The Keynesian Elite in the New Deal State, 1910-1939
MLC
can stand for a homogeneous praxiological milieu, habitus, and
network: the Keynesian Elite (see Fig. 2). FDR, on the
other hand, stands for
the fundamental heterogeneity of his Administration, as the site of
fundamental conflict between competing elites (Fig. 1), and the scene
of emergent functions and institutional formations (NLRB, NRPB, etc.).
It is
utterly naive to conceive of FDR as a unitary, homogeneous agent.
These elites are in part defined by the input-ouput matrices of the major sectors of the American political economy.
This page is about the most dynamic and modern of these sectors within the Administration of FDR.
These elites are in part defined by the input-ouput matrices of the major sectors of the American political economy.
This page is about the most dynamic and modern of these sectors within the Administration of FDR.
Morris L. Cooke (MLC) Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)
The Securities bloc (SC)
Other People's Money, by
Louis D. Brandeis (1913-1914)
Pujo Committee Interlocking Directorates 1912
Pujo Committee Interlocking Directorates 1912
Commodities in Inernational Trade (CIT)
Elliot A. Rosen, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: from Depression to New Deal
(Columbia University Press, 1977), although not conceptualizing it as
such, gives a compelling description of CIT in action around the
candidacies of Al Smith and Newton Baker, etc.
Post-WWII Configurations that are beyond the scope of this page
Mark S. Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite
(Harvard, 2013): the "modern corporation"
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard, 2014). See Paul Krugman review: the resurgence of “patrimonial capitalism”
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard, 2014). See Paul Krugman review: the resurgence of “patrimonial capitalism”
Figure 1. U.S. Political Economy by Sector, 1910-1938
see Rosen for 1932 list
The Taylor Society: elite firms
The Taylor Society: manufacturing firms
Pollak Foundation
Twentieth Century Fund
Committee for Economic Development
Hiss List
The Eastern Rate Case: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers, August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess. This can now be read online
The Bulletin of the Taylor Society
RR
Source: "Membership
List, May 1927," in the Morris
L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library and
United States Government Manual 1937
United States Government Manual 1937
Source: "Membership
List, May 1927," in the Morris
L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Milton J. Nadworny, Scientific Management and the Unions, 1900‒1932 (Harvard, 1955)
Establishment of National Economic Council. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Manufactures, United States Senate, Seventy-second Congress, first session, on S. 6215 (71st Congress) a bill to establish a National Economic Council. Printed for the use of the Committee on Manufactures. here
This page consists mainly of the graphic materials in the right-hand column. The reader ought to first scan the entire column. Scan is the wrong word; the reader ought to look closely, and pay attention to detail. Concepts of class, function, strategy, network, habitus, and praxis are not living things, but are the product of the effort of human beings to understand stuff. see Bryant. There is no contradiction conceptual rigor and empirical richness.
Certain things do not appear on this page becaue they are readily available online.
Sixth. The resurgence of “patrimonial capitalism” (Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (Harvard, 2014). See Paul Krugman review
Figure 4. The
Taylor Society III: Non-Mfg Organizations, 1927
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
In Fig. 5 I have proceeded immanently taken the 1927 member list of the Taylor Society and arranged the firms according to their place in the flow of money and goods. These are actually quite large firms in relation to their specific field of economic activity; they are technologically progressive; and are intellectually among the vanguard of capitalists. To refer to them as small and provincial is flatly wrong. Even to refer to them as competitive, while not flat-out wrong, is misleading. Steve Fraser's study of Sidney Hillman describes the joint union-management efforts to stabilize the market by taking labor out of competition.
The modern corporation itself is a form of planned economy (see Alfred Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand).
For attempt by Walter Reuther and progressive spring manufacturers to stabilze the spring industry see:
Minutes.
