NC and the New Deal, Ch. 5

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Chapter FiveNorth Carolina, Congress, and the N ew Deal

Nothing be tter illustrates both the extent and the limitations of TarHeel enthusiasm for the New Deal than the behavior of the state's sena-tors and congressmen in the 1930s. They supported, and in some cases ledthe fight for, many New Deal measures that extended the scope of federalgovernment responsibility for the economy and individual welfare farbeyond anything they had ever dreamed of. The support the congressmengave reflected thei r acute awareness of their constituents' desperate plightduring the depression-a plight tha t apparently could only be remediedby jobs and money from Washington. As time went on, however, itbecame clear that this enthusiasm for th e New Deal was precisely circum-scribed. Reluctant to disavow the president himself, North Carolina con-gressmen nevertheless were unwilling to support the full-fl edged aspira-tions of those New Deal liberals who wanted to extend New Deal benefitspermanently to the economically disadvantaged in American society.IThe political styles of the austere and punctilious Senator JosiahWilliam Bailey and of the casual and clubbab le Senator Robert RiceReynolds could not have been more different. Yet their records in the1930s both testify to their keen perception of the strength of their NorthCarolina constituents' devotion to Roosevelt and the New Deal and theirunwillingness to flaunt openly their conservatism until they were safelyreelected.Josiah Bailey was very conscious of his own importance. Two journalists,Alan A. Michie and Frank Rhylick, noted that he was "superethical,superconstitutionaI, and supercilious," and Jonathan Daniels claimed, "he

struts even when he sits down." The massive self-righteousness was alliedto a thoroughgoing conservatism that sprang from his simple approval of"the accepted doctrine for 150 years . . . that fundamental economic lawsare natural laws, having the same source as physical laws." Governmentinterference in the economy and business had, Bailey thought, prolongedand intensified the depression. Not only was such intervention unsound oneconomic grounds, it was also unconstitutional and immoral. H e reactedtherefore with apocalyptic horror to much of what the New Deal was try-ing to do. The consequence, for example, of the government building afurniture factory in West Virginia would be "an absolute subversion offree government . . . ; hat socialistic conception which I abhor and whichI am sworn in the only oath 1 took here as a Senator to abhor and to hate."

Senator Josiah W . Baileythoroughly de tested govern-m e n t i n t e r f e re n c e w i th t h eeconomy, but unt i l h is re -election in 1936 he could notopenly oppose the president'sp r o g r a m s . O n c e r e e l e c t e d ,Bailey helped fashion the con-servative coalition of Republi-cans and southern Democra tsthat stridently resisted the fur-ther extension of New Dealpolicies.

A 1935 amendment to farm legislation, he averred, "strikes down the soulof the American Republic, compromising us in our own eyes and present-ing us defenseless before the bar of moral law." Bailey's prescription forthe depression was simple: government above all should balance the bud-get an d avoid the deficit spending that not only hindered recovery but hadevil moral consequences for the American people.Not surprisingly, Bailey had one of the most conservative Democraticvoting records under the Hoover administration and the seventh mostconservative voting record in the Senate, 1933-1939. He voted againstfederal relief spending and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Yetdespite his distaste for almost everything the New Deal stood for, betweenthe end of the "hundr ed days" and the elections of 1936 he voted againstonly one major piece of New Deal legislation, the Wagner Act, and he

+ voted against that before it became a piece of "must" legislation endorsedby the president. In some cases he confined himself to amendments thatwould have virtually nullified proposed legislation before finally votingfor the bill itself. His most violent denunciat ions of the trends of govern-ment were reserved for legislation that had not acquired "must" status,like the Tugwell Food and Drugs bill or the Guffey Coal Act. For t he mostpart he kept his thoughts to his private correspondence. When C. L. Shup-ing, his campaign manager, publicly denounced the New Deal, Baileyt quickly disowned him, although simultaneously keeping up a sympathetic

