliberate recklessness will permit the episode to repeat itself, at least in this form.

These men could read Machiavelli with some profit; that grim realist pointed out that only in the safety and good will of his subjects did a prince find safety for his own rule.

Although Schwarz speaks of Berle's “cataclysmic mentality” he does not see this shift in Berle's perspective on the corporation after 1929. Schwarz, Liberal, 29. Berle's memo to FDR on Hoover, from which we have quoted at length in the text, concludes: “To the answer that the government is inefficient they merely suggest that the efficiency of an uncoordinated economic system as it runs now has ruined half the country and threatens to starve a substantial portion of it.” In other words the corporate managerial system (“as it runs now” according to Berle's studies) is the cause of the catastrophe. Navigating, 59. Compare Alchian, Armen A., “Corporate Management and Property Rights,” Economic Forces at Work (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1977), 227–257Google Scholar.

215. Schwarz, Liberal, 52–53, 55, 57, 62–68.

216. In the midst of draft 1, Berle had spoken of the need for “a fundamental inquiry into the whole problem of property rights built up in the 18th Century” (p. 12). This led him by stages to security as the basic principle (p. 15) and thence to the Deweyite assertion, “I believe that the individuality of our great mass of workers can only be expressed after a maximum of economic security is reached.” By draft 3, Berle had adopted FDR's preference for Jeffersonian or Lockean formulations: security could be a more effective principle if Dewey's concern for the expression of individuality, or for culture, was abandoned or cast entirely in Lockean rhetoric.

217. John Dewey, “Freedom and Culture”, LSA Parts 1–2; “Liberalism and Social Action,” FC, 174–179.

218. ION, 48–49, 75–78, 85.

219. Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modem Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), 151Google Scholar.

220. FDR, Public Papers I, 747–748.

221. Berle Papers, FDRL Box 16. Compare Berle, The Modern Corporation, IV, iii.

222. FDR, Public Papers I, 747.

223. FDR, Public Papers I, 748.

224. FDR, Public Papers I, 747.

225. Compare Lowi, Theodore J., The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the Vniled Stales (New York: Norton, 1979)Google Scholar; and Mansfield, Harvey C. JrThe Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 28–51Google Scholar.

226. Compare draft 2, p. 13:

Indeed the Republicans originated the type of regulation which we propose to make effective with regard to agriculture as the active proponents of the protective tariff system for more than a century. How can they strive to rest their case on the myth of rugged individualism when for a century they have loaded the dice of individuals of specially favored industries, not because the interests of the nation as a whole required such regulation, but because powerful lobbies in Washington demanded such subsidization even though it might be contrary to the interests of the consumocracy to grant it.

Berle Papers, FDRL Box 16.

227. Eden, Robert, “Partisanship and the Constitutional Revolution: The Founders' View is Newly Problematic,” in Thurow, Sarah Baumgartner, ed., Constitutionalism in Perspective: The Constitution in Twentieth Century Politics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 54–63.Google ScholarMansfield, Harvey C. Jr, America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) 177–192, 209–219Google Scholar.

228. Xavigating, 70; as noted above, in note 55 to Part II, the final version was changed in several significant details.

229. See Part 1 of this essay.

230. Dewey, “Liberalism and Social Action,” Later Works, vol. 3, 96–97.

231. Pangle, Thomas L., The Spirit of Modem Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 262–275Google Scholar.

232. See Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), 42–44, 70–71, 104–105, 110–118, 146–149Google Scholar.

233. Compare Mansfield, ibid., 251, 252, 257, 259–262, 264–274.

234. New York Times, 24 September 1932, 7.

235. White captures the novelty nicely in one of his editorials: For thirty years, now, the Editor of the Gazette has been hammering away for a larger participation of the average man in the wealth of this nation–less for superintendence, interest and profits–more for wages. We have clamored for higher income taxes, for devastating inheritance taxes, for all the measures which Colonel Theodore Roosevelt used to call “social and industrial justice.” President Roosevelt's new first assistant secretary of the treasury is described as believing in the following social reforms:

Higher income and inheritance taxes.

Federal grants for the unemployed.

A more equitable distribution of wealth.

Unemployment and old-age pensions.

Minimum wages.

National economic planning.

Public works and mortgage relief.

Franklin Roosevelt has packed his whole government in Washington full of men like that. Congress has given him broad powers. He surrounds himself with leaders like Eccles, Tugwell, Ickes, Wallace, Frances Perkins and Morgenthau who believe in all these reforms. It is plain as a barn door that we are getting our revolution through the administrative arm of the government, without legislation.

Well, in these sad days of depression, the Gazette gets a great laugh out of this. In fact, you may catch us grinning at any hour of the day or night to think of what has happened in this land of the free. We hope the conservative Democrats who were lambasting Hoover a year and a half ago are enjoying what they got.

These are great days–if not happy ones.

White, William Allen, The Autobiography of William Allen White (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 635–636Google Scholar.

236. Although President Hoover (like many other commentators) fastened on Roosevelt's famous “limits to growth” thesis from the San Francisco Address, he seems never to have grasped the significance of the speech as a whole as a reflection of Roosevelt's conception of the presidency. At least he never subjected its argument to critique. See Hoover, Herbert, Memoirs: The Great Depression, vol 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 331 ff (This section appeared in Colliers in the spring of 1952.Google Scholar)