Unsanctioned Voice; World War II, isolationism, wartime price and wage controls, Eugene Lyons, Red Decade, blacklisting, The Pathfinder, David Lawrence, wartime paper rationing

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note , Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3, Chapters 4-6, Chapters 7-10 , Chapters 11 and 12 , Chapter 13 , Chapter 14 , Chapters 15 and 16 , Chapters 17-19 , Chapter 20 , Chapters 21 and 22, Chapters 23-25 and Chapter 26 of Bruce Ramsey's Unsanctioned Voice.




Chapter 27 discusses Garrett's opposition to the U.S. joining the fight in World War II prior to the Pearl Harbor attack.

Garrett decried [p. 191] the "contrary way" that FDR proceeded toward war - alternating between open advocacy for war and retreating from such advocacy. Despite Garrett's opposition, Garrett praised FDR for his ability to follow that clever strategy (necessitated by America's general opposition to war). What the book does not discuss is the role of the shifting Soviet alliances on American foreign policy. From the mid-1930's through mid-1941, Soviet policy toward Nazi Germany shifted several times (that is an understatement). The American left's attitude toward war and Germany shifted with it. Such shifts influenced FDR's foreign policy (though not completely). Eugene Lyons' definitive book-length study of these parallel shifts appears in Red Decade (1941). [These shifts also influenced Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 and precipitated Orwell's break with leftism.] Any discussion of American attitudes regarding war during the 1930's that ignores the left's parallel shifts with Soviet policy will necessarily be incomplete and misleading.



Ramsey notes that Garrett advocated preparedness despite his anti-war position. [pp. 191-192]. Garrett thus stands in contrast to today's anti-war activists, who oppose the very concept of preparedness.

Garrett viewed Lend-Lease as the real declaration of war, even though it wasn't called by that name. A large part of Garrett's objection to FDR's policies was that FDR was committing the country to war without identifying his objectives. [pp. 193-194]. America was creeping toward war without realizing it.

"Garrett's sympathy was never with the dictatorships." [p. 194]. [Thus providing another contrast with the cold war peace movement.] Garrett attempted to raise money for Finland during this period, as Finland had been invaded by the U.S.S.R.

Garrett reluctantly supported wartime price and wage controls. [p. 195]. I believe that the architects of such controls had more ambitious goals in mind than the justifications that motivated Garrett. Ramsey references a 1943 book that takes the opposite view. While I might agree with Garrett's position as far as it goes, those who proposed and enforced the wartime price controls went much further than was necessary for prosecution of the war. The war was an excuse for further government crackdowns in the economy.

Garrett (and others) were purged from the Saturday Evening Post in March 1942, despite supporting the war after Pearl Harbor (p. 196). (Such support would also contrast Garrett with today's "progressives," many of whom would find any excuse to oppose American war efforts no matter how severely the U.S. was attacked). Page 197 describes Garrett's work as a laborer in a naval shipyard, other manual labor Garrett performed in his later years and cites correspondence with Bernard Baruch.

In chapter 28, we see that Garrett was blacklisted following his termination from the Saturday Evening Post, and that other groups and publications were unfairly labelled as pro-Nazi [p. 201]. As Ramsey writes, "The anti-New Deal newspapers - and there had been a lot of them in the 1930s - were mostly cowed by the government." [p. 201].

Ramsey describes Garrett's plan to buy The Pathfinder in 1943 (because an existing newspaper was permitted a paper allotment by the government, which a new publication would not have). [pp. 201-202]. The plan was thwarted by David Lawrence of U.S. News, who bought The Pathfinder first. As Garrett wrote to Herbert Hoover, Lawrence planned "to strangle The Pathfinder to death and use its paper for his own magazine and charge it all off on his tax sheet." [quoted by Ramsey, pp. 202, 203 n. 8]. How Lawrence's use of the wartime paper allotment in this way helped the war effort has never been explained. This incident helps explain how Garrett's theoretical justification for wartime controls [p. 195] falters in practical application. (Even though Garrett wrote of price and wage controls instead of rationing, all such controls are of a kind).

