Government by Pressure

I

THE old New England town meeting was a democratic institution — an unusual phenomenon among modern men. From that root grew our form of government by chosen representatives of the people.

But Congress is not a town meeting in any sense. For in the town meeting each individual represented himself and spoke for himself. Members of Congress do not speak for themselves. They speak for their constituencies.

The members of Congress need not fully agree with what they themselves say. They need not believe altogether what they advocate. Senator Ashurst, for instance, who boasts of his inconsistency in speech and interview, is no less a man because he constantly disagrees with himself. He tries always to agree with his constituency, to fathom the wish of his constituency and to act accordingly. That is the essence of representative government.

The House of Representatives had always been that sort of body—a group of men who cleave to the will of their constituencies. The Senate, before direct election by the people, according to the Seventeenth Amendment, aspired to a different attitude. Whereas the lower house was supposed to keep its ear close to the ground, the upper house was expected to take a national, a more aloof, a more impersonal view.

Since the direct election of Senators, however, they, like Representatives, have put their ears to the ground. It might even be suggested that some members of this august body wear amplifiers.

II

Members of the Congress may discover the wishes of their constituencies by two simple methods: one is to go back to the bailiwicks to find out by painstaking search what public opinion there really is; the other is to wait for the information to come to them in the form of letters, telegrams, petitions, editorials.

The first method is difficult and troublesome; the second is quite facile. In fact, it has in recent years been simplified by the activities of pressure groups and by the use of mass pressure methods by scientifically conducted agencies of publicity. During the Roosevelt regime the government has actually accelerated the activities of pressure groups and has employed for its purposes a huge corps — the largest ever assembled — of publicity men under the general supervision of that most competent of press agents, Charles Michelson of the Democratic National Committee. Michelson is without peer in the organization and direction of mass pressure.

A pressure group is a number of men and women who organize for the purpose of enforcing their will upon a sufficient number of members of Congress to vote for legislation they favor. Such groups have always existed in the United States and have maintained effective agencies in Washington. Under older methods, men engaged in this practice were called lobbyists, the name coming from the assumption that they meet the Senators and Representatives in the lobbies of their respective houses and tell them their troubles.

Of course the lobbyist does no such thing. He meets whomever he seeks to meet in all sorts of ways, openly or secretly, in a direct, businesslike fashion or at a social gathering. Many lobbyists are former Congressmen or even cabinet officers or party leaders unto whom current gentlemen of the Congress may be beholden for past favors. Some of them are lawyers and others are former newspaper men who know their way around Washington.

Nowadays, when administrative law has become so important, a lobbyist who is socially on good terms with bureau chiefs, or even second-line administrators, can get things done for his employers. Sometimes this means coming into possession of advance information of what will be done, so that pressure may be developed back home in advance of the act. Washington, like every capital in the world, is full of leaks and rumors, and men earn a living supplying the data thus gathered to interested parties. Pressure groups thus utilize their agents not only to exert pressure but to obtain advance information.

III

But new pressure groups have come into existence which do not depend upon lobbyists at all. They exert direct mass pressure upon Congress. They depend more upon creating situations which startle the country. They utilize the class prejudices to which such free rein has been given during the past few years.

These men and women have as much to defend as any corporation which employed a lobbyist to look after tariff legislation in the old days. They have, for instance, a vested interest in the various relief agencies which involve a redistribution of wealth without the direct exchange of productive labor for money.

Now, with unemployment practically at an end in manufacturing industries, WPA pressure groups fight to continue the existence of their particular organizations after they have long outlived their usefulness. They conduct strikes and sit-downs in government agencies as though they were combating an employer who pays them for work produced. Actually they are living on public charity to which they are not entitled, but which is a bounty to keep them from starving either when there is no work or when they will not work.

The pressure exerted by these groups upon local officials is potent. In New York City their power has grown to such dimensions that the Park Commissioner is in constant difficulty in his effort to get work out of these people, part of whose cost the city pays.

First of all, those who live on the WPA constitute a sufficient number everywhere to represent a political power. Secondly, there are always middle-class individuals whose humane instincts lead them to believe everything they hear if it is told by a socalled underdog. Then there is an organized mass of professional social workers, who have thrived upon government expenditures and who use the agencies of their organizations to press-agent the needs of WPA workers.

