The continuing celebration of the 75th anniversary of the New Deal at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and Museum took a decidedly literary turn on Saturday, June 21, as the historic site held its fifth annual Roosevelt Reading Festival in the Henry A. Wallace Visitors’ Center. Twelve distinguished authors of recent Roosevelt-related volumes, including Gray Brechin, Anthony Badger, Kathryn Flynn, Joseph Persico and Amity Shlaes, read from their works and fielded questions before proceeding to book signing sessions.
A highlight of the day was the dedication of the newly refurbished Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Research Room at the library, named for the most famous of Roosevelt scholars, who passed away last year at the age of 89. Schlesinger’s widow, Alexandra, and his son, Andrew, and Robert – both of whom participated in the festival as authors – were on hand as the sterling qualities of the Kennedy advisor and author of “The Age of Roosevelt” were recalled in a room where he had labored so often and so long.
“Today the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute is pleased to rededicate this research room in honor forever of Arthur Schlesinger’s enduring contribution to our understanding of the Roosevelt era,” said Cynthis Koch, director of the library. She went on to point out the special features of the revitalized space, including new lights, individual reading tables, and Schlesinger’s original request to work as a scholar there, dated July 7, 1949, which has been framed and given pride of place at the entrance to the room.
“Arthur Schlesinger was the definitive historian of the New Deal,” said Anthony Badger, who is the Paul Mellon Professor of History at Cambridge University. “No one else mastered so well the great complexity of issues and characters and programs involved, and how they interacted. And his generosity was fabled. Because Arthur worked so much more quickly than the other scholars here, he used to slip them pieces of paper indicating where they might find materials related to the particular topic they were researching. And I can testify to the great breadth and tolerance of his character; I was present at a dinner given in his honor at Cambridge to which he insisted on inviting the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, the Thatcherite historian Lord Hugh Thomas, and Roy Jenkins, the Social Democratic leader. I celebrate the life and work of a wonderful scholar, public intellectual, and friend.”
In their remarks, the members of the Schlesinger family stressed the historian’s deep attachment to the Hyde Park site.
“I would talk often to my father about research, and I truly believe some of his happiest days were spent amidst files and boxes right here,” said Robert Schlesinger.
“Arthur would have been so thrilled to have a permanent memorial to the time he spent here,” said Mrs. Schlesinger, thanking everyone on behalf of the entire Schlesinger family.
Criticism as well
In keeping with the spirit of breadth and tolerance, the Roosevelt Reading Festival back at the Wallace Center featured not only New Deal loyalists, but one of that movement’s most tenacious critics as well. Amity Shlaes, the free market-centric economic columnist, was adamant in expressing her belief that the New Deal was no answer to the Great Depression.
“Government intervention made it worse,” she told the Beat as she signed copies of her book “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.” “Laws and officials did perverse things to the economy. Hoover and Roosevelt both made big mistakes. The country was in a deflation and they said it was inflation – they got it backwards. They lightened and cut capital availability to the point where there was much less money to invest or borrow, making it difficult to create jobs. My book is an effort to give a voice to New Deal skepticism, to raise the possibility that great errors were made.”
Yet this being the Roosevelt Reading Festival, the balance of opinion naturally swung to the other side.
“The New Deal is now clearly seen as a defining moment of the 20th century,” Badger, author of “FDR: The First Hundred Days,” told the Beat during his own book-signing session. “It didn’t find a magic bullet for recovery, but by these programs the federal government finally became responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans. It provided social cohesion that enabled the country to survive the Depression and fight a world war to victory without changing its form of government.”
Robert Schlesinger, whose book “White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters” details how the relationship between the two has changed over the decades, emphasized in his comments to the Beat that the shifts have been dramatic.
“From Roosevelt to Kennedy, the speechwriter was a policy aid, consulting and helping to articulate the administration’s positions and initiatives. Starting with Johnson and Nixon, there was a real shift to being just a mouthpiece. The process hit a real bottom with Reagan and the elder Bush. Different types of people were hired to be speechwriters once this occurred; people with academic or legal backgrounds were, not exclusively, but largely replaced by those who had a background as reporters. For a while they were separated from the policy development system, which is problematic because for a president giving a speech is inherently a decision making enterprise.”
Sclesinger’s brother Andrew was also at the festival, reading from and offering commentary on his father’s “Journals,” covering the period 1952 to 2000, which he co-edited with Stephen Schlesinger.
Closing the daylong event was a keynote speech by Gray Brechin, founder of the California Living New Deal Project, which documents the physical infrastructure raised by the WPA and other government programs in that state and sponsors educational events related to them. He stressed the continuing relevance of the New Deal, epitomized by a bumper sticker he displayed showing a cartoon of a chipper FDR emblazoned with the slogan “Roosevelt – Now More Than Ever.”
“I think it is important to learn from the last depression,” he said. “It is something very difficult to imagine, especially for young people. We tend to look at that time through the lens of the social safety net created by FDR, and it is difficult to imagine the terror that people felt without it. Also try and imagine a president who told Americans to be courageous.”
Brechin went on to deplore what he characterized as the undoing of much of the New deal by the last 30 years of mainly conservative governance, and said it had had severe consequences.
“If you don’t pay your taxes, things fall down,” he said. “Our national infrastructure has been given a ‘D’ by the American Association of Civil Engineers – we’re becoming Third World. How do you run a modern state when you don’t have sufficient revenues to do it?
“The great question faced by Roosevelt and his administration was ‘How do you give people back their self-respect when it has been smashed through no fault of their own?’ A lot of the answer was centered on community involvement, which is what the New Deal was all about.
“The Works Progress Administration, the Works Conservation Administration – these programs and their projects have immeasurably improved the lives of millions, who enjoy the results – and they don’t realize it.”