American Liberty League

On 15 August 1934, after the onset of strikes that would last until 1938, the American Liberty League, funded largely by the Duponts and their corporate allies, was chartered in Washington. In its six years of existence, the Liberty League fought New Deal labor and social legislation, rallied support for the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, and sought to build a bipartisan conservative coalition to defeat the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and the trade union movement.

The Liberty League called upon businessmen to defy the National Labor Relations Act, hoping the Supreme Court would declare it unconstitutional, and led "educational campaigns" against social security, unemployment insurance, minimum wages, and other New Deal policies. After the New Deal's great victory in 1936, the Liberty League adopted a lower profile. Earlier, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in attacking the "economic loyalists," who were so visible in the leadership of the Liberty League, mocked the league's definition of "liberty" in his last speech of the 1936 presidential campaign, retelling a story, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, of a wolf, removed by a shepherd from the neck of a lamb, denouncing the shepherd for taking away its liberty. The league formally dissolved in September 1940.

Its influence on conservative politics in the United States was large. In the aftermath of the 1938 elections, conservative Democrats and Republicans in Congress stalemated New Deal legislation, using Liberty League themes of opposition to government spending, taxation, and communist influence in the administration and the labor movement to gain support. The Liberty League supported the early activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the National Lawyers Committee. The league's attempt to recruit and fund conservative scholarship and university forums on public policy issues prefigured the creation of corporate-funded conservative "Think Tanks."

The issues raised by the Liberty League in the 1930s remain unresolved, as does its role in history. For those who see "big government," the regulation and taxation of business, and the redistribution of wealth to lower income groups as absolute evils, it has been vindicated by history and is posthumously triumphant. For those who see government as a shepherd or steward seeking to prevent society from reverting to a socioeconomic jungle where the strong devour the weak, it stands condemned as the champion of "free market" policies that today promote economic instability and social injustice, both in the United States and the world.

Bibliography

Brinkley, Alan. "The Problem of American Conservatism." American Historical Review 99, no. 2 (April 1994): 409–429.

Leuchtenburg, William E. The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Rudolph, Frederick. "The American Liberty League, 1934–1940." American Historical Review 56, no. 1 (October 1950): 19–33. A useful early postwar critique that captures the New Deal generation's view of the league.

Wolfskill, George. Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League, 1934–1940. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. The best introduction to the Liberty League.

—Norman Markowitz

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (March 2009)

The American Liberty League was a United States organization formed in 1934 by conservative Democrats such as Al Smith (the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee), Jouett Shouse (former high party official and US Representative), John W. Davis (the 1924 Democratic presidential nominee), and John Jacob Raskob (former Democratic National Chairman and the foremost opponent of prohibition), Dean Acheson (future Secretary of State under Harry Truman), along with many industrialists, and members of the Du Pont family. Also members were Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors, John Jacob Raskob, Jouett Shouse (later Chairman of the Democratic Party), Jay Cooke II, Captain William Stayton, and about one hundred thousand other members.^[1]

The League stated that it would work to "defend and uphold the Constitution" and to "foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property." The League spent between $500,000 and $1.5 million in promotional campaigns; its funding came mostly from the Du Pont family, as well as leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors, General Foods, Standard Oil, Birdseye, Colgate, Heinz Foods, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. It reached over 125,000 members and supported the Republicans in 1936.

In the year of its founding, 1934, the League was accused by Smedley Butler of being involved in a fascist Business Plot to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Butler was a retired Marine Corps general and strong supporter of President Roosevelt. Butler said that he was approached to lead a group of 500,000 veterans to take over the functions of government. Butler speculated in his congressional testimony that the League was somehow involved with a plan to found a para-military fascist veterans organiztion, an 'American version' of the 1930s French Croix de Feu. The final McCormack-Dickstein Committee report refused to include this "hearsay" material. No prosecutions or further investigations followed, and historians^[2][3] and contemporary journalists^[4] largely rejected the idea that any such plan was near execution.^[5]

The League labeled Roosevelt's Agricultural Adjustment Administration "a trend toward Fascist control of agriculture." Social Security was said to "mark the end of democracy." Lawyers for the American Liberty League challenged the validity of the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act), but in 1937, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute. The League faded away and disbanded in 1940.

References

1. ^ Wall Street: a history : from its beginnings to the fall of Enron, Charles R. Geisst, Oxford University Press US, 2004 ISBN 0195170601, 9780195170603 438 pages page 238
2. ^ Burk, Robert F. (1990). The Corporate State and the Broker State: The Du Ponts and American National Politics, 1925-1940. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-17272-8. 
3. ^ Sargent, James E. (November 1974). "Review of: The Plot to Seize the White House, by Jules Archer". The History Teacher 8 (1): 151-152. 
4. ^ Author unknown (December 3, 1934). "Plot Without Plotters". Time Magazine. http://www.livejournal.com/users/bailey83221/47109.html. 
   Author unknown (November 21, 1934). "Gen. Butler Bares 'Fascist Plot' To Seize Government by Force; Says Bond Salesman, as Representative of Wall St. Group, Asked Him to Lead Army of 500,000 in March on Capital -- Those Named Make Angry Denials -- Dickstein Gets Charge.". New York Times: 1. ;
   Philadelphia Record, November 21 and 22, 1934
5. ^ Schmidt, Hans (1998). Maverick Marine (reprint, illustrated ed.). University Press of Kentucky. pp. 224. ISBN 0813109574. 

References

• John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner and David Brody, eds. The New Deal: The National Level. Ohio State University Press. 1975.
• Douglas B. Craig, After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920-1934 University of North Carolina Press. 1992.
• Frederick Rudolph, "The American Liberty League, 1934-1940," American Historical Review 56 (October 1950): 19-33. online at JSTOR
• George Wolfskill. The Revolt of the Conservatives: A. History of the American Liberty League, 1934-1940. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).

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