Expertise at War: the National Committee on Education by Radio

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EXPERTISE AT WAR: THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION BY RADIO, THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS, THE FEDERAL RADIO COMMISSION AND THE BATTLE FOR AMERICAN RADIO

David R. Haus Jr.

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2006

Committee:

Leigh Ann Wheeler, Advisor

Marc V. Simon Graduate Faculty Representative

Donald Nieman

Liette Gidlow

Robert Buffington

David R. Haus, Jr.

ABSTRACT

Leigh Ann Wheeler, Advisor

In 1930 a group of educators formed the National Committee on Education by

Radio (NCER) to fight for the preservation of non-profit education radio stations while also combating the meteoric rise of commercial radio programs. Between 1930 and 1934 the NCER would do battle with the commercial radio industry and its trade organization, the National Association of Broadcasters, attempting to carve out a safe space for educational, non-profit radio through a mixture of lobbying efforts and grass-roots activism. Ultimately the NCER lost its battle with the passage of the Communications

Act of 1934. Other scholars have explored this moment in American history, arguing that the NCER stood little chance for success because of its own ineptitude and a powerful commercial industry.

This dissertation attempts to understand its choices and motivations in the struggle for educational radio while examining the broader implications of the NCER’s arguments on our understanding of New Deal politics, associationalism, gender, and consumerism. The NCER waged a principled campaign to protect the home from commercialism and prevent Eastern cultural colonization of the United States by providing a redemptive space on the air. The NCER was an organization steeped in a fusion of humanitarian progressivism and populism that informed and limited its courses of action. It believed that it had valuable, relevant expertise to offer the federal government in deciding the model of American radio. iv

I conclude that the NCER was not an inept organization that ultimately failed to achieve its goals. Instead it was a progressive group that watched the very progressive machinery its members once supported quash its campaign for radio reform and alter its conception of democracy, seeing federal regulators devalue its gendered expertise and watching educational radio sacrificed at the altar of the New Deal. However, the NCER posed a greater threat to the commercial industry than previously believed, and could have succeeded under different circumstances. The NCER fought against the conflation of consumerism and democracy while fighting to stave off cultural domination by the

East coast, and it compels us to rethink the nature and periodization of progressivism. v

For my wife Danielle and everyone who was with me at the start and did not get to see the finish: Herman Haus, Ed Hendrickson, Mickey Hendrickson, Jane Quinn, and Ed

Quinn. vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without help from many people in my life who directly and indirectly contributed to this project and my sanity. First there were a number of people at libraries and archives who provided valuable help during my research. The wonderful staff at the Western Reserve Historical Society was always patient and helpful in helping me locate materials in the archive and provided timely photocopies. The archivists and staff at the Ohio Historical Society Library and the

Indiana State Library also provided help tracking down items in their collections. At

Bowling Green’s Jerome Library, Colleen Parmer helped me locate a number of government documents important to my research. To them, I give my sincere thanks.

Many of my colleagues and friends provided sound advice during my research and writing. Matt Daley always supplied good advice and insight, and our numerous discussions about the Progressive Era during rounds of golf and a long car ride to a conference certainly helped my thinking. Pete Genovese also patiently listened to my ideas and gave me helpful feedback especially during the early stages of my research.

Even if he was busy with another project, Pete always made time to read a draft or comment on my ideas. Jim Forse and Steve Beck provided constant support and useful suggestions throughout my research and writing. Jim Buss always gave helpful suggestions and a critical ear. Tina Amos helped me with a number of tasks around the office freeing up time for me to write, and she always did so with a smile and word of encouragement. Finally, my committee gave me wonderful advice, help, and support throughout the entire process and was always willing to help. vii

Of course there were also my friends and family who made sure that I remained

as sane as possible during this long process. Pete Genovese, Jim Forse, Steve Beck, Jim

Buss, Todd Good, Ed Quinn, Joe Genetin-Pilawa, Heath Bowen, Sean Newborn, Chad

Gaudet, and Larry Cousineau always kept me laughing and their friendship has enriched my life. Debbie Barscheski’s friendship and faith was an important source of early encouragement that started me on the way. It is always helpful to have the support of your family. My sister, Amy, and her husband, Joe, supported me and made me laugh.

They are two of the finest people I will ever know. My grandmother, Joan, sparked my interest in the past and offered her love and encouragement in all of my endeavors. My in-laws, Gayle and Bill, always treated me with love and understanding during this process, and they always believed in me. My parents, Ellen and Dave, encouraged me and supported me through everything, and I could have never completed this project without them. Ellen and Dave did everything they could to provide me with the best education possible and always pushed me to do my best.

There are two people without whom my dissertation would not have been

possible. I could not have had a better advisor. Leigh Ann Wheeler’s constant advice,

guidance, and confidence during my research and writing sustained me. She always

listened to me and encouraged me, reading numerous drafts as I developed my ideas. She

did all of these things cheerfully and never treated me like a burden when, at times, I

know I was. Her support never wavered, having faith in me even when I did not. Her

advice extended beyond the dissertation as well. Her suggestions have made me a better

teacher and colleague, and any of my future accomplishments will be due in no small part

to her. I can only hope that someday I can provide the same kind of guidance that she did. viii

Leigh Ann Wheeler always treated me like an equal, but I know of few equal to her. My meager thank you is a poor gratuity for her guidance.

My wife, Danielle Haus made this project possible. Danielle has been the center of my life, and, even though I am terrible at showing her this, I could not live without the constant love and support she has given me. She always understood during this process, and uncomplainingly excused me from numerous chores around the house and other responsibilities so that I could write. Whenever I was discouraged, Danielle provided encouragement. There are too many things that Danielle has done for me to enumerate, and I hope she knows that her companionship has been and will always be the best part of my life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER I. THE ORIGINS OF REFORM ...... 29

The October Conference...... 32

The National Committee on Education by Radio...... 41

Legislative Activity—The Fess Bill, 1930-1931...... 51

Regulatory Activity—The Service Bureau and the Federal Radio Commission ...... 64

CHAPTER II. “RADIO IS AN EXTENSION OF THE HOME”...... 72

Getting the Message Out: Modern Day Muckraking...... 73

A Progressive Past?...... 75

Antimonopolism ...... 77

Social Bonds and the Social Nature of People: Fighting New Yorkism ...... 84

CHAPTER III. RESISTANCE ...... 103

Other Educators...... 107

The National Association of Broadcasters...... 129

CHAPTER IV. PRESSING CONGRESS ...... 151

Sir John Reith ...... 153

An Active Congress ...... 156

The Information Campaign...... 168

The NAB Unity and Standards Campaign...... 179

The S. 129 Findings ...... 184

Madrid ...... 187 x

CHAPTER V. EXPANDING HORIZONS...... 193

A Sign of Things to Come ...... 197

Legislative Activity and Payne Fund Tensions ...... 201

The North American Radio Conference ...... 208

New Directions: The American Listeners Society...... 218

New Directions: The National Debate...... 220

CHAPTER VI. A NEW DEAL FOR RADIO...... 230

Will FDR Endorse Reform?...... 233

The Tugwell Bill and the NAB...... 239

The National Industrial Recovery Act and the NAB...... 247

The Communications Act of 1934...... 258

CONCLUSION ...... 281

The Fall Hearings...... 283

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 304 1

INTRODUCTION

The history of the development of broadcasting in the United States has, for many years,

been more of a mythic tale than an actual historical account. The early storytellers, with the blessing of the men responsible for building the commercial broadcasting empire, presented the development of American radio much like the chroniclers who detailed the voyages of early explorers. Both cases were stories of vision, conquest, and consolidation by “great men,” who, in the end, gave humanity great gifts of a new frontier, one physical and one electronic. These celebratory accounts served a platter of myth, but that myth—like all myth—had only a dash of truth to it. Some of those early accounts of radio were also more memoir than history; many of the men responsible for developing radio wrote extensive pieces about their central role in the process and managed to incorporate tall tales into their memoirs.

The David Sarnoff story is a good example of the reinvention process. Sarnoff, president

of the Radio Corporation of America, lived a true Horatio Alger story having risen from sweeping boy to the presidency. Sarnoff was a telegrapher at the time of the Titanic disaster, an

incident that became a cause celebre for the general public and for radio. Later in his life, Sarnoff

placed himself at the center of the Titanic incident, claiming that he was the first wireless

operator to receive word of the disaster and did not sleep for several days so that he could bring

the names of survivors to anxious friends and relatives. In reality the telegraph station in New

York City that Sarnoff manned had been closed for hours when Titanic issued its wireless

messages and no employees were present when Titanic issued its S.O.S. The RCA publicity

department, during Sarnoff’s presidency, even doctored a photograph that placed Sarnoff at the

scene as proof of his service.1 But while Sarnoff may have worked during the ensuing days to

1 David Sarnoff, Looking Ahead: The Papers of David Sarnoff (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968); and Tom Lewis, Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991), 105-107. 2

bring information about survivors to friends and relatives, he was not, as he claimed, the first to receive information about the sinking.2

Sarnoff’s Titanic story exemplifies celebratory early accounts of the rise of radio in the

United States.3 But the most important part of the American radio myth did not revolve around

one person; it involved an entire industry. The truism still offered to the American public

today—that the commercial broadcast paradigm used in the U.S. was an inevitable arrangement

that was only logical and innately American—is the central piece of the radio myth. The

American commercial broadcast paradigm was not the result of a consensus opinion decided

completely on technical merits; it was not the most logical system, and it was not inevitable. As

Paul Starr argues, “These decisions [about the organization of radio], however technical in

appearance, were often deeply political in their significance.”4 This study investigates the

moment when policymakers, Congress, and the radio industry cemented commercial

broadcasting as the “American System.” Specifically, I argue that the battle over American airspace was, at its core, a larger cultural and ideological war between urban spaces and rural spaces in America. The adoption of the “American System” also signified that rural values and voices were relegated to the margins of the broader national culture.5

This excursion into media history attempts to further debunk the myth surrounding the

establishment of the commercial media system. The myth was the result of zealous individuals

within an active commercial industry writing their own history and presenting the birth of the

system they created as glorious and beneficial to all. In truth many groups contested the

2 Lewis, Empire of the Air, 105-107. 3 For a collection of Sarnoff’s memos and ideas as well as his commentary see Sarnoff, Looking Ahead. For a newer good general overview of the early days of radio see Susan J. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting 1899-1922 (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and Lewis, Empire of the Air. 4 Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media, Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 328. 5 I use American System in quotations because the commercial industry and policymakers used this term when describing commercial broadcasting. 3

American commercial broadcast paradigm from 1930-1934 only to lose their fight with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 which allowed the commercial system to continue and thrive. The groups who protested the commercial model did so for a variety of reasons:

inability to compete with commercial operations, censorship of controversial subjects or religious programming, or dislike of commerce on the air. The groups fighting were also diverse, represented by labor unions, religious groups, and educators alike.

Several scholars have written about this moment in broadcast history, but my study shifts the gaze of such inquiry from labor unions, religious groups, and educators to one group of reformers who fought against the commercial radio industry, the National Committee on

Education by Radio (NCER). The NCER was an educational reform group sponsored by the

Payne Fund, a philanthropic fund that also took an interest in “saving” films. I am most interested in this group for four key reasons. First, understanding the NCER and its actions will help us to understand better the opposition to the commercialists and why that opposition failed.

Second, of all of the groups working against the commercial radio industry, the NCER was the best suited to achieve its goal of reform. The NCER comprised a group of professional educators who avoided the stigma of labor unions or religious institutions. Thirdly, the NCER was the key group that actively protested and attacked commercialism on the air; of all the groups doing battle with the commercial industry, it was the NCER that was the public face of the opposition,

and it alone attacked commercial radio on principle between 1930-1935, yet it has received little

sustained attention. I isolate and elevate the NCER in this study precisely because the NCER

provided the greatest opposition to the status quo of American broadcasting. The NCER

ultimately lost its battle with the commercial industry, but it lost in good part as a result of the 4

radical reputation it earned at a time in American history when, ironically, more and more people

were willing to entertain radical and anti-commercial ideas, in part due to the Great Depression.

The Committee’s fundamental ideological battle with regulators and commercial

broadcasters saw both sides struggle to define “American” in accordance with its model or

concept of radio. It thus elevated the fight for radio from a mere argument over a broadcast

system to a struggle over the place of commerce in American society and the control of the

American public sphere. Also in contrast to other radio histories which include a discussion of

the NCER, I argue that the NCER can only be fully understood in the context of Progressive reform and its predecessor, Populism. Certainly these were two ideologies with an element of radicalism, but, by the early 1930s, perceptions of their radicalism had softened. Commercial broadcasters labeled the NCER ideology as radical, and by the standards of that time one could see its thinking as radical. The U.S. had already endured a red scare and experienced a supposed return to “normalcy” in which suggestions of government ownership of an industry smacked of

Leninist thinking at worst or, at best, a return to the more radical of humanist Progressive ideas.

The National Committee on Education by Radio was a Progressive organization that fought for the purity of the American public sphere and attempted to combat what it viewed as the cultural

colonization of the United States by New York and East Coast interests.

Origins of American Radio

Originally the term radio simply signified wireless telegraphy—nothing as grandiose as a

national network broadcast to millions of homes—but it quickly outgrew this meaning and

became much more. Guglielmo Marconi’s invention easily proved its utility and even necessity

between 1900 and 1914, and its uses became much more evident in the wake of two major 5

events—the Titanic disaster and World War I. The Titanic disaster hastened the spread of

wireless telegraphy; British and American maritime officials realized that if the technology had

been mandated for international shipping, then the great loss of life in that disaster might have

been averted. If all ships had wireless capability, then ships closer to the Titanic than the

Carpathia could have converged on the scene more quickly and saved more lives. The disaster

even motivated Congress to pass the Radio Act of 1912 which required the installation of

wireless sets on all U.S. ships. Two years later, World War I gave wireless a larger stage to prove

its necessity in the modern world. After the war, the U.S. government transformed Marconi’s

company, American Marconi Wireless, as part of a national security policy. Marconi was not a

U.S. citizen; he was the son of an Italian father and a rich Irish mother—the heiress to the

Jameson Whiskey fortune—and, in any case, the federal government believed his company so

vital to U.S. security that it would no longer tolerate foreign ownership. Marconi invented the

wireless telegraph and built his business in the United States which gladly accepted this device,

however, Marconi himself, the Italian, as a business owner was no longer welcome. The U. S.

government bought Marconi out of his ownership and directorship of his company and

restructured and renamed it The Radio Corporation of America (RCA).6

The Radio Corporation of America would not simply remain a wireless telegraph

company in the decade after the peace at Versailles; it changed the very definition of radio. A

young executive in RCA who had been one of its top telegraphers in his early tenure and later a

personal assistant to Marconi, David Sarnoff, provided the direction and the insight that piloted

RCA’s development of broadcast radio. Now that the war was over, an idea he proposed before

the war, a Radio Music Box in every home, could become a reality. Sarnoff issued a memo

6 Hugh G. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900-1932 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 322-350; Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 284-291; and Lewis, Empire of the Air, 136-159. 6 describing a radio receiving set as an appliance for the home that could receive sound transmissions. Because, however, World War I diverted the focus and efforts of Marconi

Wireless, Sarnoff’s idea would have to wait until peacetime. Sarnoff convinced RCA to purchase patent rights to several types of tubes used in transmitting and receiving sound broadcasts, most notably the patent for the DeForest Audion tube invented by Lee DeForest and the superheterodyne tube perfected and patented by Edwin Armstong. Sarnoff also used promotional events on chain hookups to test his ideas about creating a box that would receive all kinds of content broadcast into the home. Of course KDKA, Pittsburgh gets credit for being the first radio station as we now know it, famously going on the air to provide on-air election coverage in 1920. Lee DeForest also experimented with broadcasting sound in the early teens, but it never took off. Even Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce during radio’s formative years, perpetuated this corporate pioneer myth in his memoirs.7 In any case, both of these claims are wrong. 8

Left out of most early broadcast histories is the fact that the first actual broadcast station belonged to the University of Wisconsin, and many other colleges and universities purchased and licensed facilities of their own. In fact educational stations, or, at least, stations owned by educational facilities, were a large segment of the American broadcast infrastructure during the late 1910s and early 1920s. Some built facilities and sought experimental licenses which the federal government granted in large numbers. Colleges used the stations as working projects for engineering and science departments, and others used them to provide extension programs over the air to eager listeners otherwise unable to attend college. Many were successfully serving their public by the early to mid-1920s thus predating NBC, CBS, or Mutual by a few years. In short

7 Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 139. 8 Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting; and Lewis, Empire of the Air, 115-135, 157-185. 7

these stations were of practical use to a large segment of the population, and they were central to

the spread of broadcasting in the United States. This was especially true in the Midwest and

West—which is not to say that all college stations were useful, successful, or even necessary.

Many sought licenses before receiving funding or building an actual broadcast facility. Had the

federal government not been so accommodating with its license issuance policy, overcrowding problems faced by all stations would have been avoided, and by the late 1920s the college owned stations may not have been in such serious trouble.9

Since the federal government began regulating radio stations in 1912 largely as a

response to the Titanic disaster, its management had been nebulous and lax at best. After World

War I and during the early 1920s, the Department of Commerce regulated radio—one of its

many duties, and not considered a particularly significant concern. The Department licensed

stations for broadcast operation, but the licensing procedure had flaws. First, all licenses granted

had experimental status, and they had long life spans without expiration. Secondly, the

Department granted most license applications and thus failed to preserve the very purpose of

regulation. The licenses were supposed to keep order on the radio band as there were few

frequencies available for broadcast despite technological advances which made more frequencies

available, but demand still outstripped supply.10

Radio technology in the 1920s, while improving, was not perfect. The useable band was

much smaller than it is today, divided between wireless telegraphy applications, military

applications, and experimental broadcast applications. There was also no such thing as

Frequency Modulation (FM) broadcasting, but only Amplitude Modulation broadcasting (AM).

This meant that the limited space available had even more drawbacks. First some parts of the

9 George H. Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 1987), 142-152. 10 Ibid., 142-152. 8

available AM band were not very good in quality especially the higher frequencies on the dial.

Therefore receiving an assignment on that part of the band was not necessarily cause for

celebration. Secondly, the lower frequencies on the band operated better with higher power ratings which also meant that the station had a larger area of coverage. Compounding these frequency problems was the speed at which radio technology improved. Operating a broadcast

facility was indeed an expensive undertaking because it required a large initial investment for

equipment, facilities, and staff and continued to be a burden since the equipment needed constant

updating as technology improved. Still many stations made due with aging equipment that did

not provide for good transmission and others used mobile broadcasting equipment and traveled

from place to place. Engaging in broadcast, though experimental, was not something to be taken

lightly; it required considerable capital and upkeep to be done effectively.11

By the mid 1920s radio broadcasting became popular for many reasons. It offered the

listener an opportunity to participate in a new “community” and a new technology, and the

broadcaster a way of promoting the message of a business, school, or church. More educational

institutions sought station licenses believing that broadcasting would help them gain a wider

audience. Also joining them were small businesses, churches, and radio companies that saw

broadcasting as a way of promoting themselves. Churches saw radio as a way to expand their

message and increase membership while most of the small businesses treated radio as merely a

fanciful promotional gimmick that would help sell products by developing good will with

potential customers. Many other stations sought licenses simply because the station owners

believed that radio would be an important part of the future, but they had not yet identified

exactly how they would use radio. Others broadcast as a mere whimsy. This situation is

11 For a more in-depth discussion of radio technology see Hugh G. Aitken, Syntony and Spark: The Origins of Radio (New York: Wiley, 1976). 9

analogous to modern companies starting video game and software divisions when their product

has nothing to do with these pursuits. Still these companies develop games or websites designed

to promote their product only later to deem the whole enterprise a costly error. Software

divisions are scrapped; their games relegated to humorous footnotes or collectors items, and their

websites set adrift on the internet like space junk orbiting the earth. In any case, the number of

radio stations as well as license applications grew despite the regulatory procedure.

The radio situation was chaotic by the mid 1920s. The large number of stations interfered

with one another, and many did not follow the power rating and other specifications mandated by

their licenses. This problem led to complaints from both listeners and businesses; both put a good

deal of money into radio—listeners invested in a receiving set as well as batteries for them and businesses had spent money on transmission facilities and talent. The interference meant that the sets were not getting high quality reception, and businesses that took broadcast seriously were

losing or simply not reaching their audience. As Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover tried to

manage radio and solve its problems. Hoover viewed his authority over radio as a “weak rudder”

in piloting the course of radio.12 He wanted to make radio a viable reality for Americans while at

the same time “placing the new channels of communication under public control” because many

corporate stations were “insisting on a right of permanent preemption of the channels through the

air as private property” which Hoover viewed as a monopoly. The corporate stations argued that

permanent preemption was not actually a monopoly; instead it was more like private ownership

of a waterway.13 Hoover, in his “usual fashion of solving problems wherever possible by cooperation rather than by law,” used a series of four White House conferences between 1921

and 1925 to broker a general agreement between government and broadcasters on broadcast

12 Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 139. 13 Ibid., 139-140. 10

standards, but he later urged Congress to take interest in the ether.14 Succumbing to pressure

from Hoover, business interests, and constituents Congress passed the Radio Act of 1927.

The Radio Act of 1927 was in many ways the real trigger of controversy over the control

of American radio. It was an attempt to bring order to the broadcast situation at a time when

broadcasting itself was becoming an industry. NBC would begin operation in 1928 and CBS would soon follow. It was a time in which radio was truly changing from an experimental art in which amateurs dabbled to a business with professionals at the helm. The Radio Act established three critical practices in radio. First it created the Federal Radio Commission, an independent regulatory commission staffed by “experts” to sort out the problems plaguing American broadcasting. The Act only gave the FRC one year of existence because legislators believed that all of radio’s problems would be sorted out in that time. However it would be extended permanently until 1934 when the Communications Act of 1934 established the permanent

Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Secondly, Congress wrote the Act—like so many critical pieces of federal legislation in the history of the United States—with terribly open ended and vague language that may have captured its ideals but failed to provide clear direction for the

Federal Radio Commission. The FRC was supposed to operate in the “public interest and necessity,” yet the Radio Act contained no language defining public interest and necessity.

Finally the Radio Act voided all of the licenses granted by the Department of Commerce and replaced them with a temporary permit. During the period in which the permit was in effect, the

FRC would investigate the station and its operation. It would then make a decision to eliminate

14 Ibid., 140-145; For a greater discussion of Hoover’s White House Conferences on radio see Hugh R. Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920-1960 (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 1-42; and Philip T. Rosen, The Modern Stentors: Radio Broadcasters and the Federal Government, 1920-1934 (Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980), 35-60. 11 the station, allow it to continue on a new frequency, share a frequency with another station and only operate on a part-time basis, or continue current operations.15

The Radio Act of 1927 did not bring order to the air. In fact it raised greater questions about the organization of broadcasting in the United States. The original version of the Radio Act included language granting special protection to educational stations as representatives of the most noble aspects and possibilities of broadcasting. Radio had, since its infancy, been a symbol of progress and enlightenment, and educational radio helped fulfill that promise.16 Still, this language was excluded from the final draft of the Radio Act of 1927 when one Senator argued that such language would not be necessary because naturally Congress and the Federal Radio

Commission would protect educational stations. The FRC did not live up to this expectation.

During its existence it repeatedly gave prime frequencies to commercial stations and relegated educational stations—in some cases long established stations—to weaker frequencies at the edges of the dial. It also cut the power ratings of other educational stations thus reducing their effective range of service. On other occasions it forced educational stations to share a frequency with a commercial station and granted the commercial operation the times of day when most people would listen to programs. In other cases the FRC kept reassigning educational stations’ frequencies so that one station may have changed frequencies three or more times over the course of two years. This process made it difficult for an educational station to retain its audience, since frequency hopping generated confusion among the listening audience. Adding to this difficulty was a growing number of lawsuits and challenges filed against the educational stations. In order to fight this trend, several groups organized for action against the FRC and the commercialists between 1927 and 1934.

15 Rosen, The Modern Stentors, 1-144. 16 See Susan J. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting. 12

Traditional histories of radio, mostly written in the 1930s right after the commercial industry defeated the reformers, provide a golden image of the radio situation in the United

States between 1927 and 1934 that either removed the educators and other non-commercial stations from the picture or simply painted them as irrelevant radicals. They show how the developing commercial broadcasters worked with the federal government to help raise broadcast standards, end chaos in the band, and provide free content to listeners. At the same time they washed away the more controversial history of radio; the complaints and battles over frequencies were not included in their accounts.17 Educational stations were the hardest hit by the FRC’s

pruning during its existence. Still this story, like the story of educational stations as the first in

broadcast, has been overlooked, and the fact that the contributions made by educational stations

and their role has not been popularly accepted or even known is revealing and important. The

commercial broadcast media gained power over the 1920s and early 1930s and these commercial

stations made a concerted effort to take the prime frequencies and power ratings held by many

educational stations and later consolidated power. These powerful interests sponsored

celebratory narratives of their ascent, and the popular story of radio—the one of inventors,

businessmen, and expert federal regulators—reflected a rose-colored revision of the history of

radio passed down by the commercial broadcast industry as well as individuals like David

Sarnoff whose images and legacies were invested in such fictive accounts.

The stories presented by traditional histories were ones of consensus. Never was this

consensus vision as sure as when describing the development of network radio and the

consolidation of the commercial radio paradigm. They held aloft a system of broadcasting in

17 Two of the most laudatory early radio historians were Gleason Archer and Herman S. Hettinger. See Gleason L. Archer, Big Business and Radio (New York: The American Historical Company, 1939); Gleason L. Archer, History of Radio to 1926 (New York: The American Historical Society Inc., 1938); Herman S. Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Advertising (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1933); and Herman S. Hettinger, Practical Radio Advertising (New York: Prentice Hall, 1938). 13

which programs were “free” in that sponsors paid to advertise and cover their cost; this

“American Plan” was their great legacy and gift to the American public. Their story ends in 1934

when Congress and President Roosevelt restated the Radio Act of 1927 with some minor

changes and established a permanent regulatory body, the FCC. In their feeling, this was a

moment in which business, Congress, and the President worked together with experts to provide

a logical code governing communications in the United States, and there was no real debate over

this process or its arrangements. It was, in short, an enlightened moment according to the early

histories of radio.18

The historiographical tide began changing in the 1960s. Scholarship over the past forty

years has been more critical of the development of American broadcasting and its commercial

organization. The first scholarly history of the development of American broadcasting, written in

the 1960s, Erik Barnouw’s trilogy A Tower in Babel, The Golden Web, and In Preparation

started to revise the interpretation of radio history. His series of books examined the invention

and development of radio as an experimental field, its development, and its continuation as a

commercial broadcast medium. Barnouw’s work may have focused on inventors, government regulators, and corporate leaders as well as personalities with little attention given to the

listening audience, but it still presented a coherent, accessible history of American radio that

turned a more critical eye upon radio’s past. Barnouw wanted to “scrutinize behind-the-scenes

struggles, which tended to become more elusive—and more implacable—as the stakes rose.”19

His trilogy was also the first scholarly history to reveal anything but consensus in the arrangement of American radio and the Communications Act of 1934. His story had several groups—educators, religious institutions, and other independent broadcasters—engaging in a

18 See Archer, Big Business and Radio; Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Advertising; Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume II—1933-1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). 19 Barnouw, The Golden Web, 4. 14 debate over the control of the American airwaves, and, in so doing, re-injected the educational stations and other independents back into the story of the development of radio. In fact it even presented some of the disputes over the Communications Act of 1934 and the fight that a variety of reformers put up during that time to urge that a section of the radio band be reserved for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Barnouw argued that the Communications Act of 1934 was merely a restatement of the earlier Radio Act of 1927 with only slight modifications, and, as such, a reaffirmation of the status quo that was generally agreed upon by government, broadcasters, and the people of the

United States.20 He may have reintroduced the educators and other protestors of commercial radio into the record of American radio, but he viewed them as simply ineffective and unpopular, if well-meaning.21 He also gave this moment modest attention in his history. The lack of attention was unfortunate since he missed an opportunity to further analyze actual debates and battles over the organization of American radio and how the modern commercial paradigm became cemented in tradition. Nevertheless, Barnouw was trying to tell the story of radio from its development to his present, the 1960s, and therefore he could not spend a great deal of time on any single moment or event in radio history, and these shortcomings do not diminish

Barnouw’s contribution to radio history. He wrote an accurate, critical history of radio that spawned further serious scholarly inquiry into the subject; the organization of American radio was not something that all people regarded as inevitable and rational, and many fought to keep commercialism off of radio or at least reduce its presence.

In 1980, Philip T. Rosen continued critical inquiry into the development of American radio in his book The Modern Stentors: Radio Broadcasters and the Federal Government, 1920-

20 Ibid., 25-26. 21 Ibid., 22-28. 15

1934. Rosen’s study focused on a narrower time period than Barnouw’s trilogy and specifically examined the development of the broadcast industry and its relationship with the federal government. Rosen also included the educators and other non-commercial groups in his story, and spent more time analyzing their war against commercial radio between 1927 and 1934.

Rosen was critical of the ways in which the federal regulators favored commercial stations over educational stations and other non-commercial independents, but he reserved most of his harshest criticism for the reformers themselves. Rosen argued the reformers’ actions were

“unsound and self-defeating…While denouncing favoritism for others, the noncommercial groups demanded special treatment for themselves.”22 In the end, Rosen believed that the reformers’ lack of unity and conflicting desires, combined with their “radicalism,” unified their commercial opponents who easily dispatched them. The Communications Act of 1934 was a moment of consensus that “emerged not from a struggle between hucksters, profit-motivated executives, and commercial operators against the forces of higher education, fair play, and classical music but, as always, from a perennial contest between political and economic forces.”23 As far as Rosen was concerned the Communications Act of 1934 passed because it represented a consensus opinion, and those who opposed the status quo of American broadcasting were merely radicals who waged an “abortive revolt.”24

Rosen’s argument echoed the early consensus historians, and it reflected some flaws in his study. He labeled the reformers radical, but there was little support for this claim. The commercial broadcast industry may have painted them as radical, but Rosen’s insistence that this was the case begged for more explanation. The NCER was critical of capitalism in radio, never having seriously challenged capitalism or the market economy of the United States. Also, his

22 Rosen, The Modern Stentors, 13. 23 Ibid.,13-14. 24 Ibid., 13-14, 161-183. 16

assertion that the radio reformers railed against favoritism of commercial stations while

demanding special consideration for themselves is problematic. The radio playing field in the

late 1920s and early 1930s was not level, and many were merely debating the FRC interpretation

of “public convenience and necessity.” The noncommercialists were merely asking to be placed

on the same footing as the commercial stations. This was not a case of special exception; it was a

case of fair play. In order to preserve the few existing educational stations, some reformers did

indeed lobby for a percentage of airspace to be reserved for noncommercial and educational fare,

but this percentage was small compared to the amount already dominated by commercial

broadcasters. In addition to describing the demands of noncommercial broadcasters as unfair,

Rosen simply dismissed the reformers’ efforts as self-defeating, but he did not give an adequate

explanation as to why that was the case. In the end, Rosen’s work too easily dismissed the

noncommercial broadcasters, but it at least wrote them back into the history of the development

of American radio.