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correspondence that indicated his full agreement . He regularly issuedstatements full of personal praise of the president, wrote fawning letters toRoosevelt assuring him of the New Deal's success and of his personal sup-port, and, in the words of Jonathan Daniels, made a "regular sugar-mouth" speech seconding the president's renomination a t the Philadel-phia convention in 1936. He even managed for a time to maintain theappearance of f riendly relations with the Daniels family, despite the factthat there was no love lost between them. Both Josephus Daniels andJonathan Daniels were convinced that Bailey was masking his real feelingsin order to secure reelection. They rightly predicted that once reelected hewould become one of t he most conservative members of the Senate. Baileyfor his part had no doubt that "had t he News and Observer been pub-lished in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, it would have applaudedthe crucifixion of Jesus since it was the popular thing to do."

Bailey made much of his independence of popular opinion and his will-ingness to stand b y his principles, irrespective of their unpopularity. This"hard way" that he chose was similar, he thought , to that followed byMoses, Christopher Columbus, Robert E. Lee, and Jesus Christ. H e oftenexplained that he could not vote for an apparently popular piece of legisla-tion because of the oath of office with which he had sworn to uphold theConstitution. To support th e Bankhead Act for compulsory crop control ofcotton would, for example, be "to take from the American people powerswhich I solemnly swore I would never take from them when I swore tosupport the Constitution." But for all this much-vaunted independence,there were few senators who were more finely attuned than Bailey to theirconstituents' wishes or more prepared to adapt their public stance accord-ingly. What made Bailey conceal his hostility to t he New Deal was in partthe knowledge that he had campaigned in 1930 against Senator F. M.Simmons on the ground of party loyalty, excoriating Simmons for havingdeserted presidential nominee A] Smith in 1928. Bailey could therefore illafford to turn against Roosevelt too quickly. Above all, Bailey knew onlytoo well that the New Deal was overwhelmingly supported by his depres-sion-ridden constituents, particularly the farmers of eastern North Caro-lina who had been rescued from bankruptcy. Bailey had to support theNew Deal or run the risk of being repud iated a t the polls in favor of anout-and-out New Dealer in 1936.

Agriculture perfectly illustrated Bailey's willingness and ability to dis-guise successfully his political feelings in order to satisfy his constituents,especially the tobacco growers. Bailey disapproved of t he domestic allot-ment plan, voted against the Agricultural Adjustment Act, took no part inthe marketing crisis of September, 1933, thoroughly objected to compul-sory crop control, and voted against the Bankhead Act for cotton. Yet

Bailey knew that the tobacco program had brought economic salvation tothe tobacco growers and that there had been mu ch criticism of his votes in1933 and his failure to participate in the efforts to resolve the 1933 crisis.Therefore, he actively helped secure passage of t he Kerr-Smith Act pro-viding compulsory control for tobacco, although it involved exactly thesame principles he had so scornfully denounced in the Bankhead Act. In1935 he privately condemned the AAA amendments in letters to NorthCarolina cotton manufacturers and tried to emasculate the legislation byfurther amendment, but he eventually voted for the original amendmentsand portrayed himself as a supporter of whatever the farmers wanted. In1936 after the Supreme Court had invalidated the first AAA, he enthusias-tically endorsed its replacement, the Soil Conservation and DomesticAllotment Act, even though the act embodied the domestic allotment planthat he had so criticized in 1933.

The success of Bailey's endeavors were shown in 1936. He ran for re-election as a loyal New Dealer. His campaign literature stressed the largenumber of New Deal measures he had supported. A note from James A.Farley, F.D.R.'s campaign manager, which he had sent routinely to allDemocratic congressmen and senators, became a personal endorsement inBailey's hands. Th e senator gave credence to a totally misleading accountof the 1933 tobacco crisis, obtained from a friendly official in the AAA'sTobacco Section, that praised his valiant efforts on behalf of the tobaccogrowers. In addition, Bailey received strictly illegal help from t he stat eWPA. His secretary and close ~olitical llies openly solicited campaigncontributions in WPA offices, received promises that reliefers would berounded up to support the senator, and were supplied from all through theorganization with lists of key administrative and supervisory personnel.

