Tue Nov 7 09:45:48 EST 2006
Published by EH.NET (November 2006)
Spencer Weber Waller, _Thurman Arnold: A Biography_. New York: New
York University Press, 2005. xi + 271 pp. $40 (cloth), ISBN:
0-8147-9392-4.
Richard E. Holl, _From Boardroom to the War Room: America's Corporate
Liberals and FDR's Preparedness Program_. Rochester, NY: University
of Rochester Press, 2005. x + 191 pp. $75 (cloth), ISBN:
1-58046-192-1.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Michael V. Namorato, Department of History,
University of Mississippi.
These studies by Spencer Waller and Richard Holl have a number of
interesting commonalities: both discuss American business, both
address the importance of the New Deal and Franklin D. Roosevelt's
policies, and both analyze how business and the New Deal interacted.
They differ primarily in their approaches to these distinct areas of
concern. Where Waller writes a biography of Thurman Arnold who was a
member of the Department of Justice in the late 1930s, Holl looks at
how American corporate businessmen (or liberals, as he calls them)
worked with the Roosevelt Administration. Even more interesting is
how these very corporate liberals and Thurman Arnold perceived each
other.
Waller argues very forcefully that Thurman Arnold was a unique
individual in so many ways. He was "in essence the decathlon champion
of American law" (p. 2). He was a practitioner, a law school dean, a
legal realist, author, New Dealer, creator and enforcer of modern
anti-trust laws, a federal judge, a defender of free speech during
the McCarthy era, and the founder of one of the most prominent law
firms in Washington today. As a person, moreover, Waller paints a
picture of this icon as one who liked to be funny, was not much of a
father (but made up for it by being a better grandfather), and whose
loyalty to his friends, such as Abe Fortas, never wavered.
In reaching these conclusions, Waller meticulously studies Arnold's
life -- beginning with his parents, childhood in Wyoming, education
at Princeton, and law school at Harvard. An average student, Arnold
developed his interests in writing and partying, although, by law
school, he focused more and more on the work at hand. As a young
lawyer, Arnold went to Chicago where he took on cases that seemed to
be routine and not very challenging. When World War I broke out, he
served in France after which he and his wife returned to Laramie to
set up home and a law practice.
Waller recounts details about Arnold's life as a small town
politician and later dean of the West Virginia College of Law, which
helped him to survive the Great Depression. From there, he went to
the Yale Law School as a teacher. Waller spends a considerable amount
of time discussing how Arnold became a "legal realist" at Yale. He
also summarizes in detail Arnold's writings in such works as _The
Symbols of Government_ and _The Folklore of Capitalism_. Undoubtedly,
these exercises in teaching and writing helped prepare him for the
later work he would do in the New Deal in the Anti-Trust Division of
the Department of Justice.
In Chapter 6, Waller recounts how Arnold got into the New Deal and
worked on the enforcement of anti-trust laws, and how Franklin D.
Roosevelt responded to what he had done. The author gives long,
in-depth explanations of the cases that Arnold pursued -- which were
won, lost, or had a long-term impact on American jurisprudence.
Probably the most significant discussion in these sections recounts
how Arnold perceived anti-trust as a means of preventing abuse of
power in the business world. Relentless in promoting himself and his
causes, Arnold continually lobbied for more staff, resources, and
funds. Several cases would go on to become quite important in legal
history such as the Alcoa, American Medical Association, and oil
industry cases. Nevertheless, with his usefulness diminishing, Arnold
left the New Deal to start a new life as a federal judge.
His judgeship was quite unhappy and Arnold was relieved to get out of
it and into opening a private practice, at first with Reed Miller.
Later, of course, Arnold joined forces with Abe Fortas and Paul
Porter. Together, they established one of the most prominent law
firms in Washington. The remainder of the book studies how the firm
grew, how it got involved in the McCarthy era witch hunt cases, and
Arnold's work with Coca Cola and Fortas' relationship with Lyndon
Johnson. By the 1960s, Arnold was an icon among lawyers in
Washington, despite his outspoken views on Vietnam and other issues.
On November 7, 1969, after telling his wife Frances that he was not
sure he wanted to live any longer, he died peacefully.