Unsanctioned Voice; Saturday Evening Post; George Lorimer; French occupation of Ruhr; Calvin Coolidge; Herbert Hoover; agriculture; H.A. Nestos

Click these links for discussions of the Writer's Note , Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3, Chapters 4-6, Chapters 7-10 , Chapters 11 and 12 , Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 of Bruce Ramsey's Unsanctioned Voice.




Chapter 15 deals with the beginning of Garrett's career with the Saturday Evening Post and Garrett's writings on the war debt.

Garrett's writings for the Post included a fictional piece in 1917 about a "clerk in a bond house who figures out during the gold run of 1895 that the government is bankrupt." (p. 97). I am sure that this work (like almost all of Garrett's Post writings) is available on microfilm in larger libraries.

Ramsey describes the Post articles as "long articles, written for a world before television, when Americans had the patience to read." (p. 97).

Ramsey quotes and cites (pp. 98-99) two Garrett Post articles about France's attempts to collect reparations from Germany by occupying the Ruhr in 1923. Garrett described his visit to the Ruhr during the occupation and German resistance to that occupation. The story of the French occupation is fascinating and virtually unknown in mainstream history discussion.

The articles cited regarding the war debt cover much of the same material that later appeared in A Bubble That Broke The World. Bubble was a reorganized compilation of writing that appeared in the Post in 1931 and 1932. Two of the (many) articles cited in end note #2 (p. 104) have similar titles to two chapters of Bubble. The chapters are undated in Bubble. Ramsey's research thus has helped provide more background for Bubble.

Ramsey's discussion of Garrett's writings on the war debt included Garrett's conversations and meetings with the famous and powerful. "From World War I through the 1930's Garrett had the closest contacts he ever would with high politicians." (p. 101). Chapter 15 would include references to Garrett's contacts and relationships with Bernard Baruch, Secretary of State Elihu Root, Post publisher George Lorimer, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and Presidents Coolidge and Hoover. (pp. 99-101). Hoover and Garrett remained life-long friends. (p. 102).

Chapter 15 also includes Garrett's views on immigration (p. 102) and how a culture and nation can be changed irreversibly by unfettered immigration.

The chapter also sets forth Garrett's views on the Phillipines in the 1920's (pp. 102-103) and quotes liberally from The American Story (1955) on several subjects. Ramsey also refreshingly uses the word "nationalism" to identify concepts that modern orthodoxy attempts to denigrate with the misleading label "isolationism."

Chapter 16 deals with agriculture. Here, Ramsey confusingly uses "nationalism" to mean the opposite of "individualism" (p. 105) even though a government policy promoting and allowing individualism tends to make the entire nation strong. Nationalism and individualism go hand-in-hand.

Reading this and the immediately prior chapters gives one an appreciation of the size of the task confronting Ramsey. Most of the knowledge available about Garrett comes from his many articles, essays and columns. Ramsey had to find these items (presumably) on old library microfilm, print them from the old machines (an arduous task itself) and organize them by subject so that a larger picture of Garrett's (sometimes changing) views could be developed. End note #1 (p. 112) from Chapter 16 alone cites more than two dozen lengthy magazine articles written by Garrett. These and other articles and writings are then compressed and summarized in an 8 page chapter and integrated into the broader picture of Garrett's life in the 1920's.

Garrett wrote about agriculture's role in the bubble that burst in the early 1920's. He resisted attempts to create more federal involvement in farming and sparred with North Dakota governor H.A. Nestos over these and other issues. (pp. 105-109). Garrett owned his own farm in New Jersey. (pp. 109-110).

Garrett compared farming with railroads and lamented that federal controls had tamed the railroads. (pp. 110-111). Chapter 16 provides a preview of the federal controls that would come to farming with the New Deal in the 1930's. (p. 109).

Update - click here for discussion of Chapters 17 through 19.

The Driver - Part IX - a run on the U.S. Treasury - Panic of 1893

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of my review of The Driver.














