Socializing capitalism: The CENTURY during the Great Depression

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

The crash of the market also offered Americans the opportunity to reflect on a new understanding of the problem of greed. Americans, the CENTURY said, have been too quick to condemn racketeering, "the poor boy's easy road to quick wealth," while ignoring ways "the son of a comfortable home seeks to make his pile and make it quickly" (August 6, 1930). In addition, the country's obsession with its "standard of living" had to be balanced against the needs of the rest of the world. Problems like these, the CENTURY concluded, would not be solved "by standing pat on the traditions under which the present absurd inequities have grown up" (August 27, 1930).

Editors grew impatient with President Hoover's unwillingness to use federal means to address the social crisis. Hoover urged private charities, and the organizations of local communities where hunger existed, to step up to meet the need. The CENTURY judged the president's response entirely inadequate. His fear of the dangers associated with the federal "dole," argued editorials, ignored the fact that poverty emerged more from the defects of the system than from the "personal shortcomings of the sufferers" (February 11, 1931). "Those who bear these miseries are those who contributed least to the excesses of yesterday" (December 30, 1931).

The depth of the depression demanded a federal response, one that would establish a "permanent deposit of advanced social legislation." Hoover, to the growing dismay of editors, ruled such legislation out of bounds. "How bad must things become," asked one editorial, "before the nation is ready" to enact legislation (March 4, 1931)? One week later, the CENTURY challenged politicians to develop "an adequately planned national economy" (March 11, 1931), one that would enable federal policies to curb the excesses of capitalism. A national disaster deserved a national response. Hoover's local-community approach would "prove to be not only tragically inefficient but scandalously inequitable" (October 28, 1931).

The crowning irony of these years, therefore, is the fact that Morrison used the pages of the CENTURY to endorse Hoover's reelection in 1932. He found himself most drawn to the politics of the ever-present socialist candidate Norman Thomas, but those impulses were checked by his belief in the importance of maintaining the vitality of the two-party system (October 19, 1932). As he examined the alternatives, Morrison reckoned the Roosevelt of the campaign trail too tentative and completely uninspiring when speaking about the economy. Roosevelt also pursued unfortunate alliances with the "corruption of Tammany" (April 13, 1932), "the sinister figure" of William Randolph Hearst (October 26, 1932) and the "hierarchy" of the Catholic Church (April 20, 1932).

Perhaps more determinative for Morrison than any other consideration, Roosevelt fully supported the "wet plank" of the Democratic platform. "So far, then, as the liquor issue may figure in the campaign," the CENTURY editorialized, "the drys can have nothing but opposition to the Democratic campaign" (July 13, 1932). Hoover's vacillation on the issue just before the election did not score many points with editors either (September 21, 1932). In the end, since both candidates seemed to support a capitalist economy, the CENTURY's editors uncovered no reason to replace the overly cautious capitalist they respected with the "looseness and inconsistency" of the capitalist they did not trust (October 26, 1932).