Murray Body Committee Local 2 at Executive Board Meeting, April 26,
1939, Toledo Ohio (Addes Collection, Box 14.11, Reuther Archives Detroit) re. competitive situation in the spring and wire industry
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Figure 6. Taylor Society, 1927: Mass
Housing, input-output flows
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66, FDR Library
Figure 8. Eastern Rate Case: Shippers
Association, 1910: Chicago subset
Mass Consumer-Oriented Firms
Mass Consumer-Oriented Firms
Retail Sears, Roebuck Marshall Field & Co. Mandel Brothers B. Kuppenheimer Montgomery Ward Siegel, Cooper & Co. G.W. Shelton & Co. Clothing Hart,
Shafner, & Marx
Rosenwald & Weil, Inc. The Hub (Henry C. Lytton & Sons) Charles A. Stevens & Brothers Percival B. Palmer & Co. Warren Featherbone Millinery, Gloves, Hats, Hosiery Bush Hat Co. Chicagao Mercantile Co. Joseph N. Eisendrath Co. Parrotte, Beals & Co. C.D. Osborn Co. Shoes Wilder
& Co.
Guthman, Carpenter, & Telling Co. Smith-Wallace Shoe Co. The Rice and Hutchins Chicago Co. Selz, Schwap & Co. R.P. Smith & Sons & Co. Food & Related Southern
Cotton Oil Co. (Wesson Oil)
Booth Fisheries National Biscuit Co. Nordyke and Marmon Co. (flour and cerial milling machinery) Beech-Nut Packing Sprague, Warner & Co. (flavoring extracts, preserves, beverages) |
Food & Related, cont. Steel-Wedeles Co. (importing, jobbing & mfg. of grocieries and kindred) W.M. Hoyt Co. Frankln MacVeagh & Co. Oerlich & Laux, Inc. Charles B. Ford & Co. (butter, eggs, poultry--brokers and wholesalers) W.T. Rawleigh Co. (veterinary and pultry preparations) E.B. Millar & Co. (tea, coffie--importing and mfg) Libby, McNeil, & Libby Decatur Brewing Co. Thomson & Taylor Co. (coffee, spices--mfg for jobbers) Reid, Murdoch & Co. (coffee, pickles, peanut butter) Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein (candy, crackerjacks) United Cerial Mills (Washington Crisps, Egg-O-See, Toasted Corn Flakes) Soap & Related James
S. Kirk
Packaging
& PaperFrigid Fluid Co. The Fairbanks, N.K. Co. Darling & Co. Globe Rending Pacific Coast Borax Co. Fitzpatrick Bros. Soap Humel
& Downing Co.
Sanfod Mfg. Co. The Paper Mills' Co. J.W. Butler Paper Co. |
Source: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerece Comission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers,
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol. 1 pp. 6-15
Eastern Rate
Case: Shippers Association, 1910: Chicago subset, cont.
Mass Housing Supply Industries U.S.
Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry James B. Clough
Kewanee Boiler Crane Co. H. Mueller & Co. Illinois Malleable Iron Co. Joseph T. Ryerson & Son Devoe & Reynolds Adams & Elting Co. George S. Mepham & Co. Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. American Lumberman Lumber World Review Morgan Sash & Door Chicago House Wrecking Co. John V. Farwell Co. (wholesale furniture, carpets, etc) Union Furniture Balkwill & Patch Furniture Co. Inc. W.W. Kimball Co. (pianos, etc.) Lyon & Healy, Inc. (pianos, etc.) Tonk Manufacturing (piano benches) Foley & Williams (sewing machines, supplies, pianos) The Brunswick Balke Collendar Co. Chicago Portrait Co. Pitkin & Brook, Importers, Mfg and Distributors (china, glass, lamps) M. Paulman & Co. |
Diversified Capital Goods, Esp. Agricultural Implements International
Harvster
Deere & Co. Emerson-Brantigam Co. R. Herschel Manufacturing Co. Rock Isoand Plow Co. Star Mfg. Co. Link-Belt Co. Smith Mfg. Co. Williams, White & Co. Whiting Foundry Equipment Co. Whitman & Barnes Co. (twist drils & reamers) The Delaval Seperator Co. Griffin Wheel Co. Galena Sigal Oil Co. Other General
Chemical Co.
