Friday, May 26, 2023

ATLANTIC MAGAZINE--Depression Icon---- SOLDIERS, NEW DEALS, UNIONS

   
07 Sept 2020---



   "...critical of President Roosevelt's New Deal and its penchant for having become politicized..."

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     Incline Village, Nev., (EOC)--     "In an article in the current Atlantic Monthly entitled, 'What's wrong with Congress?' by Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, former president of the Massachusetts of Technology, it is clearly brought out that the threat against democracy is the organized pressure politics of minority groups and bloc lobbies, which supplant orderly parliamentary discussion and action. The author cites the efforts of the veterans to coerce congress on the bonus by their march on Washington." (1)
     In a further explanation of the 1935 Pritchett manifesto in the Atlantic Monthly, the author also called for a single six-year term for presidents and other less career-minded terms for congress. In addition, this would do away with lobbies. (2) 


     In yet another column of that same Spokesman-Review issue of Pritchett's Atlantic Monthly article, he suggested that only the two party system would work in America and anything else would lead to;
     "it brought fascism to Italy and the nazis to Germany.  At one time there were 30 parties in Germany. By 1932 the number had been reduced to 18--still too many--a condition that gave Hitler his opportunity. Today Germany has a dictatorship and the old parties are gone."
Clearly, Pritchett, through his Atlantic Monthly venue, was insinuating that veterans, with a grievance of Depression-era unemployment and a march on the nation's capital to demand relief, would somehow lead to naziism and Hitler. 
     Further elaboration on the Atlantic Monthly promoted Pritchett theory of lobbies, Paul Cherington posted in the Sioux City Journal in August of 1935 that the career politician had four particular special interest groups he could count on for votes;
     "the farmers, labor, the American Legion and the haters of invested capital." (3)


     Whether Cherington was just being facetious or stating a fact is unknown, but placing veterans into the same category as labor and haters of capitalism might indicate the latter. 
At the beginning of 1936, The Atlantic Monthly published a story written by Lawrence Sullivan critical of President Roosevelt's New Deal and its penchant for having become politicized;
     "Among the facts presented by Mr. Sullivan are that, while the New Deal has added 235,000 persons to the direct full-time Federal pay roll, only one in 107 of the new personnel is under Civil Service. The rest are chosen under the 'political clearance' plan of Mr. Farley, which means on a purely political basis." (4)
That criticism of Sullivan, in turn, was written by Frank R, Kent, titled "Great Game of National Politics."  Apparently, though the Monthly was keen to point out the dangers of independent,  non-aligned political parties, at the same time, it warned against the threat of just the opposite; the two party "pay-to-play" system under the Democrats leading up to World War II. Would the rather contradictory editorial policy become part and parcel to the magazine's philosophy? The editorial page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that week answered the question by stating;
     "No wonder Lawrence Sullivan can conclude his article on 'Our New Spoils System' in the current Atlantic Monthly with the sarcastic observation that 'no president has ever bolstered Civil Service with more compelling eloquence.' " (5.)

The magazine's political stance shifted depending on who was published in it. Even before the rise of the Nazis in Germany, in 1930, the so-called "philosopher and psychologist, world traveler and author" Count Herman Keyserling, posted a piece in the Monthly describing "the South is the hope of America;" 
     "...of all Americans who have played and are still playing a really important part in the country in the sense of human superiority were and are sons of Virginia and the adjacent states." (6)
According to his Wiki bio, Keyserling professed the "born to rule" philosophy  and incorporated "Fuhrerprinzip" into his Social Darwin leaning, in other words, Nazism. (7)
     By 1932,in a rather apologetic article by H.P. Allen in the Windsor Star relating to the William C. White article in the Monthly regarding a "Herr Schmidt," the homeless German, who's wife dumped him and turned into a prostitute, was the victim of politics and the Versailles Treaty. Thus, he became a devout follower of Hitler, along with tens of thousands of others who voted and nearly unseated Hindenburg in April.  (8) Whether Schmidt was a real character or a personification of the millions in his shoes was immaterial, it reflected the bleeding heart tone of the magazine as to why the average, less than superior non-Virginian Joe should relate to the superior but less-fortunate Nazi rank-and-file.
     In yet another reference to the category of "farmers, labor and the American Legion, "  George F. Sokolsky criticized the American Federation of Labor in the Monthly via reprint in the Ironwood, Michigan Daily Globe in 1934;
     "basing its policy and tactics on craft unionism--loose, irresponsible, unharnessed subject to sporadic strikes, to racketeering in the unions, is unrelated to the necessities of American labor." (9)
Sokolsky based his argument on the rise of technology, where the craftsman was obsolete and should belong to the company union, where he became the tool of the machine instead of the reverse. 
    Through all of the above, there is a certain sense of disdain for the soldier and the worker, as being bothersome but essential components of the "hateful capitalist system." In other words, The Atlantic Monthly's articles during the Depression appeared to condescend to the average American, a bit of snobbish Bostonian intelligentsia almost forcing itself to publish articles about everyday life. Soldiers were whiners on bonus marches, if you weren't from Virginia, you were stupid and inferior and labor unions were run by gangsters. 
     The Atlantic Monthly was a great magazine during the Great Depression. Its contributors, though maybe not reflecting the values of Americans at the time, could at least contribute and were rhetorically relevant. Today, it's nothing but a shell of its former self, with an owner who understands little about journalism and an editor who knows everything about journalism but ignores all the rules.
 


Cited
1.) Coerce, The Capital Journal, Salem, OR, 07 March 1935, Page 4.
2.) Manifesto, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA, 09 March, 1935, Page 4.
3.) American legion, Sioux City Journal, 14 Aug 1935, Page 4.
4.) New Deal, The Scranton Tribune, 27 January 1936, Page 9.
5.) Eloquence, St Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 Jan 1936, Page 36.
6.) South, Jasper Alabama Daily Mountain Eagle, 01 Jan 1930, Page 4.
8.) Schmidt, The Windsor Star, 27 June 1932, Page 15. 
9.) AFL, Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan, 04 Aug 1934, Page 3.




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