Bailey did not win simply because of his ability to hide his opposition tothe New Deal. His election in 1936 showed how difficult it was to find al-ternative candidates who were indentifiably pro-New Deal and yet alsostrong local candidates. In 1933 and 1934 it looked as if Governor Ehring-haus might capitalize on his popularity among the tobacco growers afterhis leadership in the marketing crisis and challenge Bailey. But ill healthand damaging struggles with t he General Assembly of 1935 laid his candi-dacy to rest. Congressman Lindsay Warren seriously considered runningin 1935 by also appealing to rural support of the New Deal and the farm-ers' suspicions of Bailey, but he did not have sufficient financial independ-ence. It is by no means clear that either of these candidates, both close as-sociates of Max Gardner, would have been substantially more committedto the New Deal in the long run than Bailey. A more clear-cut challengewould have been presented by the congressional delegation's most vocif-erous New Deal supporter, Frank Hancock, but Hancock had already


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Congressmen Lindsay Warren ( l e j t ) and Frank Hancock (right) wanted to run againstSenator Bailey in the 1936 Democratic primary. Neither h ad sufficient financial support tomount a challenge, though both had far greater sympathy for the New D eal than did Bailey.

been deserted in his Fifth Congressional District by the Winston-Salemfinancial interests, and he was scared off finally by the emergence of anopposition candidate for his congressional seat. Josephus Daniels wouldhave dearly loved to challenge the senator whom he correctly predictedwould be as reactionary as Virginians Carter Glass or Harry Byrd, butDaniels was old; he would have had to give up his much-loved post as am-bassador to Mexico; his family opposed the venture; and his candidacywas guaranteed to provoke well-financed and intense factional opposition.It was left, therefore, to Richard T. Fountain, the antimachine candidatefor governor in 1932, to take up the New Deal banner. He charged thatBailey had "opposed all New Deal legislation in the original form becausehe had no time to look after the interes ts of the farmers but plenty of timeto devote to the interests of the power trust." No matter how vigorously hetook Bailey to task for his lack of support for the New Deal, Fountain was apale shadow of the man who ran in 1932. His political contacts had largelylapsed; he was in ill health, and his campaign had neither funding norpublicity. He nevertheless almost forced Bailey to a runoff.

Within days of being safely reelected in the general election of Novem-ber, 1936, Bailey privately announced th at he would join other conserva-tives to block any attempt to expand the New Deal. Not up for reelectionuntil 1942, he could now safely ignore pressure from pro-Roosevelt con-stituents. He was a bit ter critic of Supreme Court reform and served as a

member of the bipartisan steering committ ee that coordinated th e opposi-tion to the president's court-packing scheme. He was the most persistentSenate voice for a vote to condemn sit-down strikes, and he launched insis-tent denuncia tions of federal relief administrator Harry Hopkins and con-tinued spending on relief. Such spending, he argued, not only made abalanced bud get impossible, but was also based on a "studied effort tomagnify the problem of unemployment." It discriminated against NorthCarolina in favor of richer northern states and was outrageously used byHopkins and his allies to influence elections.

The recession of 1937 gave Bailey renewed hope. It encouraged him todraft with other like-minded conservatives a Conservative Manifesto,which served as an ideological underpinning to the informal coalition ofconservative Republicans and southern Democrats that essentially haltedexpansion of the New Deal in Congress. A balanced budget, the repeal ofirksome taxes, the endi ng of government competition with business, andthe maintenance of states' rights would, the manifesto argued, bring thereturn of the business confidence necessary to stimula te recovery. Baileyplayed a full part in the anti-New Deal coalition, voting against govern-ment reorganization, minimum wage-maximum hours legislation, publichousing, and furt her spending measures and in support of any antilaborproposals. He despaired that the Democratic party was being taken overby Socialists and, even worse, Negroes, with the result that the way layclear to "the lowest depths of degradation" and a "labor governmentbased on National Socialism." Only one thing tempered his opposition tothe New Deal: the desire for compulsory crop control on the part of histobacco-growing constituents. Such control contradicted Bailey's dearestprinciples, and he had no hesitation in voting against general agricultu rallegislation such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which in-cluded compulsion, but even he would not vote against special legislationdesigned to ensure continued compulsory control specifically for thetobacco growers.Senator Reynolds's conservatism took longer to emerge than SenatorBailey's. Nevertheless, conservatives in North Carolina who had beenalarmed by Reynolds's startling campaign in 1932 need not have worried.Reynolds proved to be no Tar Heel Huey Long, the flamboyant radicalfrom Louisiana. He di d, however, in his first term give consistent if light-weight suppor t to the New Deal, even if his active and distinctive sena-torial life-style sometimes concealed it. Reynolds took the opportunity as asenator to travel widely to Europe, the Philippines, and India. On one visitto Mexico he was robbed by bandits; on another t rip to investigate politi-cal conditions in the Virgin Islands doubts were cast on his sobriety. Heachieved some fame by kissing movie actress Jean Harlow on t he Capitol