The most important contribution in this field has been made by Robert W. McChesney.

McChesney’s 1994 book, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for the

Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1934, is a groundbreaking account of the development and consolidation of the modern commercial broadcast paradigm that acknowledges conflict.

Examining closely what Barnouw discussed briefly and other historians dismissed, McChesney

demonstrates that the arrangement of the broadcast system was hotly contested by a variety of

interests: labor, religious groups, educators, newspapers, and commercialists. He includes most

major groups which served the anti-commercial campaign: the National Committee on

Education, a group of educators representing college and university broadcast facilities as well as

the NEA, the Paulist Fathers, and WCFL, a labor station operated by the Chicago chapter of the 17

American Federation of Labor. He argues that there was indeed a lively disagreement over the

organization of American broadcasting, that groups other than the established commercial

broadcasters and networks proposed a variety of systems including government ownership, and

that those groups lost their appeal because they were disorganized, lacked any kind of consensus

among themselves, and the commercial broadcast industry was too well entrenched and

connected to the federal government to succumb to their opposition. Finally, the

Communications Act of 1934 was not a mere consensus restatement of the Radio Act of 1927,

nor was the commercial broadcast arrangement inevitable; the Communications Act of 1934 was

passed only after these things were debated. Most importantly, McChesney presents this event as

an anti-democratic moment—commercial interests used their connections to the government to

retain the right to profit from public airspace; the interests of the people were not served by their

government representatives, and the resulting commercial system was inherently undemocratic.25

His account also differs from earlier histories of American radio in that he fixes his gaze more upon the reformers than the industry and sympathizes with their arguments. McChesney writes what he terms a “revisionist interpretation” that agrees with the noncommercialist position finding “the reform movement’s critique of commercial broadcasting compelling along with its argument that a democratic society is best served if…a significant portion of its broadcasting is not subject to the capital accumulation process.”26 Even so, he claims that he does not find the commercial broadcasters “morally negligent” for suppressing the noncommercial campaign and reserves his most severe criticism for the reformers themselves.27

25 Robert W. McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3-11. 26 Ibid., 5-6. 27 Ibid., 6. 18

Despite the many merits of McChesney’s work, his study leaves serious questions. First

his focus on many anti-commercial groups may present a sweeping picture of the fight for

broadcast reform, but it also obfuscates the story. He often uses the term reformers or

noncommercial to describe all groups doing battle with the commercial broadcast industry, yet

these “reformers” had varying goals and definitions of success and many did not oppose

commercial broadcasting. Nathan Godfried recognized the fight of the labor station, WCFL, as a more unique case, and his book WCFL: Chicago’s Voice of Labor 1926-1978 examined the special situation of that station. WCFL was the only one of its kind, and it was more of an exception to the norm as far as broadcast reform went.28 The Paulist Fathers’s station, WLWL in

New York, was another case. The Paulists were interested in preserving the station first and

opposing commercialism was a secondary interest; it was a means to an end.29

McChesney’s work also needs to contextualize the reform effort and its ideology not just

in terms of the Great Depression and the New Deal, but also the thought and ideology of

populism and progressivism. McChesney is not a historian; he is a communications scholar,

making his focus understandable. However, his need for a broader context is especially glaring

with regard to the educational groups he discusses. By far the educational stations had the most

to lose in their battle with the radio industry; they had the most stations of any anti-commercial

groups. McChesney describes the tensions between some of the different educational groups, but

misses the deeper reasons for their disagreements.

28 Nathan Godfried, WCFL: Chicago’s Voice of Labor 1926-1978 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 17. The most important concern for WCFL was not commercial broadcasting as a practice, it was existence; WCFL was simply fighting for its life and its frequency. It later became a commercial operation. It succeeded in staying on the air, but it was not necessarily anti-commercial. 29 The Paulists lost their fight, but their case was also an exception. Religious programming on the air was a touchy subject, and many listeners were divided on the issue. Also making the cases different was that both stations might have suffered from existing American attitudes that were anti-labor and anti-Catholic. 19

My study takes issue with McChesney’s conclusions and approach. I agree with

McChesney that the broadcast reform movement failed, and that neither the reformers’ failure

nor the commercial broadcast system was inevitable. Rather, both were the result of a hard

fought battle that saw the reformers outmaneuvered by a deft, well-connected commercial radio

industry. Yet this only explains a few of the reasons that the reformers failed. I disagree with

McChesney’s contention that the failure of reform was an anti-democratic moment; the system

proposed by reformers could be construed as terribly oligarchic and pedagogic and they did not

represent mass opinion. In many ways the commercial system was more inclusive and open. I also do not try to answer questions concerning the nature of media organization as McChesney does; I am not as concerned with arguing whether or not the commercial paradigm is a beneficial

one. I also do not necessarily sympathize with the non-commercial reformers; their ideas were as

undemocratic as McChesney claims the commercial system is. McChesney’s belief in non-

commercial broadcasting makes him too critical of the educators for failing and too accepting of

their view. I will show that the NCER was not the bungler McChesney depicted; the Committee

members were people deeply committed in principle to the idea of non-commercial broadcasting

and took the only course of action their principles allowed them to take.

Methodologically speaking, McChesney failed to see the NCER’s dearest principles in

the context of progressivism and its predecessor, populism. McChesney does little more than

acknowledge the populist thinking of the NCER, but he avoids further examination of this lineage.30 Populism was a body of thought supporting agrarian protest that was popular in

Midwest, West, and South of the United States before the turn century. Despite the demise of

Populism as a political movement, some of its ideas remained ingrained in the minds of many

30 Robert W. McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Radio Broadcasting, 1928-1935,” Children and the Movies: Media Influence and the Payne Fund Controversy Garth S. Jowett, Ian C. Jarvie, and Kathryn H. Fuller, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 311. 20

Americans. Populists feared economic domination by Eastern industrial and railroad interests

and urbanization. Much of this body of thought eventually became part of progressivism. I argue

that the very principles which dictated the NCER’s actions and ultimately led to its failure—the

failure that McChesney pins in part to NCER ineptitude—were progressive. The Committee did

not wage a simple campaign of realpolitik that exploited weaknesses of opponents and played

federal regulators like chessmen on the checker board of Washington; nor did it claim that as its

goal. Barnouw, Rosen, and McChesney simply viewed these practical problems as causes of

failure, but they did not understand the reasons or thinking of the NCER that would steel it to

continue in practices those scholars viewed as bungling. This was not a campaign that relied on

radio engineering arguments. Nor did it appeal to laissez-faire beliefs. The Committee did at

times attempt to demonstrate that its plan for reform would indeed be more technologically

sound than the plans endorsed by the commercial broadcast industry, but this type of argument

was not at the heart of NCER endeavors. Rather, the Committee waged a humanistic war that

urged immediate government interference to preserve the noble possibilities of radio as the

Committee saw them. At the same time it hoped to protect the social fabric of the nation.

Secondly, and more simply, this logic contributed to the inability of the NCER to convince

policymakers of the merits of its plans because it explained the NCER’s decisions and the

Committee’s resolute adherence to its program.

My work is an attempt to combine two bodies of historiography that have been very

separate: progressive historiography and radio historiography. I contend that old Progressivism

had bifurcated by this time into two general camps: business Progressivism and management

being the first and humanitarian reform being the second. This idea is not new as Maureen

Flanagan has demonstrated in her study of the City Clubs of Chicago. This division clearly 21

existed during the “golden age” of Progressivism and it was deeply gendered. Men were more

involved in business and management reforms and women more often worked in more

humanistic causes, yet both considered themselves progressive.31 This institutional schizophrenia

aside, the bifurcation is also relevant to the NCER in that even though the NCER was an organization controlled by men, these men were educators and acting as advocates in a field associated with women and women reformers. The NCER was a group of humanistic progressives. The business/ management Progressives became the men who ran federal regulatory agencies such as the Federal Radio Commission. This division between business interest and human interest and male and female domains of reform disadvantaged the NCER because the Committee used a feminine language of reform that addressed the problems of radio’s soul rather than a male language that tackled radio’s technical problems.

By 1920, one may inquire, wasn’t progressivism as a movement dead, and hadn’t

populism been laid to rest with Bryan’s final defeat? How then could two dead civic religions

burn prominently with such fervor in the 1930s, years after their funerals? Even more baffling,

how could two unrelated movements—if we are to believe recent scholarship on the origins of

Progressivism—coexist? As an official movement—political party—progressivism was dead;

some argue that it was never a movement at all, rather progressivism was simply a clever

invention foisted on the past by historians.32 Populism had been more of a coherent movement, but it too suffered a fatal defeat. Nevertheless, the logic at the core of the NCER campaign and the language around which it revolved owed a great deal to this reform parentage. Also too many

31 Maureen Flanagan, Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Maureen A. Flanagan, “Gender and Urban Political Reform: They City Club and the Woman’s City Club of Chicago in the Progressive Era.” Who Were the Progressives? Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, ed. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 195-219. 32 For more on the question of the existence of Progressivism as a movement see Peter G. Filene “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement’,” American Quarterly 22 no.1 (Spring 1970): 20-34. 22

histories have limited their view of progressive reform to a time in which “Progressive” men

engaged in national politics and sat in the White House. With Elisabeth Israels Perry, I call for an

expanded periodization of progressive reform; progressive reform did not simply exist between

1900 and 1920, a time in which a Progressive political party had members in office. Any

understanding of progressive reform must come from common people and grass-roots groups as

well as Presidents and Congressmen, and humanitarian progressive thought is best revealed by

the work of civic-minded women or at least in areas associated with women.33 The Progressive

movement may have been dead by 1920 to those who simply view it in terms of national politics,

but pockets of reformers continued on the progressive path throughout the 1920s and beyond.

Most notably, progressive ideas were further sculpted into the New Deal and contributed to the foundation of modern liberalism.34 Such progressives were not necessarily fringe characters

either. A significant pocket of Progressives remained in Congress throughout the 1930s such as

Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and George W. Norris of Nebraska.35 Thus the idea of a

Progressive thinking organization operating as late as the 1930s should not be surprising.

Answering the second question concerning the relationship between Progressivism and

Populism is trickier. Since the late 1950s scholars have attacked the idea of any substantive

relationship between Populism and Progressivism. Richard Hofstader perhaps gave the most

generous nod to such a relationship in his book, The Age of Reform, acknowledging that

Populism contributed to a reformist zeitgeist, but declaring it too provincial to have contributed anything more substantive.36 Hofstader’s contemporaries were not as accommodating. Robert

33 Elisabeth Israels Perry, “Men are from the Gilded Age, Women are from the Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 no. 1 (January, 2002). 34 Sidney M. Milkis, “Introduction: Progressivism Then and Now,” Progressivism and the New Democracy Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur eds. (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 1-39. 35 Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), 45-46. 36 Richard Hofstader, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955). 23

Wiebe, James Weinstein, and John Buenker all disputed a Populist lineage in Progressivism.37 I believe we need to reconsider this body of scholarship, and I agree with Elizabeth Sanders that populism was a key component of progressive thought.38 Thus the presence of some Populist

thought intertwined with Progressive thought in the actions of the NCER was actually quite

normal for any Progressive organization. Progressives, as Alonzo Hamby noted, had “rural

counterparts…with the same resentments, sometimes employing the rhetoric of the populist

movement but no longer pursuing inflationary panaceas.”39 The other Populist legacy for

Progressives was the “vigorous, but ultimately unsuccessful struggle against a dominant standpat

Northeastern elite.”40 Both of these conditions were key components of NCER complaints.

The NCER campaign attacked the commercial invasion of the private sphere of home,

the commercialization of the public sphere, the corruption of children, and the unresponsive

nature of federal regulators. It also called for expertise, morality, public good, an end to the

influence of special interests, and faith in technology and progress. Along with Daniel T.

Rodgers, I contend that a specific language that marked all groups considering themselves

progressive encompassing antimonopolism, emphasis on social bonds and the social nature of

people, and social efficiency was a key component of the Committee’s thinking and therefore demonstrates a strong linkage to a Progressive past.41

The NCER also attacked the American Plan of radio on a deeper level. It relentlessly

fought against what it saw as the cultural colonization of the country—especially the Mid-

37 See Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); John Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York: Scribner’s, 1973); and John Buenker et al, Progressivism (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1977). 38 Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform : Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999). 39 Alonzo Hamby, “Progressivism: A Century of Change and Rebirth,” Progressivism and the New Democracy, 44. 40 Ibid., 47; also see Sanders, Roots of Reform. 41 Richard T. Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Review s in American History 10:4 (Dec., 1982), 123. 24

West—by New York City and other East coast interests. In fact the anti-New Yorkism was also,

in part, an anti-urban sentiment in general. These points, more than any others, were the heart of

the NCER’s attack. This component of the campaign was clearly a descendant of populist

beliefs. After all, Bryan and the other populists fought the same monster in the 1890s. The silver

standard was their rally point, but the core of that platform was fear of Eastern cultural and

economic dominion over the nation—especially the Mid-West, the West, and the South. At the

same time, another activist, Huey Long, would attack East Coast business interests and accuse

them of starting the Great Depression as well as perpetuating the suffering felt by people in the

South.42 This heritage remained very much alive in the 1930s.

This logic coursed so fully through the NCER’s veins that it was clearly fighting for more

than radio. The Committee platform against monopoly, commercialism, and New Yorkism on the air illuminated a sub-campaign against what it perceived to be the major social ills of the

time. The Committee saw the emergence of the New York based national broadcasting networks

and their hegemony over American broadcasters as a practice that effectively spread New York

values or urban values over the United States at large. In the process it shut out local voices and

tastes as well as local control over the material broadcast. In short, this process demonstrated the

weakness and essential irrelevance of those voices in American broadcasting as well as their

input into its control. Radio, like the silver standard forty years before, simply proved to be the

Committee’s rallying point.

The NCER was attempting to “clean up” radio in the same way that the earliest

progressives cleansed the cityscape of the late 1800s. Early progressive women, reacting to the

disorder and dirt of urban centers, created “redemptive spaces” in the city such as public baths

and settlement homes that helped order the city in a way that would enhance social efficiency

42 Brinkley, Voices of Protest. 25

and the social bonds of people. At the same time these redemptive spaces would assimilate all

strangers to an American culture as defined by middle class women appealing to a morality

informed by rural or “country” life. The city, a human factory, may have been a great

accomplishment of modern technology and industry, but order and the degradation of the human

spirit was the most common waste product of this space.43 Radio, like the city of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, needed cleaning and ordering, and, while other men may have focused on

radio’s technological structure, the NCER would fight to carve out a redemptive space on the air.

From a policy standpoint, the NCER’s campaign against commercial broadcasting

illuminates what I believe is the ultimate irony of progressive reform. The 1920s saw a continued

rise in urbanity, in New Yorkism, and in pseudo-trusts enabled by modified laissez-faire New

Era government-business cooperation. The systems championed by one segment of the old

progressive movement to hold corporate infractions in check and allow experts to formulate

policy scientifically all combined to shut out this group of latter-day, humanistic progressives

and the public. Progressives had campaigned for city government systems and regulatory

structures comprised of non-partisan experts that would help end corruption and graft.44 The

Federal Radio Commission, the regulatory agency for radio, was indeed an oversight committee

staffed by technical experts who viewed and approached the problems of radio from this

perspective. Thus, its background stacked the deck against the NCER for two key reasons. First,

“radio expertise” was often the result of having been a part of the very commercial industry

being regulated, and this definition of expertise gave the commercialists valuable allies.

Secondly, the FRC’s viewpoint influenced the kinds of questions it asked at hearings and

43 Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). 44 Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform, 118-162. 26

investigations, and it also influenced the kinds of witnesses it would allow or bar from testifying

at such proceedings.

The Committee may have been using a logic that fought hobgoblins from the past, but

those hobgoblins still haunted America. The Radio Corporation of America, the parent company

of NBC, was clearly a trust. The vast radio empire it controlled cornered every part of the radio

market from set manufacture to broadcast facilities. It owned both NBC networks, the key patents on the audion tubes that all radios needed, set manufacturing plants, and the Victor phonograph company. In short, every radio consumer, at some point, would have to pay RCA for

his or her radio experience. Networks were rapidly becoming the dominant radio outlets, and

both NBC networks were the jewels in the radio network crown. These operations, stationed in

New York, beamed content across the country, but those entertainments were all urban, and New

Yorkish. The NCER did not invent these threats; they were very real.45

In total the language and the logic of the Committee not only reflected a substantive

populist/progressive linkage; it also shared stylistic similarities. The NCER hoped that if it could

demonstrate that the commercial broadcast industry was corrupt, it could sway regulators and

Congress to end the system. This was the modus operandi of many progressives and populists.

Essentially the Committee viewed itself as an organization that would expose radio in the way

that Upton Sinclair cut away at meat packing. This very concept—that merely exposing

corruption and corporate abuse to public light would bring about change—was a Progressive

tactic.46 Its approach also betrayed a conspiratorial view of history well documented as a part of

45 Lewis, Empire of the Air. 46 Richard L. McCormick, “The Discovery that Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” Who Were the Progressives? Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, ed. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2002),103-140. 27

progressive thought by historian Richard Hofstader.47 Finally, the NCER consisted completely of

elite educators, a profession foundational to humanistic progressivism. The language and logic as well as the approach were directly inherited. The NCER viewed the U.S. as breaking at the seams, and radio was simply one piece of sidewalk the many fissures traversed. Its fight for the ether was also a fight for American society.

Chapter one describes the formation of the NCER and its activities in its first year of

operation. It also discusses the perceived need for the group, its interpretation of its mandate, and

its goals as well as its ideological opposition to commercial broadcasting. Chapter two explains

the heart of the NCER complaints about radio at the time. In this chapter I attempt to explain

how its language and the logic behind its language and actions was a mixture of the progressive

and populist legacies. This is important because it demonstrates that the NCER may have had

legitimate complaints about the state of radio at the time, but the terms in which they framed

their complaints were not ones of efficiency. Their problem was more humanistic. I am building

this point because I will argue that this approach seriously hurt their cause because federal

regulators privileged efficiency over humanistic concerns. I also argue that the NCER had a

much larger problem with the state of the U.S. at that time, and it was not simply radio. The

NCER was fighting against what it perceived to be a cultural colonization of the West and

Midwest and South by Eastern interests.

Chapter three describes the attempts the NCER made to find allies in its struggle. The

Committee needed organizations to support its view of the radio problem and work together in lobbying the Congress and federal regulators for action. This attempt at gaining allies failed and actually hurt the NCER in its campaign against commercial radio. Still the types of allies it sought demonstrated the deeper progressive ideology fueling the NCER campaign.

47 See Hofstader, The Age of Reform. 28

Chapter four recounts the NCER’s goals and activities in 1932. It was a difficult year for the Committee, but one that shows the NCER gaining token consideration from the federal government and its opposition. Such measures looked like serious attempts to work with the

NCER, but they were actually clever ways of preventing the NCER from exercising significant influence. This chapter also recounts the death of the Fess Bill, showing how the NCER was quickly boxed into a corner by a supposed “nonpartisan” government regulatory agency and

“impartial” Congress whose decisions would favor the commercialists. Still it demonstrates the fear the reformers inspired among the commercialists and the international dimension to NCER progressivism.

Chapter five recounts the NCER’s internal problems, and its attempts to court new members of Congress to support some kind of reform bill. It also examines the NCER’s participation in another international radio conference and its attempts to court the general public and enroll it in the struggle for reform. It shows how this organization, which still had some promise, dealt with the blows it took in 1932. Despite all of these measures, the Committee still fell into disfavor with the federal government, found no new support for its ideas in Congress, and failed to rally the public to its cause. Even worse it suffered from some disapproval from its parent organization that funded the NCER.

Chapter six recounts the possibility the NCER felt FDR’s arrival in office presented. The

NCER thought that FDR as a president would be more supportive of its efforts than Hoover, but

FDR was not. In fact, FDR’s investigations would only bolster the commercial radio industry, and the NCER suffered some it its worst defeats. The Tugwell investigation of the drug and beauty industry and its advertising as well as the NIRA helped to further cement the commercial industry. 29

I. THE ORIGINS OF REFORM

By October of 1930, Americans, submerged in the morass of the Great Depression for

one full year, saw the boom and prosperity of the previous decade vanish seemingly over night.

Unemployment had tripled from 3% to 9%; the GNP dropped, and new investment dipped by

35%.1 The major corporations that thrived during the post-World War I boom—corporations that

had worked with government during the 1920s to develop what some heralded as the new

associative state—now saw their stocks plummet and profits collapse. Company leaders had

believed, as had President Hoover, that the new cooperation between expert managers and

businessmen would eliminate waste, promote efficiency, and preserve a robust economy for

many years. Businessmen and government officials still paid lip service to the concept of

competition as fundamental to the marketplace, but one of the key effects of associationalism

was actually the limitation of competition in favor of cooperation.2 Industrialists would produce,

and production, according to the wisdom of that time, fueled healthy economies. Even this basic

belief was, by 1930, being seriously questioned. Some industrial workers and others began to

question the very roots of capitalism and the machinery that built the prosperous 1920s by

turning to socialism, communism, or labor unions. Hoover, the engineer, attempted to fall back

on his associative system to encourage economic recovery, but his early measures, while well-

intentioned, seemed cold and heartless to the down and out. He supported no large scale

government relief. Rather, he attempted to manage the growing wave of poverty as he had

prosperity. He believed private charities should handle the situation, but these charities were

overrun by the rising tide of the needy. The winter of 1930 was well on the way, and many had

1 Ellis Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917-1933 (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1992), 165. 2 Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 39. 30

no provision, shelter, or prospect of employment. One sufferer in October 1930 asked President

Hoover why “we must suffer on acct [sic] of a few men seeking power and rule and have laws

pass [sic] to suit themselves.”3 Another writer inquired “could we not have employment and food to Eat. And this for our Children Why should we hafto…now Have foodless days and our children have Schoolless days… Why does Every Thing have Exceptional Value, Except the

Human Being…Can you not find a quicker way of Executing us than to Starve us to death?”4

However, this was just the beginning of the Great Depression, and the worst of it was yet to come. There were indeed people questioning the truisms to which the associationalists clung throughout the 1920s, but they were still few in number.5

Ironically the Hooverian machinery grew out of a progressive tradition that aimed to end human suffering and waste. The original goal of the commission style management, upon which

Hoover relied throughout the 1920s, was to create a non-partisan method to regulate industries efficiently and fairly, keeping them out of the clutches of corrupt politicians and special interests, and placing them in the hands of professionals who could use their expertise to provide the best possible system for all people. By the 1920s advances in corporate management led to a revision of the image of big business. Supposedly the evil trusts of the turn of the century were gone and, in their wake, remained “modern managerial corporations that could evolve into a neutral technocracy administering orderly growth and progress.”6

Championing this image throughout the 1920s was the “man for all emergencies,”

Herbert Hoover. An old managerial Progressive, Hoover argued that the true aim of progressive

3 Anonymous letter to Herbert Hoover from Pottstown, Pa dated October 30, 1930 from Robert S. McElvaine, ed., Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 42. 4 Anonymous letter to Herbert Hoover from Vineland, NJ dated November 18, 1930 from Ibid., 43. 5 For greater detail about the Great Depression and the business arrangements of the 1920s see Gordon, New Deals and Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order. 6 Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, 74-75. 31

government was community cooperation or “associational action.” He believed that this

enlightened governance had enabled American progress and would continue to foster such

progress while eliminating destructive state regulation and class warfare.7 During his time as

Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1928, Hoover worked tirelessly to build what scholar Ellis

Hawley termed the “associative state.” This arrangement used private organizations to advise

and make agreements while Hoover acted as a moderator of sorts thus allowing the supposed

experts to make policy that ensured continued progress and growth while eliminating what he

believed was classist legislation from Congress. Hoover did not want “statist coercion;” he

wanted “publicly endorsed agreements that had an approved yet extralegal status.”8

In 1930 the National Committee on Education by Radio, a reform group attempting to

preserve educational radio stations, began operations. The organization arose from an ad hoc

meeting of educators called by the Commissioner of Education of the United States, William

John Cooper, in October 1930, to address the numerous problems faced by educational radio

stations in America—most importantly the Federal Radio Commission’s seeming predilection

for revoking their licenses. In many ways the “October Conference,” as it would be known, was

a typical Hooverian, New Era solution. The federal government would merely act as a facilitator,

bringing disputing parties together and mediating a discussion of their differences. Until that

time there was no organization dedicated to protecting and promoting education by radio.

Ideally, the meeting would bring about a general agreement between the federal regulators and

the educators without requiring time-consuming legislation or lawsuits.

By the end of 1931 the new National Committee on Education by Radio had organized and, filled with hope and optimism, initiated a variety of ambitious projects. A group of

7 Ibid., 83. 8 Ibid. p 86. 32

professional educators—experts—comprised the Committee in an era that placed a high value on

expertise, yet the educators were starting to believe that few people in the federal government

really cared about their particular expertise. The Committee proposed and supported legislation

to protect educational stations, lobbied the Federal Radio Commission, conducted a research

campaign on radio education, published a newsletter to disseminate information about radio, and

developed a service bureau to aid educational stations. The NCER challenged the tenets of

associationalism by seeking Congressional action and, like a number of Americans other walks

of life, launched a campaign that fundamentally questioned and exposed the limitations of

associative action to prevent human misery and profit the mind and body as well as the wallet. In

the process, the NCER campaign revealed the deeper ideological conflict of the still extant

progressive ethos that supported associationalism. The NCER, like the letter writer from

Vineland, NJ, wondered “Why does Every Thing have Exceptional Value, Except the Human

Being?”9

The October Conference

The conference could not have come soon enough. In October 1930, the Commissioner

of Education of the United States called for a meeting of educators to find ways to preserve the dwindling number of educational radio stations and formulate methods to parry the numerous challenges commercial radio stations leveled against educational outfits. Too many educational radio stations were going dark only to be replaced by new commercial broadcast facilities, and the economic effects of the Depression prevented many of the educational stations from better defending themselves against commercial challenges. These stations were not being driven out

9 Anonymous letter to Herbert Hoover from Vineland, NJ dated November 18, 1930 from McElvaine, ed., Down and Out in the Great Depression, 43. 33

of business by “free market” competition or their own technological inferiority. Rather, the three

year old Federal Radio Commission had forced many universities owning and operating educational stations off the air or reduced their power and time assignments. In 1928, the FRC’s first year of operation, twenty-three educational radio stations closed down; meanwhile the FRC proved reluctant to award new licenses to educational stations: between 1927 and 1934 the FRC would issue just twelve educational licenses, despite the fact that many of these stations provided public services such as extension work, distance learning, and other such programming for its audience free of charge.10

Why did the FRC rule against these stations during licensure hearings? Educational

stations faced three key internal problems that prevented their stations from meeting FRC

standards. First, they had difficulty staffing educational stations throughout the year. Professors

used radio to deliver messages and educational fare as a public service or because they were simply interested in radio. They were not compensated for their efforts, nor were their radio endeavors considered part of their teaching load by school administrators. Thus filling the schedule consistently was a key problem every college radio station manager faced because programmers relied upon faculty volunteers. Secondly, summer breaks exacerbated this staffing problem because an already tentative program schedule collapsed when faculty and students left campus during the summer months. Educational stations simply remained off the air on certain days over the summer because there was no one to broadcast. Finally, university-wide budget crunches also posed a serious problem for educational stations. Colleges were reeling from the effects of the Great Depression on their cash flow and funding. Many were cutting budgets and scaling back even on bare necessities; a radio station was a luxury that required constant upkeep.

As broadcast technology improved, the FRC mandated that stations use the new equipment to

10 Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation, 50-51. 34 provide clearer signals and cut down on interference. The new equipment was expensive and constant upkeep placed a serious burden upon the school.11

When the educational stations went dark, so did their public service minded content.

Many of these stations had been in existence since radio’s first experimental days in the early

1920s, offering broadcast classes, informational lectures, and agricultural extension information to local farmers during their tenure on the air. But by 1930, due in part to FRC licensing decisions, radio had become a major industry in the United States, and its largest growth sector was commercial programming. When educational stations lost their frequencies and assignments their slots were almost always taken by a commercial station. Even worse, commercial stations forced into sharing a frequency with an educational station often challenged it to hearings before the FRC. According to the FRC code, any station could have its license challenged, and it was required to prove that it served the public interest better than its challenger. These challenges required defendants to hire legal counsel and send that counsel to Washington, D. C. to defend the station. Failure to appear at the hearing was tantamount to forfeiting one’s license; attendance was not optional. These challenges and hearings burdened financially marginal college stations.

Usually the challengers were commercial stations with better financial resources, and in many cases the commercial station repeatedly challenged the educational station in an effort to sap its limited financial resources, make it unable to send counsel to appear in Washington, D.C., and thus surrender the license to the commercial challenger. The FRC’s unwillingness to give greater consideration to educational institutions forwarding license applications, the Commission’s seeming disregard of educational content as a public service, and the wave of commercial

11 Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 142-152. 35

stations strafing educational licenses causing widespread concern among educators, including

Cooper.12

From 1921 to 1927 Hoover used his associational system to regulate radio under the

auspices of the Department of Commerce thereby protecting it from Congressional action. He

held four major White House conferences to forge general principles about its efficient operation

and development. Still, despite his best efforts, he lacked the staff to administer radio properly,

and continued disorder on the band led Congress to create the Federal Radio Commission in

1927 ending its regulation by the Department of Commerce.

The FRC may have been a new entity, but its actions were steeped in associational

ideology. The Radio Act of 1927 created the Commission and required it to regulate

broadcasting according to “public interest, convenience, or necessity.” Clearly one could view

educational programming as serving the public interest clause of the Radio Act of 1927. The

FRC, mostly comprised of engineers, took a narrower view of the public interest clause; it

believed that public necessity was best served by efficient technological management and

engineering practices. Program content was not its major concern. Therefore the FRC was most

concerned that a radio station use all of the time it was allotted by license. In this case public

interest was defined as a radio station providing as much broadcast material as possible

regardless of content. Also all stations needed to comply with new broadcast frequency

tolerances. If a station could not stay up to code in this respect—no matter how useful its

content—the FRC revoked its license. Throughout its existence the Federal Radio

Commissioners and their engineers would attempt to insulate themselves from questions that

went beyond the realm of technology. This practice reflected two important aspects of the FRC

and engineering at that time. First its refusal to answer non-engineering questions helped

12 Ibid., 142-152. 36

reinforce the non-partisan nature of the Commission. Secondly, it avoided discussion of non- engineering questions as a way to further assert professional standards of engineering and make

distinctions between the areas in which engineers were and were not expert.13 The engineers of

the Federal Radio Commission were going to make decisions about the public interest based

upon their realm of expertise without going beyond their professional purview as they saw it.