Lehigh Valley Railroad Peabody Coal Inland Steel |
SOURCE: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerece Comission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers,
August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess., Vol. 1 pp. 6-15
|
higher-order macro functions David O. Ives, manager of the Transportation Department of the Boston Chamber of Commerce John S. Lawrence, Lawrence & Co. The selling department of the textile mills in New England manufacturers Charles
H. Jones, President of the Commonealth Shoe and Leather Company of
Whitman, Massachusetts (a close associate of Louis D. Brandeis),
representing the New Engand Shoe and Leather Association
Guy T. Miller, treasurer of the Bridgeport Brass Company B.F. Curtis of the Norton Company (a major manufacturer of grinding wheels and abrasives) George H. Benkhart, of Smith, Klein and French Company (drugs and baby foods) Edwin F. Fobes, President of the New England Confectionary Company A.C. Lorion, representing the Wright Wire Company of Worcester and Palmer, Massachusetts (wire cloth for poultry netting), the Grayton and Knight Manufacturing Company (belting), and the Metal Trades Assocation of Worcester (mostly machine tool manufacturers) E.A. Stuart, of the Mitchell-Woodbury Company, Boston (importers of crockery and china) |
1937-8: Carmody & Ezekiel Lists of Liberal Businessmen: Seattle
| Merchants Nathan Eckstein, Pres. Schwabacher Grocery Co. (Wholesale grocer) Charles H. Black, Pres. Seattle Hardware Co. (largest wholesale hardware business in the state Manufacturers Darrah Corbet, Pres. Smith Canning Machine Co. George H. Penny, Pres. Western Blower Co. (al sawmills in this part of country use his pipes and machinery for blowing the sw dust out of the mills and into the fuel bins) W.B. McCaffray, Pres. National Fruit Canning Co. Construction Contractors Raymond H. Huff, V.P. & Treas., Puget Sound Bridge & Dredging Co. Henry Lohse (contractor in industrial and commercial buildings) Hugh Russell (builds for large and small home owners and for real estate developers) W. B. Shannon (electrical engineer) |
Other secondary sources get drawn in at well. Gal's biography of Brandies, because of its thorough and detailed account of Brandeis' business contacts, among the most important of whom was McElwain, is ineluctably drawn into the plane of immanence/consistency under discussion. (Other accounts of LDB, however, are not so affected.)
But so is Alcorn's Narcissism and the Literary Libido. and Moretti's The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. Once the problematic of the development of the self is opened (in Wellman explicitly, but also in ERC, McElwain, Reuther and Peterson), any text that illuminates this process is drawn into the plane of immanence/consistency.
It is this assemblage of texts into a plane of immanence/consistency that is the flux of becoming that gets labeled (as Progressivism, the New Deal, Socalism, or what have you). But I want to avoid the crippling effect of starting with an ontological assumption that there is something (Progressivism, etc.) that has to be elucidated. I do not want to substitute Being for becoming. This is what I construe as transcendental empiricism.
Naturally, there is a tension here. We do speak of things--our secondary literature is generally (but not entirely) about things, not processes. This tension is evident in Lewin's Russia/USSR/Russia: the drive and drift of a superstate. On the one hand the tremendous ontological instability of the times: as Lewin says, the Bolshevik Party was remade several time over in a period of a few years; but Lewin, in an exercise of the fallacy of misplace concreteness, speaks of the Soviet System as an entity even as he points to the flow of destabilizing forces that render its existence, on the level of ontology, merely nominal. A stable system only emerged after the death of Stalin. This book is important reading, not simply because of its intellectual power, but also because it will force you to think about these things.
Eaton to FDR May 10, 1939:
Supplementing my letter of May 2, the Temporary National Economic Committee might well extend the scope of its investigation to incude the activities of the three New York law firms who handle the legal aspects of the hierarchy mentioned in my letter.
These
firms are David,
Polk, Wardwell, Gardiner & Reed; Cravath, deGersdorff, Swaine
&
Wood; and Sullivan & Cromwell.
It would be enlightening to find out the number and size of these corporations, banks, and underwriting houses by which these firms are regularly retained, together with a similar compilation of those for whom they work from time to time on registration statements and other financial matters
The continued existence of this ring of commercial and investment bankers and law firms does not serve the cause of the country . . . .