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Tlrccf~ & What W e Thought They Mn v r t to S ay AU Aleng.I I C

By F.D.R.'s econd term opposition to massive federal spending and the demand for abalanced budget began to coalesce. Within North Carolina's congressional delegation in-creasing reluctance to support domestic spending emerged, especially after the recession of1937-1938 when the New Deal was forced to pumpev en m ore money into the economy. Fromthe Greensboro Daily News, December 15, 1938.

steps, although Harlow was unimpressed: "It was just like a Hollywoodkiss. A fake. You know we never actual ly kiss out there." He endorsedLucky Strike cigarettes, which, he claimed in the advertisements, allowedhim to enjoy two of the grea t traditions of southern life, tobacco and ora-tory. He extolled the virtues of Asheville wherever possible and was votedthe most popular senator by the Senate page boys. In his votes Reynoldsworked on the principle, "When the people of North Carolina are forsomething 75 percent, boy I'm for it 1000 percent." On the whole hetherefore voted routinely in favor of New Deal measures until 1938. WhileBailey opposed Supreme Court refo rm, Reynolds supported it enthusiasti-caIly: 90 percent of the people in the state, he told the president, weresolidly behind it. He backed wage-hour legislation, and in 1938 he cam-paigned for reelection as a staunchly liberal New Dealer. "Every vote," hedeclared, "1 have cast on th e floor of the Senate has been a vote in theinterest of the wage-earner, t he farmer, the veterans, the aged, the youth,the advancement of education and the protection of business andindustry."

Ironically, Reynolds received a challenge in 1938 from ano ther ferventNew Dealer, Frank Hancock. Hancock's campaign was doomed from thestart. Traditionally, Reynolds's seat was held by a westerner. Hancock'shome in Oxford, Granville County, would have been ideal for the raceagainst the easterner Bailey in 1936, bu t it was scarcely a sufficientlywestern base for 1938. Hancock could get no financial backing, since hehad long ago fallen out with the conservative bankers of Winston-Salem,and he could get no help from Max Gardner, who told him he had no issueon which to challenge Reynolds. That roved Hancock's greatest diffi-culty. In 1936 he could have attacked Bailey's less-than-total devotion tothe New Deal; but he could hardly make that an effective charge againstReynolds, who ~ o r t r a ~ e dimself as a 100-percent New Dealer. All Han-cock could do was to cast doubts on the incumbent's sincerity and attackhis playboy image. He denounced Reynolds's "frivolous and worthlessmissions" visiting "the nightclubs of Baghdad and studying the divorcelaws of Russia" and criticized him for employing a Virginian as his secre-tary and for introducing liquor and racetrack legislation for the District ofColumbia. Hancock made no headway and won only thirteen ou t of th estate's 100 counties.

Hancock was right in his skepticism about Reynolds's devotion to theNew Deal cause. No sooner was Reynolds reelected th an he joined Baileyas a member of the conservative coalition opposing Roosevelt. Hitherto,Reynolds's isolationism had not stopped him from supporting the NewDeal domestic programs. Once reelected, he devoted more and more timeto combating immigran ts, communists, and the "Alien in our Midst," and


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Senator Robert R. Reynolds, a rock-ribbed isolationist, flirted dangerouslywith a number of right-wing organ-izations that not only objected toAmerica's rearmament in the late 1930sbut proposed a ban on all immigration.The senator's critics accused him ofhaving pro-Nazi sympathies. From theGreensboro Dally News, November 29 ,1938.