Late in Chapter VI, Garrett describes a run on gold at the U.S. Treasury. In Part 7 of my review, I described the causes of the Panic of 1893:

A main factor in precipitating that crisis was the federal government's decree that Gold and Silver trade at parity with each other. The two metals were treated by Congress as equal in value, the laws of economics notwithstanding. "Naive trust in the power of words to command reality is found in all mass delusions." [p. 89].

The forced parity between the metals caused a run on gold, leading to a general credit collapse.

Garrett creates a fictionalized account of this run:

For several weeks uninterruptedly there had been a run on the government's gold fund. People were frantic to exchange white money [silver] for gold. They waited in a writhing line that kept its insatiable head inside the doors of the sub-Treasury. Its body flowed down the long steps, lay along the north side of Wall Street and terminated in a wriggling tail around the corner in William Street, five minutes' walk away. It moved steadily forward by successive movements of contraction and elongation. Each day at 3 o'clock the sub-Treasury, slamming its doors, cut off the monster's head. Each morning at 10 o'clock there was a new and hungrier head waiting to push its way in the instant the doors opened. Its food was gold and nothing else, for it lived there night and day. . . . . . It grew. Steadily it ate its way deeper into the nation's gold reserve, and there was no controlling it, for Congress had said that white money and gold were of equal value and could not believe it was not so. The paying tellers worked very slowly to gain time. . . . . the officers of the sub-Treasury had just telegraphed to Washington saying they could hold out only a few hours more. That meant the gold was nearly gone. It meant that the United States Treasury might at any moment put up its shutters . . . . Never had the line been so excited, so terribly ophidian in its aspect. Its writhings were sickening. The police handled it as the zoo keepers handle a great serpent. That is, they kept it straight. If once it should begin to coil the panic would be uncontrollable. Particles detached themselves from the tail and ran up and down the body trying to buy places nearer the head. Those nearest the head hotly disputed the right of substitution. . . . In the tense babel of voices there came sudden fissures of stillness, so that one heard one's own breathing or the far-off sounds of river traffic. At those moments what was passing before the eyes had the phantastic reality of a dream.

[pp. 127-129]

This story provides background for the main plot. It may become a reality in our own lives as the government further devalues our currency in its attempts to wish away the fundamental problems in our economy.



The Driver is not a history lesson on gold or an economics essay. For a nonfiction treatment of the government's attack on gold during the New Deal (and some history of gold in the U.S.), see Garrett's "Pieces of Money" from the Saturday Evening Post, April 20, 1935 [reprinted as Chapter 7 of Salvos Against the New Deal].
-------------
See Part X.

2005 Weblog Awards

This blog has been nominated for the 2005 Weblog Awards in the Best of the Rest category. This is the category for the smaller blogs that do not yet generate much traffic.



For those of you that have been directed here from the awards/voting page, this blog promotes the writings of early 20th century conservative writer Garet Garrett. I seek to rediscover conservatism's roots by reviewing Garrett's little known novels and, ultimately, Garrett's political essays during the New Deal.

Garrett has long been rumored to have influenced the writings of Ayn Rand. Many similarities exist between Garrett's novels, particularly The Driver, and various Rand novels and plays.

Garrett is enjoying a mini-renaissance lately due to the recent publication of various compilations of his Saturday Evening Post essays. You can find links to and descriptions of these and other works of Garrett throughout this blog.

The rules allow you to vote early and often, please do so here.

How I Found Satan's Bushel

Satan's Bushel review parts I, II and III.

As I wrote in a previous post, my interest in Satan's Bushel was raised when Bruce Ramsey referred to that book in his introduction to Salvos Against the New Deal:

Satan's Bushel (1924) was an allegory of agriculture and its
struggle with overproduction. ("Satan's Bushel" was the bushel that broke the price.)

I discovered that the story was about much more than that, but getting to that point required a journey.

I have tried, without success, to find a copy of Satan's Bushel for almost two years. I have never yet seen a copy of the book. Bruce Ramsey wrote to me that a copy of the text could be found in back copies of the Saturday Evening Post. Indeed, most of Garret's fiction books can be found serialized in the pages of the Post in the 1920's. Satan's Bushel is one exception to that rule. After I wrote back to Mr. Ramsey and informed him that the Post had come up dry on Satan's Bushel, he told me he would try to remember where he had seen it and get back to me. (Ramsey had previously discarded his photocopies of the Post when he gradually accumulated the actual books with considerable effort over a fair amount of time).