It would be enlightening to find out the number and size of these corporations, banks, and underwriting houses by which these firms are regularly retained, together with a similar compilation of those for whom they work from time to time on registration statements and other financial matters
The continued existence of this ring of commercial and investment bankers and law firms does not serve the cause of the country . . . .
Eaton to FDR May 24, 1939 re. GOP campaign in Cleveland area.
Eaton to FDR August 31, 1939:
Your
great international
policies are in danger of being jeopardized in public antagonism in the
personnel of the new War Resources Board with its three Morgan members:
Stettinius, Gifford and Pratt . . . . Should not such a
committee
be composed of bona fide representives of the nation's industrial areas
rather than men located in and connected with the New York financial
district.
Eaton to FDR September 12, 1939 on Wall St. and Morgan Interests
Eaton to FDR Nov 21, 1939:
Although
Jack Knight, the
proprietor of the Akron Beacon Journal, was brought up in the
Republican tradition, he is a great admirer of yours. His is
the
most successful and perhaps the most influential newspaper in Ohio.
I have been urgin Knight not to support Taft, the Ohio
representative of Morgan and Kuhn Loeb.
Eaton to Willkie Nov 22, 1939
Eaton to FDR Feb 7, 1942 re TIME propaganda re Harriman and Morgan in War and Navy departments
Eaton to FDR April 6, 1944 re. growth of Wall St. since 1933
Other letters I do not have but are referenced but not included in my collection:
Eaton to FDR May 2, 1939;
(see
Alon Gal, Brandeis of
Boston, Harvard University Press, 1980)
Louis
D.
Brandeis, the Lenin of Progressivism, in his own words
Harold Urofsky, ed., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, Vol I (1870-1907): Urban Reformer (State University of New York Press, 1971); Vol II (1907-1912): People's attorney; Vol. III (1913-1915): Progressive and Zionist (State University of New York Press, 1971-78)
Committee for Economic Development, 1970
-the Railroads were less "modern" than the shippers, notwithstanding the standard myth of eg LDB as a romantic provincial (center vs. peripheral)
-the Railroads/Wall Street web of interests can be viewed as a(re)emergent aristocracy with claims to the wealth produced by others.
-
The Taylor Society emerged in the course of the Ean sterRate Case (1910), and is the zone of systems synthesis of mass/advanced capitalism, the locus of the emergent functions of the 'welfare state. The force-field of out of which the Keynesian elite input output relations emerged is suggested by the membership list of firms, broken down into
a. capitalist enterprises
b. service organizations
Harold Urofsky, ed., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, Vol I (1870-1907): Urban Reformer (State University of New York Press, 1971); Vol II (1907-1912): People's attorney; Vol. III (1913-1915): Progressive and Zionist (State University of New York Press, 1971-78)
Committee for Economic Development, 1970
-the Railroads were less "modern" than the shippers, notwithstanding the standard myth of eg LDB as a romantic provincial (center vs. peripheral)
-the Railroads/Wall Street web of interests can be viewed as a(re)emergent aristocracy with claims to the wealth produced by others.