Thus, as scholar Hugh Slotten concluded, the engineers of the Commission failed to take into

account “the possibility that technical evaluations might have social, political, and economic

implications.”14 So, on the one hand, the FRC may have seemed like the managerial ideal, while

on the other it revealed a fundamental problem of associationalism and progressive thought. As

Ellis Hawley noted, this type of management failed to live up to the original vision of

associationalism to preserve “the old American dream of an open, decentralized, self-regulating

economy, made up of independent entrepreneurs and free individuals,” and the “vision of a

Christian capitalism, the notion of a ‘just society’ in which the market place would be moralized,

ethical standards observed, and men motivated by feelings of compassion and brotherhood.”15

Managers and the universities that owned stations pursued several courses of action to

preserve their stations but none of them worked. The most promising campaign for self-

preservation attempted to forge a solid relationship with the Agriculture Department of the

United States—a sensible approach because many of the larger educational stations were owned

by land grant institutions that used the broadcast outlets to support extension work. They often

broadcast crop information including advice on best farming practices, crop prices, and weather conditions. In short they provided reliable sources of information for the farmer, and, as such,

13 Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation, 43-67. 14 Ibid., 57. 15 Ellis W. Hawley, Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American Capitalism ed. J. Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. Susman (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1973), 5. 37

provided a vital public service—a requirement of the Radio Act of 1927.16 Educational station

managers hoped that finding a powerful government ally in the Department of Agriculture could

help them fight the Federal Radio Commission’s predilection for jettisoning educational stations.

But their hopes were soon dashed. At the same time, the commercial adversaries of the educational stations began to broadcast some crop and agricultural information, and the CBS

network also attempted to cultivate the Department of Agriculture by appointing Sam Pickard, a

Radio Division chief of the Department of Agriculture and a Federal Radio Commissioner, as a vice-president of the company. If educational stations were going to argue that they served the public interest by broadcasting helpful agricultural information, the commercialists would not be left out. In the end many members of the Department of Agriculture and even supporters of the educational stations suggested that they simply work with the commercial broadcasters because the educators would get their wish of quality service-minded programming while not taking a

place of their own on the broadcast band. The educators then lobbied the Secretary of the

Interior, Ray Lyman Wilbur, who directed one of their supporters, U.S. Commissioner of

Education, William John Cooper, to meet with the various representatives of educational stations

to discuss the problem.17

Commissioner Cooper and the educational broadcasters were not alone in their concern

about the attrition rate of educational stations. Since commercial radio stations—especially

networks—began to dominate the ether, many educators and elites questioned the future of the

invention and lamented its current course. “The case of radio,” wrote one critic “has already

given us…one dramatic reminder of the inability of our non-material culture to support the

16 Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 142-152. 17 Rosen. The Modern Stentors, 168-170. 38 material advance we prize so highly.”18 Specifically, he questioned the system of advertising in

American radio and commercial stations’ willingness to provide sustaining programs—programs uninterrupted by advertising—and enlightening fare. “One wonders,” the critic pondered,

“whether the ‘unsponsored’ programmes [sic] which now account for the better features of

American broadcasting will be continued on the increasing scale which cultural considerations demand.”19 Finally he worried about educational stations’ ability to compete for frequency allocation with national chains and other commercial stations.20 Another writer critical of the state of radio attacked it as a “vast cacophonous sales mart” that succeeded by “appealing to a

15-year-old intelligence” and “stimulating the tastes of the mentally deficient.”21 One prominent radio critic attacked the state of radio, declaring that “the scientific workers who developed and perfected the radio tube …brought into the world hopes, apprehensions, marvels, and grotesqueries greater than they could have anticipated.”22

Many more such articles appeared between 1927 and 1931. While many had their own special contribution to this body of criticism, most critical pieces attacked radio programming in four distinct ways. First they targeted program content, especially advertisements, which they considered a vulgar intrusion into the home. They also criticized the content of commercial programs themselves, arguing that commercial material was devoid of any intellectual benefit and appealed only to the lowest level of intelligence in American society. Commercial radio did not ask its listeners to think; it told them to purchase things to make their life better while pacifying them with vaudeville comedy and sensational drama. Thirdly writers pointed to radio as a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts. It was a machine of noble possibilities, and it served as an

18 William Orton, “Unscrambling the Ether,” The Atlantic Monthly (April, 1931): 429. 19 Ibid., 435. 20 Ibid., 436. 21 Henry Volkening, “Abuses of Radio Broadcasting,” Current History and Forum 33 (December, 1930): 396-397. 22 James Rorty, “The Impending Radio War,” Harper’s Magazine 163 (November, 1931). 39

example of the great possibilities of science, but those potentialities were being ignored. Finally,

the critics agreed that education was a public service, and educational stations served the public

interest clause laid out in the Radio Act of 1927; it was the noblest pursuit on the air and

represented the best use of new radio technology. These beliefs served as the key assumptions

held by most of the educators at the October Conference and dictated their final resolutions.23

Commissioner Cooper’s conference was a brief roundtable that attempted to assemble the key educators and organizations representing educational broadcasters as well as representatives from interested philanthropic organizations. It even included an interested Federal Radio

Commissioner, Harold Lafount. The Conference included representatives from the Association of College and University Broadcast Stations, the Association of Land-Grant Colleges, the

National University Extension Association, the National Association of State University

Presidents, the National Education Association, the Jesuit Education Association, the National

Advisory Council on Radio in Education, the Payne Fund, and the Federal Radio Commission.

Cooper hoped that his radio conference would achieve such results. His hopes were dashed, however, when Harold Lafount, the Federal Radio Commissioner in attendance, responded to the educators by declaring the FRC powerless to favor one type of broadcasting over another. The public interest clause in the Radio Act of 1927 was vague, he pointed out, and would not be enforceable until Congress defined it. The FRC held fast to this position for the remainder of its existence, and, while at times sympathetic to educators, the Commission refused to assist educational broadcasting simply because it claimed to serve the public interest.24

Harold Lafount’s refusal to compromise helped steer the educators down a different,

more confrontational path. The attempt to broker an agreement between the FRC and the

23 “National Committee on Education by Radio,” Education by Radio. 1 (June 25, 1931): 79-82. 24“Reservation of Broadcasting Channels for Educational Institutions,” J. McKeen Cattell and William McAndrew, eds., School and Society with which is combined the Educational Review 32 (November 29, 1930): 722. 40

educators failed because of the associational tension between managing the marketplace for

efficiency and managing it for morality and ethics. Because the Federal Radio Commission

claimed that only Congress had the power to make such radio concessions, educators were

essentially forced to seek some kind of Congressional action. They formulated a four-fold

strategy to protect educational broadcasting. First they resolved that Congress enact legislation

requiring that at least 15% of all radio broadcasting channels be reserved for educational

institutions. This measure would force the FRC to protect educational broadcasting. Second they

resolved that an educator be appointed as a Federal Radio Commissioner. This measure would

presumably help educational stations during hearings until Congress could pass helpful

legislation. Thirdly the conference committee demanded that commercial stations schedule

educational fare during prime listening hours. This platform was aimed at keeping commercialists “honest” by making sure that educational programming was not continually relegated to the least marketable advertising hours when listeners were few. Finally the committee called for the establishment of a special committee “for the purpose of formulating definite plans and recommendations for protecting and promoting broadcasting originating in educational stations.”25 The resolution did not specifically state whether this was to be a

government or a private organization, but as a private organization it could claim a government

sanctioned status because it was created by a resolution at an official conference called by the

Secretary of the Interior, Ray Lyman Wilbur.

25 Rosen, The Modern Stentors 1920-1934, 168-170; “Reservation of Broadcasting Channels,” 722; and Rorty, “The Impending Radio War,” 714-726. 41

The National Committee on Education by Radio

The Payne Fund, a philanthropic foundation that had financed a variety of educational,

reform, and media projects, decided to fund the organization called for by the conference

committee.26 Armstrong Perry, a member of the Payne Fund and a “specialist in education by

radio,” worked with the U. S. Office of Education during the fall of 1930, and he was present at

the October Conference as the representative of the Payne fund.27 Perry had already secured a

commitment from the Payne Fund to back a select group of educators at the meeting ready to

carry out such work. The Fund requested Commissioner Cooper to select the members of the

new committee, and he obliged them. After selecting members he then removed himself from

any further involvement in the new committee, because he believed it inappropriate for a

government official to be associated with a group designed to lobby Congress. In any case, the result of these deliberations was the National Committee on Education by Radio.28

The National Committee on Education by Radio began official operations in December

1930. In its first meeting the Committee formally requested the funds promised by the Payne

Fund and officially received a five year grant from the Fund. The NCER membership included

representatives of organizations present at the October Conference. Later in 1931 and early 1932 the NCER added a representative from the National Association of State University Presidents, a secretary, Tracy F. Tyler, and a special assistant, Eugene J. Coltrane. Also included in the NCER was a member of the Payne Fund, Armstrong Perry. However, five members would form the soul of the organization and its activities: Joy Elmer Morgan, the outspoken educator and editor

26 For more on the Payne Fund see Garth S. Jowett, Ian C. Jarvie, and Kathryn H. Fuller eds., Children and the Movies: Media Influence and the Payne Fund Controversy. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Also see description of the Payne Fund, Western Reserve Historical Society in finding guide in manuscript collection filing cabinet. 27 “Reservation of Broadcasting Channels,” 722. 28 Rorty, “The Impending Radio War,” 714-726.; “The National Committee on Education by Radio.” School and Society 33 no. 837 (January 10, 1931): 49; Rosen. The Modern Stentors, 168-170; and McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 46-47. 42

of the NEA Journal and chair of the NCER; John Henry MacCracken, vice-chairman and

representative of the American Council on Education; Tracy F. Tyler, a professor with the

Columbia Teachers College who wrote a Ph.D. dissertation about radio in education; Armstrong

Perry, the director of the NCER Service Bureau and perhaps its most public face, and Eugene J.

Coltrane, the NCER special assistant.29

The Committee’s organization and membership presented both serious advantages and

disadvantages. The member organizations were all directly involved in operating and

maintaining educational radio stations throughout the United States. Therefore the stations in

need of dire help were all theoretically included in the NCER. This positioned the Committee to represent educational stations in America, equipping it instantly with a broad membership base.

It included the state and land-grant institutions which most often had the larger educational operations, and it also included two Catholic organizations that represented smaller educational broadcasting operations. The Committee essentially represented a wide range of educational

broadcasters in the United States. On another level the NCER also represented colleges and

universities and educators as a whole by including representatives from the National Council of

State Superintendents, the National Association of State Universities, the American Council on

Education, the Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities, and the National Education

Association. The NCER was at least theoretically well-connected with professional educators and their organizations at local, state, and national levels. All members of the NCER as well as the majority of leaders in its member organizations were men.

29 “Record of the Committee Meeting, December 30, 1930,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; “Agenda for the Second Meeting of the NCER, January 28, 1931,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; “Agenda for the Third Meeting of the NCER March 9, 1931,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; “Minutes of the Meeting of the NCER October 3, 1932,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 747; and Joy Elmer Morgan, “National Committee on Education by Radio,” Education on the Air: Second Yearbook of the Institute for Education by Radio ed. Josephine H. MacLatchy. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1931). 43

This arrangement also posed two liabilities. First, the member organizations sent one

representative to the NCER, and that envoy was already part of a larger organization. In other

words, NCER members were often part of interlocking bureaucracies, and, more often than not,

the NCER member did not necessarily speak for individual educational stations or a parent

organization itself. The very organizational structure of the NCER made it difficult to represent,

coordinate, control, or even become familiar with all educational stations. Also, quite often, these

organizations could not effectively coordinate activities among their own membership. An

additional problem for the Committee was the fact that member organizations had their own

policies which at times disagreed with the NCER. Some even cooperated with groups opposed to

the goals of the NCER. Many member organizations, for example, also belonged to The National

Advisory Commission on Radio Education (NACRE). This rival organization actually worked in

cooperation with commercial stations—a policy the NCER officially condemned—instead of

working for legislation to protect educational stations. The NCER could inform the committee

representative that it disagreed with the actions of his parent organization, but the organization of

the NCER gave it no recourse to force the parent organization to change its actions. Simply put,

the levels of bureaucracy involved made the NCER a representative organization in name and

theory only. It was powerless to coordinate activity or even keep member organizations

consistently in agreement with NCER plans. In reality, from 1931 to 1934 it had little consistent

coordinating ability with regard to individual organizations or stations.30

The backgrounds of individual NCER members posed a second problem. All of the men

in the NCER were educators. They were experts, but their knowledge was not the kind valued by

the Federal Radio Commission. They could provide legislators, federal regulators, and the

30 Morgan, “National Committee on Education by Radio”; and “Record of the Committee Meeting, December 30, 1930,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 44

interested public with many good reasons for preserving non-commercial, educational stations

run by expert educators in the United States. They approached problems like academics and

associationalists: conducting research and studies, publishing results, and holding conferences.

However, unlike associationalists, the NCER waged a war for radio reform based on arguments

couched in humanistic not engineering principles. The arrangement for which it fought might not

have been the most efficient system, but it would provide enlightening and uplifting content. In

short the Committee lacked a technological and managerial perspective.

Educators also suffered from the fact that their focus on humanistic concerns over business efficiency essentially feminized their branch of expertise, while the FRC valued the

colder, more economic, associational ideology. This bifurcation of old progressive thought was

nothing new. As Maureen Flanagan has demonstrated, this separation had existed before the turn of the century. In her study, Chicago clubwomen campaigned and exerted their influence to make the city cleaner, healthier, and more “moral.” At times the women reformers succeeded in their endeavors. However, standing in their way, were the men of business and politics who

“sought to fashion a city that would function to promote male economic concerns.”31 One of the

areas in which women took an interest was education and that did not change; teaching was long

considered a traditional women’s profession.32 So educators long steeped in concerns for the welfare of children as well as adults had participated in a variety of reform campaigns to create

better city environments that would help nurture all people.

Regulators and businessmen never openly labeled the educators’ arguments as weak

simply because their arguments were effeminate. They simply devalued humanistic arguments as

inefficient or radical, and, like the Chicago men that Flanagan studied, preferred regulations and

31 Flanagan, Seeing With their Hearts, 117. 32 Susan Levine, Degrees of Equality: The American Association of University Women and the Challenge of Twentieth-Century Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 25. 45 structures that promoted their economic interests. Because educational radio would cut into that interest, it was devalued. Educational expertise and public well-being would receive the same lip service as competition by the associationalists, but such arguments were treated as whimsical by many regulators.

It is, perhaps ironic that the NCER was comprised solely of men. Flanagan argued that the difference between activist men and women was not based solely on ideas of biological sex.

Rather it was a concept of ethnic solidarity and “shared private experiences” that pushed women down the path of social welfare reform.33 Motherhood as a shared private experience would eliminate men from this equation. Men were not mothers obviously nor did they share the private experiences of women. However, educators, both men and women, had a professional outlook that valued social welfare above all. Unlike men in other professions, male educators were not concerned with financial bottom lines in a classroom; their job was to nurture students’ minds.

These were professional men, but the expertise that defined their profession placed human needs over economic gain.

Women were not part of the Committee because women were essentially shut out of positions of authority in many higher education associations. But a woman philanthropist, who had focused her foundation’s activities on social welfare concerns, financed the NCER, and many women including the National Congress of Parents and Teachers and the American

Association of University Women would later help the NCER in its campaigns. Frances Payne

Bolton was a woman of great financial means having inherited much of her personal fortune from her uncle, Oliver Hazard Payne, a founding member of Standard Oil. Very much a model activist woman of the Progressive Era, Bolton took great interest in a variety of projects relating to social health and welfare, working in settlement houses and nursing. Bolton would use her

33 Flanagan, Seeing With their Hearts, 119. 46

fortune to endow a school of nursing at Case Western Reserve University, hoping to standardize

and modernize the training of nurses. She would also use her position in several public health

groups to further lobby for better training for nurses experiencing her greatest successes during

World War I. By the 1920s, her interests began to branch out, and Bolton took a serious interest in youth and education in 1925 sponsoring a National Committee for the Study of Juvenile

Reading. The reading study was also the beginning of her philanthropic group, the Payne Fund.

Bolton would further extend her interests by 1926, sponsoring a series of sociological studies on the effects of motion pictures upon children hoping that their results would lead to better films for children and the public. While Bolton was sponsoring studies of motion pictures, more action-minded reformers campaigned against the film industry for the sex and vice it beamed onto the silver screen. Bolton would not go that far. She may have been a public welfare minded

Progressive, but she steadfastly held to a belief in the scientific study of social problems by trained experts as a way to attain reform and progress. Thus the Payne Fund would tap experts to study a problem scientifically and thoroughly assuming that would be the limit of its endeavors.

Bolton wanted material that would be useful to the federal government or state governments so that they could make informed decisions; she did not want lobbyists. Activists were fine as long as they limited their action to their studies. One study of the Payne Fund film projects demonstrates this ideal; the head of the film study project, William Short, was an activist who recruited like-minded social scientists, but Bolton soured on Short because of his activist nature and eventually had him removed.34 By the time of the October Conference took place, Bolton

34 Jowett et al, Children and the Movies, 7. 47

was informed about the plight of educational radio, and it seemed to fit into her other interests.

However, the NCER would prove to be a group that departed from Payne Fund traditions.35

The NCER quickly mapped out its strategy and goals in its first few meetings. Guiding it

was the October Conference resolves which the Committee viewed as its mandate. After all, the

October Conference essentially created the NCER, and the members of the NCER hailed from

the same educational institutions represented at the Conference. Therefore the members of the

committee generally supported the October resolutions. The NCER developed a multi-pronged

attack on radio. The Committee believed that it should hold steadfast to the key findings of the

October Conference; this meant that it would actively pursue the 15% allocation plan endorsed

by the October Conference Committee, a plan that would reserve 15% of all broadcast airspace

for educational, non-commercial broadcasting. At the same time it would attempt to achieve the

same ends in a bureaucratic approach by appealing to the Federal Radio Commission to grant

educational stations a protected status. Also, as a way to ensure that education would enjoy a

more privileged status, the NCER agreed to lobby to have an educator placed on the Federal

Radio Commission. Also the Committee planned to form a service bureau that would grant

immediate aid to ailing educational stations by providing information, representation, and any

other type of aid needed at expensive Federal Radio Commission hearings where licenses were

renewed and time and power was allocated. The NCER vowed to serve as a definitive source of information for Congress, the FRC, broadcasters, and educators concerning educational broadcasting, from technique, to engineering matters, research, and advocacy. Finally the NCER planned to use an international strategy surveying foreign systems of broadcast to develop a body of information about all types of possible radio arrangements, participating in international radio

35 Jowett et al, xvi, 1-12; and David Loth, A Long Way Forward: The Biography of Frances P. Bolton (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957). 48

conferences, and developing cordial relations with international broadcasters.36 The international

approach would arm it with useful information when it needed to present a case for the

arrangement of broadcasting in the United States, and it was an attempt by the NCER to

demonstrate its interest in all facets of radio. It may have been an organization devoted to

preserving education and ending commercialism on the air, but it would be professional and

informed about radio internationally as well as nationally.

The true face of the NCER was Joy Elmer Morgan, the chairman of the Committee.

Hailing from Nebraska, populist and progressive reform ideas coursed through his veins, and his

career reflected these beliefs. Morgan supported public education, government regulation of utilities, trust-busting, and free trade. In his early career as a teacher he campaigned for public utility reform, and, in 1911, Morgan co-edited a book on the subject; the next year, 1912, he co- edited a debater information book on free trade. Throughout his life, Morgan promoted greater understanding and amity between nations.37 As an educator, a member of the National Education

Association, and editor of the NEA Journal, Morgan worked for extending the grasp of public

education and enlightenment. He was a lifelong devotee of Horace Mann and later wrote two

books about Mann and his days of innovation in education at Antioch College in Ohio.38 All of these early beliefs provided the base of Morgan’s principles and character, and they guided him as he set NCER policy and edited the NCER publication Education by Radio. Morgan threw his full support behind the resolutions passed by the October Conference simply because they

36 “Record of the Committee Meeting, December 30, 1930,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743.; “Agenda for the Second Meeting of the NCER, January 28, 1931,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; and Joy Elmer Morgan’s handwritten notes of the First Meeting, December 30, 1930, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 37 Selected Articles on Municipal Ownership, A Compilation Joy Elmer Morgan and Edna Dean Bullock, ed. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1911); and Selected Articles on Free Trade and Protection Joy Elmer Morgan, ed. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1912). 38 Joy Elmer Morgan, Horace Mann: His Ideas and Ideals (Washington, D. C.: National Home Library Foundation, 1936); and Joy Elmer Morgan, Horace Mann at Anitoch: Studies in Personality and Higher Education (Washington D. C.: The Horace Mann Centennial Fund, the National Education Association, 1938). 49 encompassed the very issues he held dear for his whole life: public education and public ownership of utilities.

Commissioner Cooper’s and the NEA’s selection of Morgan as Chair of the NCER was met with dismay at first by members of the Payne Fund who had hoped the NEA would choose someone with political connections and more of a national reputation. To make matters worse,

Morgan had some early problems with the Payne Fund. After learning of Morgan’s appointment,

Armstrong Perry admitted that he was “inclined to be disappointed at first,” hoping that the NEA would have selected someone with a higher public profile, but he had a speedy change of heart after meeting Morgan and later believed Morgan’s selection to be “the wise choice.”39 Perry was not Morgan’s only detractor. At times Morgan’s benefactor, The Payne Fund, believed him to be stubborn and uncompromising, especially during his early tenure.40 Morgan pushed for even greater funding and the ability to carry over yearly surpluses, and he refused to cooperate with organizations he deemed insufficiently committed to the cause of reform. The Payne Fund sparred with him on and off during his first year with the NCER, urging him to back off from his criticisms of a rival group the National Advisory Committee on Radio in Education (NACRE).41

39 Letter from Armstrong Perry to the Payne Fund dated October 26, 1930, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 1, Folder 6. 40 The Payne Fund Meeting Minutes August 29, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 1, Folder 6; 41 Letter from W. W. Charters to Ella P. Crandall dated October 20, 1930, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 2, Folder 267; “Record of Committee Meeting,” December 30, 1930, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; Letter from H. M. Clymer to Joy Elmer Morgan dated January 22, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 2, Folder 27; Telegram from Frances Payne Bolton to The Payne Fund dated February 9, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 2, Folder 27; Letter from the Payne Fund to Joy Elmer Morgan dated March 17, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 68, Folder 1335; and Letter from Ella P. Crandall to The Payne Fund dated December 19, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 68, Folder 1335. The Payne Fund misinterpreted Morgan’s actions in this case. Morgan was not simply being stubborn; he was trying to make sure that the NCER adhered to the principles set forth in the October Conference. These forbade cooperation with organizations like the NACRE that were willing to work completely within the commercial radio structure while ignoring independent educational stations. 50

Joy Elmer Morgan was the most “famous” of all of the NCER members by virtue of his editorship of the NEA Journal. The other men on the committee were prominent men in education, but they are almost faceless to us today, and their personal details are elusive. John

Henry MacCracken’s involvement waned between 1932 and 1934. Many of the early tasks he performed were taken over by Tracy Tyler when he began his employment with the Committee.

Armstrong Perry’s service in the NCER soon became his sole occupation. Technically he was

“on loan” to the Committee from the Payne Fund, and the Fund continued to pay Perry’s salary, but his only assignment between 1930 to 1934 was NCER work. Tyler had a similar situation.

The NCER hired him in 1931 as a research assistant and secretary and NCER work was his only job. He was at NCER headquarters every day conducting a variety of projects, and, in this case, the very nature of his job made him one of the most active NCER members. Eugene J. Coltrane was an NCER employee and member as well. His duties carried him across the country attempting to coordinate with individual educational broadcast stations, Federal Radio

Commissioners, Congressmen, and Senators. While he conducted most of his work away from

NCER headquarters, he was nevertheless one of the most active people in the Committee. So, while the NCER had representatives from the ten concerned organizations present at the October

Conference, only two of them, Morgan and MacCracken, took real leadership and working roles in the NCER. Perry, Tyler, and Coltrane worked for the Payne Fund and the NCER itself. This was advantageous in that the NCER had dedicated people who could focus all of their energies on the NCER.

Legislative Activity—The Fess Bill, 1930-1931

From its first meeting in December 1930, the NCER forged ahead with a plan to

accomplish what it viewed as the key resolution made by the October Conference Committee, a

bill granting 15% of the U.S. broadcast spectrum to educational stations. This was perhaps the

plan most closely associated with the Committee throughout its first four years of existence. The

resolution appeared during the first meeting, and Joy Elmer Morgan pursued this goal through a

sub-committee helmed by John H. MacCracken. Originally Morgan charged the sub-committee

with drafting the text of the bill and then proposing it to Senator James Couzens (MI).42 During the 71st Congress Couzens was the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interstate

Commerce—the committee that dealt with radio matters in the Senate. The NCER proposed that

Couzens add the allocation plan to another bill that he had proposed and shepherded through the

hearing stage. However, Couzens warned that this proposal could scuttle his bill, and he refused

to consider the rider.43

Senator Simeon D. Fess of Ohio, who was also a member of the Senate Committee on

Interstate Commerce, agreed to sponsor the 15% bill. Fess seemed a natural ally for the NCER

cause. Before his career in politics, Fess had been an educator in Ohio and Illinois having served

as a professor and vice-president at Ohio Northern University and a lecturer at the University of

Chicago. He, like Morgan, was a product of mid-Western progressive thought and idolized

Horace Mann, whose footsteps he would literally trod. After a brief stint at the University of

Chicago from 1902-1906, Fess took the presidency at Antioch College, Mann’s old school, from

1906-1917 and attempted to reinstitute a number of Mann’s “experiments.” Fess may have been away from this occupation for some time by 1931, but he was still committed to education. As a

42 “Record of the Committee Meeting,” December 30, 1930, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 43 Ibid. 52

Congressman from 1913-1917 and as a Senator from 1923-1935 Fess proposed a variety of bills

to aid public education including a proposal for a national university and the National

Archives.44 On January 8, 1931, just nine days after the NCER held its first meeting, Senator

Fess proposed a bill amending the Radio Act of 1927 “Not less than 15 per centum … of the

radio-broadcasting facilities … shall be reserved for educational agencies of the Federal or State

Governments.”45 Thereafter the allocation bill would be known as the “Fess Bill.”46

The NCER was ecstatic over the Fess Bill. The Committee had recruited Fess and his

quick work struck a blow for the reform cause. First, the fact that the Committee was able to

convince a Senator of the merits of its cause so quickly was promising. Also, because the

measure used the same language as the resolution from the October Conference convened by the

U.S. Commissioner of Education, the Fess Bill also looked as if it was endorsed by the October

Conference as well. For his part, Fess left no material explaining his reasons for sponsoring the

15% plan, but it did fit with two of his lifelong concerns. First Fess believed that education, far

from being a special interest, affected all people and was a key component of American civic

life. Secondly Fess had long dreamed of a National University, which he proposed in both the

House and Senate in every Congress between 1914 and 1928. Fess may have believed that

saving the educational stations would further his ambitions to form a National University.47

The NCER rushed to announce the Fess Bill in its newsletter Education by Radio. John

MacCracken penned an article entitled “The Fess Bill,” praising the Senator for taking action and

44 For a full background on Simeon Fess see John L. Nethers, Simeon D. Fess: Educator and Politician (Brooklyn, New York: Pageant-Poseidon, 1973). 45 Text of the Fess Bill in Education by Radio 1 (March 19, 1931): 21. 46 S. 5589 proposed in the Senate January 8, 1931, Congressional Record 71st Congress, 3rd sess. Vol. 74, pt. 2; and “Agenda for the Second Meeting of the NCER January 28, 1931,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 47 Nethers, Simeon D. Fess, 124-126; Simeon D. Fess Papers, The Ohio Historical Society Library. Fess left no papers or record of this bill in his papers at the Ohio Historical Society. However this does not mean it was not important to him, a number of his important proposals have little or no presence in the collection. 53

building the case for the Bill.48 However, any hopes for a fast hearing and passage by the Senate

before the end of the 71st Congress were soon dashed despite NCER optimism. S. 5589 did not

even receive a hearing and died in committee. The only record of the Fess Bill’s existence was

its reading in the Congressional Record and its appearance in Education by Radio, indicating

little Congressional interest in the Fess Bill or radio reform. At the same time, the NCER learned

of an address made by Ray Lyman Wilbur, the Secretary of the Interior who had instructed

Cooper to call the October Conference. Wilbur officially distanced the Department of the Interior

from the 15% resolution made at the conference which was now the Fess Bill.49

Despite these setbacks one can hardly regard the Fess Bill as a complete failure at this

point. Legislation sometimes takes several sessions or proposals and as many hearings to be

brought to a vote in the Senate. At this point, the Fess Bill and the National Committee on

Education by Radio could be considered successes; in the course of three months the NCER

began operations and was able to get a key platform proposed as a bill in the Senate.

But publicly the Committee appeared disturbed by the Fess Bill’s failure to move through

Congress, declaring its death a warning sign about Congressional apathy towards radio. In its

newsletter the NCER reprinted an excerpt from The Washington Star reporting that no major

radio legislation “completed the legislative gauntlet” during the 71st Congress.50 The alarmist article was a warning to its readers. It was not a statement from the NCER, nor was it a personal attack on Congress. It simply conveyed the message that Congressional action on radio, which the NCER believed to be necessary, might not happen in the next Congress just as it had not in the previous Congress. In a sense it was part of a call to action issued by the Committee to the

48 John Henry MacCracken, “The Fess Bill,” Education by Radio 1 (March 19, 1931): 21-22; and John Henry MacCracken, “The Fess Bill,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 49 Ray Lyman Wilbur, “The Radio in Our Republic,” School and Society 33 no. 857 (May 30, 1931): 709-713. 50 “Radio During March.” Education by Radio 1 (April 9, 1931): 36. 54

recipients of its newsletter (which included all members of Congress as well as educators and

governors) to rally behind the measure during the new Congress.