L

Thd'n Sw t h i no W a Ha rdlv Like lo Rurh Into.

he formed the notorious "Vindicators Association of America," whichplanned to halt all immigration, keep America out of war, and purge thecountry of all foreignisms except Americanism. At the same time he rapid-ly star ted opposing relief spending and labor measures. His desertion ofthe New Deal was hastened not only by his questionable links with right-wing, American fascist groups, but also by the fact that his former op-ponent Hancock was given a job on the Federal Home Loan Board in theface of the senator's opposition. Thus, saf e reelection, growing bitternesswith the administration's foreign policy, and a major patronage rebuffcombined to free Reynolds from any vestige of loyalty to the New Deal.

I1The fact that both Bailey and Reynolds had waited until they were safe-

ly reelected before daring to come out in open defi ance of the New Dealtestified to the st rength of their belief that their constituents supported theNew Deal. The behavior of the state's congressional delegation bears evengreater witness to that popularity, but the caution of the delegation after1937 perhaps provides, even more than the outr ight opposition of the sen-ators, a guide to the precise limits of that popularity.

North Carolina congressmen consistently and enthusiastically sup-ported the New Deal up to 1937, as did most southern delegations. What-ever the views of a particular congressman on the wisdom of specific

measures, crisscrossing pressures compelled him to back the administra-tion. On the one hand there were the ties of personal and party loyalty tothe resident, which the lure of patronage enhanced. On the other therewere the economic crisis and urgent relief needs of constituents. At notime had congressional mailbags been so full of pleas for help and jobs; atno time had a government been so keen to. implem ent plans to providethat aid and employment . These pressures from above in Washington andfrom below in their districts worked powerfully on the North Carolinarepresentatives.

Veteran fourth district Congressman Edward W. Pou, for example,chaired the House Rules Committee until his death in 1934and sponsoredthe gag rules that sped so much of early New Deal legislation on its way.There is no evidence of what Pou thought about the substance or detail ofthe legislation that he was so instrumental in forwarding. What we doknow is that in the economic emergency of the depression he thought thatany action, however dictatorial, was better than nothing and he was will-ing to give far-reaching authority to a president whom he cast in theheroic mold of his party hero, Woodrow Wilson. He compared Rooseveltto a great surgeon who is given complete control of a blood transfusion: "Ithink the safest thing we can do in such an hour is trust and follow thePresident."

Similar pressures could be seen at work on Robert L. Doughton, chair-man of the House Ways and Means Committee, which reported out suchkey measures as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the SocialSecurity Act. Doughton's long congressional career had been spent ou t ofthe limelight until h e had led the rebellion against the proposed sales taxduring the Hoover administration. H e relished his newfound prominence,but he still paid assiduous attention to the postmasterships and localpatronage that had guaranteed him reelection from his ninth district for solong. He frankly did not understand much of the legislation that his com-mittee approved. Increasingly deaf, he left many details of tax and finan-cial legislation to younger committee members. What he did understandof th e New Deal he did not necessarily agree with. H e never agreed withthe Wagner Act, although he voted for it, and in economic matters he wasprobably in sympathy with those North Carolina industrialists who wrotehim at such length now that he chaired such a crucial~committee. ever-theless, he was a loyal supporter of the New Deal. His commit tee chair-manship, which gave him some political leverage with the Rooseveltadministration, tended in fact to buttress, rather than diminish, his loyaltyto the New Deal. He had a considerable personal regard for F.D.R. and anundoubted susceptibility to presidential flattery. Although he was oc-casionally piqued by Roosevelt's habit of acting without consultation, he