After having one of those "eureka!" moments, Ramsey wrote to me that the actual magazine that contained Satan's Bushel was called The Country Gentleman. While I was glad to have received renewed hope of finding the text, Ramsey's news was not the end of the story.

Upon arriving at the State Library, I was told that The Country Gentleman was not published in 1923 and had merged with the Saturday Evening Post by that time. This information was false, and I persisted in my request that the librarians find the Country Gentleman copies in their stack of microfilms in the basement. After the librarians informed me that they would notify me if anything turned up, I once again gave up hope and returned home.

Much to my surprise, I received a phone call several days later from the librarian. Not only had they found the issues of Country Gentleman in question, they had also found, as a result of this search, the library's entire series of Country Gentlemen microfilms that had been misfiled and lost for years.

I have written in a previous post that Satan's Bushel reflects much of our culture that has now been lost or forgotten. A piece of the dying American culture had been essentially buried in the rubble and had languished unnoticed and unappreciated. I thought of this obscurity several days later as I watched the librarian carry the microfilm to one of the ancient microfilm machines so that I might copy it.

Many of the ancient writings from the Roman civilization were destroyed by marauding barbarians who burned cities with little regard for what they destroyed. The barbarians did not even understand the concept of literature or the role of literature in preserving civilization.

I felt that I was reversing the ancient Roman scenario by rescuing Garrett's literature with the help of one who had no idea what she was carrying (or what her coworkers had discovered in the basement). Those of us who rescue forgotten American writing, especially literature with a capitalist theme, will do so in relative obscurity without the understanding of those who might still possess the treasures we seek.

The image of this obscurity was reinforced as I scrolled through the microfilm and discovered the hastiness with which the pages had been copied. Half of most of the pages were too blurry to read. I had to copy many pages two or three times just to get a clear image of each word in the text.

But now, one more copy of Satan's Bushel exists outside the confines of some library basement. The most thorough discussion of this book ever created now exists on the internet. Absalom Weaver's speech can now take its place alongside the speeches of Ayn Rand's great characters. More such discussions of Garrett's books will follow on these pages.

Harangue

Harangue

A 1927 original edition of Harangue is up for sale now on e-bay. Again, I do not plan to make it a habit to quote e-bay information, but this is a rare find. I bought my copy of Harangue more than a year ago (on e-bay) and I haven't seen it available since then. (Of course I still haven't read it yet, but more on that later.)

The opening bid is $15.00 and there are no bids yet (and no, this is not my sale). The seller probably doesn't know what he has in his possession (and apparently neither do any buyers).

Normally, if you want to read this book, you have to go to a university or state library and photocopy the microfilm versions from the old Saturday Evening Post or Country Gentleman. That is what I did to obtain copies of the Driver and Satan's Bushel - but more on that later.

Introduction

I created this blog for the purpose of storing and spreading information about the mainly lost works of Garet Garrett. While the whole idea might sound uninteresting to those of you who have not heard of him or his work, keep an open mind.

Garrett was an early to mid 20th century conservative writer whose books and articles challenged the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt. He also did much more than that. As a novelist, essayist and editor for the Saturday Evening Post, Garrett provided a remarkable advocacy of capitalism and freedom.

Garrett's writings foreshadowed many of the later writings of Ayn Rand. For those who have read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, certain unknown novels of Garrett would evoke a certain familiarity. While Ayn Rand appears to have built on those works and added much that was unique, revolutionary and brilliant, Garrett's works provided certain unmistakable elements for the Randian novels. Despite Garrett's obscurity, his ideas live on today in the works of modern writers and books.

There are enough Garrett books, articles and stories (together with related economic and political news) to blog for many years. Check back here every so often to see what is new (and what is old). You will gradually gain an appreciation for Garrett's works and for old fashioned capitalism.