For the balance of the year, the Committee planned a reintroduction of the Fess Bill in the

Senate, searched for Congressional support for hearings, and looked for a sponsor for the Fess

Bill in the House of Representatives as well. In May of 1931, Morgan assigned J. L. Clifton, the

NCER envoy from the National Council of State Superintendents, to discuss a reintroduction of the bill with Senator Fess.51 This was a politically deft move by Morgan; Dr. Clifton was from

Columbus, Ohio and had worked with WEAO, the educational station of the Ohio State

University. Ideally, in case Fess had perhaps changed his mind about the reallocation bill, Clifton could connect reallocation with the needs of an Ohio education station and convince Fess again of its utility. So Clifton rather than MacCracken met with Fess about the matter even though

MacCracken was the chair of the legislative sub-committee. At the same time, Morgan assigned

MacCracken to find a sponsor for the reallocation bill in the House, and, for the October

meeting, to draw up a plan for hearings on reallocation.52

Convincing Fess to reintroduce the bill was not as difficult as implementing the rest of

the plan. Fess agreed at once to reintroduce the bill. However, John MacCracken struggled to

find a House sponsor for reallocation. His first idea was to approach Chester Castle Bolton, a

Congressman from Ohio. Representative Bolton was Frances Payne Bolton’s husband, and the

two founded and financed the Payne Fund. Morgan had even hinted at the May meeting that

Bolton might have already found a sponsor or decided to sponsor the bill himself.53

Unsurprisingly, MacCracken assumed that the financial backer of the Payne Fund would support

51 “Minutes of the Meeting of the NCER Columbus, OH, May 11,1931,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38 Folder 743. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 55

a legislative goal of one of its organizations. Throughout the Spring and Summer of 1931, the

NCER pressed onward, but Chester C. Bolton rejected the NCER’s advances. In one letter an

NCER supporter, F. H. Bain, Superintendent of Shaker Heights School District in Ohio wrote

Bolton urging him to support the Fess Bill. Bolton coolly responded that he would have “keen

interest in it,” but, he reminded Bain, the Fess Bill would need to be reintroduced, and it was

only a Senate matter yet to be introduced in the House at that time.54

MacCracken would receive information about Chester Bolton’s “keen interest” in

October, 1931 in a letter from Frances Payne Bolton; it was a shocking piece of correspondence.

First, Bolton asked if she could “speak as an individual with direct Congressional contacts rather

than as a member of the Payne Fund.”55 Bolton then informed MacCracken that Chester Castle

Bolton would not sponsor such a bill and then added that while the Fess Bill “drew the attention of many to the radio situation—a most necessary thing at that moment,” Senator Fess himself

“does not command much confidence—and many of us regretted keenly the choice of

sponsor.”56 Bolton never specifically listed any reasons why Fess was not highly regarded, and

her statement shocked MacCracken. He was one of the men directly responsible for choosing

Fess, and now, after the fact, his financial backer with Congressional connections informed him

that Fess lacked the presence and authority in the Senate to steer the 15% measure to a successful

conclusion.

The remainder of Bolton’s letter bore even worse news questioning the utility of the 15%

allocation plan: “if secured, would it be of any real use?” This absolutely devastated

MacCracken. The NCER had already positioned itself squarely behind the reallocation measure

54 Letter from F. H. Bain to Chester C. Bolton dated May 22, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 46, Folder 885. 55 Letter from Frances Payne Bolton to John H. MacCracken dated October 9, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 56 Ibid. 56

and dedicated a great deal of time and resources to it. The letter appeared as if the NCER’s

financial backer was asking it to turn its back on the key resolution from the October Conference

that established a mandate for its existence and activities. Bolton believed that the radio situation

had changed since the October Conference one year earlier. At that time legislation might have

seemed like the logical course of action, but now she wanted the NCER to change strategy.

Frances Payne Bolton never gave any specific reason for her belief that the radio situation had

changed since the October Conference, but four factors probably led her to this conclusion. First,

by late 1931 more Congressmen were angry with the FRC and critical of its limited definition of

public interest probably leading her and others to believe that a major government study of

broadcasting would take place in the near future which would lead to reform. Second, as one

scholar noted, the Payne Fund had always been “politically shy” which was due to Frances

Payne Bolton’s husband being a Congressman, and she did not want her projects to appear

radical and tarnish her husband’s political career.57 Third, Frances Payne Bolton herself was a staunch Republican opposed to the kind of heavy-handed legislation for which the NCER lobbied. Finally, Bolton probably believed that Congress would be wary of such regulation because of the importance of radio in political campaigns. By 1928 and 1930, both Republicans and Democrats spent up to one-fifth of their campaign budget on radio, and relied upon the

generous terms of credit bestowed upon them by a willing commercial industry. Commercial

stations did not give credit to other advertisers, but it welcomed candidates from mainstream

political parties with open arms. By 1931 the radio advertising debts many of these Congressmen

incurred in 1928 and in 1930 were still being repaid.58 Bolton might have believed that Congress

would not bite the hand that had fed it during campaign season especially when 1932 looked to

57 Jowett et al, Children and the Movies, 8. 58 Starr, The Creation of the Media, 372-373. 57

be a real political battle. Frances Payne Bolton was not alone in warning the Committee against

pursuing the Fess Bill. Attorney Charles F. Dolle, hired by the NCER to give it legal advice for

Federal Radio Commission hearings, warned “I am not at all sure that the ideas advanced at the

Chicago Conference are the proper solution of this question. It seems to me that grave difficulties

are to be encountered if a fixed percentage of the available wavelengths are to be assigned

exclusively for educational purposes.”59 Frances Payne Bolton’s damning assessment of Fess and the 15% plan combined with Dolle’s reservations challenged the NCER to reassess it goals and beliefs.

No matter how steadfastly the NCER held to its position on reallocation, it was unlikely

that the matter would make it through the committee level let alone receive consideration on the

floor. Chester Bolton categorized the proposal as “a fine wrench to throw into the monopolistic

machinery, but not well enough thought through to prevent an even worse situation for

Education.”60 Chester Bolton agreed that the Fess Bill was a great attack on the monopolistic

radio industry, but the NCER needed to consider a more practical approach to preserving

educational broadcasting. Frances Payne Bolton summarized Congressional opposition to the

plan as threefold. First requesting 15% was “an admission of having a small cause…if 15% is the

desired minimum, then much more must be tried for.”61 Second many believed that asking for

15% essentially conceded that vested rights to airspace exist, and the measure removed any

educational responsibilities from the commercialists. In short the 15% reallocation measure

would merely ghettoize the ether, and education would still suffer. Finally, she argued that

59 Letter from Charles F. Dolle to Joy Elmer Morgan, undated received December 1930, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 886. 60 Chester Castle Bolton quoted in a letter from Frances Payne Bolton to John H. MacCracken dated October 9, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 61 Ibid. 58

technology advanced much more rapidly than did policy and legislation might actually do more

harm to educational radio than good.62

Such opposition trapped the NCER because these arguments against the Fess Bill used

the NCER’s own logic against its proposal. The Committee from the start believed that asking

for 15% was merely an emergency measure and much more space would be necessary. In fact

during the discussion session following Morgan’s address at the Second Institute for Education

Radio Conference sponsored by the Ohio School of the Air in the fall of 1931, Morgan declared

that “the proposed fifteen per cent is an emergency and not a final measure.”63 Indeed, the

NCER was asking for the bare minimum; it believed that a much higher percentage of airspace

would be necessary.

The Committee was also on record as opposing the concept of vested interests on the air.

The Radio Act of 1927 refused to recognize such interests and no license holder enjoyed a

guarantee of perpetuity. A broadcast license was not a property right. Yet the Fess measure

violated the spirit of this concept in two ways. First, it assumed the existence of vested rights and

tried to codify them. A blanket allocation to education was an attempt to secure a vested right.

Second, the measure also reserved the bulk of U.S. broadcast channels to commercial

broadcasting. This essentially granted commercialists—the enemies of the NCER and education

on the air—a real property claim to 85% of the spectrum by law. This type of measure would

provide educational stations with an increase in frequencies—by 1931 educational stations

occupied roughly 6% of the entire broadcast spectrum—but the measure could also ghettoize

educational broadcasting and reinforce and sanction commercial dominance. Even though the

62 Ibid. 63 Joy Elmer Morgan during discussion following his address “National Committee on Education by Radio,” Education on the Air: Second Yearbook of the Institute for Education by Radio. ed. Josephine H. MacLatchy. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1931), 25. 59

language of the Fess Bill called for a reservation of “not less than” 15%, the use of 15% in this

way made it a de facto limit for the number of educational stations on the air. If educators

complained that 15% was not enough, or their expansion was blocked by this measure, the

Federal Radio Commission could still argue that it had upheld the law by reserving 15%. In

short, if educators ever wished to expand, they would need to pursue new legislation.

The final objection to legislation concerned the rapid rate of technological advancement and exposed key weaknesses of the NCER and the October Conference as well. The October

Conference took place over the course of one day in which a variety of educators formulated a plan to address the problems of educational radio. The NCER clung to these resolutions, and it never seriously rethought any of them. The Committee also simply lacked real engineering thought and vision. It did indeed have members who were affiliated with physics departments at colleges and universities, but it never had a solid group of advisers “in the field” working on new methods of synchronization and reduction of interference. Developing new synchronization techniques could allow more stations on the same frequency and open the American broadcast spectrum and possibly provide new airspace for educational radio. However, it lacked a serious, sound engineering plan, and many Congressmen, Federal Radio Commissioners, broadcasters, and other regulators viewed engineering as the most important radio matter. The Committee would show great interest in engineering matters, but it needed more than interest; it needed solid engineering expertise. The Fess Bill and the NCER plan also failed to provide a fuller explanation of exactly how the 15% allocation should be divided throughout the United States. It basically left this important matter to the discretion of the Federal Radio Commission—a key oversight because it was the supposed weakness and failure of the Commission to allocate 60

frequencies properly in the first place, the NCER argued, that led to the radio problem. Its own

proposed solution again left key decisions to the FRC.

In an attempt to steer the NCER onto what she viewed as a more viable course of action,

Bolton suggested the NCER reprioritize its goals and activities. “I cannot urge you too strongly

‘to make hast alowly [sic]’. The Committee on Education has a real opportunity—but for that

very reason they must go forward with great circumspection and great wisdom.”64 She believed

that the best course of action for the NCER would be to act as a clearinghouse of information and

to provide detailed, accurate information for Congress and others “but not put forward any

‘Educators Plans’.”65 In fact Bolton believed that it would be “unfortunate” for the NCER to act

“on their own,” and warned that “this is not the moment to define too categorically the place

Education shall have on the air. If you try to force such an issue…I fear that the end result will

be exactly opposite from what you are seeking.”66 Bolton never actually commanded the NCER to abandon the reallocation measure, but her letter was a clear message that she believed such activity would probably be more injurious to the cause of education on the air than helpful.

Essentially Bolton feared that the NCER was not acting like a group of non-partisan professionals and slouching toward something more unseemly by substituting political action for professional study that would not appeal to the associational sensibilities of regulators or

Congress. Once the NCER included a legislative campaign it immediately ceased to be simply a group of professional information gatherers and this idea did not appeal to Bolton or the

“professionalized” government.67

64 Letter from Frances Payne Bolton to John H. MacCracken dated October 9, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Judith Sealander, Private Wealth and Public Life: Foundation Philanthropy and the Reshaping of American Social Policy from the Progressive Era to the New Deal (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 61

Bolton did not threaten the Committee’s funding at this time but urged the NCER to

change its approach to cast a wider net of possibilities and avoid pigeonholing itself into any

single course of action. She did not explain why she did not consider cutting the NCER off, but

there are a few possibilities. First she had made a personal pledge to fund them at the October

Conference, and cutting the NCER loose at such a critical time would essentially silence the

educators at a time when they most needed some kind of voice. Secondly, in concert with the

first possibility, there was no other organization representing the college stations. As imperfect

as NCER representation was, Bolton might have resigned to herself to it as better than nothing.

Finally the activities of the NCER’s Service Bureau (discussed later) were giving much needed

direct assistance to stations; scuttling the NCER would have ended this service. Finally other

philanthropic foundations also had disagreements with those whom they backed.68

Nor was Morgan alone in his disagreement with Frances Payne Bolton. The Payne Fund

was also at this time sponsoring research groups examining film reform along the same lines as the radio activists. In short, the film reformers hoped to rid motion pictures of lewdness, sex, and

vice of all types on the assumption that they harmed children and warped adult perceptions of reality. William Short, the head of the Payne Fund sponsored National Committee for the Study

of Social Values in Motion Pictures suffered a problem similar to Joy Elmer Morgan’s with the

Payne Fund. Short was an activist as well as a man committed to research. Short wanted to develop research proving that the standard movie fare of the day harmed children. He also wanted research that would provide support for reform proposals. Simply put, Short wanted these studies to be a part of policy activism, and he recruited a committee that reflected this activist focus.69 However, Frances Payne Bolton and some other members of the Payne Fund

68 Ibid. 69 Jowett et al, Children and the Movies, xxi-xxii, 7-9. 62

Studies, strove for “neutrality on policy issues.”70 Bolton would discourage Short’s activist

efforts and later soured on him, forced him to distance his committee from the Payne Fund, and

withdrew the bulk of the Payne Fund’s funding.71

Bolton’s criticism of Fess and the 15% plan discouraged the NCER leaders. Bolton avoided detailing why she and her husband opposed the plan. Aside from the flaws mentioned she might have been attempting to prevent the group from endorsing a plan that would be heavily attacked as radical because such a stigma could negatively affect the image of the Payne Fund and its chief financial backers. A radical label could cost Chester his seat in an election, plus the fact that a group he funded was lobbying for legislation could appear as a conflict of interest. In any case the 15% plan may have had some flaws, but the NCER needed to find a legislative method to preserve the still extant educational stations before they succumbed to commercial challenges before the Federal Radio Commission. The Fess Bill was probably the most effective method of accomplishing this goal because it would force the FRC to recognize the value of educational stations and protect them. Research activity and acting as a “clearinghouse” of information were important endeavors, but they did not do anything to help stop the arterial bleeding of educational stations. Once the NCER could secure this legislation, it could then proceed to use its research and informational campaigns to procure newer, more favorable legislation.

Bolton’s regret that the NCER chose Fess as a sponsor was baffling. It might have been based on Fess’s inability to get his National University proposal out of committee despite proposing it annually for more than 18 years. Still this proposal was different; it did not involve asking for a great deal of government money to start a massive university. Fess was only asking

70 Ibid., 7. 71 Ibid., 51-56. 63 that educational stations be preserved at no cost to the government. Also, many policymakers and politicians held Fess in high esteem. Fess was a ranking member on the Senate’s Committee on Interstate Commerce—the sub-committee charged with radio legislation. He could help steer the bill through the committee to the Senate floor. Fess was a well-respected Senator and a powerful man in the Republican Party. He was the majority whip in the Senate at that time and a friend of both President Coolidge and President Hoover. In 1932 he would serve as the Chairman of the Republican National Convention. Fess had also been seriously considered as a candidate for Vice-President. His biographer referred to this period as the peak of Fess’s political career.

Fess’s sponsorship was also a wise choice given his record on government regulation and education. Fess was a stalwart Republican throughout his career, and, like his fellow Republicans at that time, expressed concerns about government regulation. His support of the 15% plan was telling. It could have been a sign that the situation in radio had so degenerated, that a man who spent his Congressional career fighting government regulation via legislation actually endorsed it as a way of saving radio. He also had a long record of supporting educational causes even when they brought government expansion. No other man in the Senate at that time would have fit these specific qualifications, and the NCER made a good choice.72

In the end the Fess Bill had some utility and positive possibilities, but the measure generated problems for the NCER with its financial backer. Despite enjoying little support on

Capitol Hill it drew attention to the bleak life expectancy of educational broadcasting in the

United States. It would at best provide a short term solution, but it could at least preserve current educational stations and give the NCER time to coordinate its other activities to secure even better legislation for educational stations.

72 Nethers, Simeon D. Fess, 269-403. 64

Regulatory Activity—The Service Bureau and the Federal Radio Commission

In the meantime, the National Committee on Education by Radio pursued another key

resolution adopted during the October Conference: persuading the FRC to appoint an educator to

the Federal Radio Commission. The NCER believed that an educator on the Federal Radio

Commission would serve as a sympathetic ear for educational stations that appeared at hearings or during the licensure process. However, the educators still had to find a way to preserve the educational stations until that day came. The solution to this problem was the Service Bureau of the NCER. In a larger sense, both schemes were preservation measures to hold the line until the

Fess Bill became law.

“McCracken raises question of whether or not we should urge either an ex officio or else

a regular member on the Radio Commission,” wrote Joy Elmer Morgan during the first meeting

of the NCER in December, 1930.73 The Committee agreed on this proposal and resolved,

reiterating a similar resolution made during the October Conference, “that a letter be addressed

to the President of the United States requesting that when a vacancy occurs, education be given

representation on the Federal Radio Commission.”74 The Committee spent the next several

months discussing possible candidates for the position searching. It also dispatched a letter to

President Hoover requesting that he make such an appointment and failing that Hoover should

demand “specific legislation” that would allow Federal Radio Commissioners greater latitude in

deciding on applications. At that time the FRC would weigh competing applications based solely

on the number of people each competitor served. This usually disadvantaged educational

applicants since their lower budgets and less powerful equipment limited their potential

73 Joy Elmer Morgan handwritten notes of the First Meeting, December 30, 1930, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 74“Record of the Committee Meeting, December 30, 1930,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 65

audience.75 The Committee appealed on the grounds that the Radio Act of 1927 had been designed to protect educational stations and the FRC was not living up to the spirit of the act.

However, Herbert Hoover did not appoint an educator to the Federal Radio Commission because

there was no vacancy on the Commission not necessarily because he rejected the possibility of

an educator on the FRC.

The NCER also established its Service Bureau. The bureau provided much needed direct

services to educational stations such as legal representation and information for FRC hearings

and was the most successful component of the NCER program in 1931. Its success was the result

of the tireless and brilliant work of Joy Elmer Morgan and Armstrong Perry, the director of the

service bureau, and the immediate and practical aid it afforded to stations in need. The activity

helped foster good relations between the Committee and individual stations. It aided the NCER

in overcoming one of its organizational weaknesses, because it was through the service bureau

that the NCER could relate to individual educational stations. During the first NCER meeting the

Committee passed a resolution allocating $10,000 per year to a service bureau that would

look after the interests of these [educational] stations before the Radio Commission. The powerful commercial stations are generously represented in Washington by well-financed counsel. In order that stations which are not able to spend large sums for travel may have a representative on the ground and that all educational stations may have had such aid as can be given.76

Recall that educational stations often suffered during FRC licensure and challenge hearings

simply because they often could not afford to send a representative to Washington, D.C. to argue

75 Letter from John Henry MacCracken to President Herbert Hoover, erroneously dated January 8, 1930 it should be dated January 8, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 886. 76 “A Service Bureau for Educational Stations,” Agenda for the First Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, p. 14, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; and “Record of Committee Meeting, December 30, 1930,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38 Folder 743. 66

its case in front of the Commission. Thus challenging educational stations and forcing them to

appear before the FRC was a way for commercial stations to squeeze them off the air. 77

During its first year the Service Bureau aided many stations in this predicament, and even

helped them secure better time and power allotments. The Bureau rented office space in

Washington, D. C. in the National Press Club Building near the Federal Radio Commission

headquarters so it could always be on hand at a hearing if needed and it offered its services to

stations free of charge.78 Two of the most notable victories were Nebraska Wesleyan University

station, WCAJ, and University of Iowa station, WSUI. In both cases the Bureau helped them

argue their case before the FRC. WSUI received legal assistance from the NCER; the Committee

hired a lawyer, Horace Lohnes, to represent the station at its hearing—WSUI could not afford

legal counsel—and the station actually received a time share increase as a result of the hearing.

WCAJ had signed statements from the governor of Nebraska testifying to its important contributions and service to the state. WCAJ presented other sworn affidavits to that effect as well as evidence justifying retention of its license. Originally an examiner for the FRC disallowed this evidence and ruled against the station. This was a telling decision. Despite numerous claims from esteemed public officials in the state listing the great public service

WCAJ provided, the FRC examiners held fast to their technical definition of public service— numbers of people reached and use of allotted time. WCAJ obtained an appeal hearing in front of the FRC—convincing the FRC that the examiner should have allowed the affidavits and sworn

77 Rorty, “The Impending Radio War,” 714-726; Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 142-152; “Superpower,” Education by Radio 1 (May 7, 1931): 49-51; “Wisconsin Uses Radio for Education” Education by Radio 1 (February 19, 1931): 5-8; and “National Committee on Education by Radio,” Education by Radio 1 (June 25, 1931): 79-82. 78 “A Service Bureau for Educational Stations,” Agenda for the First Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, p. 14, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; and “Record of Committee Meeting, December 30, 1930,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38 Folder 743. 67

statements—and with help from the NCER, the station kept its frequency. 79 The WCAJ decision

would pay further dividends to the NCER. The station manager, J.C. Jensen would become a

strong ally and supporter of the NCER and eventually the Committee’s nominee for the Federal

Radio Commission. The Committee also aided another beleaguered station, KOAC, operated by

the State of Oregon by providing testimony and representation concerning its public service.

KOAC could not afford to send its own representative to the FRC hearing. The NCER’s

assistance preserved the station and won its enthusiastic loyalty. Paul V. Maris, Director of

Extension for the State of Oregon, beamed that “I have been much gratified by the promptness

and vigor with which you have functioned as the chairman of the National Committee on

Education by Radio…you have been the strongest ally we have had.”80 Clearly the Committee

gained some positive ground during its first year of operation; it helped preserve and even

increase some educational station allotments and developed a strong relationship with an

important educational station.

Another important service provided by the Bureau was its information campaign. The

Bureau sent a variety of materials to all educational stations advising them of the best ways to

defend their licenses and power and time allotments. It also lobbied the Federal Radio

Commission for other types of relief. First it dispatched a letter to all educational stations

begging them to make sure that they used all of their time allotted for broadcast because failing

to do so often resulted in reduced time and power allotments and even loss of broadcast

license.81 Recall that commercialist challengers often used the inconsistent broadcast schedules

79 “Report of the Service Bureau, January 15-31, February 1931,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc. Box 39, Folder 745; and “Report of the Service Bureau, March 1931,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 80 Letter to Joy Elmer Morgan from Paul V. Maris dated March 26, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 81 Letter from the Service Bureau of the National Committee on Education by Radio to all educational station managers dated July 8, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 744. 68

to wrangle frequencies away from educational broadcasters. At the same time this issue also

revealed a key weakness of the NCER when arguing for educational stations in front of the FRC.

If the NCER claimed that education was of key importance on the air, and educational stations

needed more time allotments and frequencies, then why, the FRC would ask, did educators fail to

use their allotted time? Indeed this situation exposed a lack of unity among educators on the

matter, and it demonstrated one of the key challenges the NCER faced. If the NCER were going to be successful it would at some time have to find a way to synchronize its actions with the extant educational stations or at least find a way to impress upon them the gravity of their actions.

Another matter for which the Bureau lobbied was the relaxation of the Federal Radio

Commission’s General Order No. 7 which required better technical operation of all stations to

reduce interference in the band. The FRC adopted General Order No. 7 during its first term of

operation in 1927. The directive required all license holders to maintain no more than a ½

kilocycle deviation from the allotted frequency so as to eliminate interference with other

stations.82 All radio stations deviated slightly from assigned frequencies. The variance was not

the result of human errors; rather it was just the imperfect nature of early broadcast equipment in use. By 1927, however, better equipment was available which limited the deviation to only ½ kilocycle, and, if all stations used this hardware, then the Commission could greatly reduce heterodyne interference and provide clearer signals to listeners. The problem for educational

stations was that to obey General Order No. 7 would require large expenditures on new

equipment or refurbishing and updating extant facilities. By 1931, Colleges and Universities suffered major budget problems as a result of the Great Depression, and they had few resources

82 Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year ended June 20, 1927. ed. Federal Radio Commission. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1927), 14. 69

available for broadcasting. Therefore the directive forced educational broadcasters to make a

difficult decision: they could fail to obey the order and have their license terminated by the FRC;

they could go dark, or they could bankrupt the school by updating facilities with no guarantee

that their license would be secure at any time. Another problem arose from the fact that some

schools could afford the upgrade, but the budget cycles at the institution simply delayed

compliance because necessary money for an upgrade could only be budgeted for the next

academic year. The failure of many educational institutions to comply often armed commercial

challengers during hearings as well. In short the General Order was intended to provide

maximum efficiency and quality but it also jeopardized educational endeavors.

Perry and Morgan mobilized a campaign to relieve this pressure on the educational

stations. The NCER, in an effort to cooperate with the FRC, agreed with General Order No. 7 in

principle, but it offered a countermeasure that would delay the full implementation of the

directive until April, 1933 and give educational stations more time to comply.83 Despite the

NCER’s best efforts, the FRC did not delay the implementation of the order. Rather, it issued a

new order in 1931 creating further hardship for educational stations. General Order No. 95 declared that insolvency of any kind of a licensed radio station would serve as grounds for license revocation or non-renewal.84 The FRC was not interested in compromises; it was

interested in efficient technical operation even if that meant sacrificing valuable programming.

The NCER also received some more devastating news during the battle over General Order No.

7; Federal Radio Commissioner Harold Lafount, a representative at the October Conference, had

been traditionally considered sympathetic to the cause of the educators, but his record over the

83 Minutes of the Meeting of the NCER Columbus, OH 4/9/1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743. 84 Fifth Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1931. ed. Federal Radio Commission. (Washington, D. C.,: United States Government Printing Office, 1931), 82. 70

course of 1931 cast doubts about his sympathy and desire to help educational stations. Lafount dissented in several cases in which the FRC had awarded renewals or preserved educational station allotments. The NCER more than ever needed to get an educator on the Federal Radio

Commission so that it could have at least one sympathetic party in the FRC.85

In sum, the Service Bureau and campaign for an educator on the Federal Radio

Commission produced positive results for the Committee. The Service Bureau’s actions can only be viewed as a success. It provided essential aid to ailing stations, preserved frequencies, and built strong relationships with some individual stations. The Bureau helped the NCER overcome some of the most immediate threats to educational radio by simply keeping educational stations

on the air at a time when those stations suffered numerous challenges from commercial

operations. It also helped develop solid individual relationships with educational stations and

helped to build support for the Committee. Its campaign to lobby for an educator appointed to

the FRC was not immediately successful, but there was no reason to lose hope. Hoover’s

inaction might simply indicate a reluctance to create a special position for the educator, so there

was a chance that the NCER would get an educator appointed when the FRC had a vacancy. The

Committee was not successful in brokering a compromise to help educational stations remain technologically compliant, and this failure clearly demonstrated to the NCER that the FRC was not interested in arranging compromises, and that educators needed someone on the regulatory body sympathetic to the plight of educational stations.

The onslaught of commercial challengers and the FRC’s disinterest essentially forced the

NCER’s hand in pursuing reallocation legislation. The Payne Fund may have wanted the NCER

to be an information center instead of a pressure group lobbying Congress, but the situation

85 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to all members of the National Committee on Education by Radio dated November 12, 1931, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 744. 71 certainly necessitated greater action. The Federal Radio Commission was the only other government body that could have helped, but time and again it refused. By passing legislation, the NCER could outflank the FRC thus compelling the body to respect education on the air. The

Fess Bill was a great possibility in 1931. It may have died after Fess first introduced it, and the

NCER may have had difficulty in finding a House sponsor for the 15% measure, but many important pieces of legislation have crossed the same bumpy road on the way to passage. There was no reason for the NCER to expect that the Fess Bill would be any different. If there were any problems steering the Bill, the NCER could be confident since Senator Fess, despite the Bolton’s objections, was actually highly regarded in the Senate, and had the ability to guide the 15% Bill to a successful conclusion. The introduction of the Bill alone could have been considered a minor success because it made all of Capitol Hill aware of the radio problem.

The arguments with the Payne Fund itself raised some serious issues the Committee would have to address in the upcoming year. The Payne Fund’s desire for the NCER to be more of an information clearinghouse and to cooperate with other radio research groups posed a serious question for the Committee. The Committee had to decide to which body it was beholden: the Payne Fund or the October Conference educators. In the end the NCER sided with the October Conference educators and continued its allocation campaign; it persisted in lobbying for an educator on the Federal Radio Commission, and it kept the Service Bureau operating. The

NCER sided with the October Conference educators because the NCER shared the same fundamental principles and beliefs about radio and American society. If it followed the Payne

Fund’s wishes, it may accomplish some kind of radio reform, but it would be an unsatisfactory, compromise reform. The NCER had no room to compromise, so it took the only course of action left to it. 72

II. “RADIO IS AN EXTENSION OF THE HOME”1

Even though many historians argue that the Progressive movement effectively died in

1920, the NCER’s fight against radio commercialism and monopoly suggest that historians have

prematurely buried the Progressive movement. The concerns the NCER raised in its campaign

against radio’s status quo echoed the Progressive ethos of efficiency, expertise, morality, public

good, an end to the influence of special interests, and faith in technology and progress. Of course

this ethos alone does not prove that the NCER was a Progressive organization, because, as

Richard Hofstader noted, these values lay at the heart of many reform movements.2 Nevertheless

the NCER had three important linkages to a populist and progressive past. First, the NCER leaders considered their organization progressive and viewed its own work in the context of progressive reform; its members were people with personal histories of progressive activism.

Some scholars, most notably Peter Filene, argue there was not a strong Progressive logic that undergirded a large cohesive movement.3 However, along with Daniel T. Rodgers, I believe that

progressive reform rested upon three specific languages that marked all groups considering

themselves Progressive and served as unifying bonds: antimonopolism, an emphasis on social

bonds and the social nature of people, and social efficiency.4 I find Rodgers’s argument more

convincing than Peter Filene’s because Filene’s work ignores the fact that these reformers

believed that they were a part of a larger movement, and he holds Progressivism to a test of

ideological consistency few if any reform movements could pass. All ideologies have

inconsistencies invisible to their adherents. Additionally, many reform movements hold fast to

general principles but within that framework there is still room for disagreement. Using Filene’s

1 National Congress of Parents and Teachers, “Radio and the Home,” Education by Radio 1 (June 11, 1931): 71. 2 Hofstader, The Age of Reform. 3 Filene, “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement’,” 20-34 4 Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” 123. 73 logic it would be possible to dispute the existence of the federalist ideology that birthed the

Constitution because these federalists split into two opposing political factions. Also, denying the existence of the Progressive movement renders a group like the NCER incomprehensible.

Finally, the NCER may have considered its work as progressive and used progressive ideas, but it was also the Committee’s struggle to establish a “safe” space on the air free of corporate greed—one that valued the soul of the listener over his wallet that made it truly progressive.

The progressive nature of the NCER is important because it allows us to understand its actions and decisions. The Committee viewed and attacked the problem of commercial radio from a progressive mindset and made decisions based upon this thinking. The NCER’s progressive nature reveals that the fight against commercial radio was only part of a larger concern about the debasement of American culture by urban values. Finally, it forces us to rethink the periodization of the progressive era, and the impact of progressive reform.

Getting the Message Out: Modern Day Muckraking

The NCER used its newsletter, Education by Radio, the same way muckraking journalists used their various outlets. The newsletter was supposed to inform people of the horrors of radio’s current condition, and, ideally, elicit the same responses of horror that the muckrakers’ readership did. The NCER mailed the newsletter to politicians, activists, educators, radio station personnel, and libraries across the country. However, the reach of the Committee’s newsletter was not as sweeping as those the muckrakers used. So, the NCER’s early campaign from 1931-

1932 never actually engaged a mass audience. Muckrakers used more popular outlets with wider circulations such as McClure’s as opposed to a small newsletter like Education by Radio, yet the key similarity between the muckrakers and the NCER lay not so much in the targeted audience 74

as it did in the expected reaction of the audience. Both used their outlets to inform their

audiences that business corrupts, and both hoped that such a revelation would spur people to

action.5 The NCER declared that one of its most important roles would be as a “clearinghouse

for research” of appropriate information; it would “spread needed information to the schools and

the public and serve as a clearinghouse, save correspondence, and knit together the forces interested in educational broadcasting,” and, when it engaged in more active roles such as pushing the Fess Bill, the Payne Fund attempted to hem it in claiming that the clearinghouse role was its most important at the time.6

The difference between the muckrakers’ and the NCER’s target audience reflected a shift

in the relationship between people and government as well as a change in the layers of

government oversight that existed by 1930. The NCER was a collection of upper-middle class

professionals representing and targeting other upper-middle class and wealthy professionals—

Senators, Congressmen, Federal Radio Commissioners—lamenting the Committee’s exclusion

from the political process. Engaging the masses would not necessarily have helped the NCER

recruit a mass following because it employed a paternalistic, condescending view of the general

public. The Committee was out to save the public, and it did not really want the public’s help. In fact the NCER was fighting a battle of expertise—something that separated it from the masses by

definition—in the very administrative trenches created by managerial progressives during the

early 1900s, revealing a split in the Progressive movement. The Federal Radio Commission, an

independent government oversight committee comprised of “experts” in radio and efficient

5 McCormick, “The Discovery that Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” 105- 139. 6 “The National Committee on Education by Radio,” Education by Radio 1 (February 12, 1931): 1; Special Memorandum for Mr. Morgan and Mr. Tyler. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 774; “Plans of the Committee” from the Agenda for the Second Meeting of the NCER January 28, 1931. p. 11. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 38, Folder 743; and Letter from Mrs. Chester C. Bolton to John H. MacCracken dated October 9, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 75

administration was a clear example of managerial reform that became entrenched in federal

government during the 1920s. The NCER was fighting the post World War I phenomenon

described by James Weinstein: “Day to day power centered more and more in the hands of

administrators and experts who thought primarily in terms of increasing the efficiency of the existing system, [and] were constrained to do so in a manner to win approval of corporation leaders.”7 But the NCER’s concern was not efficiency; it was social salvation.

A Progressive Past

NCER chair, Joy Elmer Morgan, was no stranger to reform. Considered by some to be a

“pedagogue” and “professional reformer,” Morgan edited the Journal of the NEA, an

organization that had been an integral part of reform since its birth. Prohibition and the anti-

saloon movement, child welfare, sanitation, free trade, and public utilities were all campaigns in

which he took part.8 On two occasions between 1910 and 1920 he edited handbooks for the

National University Extension Association debate which pitted private ownership of utilities

against municipal control and protectionist tariffs against free trade.9 His contribution to the

tariff debate handbook foreshadowed some of his core beliefs about radio and criticisms of the

commercial radio industry. In his 1912 article “Protection for Protection” he warned of the ease

with which corporations misled Congress and the people about their needs for protection arguing

that “Honest enterprises requiring protections and the general public should be shielded from the

greed of unscrupulous corporations, who are willing to spend prodigious amounts of money and

7 Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State 1900-1918, 252. 8 H.E.Buchholz, “The Pedagogues at Armageddon,” The American Mercury 29 no. 114 (June 1933): 129, 244; and Levering Tyson, “Average Man Key to Education Program,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 13. 9 Morgan and Bullock, ed. Selected Articles on Municipal Ownership; and Morgan, ed. Selected Articles on Free Trade and Protection. 76 to sacrifice principle and law to destroy their competitors and plunder the public.”10

Protectionism may have had its advantages, but it also enabled corporations to abuse the privilege to gouge the public. Morgan’s solution to this possibility proposed that “Protected interests should be required to make annual reports…The people have a right to know the details of the system, the expense, of operation, the rate of dividends, the burdens the public has assumed in giving the protection, and the benefits it has received because of the assumption of these burdens.”11 Protective tariffs may have benefited an industry, but by asking for protection, it set itself up to present detailed accounts about the benefits of that protection so that consumers would not be abused. Morgan later echoed these sentiments during his radio crusade, arguing that commercial radio was receiving a special gift from Congress and the public and that it was using that gift counter to public interest. Morgan’s support of public utilities also influenced his radio beliefs. Many people had viewed radio as a public utility, and Morgan’s belief in publicly owned utilities, not private, corporate ones, certainly carried over to radio. If the bold leader of the NCER was an educator first and foremost, his work as a public welfare reformer ran a close second.

Armstrong Perry too was in many ways a professional crusader. Perry, one of the first people involved in the fight for educational radio, was already employed by the Payne Fund when the NCER began operations. Perry had been a “radio specialist,” and, in 1930, the Payne

Fund sent him to work on projects for the U. S. Office of Education.12 Perry made his career around developing this medium for the purposes of education. Tracy F. Tyler, a newly minted

PhD in education, blossomed in a discipline where reform coursed through its veins. His dissertation, on the educational possibilities of the ether, echoed NCER sentiments. Thus, the

10 Joy Elmer Morgan, “Protection for Protection,” Selected Articles on Free Trade and Protection, 35. 11 Ibid., 36-37. 12 Ben H. Darrow, Radio the Assistant Teacher (The Greenfield Printing and Publishing Company, 1932), 56. 77

Committee’s three dominant personalities—the people who helmed the ship and developed its

strategy—were reformers with strong populist/progressive pedigrees. Their work in the

committee also primarily represented land grant institutions. Indeed, most of the member

organizations in the NCER were affiliated directly with land grant colleges, in the Midwest and

the West—places with definite links to a populist and progressive past.

Antimonopolism

The first prong of the NCER progressive attack was a strong campaign to cast radio as a public utility and the network system as a monopoly. The NCER printed the bulk of its antimonopoly material during its first two years of operation: 1931-1932. At this time the federal government was taking action against one of the NCER’s main targets, RCA, as operating in

restraint of trade. RCA later signed a consent decree with the U.S. government after an investigation of its possible violation of anti-trust law.13 The consent decree actually did little to

RCA. However, during those first two years, the NCER pressed the matter in its weekly issue of

Education by Radio. Every week the NCER informed its audience of the many monopolistic

tendencies of the networks. The NCER employed two axes of attack on this front; first it

described the heads of the networks and radio companies, especially the National Broadcasting

Company, as career monopolists and frauds who were experts at manufacturing false images;

secondly it compared radio to public utilities that were controlled by special-interests. Both

points of attack—the clear stance against monopoly and privatization of public utilities—had

strong progressive roots. The focus on conspiracy was a more subtle but important part of

progressive thought.

13 RCA was investigated and drew the ire of the NCER because it controlled two of the three broadcast networks, NBC Red and NBC Blue, as well as key radio patents and production of receiving sets. RCA also owned or controlled Westinghouse, Victor, and General Electric. 78

The best example of this campaign was the NCER attack on the Radio Corporation of

America and its subsidiaries including NBC, Westinghouse, and General Electric. The

monopolist the NCER attacked most vehemently was Merlin H. Aylesworth, president of NBC,

characterizing him quite fairly as an old-style monopolist who brought a familiar bag of business

tricks to NBC. The campaign against Aylesworth served dual purposes for the NCER. First his

leadership of NBC was representative of the leadership and direction of all radio networks and

stations. If Aylesworth’s image could be successfully questioned by the NCER, it could be used to cast a negative light on the networks and commercial radio industry. Secondly Aylesworth himself was used to paint a picture of a “robber baron” type alive and well in the 1930s. The

NCER argued that Aylesworth spoke of non-partisanship, efficiency, and public service, but he operated in a terribly partisan, inefficient way that sacrificed the public good for his coffers.

Aylesworth had been a managing director of the National Electric Light Association (NELA) before taking the presidency of NBC. The NCER criticized Aylesworth’s practices as director of

NELA as “an astounding campaign” that unduly influenced important people in the community such as teachers, clergy, civic groups, and government officials and “corrupt[ing] the public intelligence thru unreliable statistics and onesided propaganda on behalf of unregulated, privately-owned utilities.”14 The Committee condemned Aylesworth’s practice of urging local

college professors to study and lecture on the NELA and its problems in return for an annual retainer of an undisclosed sum essentially equating the practice with bribery. In a later issue of

Education by Radio the NCER ran a bold warning entitled “Power Trust Promoter Becomes

Radio President—Is this NBC’s Concept of Education by Radio?” The warning cited an

14 “The Menace of Radio Monopoly,” Education by Radio 1 (March 26, 1931): 25. 79

Aylesworth speech to his managers urging them to offer professors money in exchange for their attention and support.15

On the surface Aylesworth’s actions might appear harmless or even quite progressive. As the director of a trade association representing power producers in the United States, he was simply trying to involve scholars and teachers in researching and teaching about the problems of power production. However the NCER identified and exposed a seamier side to these relationships. By working in concert with professors, NELA could use them to conduct special research or influence government decisions through their research findings under a guise of impartiality. In reality NELA purchased “impartial” evaluators who would endorse private ownership of power production. It also used these teachers to supply their students with propaganda promoting private utility ownership. The rewards of this activity outweighed its cost because Aylesworth could use these relationships to bolster and solidify his industry with a foundation of scholarly and scientific legitimacy in the form of scholarly studies done by professors on his payroll. To the NCER, the NELA was corrupting higher education and scientific research.16 The Federal Trade Commission eventually found NELA’s practices corrupt, and the NCER did its part in exposing its former chair as a shady character now piloting the National Broadcasting Company. The NCER had no direct evidence by 1931 that NBC would engage in the same questionable practices as the NELA, but the Committee believed that

Aylesworth’s past indicated the probability of impropriety in the future. The Committee’s evidence may not have held up in a court of law, but it viewed the information as damning in the court of public opinion.17

15 “Power Trust Promoter Becomes Radio President,” Education by Radio 1 (December 31, 1931): 162. 16 George W. Norris, “The Power Trust in the Public Schools,” Education by Radio 1 (May 14, 1931):55-56. 17 Ibid., 55-56. 80

The NCER was not alone in its criticism of Aylesworth. Education by Radio contained a

piece entitled “The Future of the Air” in which H.V. Kaltenborn, the editor of The Newspaper of

the Air, chafed at the great publicity that radio networks gave to their in-house education forums

which he characterized as “usually sound[ing] more important in published announcements than

they ever become on the air.”18 He then directly related such practices to the guidance of Meriln

Aylesworth whom he called “a veritable Merlin in this publicity game” and a “past-master in the subtle art of public relations.” Kaltenborn further criticized Aylesworth for using the Rockefeller name to “give public-service grandeur” to Rockefeller Center the home of NBC’s Radio City.19

Finally Kaltenborn exposed Aylesworth’s claim to allow all viewpoints on NBC even radical

ones as groundless.20

Kaltenborn’s piece echoed and amplified NCER sentiments. Aylesworth was a corrupt

promoter not just in his NELA past but in his NBC present. In this assessment, Aylesworth was a

wolf in sheep’s clothing who provided feeble attempts at in-house educational fare to present to

the public an image of education while, in reality, just presenting more commercialism and little

of intellectual value. Aylesworth also was able to claim that he barred no radical speakers from

the air while maintaining what Kaltenborn termed a “conservative” organization. By

conservative Kaltenborn simply meant NBC would not air any speaker it believed dangerous to

the status quo of the free market system at a time—during the Great Depression—when very

radical speakers were available and interested. Aylesworth wanted to avoid anyone he feared

might provide serious criticism but was able to present the image of parity by granting time to

“some wellbehaved [sic] liberal or radical speaker like Norman Thomas, and then advertises this

18 H.V. Kaltenborn, “The Future of Radio,” Education by Radio 1 (May 14, 1931): 53. 19 Kaltenborn was referring to the image of the John D. Rockefeller of the 1930s most associated with philanthropic causes and charity as opposed the robber baron image of John D. Rockefeller popular at the turn of the century. 20 Kaltenborn, “The Future of Radio,” 53. 81

concession widely and vigorously.”21 Again Aylesworth was able to present an image of

impartiality on the air through the careful use of tokenism and heavy publicity. Kaltenborn’s

Newspaper of the Air was a highly regarded radio news program that aired on the CBS network, and his status as a CBS broadcaster made his criticism most damning because he was an

“insider” in the commercial broadcast industry, and he was attacking the very system that beamed his show into the homes of millions of people.22 It is possible that Kaltenborn was busy

waging war against a competing network, but this kind of attack was not typical within the

commercial industry at this time.

The NCER similarly attacked Aylesworth implying that monopolistic control of the air

led to censorship. The Committee later reprinted a piece from the Wyoming Labor Journal in

Education by Radio publicizing a problem Aylesworth encountered after his network attempted

to censor an address. In June of 1932 William Ripley, an economics professor at Harvard

addressed the National Association of Mutual Savings Banks on the losses that many banks

suffered in public utility securities during the Great Depression. NBC agreed to air this speech

providing an opportunity for Aylesworth to demonstrate his supposed commitment to education

on the air. Ripley was a scholar talking about the problems of public utility securities and

banking—timely topics for the Depression-struck country. His talk also touched on the problems

of utility securities which were matters of concern for Aylesworth’s old organization the NELA

as well as his new company, NBC. As a condition of the broadcast, NBC required Ripley to

submit a copy of his speech to the network for review beforehand. Ripley’s address was very

critical of the public utility investment policies and securities, and NBC ordered him to edit these

parts out of the speech. Ripley refused stating, “I have been asked to blue-pencil my speech. I

21 Ibid., 53. 22 For more on Kaltenborn see H. V. Kaltenborn, Fifty Fabulous Years, 1900-1950: A Personal Review by H. V. Kaltenborn (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1950). 82

have never submitted to blue-penciling, and will not begin now.”23 As a result of his refusal to

remove material NBC believed too radical, the network withdrew its offer to air Ripley’s speech.

The Education by Radio article declared the incident an example that the “power trust … proved

that it has grown strong enough to put censorship on the air.”24 Ripley never spoke publicly about the incident again, nor did he ever explicitly classify this incident as censorship, but the

NCER declared it a case of NBC’s censorship of radio. The Committee described Ripley as an eminent economist and a conservative, and concluded that any voice critical of the power trust or radio would be silenced. It was a perfect moment for the NCER because Ripley was a scholar deeply invested in the status quo of the free market, so, from that standpoint, he was a

“conservative,” but he was also a scholar trying to enlighten the masses as to the causes of some of the financial woes of the country. Still the majority of the public did not know that Ripley’s address was canceled nor did it know the content of his speech. The incident further reinforced

Kaltenborn’s earlier accusations the “power trust, with its ally or subsidiary, the radio trust, controls the air.”25

Aylesworth’s name was not mentioned by the NCER in the article, but it was not

necessary. The NCER made sure to imply Aylesworth’s stylistic fingerprints were to be found all

over this incident. This scourging of Aylesworth reflected a trend that continued in later issues;

the Committee omitted his name—most likely a precaution to protect the NCER from a libel

suit—but its attacks implicitly referred to him as well as his stewardship of NBC. For example,

the NCER questioned the practice of radio stations accepting advertising from power companies.

The NCER warned readers that they “Pay for Power Trust Advertising.”26 It reminded them that

23 “Radio Trust Denies Free Speech,” Education by Radio 2 (September 15, 1932): 96. 24 Ibid., 56. 25 Ibid., 56. 26 “You Pay for Power Trust Advertising,” Education by Radio 2 (February 4, 1932): 21. 83

the power group was a trust “whose efforts to corrupt the schools and misinform the public were

revealed by the investigations of the Federal Trade Commission.”27 Furthermore it warned that

one would “be amazed at the extent to which these ‘goodwill’ sales talks fill[ed] the air.”28 The piece did not mention Aylesworth by name, but it did not have to do so. His practice of using

“goodwill” talks as masked publicity and advertising was as good as his signature. Aside from its corrupt nature this was a dangerous “camouflage,” according to the NCER, because it served to convince federal regulators and the public that there was no need for independent educational radio outlets. The commercial stations were “most generous in their offers of free time on the air… more than generous just as the National Electric Light Association was generous with free material to be used in school classes.”29 Thus groups like the NCER’s rival, NACRE, who

cooperated with the commercial industry and worked within their system, praised the

commercial system for granting educators free time.

Another issue of Education by Radio contained a textbox warning readers about “The

Same Old Octopus—The National Electric Light Association, mired in its own slime by the revelations of the Federal Trade Commission’s power trust investigation—has dissolved to

become the Edison Electric Institute. This habit of changing names has been made familiar by

the practices of exploiters, lobbyists, high financiers, gangsters, and thieves.”30 Most obviously

the NCER was trying to alert its audience that a simple name change did not reconstitute the organization, and it was still up to its old tricks. In the same issue it also re-printed an editorial that urged readers to insist on federal and state regulation of utilities.31

27 Ibid., 21. 28 Ibid., 21. 29 “Camouflage,” Education by Radio 2 (July 21, 1932): 88. 30 “The Same Old Octopus,” Education by Radio 3 (February 2, 1933): 10. 31 “Will Change Clothes,” Education by Radio 3 (February 2, 1933): 10. 84

That it used the NELA as its example was no coincidence. In the eyes of the Committee,

Aylesworth steered the NELA down its path of deceit and corruption. The NCER’s use of the

octopus analogy was revealing. It was a loaded word that progressives had used to describe

monopolies early in the century. Readers may have remembered Frank Norris’s book, The

Octopus, which told the story of corrupt railroads taking advantage of wheat farmers.32 Thus

NCER sent a clear message to its reader: Aylesworth and his National Electric Light Association were just like the grasping railroad managers taking advantage of the California wheat farmers in

Norris’s fiction. The octopus image thus served as a useful device to expose the monopolistic nature of radio itself.

Finally the power trust exemplified the numerous problems and corrupt practices that

could take root when institutions that served the public were controlled by private interests. It

was an analogy for radio; the NCER wanted its readers to see what happened with private

utilities and recognize the very direct connection between the shady dealings of the National

Electric Light Association and the practices of NBC and beyond to the National Association of

Broadcasters. In short the NCER wanted to show how Aylesworth had taken his technique from

the power trust to radio, corrupting the free market and profiting at the expense of the public.

Social Bonds and the Social Nature of People: Fighting New Yorkism

The NCER’s antimonopolist sentiment was also part of a deeper criticism of the United

States at that time. Historian, Richard Hofstader argued that the “American mind was raised

upon a sentimental attachment to rural living and upon a series of notions about rural people and

rural life,” that viewed rural life as a wholesome existence upon which American life was

32 See Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1901). 85

founded and stood as the moral bellwether of the country.33 The city stood in opposition to

everything embodied in this ideal—an ideal that remained vital in the 1930s. The NCER’s fear of

monopoly also had its deepest roots in this thought; the corruption of the free market was an

attack on fair dealing—a trait commonly associated with the “country” merchant—as well as a

technique used by Eastern banks and financiers. Many people feared the danger of urban

spaces—most common in the East—and longed for “the good old days” of small towns and

farms as opposed to high rents, overcrowding, and wage slavery. These were not the only evils

of the city. In fact the greatest “problems” of the city were its culture, value system, and diverse

population. Reformers used the term culture to refer to many aspects of city life: popular entertainments—jazz music, vaudeville, films—as well as political culture—corruption, graft, inefficiency, and mobocracy. Reformers included immigrants and African-Americans in this equation. Immigrants had been the most populous groups in large American cities, and these were entertainments either created or consumed by non-natives, and any moral defects the reformers saw in city culture, they also saw in immigrants and African-Americans themselves.34

These ideas coupled with the goodwill reforms spearheaded by Progressives reveal a key

duality to the Progressive mind. On the one hand they fought political corruption by pushing city

manager systems of government, civil service exams, and expert commissions, and, on the other

hand, these reforms also took away the political voice of many of the immigrants in the cities.

Progressives campaigned against “saloon culture” and its effects on city life and the welfare of

children and women in campaigns that targeted immigrants who patronized taverns for pleasure

and profit. America’s drinking problem in the eyes of most reformers was America’s immigrant

33 Hofstader, The Age of Reform, 24. 34 For a larger discussion on the image of the city see Hofstader, The Age of Reform, 23-93; Milton John Cooper, Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990), 8-9, 84-85; and Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Papermac, 1995). 86 problem.35 Reformers also targeted immigrants for special schooling in civics and English. This was a useful program, but the logic backing it was one of nativism. Progressives wanted to assimilate all immigrants into their own white, middle-class version of American culture.

Vaudeville entertainments and films also received the scorn of Progressives. Vaudeville theatre included impressionists, slapstick comedy and other light fare. It was cheap entertainment that reformers saw as dangerous and depraved. These pursuits diverted mass attention away from cultural uplift and enlightenment, reformers argued. Reformers once believed film had the potential to educate and uplift, but movie studios misused this technology for profit, and, in the process, stirred the baser passions of the masses. Further alarming reformers was the fact that people wanted escape and entertainment not Chautauqua lectures on the silver screen; they wanted Rudolf Valentino playing the part of a sheik in an epic film, not Charles Beard telling them about the epic history of sheiks. Films were supposed to serve educational and higher cultural pursuits, but most films lacked these qualities. Again Progressives most associated these entertainments with immigrants and poor urban laborers, and they used their position condescendingly in an attempt to prescribe for all people what reformers believed was best for them.

African-Americans fared no better at the hands of Progressives. The reformers, using a racist lens, damned jazz music for its beat and style—the music would often be associated with drug addiction and voracious sexual appetites. They viewed the dancing it inspired as tribal and primitive appealing to the basest passions of humanity. In fact, the word jazz has been a slang term for sex. During this same period the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry

Anslinger, would associate these images with drug abuse, and the film Reefer Madness would

35 Cooper, Pivotal Decades, 65-67; and Thomas Pegram, Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800-1933 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998), 66-108. 87

project Anslinger’s associations and put them on screen.36 So jazz, like vaudeville and films, was

in the eyes of many reformers another materially bankrupt entertainment that signified vice and

the dangers of urbanity. This was the result of two underlying factors. First it was a reaction to

the migration of many African-Americans to northern urban areas during the great migration and

reflected the larger population of African-Americans in cities like New York. Secondly, it still

revealed the racial stereotype of the oversexed and predatory African-American male, and jazz

music, in the eyes of many reformers, was a cultural manifestation of this “reality.”

The fact that this kind of culture was transmitted over the radio through jazz bands, and

quickly became the dominant type of material broadcast, disturbed the NCER. The radio

industry’s resistance to jazz music waned by the late 1920s because of three developments. First

George Gershwin’s successful arrangement of jazz music for Paul Whiteman, Rhapsody in Blue,

proved to be a watershed moment for popular acceptance of jazz music by a more mainstream

white audience. Of course that first step made jazz acceptable only when co-opted and performed

by whites.37 Also, by this time, the young networks and other radio stations began using

audience surveys to determine programming. A survey as early as 1927 demonstrated that a

plurality of the American radio audience preferred popular music—jazz—on the air.38 Finally

the audience began to accept jazz music because it became more familiar with urban audiences

in the north as a result of the Great Migration: the movement of many African-Americans from

the American south to northern urban centers between World War I and World War II.39

36 David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 91-229; and Reefer Madness, director Louis J. Gasnier, 1936. 37 Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 173-185. 38 Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting (Washington, D. C.: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 96-97. 39 Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 173. 88

The most stinging criticism the Committee made of the commercial radio industry was

that it played to the lowest common denominator, and that industry for the most part was

centered in New York—the largest urban center in the United States. The American people had

access to a technology that could empower them through education and enhancing democratic

institutions during one of the worst political and economic crises in American history, the Great

Depression. What they actually received was an electronic bread and circus simply teaching

them to ignore the larger import of the world around them while they listened to Amos ‘n’ Andy.

Networks and commercialism were evil to the NCER because they shut out local voices and

tastes—such as local news, hard work and education—and replaced them with urban desires.

William Jennings Bryan had his cross of gold. Jane Addams had her struggle against

poverty. Upton Sinclair had the Meat Packing industry. Joy Elmer Morgan had commercialism.

At its 1931 meeting, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers resolved “We believe that

radio is an extension of the home; that it is a form of education; that the broadcasting channels

should forever remain in the hands of the public; that the facilities should be fairly divided

between national, state, and county government; that they should be owned and operated at

public expense and freed from commercial advertising.”40 The resolution, urged upon the

organization by the National Committee on Education by Radio, encapsulated NCER thinking in

a brief statement, and the slogan “Radio is an extension of the home” would later appear on the

NCER letterhead. Radio was more than a whimsical little fixture in the home; it was an

extension of it and the material broadcast needed to be appropriate for the gentle sensibilities within the sanctity of the middle-class home. Education, not commerce, was the only worthy domestic pursuit.

40 National Congress of Parents and Teachers, “Radio and the Home,” Education by Radio 1 (June 11, 1931): 71. 89

Radio delivered very public material into the private domain of family life thus inviting

all kinds of horrors of American society into the home: hucksters, violence, and vice. Over the course of one evening a listener might hear a violent serial interrupted by a pitch for a mountebank’s magic elixir and faux doctors touting the virtues of Lucky Strike cigarettes. This

trio entered the American home as easily as a bottle of milk. Indeed, one advertising executive

noted that “The minute a person buys a radio receiving set he naturally becomes a critic. He is

ruthless. That is as it should be because, after all, it is into his intimate family circle that

broadcasting comes.”41 Simply put the radio owner needed to become a critic because the

material carried on the radio challenged domestic ideals. The onus of scanning all material was

left upon the shoulders of the listener; that radio stations airing such dubious content bore some

responsibility did not cross this observer’s mind. The NCER had based a great deal of its

criticism of radio on this phenomenon arguing that commercialism and the material that

commercials sponsored represented serious dangers to the fabric of American society, equally

threatening children and adults, native-born and immigrant alike. The commercial radio outlets

profited from introducing all kinds of horrors into the American home, and, even if listeners

loved such material that did not mean the commercial fare was good for them. Simply put the

NCER was working to protect Americans from commercialists as well as themselves.

The state of radio paralleled the state of the city at the turn of the 20th century. Cities were

foul places of disorder, disease, dirt, and poverty. At the same time, the growth of cities in the

United States and the large influx of people to them reconfigured the ways in which Americans

interacted as well as the very fabric of American cultural life. By the 1870s, starting at the grass-

roots level, groups of reformers—mostly women—attempted to make cities more livable by

creating “redemptive spaces” within the city. Municipal housekeeping projects like Jane

41 Roy S. Durstine, “Audible Advertising,” Radio and its Future (U. S. A. : Harper and Row, 1930), 50. 90

Addams’ Hull House and public baths were all attempts to make the city cleaner while helping people assimilate to city life in an orderly fashion. At an even deeper level these spaces and the very project of “cleaning” were “attempts to reorganize the social system within understandable boundaries,” and also to find the proper place for all people within those boundaries.42

The disorder in radio was similar. The 1920s had been a veritable free-for-all with regard to radio broadcasting and the resulting call for order from the nascent radio industry endorsed that order with profit and efficiency in mind; it did not consider the soul or at least the mind of the listener in the process. Up to this point historians have placed the NCER’s fight for radio reform as a practical measure designed to save the educational radio stations which the

Committee represented and thus placed the NCER within the same context or mindset as the commercial broadcast industry. Yet this practicality did not entirely explain why the NCER urged reform, nor did it reveal the true importance of the Committee’s work. The campaign for a drastic change in radio surely focused on practical activities: the Service Bureau, legislation, and later participation in international radio policy conferences; however these activities were means to a larger end. The NCER directed most of its attacks on the commercial industry from a deeper philosophical level. Its war against commercialism on the air reflected the fact that radio broadcasting erased the physical borders of urbanity, aso the NCER attempted to “clean” radio in the same way that civic-minded women of the Progressive Era tried to “clean” the city.

The NCER’s fight for the Fess Bill was a battle to create redemptive spaces in the “dirty” community of the ether and, like the municipal reformers of the past, institute order in this social system. Dirt, as scholar Daphne Spain noted “is disorder,” and, when understood this way, radio was dirty because frequency allocations were changing constantly and commercial content

42 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 13. 91

blurred the line between advertisement and entertainment.43 If successful, the Fess Bill would

preserve educational stations that would provide material to engage the mind constructively

while offering a safe alternative to the promotion of cigarettes, tonics, and violence. Under such

conditions, a listener need not be a fierce critic, but could trust that the shows broadcast would be

safe. Treated as a human with a mind and not an insatiable consumer, the educational fare would

also define the proper place of that listener in this safer social system.

At the same time, the NCER also feared that the New York based networks were

culturally colonizing the rest of the country and keeping local voices and values off the radio. At first glance one may be puzzled as to how commercial radio might represent urbanity because advertising had been a national reality for many years that targeted rural and urban people alike.

However, as Roland Marchand observed, the advertising industry became much more

sophisticated during the 1920s, and its ads equated modernity with urbanity. Advertisers

employed a variety of parables that preached a “new logic of living” that eschewed the “older

values of discipline, character-building, self-restraint, and production-oriented achievement”

while vaunting new values of “pleasure, external appearance, and achievement through

consumption.”44 At the same time these advertisers depicted the “ideal modern life” which was

also urban.45

When the Committee attacked the urban nature of most radio stations, its attacks went

beyond radio. It attacked the culture of New York and urban spaces themselves when fighting

against what it called “New Yorkism” on the air or the urban-centric nature of stations. The

43 Ibid., 13. 44 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1985), 234. 45 Ibid., 167. 92

dangers of the city: vice, violence, and jazz music no longer recognized physical boundaries. Joy

Elmer Morgan warned:

We are in vastly greater danger as a people from New Yorkism than we are from communism. There is more danger that the trivial, the sensual, the jazzy, the confused notions of home life which are bred in the hothouse metropolitan centers will sap the ideals and the vision of the outlying regions which have been the stable centers of our national life.46

As commercial programs entered the home of the rural, mid-western family via the ether they

posed a cultural threat; people no longer remained safe from these elements by avoiding the city

because urban life was delivered right to the home. Even more importantly, Morgan, a

Nebraskan, equated rural and non-urban America as a well-source of the ideals of American life.

