PALACE POLITICS UNDER THE NEW DEAL

JEFFERSON CHASE

What are the intrigues, private ambitions, and political creeds behind the sad procession of Roosevelt's Forgotten Advisers?

The potentates of this earth have always been surrounded by eager groups of attendants, swift to interpret the great man's smile as a mark of favor and his august frown as the equivalent of disaster and disgrace. In Rome they were called the Friends of Caesar; the Greeks had a word for them—"sycophants"; in medieval times they were known as "courtiers"; and in this modern, stream-lined era they have reappeared as "yes-men". But their activities —now, yesterday, and two thousand years ago—have had no other name than "palace politics".

"Palace politics", in brief, means the attempt on the part of a group of men to win the vote—not of that many-headed beast, the public—but of one single potentate. And this kind of particular vote-catching is no game for children. Look back into the past and you will see that the Grand Vizier had a bow-string, the Caesar a short, sharp sword, the Borgia a little spmething in a goblet, and each and every ruler the equivalent of a dagger, or a dungeon, for such favorites as had outlived their usefulness, or presumed too much on their popularity. . . .

Since the beginnings of the American Republic, of course, competition for the presidential ear has always been sharp. Today, however, it is more than sharp; it is inconceivably bitter. In fact, Washington, since the enormous concentration of emergency powers in the Executive under the New Deal, offers a lively example of the technique of "palace politics".

This technique is simplicity itself. It makes not the slightest difference who has the President's ear at any particular time. There are always many others who are prepared to brush aside the adviser of the moment by means of propaganda, bludgeons, or sheer weight of pressure. It's like the children's game of "I'm-theKing-of-the-Castle", in which whoever stands on top of the heap is the enemy of the others—all of whom combine to drag him down in order that each may have a chance to scramble to the top of the heap.

You can say that this is nothing new in Washington; that Warren the WellBeloved hob-nobbed with his Ohio gangsters; that Calvin the Silent had his Frank Stearns; that Woodrow Wilson's closing years were rendered impenetrable by Mrs. Wilson, Joe Tumulty and Admiral Cary Grayson. But in those times the tempo of national politics was relatively even and unhurried, and the various unofficial court chamberlains, mayors of the palace, and royal jesters did not change with any predictable regularity.

The New Deal has altered all that. The American people are on the move at last and the government moves with the people. From the outset, there have been two major groups within the palace who may be loosely characterized as the New Dealers and the Orthodox. The Orthodox include the practical politicians, the financial conservatives, and the safe-and-sane boys—the Douglases, the Johnsons, the Farleys, and the Ropers. The New Dealers have included the famous Brain Trusters and the "liberals"—the Tugwells, the Hopkinses, the Perkinses and the Moleys. The traditional party struggle, having been largely abandoned by Congress, has moved a few steps nearer the throne room in the Executive Mansion and has, so far, mostly confined itself to thrusts and counter-thrusts, line plunges, and end-runs among the contrasting groups of the Executive personnel.

Hence, the procession of sadder-if-notwiser men who have passed through the spotlight of New Deal prominence. Each in turn was heartily hissed and booed, but now, being out of the struggle, all are generally conceded to be good fellows.

Raymond Moley, now editor of Today and pal of big business men, was the first to fall. This gave first blood to the Orthodox—their only score so far. At the outset of the New Deal he came closer to being an Assistant President than any man in our history. Thorough, energetic and pugnacious, Moley was once more cursed than any man in Washington. Why? His advice was good and his loyalty unquestionable. He was neatly removed by his official chief, Secretary of State Hull, and by those even closer to the President, who resented Moley on the inside track.

Then there was Lew Douglas, Director of the Budget, author of the Economy Act, Roosevelt's great sacrifice to the Wall Street "confidence" crowd. Douglas was able, energetic, disinterested, a crusader in the cause of balanced budgets and the gold standard. He lingered beyond his climax as a thorn in the side of the New Dealers and fell because he had clashed too long and too foolishly with inside trackers, who believed it was more important to save men than to save pennies.

The latest head to roll in the sand is that of Hugh Johnson, generalissimo of the NRA, sire of the Blue Eagle, and the contributor of explosive expletives to the cooing and billing of the "happy enders." Johnson went into action against the whole group which included Secretary Wallace and Undersecretary Tugwell in Agriculture, Donald Richberg and the labor leaders, Miss Perkins in the Labor Department, Harry Hopkins of the Relief Organization, and Secretary Ickes who dispenses the Public Works appropriation. They had fought long on issues of policy, till the textile strike provoked the doughty general to his worst indiscretion, and he went to join the ranks of Roosevelt's Forgotten Men.

There are many in those ranks and more will follow. Who remembers when Professor George Warren of Cornell was doing mumbo-jumbo to the double eagle and playing tit-tat-toe with the price of gold? Professor Warren is back in Cornell. What bright little boy can tell off-hand what job at Washington used to be held by Professor A. A. Berle, Jr.? Who remembers Dean Acheson? He was Undersecretary of the Treasury and was thrown out on his reputation when he stood out against Professor Warren. Who remembers Professor 0. M. W. Sprague? Sprague was the financial wizard who was called back from the bank of England to apply the latest forms of fiscal psychoanalysis to the American Treasury, and who resigned in a huff when he discovered cobwebs in his "Incoming Mail" basket. Who remembers when Jimmy Warburg, recent author of a monetary treatise attacking the New Deal, was a member in good standing of the Inside Circle? Who remembers that Governor Black of the Federal Reserve Board found it advisable to get out and watch from the side-lines half-way through the second quarter of the game? Who remembers when the Republicans, Bronson Cutting of New Mexico, and Bob LaFollette of Wisconsin, were leading pro-Administration leaders in the Senate; when George Peek was the big noise in the AAA; and when Jack Garner was front-page news?

