Historical Musing No. 1 (in "F" Minor); Part Two

With the chicken on the stove and the cat finally settled down for a long, five-minute rest, it is time to complete the first "Historical Musing."

In part one I touched upon statements by FDR regarding his presumptive belief that the nation desired government action. It is worth noting that he was correct in this presumption as the results of the 1932 election prove. Hoover himself was not a proponent of laissez-faire policies (find a copy of Hoover's 1922 American Individualism), his actions and reactions following Black Tuesday show the ends to which he was willing to allow government to take part in widespread economic recovery (one devistating mistake he had made was the Revenue Act of 1932, in which taxes on the highest levels of income were levied from 25 to 63%, the estate tax was doubled, and, possibly most importantly, corporate taxes were raised 15%, attacking those who most directly affect prosperity and recovery). However the message was clear in 1932: help us; don't help me help myself, fix our little problems so that we can forget about all of this (and fix the drought, too). This is understandable, since many in the working classes of Europe had become mesmerized by the ideals of communism, and those ideals trickling out across the industrialized world, strongly influencing many Americans and even leading to a "revolutionary" institution of a government (Russia, nee USSR, nee Russia) based upon those ideals. For many working Americans this philosophy was the proverbial greatest thing since sliced bread, assuming that they had lost their job to an automated bread slicing machine, and in a governmental sense it relied heavily upon "redistribution" to move nearer to some sort of economic equality. With that, on to Part Two.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.

If what we have visited here-to-fore in this speech could be considered a bit "progressive," this sentiment is downright socialistic. I personally find the sentiment frightening that "we" would be willing to put "our" faith in a man who believes in the relocation of the people over whom he was elected to preside in order to facilitate some form of reorganization of land usage or other. Since he deemed it important enough to set as a part of his administration's agenda in his first publicly-spoken monologue as President we may take for granted that this is not merely a prelude to the occasional exercise of eminent domain for a TVA project.

One last bit before I retire...


Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

Would we be better served by a government who keeps their metaphorical noses out of the financial dealings of the people, or one which legislates for the mutual good and common security and strives to bring down the hammer upon transgressors? That is to the taste of the the individual, in my opinion. Yet consider these old-order "evils" to which Mr. Roosevelt speaks. Nearly every generation develops new economic theories and, really, about the only good thing what most of them have brought is the ability to prove them wrong; economic theorists believed that a stagnating economy could not be coupled with inflation, yet a period to which I casually refer as the '70s proved that to be a gross miscalculation. However, throughout capitalist history economies have their ups and their downs; very often the downs seem to attack suddenly, at least to the eyes of the majority of affected people, whereas the ups are often achieved with a relatively more shallow gradient. New Deal implementations may have helped restore some faith in some peoples' selves, but to resolve the economic woes of the nation it was a failure.

Consider the unemployment rates once more; 1926 saw the lowest unemployment percentage in eight years at 1.9%; the average for 1929 was 3.2%, rising to 8.9% for 1930; 1933 saw the worst unemployment rates at 24.9%, although the preceding and following years were not much better. In fact 1937 saw the lowest unemployment rate, at 14.3%, prior to World War Two, and rates failed to dip below 5% (really, they failed to drop out of borderline double digits) until 1943 finally saw a 1.9% rate. According to one article, the Great Depression can be described as containing two periods of recession: August, 1929 through March, 1933 (Hoover); and May, 1937 through June, 1938 (second Roosevelt). For reference, compare this with the unemployment rate for February, 2008 at 4.8%.

For whatever my humble opinion may be worth, if the New Deal, as preluded with the First Inaugural Address, restored the faith of an individual in the individual, thereby winning the admiration and respect of seemingly millions of Americans, then it may be understandable the long-term effects that this had on the economy; the policy failed, and inspired decades of economic theory and political action based upon those failures.

Next on the agenda: Woodrow Wilson, the Change in Government, and Cardoza's Modern Speculation.

On Deck: Is the Snow Off Peavine Yet?