The result is that mayors are frightened. What will all this pressure mean in the next election? They know that conditions do not warrant the expenditures which the WPA people want to make permanent — and to which each city contributes perhaps more than it ought. They bring pressure to bear on the governors of states and on the President of the United States. ‘For the love of everything political,’ they shout, ‘get these WPA creatures out of our hair! Give them money and more money until after the next election.’

But there is always a next election, and the WPA money-takers know that and they frighten the politicians by their mass pressure tactics. Every time there is even a rumor of balancing the budget or economy in government, they threaten a march on Washington. And if there is anything that the President does not like, and that Congress does not like, it is a march on Washington.

So give them their money. Let them have what they want. That will relieve the pressure.

IV

Of course, that starts pressure from other groups. Taxpayer groups promote nation-wide propaganda to call attention to the menace of high taxes. ‘Fifty-three taxes in a loaf of bread!’ they scream. But they are discredited.

The National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the Liberty League, the Crusaders, the Women Investors, and kindred organizations keep up the cry against high taxes. But they were defeated in the last election, so they do not count. They opposed the mandate, and the government insists that it received a mandate. Therefore the government can ignore the pressure from such sources.

Besides, these groups represent Business, and Business is vicious. In fact, government propaganda is devoted to convincing the American people that Business is vicious. The propagandists even seek to convince the business man himself that he is vicious. They have already so convinced many wives and children of business men, who are to hang their heads in shame when they come home for dinner. The terms ‘ Economic Royalists,’ ‘Princes of Plenty,’ ‘Defeatist Lawyers,’ and so on, are not the mere vituperations of political partisanship. They are the result of careful planning in the science of mass pressure. They serve to develop an inferiority complex and thus to break down morale. Says Johnny to his father, ‘Are you an Economic Royalist?’ and the old gentleman splutters and wonders what the younger generation will say next. Government thus relieves itself from the pressures of these groups either by smearing their leaders or by winning them away from their colleagues by high office, by flattery, or by undermining their faith in their personal futures.

Business pressure on government is, then, for the present not effective. Nevertheless it continues in many forms, and in some respects is beginning to influence those who are disappointed with the work of the present administration.

The business man as an individual, nevertheless, is still frightened and timid. He is not so scared as he was during Senator Black’s inquisitions, but he does fear that they may be renewed.

The American business man is still on the defensive, and therefore avoids overt use of pressure methods. He is afraid of a boomerang. He does not know when any effort he may put forth to protect his position will be used against him. He fears income tax investigations; he fears that when his company comes before the SEC with regard to future financing he might be held up to his disadvantage; he fears dissolution suits; he fears all sorts of reprisals.

Further, he is frightfully confused by the varieties of lines taken by his colleagues. Some are even hailing John Lewis, Governor Murphy, and Franklin D. Roosevelt as saviors. The line of reasoning of those who feel that way is similar to the thought, which generated support among German industrialists for Hitler. They say that Lewis is a ‘dealable’ person — he listens to reason: a transaction can be entered into with him which takes the bloom off a strike; that he is flattered by association with the financially great and the socially élite, and that therefore they can put things over on him and he will put things over for them — all of which is interesting, if true, but involves an emphasis on double-crossing which is frightfully demoralizing.

If ever boring from within was done in American industry, it has taken place in connection with the attitude of big business toward the personality of John Lewis — and the result is that pressure groups among business men and business organizations are without vitality. Not only is American business currently on the defensive, but it is not making a virile stand.

For the sake of accurate reporting, the preceding sentence must be modified, because self-interest always finds a way to protect itself. The policies of defeatism pursued by business are proving and will continue to prove futile because it is altogether impossible for John Lewis or anyone else to guarantee industrial peace.

After so many years of mass propaganda, in which every vehicle of pressure was utilized to accomplish mass dissatisfaction, nothing can be done to stem the tide of hatred until it has run its course. Nor is it possible to chart that course in advance any more than to foretell the exact nature of a flood. It is even possible that those who are out in front of the mass — John Lewis, Homer Martin, Philip Murray, Adolphe Germer, Powers Hapgood, and their associates — may be engulfed in the muddied waters along with the captains of industry. Rank-and-file movements may even turn their leadership aside for a time if the leaders continue to win strikes in which there is no advantage to the worker.