There was once a time—remember?— when the Hon. Richard Washburn Child, former Republican Ambassador at Rome, rendered yeoman service as leader of the Republicans-for-Roosevelt League. When last sighted, Mr. Child was making a leisurely circuit of the European capitals in the interest of that Orthodox abstraction —revival of foreign trade. Foreign trade was also responsible for the last appearance of Jimmy Cox, F. D. R.'s runningmate in the 1920 affair. Mr. Cox appeared at the London Economic Conference in 1933 and since then has been residing in deafening silence at Miami, Florida. And then there was Cyahtah Glass of Virginia, who promised all and sundry in 1932 that the New Deal would maintain the Gold Standard, and who has been snapping and snarling ever since the Gold Standard went to join the hippogryph and unicorn in the first fortnight of the New Deal.

Who will be the next? Will it be the oldtimers, the men who fought the hopeless losing fights for the Sacred Donkey—Jim Farley, Secretary Roper, Cordell Hull, Claudius Swanson? The American Liberty League is already packed with those who "knew Roosevelt when". Will it be the "radicals"—Wallace, Tugwell, Perkins, Richberg, Hopkins and Ickes? The latter are on top today; who will be on top tomorrow?

One thing is certain. The "palace politics" of today—the little spites and the mean gossip and the bitter grudges—are not isolated from the surge and roar of American national policy. If propaganda and publicity could do the trick, Rex Tugwell would have been out of public life a year ago. Ever since the proposed new Food and Drugs Bill laid impious hands on cosmetics and advertising, the knives have been sharpened and the tom-toms throbbing for his scalp. Yet he has weathered a worse storm than that which left his friend Ray Moley stranded, and he has faced more furious political vituperation than anything which General Johnson provoked. What is the answer?

The answer is that the politics of the palace are a fair substitute for national politics only where the palace reflects the nation rather than the prince. And today, the palace does reflect the nation rather than the prince. F. D. R., a keen student of human nature, has been shrewd enough to divert "palace politics" to the service of the New Deal, and whenever popular opinion has forced him to drop one or another of his rapid succession of pilots, he has taken advantage of the fact that the palace politicians could be counted upon to speed the parting guest. The Rooseveltian equivalent of the bow-string, the sharp sword, the little something in the goblet, the dagger and the dungeon is— exile. And so far, with the original exception of Moley, only those men have been exiled from the palace who are out of tune with the nation. The Orthodox have walked the straight and narrow plank leaving the unorthodox behind. This can be no accident in a nation which is shedding its orthodoxies and adventuring down untrodden paths.

To the skilled political observer there is as much meaning in the shifts and tricks of palace politicians as in the tumult and the shouting of the mob. The real question of the palace is not which voice has gained the Prince's ear but whether the voice to which the Prince listens is attuned to the crowd outside the palace gates. Hence those anxious souls who tremble when they read of a Moley or a Tugwell enjoying the run of the White House, or who pray for the good old days when a banker was not kept waiting in an ante-room, would be better advised to turn their dictaphones to the city streets and the men and women on the farms. For the voices of hunger and of hope, of anger and of nakedness, rule our destiny today. And only those men who can interpret correctly the meaning of these voices can long stand near the throne.

GOLD STARS

Leaving, from left to right: a group of the men mentioned in this article, who once helped to pilot the New Deal and who have, one by one, jumped, fallen or been pushed overboard. Note the white crosses of martyrdom, on their breasts

BOTTOM ROW

GOV. EUGENE R, BLACK

of the Federal Reserve Board. Tried to get out and walk

PROF. RAYMOND MOLEY

of Columbia University. Scalped by the Indians

HON. JAMES M. COX

of Ohio. Translated to the Elysian Fields of Miami, after injuries received at the World Economic Conference

GENERAL HUGH JOHNSON

Choked, unexpectedly, on the Blue Eagle's drumstick

LEWIS W. DOUGLAS

Budget Director. Destroyed by prolonged unbalance of his budget

PROF. OLIVER M. W. SPRAGUE

of Harvard. Victim of neglected wounds in the Treasury. Interred at Cambridge, Mass.

PROF. GEORGE F. WARREN

Destroyed by explosion of his "Quantity Theory of Money"

TOP ROW

JAMES P. WARBURG

Committed political hari kari on the grave, of the Gold Standard

RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD

Victim of political malnutrition, since November, 1932

SENATOR CARTER GLASS

of Virginia. Refused to swallow the New Deal monetary policies. Buried in the Capitol at Washington

DEAN G. ACHESON

Undersecretary of the Treasury. Crushed by Professor Warren's Gold Purchase Plan

BRONSON CUTTING

cratic Administration?

PROF. ADOLF A. BERLE.JR. of Columbia. Swallowed by the New York Fusiohists, led by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia