Fear Itself (106 page)

10
Lewis Mumford, “Foreword,” in
Planned Society: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: A Symposium of Thirty-Five Economists, Sociologists, and Statesmen,
ed. Findlay Mackenzie (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937), p.x. See also the attempt by the Frankfurt School émigré economist Karl W. Kapp to develop criteria “for distinguishing between different types of economic control . . . by a classification according to their compatibility with the free market economy” in Kapp, “Economic Regulation and Economic Planning,”
American Economic Review
29 (1939): 768.

11
Wesley C. Mitchell, “The Social Sciences and National Planning,” in
Planned Society,
ed. Mackenzie, p. 108.

12
William F. Ogburn, “Social Change,” in
Planned Society,
ed. Mackenzie, p. 603.

13
Margaret Mead, “Primitive Society,” in
Planned Society,
ed. Mackenzie, pp. 3–25.

14
Harold D. Lasswell, “Propaganda in a Planned Society,” in
Planned Society,
ed. Mackenzie, pp. 639–40.

15
Sidney Hook, “The Philosophical Implications of Economic Planning,” in
Planned Society,
ed. Mackenzie, p. 677.

16
Leverett S. Lyon, Myron W. Watkins, and Victor Abramson,
Government and Economic Life: Development and Current Issues of American Public Policy
, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1939, 1940); citation is from vol. 1, p. 3.

17
Marion Clawson,
New Deal Planning: The National Resources Planning Board
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. xvi.

18
Cited in Charles E. Merriam, “The National Resources Planning Board: A Chapter in American Planning Experience,”
American Political Science Review
38 (1944): 1076. Merriam, who was a distinguished political scientist, served on the NRPB from its founding to its end.

19
Following the encouragement of President Roosevelt to study and plan the relationship between natural and human resources, the NRPB, taking a broad approach to its mandate, divided into three divisions—on economic security, health, and nutrition; on transportation, energy, and land; and on public works and water resources. Each sought to connect planned interventions in markets to key economic goals, including stabilization and growth, and central social goals, including urban development, income redistribution, and the reduction of poverty. The NRPB was not a line agency, but a combination of intelligence, coordination, and guidance enabled it to help shape the political agenda of the executive branch.

20
Allan G. Gruchy, “The Economics of the National Resources Committee,”
American Economic Review
29 (1939): 60.

21
Merriam, “The National Resources Planning Board,” p. 1086.

22
Friedrich A. Hayek,
Road to Serfdom
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).

23
Together with the Liaison Office for Personnel Management. To carry out the authority Congress provided, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8248 on September 8, 1939: “Establishing the Divisions of the Executive Office of the President and Defining Their Functions and Duties.” The Bureau of the Budget was directed “to assist the President in the preparation of the Budget and the formulation of the fiscal program of the Government,” while the National Resources Planning Board was instructed to collect data and recommend “long term plans and programs” for human and natural resources, propose measures to improve and stabilize the economy and “the social, economic, and cultural advancement of the people of the United States,” and “act as a clearing house and means of coordination for planning activities, linking together various levels and fields of planning.” Cited in Clawson,
New Deal Planning,
pp. 314–18.

24
National Resources Planning Committee,
Progress Report
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939); cited in L. G. Rockewell, “National Resources Planning: The Role of the National Resources Planning Board in the Process of Government” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1942), p. 95.

25
See Ira Katznelson and Bruce Pietrykowski, “Rebuilding the American State: Evidence from the 1940’s,”
Studies in American Political Development
6 (1991): 312.

26
This former staff member, Roger W. Jones, described the agency to Daniel A. Biderman. See Biderman,
Harold Smith and the Growth of the Bureau of the Budget
(senior thesis, Princeton University, 1975), p. 11; cited in Andrew Rudalevige, “Inventing the Institutionalized Presidency: Entrepreneurship and the Rise of the Bureau of the Budget, 1939–1949,” in
Formative Acts: American Politics in the Making,
ed. Stephen Skowronek and Matthew Glassman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 316. The bureau had been established by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which created the BOB to assist the president to prepare a unified and comprehensive annual budget. For a discussion, see Stephen Skowronek,
Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 206–09.

27
Rudalevige, “Inventing the Institutionalized Presidency,” p. 323.

28
These data are culled from
The Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Years 1941 to 1947
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office).

29
Wayne Cox, “Federal Executive Reorganization Re-Examined: Basic Problems,”
American Political Science Review
40 (1946): 1134.

30
National Resources Planning Board, “Industrial Location and National Policy” (Interim Report), May 1941, p. 23; cited in Philip W. Warken,
A History of the National Resources Planning Board, 1933–1943
(New York: Garland, 1979), p. 108.

31
Key NRPB documents included
After Defense—What?
(1941);
Security, Work, and Relief Policies
(1941);
After the War—Full Employment
(1942);
Demobilization and Readjustment
(1943); and
National Resources Development Report
(1943).

32
National Resources Planning Board,
Post-War Planning
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942), p. 32. For strong endorsements, see “A New Bill of Rights,”
Nation,
March 20, 1943, pp. 402–03; “Introduction: Charter for America,” special section,
New Republic,
April 19, 1943, pp. 523–24. A surprisingly sympathetic summary can be found in “New Deal Plans Industry Control,”
Business Week,
March 20, 1943, pp. 15–18.