Introducing the threats of the city, New York being the largest, threatened the very moral fabric of the United States. Simply put, New Yorkism was an imminent danger to Americans; the general immorality and ignorance which the Committee believed typified New York now occupied the American parlor. However, New York was not the only problem—it was but a symbol of urbanization in general. The true locales of valuable American development were the rural areas of the country. Graft and corruption were exceptions to the norm in rural areas, but, in

large cities, they were the status quo according to Morgan. He charged that the large city lacked

the “intelligence, the ideals, and the courage to govern itself without graft and corruption.”47

Radio and motion pictures were not the big problem in the United States; urbanity was the true cancer metastasizing in America, and radio and motion pictures merely spread the “smart-alecky attitude of commercialized amusements in our metropolitan centers … destroy[ed] the home life and the community ideals of our smaller towns and rural communities.”48

46 Joy Elmer Morgan, “Education’s Rights on the Air,” Education by Radio 1 (June 18, 1931): 74. 47 Ibid., 74 48 Ibid., 74 93

Morgan was not alone in his assessment of the city. The Committee printed part of an

address by Secretary of the Interior, Ray Lyman Wilbur, lamenting that the “modern American

city is a colossal joke on humanity” since it lacked planning and cleanliness and victimized

children.49 Wilbur was referring specifically to his longstanding health concerns about large

cities stemming from his time as a medical doctor working to contain smallpox outbreaks in

California in the early 1900s.50 Nevertheless his attack is enlightening, and the NCER used ti to

highlight the disorder of the American city and the dangers it posed to children. The conditions

of the city and its people enabled the spread of disease and dirt and general disorder that was also

reflected in the culture of the urban space. Just as Wilbur had once worked to create a redemptive

space in the city to help end smallpox, the NCER worked to build a redemptive space to protect

children and adults from the advertising pox.

At the same time the rural areas of the country were losing their voices under

colonization by urban interests. Populists had argued that the Midwest, West, and South had

already suffered from economic domination by the East, and similarly many people during the

1930s believed that the Great Depression was the result of greedy Eastern business interests. The

Committee’s antimonopoly stance implied this fact, and other critics in the 1930s would echo

these sentiments. Huey Long, for instance, built his career on this idea.51 Now eastern interests

were imposing cultural dominion over them, and, in the process, eliminating rural cultures. The

Dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois would even compare the cultural

situation to the economic situation of America in 1934 calling it the “cultural depression,”

49 Ray Lyman Wilbur “The Modern American City,” Education by Radio 1 (June 18, 1931): 77. 50 For more on his early career and fight against smallpox outbreaks see Ray Lyman Wilbur, Memoirs (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1960). 51 Brinkley, Voices of Protest. 94

meaning that the rise of eastern dominated radio eroded the gentle cultural fabric of the United

States.52

But the commercialists and the NCER did not disagree on everything. Both groups

considered a unified national thought a wonderful possibility of radio. However, this made radio

a double-edged sword; radio could unify national thought positively or negatively. NBC

president, Merlin Aylesworth marveled that “Radio broadcasting has brought isolated regions

into contact with world events; it has brought the East and the West and the North and the South

together.”53 Clearly, Aylesworth saw the national radio as something that had already unified the nation and provided for greater understanding of the world. The redemptive space advocated by the NCER would shield people from these “dirty” aspects of modern life.

The NCER and other reformers were not the only group to believe this idea. In one article

in Education by Radio Tracy F. Tyler quoted an angry Southern Congressman who protested that the radio was making his constituents “like a bunch of damn Yankees!”54 The NCER capitalized

on these fears when it informed the readers of Education by Radio about the problems in the

ether by usually framing its arguments in a rural versus urban context. It reflected the true problem of radio in the eyes of the Committee, and it was useful in making the dangers of commercial radio more real. The tension between rural and urban interests lay at the heart of the other concerns the Committee had about radio: promotion of vice, child welfare, and democracy.

The NCER implicitly viewed rural and small town America as a space relatively free of vice or at least a place less tolerant of it. From the NCER perspective, commercial radio outlets

52 Thomas E. Benner, “Radio and the Cultural Depression,” Radio as a Cultural Agency: Proceedings of a National Conference on the Use of Radio as a Cultural Agency in a Democracy ed., Tracy F. Tyler. (Washington D.C.: The National Committee on Education by Radio, 1934), 10. 53 Merlin Aylesworth address to the National Institute of Social Sciences, 1933 quoted in Azriel Eisenberg, Children and Radio Programs: A Study of More than Three Thousand Children in the New York Metropolitan Area (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 4. 54 Tracy F. Tyler, “The Case Against Chain Ownership,” Education by Radio 3 (July 20, 1933): 33. 95

reflected the vice and filth of the urban spaces which served as their source and headquarters.

The vulgar culture of the city became even more threatening when a radio school of

performance, dedicated to teaching new vaudevillians and popular musicians, was rumored to be

housed at Radio City reinforcing a belief that the threat to decent culture was growing. The

network housed at Radio City, NBC, was clearly demonstrating that it intended to continue with

its current fare; it was so committed to the format that it even needed a school to train future

talent. One critic lamented that the school would teach people how to perform “bigger and better

drunk acts; [dance in] a ballet of forty-eight girls and sixteen boys, who will presumably emulate

the contributions made to the art of the dance by the thirty-two Roxyettes of present fame.”55

Aside from promoting drunk acts during prohibition, this school was dangerous because it would enable commercial radio to deliver racier and sexually suggestive material. The Roxyettes’ costume, the author later noted, was skimpy and showed bare legs and midriffs. It was the kind of act Roxy could pull off in New York, which was more tolerant of such performance, but it was an affront to the sensibilities of rural America. Nevertheless, Roxyesque acts would be a staple of commercial radio and prove what a later critic would term “slapstick obscenity that perhaps has a place in the Bowery burlesque halls.”56

This fear echoed the complaints of B. H. Haggin, a professional musician, who wrote an

article for Education by Radio critical of the new musical culture that emanated from commercial

radio stations. Haggin decried the “celebrated fiddlers and singers” who were the staples of radio

music as well as the shortening and speeding up of symphonies to fit the “new expression” of the

times.57 Commercial radio was simply replacing established decent culture for jazz and uptempo

adaptations of a few classical pieces. It may not have been the racy performances of the

55 Frederick Lewis Allen, “Radio City: Cultural Center?” Education by Radio 2 (May 12, 1932): 68. 56 “Smut on the Radio,” Education by Radio 2 (November 10, 1932): 104. 57 B. H. Haggin, “The Music that is Broadcast,” Education by Radio 2 (February 25, 1932): 29. 96

Roxyettes, but it was still a sign of a culture sliding into a moral abyss all in the name of commerce. The fact that these pieces had been commercialized was not the problem for Haggin; rather, the crux of the matter was that the “commercialization has placed it [culture] in the hands of the American cultural class with its ignorance, indifference, or contempt for anything ‘high- brow.’”58 The center of that commercial class was New York and its urban clones.

This argument also posed a possible problem for the NCER. If indeed it was interested in

preserving local control and local voices on the air, then by printing an article critical of fiddlers and singers essentially attacked musical forms appealing to its core: people of rural America.

Rural America was the heart of fiddle music and other types of folk music attacked by Haggin and later critics. In short, its logic was flawed. However, it actually is enlightening to the modern observer; the NCER wanted local control of radio, but it wanted the control placed in the hands of educated elites. It wanted high culture sans commerce. While it appealed to the common man, the NCER certainly did not want that common man asking for a jug band.

“With all the disgusting, false, and harmful advertising now on the air,” lamented the

NCER “we find commercial broadcasters already looking forward to further polluting it.”59

Their article ran after reading in the Broadcasting, the trade magazine of the National

Association of Broadcasters, that the director of sales at WOR in New Jersey was already looking to the day that the Eighteenth Amendment would be repealed and liquor companies would be potential advertising clients. There was still mixed reception of the idea in the NAB, but the idea gained steam in the following months. The NCER was aghast noting that the British

Broadcasting Company banned liquor ads even though drinking was legal in England. The

58 Ibid., 31. 59 “Predicts Still Lower Standards for Radio Programs,” Education by Radio 2 (October 13, 1932): 98. 97

Committee reiterated its disgust later that year in an article discussing “polluted air.”60 It

compared the prospect of liquor ads on the air to the “defiled” billboards created by cigarette

companies.

Jazz and jug band music may have reflected a slouching American culture, but the NCER

pointed to a larger culprit on the air: tobacco and alcohol.61 The Committee believed the vice

unworthy of space on the air, and the commercializing and celebrating vice was an example of

the horrors of New Yorkism. At the same time it demonstrates to us the depth of the

Committee’s progressive thinking. The NCER published anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco tracts

with the assumption that its allies against the commercialists would agree implicitly; they viewed

their anti-liquor stance as part and parcel with anti-commercial radio. Confused and dismayed by

this approach, the Payne Fund itself even warned the NCER to avoid such assumptions and drop

its anti-liquor stance which the Payne Fund argued would make people view the NCER as

conducting a “general Puritanical crusade on everything.”62 The problem with the Payne Fund’s

request was that it was asking the NCER to abandon its core logic to make itself more appealing,

or, in other words, allow the continued decay of what it believed were public morals. The

Committee was forging a redemptive space on the air; compromise would not redeem anyone.

With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt came the probability that he would ask for a

constitutional amendment repealing prohibition, and commercial broadcasters started openly to

examine the possibility of carrying alcohol advertising on the air. Such open consideration drew

the ire of the NCER for several reasons. First these stations were talking of accepting advertising

from an industry not allowed to sell its product in the United States. More importantly the

60 “Polluted Air,” Education by Radio 2 (December 5, 1932): 108. 61 Jug band music was a term used to refer to western and “hillbilly” style music which, at times, used a jug as a bass instrument. 62 Letter from S. Howard Evans to Tracy F. Tyler, January 21, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 904. 98

Committee was committed to prohibition, and it viewed the nonchalant attitude of the

broadcasters as reflective of the nonchalance with which cityfolk attended speakeasies. Simply

put, the commercialists believed that drinking was not a sin even if it was unconstitutional. After

the repeal, commercial radio stations accepted liquor advertising, and the NCER still attacked the

practice. The NCER was not alone either. Film reformer Catheryne Cook Gilman also objected

to FDR’s proposal to lift Prohibition, seeing film reform and Prohibition as synchronous.63

The situation grew worse when CBS presented a special interview with Prince Jean

Caraman de Chimay, a prominent French vintner. The interview revolved around the topic of the

possible repeal of prohibition and the values and benefits of wine drinking. It was clearly an

early pitch by CBS to garner future goodwill with brewers and liquor companies in the event that

prohibition ended. It pushed the boundaries of what kind of material was acceptable on radio

especially when Chimay discussed the “misery” caused by prohibition, the benefits of wine for

hospital patients, and the responsible drinking habits of the French. He noted that children were

given wine with meals “almost from the time they leave off mother’s milk.”64 Beside the

transcript the NCER printed angry letters sent by listeners concerning the program. Most of the letters fumed at this “invasion” of the home in which their children could hear “the seductive lies

the liquor interests have always used to entice young people.”65 Another letter from a Nebraska

resident wondered how a radio station could get away with “murder.” Liquor advertising was

against the law in Nebraska as was drinking. To many listeners it seemed an example of local

laws and desires being overrun by eastern commercialism. The Committee itself did not release a

formal statement in the article; it did not need to as the published letters conveyed its great fears.

63 Leigh Ann Wheeler, Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873-1935 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 134. 64 “Shall Radio be Used for Liquor Proapganda?” Education by Radio 3 (January 19, 1933): 5-6. 65 Ibid., 5-7. 99

This kind of behavior may have been acceptable in Hell’s Kitchen, but it simply did not play in

Peoria.66 CBS would not be alone in its liquor ad exploration; NBC later broadcast a New Year’s

Eve party from Berlin which served as a thinly veiled liquor campaign.67

The anti-liquor stance taken by the NCER also spoke to another fear of a debased culture

on the air: harm to children. The Committee was terribly concerned about the effects of programs

on the mind of the child. It re-printed one editorial from the New York Times that questioned the

“effect of various crime and detective hours that cater to the most morbid emotions, as well as

giving detailed suggestions for ways of committing the most horrible crimes.”68 In another issue

the NCER reprinted an editorial from The Chicago Daily News attacking the horror and violence

that pervaded children’s programs so as to make them thrilling and interesting. Children were

reported to suffer from nightmares and other traumas from the material.69 In the following issue

of Education by Radio the NCER featured an article written by the Child Study Association of

America discussing preliminary findings on this very question of the effects of programs on

children. One disturbing trend the study revealed was that most children between ages six and

ten listened to the radio alone rather than with their parents. Children were being barraged by

messages of questionable taste, and their parents were remiss in protecting them from such

messages.70 The NCER believed that if parents were present, they could screen shows before

allowing their children to listen or turn the show in question. This fact is critical to understanding the NCER’s motivations for reform. Children were at “risk” in this chaotic space, and their

66 “Hell’s Kitchen” was term for the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 67 Morgan, “Radio and the Home,” 8. 68 “Radio During April,” Education by Radio 1 (May 21, 1931): 60. 69 “Should Advertisers Control Radio Programs?” Education by Radio 3 (March 4, 1933): 13. 70 Child Study Association of America, “Effects of Radio on Children,” Education by Radio 3 (March 30, 1933): 17- 19. 100

parents were not protecting them. These circumstances left the NCER serving as the equivalent

of the municipal housekeepers of the early 1900s.

Accompanying the report was a copy of a petition sent to the producers of the Little

Orphan Annie show from the Minneapolis College Women’s Club protesting its material as

over-stimulating and scary for children.71 The Little Orphan Annie show was a dramatization

based on the Orphan Annie comic strip character and specifically marketed to children even

featuring premiums and giveaways from its sponsor, Ovaltine, to further entice children into

listening. The pre-pubescent Annie, a rough-edged urban orphan, and her friend, Joe Corntassel,

traveled far and wide fighting smugglers, sharpsters, and pirates. The very nature of battling such

foes was stimulating for a child, and, when Annie and Joe were caught in their usual tight spot,

children could be easily scared by the situation.72 Annie, although a fictional character,

represented many of the NCER’s fears. A lone child battling criminals without the constant

protection of parents having come from an urban orphanage, she was, in short, a modified street

urchin.

Armstrong Perry, the Director of the NCER Service Bureau, considered these programs

dangerous. That same month he reported to the committee that “It has come to the attention of

the Director that a twelve year old boy…killed himself apparently as a direct result of listening to

children’s programs of a type now common in the chains and local stations.”73 Even worse was the NCER learning that children were committing crimes after watching suggestive films. They feared that radio would not be far behind.74 Children were in danger; they were under siege from

71 Minneapolis College Women’s Club, “Petition,” Education by Radio 3 (March 4, 1933): 19. 72 http://www.radiohof.org/adventuredrama/littleannie.html, Radio Hall of Fame website, Little Orphan Annie page, accessed August 8, 2005. 73 Report of the Service Bureau March,1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 74 “Who is to Blame?” Education by Radio 3 (April 27, 1933): 24. 101 liquor and tobacco interests, and they were being terrorized by the horrors of the city. The detective shows and thrillers thrived on culling sensational material from the cities about gangsters and crime syndicates. However, the Committee realized, commercial radio was not the sole culprit; parents were also to blame. “Why should parents,” asked the Committee, “supinely permit a heavier load of terror to be thrown over the children’s so called quiet hour on the air?”75

Even worse than the material broadcast was the fact that these children received this material alone and unguided in their homes. Parents had abdicated their authority when it came to radio, and they failed to protect the home. The NCER’s question called parents to action, imploring them to protect their children from the evils of the air, but it simultaneously revealed the NCER’s paternalism. It believed that many parents were remiss in their duty to protect their children because they too were intellectual children ill-equipped to shield their home from improper material. The NCER would have to protect the home because parents were not. The imposition of urbanism on the entirety of America came at a price: the corrosion of the child.

In the end the National Committee on Education by Radio fought more than just commercial radio. It fought more than just commercialism. The Committee targeted what it viewed as the root of these problems: a rise of urbanism in the United States. It used the language of past reform to exorcise these demons and it painted the kind of campaign it would fight: Anti-monopolism and a focus on social bonds and the social nature of people. Its ultimate goal would be the creation of a redemptive space that could protect children and adults from their ignorance and sensational programs. While the redemptive spaces of old were reforms spearheaded by women, the NCER was a committee of men fighting for a redemptive space. It was women progressives who waged campaigns to protect children and moral culture leading charges against alcohol through the WCTU. In short it was women who fought to protect the

75 “More About Children’s Programs,” Education by Radio 3 (May 25, 1933): 26. 102 home from the crass, the vulgar, and the dangerous—everything that the NCER labeled as urban.

However, these were professional educators who believed that their duty to educate and protect children and adults from their own ignorance and predatory interests had no boundaries. The

NCER was fighting for the welfare of children and rural people and the preservation of what it saw as culture. Radio erased formerly static boundaries and introduced disorder into the

American home, and the NCER believed that this kind of housekeeping was a job for professionals with expertise in social welfare whether male or female. The situation had changed by 1930 because when women started municipal housekeeping there were no professions necessarily dedicated to human welfare. Even educators were not the professionalized force which existed by the 1930s. As women spearheaded reforms as to create redemptive spaces and save people from the disorder of the city they professionalized the study and administration of human welfare. The NCER’s educators were heirs of this legacy as its tenets leaked into the profession of teaching and inducted into the female domain of progressive reform a group of men. The real question facing the Committee throughout this struggle, however, was simple: Did anyone care enough to join them?

103

III. RESISTANCE

From October 1930 through January 1932, the NCER commenced operations and began

fighting its radio reform campaign by providing immediate aid to troubled educational stations

via its Service Bureau, attempting to outflank the Federal Radio Commission through

Congressional action in the form of the Fess Bill, and generating awareness of the exploitative

nature of the commercial system through research and Education by Radio—all with moderate

success. During this first year the NCER was getting its anti-commercialist message out; national

organizations and their local chapters as well as prominent individuals issued statements

supporting the work of the NCER or echoing the Committee’s complaints about the commercial

broadcast system. It appeared that the Committee’s message resonated with the public or at least

important civic groups such as the National Conference of Parents and Teachers.

At the same time, while it seemed the NCER’s reputation and its critique of the broadcast

system struck chords with the public, the Committee began to encounter well organized

resistance from the commercial industry itself as well as a rival educational radio group, the

NACRE. Both complicated the Committee’s work and threatened its goals. NACRE took a

different approach to education and radio by working within the commercial system and only

providing research and educational programs to the networks. NACRE’s cooperative policy

armed the commercial industry because it would use NACRE programs to demonstrate that

education and commercial broadcasting were not mutually exclusive. Indeed, education could

thrive in the commercial environment. Concurrently, the trade association of the commercial broadcast industry, the National Association of Broadcasters, would use the activities of the

NCER to unify the industry against the Committee’s attacks. In the end, the early success of the

NCER—finding a sponsor for its reallocation bill threatening the commercial system and 104

providing determined opposition to that system—and a growing public affirmation of its

message also galvanized its commercial opponents.

“We favor legislation reserving to education a reasonable share of radio channels. The

Association commends the efforts of the National Committee on Education by Radio in behalf of

the freedom of the air,” declared a resolution adopted by the National Catholic Educational

Association (NCEA).1 NCEA college department chair, Bernard P. O’Reilly of Ohio—one of the

seedbeds of the radio reform movement—proposed this resolution.2 The NCEA had a direct interest in the Committee’s success because the NCEA represented Catholic colleges holding threatened radio licenses, and it generally agreed with the NCER’s criticism of commercial radio

programs. The resolution was a good sign for the Committee because it demonstrated support for

the Fess Bill which the NCER considered its most pressing matter in 1931. The NCEA was an

organization represented in the NCER, and the NCER welcomed its vote of support for the Fess

Bill. Throughout 1931 and early 1932, other member organizations and their chapters also

passed resolutions supporting the NCER and the Fess Bill providing important first steps in

spreading the NCER message.3 The NCER boasted these pledges, printing them in the

Committee’s newsletter, Education by Radio. One might logically expect these organizations to

pass the NCER agenda, but their status as Committee members should not diminish the

importance of their votes of support. The member groups were present at the October

1 National Catholic Educational Association resolution passed June 22, 1931 quoted in Education by Radio 1 (August 27, 1931): 101. 2 Ibid., 101 3 Superintendents section of the NEA resolution in support of the NCER and the Fess Bill quoted in “Superintendents Favor Educational Channels,” Education by Radio 1 (March 5, 1931): 16; National University Extension Association resolution in support of the NCER and Fess Bill unanimously passed May 15, 1931 quoted in Education by Radio 1 (June 25,1931): 79; NEA resolution supporting the NCER and the Fess Bill at its meeting July 3, 1931 quoted in “Education by Radio,” Education by Radio 1 (August 27,1931): 100; Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities resolution in support of the NCER and the Fess Bill passed November 19, 1931 quoted in Education by Radio 1 (December 3,1931): 144; and The Jesuit Educational Association resolution in support of the NCER and the Fess Bill quoted in “The Jesuit Educational Association Speaks,” Education by Radio 2 (March 10, 1932): 37. 105

Conference, and they represented a large number of people and educational stations. Simply put,

the NCER’s agenda resonated with a growing audience. The next challenge would be convincing

non-members and the general public.

The NCER member organizations were not alone in their resolutions. Later in 1931, the

Wyoming State Teachers Association gave its endorsement:

Recognizing the importance of radio as a medium of education in the schools, we endorse the attitude expressed by the Department of Superintendence of the NEA in urging the conservation of adequate channels and facilities in the important new means of communication by radio for the purpose of education, culture and government. We further endorse the National Committee on Education by Radio in its efforts to conserve adequate privileges in radio broadcasting for education.4

The Wyoming State Teachers Association, the teachers association of a western state that lacked

any meaningful presence on the air, was an educational organization with a direct interest in the

success of the Fess Bill. According to the Federal Radio Commission report for 1931, thirty-four

percent of Wyoming families owned receiving sets, and the state was eighty-six percent under

quota for broadcast stations as required by the Davis Amendment to the Radio Act of 1927.5

Indeed, Wyoming was underrepresented on the air, and most of its stations were under the control of networks. Therefore this association was not only fighting to keep a place for education on the air, it was fighting to preserve a space for local viewpoints. The WSTA resolution was important because it demonstrated that more supporters rallied to the NCER’s reform message, and it saw the NCER’s campaign as one interested in fighting Eastern domination of the American public sphere.

4 Wyoming State Teachers Association resolution passed at its annual meeting October 7-9, 1931 quoted in Education by Radio 1 (December 31, 1931): 159. 5 Federal Radio Commission, Fifth Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1931), 20-22. 106

In addition to the WSTA resolution was an even bigger catch for the NCER: The

National Congress of Parents and Teachers. NCER chair, Joy Elmer Morgan, attended the

NCPTA national meeting at Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1931 where he delivered an address about

the important relationship between home and school and the role of radio in the future of

education. On May 7, 1931 the NCPTA adopted its resolution affirming that it, like the NCER,

believed that “radio is an extension of the home; that it is a form of education; that the

broadcasting channels should forever remain in the hands of the public; that they should be

divided fairly between national, state, and country government; that they should be owned and

operated at public expense and freed from commercial advertising.”6 Morgan believed the

NCPTA to be “one of the most significant organizations in America,” and having it subscribe to the NCER’s Nicene Creed, “radio is an extension of the home,” was another important step in the battle for reform.7 The National Congress of Parents and Teachers, an organization with a

robust membership, enjoyed direct ties to classrooms and homes across the country. Of course,

the NCPTA was a fitting target organization for the NCER because both organizations had as

their central foci the home and children. Its resolution supporting the NCER at least meant that all members would hear of the Committee’s work and deliver the NCER message to the general public as well as fellow educators. A letter from the NCPTA president, Mrs. Hugh (Minnie)

Bradford, confirmed that all NCPTA parent-teacher groups would hear of this resolution and be

“made aware” of the commercialist threat “in order to help with the problem.”8 The NCER was

getting its message out, and it seemed to resonate with the general public as represented by the

NCPTA.

6 “Cooperation Between Home and School,” and “Radio and the Home,” Education by Radio 1 (June 11,1931): 71. 7 Ibid., 71. 8 Letter from Mrs. Hugh (Minnie) Bradford, President of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers to Joy Elmer Morgan dated August 27, 1931 excerpted in Education by Radio 1 (September 10, 1931): 105. 107

Other Educators

Tempering these achievements and early successes were other educational radio groups

that sparred with the NCER and complicated the field of reform. Two groups in particular, the

Ventura Free Press and NACRE, complicated the Committee’s work. Because they disagreed on so many things, their existence made the educators as a group look disunited and unsure of the proper course of action with regard to radio. This disunity also helped enabled the commercialists and the FRC to paint the NCER as a radical fringe group that did not represent the professional opinion of all educators. Unity would have benefited the educators. By presenting a unified front against the commercialists, the NCER would have demonstrated that the professional educators agreemed on a solution to the radio problem. Secondly unity would have put more people and organizations at the disposal of the reform campaign.

H. O. Davis of the Ventura Free Press may have been the lone member from another

group truly committed to the NCER, but the Committee rebuffed most of Davis’s advances.

Davis had been a successful businessman, former Hearst newspaper executive, and a civic-

minded man who directed the 1915 San Diego Exposition.9 In 1930 Davis earned a seat on the

Payne Fund board of directors and wanted to create a second wing of Payne Fund opposition to

the commercial broadcasters that would help publicize the anti-commercial message. He hoped

that the new group would work with the NCER in the campaign. Davis had recently purchased a

small California newspaper, The Ventura Free Press, and he suggested that if the Payne Fund

could provide financial support he could use the paper to curry public opinion and attract the

support of other newspapers. This would exacerbate the press-radio war already underway and

hopefully turn the tide of support against the American Plan. The Payne Fund liked Davis and

9 “Propaganda Lures Parents-Teachers,” Broadcasting 2 no. 3 (February 1, 1932): 12. 108

his idea, but, due to the radical nature of the project—Davis leveled heated attacks against the

industry and capitalist control of the ether—Frances Payne Bolton insisted that her funding of the

endeavor be kept confidential. She feared that public discovery of Payne Fund support for the

Ventura Free Press would damage her husband’s reputation—he was a Republican

Congressman from Cleveland—and give the Payne Fund negative publicity. Bolton supported

Davis’s radicalism over the NCER’s because Davis was not engaged in a legislative campaign and Davis could not be publicly tied to the Payne Fund. The confidentiality decree kept the

NCER in the dark too; the Committee never knew that Davis received Payne Fund support; nor was the NCER initially aware that the Fund wanted the two groups to cooperate. Only

Armstrong Perry, the NCER’s attaché to the Payne Fund, knew of this covert project because he was a member of the Payne Fund and attended Payne Fund meetings.10

Bolton’s fears were not unique to the Payne Fund. During the 1920s and early 1930s

philanthropic foundations eschewed projects appearing radical in favor of more reserved projects

reflective of professional decorum and scientific analysis. These foundations wanted to influence

public policy but only by way of providing research and information to policymakers.11 They believed that they were using scientific methods to improve American society as opposed to

“dirty” politics. The Ventura Free Press campaign would be anything but a scientific, non- partisan research program designed to better inform policymakers. The Ventura Free Press campaign’s most important contribution was its publication entitled The Empire of the Air. In it,

Davis presented the history and problems of radio as a story of corruption, collusion, and monopolism. His attacks against the commercial radio industry and the FRC were sensational reflecting the Hearst newspaper style with which he was familiar, but his charges could also have

10 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 58-61. 11 Sealander, Private Wealth and Public Life, 1-34. 109

been easily seen as attacks on capitalism itself.12 Additionally, the Ventura Free Press campaign

was not the project of which Bolton had concealed Payne Fund sponsorship. The Payne Fund

sponsored film reformer, William Short and his Motion Picture Research Council, but concealed its funding fearing its radical nature would negatively affect Frances Payne Bolton and her husband Chester.13

Davis’s attacks bore great similarity to those made by the NCER. Both groups argued

that the commercial industry, dominated by national networks, constituted a “radio trust” that

colluded with federal regulators to profit from questionable programming designed to serve

advertisers and not the public. From this perspective, Davis’s and Bolton’s assumption that

Ventura and the NCER could cooperate was a logical one. More importantly, cooperation would

also benefit the NCER because Davis’s publication and special press releases had a wider

circulation than Education by Radio targeting a mass audience as well as educators and

regulators.

However, even if they had known about each other’s involvement with the Payne Fund,

the NCER and The Ventura Free Press probably would not have been able to work together

closely because Joy Elmer Morgan distrusted the group. Morgan believed that Davis’s

background as a Hearst executive rendered his motives shady. Still, the NCER did help with the

publication of The Empire of the Air to an extent. Morgan attached a cover letter to the document

that circulated with each copy asking recipients to run the material, but he left out any explicit

praise for the work itself, stating simply that “America cannot afford to turn radio over to a

commercial monopoly which is going over the heads of parents in an effort to influence the

12 H. O. Davis, The Empire of the Air: The Story of the Exploitation of Radio for Private Profit, With a Plan for the Reorganization of Broadcasting (Ventura, California: Ventura Free Press, 1932). 13 Jowett et al, Children and the Movies, 51. 110

children in their homes.”14 So, while, Morgan cooperated with the effort by giving a weak

endorsement of the Davis group, he also distanced the NCER from a collaborator that definitely

could have given it some key publicity.

On the other hand, Morgan’s efforts to maintain distance between the two groups also

helped the NCER. Davis’s campaign failed to gain much support despite his constant work.

Newspapers never quite endorsed the campaign because they were skeptical of Davis’s group

and many identified with the commercialists. Many editors wondered how a small California

newspaper could afford such a campaign and wide circulation, while others did not trust a group

that asked for support without begging for funding of some kind. Editors appreciated Davis’s

sentiments but demanded that he offer a more concrete alternative broadcast scheme in addition

to his criticism.15 Also weakening his case was the fact that his former employer, newspaper

magnate William Randolph Hearst, encouraged cooperation between newspapers and

commercial radio in part because Hearst owned many radio stations as well as newspapers.16

Finally the Ventura Free Press drew scathing attacks from the commercial industry and the FRC.

As will become clear, the NCER was already drawing fire from the commercial industry for its

radicalism; a direct connection to the Ventura campaign could have called the Committee’s

professionalism into question and made it easier for the commercialists to dismiss the NCER as

radical. So even if Morgan and Davis found some kind of modus vivendi, the Davis campaign

would have yielded few gains to the NCER.

Davis’s campaign, while leveling similar charges against the commercial radio industry,

failed to earn full NCER cooperation because Morgan distrusted Davis’s motives and

14 Joy Elmer Morgan quoted in Ibid., 12. 15 Letter from H. O. Davis to Frances Payne Bolton dated September 9, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund, Inc., Box 40, Folder 764. 16 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 60; and “Propaganda Lures Parents-Teachers,” 12. 111

background, while the second educational group obstructing the Committee’s progress, the

National Advisory Council on Radio in Education, suffered from a different problem. NACRE was a group of educators concerned about the quantity and the quality of educational programs

on the air that researched the possibilities and efficacy of radio delivered education and designed

programs for stations. NACRE agreed with the NCER’s position that radio was a technology of great promise and that advertising and ballyhoo corrupted radio. So, on the surface, these two organizations had strong commonalities, but their differences ran deep, and, in the end, those differences would overwhelm the potential for cooperation and give rise to an adversarial relationship. The NCER simply would not compromise with NACRE, and in the process divided the educational reform movement.