Because of the confusing results of current strike settlements and the inept response of a section of business leadership to mass pressure, there is ample revolt, ample resentment, in business circles against the breakdown in resistance to this pressure. And there will undoubtedly be a re-forming of ranks, with a resultant business pressure upon government.

V

One of the most startling political escapades of the present régime is the story of Mr. James H. Rand, Jr., the head of the Remington-Rand Company, manufacturers of typewriters and business equipment, whose principal customer ordinarily should be the Government of the United States.

In the early days of the Roosevelt Administration, Mr. Rand was an agency of government pressure. He was, in fact, the ‘white-haired boy’ among business men. He was the leading spirit in the Committee of the Nation, which was a body of business men organized for the purpose of making popular the administration’s early monetary policies. They were against gold; they were for the Roosevelt silver policy; they were for cheap money. Mr. Rand did much to make Mr. Roosevelt popular among business men. The Committee of the Nation actually attempted to make everything appear to be rational and sound and beneficial to business.

How ‘Jimmy’ Rand and Franklin D. Roosevelt came to fall out, I do not know. But early in the spring of 1934 Dr. William A. Wirt, of Gary, Indiana, a man of hitherto unblemished reputation and a truly great educator, appeared before a Committee of the House, introduced by James H. Rand, Jr., sponsored by the Committee of the Nation, and spoke of a plot to remake the American form of government.

Dr. Wirt reported a conversation he said he had with a group of ‘ Brain Trusters,’ among whom was Rexford Guy Tugwell. In view of the sit-down strikes and the attempt to pack the Court, his statements take on a new significance. Let me quote one or two paragraphs which relate to the subject we are now discussing. Dr. Wirt said:

I was frankly told that I underestimated the power of propaganda. That, since the World War, propaganda had been developed into a science. That they could make the newspapers and magazines beg for mercy by threatening to take away much of their advertising by a measure to compel only the unvarnished truth in advertising.

That they could make the financiers be good by showing up at public investigations the crooks in the game. And that the power of public investigation in their own hands alone would make the cold chills run up and down the spines of the other business leaders and politicians — honest men as well as crooks. . . .

They were sure that the leaders of industry and labor could be kept quiet by the hope of getting their own share of the government doles in the form of loans, and contracts for material and labor — provided they were subservient.

They were sure that the colleges and schools could be kept in line by the hope of Federal aid until the many New Dealers in the schools and colleges had control of them.

Well, the pressure machine was put on Dr. Wirt and Mr. Rand. By the use of propaganda, Dr. Wirt was made to appear so ridiculous that he retired to Gary mortified. He had really sought to aid His country and his President, and a steam roller went over him and flattened him out.

James H. Rand, Jr., and his company have had unending labor troubles since he fell out with his former allies. He has apparently been thrown to the dogs and shown no mercy.

Is there a relationship between what happened to Rand and his support of Dr. Wirt’s attack on certain New Dealers? Frankly, I do not know. But the effect is to strengthen the fear psychology which is so characteristic of business men to-day. After all, the government is a huge customer and can shift orders to competitors, and business men are afraid of that. The lesson that Rand may or may not have learned has not gone unnoted in Wall Street, and companies which have to go before the SEC, the ICC, or the FTC tend to conform to the New Deal. Thus, pressure has done the trick.

VI

Labor pressure on government is now terrifyingly effective. John Lewis has opetdy challenged the President, and every little Lewis does the same kind of threatening. In effect, they say: ‘We elected you — deliver!’

And although the President did once gently slap Mr. Lewis’s wrist, and although General Hugh Johnson did with some semblance of authority announce that Lewis was not as close to the President as t he public thought, the fact remains that up to the moment of writing the President and his Secretary of Labor have protected Mr. Lewis in every situation where he needed their aid. Some day, when men cease to fear administration pressure, the story will be told of how much that assistance has meant in the development of the C. I. O. Perhaps it will come out in the course of Congressional investigations; but, in confidence, one hears many startling tales — and one can only hope that some of them may not be true.