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could always be soothed by a personal chat with the president. After onesuch occasion when he had intended to put the president right on tobaccotaxation, he came away from the Whit e House purring that " he Presidentis obviously the finest man to work [with] I ever saw and I am not worriedabout any matters as long as he has the final decision." In 1935 Rooseveltplayed a part in persuading Doughton to stay in the House rather than runfor governor, and he convinced him not to retire in 1936, 1938, and againin 1940. Roosevelt clearly had the knack of appealing to Doughton's vani-ty.The ties of party loyalty, patronage, and the needs of the economicemergency bound ail the North Carolina congressmen. What linked theyounger congressmen above all to the New Deal was their certainty thatthe New Deal was popular with their constituents. Congressmen like JohnKen, Lindsay Warren, Graham Barden, J. Bayard Clark, Harold Cooley,Frank Hancock, and William Umstead, who were from tobacco-growingdistricts, never doubted that the farmers supported the New Deal. Repre-sentatives A. L. Bulwinkle, J. Walter Lambeth, and Zeb Weaver in theWest recognized increasing business hostility to Roosevelt, but they re-mained convinced tha t the bulk of th e farming and laboring populationfirmly backed the New Deal.

The loyalty of Tar Heel congressmen, however, came under great strainin 1937 with Roosevelt's plan to reform the Supreme Court to make itmore amenable to liberal legislation. When the plan was announced, onlyFrank Hancock immediately declared his willingness to support theappointment of extra judges, a nd he became one of the leaders in the fightto build up public opinion behind the proposal. Bulwinkle at oncedeclared his opposition. Eventually, Cooley, Kerr, and Weaver joinedHancock in backing the president. Cooley and Kerr, in particular, hadtested the waters in their constituencies and found that they could safelysupport Roosevelt. Tobacco growers, whose program had been knockeddown by the Supreme Court, often linked reform of the Cour t to thereturn of the compulsory crop control they so badly wanted. Th e rest ofthe North Carolina delegation remained silent. Their dilemmas weresummed up by Bob Doughton and Lindsay Warren. At the age of seventy-four Doughton had little sympathy with the idea that judges four yearsyounger than he were unfit for service, but he did not want to oppose theadm,inistration openly for fear of losing his position of influence and con-trol of patronage. Similarly, Lindsay Warren, who had been offered thecomptroller generalship of t he United States in 1936 and was on closeterms with House leaders like Speaker William Bankhead and Sam Ray-burn, was reluctant to make public his decided opposition to the plan.Along with Speaker Bankhead, who confided his own distaste for the pro-

North Carolina's congressjonal delegation (ca. 1937) included (seated)Senator Josiah W .Bailey, Congressman Robert L. Doughton, and Senator Robert R. Reynolds and (left o r ight)Congressmen William B. Umstead, Graham A. Barden, Harold D. Cooley, John H. Kerr,J . Walter Lambeth, J. Bayard Clark, Lindsay Warren, Frank Hancock , Alfred Lee Bulwin kle,and Zebulon Weaver.

posal to him, Warren worked behind the scenes for some sort of com-promise.

Relations between the North Carolina delegation and the New Dealwere never the same again. Some of the representatives moved into fairlyregular and open opposition. J. Bayard Clark became a key member of thebipartisan coalition that stymied reform legislation in the House RulesCommittee. Bulwinkle, responding to the textile an d furniture manufac-turers in his tenth district, consistently voted against spending and taxlegislation. Umstead and Lambeth both announced early in 1938 theirdecision not to stand for reelection. Neither had been in the House verylong, and it was believed that their retirements reflected growing dissatis-faction with New Deal trends. Barden led the fight to emasculate thewage-hour legislation and th e Wagner Act, starting on t he path that wouldestablish him in th e 1950s as one of the most conservative and antiunionmembers of the House.


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The other representat ives remained more enthusiastic supporters of th eadministration. Doughton and Warren continued to be key figures in thegovernment's congressional strategy. Indeed, Warren helped lead thelegislative fight for executive reorganization; he was rewarded in 1940 bythe renewed offer-this time accepted-of the post of compt rollergeneral. Hancock, Kerr, Cooley, and Weaver maintained a strong rhetori-cal commitment to New Deal goals and generally voted with th e adminis-tration. But even these supporters were now more cautious. Hancock in1937 led a strong attack on the Wagner bill for federally sponsored low-cost housing. Doughton voted to cut the relief appropriation in 1937.During congressional hearings on proposed tenancy legislation, which ledto the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937,Cooley revealed t he sus-picions about rural poverty proposals that later made him a relentless criticof t he Farm Security Administration. Kerr voted against the Fair LaborStandards Act, and Warren led the opposition to the domestic spendingprogram of 1939.