The National Advisory Council on Radio in Education was first organized after talks at a

meeting of the American Association for Adult Education in the winter of 1930. Therefore this

organization predated the October Conference that spawned the NCER. NACRE’s structure

differed from the NCER’s in that NACRE had more of an associationalist arrangement. NACRE

had representatives from education, industry, government, and the public thus attempting to

merge all interests under the organization. In contrast, the NCER’s members came from the field

of education only; there was no business, government, or public representative on the

Committee. NACRE had a rather open membership policy only requiring that members show

“interest in and sympathy toward the development of educational broadcasting.”17 However,

there was a catch to membership; NACRE had two classes of members: active and associate.

Active membership was limited to a small group of educators, businessmen, and other prominent

individuals. Associate membership was open for all kinds of organizations willing to commit to

17 The National Advisory Council on Radio in Education, The National Advisory Council on Radio in Education (New York: Office of the Council, no date), 3. 112

NACRE’s mission. NACRE required proof that the organizations applying for associate

membership could contribute to its program development so it required an application process.

This membership structure provided tight control within NACRE; its active membership, a small

group that held secure positions, controlled the direction of the organization and steered policy as

it wished while availing it of the help and expertise of associate members. So if NACRE wanted

to design a U.S. History program series it could rely upon any number of members including the

prominent historian, Charles Beard, but it did not need to consult them about NACRE’s

management. This structure gave NACRE a public image of openness because interested

individuals and organizations could join while real decision making remained in the hands of a few people. It also lacked the stigma of demagoguery that the NCER suffered because the

NACRE included people outside the education profession. The NCER had a closed public image, and it had no membership policy that allowed interested individuals and organizations to join. At best interested parties could echo NCER sentiments and publicly praise the Committee’s work, but they could not become official members. Finally the NACRE also had the advantage of wealthy financial backers. NACRE received generous grants from the John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the Carnegie Corporation. This organization was well financed and organized, and it encompassed more than just educators.

NACRE was not just structurally different from the NCER; it took a different approach to the radio problem. NACRE defined itself as a “clearing-house of information about educational broadcasting as facts become available for close study and analysis,” meaning that NACRE would limit its work to designing educational programs and conducting research on radio.18

NACRE believed in radio education, but it chose to work within the commercial radio system

and conduct research on the best methods of teaching on the air. It refrained from actively

18 Ibid., 4. 113

lobbying Congress to address the growth of the commercial industry at the expense of

educational stations. The NCER did not design educational programs, so, in this respect, the

NACRE was the lone educational group actually providing radio education. Of course, like the

NACRE, the NCER also made studies and distributed information about educational

broadcasting, using its newsletter, Education by Radio, to present its material, but the NCER’s

studies often revolved around attacking the commercial radio industry. On the other hand, most

of NACRE’s studies focused on the actual process of radio education: speaking techniques on

the air, course design, program design, and adult education. Its research and educational program

work and its noncontroversial position stood in sharp contrast to the NCER’s more

confrontational approach and would present a conflicting image of educator’s attitudes toward

the commercial industry.

NACRE would become a main component in the educational endeavors of network radio.

With the threat posed by the NCER, commercial stations wanted some educational programs so

that they could prove to Congress that it need not pass special legislation for educational stations

because the commercial industry provided education on the air. Also, by working within the

commercial system, NACRE placed a variety of prominent scholars at the disposal of the

industry. NBC was the first major wing of the commercial industry to take advantage of NACRE

when the network approached it to provide forty educational talks over the course of 1932. This

series was not new; it was a continuation of the “Listen and Learn” series started in the fall of

1931. Now, however, NACRE, and its group of educators would control the series. NACRE designed the programs to bring lectures, discussions, and other educational presentations to a

mass audience over network radio.19 This setup would deliver the largest possible audience for

19 “40 Education Talks Scheduled on NBC: Noted Authorities Sponsored by Radio Advisory Council,” Broadcasting 2 no. 2 (January 15, 1932): 24. 114

education on the air since NBC gave NACRE series a prime time slot at 8:30 P.M. on Saturday

evenings. This meant that both children and adults would be able to listen to the program.

Speakers were of the highest rank and reputation. Scholars such as University of Chicago

president, Robert M. Hutchins, James Henry Rogers of Yale, and Ernest M. Patterson of the

University of Pennsylvania all delivered addresses.20 Topics, while branded generally as economics or political science, often focused on current events involving the Great Depression or the New Deal. This combination of large audiences and prominent speakers was supposed to fulfill one of the great hopes of education on the air; radio could give mass audiences access to the world’s “greatest minds.” The fact that the “great minds” spoke on current topics also demonstrated that education on the air did not need to be abstract nor did it need to be reserved

for educational stations. The NACRE programs offered learning in various disciplines that used topics familiar with a mass audience to make its points thus showing the relevance of that material to daily life.

The commercial industry, federal regulators, and educators believed that NACRE’s series

of programs were generally successful—meaning that the programs were enlightening and

reaching a large audience—and drew praise from stations and listeners. “The series has proved

that where there is a sincere desire, educators and broadcasters can get along without stepping on each others toes,” boasted NBC vice president John Elwood.21 Elwood was the person

responsible for bringing NACRE to NBC. NBC also claimed more than one hundred thousand

letters from listeners; most of the letters were from people “not professionally engaged in

education.”22 Elwood and NBC were proud of this program, and it served a useful purpose. At a

time when educators and reformers complained that there was no outlet for education among the

20 Ibid., 24 21 Ibid., 24 22 Ibid., 24 115

commercial stations, NACRE provided that education demonstrating that it was possible to work

within the status quo of broadcasting. So, while the NCER campaign charged the commercialists

for failing to provide education on the air, coordination between NBC and NACRE cast doubt

upon those accusations.

All of NACRE’s advantages cut into the efficacy of the NCER and its approach. NACRE

became the organization that the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and

commercialists lauded, and it believed that cooperation with NACRE demonstrated that

commercial broadcasters were interested in education on the air. Network interest in education

would show Congress that the charges leveled against the industry by the NCER and Senator

Fess were wrong and there was no need to reserve educational stations. Moreover, commercial

educational programs reached larger audiences and exposed that audience to the ideas of the

prominent scholars of the age. A scholar like Charles Beard, who actively sat on NACRE’s

Committee on Civic Education by Radio, and other top scholars who aided NACRE were

accessible to the public over the radio.23 The NACRE-NAB alliance challenged the NCER’s

position. The allies demonstrated publicly that professional educators were divided over the radio question, and NACRE’s association with prominent scholars also contributed to its

reputation by appealing to the associational sensibilities of the FRC, Congress, and President

Hoover. NACRE acted in a non-confrontational way; it studied matters within its scope of expertise and education, cooperating with the existing system to serve the public without the need for government regulation. At the same time it delivered the ideas of top experts to the public. In contrast the NCER had no prominent scholars to offer, no programs to provide, and its research campaign focused on ending the commercial system. Thus while NACRE brought

23 “A Report by the Committee on Civic Education by Radio of the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education and the American Political Science Association,” ed. Levering Tyson. Four Years of Network Broadcasting Information Series number 16. (New York: University of Chicago Press, 1937), iv. 116

Americans Robert M. Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago, over NBC, the NCER was busy telling Americans that the commercial industry had nothing of value to offer them.

NACRE posed a serious threat to the work of the NCER because NACRE’s programs bolstered the image of the commercial industry and armed the commercialists against the

NCER’s attacks while doing nothing to preserve the dwindling number of educational stations on the dial. In order to contain the threat posed by NACRE, the NCER searched for ways to discredit NACRE’s activities, hoping to discredit its cooperation with commercialists. The

Committee, in order to make its idea of reform a reality, needed to present itself as the true representative of professional educators’ opinions. The NCER and NACRE had a polite relationship at first. They were active in many of the same conferences, and Levering Tyson, the

NACRE’s director, even published an article in Education by Radio. However, these facts aside, these organizations never really tried to work together, and it would have been difficult for them to do so. The NCER was a political organization working to secure resources for educational radio while the NACRE shunned political agitation, and worked within the status quo. The

NCER’s reform language and logic also alienated NACRE; it viewed the NCER as self- appointed demagogues attempting to force education upon the masses. A compromise effort between the two could have galvanized reform efforts, but their very missions were at odds and thus left little chance for alliance. The NCER objected to commercial radio, while NACRE worked with commercialists. This left the NCER with few options. Full cooperation with

NACRE would mean that the Committee would have to recant its entire belief system. However, if the NCER could expose NACRE as a mere screen for commercial interests or a victim of those interests, it could either marginalize NACRE and its efforts or convince it to change its position, clearing the way for the NCER to set the reform agenda. 117

The NCER fired its first salvo at NACRE’s sources of funding. NACRE received funding

from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the Carnegie Corporation. Rockefeller was already the object of

NCER criticism. Because he built Radio City, NBC’s home office, the Committee saw

Rockefeller as an accomplice in building the radio trust. Also Rockefeller was not associated

with traditional educational interests, and this revelation could potentially bring the authenticity

of NACRE’s work into question. Finally the American public, dealing with the ever worsening

Depression in the early 1930s, often exhibited suspicion of great wealth. The NCER began its

campaign by sending letters to Rockefeller and NACRE asking basic questions about the

NACRE and its supporters. The letters looked harmless; the NCER appeared to be genuinely

interested in NACRE, but, in reality, the questions in the letters were leading. The Committee

was trying to catch NACRE or Rockefeller admitting the Council was a commercial puppet. Joy

Elmer Morgan sent a letter of inquiry about NACRE in January 1931 seemingly interested in the

group and offering to cooperate “to the fullest possible extent.”24 Tyson, NACRE chairman,

promptly sent the NCER a copy of NACRE’s constitution and financial information. But Tyson

was also suspicious of Morgan, and he attempted to preempt any attacks or questions behind

NACRE’s sincerity. "In spite of the feeling that cropped out at Chicago in October,” Tyson

wrote, “and in spite of the seemingly determined whispering campaign that the Council has been

set up as a smook (sic) for monopoly, you will find that we are entirely independent of any

influence whatsoever either in the industrial or educational fields. The Council is maintained by

funds provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,

personally, and our budget is administered solely by the Council.”25 Clearly Tyson knew that its

24 Letter from Joy Elmer Morgan to Levering Tyson dated January 23, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 25 Letter from Levering Tyson to Joy Elmer Morgan dated January 26, 1931.Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 118

association with commercial radio stations would draw fire from the NCER and its allies, and he

had already heard rumors to that effect. The NCER’s Research Director had even made such a

pointed inquiry several months earlier, in June of 1931.26 Morgan followed up on this exchange

by further needling Tyson for particulars about NACRE’s funding. He noted a United Press

dispatch of April 6 quoting Tyson as saying that NACRE had a fund of $100,000 to spend on

programs, and Morgan wanted to check if this figure was accurate. Morgan’s query was not a

simple, innocent reaction to a newspaper release; he was one of the educators who considered the

NACRE as a cover for commercialists, and he was hunting for information that might expose it

as such. Morgan’s investigation of NACRE was a bit hypocritical. The NCER never publicly

disclosed its financial information or the amount of money it received from the Payne Fund. Nor

would it ever release such information, and, if it had, Morgan’s NCER would be just as

vulnerable to attack as Tyson’s NACRE; Frances Payne Bolton inherited an oil fortune made

with robber baron methods. The NCER, like NACRE, also had a substantial grant of money for

operation. Later in the same letter Morgan noted that the work of the NCER was going forward

"far beyond the highest expectations of any of us… The people of the country are rallying

around the idea of independent educational stations and networks with permanent tenure on the

air."27 His obiter dictum may appear to be a simple boast, but it implicitly belittled NACRE.

Tyson politely expressed pleasure at the NCER noting that the budgetary figures Morgan cited

were “greatly exaggerated.”28 Tyson’s response essentially ended correspondence between

26 Letter from Levering Tyson to Tracy F. Tyler dated December 22, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 27 Letter from Joy Elmer Morgan to Levering Tyson dated May 13, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 28 Letter from Levering Tyson to Joy Elmer Morgan dated May 15, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 119

Morgan and Tyson; Tracy F. Tyler, the new NCER Research Director, would continue the bulk of NCER correspondence with NACRE because such correspondence would be part of his job.

John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of the Standard Oil magnate, real estate developer, and

director of the Rockefeller philanthropies, was the NCER’s next target. “While in attendance at a

meeting of the Land Grant Colleges” NCER Research Director, Tracy F. Tyler wrote to John D.

Rockefeller Jr. “several educators asked me for information concerning the National Advisory

Council on Radio in Education.” The inquiry seemed innocent enough, but Tyler pressed on for

information “In some way the impression had gone out that this council was controled [sic] by

commercial broadcasting interests.” Tyler argued that some educators had doubts because of

Rockefeller’s association with Radio City and Merlin Aylesworth, Owen D. Young, and other

members of the Radio Corporation of America.29 Tyler attempted to trick Rockefeller into either

mentioning that he or the organization that he funded was intimately involved with commercial

radio.

Tyler could have much more easily gotten this information elsewhere; all of this material

appeared at the beginning of every NACRE pamphlet, and the Committee already had a copy of

NACRE’s constitution and financial information and Tyson had sent the NCER additional copies

of this information as well.30 Levering Tyson later attempted to blunt Tyler’s efforts by simply

pointing out that he had sent many copies of NACRE’s bulletin to the NCER and that “On page

3 you will find the statement as to the financial sponsors of the Council. You raised this question

at the Ohio institute in June and you raised it again recently with Mr. John D. Rockefeller. This

information has been public property and has been listed in our publications ever since the

29 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to John D. Rockefeller Jr. dated November 23, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 30 Letter from Levering Tyson to Joy Elmer Morgan dated October 13, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881; and Letter from Joy Elmer Morgan to Levering Tyson dated October 14, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 120

Council came into existence.”31 Tyler may have said that he was looking for this information to

clear NACRE, but, if he really wanted to do that, he had enough information from his NACRE

publications to do so. He was fishing for more detailed information that he could use against

NACRE.

At the same time Tyler attempted to elevate the status of the group of educators with

whom he was associated by telling Rockefeller that they were “the representatives of education

in the United States.”32 The October Conference did not include NACRE’s members so such a

claim implied that NACRE did not truly represent education. Still, Tyler paid NACRE a

compliment later in his letter by praising its educational broadcasts on Saturday evenings. He

tempered his admiration, though, stating that while the programs were a nice start, “I realize as

do the overwhelming majority of educators in this country that there must be a setting aside of

broadcasting channels adequate for the use of education.”33 Once again he leveled an oblique

attack on NACRE and Rockefeller, hoping to elicit a response that would trick Rockefeller into

disclosing information, but Rockefeller’s secretary, Arthur W. Packard, rejected the bait stating

that “It is not Mr. Rockefeller, Junior’s custom to give information concerning the nature of his

commitments with any project in which he has shown an interest…such information as is made

public should be released by the organization concerned.”34 Tyler was not going to lure him into

any kind of disclosure about NACRE or his connection with NBC and Radio City.

Tyler responded to this exchange with even more antagonism weakly masked as minor

blunder. Tyler wrote Tyson claiming that he had loaned his copies of NACRE material to a

31 Letter from Levering Tyson to Tracy F. Tyler dated December 22, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 32 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to John D. Rockefeller Jr. dated November 23, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 33 Ibid. 34 Letter from Arthur W. Packard to Tracy F. Tyler dated December 2,1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 121

friend and could not look up the information he sought. He attempted to justify his query to

Rockefeller claiming that he sent the letter “for the purpose of getting a signed statement from

him as to the status of the Council. One hears from so many sources that it does have commercial

leanings, so that if Mr. Rockefeller would make a signed statement which could be given through

the press, it would be very helpful to the Council.”35 Tyler claimed he wanted to help the

Council clarify this situation because various radio industry publications and other “organs of the

commercial industry” kept praising NACRE’s work, and the people:

who have the best interests of educational stations at heart feel that there must be some reason back of this support. The educators are very much afraid of “playing ball” with the commercial people unless they are assured that by so doing they will not handicap their own cause in securing adequate facilities for broadcasting, such facilities to be entirely outside of commercial control.36

Tyler’s defense of NACRE among concerned educators was yet another indirect attack.

NACRE’s acceptance by the mainstream radio industry tainted its work in the eyes of the NCER

camp of educators. Also, Tyler again referred to “the educators” as suspicious of NACRE and

fearful that its campaign would hurt their goal of independent, non-commercial, educational

stations. His condescending phrasing excluded NACRE, an organization filled with professional

educators, including Levering Tyson; Tyler also concluded that all educators wanted independent

stations assigning the educational reform movement a unity of purpose that did not exist. At the

same time he found a way to attack NACRE’s cooperation with the commercialists and question

its educational pedigree.

The NCER considered NACRE, at best, an ineffective, misguided group. An anonymous

early draft of a memo covering NACRE betrayed the NCER’s sentiments. The edited piece

35 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to Levering Tyson dated December 28, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 36 Ibid. 122

appeared inoffensive, but, when read with its redacted passages, it charged that the NACRE

“appears to be closely associated with the large commercial radio interests and to represent their

point of view, rather than that of those responsible for public education.”37 Rhetoric to the

contrary, the NCER simply did not view NACRE as a legitimate organization in the movement,

and it even questioned the standing and commitments of NACRE’s educators.

The budding animosity between these two groups did not end with this exchange. The

heated correspondence between Morgan and Tyler of the NCER and Tyson of NACRE

continued in 1932.38 The newest misunderstanding was the fault of both the NCER and NACRE.

Levering Tyson sent Tracy F. Tyler a letter on January 17 questioning the NCER’s lack of

interest in research in radio education and Tyler’s role as Research Director. Tyson also

criticized the research efforts of the NCER attacking its study of Land Grant College radio

stations. He mostly found fault that only Tracy F. Tyler would conduct the study. Originally

Cline Morgan Koon and others not associated with the NCER were to have cooperated on the

effort. Tyson disapproved that the study would be conducted by the NCER, an organization he

viewed as biased.39 Tyson did not direct these comments to Tyler or the NCER, but NCER

member, H. Umberger, received this information and passed it on to Joy Elmer Morgan and

Tracy F. Tyler. Tyler indignantly responded to Tyson’s criticism, even though Tyson never sent

him such a letter, by reiterating that the NCER, including Tyler, had no bias and was as

37 “The National Advisory Council on Radio in Education.” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 744. 38 Joy Elmer Morgan and Tracy F. Tyler conducted the bulk of correspondence with the NACRE during their time in the NCER. Most of Morgan’s letters were written in 1931 before the NCER hired Tracy F. Tyler. Morgan’s conducted this correspondence because he was the chair, and Tyler continued it because his job was as the Research Director. The only time the two organizations actually cooperated was in the field of research. This explains why other members of the NCER did not frequently correspond with Tyson as representatives of the Committee. 39 Letter from H. Umberger to Joy Elmer Morgan dated December 28, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 745. 123

committed to any organization involved in radio education. In typical fashion, Tyler closed his

letter with an attack on NACRE:

We are cooperating in every way we can with the work that you are doing, in spite of the fact that we think this is not the most important matter facing radio education today. Certainly the subject of facilities is of greater importance right now than that of programs since many educational institutions have been running programs similar to those of the National Advisory Council, over a period of several years.40

Clearly these organizations did not trust each other.

Tyson responded to Tyler’s letter claiming he was “nonplussed as I don’t know to what

correspondence you refer.” He also apologized for any insult he may have given, but he

maintained “To the best of my knowledge and belief I have never expressed myself verbally or

in writing, concerning any ‘bias’ you have…nor do I know if you have any bias at all on any

subject.”41 He went on to inform Tyler that he knew little about Tyler and the NCER, and would

not have made such an accusation.42 Tyson may have forgotten his accusation, but the damage

was done.

By this time the two organizations began to air their disagreements publicly, abandoning

any efforts to cooperate. This public airing of differences was perhaps more damaging to their

relationship than the abrasive private correspondence because their attacks were now tools

available to other powerful forces in the radio debate. The exchange advertised the reformers’

inability to reach a consensus. NACRE fired the first salvo in the public war of words. In the

October 15, 1931 issue of Broadcasting magazine, the trade magazine of the National

Association of Broadcasters, Levering Tyson penned an article essentially attacking the NCER’s

40 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to Levering Tyson dated January 18, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 41 Letter from Levering Tyson to Tracy F. Tyler dated January 21, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 42 Ibid. 124

platform. Tyson argued that there was too much disagreement among educators on the nature of

education to begin to define the appropriate nature of education in radio. “It is almost

impossible,” he claimed “to chase a satisfactory definition of ‘education’ into a corner, let alone a satisfactory definition of ‘educational broadcasting.”43 He furthered this case by extending the

education debate to the general public. Every American, Tyson claimed “has a passion for self-

betterment. The success of our American commercial correspondence schools is eloquent

testimony of this. But few Americans would willingly be backed into a corner and allow a fist to

be thrust into their own faces followed by the admonition ‘Now we are going to educate you!’”44

His attack never mentioned the NCER by name nor did it need to do so. There was only one key group agitating against the commercial radio industry and commercialized education: the NCER.

Tyson’s point hacked away at the NCER’s image of educational authority and consensus. The educational experts that the NCER claimed to represent could not even agree on the definition of education itself. How could they possibly formulate a good definition of education on the air?

The NCER’s dogmatism was also under fire. Its proposal, if successful, would forcefully reallocate a significant portion of the radio spectrum solely to education. This demand and the

NCER’s logic was almost an insistence that this service was necessary because the public needed to be educated whether it liked it or not. Essentially, Tyson’s attack exposed the NCER’s elitism and implied that it stifled free choice.

Tyson then picked away at the NCER’s near deification of the European radio situation noting that Europeans “have advanced much farther than we have in America, not so much in the programs themselves, but in their attempts to study the educational possibilities of radio and in organizing educational forces to take advantage of the new means… of their education

43 Levering Tyson, “Average Man Key to Education Program,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 13. 44 Ibid., 13. 125

systems.”45 This statement attacked the NCER on two fronts. First it countered the NCER’s claims of European superiority as far as radio in education was concerned at the very time NCER

Service Director, Armstrong Perry, was touring European radio facilities and sending back his plaudits of the system (discussed further in Chapter 4). Tyson’s remark also questioned the

NCER’s belief that the European situation was superior because of its lack of commercialism and programming. Instead he claimed that the strength of European radio lay in its experimental education efforts and research. So, while Education by Radio was running Perry’s cables from

Europe, NACRE deftly planted seeds of doubt in the major publication of the broadcast radio industry.

Tyson’s last major point was perhaps his most revealing; he maintained that the most

important aspect of keeping education on the air was the manufacture and distribution of quality

programming, not the commercial basis of the station airing it. He reminded his readers “at the

heart of all these intricacies [of the radio problem], there is always the program itself, which is

now and always will be the crux of the matter.”46 He argued that education would be best served

with well conceived, entertaining programs that appealed to a wide audience delivered by

“educators of the first rank.”47 Thus, Tyson and NACRE disputed the NCER’s insistence that the

core of the radio problem was commercialism and permanent station allocations. Tyson went

even further by reiterating the position taken by NAB executive, Henry A. Bellows, that most

educational programs were dull except, of course, NACRE programs.48 Bellows was also a Vice-

President of CBS and a former Federal Radio Commissioner. Tyson’s echo of this observation

cut deep into the appeal of the NCER. The NCER’s claim of educational expertise was not

45 Ibid., 36. 46 Ibid., 13, 36. 47 Ibid., 36. 48 Ibid., 36. 126 enough; if educational stations were given the allocations they desired, they might still fail to educate the public if their programs did not attract a listening audience.

Tyson’s article damaged the NCER by dissecting and casting doubt upon the NCER’s key positions in a very public forum—the trade magazine of the commercial radio industry—that held the attention of the commercial industry and the Federal Radio Commission. At the same time it publicly underscored disunity among educational radio reformers and armed the enemies of the movement. Finally, the very fact that Tyson’s attack appeared in the inaugural issue of the commercial radio industry’s flagship publication salted the NCER’s open wound. To NCER leaders, it was as if these educators were traitors, selling their services for so many pieces of silver.

A similar division of expertise took place in the film reform movement at this time.

Catheryne Cook Gilman’s opposition to the motion picture industry proved so formidable that the industry tried to lure her into the industry’s own film standards group headed by Will Hays.

Hoping Gilman would join the group because of pressing financial needs motion picture industry representatives were disappointed to see her decline membership out of principle. In order to combat Gilman, Hays hired his own ambassador to represent women, Alice Winter. Winter, like

Gilman, had participated in a variety of women’s reforms and groups and provided the industry with its own expert woman. Now it could use Winter to counteract Gilman while dividing women’s expertise.49

In the November 19, 1931 issue of Education by Radio, the NCER began its public campaign against NACRE. An article comparing the British radio system with the American system mentioned NACRE series of programs and subtly cast the organization as a victim and a traitor. The article praised the “impressive list of speakers” and the prime time slot given to the

49 Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 82-91. 127

series. However, it found fault with the fact that the series was presented as a gift from NBC

claiming “the NBC has annexed perhaps the greatest selling point of its career” because it

enabled high-price retailers to advertise to elite listeners who would “listen to President Butler of

Columbia, President Angell of Yale, and Jane Addams of Hull House.”50 This series embodied

one of the NCER’s greatest fears: the commodification of education. NACRE’s complicity in

this endeavor put the organization in a tight spot; it had either sold out a fine program so that it

could attract wealthy audiences to the NBC’s advertisers, or NBC simply victimized a group of

noble educators. In an aside in the same issue, the NCER made sure to point out that NACRE

received its funding from “Rockefeller-Carnegie interests.”51 This charge attempted to use the

relationship between Rockefeller and commercial interests to taint NACRE’s image. The piece

also suggested that, while it was glad that NBC assigned the series a prime time slot, research

demonstrated that this hour was not a good one for education. This complaint was also a veiled

attack on NACRE. NACRE was supposed to be a clearinghouse of information on radio in

education dedicated to research. Surely, such an organization should be aware of the best time

for educational programming to air. Also, if it were indeed a priority for NBC then the network

would allow NACRE programs to air at the best time for education. Like its initial

correspondence, the NCER seemingly offered NACRE praise for its efforts, but its plaudits

thinly veiled damning criticism.

The correspondence campaign and the public exchange effectively indicated that these

organizations would not cooperate. Their relationship over the next two years would be cordial, but NACRE would never back NCER political efforts, and the NCER would never seriously collaborate with an organization working within the commercial radio format. By March of

50 “Contrasts—John Bull and Uncle Sam,” Education by Radio 1 (November 19, 1931): 138. 51 “A Good Program at a Bad Hour,” Education by Radio 1 (November 19, 1931): 138. 128

1932, the NCER leadership of Joy Elmer Morgan, Armstrong Perry, and Tracy F. Tyler would

simply refuse any attempt to build an alliance with NACRE. During its meeting that month,

NCER member, Charles N. Lischka of the National Catholic Educational Association, wondered if cooperation with NACRE was a possibility. The minutes of the meeting simply indicate that because members believed that “the council was closely connected with commercial interests,”

Morgan tabled Lischka’s idea. 52

In the end, the varied groups of educators never agreed upon the best way to deliver and maintain education on the air, and the dogmatic nature of the NCER limited its ability to form a

coalition out of these groups. One could blame the NCER for the lack of a reform coalition. It

never made serious efforts to cultivate these people and groups, and it refused to compromise or

find ways to work with other groups. When it had the chance to develop a good relationship with

NACRE—and perhaps win the group over to its camp—it engaged in a smear campaign. Of

course, when the NCER realized that NACRE would never join the NCER’s campaign, it needed

to find a way to discredit it publicly. On the other hand, the NCER was waging a principled

campaign in which compromising with NACRE essentially meant that the NCER would agree to

operate within the commercial system that it opposed. If one is to assign blame for the educators’

failure to agree it is just as valid to pin the blame on NACRE for allowing itself to be used by the

commercial industry. In any case, the practical reality of the situation was that the divisive nature

of the educators also eroded their expert image. Their public disagreement over basic principles

would raise serious questions in the minds of federal regulators. Perhaps this fact more than any

other makes one wonder if this reform movement ever had a realistic chance of achieving its

goals. After all, the educators split very early in the reallocation campaign, and the rift only grew

52 The National Committee on Education by Radio. Minutes of the Meeting of the NCER, March 7, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 746. 3-5. 129

over time. If the U.S. were to edge closer to allocating permanent space for non-commercial,

educational stations, it would not be because a unified body of expert educators presented an

overwhelming case to the public and the government. At the same time, the NCER’s most

powerful enemy prepared to attack it with full force.

The National Association of Broadcasters

The National Association of Broadcasters became the most powerful obstacle to the

NCER campaign. The campaign against the commercial broadcast industry galvanized the

National Association of Broadcasters, awakening a powerful NCER adversary. The NAB was

supposed to represent all commercial radio stations, but by 1930 it had a serious internal

problem: a growing rift between networks and smaller, independent stations. The growth of NBC

and CBS seriously endangered small operations by engulfing them or competing against them.

The networks produced expensive, popular programming, a task that many independent stations

were not ready to undertake; they did not have the budget or the backing to produce the glossy

programs that networks provided. Essentially, it was hard for a local talent hour to beat out Amos

‘n’ Andy, and, when a local program generated this kind of appeal, networks lured away the

creators with large sums of money.53 Amos ‘n’ Andy was the best example of this process. The

show began in 1928 as a way for Freman Gosden and Charles Correll to promote their vaudeville

act in Chicago. Their only compensation for the show—then titled Sam ‘n’ Henry—was a free dinner. The program was a major success, and they began to receive a salary for their services.

When NBC discovered the program it offered the most generous radio contract ever; Gosden and

Correll would earn a higher yearly salary than David Sarnoff, the President and major architect

53 Erik Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States: A Tower in Babel, Volume I—to 1933 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 206-210. 130

behind NBC. WGN had no way to counter the NBC offer, and it lost Sam ‘n’ Henry. The

program became the longest lived and most successful radio program of the golden age, while

simultaneously ushering in an era of network domination.54

Small stations also created serious problems for the National Association of Broadcasters.

The small commercial operation had limited advertising resources and funds at its disposal so, in

some cases, it began to accept advertisements from clients selling dubious products thus feeding

the most damning criticism of the commercial industry. Commercial stations came under fire not

simply because they allowed advertising, but because some stations allowed terribly misleading

and fraudulent advertising. Radio quacks selling modern snake-oil remedies were the most

attacked group of advertisers. The American Medical Association and other groups spoke out

against this use of the ether by disreputable salesmen.55 Large, private stations and networks

could afford to refuse such clients, but small stations—competing for tight advertiser dollars in a

Depression economy—accepted this clientele. If this type of advertising was allowed to

continue, the entire commercial industry could face the threat of government interference.

