Book Reviews

The implication of the title is that there were many subsequent New Deals, most of them COlD.e downs from the one which, as Moley puts it, "saved capitalisTIl in eight days." The Moley history of the first of the Rooseveltian ad ventures in quarterbacking is marked with what Professor Frank Freidel describes in a foreword as "respect for the facts and ... precision in handling details." Moley himself pays tribute to his assistant, Elliot A. Rosen, who spent five years examining Moley's own papers and those of "many contemporaries in various deposi tories." After Rosen had completed his work, Moley spent "nearly three years" on his own written account, doing a good deal of ad ditional research. The result, as he says, is a "story," meaning that it is history as it appears to one who played an intimate part in the unfolding of great events. Ray Moley's character is com plex, and his long life has been 379 380 THE FREEMAN June spent in the pursuit of truth. To quote Lytton Strachey, he is "no striped frieze, he is shot silk." He grew up in the Western Reserve area of Ohio in the years following the big depression of the nineties, when the ideas of Henry George were percolating in the minds of Moley's fellow Ohioans, Mayor Tom Johnson of Cleveland, Brand Whi tlock, and Newton D. Baker.

As part of the Progressive Move ment, Moley shared some of its mixed motives, wishing to com bine free enterprise with surveil lance and control by the state. No trust-buster, Moley was impressed by the thinking in Charles Van Hise's Concentration and Control, which argued that large corpora tions were inevitable and "should be controlled at the national level of government." This put him at odds with Justice Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, and his de parture from the Roosevelt entou rage in 1936 came at a time when the Frankfurter influence was in the ascendant. The "second New Deal," which featured the TNEC investigations, the attempt to pack the Supreme Court, and the witty fulminations of Thurman Arnold against monopoly, was certainly not to Moley's taste. Moderation in All Things However, as his reflections on the "first New Deal" make plain, he now thinks that the attempt to "control" business at the "na tional level" can be as pernicious as Brandeisian trust-busting.

Moley still defends the early Roo seveltian measures on the prag matic ground that something had to be done quickly to revive the confidence of a badly shaken na tion. Since the object was achieved, the impact of the so-called "hun dred days" that followed Roose velt's first inauguration was in his opinion good. The trouble, as he now sees it, is that Roosevelt didn't know when to relax. Poli tics led FDR to make a whipping boy out of the "economic royal ists" during that 1936 campaign. But there was little need for the superheated rhetoric; Roosevelt had his victory in the bag anyway. Moley denies that the early New Deal was "homogeneous." The idea was to push action "on many fronts" in order to gain a "psy chological effect." Some of the measures were designed for re lief, some for recovery, and only one or two, such as the TVA, were for reform. The hope was that a climate would be created "in which natural forces would assert themselves." A passive Adminis tration, says Moley, never would have succeeded.

In short, as Thurman Arnold put it in his cynical Folklore of Capitalis1n, any action was better 1967 NEW DEALS NEVER END 381 than no action. Hoover had failed to comprehend. this, and so the country turned on him. To Whom Credit Is Due Moley's book is wholly objective when it comes to distributing the credit for the "first New Deal." The closing and opening of the banks was carried out in accord ance with a script written by Herbert Hoover's own Treasury officials, Secretary Ogden Mills, Undersecretary Arthur Ballantine, and acting Comptroller Francis Gloyd Awalt. It was Awalt who determined which banks were sol vent, which were insolvent, and which reflected doubt. If Hoover hadn't wai ted on Roosevelt to move in the banking crisis, he might have gotten credit for sav ing the day, for his own officials had shaped all the tools which Roosevelt and his first Secretary of the Treasury William Woodin promptly put into use.

Moley was a Roosevelt agent and emissary in London at the great international economic con ference that flopped so badly. His account of the failure shows Roo sevelt at his worst. The American delegation was supposed to work out a compromise on international stabilization that would give some thing to the "gold" countries yet permit American domestic price levels to rise toa point that would save the nation's debt structure. But, after letting Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDon aId labor under the illusion that something might come out of the conference, Roosevelt finally de cided to throw the "bombshell" that wrecked the whole affair. Roose velt, says Moley, was in pursuit of "that old phantom, a commodity dollar." While Moley believed, with Roosevelt, that domestic re covery was the more important issue in 1933, he considers that the President's rejection of a com promise declaration on interna tional monetary stabilization was "unwise, capricious, and, in form and substance, economic non sense." Ray Moley was not for the commodity dollar.