Despite a growing wariness about t he increasingly liberal trend of theNew Deal, the delegation never divided along pro- and anti-New Deallines. If Nor th Carolina did not produce liberals as enthusiastic for the ex-tension of the New Deal as Texans Maury Maverick and Lyndon Johnson,neither did it produce conservatives as violent in their hatred of the NewDeal as Gene Cox of Georgia and Howard Smith of Virginia. Tar Heelcongressmen-did, however, worry about the direction th e nonemergencyNew Deal was taking. Alarmingly, in their view, the New Deal appearedto be urban oriented, sympathetic toward organized labor and northerncities, and injurious to traditional relationships in southern agricu lture andindustry. Th e controversy over federal regulation of wages and hoursbrought all those fears together.

In July, 1937,Doughton took advantage of his position as Democraticchairman of committees to appoint Graham Barden to a vacancy on theHouse Labor Committee. T he Labor Committee had hitherto held littleattraction for North Carolinians, but it now had under consideration mat-ters of grave concern to the state. Most of the North Carolina delegationbelieved that minimum wage-maximum hours legislation would penalizelow-wage southern industries. They therefore supported Barden's sus-tained efforts to defeat or at least to delay passage of such a bill. After theFair Labor Standards Act passed, they supported his efforts in 1939 and1940 to exempt f rom its provisions workers connected with t he handl ing offood products. What Barden and his colleagues saw as a simple attemp t toclarify the original intent of t he legislation, the Roosevelt administrationsaw as a dangerous drive to undermine the act by exempting from its pro-visions two million of th e lowest paid workers who most needed it. Th e

dispute symbolized the gap between what t he North Carolinians and whatthe administration thought the New Deal was all about. Again in 1940 thedelegation backed Barden's efforts to control the National Labor RelationsBoard, which he believed was exceeding its statutory authority in adminis-tering the Wagner Act and was biased in favor of the CIO.

That the North Carolina congressmen in ,this circumspect enthusiasmfor the New Deal were accurately reflecting the views of their constituentsis suggested by the ease with which they secured reelection in the 1930s.Congressional elections were rarely close, and where they were keenlycontested they rarely reflected national issues. The primaries for the seatsvacated by Hancock, Lambeth, and Umstead in 1938 produced bitterlyfought races, but no identifiable issues divided the plethora of candidates.Only in two districts-the fourth and the third-were there serious effortsto portray th e issues in terms of the New Deal, bu t the se issues merelymasked long-standing personal or factional differences. In 1934 HaroldCooley campaigned for the fourth district seat, which became vacant onEdward Pou's death , by calling for a "New Man for a New Day," and heconsciously tried to exploit pro-New Deal sentiment against Pou's son,George Ross Pou. But the primary contest really reflected a long familyrivalry that dated back to the time when Cooley's father had tried tounseat Edward Pou. That family tension would still be there in 1966whenCooley was finally defeated.

In 1934 the New Deal was not an issue in the third district race. Th e in-cumbent Charles L. Abernethy had been ill for some time and was in noposition to fulfill his duties in Congress, bu t he was hanging on because hewas chronically in debt and desperately needed the salary. Ambitiousyoung politicians, representatives of other parts of the district, and oneperennial enemy made u p the five candidates who opposed him. The storyof the third district for the rest of the 1930s centered on the struggle ofAbemethy's son, Charles, Jr., to recapture his father's seat from the 1934victor, Graham Barden, and to try to pay off the continuing family debtsand keep the telephone connected. To that end he would use any issue hethought would bring him success. In 1936 he ran as a supporter of theTownsend old age plan (a proposal to give everyone over sixty a monthlypension of $200) and by Barden's own admission scared the congressmanby coming within 3,000 votes. But this was the peak of young ~bernethy'ssuccess. In 1938 and 1940 he attempted to run as a New Dealer exploitingBarden's opposition to th e wage-hour legislation. At one point in 1940 theNew Republic, a leading liberal voice, ~ o r t r a ~ e dbernethy as a genuineprogressive who was poised to give the reactionary Barden the fight of hislife. In fact, Abernethy was sliding to final defeat. A few days before theelection he was arrested in possession of a large number of stolen ballot