-
The Taylor Society emerged in the course of the Ean sterRate Case (1910), and is the zone of systems synthesis of mass/advanced capitalism, the locus of the emergent functions of the 'welfare state. The force-field of out of which the Keynesian elite input output relations emerged is suggested by the membership list of firms, broken down into
a. capitalist enterprises
distribution and semiotics
distribution suppliers
housing finance and suppliers
machinery and tools
distribution suppliers
housing finance and suppliers
machinery and tools
b. service organizations
U.S. government agencies
management, accounting & engineering firms
foundations and universities
magazines & trade journals
mass retailers
trade associations
management, accounting & engineering firms
foundations and universities
magazines & trade journals
mass retailers
trade associations
1. merger discussions with Bowery and East River National Bank, Commercial Exchange Bank and the Bank of America (MEMO Feb 13, 1929)
2. news stories Giannini supports FDR sept 19, 1935; June 25, 1936
3. re furor over court-packing plan: offers to go on radio in support (Giannini to McIntyre, 2/18/37)
4. San Fran. Examiner Nov 9 1934: attacks crowd in control of NRA
5. Warning to Foes of New Deal, Giannini says of Election (Sinclair) SF Bull ?? 1934
TEMP
Miles, McGraw on various characterizations of non-elite businesses
Phillips-Fein
Dart Industries, Salvatore, Scaife, Coors
The Eastern Rate Case: Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers, August to December 1910, Senate Doc. 725, 61 Cong., 3 Sess. This can now be read online
The Bulletin of the Taylor Society can be read online (Bass Business Collection, University of Oklahoma Libraries)
Pujo Committee, 1913: Interlocking Directorates (the Securities Bloc)
(see Alon Gal, Brandeis of Boston, Harvard University Press, 1980)
Harold Urofsky, ed., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, Vol I (1870-1907): Urban Reformer (State University of New York Press, 1971); Vol II (1907-1912): People's attorney; Vol. III (1913-1915): Progressive and Zionist (State University of New York Press, 1971-78)
Angus Burgan, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Harvard, 2012)
Mark S. Mizruchi, The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite (Harvard, 2013)
Gerald Berk, Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of Amierican Industrial Order, 1865-1917 (Johns Hopkins, 1994)
Postel, The Populist Vision
Atlantic Crossings (habitus of urban-cosmopolitan Progressivism)
Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate America (Princeton, 2002)
Johanna Bockman, Markets in the name of socialism : the left-wing origins of neoliberalism (Stanford University Press, 2011)
These were the very people found as correspondents in the Letters of Louis D. Brandeis and in the Morris L. Cooke papers. Many of these old progressives were members of the Taylor Society. Thus, they properly belong in the plane of immanence.
However, the author misconstrues them as mere middle class humanitarians, rather than as a certain kind of historicized, socialized "individual" entangled in the input-output matrix of modern capitalism as a developmental field.
The second text, A Pretty Good Club, is actually less about the U.S. Foreign Service than it is about the very same thing: a network comprised of a certain kind of historicized, socialized individuals--or rather two networks (just as the old progressives were actually two distinct--two disjoint--sets of historicized, socialized individuals). The personnel matrix of the Keynesian Elite appears in this text as the modern, cosmopolitan ethnically heterogeneous wing of the Foreign Service emergent out of the New Deal, deeply entangled with the Taylor Society, and opposed by the old guard who were both WASP and anti-semitic.
This is to suggest a certain way of reading that decomposes overblown nouns into
actual ontological-discursive
praxiological networks. An
Encore for Reform does this to a degree, but stops short
of making sense of the set of personnel that supported the New Deal.It is one of the contentions of this site that the being of things historical is to be found in the generative matrix that produces their activity. Activity is not merely the effect of of an organism's rational asssessment of its interests. Activity is more important than motive; it is part of the self-formative process. Conceptually motive and activity are diametircally opposed, inasmuch as "motive" presuposes the Cartesian self, thereby obstructing the understanding of praxis. (Deleuze-Bryant); Bourdieu; Getty
Image of thought in doing history:
from Jerome Kagan, The Human Spark: The Science of Human Development (Basic Books, 2913)
"A number of
abstract psychological concepts remain popular because they satisfy the
need for consistency among the investigator's semantic networks. The
networks for the concepts of positive
emotion and negative
emotion are an example . . . . The problems
trailing attempts to preserve semantic consistency are clearest for
concepts related to the antonyms good
and bad.
Many popular terms for human qualities belong to semantic
networks that have good
and bad
as nodes." p. 271
This statement captures the underlying logic--the generative grammar (or generative matrix)--of almost all writing on history. Big business, the capitalist class
Digging the Grave of Modernity:
Two of the Architects of Figure 1⎯ Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn
The possibilities of advanced capitalism were limited by the availability of the wretched masses/resentiment mobilization; the "natural" appearance of so-called neoliberalism is intimately connected to figure 1 THE PRIMACY OF POLITICS