Nor, as it turns out, was he for a permanent NRA, or for per.. manent involvement in central planning for agriculture. In the NRA, Administrator Hugh ("Iron Pants") Johnson fell victim of his own optimism. Moley argues that "Roosevelt might best have ter minated NRA" and permitted the "old forces of competition," which "despite their often ugly mien are the lifeblood of progress," to take over. Similarly, the AAA idea of crop limitation was not designed for the ages. It had a short-term practical validity in the depressed years of the early 382 THE FREEMAN June thirties. But modern agricultural practices, with new fertilizers, new insecticides, and new machin ery, make voluntary crop limita tion a will-o'-the-wisp. For that matter, if there had not been the Dust Bowl conditions in the mid dle thirties, even temporary crop limitation would probably have failed. The Parting of the Ways l\loley came to reject Roosevelt because he felt the Democratic Party was changing to become an instrument of class war. "I was a conservative by instinct," says Moley. In his early days as a col lege teacher he believed that the two political parties should rep resent sharply different philoso phies. But after his Washington experience he decided that a blur ring of lines could help keep the nation from being torn apart.

Originally he had accepted Charles Beard's theory that the Constitu tion had been made by and for a selfish propertied class. But after working with congressmen and with departmental administrators he "rediscovered the Constitution as its makers had designed it." He went back to James Madison, who knew that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition." With war brewing in Europe, Moley thought that Roosevelt's revival of "internationalism" would "shake our constitutional fabric at home and imperil the liberties of our people." This hasn't happened as yet, but if the cycle of wars continues the U.S. may yet be bled white. Finally, Ray Moley decided that there must be "freedom" for billions of individ ual decisions in the marketplace. Roosevelt, he came to realize, just didn't understand modern indus try's need for a "diffusion of de cision-making." So Moley, who had believed in Van Hise's Concentration and Control, bowed out of the Roose velt party. The party, as he says, had left him. But there is more to it than that. The truth is that Ray Moley had really learned something by his experiences. The centralizer had become something of a libertarian. FREEMAN readers should arm themselves by taking note of Ray Moley's intellectual odyssey. ~ ~ DEEPER THAN YOU THINK by Leonard E. Read (Irvington-on Hudson, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967, 208 pp., $2.00 paper; $3.00 cloth).

Reviewed by Alexander Evanoff, Professor of American Studies, De partment of English, Indiana State University. MOST LIBERTARIANS are political economists. Leonard Read has a 1967 OTHER BOOKS 383 third interest - Religious Philoso phy. Deeper Than You Think opens with a "Prologue" and closes with an "Epilogue" and both are invo cations and pleas to Self-Action, Self-Direction. Between the' Epi logue and Prologue is a treatment of macro and micro economics, a formula for happiness, a delightful exposition of economics for boys and girls (as useful for me as for the young); a moving exposition on pride. He treats of the origins of power, the origins of knowl edge; the limits of political action; the limitations as well as the pos sibilities, of men (Utopia can never come Now because the per fectibility of Men can never come Now) ; the source of ideas; altru .. ism, self-interest; poverty and impoverishment of the soul; giving and owning (nothing can be given which is not first of all acquired) ; and the Myth of Federal Aid. His subject is Freedom, Man, God, Government, Politics, Economics, and Teaching. And he is not abashed by the word God and not ashamed to use it. The impetus and drive of the book is to in spirit and to motivate others to self-discovery; there is no pro pensi ty to make car bon copy Leonard Read's.