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papers, and in the end he only just secured more votes than one Dr. ZenoSpence, who was standing for the Townsend Plan, fair freight rates for theSouth, and the teachings of Jesus Christ.I11What the North Carolina congressmen represented in many ways wasthe limitations of agrarian liberalism. The delegation never lapsed into the

violent anti-Roosevelt rhetoric that characterized so many congressionalconservatives. There were no bitter denunciations of Roosevelt as an aspir-ing dictator destroying American liberty, as Senators Bailey and Reynoldscharged. Few of the delegation, for example, were troubled by the presi-dent's proposals for executive reorganization, which provoked such stri-dent opposition elsewhere. They had little difficulty in accepting a thirdterm for Roosevelt. Their rhetoric was continually studded with expres-sions of loyalty to the party, Roosevelt, and the New Deal heritage. Butwhile the North Carolina congressmen accepted a powerful and perma-nent role for the federal government in agriculture in order to raise farmprices, they only tolerated similar help for other disadvantaged groups inAmerican society in the emergency of the early 1930s. Representing thebusinessmen of the Piedmont and the farmer in his role as a businessman,the North Carolina representatives had no desire to see continued spend-ing and regulation become a permanent extension of the New Deal to thebenefit of the urban, or even the rural, poor.

Chapter S ixThe Progressive Paradox

IThe New Deal made ahdifferenceo North Carolina. It rescued t he statefrom economic collapse. For farmers it brought better prices, more credit,and cheaper electricity. In tobacco, crop control and government aidtransformed the prices the growers received and guaranteed them futureprosperity. In cotton the New Deal enabled farmers to stay on the landuntil World War I1 when prices rose and economic opportunities outsideagriculture presented themselves. In industry the New Deal stopped theslide toward liquidation. It staved off a banking collapse and checked thedeflationary spiral in textiles, thereby allowing the millowners, like thecotton farmers, to survive to capitalize on wartime prosperity. In a time ofmass unemployment the New Deal replaced a welfare system that simplycould not cope with the demands of t he depression. The New Deal gaveemergency help to thousands of North Carolinians through direct reliefpayments and work projects and then launched a welfare system that, forall its inadequacies, provided for the first time the prospect of security forthe unemployed, the old, and the needy. The uplifting effect of thesechanges could not be denied. The tobacco farmer enthusiasticallystepping out to market in October, 1933, the tenant farmer with a govern-ment purchase loan, the young boy off to a Civilian Conservation Corpscamp, the college student doing clerical work for the National YouthAdministration, the Works Progress Administration laborer constructing anew government building-all these people enterta ined no doubts thatthe New Deal had wrought important changes in the fabric of day-to-dayNorth Carolina life.And yet the New Deal left the basic economic, social, and ~oliticalstructure of the state largely untouched. The traditional patterns ofauthority in the workplace and on the farm were scarcely altered. Thestructure of agriculture changed little: tobacco and cotton still reignedsupreme, and the position of tenants and small farmers in relation to thelocal merchant-banker-landlord rural elite was not significantly improved.In industry employer authority was as unchecked by unionized workers atthe end of the decade as it had been at the start. In the state's ~o li ti ca lifethe decisions were still taken by men who would not seriously impinge onthe prerogatives of the business/industrial elite of the Piedmont. LOWwages, low per capita income, low levels of educat ional spending, lowrates of unionization, a paucity of public services, and a rudimentary wel-fare system still characterized North Carolina in 1940 as it had in 1930.

NC and the New Deal, Ch. 5

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