It seems a splendid idea to have the young New Deal stalwarts
testify on the way it was, and, despite missteps and waste motion,
so it turns out to be. There is a good deal of the remembered
euphoria that Frank Freidel alludes to in the Foreword - talk not
only of "camaraderie" and "esprit de corps," of digs and crazy
parties and all-night grinds, but also of turning the country
around: "And we did, damn it, we did." Paul Freund puts it
astutely: "It was a glorious time for obscure people because the
big names and captains of industry and the majors of public life
were themselves in a quandary." But the book is not just a kind of
D.C. counterpart to the testimony of Depression victims, as it
first appears - from editor Louchheim's prefatory recollections
too. Nor is it the unstructured, unfocused nostalgia-thon one might
think from the sizable early sections of Supreme-Court-clerk
reminiscences - stocked with great, late Holmes stories (from
Thomas Corcoran, Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, James Rowe, Jr.), and
great Stone (Herbert Wechsler), Cardozo (Joseph Rauh, Jr.), and
Frankfurter (Rauh, Edward Prichard, Jr.) stories. The succeeding
section, however, takes us into the Solicitor General's office -
with Robert D. Stern, Charles Horsky, David Morse, and Freund -
which, as the government's lawyer, defended New Deal legislation
before the Supreme Court. . .and, until FDR proposed to "pack" the
Court, lost case after landmark case. We have already heard about
those cases from the liberal jurists' point of view; we will hear
about them again from the viewpoint of their drafters in the
several departments: the cross-currents, and outright
conflicts-of-testimony, are fascinating - and could themselves
comprise a book. Throughout, we are aware of Tom Cochran's managing
hand and Ben Cohen's brilliant mind. Individual sections bring:
Gerhard Gesell on the embezzlement conviction of snob broker
Richard Whitney ("I am not insolvent," as he's led away: "I can
still borrow money from my friends"); Wilbur Cohen on the advent of
Social Security (Hoover refused to apply for a number, and had to
be assigned one); Abe Fortas on William Douglas and others; Robert
Weaver on the "Black Cabinet" (an emerging topic elsewhere too).
One incidental aspect might be called the affirmation of Alger Hiss
- who testifies not only as a Holmes clerk, but also as an AAA
official; and to whom others make favorable reference. Still
another aspect, pertinent to both the recent Caro biography and to
William Leuchtenberg's In the Shadow of FDR (above), is the
considerable presence of Lyndon Johnson - even apart from Lady Bird
Johnson on the NYA. Rough, to a degree - but also history in the
raw and in the round. (Kirkus Reviews)
There has never been a phenomenon in American life to equal the
invasion of Washington by the young New Dealers-hundreds of men and
women still in their twenties and thirties, brilliant and
dedicated, trained in the law, economics, public administration,
technology, pouring into public life to do nothing less than
restructure American society. They proposed new programs, drafted
legislation, staffed the new agencies. They were active in the
Administration, the Congress, the courts, the news media. They
fanned out all over America to discover the facts, plan ways of
easing the pain of their foundering country, and report on the
results. Many of them went on to be rich, famous, and powerful, but
their early experience in Washington was perhaps the most
inspiriting of their lives. Katie Louchheim was among those who
arrived in Washington in the 1930s, and being a keen writer as well
as the wife of a member of the SEC, she had a front-row seat for
the spectacle of social progress. Now, a half-century later, she
has gathered reminiscences from her old friends and colleagues,
interviewed others, and woven them together into a lively, informal
word-picture of that exciting time. Among the many insiders who
recount their views are Alger Hiss, Robert C. Weaver, Paul A.
Freund, James H. Rowe, Wilbur J. Cohen, Abe Fortas, David Riesman,
and Joseph L. Rauh. This book, a singular and uplifting primary
document of an extraordinary period, is destined to appeal across a
wide spectrum of readers of American history.
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