Socializing capitalism: The CENTURY during the Great Depression

Christian Century, April 12, 2000 by Mark G. Toulouse

IN THE DECADE following World War I, Americans confronted a rapidly changing cultural context. Prohibition took effect in 1919 and gave birth to an era characterized by the frustrations of law enforcement and a booming business for "bootlegging" and organized crime. Throughout the decade, the CENTURY underestimated the strength of voices opposing prohibition. Editors condemned the evil of liquor without much recognition of the social circumstances that might drive some people to drink. Though, in principle, they condemned single-issue politics, they came perilously close, on occasion, to modeling its worst features. Presidents Harding and Coolidge were too soft on enforcement issues to satisfy either Charles Clayton Morrison, the CENTURY'S editor, or columnist Alva Taylor. When Al Smith faced Herbert Hoover in the presidential campaign of 1928, his open support of the "wet" position occasioned even more criticism in the CENTURY'S pages than the fact of his Catholicism. Editorial discomfort in these two areas made it difficult for editors to appreciate just how much they agreed with Smith on most other important issues. On other fronts throughout the 1920s, the editors attacked racism and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, preached peace, opposed U.S. intervention in Central America, urged the diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union, supported Protestant ecumenism, and waged a battle against the fundamentalists.

The extent of rapid industrialization and urbanization troubled many Americans, including editors at the CENTURY. Editorials attended to labor unrest and supported activities meant to reduce injustice in the workplace. More interesting, considering later developments, was the analysis given to the new economic practices associated with Wall Street. Beginning early in the 1920s, the magazine began to note the excesses of the capitalist system. "The desire for quick and unearned results," concluded one editorial, "is a national disease" (June 7, 1923). Editors regularly attacked the notion of getting "something for nothing." They condemned the "speculative mania in America" that allowed an accumulation of wealth without the "accompanying trust to be carried on for the welfare of the whole people" (December 27, 1923). Too much wealth landed in the hands of too few people. An article by Ross L. Finney offered a dire prediction in early 1924: "Unless we shift our weight Western civilization will enjoy an illusive prosperity and greatness for a time, but will then stagger, stumble and eventually collapse" (January 24, 1924).

Some 19 months before the crash of the market, editorials scrutinized the problem of unemployment with a growing sense of urgency. In the face of this "orgy of speculation," editors argued, religion must "protest a social or industrial order in which men wallow in sudden wealth which they have not created while their fellows by the million face want" (March 22, 1928). The speculation of the capitalist market allowed for an accumulation of "undigested wealth" and the separation of means from ends (November 1, 1928). Wall Street had divorced wealth from activities that led to employment. In addition, machines had invaded the workplace and massively displaced human labor. These developments confronted "the church and civilization with moral issues as important as the elimination of war" (June 21,1928).

When a well-known Methodist bishop, in a highly publicized situation, lost all his possessions as a result of speculation, the tendency to condemn him for his activities surfaced in many Christian circles. In response, the CENTURY intoned, "Let him who is without dividends cast the first stone." While CENTURY editors cursed speculation, they also recognized that it was only part of the problem. Christians who pinned all the blame on speculation missed the most important point. Capitalism, rather than speculation, was the real culprit.

Instead of joining in a hue and cry against a churchman for engaging in this system in which every one of us is implicated, from which even the bishop's salary is derived, or hiding our Christian faces in shame because his hypocritical enemies hold him up as a "horrible example," the clear call of Christ is that his followers should make a frontal attack upon the pagan system itself, and demand that our economic order shall give way to an economic order embodying the principles of the kingdom of God (July 17, 1929).

This antagonism toward capitalism surfaced regularly after October 1929.

Given its socialist sensibilities, the CENTURY interpreted the crash of the stock market as an opportunity to begin "the process of a national sobering up" (November 6, 1929). Americans could no longer ignore the growing and devastating problem of unemployment. This awareness opened the door to social solutions most Americans would have rejected as unacceptable only a few years before. Editorials supported legislation designed to account for the unemployed, to establish public works projects to enable their return to work, to provide for newly unemployed through a national unemployment insurance program, and to create a national bureau of unemployment to stay on top of the problem.