Labor pressure on Senators and Representatives is equally forceful, effective, overt, and threatening. The 75th Congress may candidly be recognized as a labor Congress (as a body, thus far, and except on one issue: the Supreme Court), dominated by the A. F. of L. and the C. I. O. And it is curious that, whereas these labor organizations are fighting each other, neither the President nor Congress dares to antagonize either of them.

Quite apart from the avoidance of a Congressional investigation of the sitdowns, which would have disclosed government complicity, it was even difficult to get through a resolution condemning this outrageous practice. It is interesting to note that Senator Robinson, when he consented to the introduction of a resolution, insisted that it should be one of such a nature that the President would not have to sign it; and when the resolution finally passed the Senate it was diluted by modifying unrelated matter which served to divert attention from the main issue. The Senate was apparently afraid to pass an out-and-out antisit-down resolution.

The President, who has commented on every subject, has been silent on actual revolutionary conduct in several states, and has seen to it that his silence is fully protected by his agents in Congress. There can be no question that Congress and the President recognize the dangers of the sit-down; they could follow the example of William Green of the A. F. of L., who is ardently calling attention to the dangerous course even at the risk of being accused of scabbing.

But C. I. O. pressure is now so potent that no agency of government risks a test of strength with it. Yet in Flint, Michigan, where the C. I. O. staged its most dramatic exhibition of strength, the voters at a by-election voted down all C. I. O. candidates for public office. And the Michigan legislature declared its opposition to the sit-down.

VII

There is no scientific gauge of the pressure of public opinion. The Gallup test is supposed to be superior to all others because its appraisal of the respective strength of presidential candidates turned out to be fairly accurate. Yet it is difficult to know whether this or similar estimates of public opinion are correct at the moment of polling, or whether, if they are then correct, the views expressed at that time are sustained over any period of time.

It is the tendency of politicians to estimate pressure on altogether a different basis. They try to determine exactly how much harm a particular pressure group can do. It is a kind of public blackmail. For instance at this moment, if the Liberty League supports a candidate, he may be defeated; but if it opposes a candidate he will not necessarily be defeated. On the other hand, John Lewis contends, and it has not been denied, that he and his party elected President Roosevelt, Governor Murphy, and Governor Earle. As long as that record stands, John Lewis and the C. I. O. have a large number of public officials fairly frightened.

However, pressure groups nearly always exceed the bounds of decency. In fact, the entire conception of pressure — other than the right of petition — exerted on a public official is indecent. No matter how general the practice has become, it runs counter to the democratic tradition. Therefore a resistance to it is inevitably set up by public officials congenitally incapable of being blackmailed. For instance, pressure on Senator Wheeler or Senator Carter Glass is a dangerous experiment, because such men explode too easily and tend to take the public into their confidence. The result is such a boomerang as the President’s Supreme Court proposal is proving to be. In that instance more pressure was exerted than could be borne, and the free men responded accordingly.

VIII

It is impossible to eliminate pressure groups in a free society, but we should be vigilant to identify them and to discover their motives. Almost every measure of Congress provides some benefit to some group — and the task is to avoid turning a temporary benefit into a vested interest fought for by a pressure group. Social workers have in recent years taken advantage of the emergencies developed by the depression and the recovery to establish just such vested interests, and they are fighting for them as Mr. Grundy fought for his tariff. The continuous and often ridiculous quarrel between Mr. Harry Hopkins and Mr. Ickes for control of funds is part of the social workers’ struggle to maintain newly created vested interests established by group pressure upon government.

The Anti-Saloon League developed the modern pressure group formula of direct assault upon the individual public official, threatening him with defeat and insisting that he abide by their programme irrespective of his personal opinion. They poured money into Congressional districts to defeat particular candidates and made the lives of appointed officials miserable by constant snooping and tattling. Few public men dared to resist this pressure. Al Smith did — and made a career of it; but by and large, politicians tended to cringe before the whip of this pressure organization. It was not until Al Capone’s oligarchy made itself utterly obnoxious that a popular revolt freed politicians from this pressure.

