American History - Part 179 -  FDR -  Supreme Court Battle -  Slapped by voters
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-08-16

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.
By the middle of the 1930s, America seemed to be moving out of the worst depression in its history. Most people supported the "New Deal" policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Most of the 9 judges on the Supreme Court in 1936 were conservative. They had ruled that many of Roosevelt's most important New Deal programs were illegal. Now the judges were preparing to decide the future of programs to help old people, labor unions, and others. And there was nothing the President could do under the American system of government.
So Roosevelt called for changes in the system. He asked Congress to reorganize the federal judicial system. And he asked for the power to add several new members to the Supreme Court. In this way, Roosevelt hoped to gain a new majority on the court that would support his views.
Most Americans liked Roosevelt. But people of all opinions feared that the President was trying to destroy the careful system of checks and balances in the federal government. They agreed with him in opposing the court's decisions. But they accepted the right of Supreme Court judges to rule as they thought correct. For this reason, the nation rejected Roosevelt's plan to add new members to the court.
Roosevelt's unsuccessful effort to change the Supreme Court came at the same time as the economy began to get worse.
Many Americans thought they had defeated the depression in 1935 and 36. There was steady economic improvement. Some bankers had even begun to fear that the economy was growing too fast.
These bankers called on the nation's central bank-- the Federal Reserve Board-- to control the expanding money supply. And the Federal Reserve acted to limit the amount of money in use.
At the same time, the federal government began reducing the amount of money that it was spending. And it launched the new Social Security tax on workers' incomes.
The effect of all these government actions was to limit the amount of money being spent by the government, companies, and private citizens. As a result, the economy began to fall once again into depression.
In August 1937, stock market prices began to fall sharply.
In 7 months, the price of stock for the General Motors Corporation fell from $60.00 to 25. The United States Steel Company stock fell all the way from $121.00 to 38. In fact, the stock markets lost in 9 months about 2/3s of all the gains that they had made so slowly and painfully since Roosevelt took office.
Americans had supported Roosevelt's New Deal program because it offered a solution to the depression. Now that program seemed to be failing.
Historian Frederick Lewis Allen remembered those dark days of 1937.
"Goods sold slowly," Allen wrote. "Businessmen became frightened and reduced production. 2,000,000 men were thrown out of work in the space of a few months. They became less able to buy what was for sale. The terrible circle of the falling value of the dollar moved all the more rapidly.
The new economic crisis hurt Roosevelt's popularity. And it came at a time when he faced growing opposition within his own Democratic Party.
Roosevelt became very angry about the new opposition from within his own party. He began to intervene personally in Democratic Party primary elections in 1938. He told party members in several states that they should only vote for candidates who would support his New Deal policies.
Roosevelt's opponents accused him of interfering in local politics. And democratic voters agreed with these criticisms. In almost all cases, they rejected the candidates supported by the President. A few months later, voters in the general election gave the Republicans major gains in both the House of Representatives and Senate.
In most situations, such a change in support would have signaled the end of a President's power. If people will not follow, a President cannot lead or be elected.
But such was not the case for Roosevelt and the United States in the late 1930s. It was true that economic and political troubles were not solved. But another crisis was growing larger every day, making these other problems seem less and less important.
The crisis was in foreign policy. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party in Germany seemed ready to make war on Europe. And Japanese forces appeared to be planning new aggression in the Pacific. Americans could no longer just worry about their problems at home. A dark cloud was forming outside their door.
That will be the subject of our next several programs.