Richard Holl, unlike Waller, takes a different approach in his study
of American business and the New Deal. Essentially, Holl looks at
what he calls the "corporate liberals" of the American business
world. These were visionary businessmen who sought to work with
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal instead of fighting against it. They
saw cooperation with the government as a means of avoiding a stronger
central state and as a way of re-creating industrial self-government.
Holl makes the case that these corporate liberals were those
businessmen in the 1920s who were very much in favor of welfare
capitalism and trade associationism. They wanted to help workers,
improve business's position in American society, and collaborate with
the federal government. Specifically, Holl focuses on Henry Dennison,
Gerard Swope, Marion Folsom, Edward Stettinius, William Knudsen,
Donald Nelson, Averell Harriman, Owen Young, and a few others.
Starting with the 1920s, Holl details how these corporate liberals
tried to develop their own welfare capitalist plan in his their own
companies and how the Great Depression forced them to retract their
promises. However, Holl goes on to show that these corporate
liberals, especially people like Stettinius, Knudsen, and Nelson,
worked with Franklin Roosevelt in his New Deal, beginning with the
National Recovery Administration, Social Security, and the Wagner
Act. Holl argues forcefully that the BAC (Business Advisory Council)
of the Department of Commerce sustained the corporate liberals'
presence within the Roosevelt Administration. Even though most
historians talk about the anti-Roosevelt business position by
1937-38, Holl points out that there were still a number of corporate
liberals who supported the president. With Harry Hopkins in the
Commerce Department, these corporate liberals like Willard Thorp,
Edward Noble, and Robert Wood worked with the secretary to see how
businessmen could foster New Deal objectives as, for example, with
the Bureau of Industrial Economics.
But, it was really in the preparedness area that the corporate
liberals made their mark. Holl meticulously relates how the United
States was unprepared for World War II. Roosevelt and the corporate
liberals knew it and realized that something had to be done to
rectify this dangerous situation. Neither Roosevelt nor the corporate
liberals wanted a state-centered answer like the "all-outers" New
Dealers, such as Harold Ickes. Instead, the president and his
business supporters called for and got cooperation.
This is where Holl contributes his most original ideas. Using
Stettinius, Knudsen, and Nelson as backdrops, Holl studies how the
War Resources Board, the National Defense Advisory Commission, and
the Office of Production Management went about helping the United
States prepare itself for war by bringing the military and business
together, by having "educational orders" filled out by companies that
would have to produce military supplies, by having these influential
businessmen direct the military and civilian authorities along
workable paths for meeting wartime demands, and by giving the
president leeway to develop and foster cooperation between business
and government. In the end, it all worked in the sense that the
corporate liberals kept the extreme radical New Dealers and extreme
anti-New Deal businessmen from dominating war preparations.
How does one assess these two works on the New Deal? In many ways
Waller's book is a biography about a lawyer which is written by a
lawyer. This is not meant in any way to demean or detract from the
study. Waller has written a good work on an individual who has not
received as much attention as he deserves. It should also be pointed
out, however, that there are a few shortcomings in this work. The
author spends too much time summarizing Arnold's briefs and his
writings. He also tends to give Arnold more importance than he might
have had. And, his portrayal of Arnold as an individual is sometimes
lost in the maze of all the "legalese" that the reader has to
confront.
On the other hand, it is clear that Holl has done an extensive amount
of research on the corporate liberals and wartime agencies. His
research is solid, his ideas are definitely interesting, and his
writing style is fine. But, again as in the case of Waller, Holl has
a couple of shortcomings. The most important weakness is that he
tends to re-iterate much of what others have said about businessmen,
especially Ellis Hawley. What makes Holl's work original, though, is
that he focuses more on the individual corporate executives. Here,
his contribution is, indeed, significant.
In closing, both Waller's biography of Thurman Arnold and Holl's
study of America's corporate liberals are solid examples of
old-fashioned, good historical research and analysis. Both have
offered interesting perspectives on their subjects and both have
given us some original ideas to look at and consider when it comes to
American business, the New Deal, and the anti-trust laws.
Michael V. Namorato, Professor of History at the University of
Mississippi, specializes in the Great Depression-New Deal era. He is
currently working with two co-authors on a political, economic study
of child welfare in Mississippi.
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