Mr. Read's expositions possess both simplicity and profundity. And each exposition is carried down (or up) to first causes. His treattnent of economic problems is lucid and uncompromising: "I honestly believe that TVA and mail delivery, for instance, should be turned over to private owner ship and operation, that labor unions should be divested of the right to use coercion in any form, that medicare, compulsory social security, and a host of other so cialistic programs should be abol ished forthwith." Deeper Than You Think is an impressive collection of ideas which I assume may often be as mystifying to some libertarians as to the occasional welfare-statist who may accidentally encounter them. Leonard Read's pronounce ment that "regardless of preten tions to the contrary, only now and then can a person be found who does not advocate some coer cion for a laudable end" is most discreetly and politely intended to apply to libertarians as well as to the something-for-nothing "lib eral." The tendency to coercion, though perhaps weaker among libertarians, is surely not entirely absent, and this tendency Leonard Read links to pride and the Golden Intellectual Calf of one's own cre ation. Read is attempting to teach the most difficult of all things to teach: the methods of self-growth, self -developmen t, self -evolvement, and many of the corollaries req uisite to that end, e.g.: (1) A 384 THE FREEMAN June free market. (2) The freedom of choice on which all growth de pends, and the blessed privilege of blundering from which a pa ternalistic government would al truistically deprive us. (3) The existence of a Divine Source which we must seek to understand and unite with more fully, and on which all depends.

The author understands and would seek to make understand able that all beliefs and all ideas which one may hold are only a measure of one's own growth and development. "As the Eye is formed so it sees." And a pint measure will never hold a quart no matter how much one pours into it. And it is as useles's a~ro· ceeding to berate a pint measure for being a pint measure as it is to glory in one's own capacity for a greater measure, because all "measures" are, in the nature of things, abysmally limited. To glory in one's own possession of Absolute Truth and the superi ority of one's own Vision is as if the Finite and Limited were to assume it could encompass the In finite and the Unlimited. The In complete is incapable of Ultimates and Absolutes; it is not itself an Absolute or an Ultimate. All men are Incomplete and on their Way, and all their institutions are im permanent and incomplete scaf foldings toward greater and more perfect achievements. Eternal growth, evolution, and develop ment are posited.

In almost a hundred different changes and variations, Leonard Read affirms: (1) That the truth a man holds is a measure of his development. (2) That one can not insert truths where the req uisite development does not exist. (3) That if the requisite develop ment does exist one cannot give anything to anyone which the individual does not already pos sess in some degree. It would ap pear that the "truth" need only to be spoken to be believed. If the "truth" is not believed or not ac cepted, then either such a truth is not atruth or a "truth" not presently intended for the indi vidual' or nation to whom it is offered. Everything awaits ripeness. Nothing of value can be en forced. Leonard Read would probably agree with William Blake that it is impossible to the thought of man to conceive a thing greater than itself; and if a man aspires, he aspires to a more perfect reali zation of the highest in him, and the highest in him is Divine. Wil liam Blake has said that "God becomes as Man is in order that Man may become as God is."

Deeper Than YOtt Think is a good book; but extremely difficult to review in a short space. ~ THE FREEMAN JULY 1967 Vol. 17, No.7 ~ To bring forth the best from one's fellow men is the quality of leader ship William Henry Chamberlin would have us learn from the late Konrad Adenauer p. 387 ~ And police officer Jack Morano is suggesting much the same thing in his tribute to a worthy American ............ p. 394 ,v Admiral Moreell also pursues that theme as he traces the relationships between business affairs, social prog ress, and the religious life of the American people p. 399 ,v Henry Hazlitt has said before, but doubtless will need to remind us again and again, that more inflation is no cure for earlier monetary madness p. 414 ~ "Is freedom worth the candle?" is the question all of us are asking and which Dr. Jack Schreiber here examines in depth p. 416 ~ Last month, George Roche outlined the history of the use and abuse of political power; now he explores in greater detail some of the modern manifestations p. 420 ~ One of those manifestations, of course, concerns labor union policies and practices; and these, as Lawrence Fertig shows, mean more inflation ............ p.430 ~. Many of the modern political power plays seem to historian Clarence Carson to be a reversion to feudalism - without the stabilizing effects such measures afforded in earlier times ............ p.432 ,v Brent Bozell's study of The Warren Court spices the pages of "A Re viewer's Notebook" this month ............ p.445 Anyone wishing to communicate with authors may send first-class mail in care of THE FREEMAN for forwarding.