33
Harold D. Smith, “The Budget in Transition,” in
Material on Budgeting: An Instrument of Planning and Management, Unit I: The Evolution of the Budgetary Concept in the Federal Government,
ed. Catheryn Seckler-Hudson (Washington, DC: American University, 1944), p. 73. Smith left the Bureau in 1946 to become the first vice president of the World Bank; he resigned later that year when it became clear that he would not succeed in gaining the organization’s presidency after Eugene Meyer left office after six months. Instead, the post went to John J. McCloy.

34
Donald C. Stone, “Planning as an Administrative Process,” in
Material on Budgeting,
ed. Seckler-Hudson, pp. 116–18.

35
The other divisions were Estimates, whose work became more pressing as military spending ballooned during the war; Administrative Management, which sought to make a burgeoning federal government more organizationally rational and efficient; Statistical Standards; and Legislative Reference, which served as a clearinghouse for federal agency requests to Congress.

36
For discussions, see Stephen Kemp Bailey,
Congress Makes a Law: The Story behind the Employment Act of 1946
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 25; Marion Fourcade,
Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain and France, 1890s to 1990s
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 102–6.

37
Cited in Clawson,
New Deal Planning,
p. 183.

38
Plus one Farmer Labor Party member, one American Labor Party member, and two Progressive Party members.

39
Clawson,
New Deal Planning,
p. 238; Barry D. Karl,
Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) p. 279.

40
Congressional Record,
78th Cong., 1st sess., May 27, 1943, pp. 4961, 4962.

41
Ibid., p. 4953.

42
New York Times,
February 19, 1943;
Christian Science Monitor,
February 19, 1943.

43
Congressional Record,
78th Cong., 1st sess., May 27, 1943, p. 945.

44
Baltimore Sun,
February 18, 1943.

45
Ibid., April 18, 1943.

46
Clawson,
New Deal Planning,
p. 229.

47
Baltimore Sun,
February 18, 1943.

48
New York Times,
June 19, 1943.

49
Washington Post,
July 1, 1943. A significant sector of the economics profession lamented the NRPB’s demise, “a national misfortune” in the judgment at the time by Glenn E. Hoover. See Hoover, “National Planning within the Free Enterprise System,”
American Journal of Economics and Sociology
3 (1944): 410. Hoover’s article called for a new national planning agency to manage the transition from war to peace. For an earlier attempt by Hoover to define a role for democratic planning, see Hoover, “Government Intervention in the Post-War Economy,”
American Journal of Economics and Sociology
1 (1942): 381–402.

50
See http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16518#axzz1Ppxp04m0; Cass R. Sunstein,
The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever
(New York: Basic Books, 2006); Alonzo L. Hamby,
Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), pp. 11–13; Henry Wallace,
Sixty Million Jobs
(New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1945), pp. 8–9.

51
Edward S. Flash,
Economic Advice and Presidential Leadership: The Council of Economic Advisers
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 16.

52
David Naveh, “The Political Role of Economic Advisers: The Case of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers, 1946–1976,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
11 (1981): 493.

53
Katznelson and Pietrykowski, “Rebuilding the American State,” p. 327.

54
Philip Broughton,
Man Meets Job—How Uncle Sam Helps
(New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1941), p. 7.

55
Katznelson and Pietrykowski, “Rebuilding the American State,” p. 328.

56
Leonard P. Adams,
The Public Employment Service in Transition, 1933–1968
(Ithaca, NY: New York School of Industrial Relations, Cornell University, 1969), p. 27. For a fine overview of the Department of Labor during the 1930s, see Hilda Kessler Gilbert, “The United States Department of Labor in the New Deal Period” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1942).

57
“The Question of Federal or State Control of the Employment Services,”
Congressional Digest
25 (1946): 104.

58
The Budget of the United States Government
; cited in Katznelson and Pietrykowsi, “Rebuilding the American State,” p. 330.

59
Cited in “The Question of Federal or State Control of the Employment Services,” p. 107.

60
In late 1945, Truman vetoed an appropriations bill after Congress added a rider that would have returned the employment services to the states within one hundred days. In his veto message, he essentially said that while he believed the employment offices should be returned to the states eventually, the immediate postwar reconversion period was the worst-possible time. See
Congressional Record,
79th Cong., 2d sess., January 28, 1946, pp. 466, 445–46.

61
The bill delegated to the secretary of labor the capacity to fashion national rules regarding how state-level employment service and unemployment compensation offices should operate. Its “recapture clause” specified that the secretary could take over should they not comply with these regulations. Further, the department could open federal offices where no state employment service existed. The legislation also required states to maintain “reasonable referral standards” and “assure equal referral opportunities for equally qualified applicants.” In addition, states were required to cooperate with the federal government and one another to maintain a system of “clearing labor” between the states, thus helping to fashion a truly national labor market. See ibid., January 28, 1946, p. 473; January 29, 1946, p. 540; January 28, 1946, pp. 474, 478.

62
The one exception was Representative Randolph (D, WVa), who said that while he opposed permanent federalization, he supported the administration bill because continued federal control was necessary during the reconversion period. See ibid., January 28, 1946, pp. 471–72; January 29, 1946, p. 544.

63
Ibid., January 29, 1946, p. 530.

64
This was not an imagined worry. Many nonsouthern Democrats did favor permanent federal control. Arizona’s Richard Harless contended, “Our unified national system of public employment offices is now, under present Federal administration, being administered back home to an extent never equaled by a State-operated system; but administered under a system which assures the free interchange of labor market data and the free movement of workers from area to area and State to State wherever their skills are needed or can best be utilized.” Similarly, Michigan’s Frank Hook claimed that federal control was desirable for the way it promoted uniform standards in unemployment compensation systems. See ibid., p. 538; January 28, 1946, p. 475.