Similarly, the evils of the sit-down might have resulted in a popular revolt against the domination of government by John Lewis. John Lewis, however, is afraid of his own weapons, and if he can control the rank and file of the C. I. O. the sit-downs will disappear. The independence, the daring adherence to principle on the part of Walter Chrysler, undoubtedly influenced public opinion, but the more significant explanation is the resistance to the method by local communities and the workers themselves. Only politicians feared the lash of this pressure. And as no labor movement can be effective in opposition to local public opinion, the sit-down will be dropped.

The problem that the C. I. O. faces, then, is how to maintain pressure on politicians without dramatic activities which maintain the impression of terrific pressure on the front pages of newspapers.

For this is essential. Some pressure groups work secretly, because they get the best advantages that way. Such a pressure group as the C. I. O. must exert its pressure through the press. Its technique is to pile up events, occurrences, activities, until the sole issue before the nation is the C. I. O. This gives the impression of tremendous strength. The strength may or may not be as great as the impression, but what matters is the impression, not the reality. The effect of this technique is triple: —

1. The workers feel that this is the dominant movement.

2. The politicians cringe before it.

3. The natural enemies of the movement prepare to compromise.

This technique has one weakness. It must have access to the front pages of newspapers. The Lindbergh flight, the Gedeon murders, an earthquake, a flood — anything might drive it off the front page. Unless genuine strength is achieved before it is driven off the front page, a new dramatic event must be staged to maintain the pressure. That is the reason for the terrific speed of the C. I. O., in which defeat was risked all the time. For instance, it is known beyond question that, had General Motors not agreed to the absurd Knudsen-Murphy letter, the C. I. O. would have lost the General Motors strike as it lost the Chrysler strike. Speed is essential, because the strike is fought in the newspapers and the sitdown itself is window-trimming. This technique in mass pressure is available only for causes which cannot rely for support upon a general public approval. Their task is to become established before disapproval can affect them.

Another type of mass pressure is embodied in the President’s Fireside Addresses. These are, of course, the perfection of a political device. But nothing that has ever been tried by any public man in the past, or by anyone else at the present time, has been equally effective. The President makes no attempt really to put over an idea or a cause. He puts over Franklin D. Roosevelt. The voice, the choice of words, the ring of sincerity, the appeal to the heart — it all goes over.

President Roosevelt, by his use of the radio, has developed a mass pressure upon Congress which made the 74th Congress a rubber stamp. The 75th Congress is beginning to rebel against this condition. Thus far, this year, the President’s use of the radio has not been as effective as heretofore; and unless he restores his pressure upon his public, there will be a lessening of their pressure upon Congress. As the rubberstamp character of Congress is the product of this pressure technique, any lessening of the pressure will result in a change in the attitude of Congress toward the President. It may restore the authority of the Democratic Party over the New Deal.

Finally, it must be noted that John Lewis, realizing the weakening in the independence of Congress, turns on the pressure in the interest of his particular cause. Paul Mallon, in a dispatch from Washington on May 9, describes the blocking of the resolution in the Senate against the sit-down strike. He says, ‘The job was done by a man on the telephone with the voice of a Hamlet in rage.’ That was the voice of John Lewis. The Congressional Record of the days when this debate took place makes very distressing reading. Senators devote themselves to blocking the resolution. Not one sound argument appears against the resolution. Not one attempt is made to defend the legality of the sit-down. The opponents of the resolution attempt, time after time, to confuse the issue, and finally a compromise resolution saves the face of John Lewis. No wonder that Senator Bailey, disgusted and weary, breaks the Democratic ranks and in anger says: —

Mr. President, I am going to be very definite about this matter. Who involved the President of the United States in this situation? I did not. The Senate did not. The Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Byrnes] did not. John Lewis did. We had just as well confront the fact. He stood upon the housetops of this land, and, in excess of arrogance, announced that he had elected Mr. Roosevelt President, that he had contributed half a million dollars to the campaign fund, and he demanded that the President of the United States of America come to his deliverance and take his side. ... I wish the President had said, ‘I am very grateful to Mr. Lewis for his help in the election. . . . But I am the President of the United States and the servant of all the people. I do not intend that anyone shall ever say to the President that he has to do this, or that he has to do that, or that he has to do the other.’ I wish he had said that; and had he done so there would have been an end to such a situation in America. But he did not say it.

In that speech appears all the resentment, the bitterness, even the anguish of a Senator who finds himself no longer able to bend his knee to pressure.