The playing of phonograph records also attracted complaints from reformers and the

Federal Radio Commission alike. Large networks did not have to rely upon pre-recorded music for programming; they financed their own orchestras and musical ensembles. NBC had the NBC

orchestra led by Arturo Toscanini and Paul Whiteman’s jazz orchestra. They even had their own orchestra studio, Aeolian Hall. The networks therefore had live “respectable” music. Small stations and other independents, with few exceptions, had to rely upon recordings to provide cheap programming. The music varied in public “respectability” as well; jazz bands, jug bands,

54 Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952 (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 84-93; Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 196-205; and Melvin Patrick Ely, The Adventures of Amos ‘n’ Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon (New York: Free Press, 1991). 55 Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, 168-172, 258-260. 131 and other kinds of music received air play.56 This was also another clear example of inconsistency in NCER logic; the stations usually played music that catered to local tastes that were not served by networks. Despite this clear example of local tastes and voices being served and not succumbing to “New Yorkism,” the NCER maintained its cultural elitism and lashed out against such music. In any case, this was still a source of criticism with which the NAB had to deal.

This was, of course, not the first time that an industry was divided between large, corporate interests and small businessmen. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many large corporations competed with small operations and snuffed them out. The problem visited the industry in 1926 when networks and large, corporate stations emerged. The economic woes of the Great Depression, in addition to the competition waged by the proliferating networks, exacerbated this divide, and it was the most immediate danger facing the National Association of

Broadcasters and the commercial radio industry. Networks and large radio companies enjoyed competitive advantages over small stations and started to take over or ruin many smaller operations. 57 It could have proved useful to reformers if they had been able to exploit this situation and convinced small stations to join the reform cause. At times, both small stations and the NCER pursued similar goals. First, the NCER attempted to preserve a space for localism in the ether, and its states rights based campaign echoed the demands of small radio operations.

Secondly, the NCER’s attacks on “New Yorkism” also resonated with the attacks small stations leveled against networks. In fact this point alone could have served as the NCER’s main point of access to an alliance with small stations since Eastern dominance of the radio industry threatened the existence of local voices on the air. However, the NCER did not exploit the rift between the

56Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 153-185; Hilmes, Radio Voices. 57 Rosen, The Modern Stentors, 101-105. 132

small stations and networks because the NCER’s anti-commercialism was its highest priority.

The NCER’s hard-line stance on commercial radio would be its guiding principle throughout its

four years, and, instead of courting some small commercial stations, it actually drove them into

the NAB camp with proposals that threatened all commercial stations.

Despite the rift between small stations and networks, the chaos that characterized the

reform movement never surfaced in the NAB because the NAB had more effective tools at its

disposal. The more the NCER intensified its campaign and attacks on the status quo, the more

the NAB energized its counter-campaign to discredit the reformers. Beginning in the Fall of

1931, the NAB deployed a multi-pronged attack against NCER challenges. First, the NAB wooed small stations into its camp by exaggerating the danger that the NCER posed if left unchecked. Simultaneously, it formulated a code of conduct for all member stations. In this way it could demonstrate to federal regulators and a potentially meddlesome Congress that there was no need to reform broadcasting because it was self-regulating. It also worked to manufacture a solid image of non-partisan expertise so that it could convince regulators that it knew best concerning radio matters. Finally it waged a counter-reform campaign that attacked NCER claims, questioned the value of its expertise, and portrayed the reformers as a special interest group attacking freedom on the air.

First, the NAB had to address the internal divisions of the radio broadcasting industry if

it was to hold reform at bay, and it made unity a top priority starting with its ninth annual

meeting. Hyping the upcoming conference in the first issue of Broadcasting magazine, the trade

publication of the NAB that debuted in October, 1931, it exhorted readers to organize and

participate. “Broadcasting in the United States today stands in grave jeopardy,” warned NAB

president Walter J. Damm: 133

Politically powerful and efficiently organized groups, actuated by selfishness and with a mania for power, are now busily at work plotting the complete destruction of the industry we have pioneered and developed…To protect the present system of broadcasting is a definite obligation which we as broadcasters owe to ourselves and to the millions of the public whom we serve…adequate protection can be achieved only through efficient organization… American broadcasting today is given a choice between organization and destruction.58

Damm’s warning was timely; the NAB’s national meeting was eleven days away, and he wanted

to remind broadcasters not to underestimate the power of their reformer enemies. The October

Conference that launched the NCER had taken place a year before, and the reformers had been

working for one year without fully organized opposition from the commercial industry. Most importantly Damm wanted to remind readers that the only way to preserve the status quo was

through organization and unity. According to Damm, commercial broadcasters built American radio, and they had a duty to defend that system. In fact, this was more than a duty owed to

fellow broadcasters; it was a public service obligation.

Adding power to Damm’s call to action, Philip J. Loucks, NBC’s Managing Director,

reminded broadcasters that the sessions at the upcoming NAB meeting would address the

growing threats to the commercial industry. He also added that the meeting would be the most

inclusive session ever held by the organization: “Broadcasters from every state in the union will

attend…attendance will break all previous records. Members and non-members alike are invited

to participate in the discussions.”59 Indeed the NAB was making an effort to be inclusive,

allowing even non-members to take part in the sessions. This message had a broader target than

broadcasters, however; it was a signal to the Federal Radio Commission, Congress, and

reformers that the NAB was organizing its industry and appealing to a wide variety of

broadcasters. It also pointed out that all were welcome; the NAB even invited reformers to

58 Walter J. Damm, “President Walter J. Damm’s Message,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 7. 59 Philip J. Loucks, “N.A.B. Expects Record Attendance at Detroit,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 7. 134

attend. However, Damm reminded all potential attendees that non-members would not be

allowed to vote for officers or on resolutions not would they be admitted to the business

sessions.60 This approach would force the hand of small operations; they could attend the NAB

meeting, but they needed to join the group in order to have a voice in its politics.

The NAB pressure campaign continued with an article outlining the six major dangers

threatening the American Plan of broadcasting. The writer, Henry Adams Bellows, was the

chairman of the NAB legislative committee and a former member of the Federal Radio

Commission. Bellows’s article in Broadcasting was not a mere statement of his thoughts on the

radio situation; it was the official stance of the National Association of Broadcasters. Bellows

viewed Congressional “encroachment on the functions of the Federal Radio Commission,” as the

most immediate threat “not only in its seriousness but in its imminence.”61 The Congressional

encroachment to which Bellows referred was the Fess Bill. Knowing that the NCER planned to

have Fess propose the reallocation bill in the last session of Congress in 1931, he attempted to

jolt the commercialists into action. Bellows did not simply view an educational allocation as the

primary threat, he believed the key problem was that Congress—not the Federal Radio

Commission—was going to decide upon a matter of allocation. Any kind of Congressional

allocation would essentially weaken the Radio Act of 1927 and the authority of the Federal

Radio Commission, complicating an already uncertain radio field. The commercialists viewed the Radio Act and the FRC as measures that helped end the chaos that once marked American radio. Even if some people thought the FRC’s decisions ill-founded and its work poor, it did indeed bring some much needed order to the ether. Bellows also warned that “No orderly scheme of radio development is conceivable if radio facilities are to be parceled out as political prizes by

60 Ibid., 7. 61 Henry Adams Bellows, “Danger Signals Ahead of the Broadcasters,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 9. 135

special legislation.”62 Congressional involvement would endanger order on the air, politicizing

it by making frequency allocation a political favor. Publicly, the NAB disapproved of

Congressional action because Congress had no expertise in the field of radio. In reality the NAB

feared Congress because it could be an unstable element compared to the FRC. The commercial

industry had deep connections with the FRC that it exploited to great advantage, and the

commercialists had spent many years developing the industry through such associationalist

relationships. Congressional action could nullify the entire commercial system, and the FRC and

the NAB would be powerless to stop it.

Further complicating matters for the commercialists was the threat of state action. Some

states and cities were trying to pass local radio regulations and taxes, while others began to

operate radio stations. For example New York City owned and operated WNYC as a public

service.63 Such activity meant that commercialists would have to fight to preserve their industry against Federal attacks as well as local ones. U.S. courts, however, overturned most local attempts at radio regulation, declaring radio a federal issue.64 Nevertheless the mere possibility

that radio could become entangled in the local political process frightened the NAB. Local

politicians knew as little or less about radio than federal ones, and fighting local decisions would

cost stations a great deal of money. Bellows’s attack on state interference also addressed the

NCER campaign. The Committee’s support of the University of Wisconsin’s attempt to have its

radio stations classified as part of the state education system, and therefore subject to state

jurisdiction, was just the kind of action that threatened to plunge the ether into chaos. If the

62 Ibid., 9. 63 Saul Scher, Voice of the City: The History of WNYC, New York City’s Municipal Radio Station, 1924-1962 M.A. Thesis, (New York. New York University, 1966). 64 Barnouw, A Tower in Babel, 257-259. 136

NCER challenge was successful, then radio regulation would essentially be split between federal

and state control depending upon whether or not it could be deemed educational.

The courts were Bellows’s third major target. He lamented that too often the decisions of

the Federal Radio Commission were not the final word in radio allocation. The Radio Act of

1927 provided an appeals process to fight FRC decisions, and the NAB believed that this process

was being abused. Federal courts were too often handing down the final word with regard to radio allocations in what Bellows called “the virtual abdication of the Federal Radio

Commission.”65 This process, he argued, ran contrary to the original intent of the Radio Act and

weakened the Commission’s power. Again, placing allocation in the hands of judges took the

decision was out of the hands of the familiar and sympathetic FRC; a judge had no deep ties to

the industry and could rule on the merits of an individual case thus bypassing associationalist

arrangements.

The fourth and fifth dangers Bellows identified dealt with internal competition and

advertising. “Rate-cutting,” he warned “is not uncommon, and shrewd buyers of radio time

regard the structure of published rates and discounts as providing simply a basis for horse-

trading.”66 Rate-cutting was essentially a process by which one radio station would cut its ad rates far below market value to lure an advertiser away from another station. This practice

devalued air-time and hurt the industry’s bottom line while encouraging disunity and competition

at the cost of the broadcast industry as a whole. Bellows exonerated networks claiming they did not engage in such practices leaving independent operations exposed as the culprits.

Bellows’s fifth danger, targeting the questionable advertising some stations aired, was a

definite response to public pressure, FRC concerns, and the NCER campaign. Bellows argued

65 Bellows, “Danger Signals Ahead of the Broadcasters,” 9. 66 Ibid., 9. 137

that accepting dubious advertising destroyed public trust in the industry; radio stations were not

newspapers and had to live up to a higher standard. In part this belief was just rhetoric and

strategy, but NAB leaders believed that because radio was not something a listener purchased

and was easily accessible, it had a duty to provide reputable advertisers. Such advertisers may

keep some stations profitable, but the backlash could destroy the industry by inviting in the

“paternal hand of government.”67

Bellows’s logic revealed the underlying managerial progressive/associationalist mentality

of his organization. He railed against inefficiency, disunity of the industry, and corruption while

appealing to reliance upon expertise and internal regulation of the radio industry. Congressional

reallocation was not dangerous because it would give space to a certain group; it was dangerous because it threatened the efficient, orderly use of available space and disempowered experts as he saw it. In reality Congressional action threatened the arrangements that enabled the growth of the industry free of regulation. Congress was not doing its duty in the eyes of the NAB, it was

“encroaching.” Congress may have had the power to create federal agencies, but it should not

have the power to interfere with the decisions of those agencies. Internal threats were just as

dangerous because they eroded the value of air-time, destroyed public confidence in the

American Plan of radio, and divided the industry. Even worse they hindered the efficient use of

radio facilities.

Of course, Bellows’s proposed solution to these dangers was industry solidarity and

organization. “The broadcasters urgently need to clean their own house” urged Bellows.68 This led him to a sixth danger—“lack of a unified effort on part of the industry itself.”69 Bellows’s

stern warning was indeed a call to action for the broadcast industry, whose lack of unity allowed

67 Ibid., 9. 68 Ibid., 9. 69 Ibid., 28. 138

the emergence of major threats to the industry. Bellows believed that unity would render the real

threat posed by the NCER as harmless, and now stations had to take part in an effort to “put…

the perils back in the class with the hungry ogres who used to scare little boys and girls in the

nursery.”70 He wanted the NCER to be like an imaginary monster dreamed up by a child. The

article also entreated independent operations to join the National Association of Broadcasters at

the upcoming meeting. Independents, according to Bellows, had the most to gain by joining

since they would benefit from the combined resources of the organization. They could meet

external threats like the NCER and Congressional action while ensuring that networks could not

cut into their business. Bellows’s warning provided some good reasons for independent

operations to take part in the NAB, but the trade organization would also have to demonstrate

that it would not let the networks dominate its policy agenda. The balance of the October 15

issue of Broadcasting echoed Bellows’s sentiments and warnings while pointing out that the

industry as a whole garnered the respect of the Federal Radio Commission and the public at

large.71

The National Association of Broadcasters made a powerful move at its ninth annual

meeting in October of 1931. At the convention it gathered support for the American Plan from key government officials, formulated a plan for industrial unity, and launched a clear counterattack on the NCER campaign. The meeting opened with a dazzling display of the

technological prowess of the industry and an encouraging endorsement from President Hoover

who addressed the convention via a live radio link from Washington, D.C. that was also

70 Ibid., 28. 71 Martin Codel, “Census Reveals Radio’s Hold on Country,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 15-16; “Organized Education Goes on the Air,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 13; Maj. Gen. Charles Mc K. Saltzman as told to Sol Taishoff, “The Commission Chairman Points with Pride,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 5, 28; “The N.A.B. Convention,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 18; and “Your Forum,” Broadcasting 1 no. 1 (October 15, 1931): 18. 139

simulcast on NBC and CBS. Hoover had always been a booster for the radio industry since his

tenure as Secretary of Commerce, so his praise came as no surprise. Hoover lauded the private

nature of the ether claiming that it had preserved free speech on the air.72 He closed by asserting

his support for the American Plan. The NAB beamed the President’s message across the nation

hoping to convince listeners that the radio industry was sound and beneficial to the public. Of

course in 1931 a public endorsement from Herbert Hoover—whose approval ratings had

plummeted by then as a result of the ongoing and ever worsening Depression—might do more

harm than good.

After Hoover spoke, the Federal Radio Commission Chair, Major General Charles McK.

Saltzman, also expressed support for the commercialists. Saltzman outlined what he saw as the

major problem facing radio in 1931: the lack of frequencies available and the growing demand

for station licenses. Of course this had been a problem for the Federal Radio Commission since

its inception. Most importantly Saltzman’s address boosted the commercial industry while

attacking the NCER stance on radio. He echoed Hoover’s belief that the private organization of

the air preserved free speech and provided listeners with programs that they desired. At the same

time he compared this to the European situation which he claimed gave listeners “what the government wants them to hear.”73 Saltzman’s statement depicted the Federal Radio

Commission and the industry as advocates of the public interest, while it also disputed the

NCER’s many claims that the European system of broadcast was cheaper and provided better

public service. While the NAB met, NCER Service Bureau Director, Armstrong Perry, toured and praised the radio facilities of several European countries, and these dispatches were reprinted in Education by Radio. In the end, Saltzman’s endorsement of the status quo also assured

72 Sol Taishoff, “Broadcasters Unite to Strengthen Position,” Broadcasting 1 no. 2 (November 1, 1931): 5; and “Praise from Leaders,” Broadcasting 1 no. 2 (November 1, 1931): 18. 73 Sol Taishoff, “Broadcasters Unite to Strengthen Position,” Broadcasting 1 no. 2 (November 1, 1931): 5. 140

broadcasters that the Federal Radio Commission had no intention of reforming broadcasting and

goring the commercial system.

However Saltzman tempered his support of the American Plan by warning broadcasters

to clean house by banning questionable advertising and programming.74 Saltzman may have

generally supported the American Plan and the industry, but the campaign against the industry

courted Congress, signaling that the matter could be beyond the Commission’s control. The

statement also helped reiterate the need for a united industry.

The NAB also received praise from Senator Wallace White of Maine, “Our system of

communications are here in America a flame fusing our people into an American type, with

common ideals and common aspirations for our country. You have splendidly met the

obligations these considerations impose. That you will continue to do so, I have no doubt.”75

White co-authored the Radio Act of 1927 while he served in the House of Representatives as chair of the House Merchant Marine Committee. Of course he supported the American Plan. In fact White’s statement elevated the Plan from a mere organization of broadcasting to a reflection of Americanism itself; he claimed that the industry was responsible for uniting the country. The

American Plan was now a patriotic cause that the industry championed. White’s endorsement was also important since the NAB had been using the term “American Plan” to imply patriotism.

The term was a possessive one. It was not simply the commercial paradigm; it was a system of organization that, in the mind of the industry, reflected key characteristics of Americanism: competition, freedom, laissez-faire, and technological expertise.

White’s address also supported the soundness of the Radio Act of 1927 claiming that it had only needed slight legislative modifications which were not the fault of the Congress or the

74 Ibid., 30. 75 Senator Wallace White, Jr. quoted in “Praise from Leaders,” 18. 141

Act itself. The first gave the Federal Radio Commission greater authority, and the second, the

Davis Amendment, mandated equitable distribution of radio frequencies across the country.

However, White claimed that the Davis Amendment would not have been necessary if the FRC

had done a better job of following the intent of the original Radio Act despite the technical

problems that geographic parity presented.76 This was a serious criticism of the Commission.

However, it also revealed that White generally feared over-legislating radio. He acknowledged,

however, that legislation might be necessary if the FRC continued to shy away from making

tough decisions with regard to content claiming that such issues were not within in the FRC’s

purview. “The old law,” White lamented, “had the virtue of flexibility. The amendment is

arbitrary.”77 White hoped that the “time may come when its arbitrary provisions will be relaxed

and we will rely for the desired distribution of services upon the more general language under

which the purpose of the amendment may be secured with less affront to technical considerations.”78 There may have been a few problems with the Radio Act, but, according to

White, these were easily fixed, and the system was sound.

He then challenged notions of vested rights on the air. White viewed fixed terms for

licenses as one of the great contributions of the Radio Act. He had a point; before fixed terms,

and the Radio Act of 1927, the Department of Commerce essentially issued lifetime licenses

which left stations unaccountable to an extent, and prevented bona fide challengers from getting

deserved frequencies. However the fixed terms held stations accountable; if they failed to abide

by the provisions of the Radio Act, their licenses could be rescinded. Most importantly, White

argued that using a frequency for a period of time did not imply a vested right to that frequency.

76 Senator Wallace White, Jr., “Whys and Wherefores of Radio Legislation,” Broadcasting 1 no. 2 (November 1, 1931): 9. 77 Ibid., 9. 78 Ibid., 9. 142

The American Bar Association had, in fact, advocated such a position in 1927, but the Radio Act

forbade it.79 Again White had a valid point. If stations had vested property rights to specific frequencies, they could not be held accountable. White argued that when drafting the Act,

Congress thought “that proper use of a frequency was a proper fact to be taken into consideration with others by the Commission in determining the allocation of a frequency…it must not be the basis of a right to the continued use of the frequency.”80 This was essentially an attack upon the

NCER and its advocacy for educational stations. Many of those stations had been in possession

of licenses since the early 1920s, and many argued that their long tenure and service entitled

them to their frequencies. Clearly White dismissed this notion.

He then criticized the various groups asking for permanent allocations on the band, especially Land Grant Colleges and the NCER. White recalled that there were similar pressures upon his committee in drafting the Radio Act of 1927, and they were denied. “The law,” asserted

White “accorded equal rights to all but gave special privileges to none.”81 He simply viewed

education as a special interest, and, as such, there should be no special provision. He also added

that the Fess Bill was unsound and posed too many technical difficulties to be feasible. This was

a serious blow to the NCER’s cause. White was an influential Senator with regard to radio

matters, and the Fess Bill originated in the Senate.

Making matters even worse for the NCER, White advocated that Congress stay out of

radio affairs. The Committee pinned its hopes upon legislation, because it had made no progress

working exclusively with the Federal Radio Commission. Its only viable option was

Congressional action, and even that it considered a mere stop-gap measure. White demanded that

“Congress . . . keep its hands off this broadcasting band or it should make a complete distribution

79 Ibid., 33. 80 Ibid., 33. 81 Ibid., 33. 143

of it. This radio house cannot stand against divided administrative authority and action.”82

Considering that White thought that Congressional allocation would be a technical nightmare, he

clearly believed that Congress should leave radio alone.

White also made sure to warn the convention that while he generally supported the

industry, Congress could take action on radio if its problems were not solved. He predicted that

with the increased demand for access to the air, decisions about program content would be made

by either the Commission or Congress. However White warned that if Congress saw evidence

“that discrimination has been practiced against any group…or…the public interest,” Congress

would take action.83 Indeed, a bumpy road lay ahead for the radio industry. If it did not address

its problems internally, then the FRC or Congress would do it, and the Congressional option was

not one the industry desired. All three addresses may have helped reassure members that the key

policymakers and regulators all supported the plan, and all three at some level attacked the

NCER program, but they tempered this praise with clear warnings to take care of industry

problems internally before the government intervened.

Ironically, during the very same week of the NAB convention at which White delivered

this address, Frances Payne Bolton urged the NCER to ditch Fess and a legislative approach in

favor of a “man vitally interested in the whole [radio] problem...Senator Wallace White.”84

White, Bolton claimed, was “deeply concerned that it [the FRC] had not been as protective to the

smaller fellow as it was intended to be.”85 Bolton stressed that she knew Senator White and that

she was “in touch with the political things more than anyone out of the Congressional family.”86

82 Ibid., 33. 83 Ibid., 33. 84 Letter from Frances Payne Bolton to John H. MacCracken dated October 9, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 144

However, Bolton must have misread White. His address placed him rather firmly in favor of the

commercialists and against the arguments made by the NCER. Still, the NCER took Bolton’s

advice—even as it continued supporting the Fess Bill—seeking a meeting with Senator White to

discuss radio reform.87 By December, 1931, the Committee had its answer from White. The

president of the Iowa State PTA, Mrs. Summers, met with White who informed her that he

vehemently opposed the Fess Bill promising to fight it if it came out of committee and that he

could offer no solutions to the radio problem. Summers reported her meeting back to the

Committee essentially revealing, when taken in concert with his address at the NAB convention,

that White had no intention of supporting radio reform of any kind.88

The speeches made by Hoover, Saltzman, and White certainly encouraged industry unity

by pointing out the dangers of disunity, but the next major component of the program focused on

that united action. Rate-cutting was the first industry matter the convention addressed. Rate- cutting was the process by which one station undercut the advertising rates of another station by

selling a time slot below its estimated value. This often led to clients approaching radio stations

expecting to haggle over the price of advertisements. This kind of competition generally

devalued radio time, and it often led smaller stations to take ads from huckster clients. Therefore

addressing rate-cutting was a key first step in solidifying the industry. At the same time,

however, the NAB had to step lightly. Rate-cutting was difficult to control, and suggesting

standard rates at the meeting would have violated anti-trust law. The NAB asked “that the

stations appreciate the inequity of two rates for the same thing and the handicap they impose

87 Letter from John H. MacCracken to Frances Payne Bolton dated October 14, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 88 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to Mrs. Summers dated December 12, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 46, Folder 884. 145

upon the national advertiser’s use of radio in competition with the local.”89 Members were even

warned that rate-cutting had been a problem with newspapers, and it drove clients away from the

medium.90 Managing Director, Philip G. Loucks, warned members that “Price-cutting in your station rates, the cut-throating of each other, will also reduce your levels…A price cut means that the other fellow will go you one better to get the business.” 91 To help solve the problem, NAB

officers proposed an “Open Time Bureau” that would hold information about each member

station, its rates and its programs so that prospective clients could peruse this material. This

would especially aid smaller stations land accounts from more reputable, national clients.

Therefore it could curb the amount of questionable advertising on the air. In the process, this also

demonstrated that the national organization cared about the health of the small commercial

operation. It also found a way to curb rate-cutting without violating anti-trust laws.

Of course the rate-cutting stance was also a paradox in logic for the National Association

of Broadcasters. This organization championed the cause of privately owned, for-profit radio in

the United States. It believed that the market naturally extended to the ether, and competition

made American radio great. However, it opposed rate-cutting, a natural product of free market

competition. The NAB viewed rate-cutters as unfair competitors. The Commercial Committee of

the NAB urged stations to maintain their regular rates because “each advertiser should be

required to make a contribution to the entertainment or education of the listener for the privilege

of reaching the radio audience…the objective of each commercial station should be to maintain

itself on at least a self-sustaining basis since any other basis may be characterized as unfair competition.”92 This was a stern warning to stations that continued to participate in these

89 Sol Taishoff, “Broadcasters Unite to Strengthen Position,” Broadcasting 1 no. 2 (November 1, 1931): 6. 90 Ibid., 6. 91 Philip G. Loucks quoted in Ibid., 7. 92 Ibid., 7. 146

discount techniques. The free market allowed for competition, but unfair competition had legal

recourse, and the Committee implied such action for offenders. If stations were not convinced to

fall into line by the more friendly tactics of the Open Time Bureau, then, perhaps, the threat of

legal action would sway them.

The scare tactics continued throughout the conference. The ethics committee urged members to screen advertising content carefully and to abide by good practices since a lack of ethics could “ruin this industry and cause it to decay.”93 Dr. Frank W. Elliott, Director of the

Ethics Committee, singled out two examples of such behavior: a cigarette testimonial by a

woman and Broadway actors telling inappropriate stories. Sure, these were not the on-air quacks

selling patent medicines, but they were the kinds of programs that would offend the public and a

group like the NCER. Even Walter Damm, President of the NAB, seconded Elliott’s remarks.94

Elliott closed by warning that “Unless some concentrated thought or policy is adopted to hold some restraining hand on such programs, we will have Congress force this down our throats.”95

One man helped abate the pang of fear in the convention: Levering Tyson. The Director

of NACRE addressed the convention and reassured the broadcasters that the industry had taken

too much abuse. Tyson argued “I am sure the time has come for educators and critics to quit

telling the broadcasters how rotten they are, to throw their resources of trained personnel, time

and whatever money they have or can get into developing what is good on the air into something

better.”96 Tyson reassured the assembly that not all educators supported the Fess Bill and

reiterated that his organization took no part in it. Tyson’s address served several purposes. It

reminded the convention that not all educators agreed upon the best use of radio, and singled out

93 Dr. Frank W. Elliott quoted in Ibid., 27. 94 Ibid., 27. 95 Dr. Frank W, Elliott quoted in Ibid., 27. 96 Levering Tyson quoted in Ibid., 27. 147

the NCER as a renegade, radical group. In turn this categorization hurt the NCER because, once

again, an educational radio group was working within the industry and even speaking at its

national meeting.

Before the meeting, the National Association of Broadcasters had feared that the lack of

industry solidarity, shady advertising practices, and Congressional grumbling could all destroy

the American Plan of radio. It hoped to use the meeting to secure unity in the industry so it could

clean house internally and preempt Congressional involvement. The meeting certainly achieved

some of these goals. NAB membership increased by 65 per cent and included thirty-two clear

channel stations, eighty regional stations, and thirty-one local stations.97 The conference clearly

illustrated the lurking dangers of disunity to members, and scared them into cooperation. The close of the meeting placed the organization in a stronger position. It increased its membership, its members knew the dangers ahead, and it received key support from the President, the chair of the Federal Radio Commission, and Senator White. Their warnings to self-regulate to prevent

government involvement sparked the members to act. The NAB passed a resolution that it sent to

Congress asserting that it trusted Congressional wisdom to stay out of radio matters and to trust

the Federal Radio Commission, even as it attacked the technical problems and chaos it believed

the Fess Bill would cause.98

If the meeting left any doubt as to the mindset of the NAB or its membership, an editorial

in Broadcasting following the convention certainly erased that doubt. “American broadcasting

has reached the stage of stabilization,” declared the editorial, “The era of reckless development is

over. Henceforth, American broadcasting must build along sound social as well as sound

97 Ibid., 6-7. 98 Ibid., 28. 148

economic lines. No group of men are better aware of this than the broadcasters themselves.”99

Indeed the NAB emerged from the 1931 meeting more organized and aware of the threats to the industry.

The meeting also laid out the groundwork for a counterattack against the NCER. It would continue to exploit the disagreement between educators to cast doubt upon the NCER’s platforms, and it would attempt to clean house of questionable advertising practices to keep

Congressional action at bay. At the same time it attempted to paint the NCER as a group of selfish elites with no interest in the public good. One editorial claimed “we know that their motives are selfish—that they either want radio to themselves or fear radio as a competitive force in business or social leadership. Happily these enemies are divided among themselves, with few of them offering any constructive alternatives to the present system and each of them opposed to the other’s theories and ambitions.”100 This opinion betrayed a good deal about the NAB.

Obviously the organization felt strong and combative, but the reform interests to which they

referred included more than the NCER. The NCER and labor and other groups disagreed about

the nature of radio reform, but included in this group as well was NACRE. NACRE was the only

group truly competing with the NCER; the NAB however felt NACRE was the only organization

offering constructive advice to the radio situation. It also wisely twisted the NCER’s logic upon

itself; the Committee had accused the commercialists of selfishness, disorganization, and

ambition that did not serve the public interest. Now the NAB illustrated how the reformers

represented a party of greed and ambition. Another editorial labeled the NCER as “wave-

grabbers and calamity-howlers” who would find “little comfort in the Federal Radio

99 “Brass Tacks,” Broadcasting 1 no. 2 (November 1, 1931): 18. 100 Ibid., 18. 149

Commission’s…confidence in Radio by the American Plan.”101 Indeed the counterattack was

underway, and it would continue in 1932.

In the end, after its meeting in 1931, the NAB appeared confident in the radio industry

and prepared to preserve it. The meeting, though full of pontificating and talk, produced some

concrete results. The realization of the threats against the American Plan swelled NAB

membership placing it at the helm of the industry. Broadcasters increased their resolve to self-

regulate to avoid government interference. Key policymakers praised the industry, thus showing

federal reluctance to get involved in radio as long as the industry could indeed police itself. It

made small radio operations feel included in the NAB family, and thus made a key step in

normalizing the industry. Finally the commercialists began to counter the NCER campaign. By

the close of 1931, the National Association of Broadcasters was in a stronger position than it had

ever been before. Now it could implement specific measures, standardize the industry, and

eliminate serious threats to the commercial industry. One conference attendee was not

encouraged by the meeting. Tracy F. Tyler of the NCER had been at the meeting and realized the

battle that would lie ahead in the coming year. For all of the NCER’s work merely strengthened

the industry that it lobbied against, and the President, a key Senator, and the chair of the FRC—

the very people the NCER needed to topple the commercialists—all heaped praise upon the

industry.

The first full year of operation for the NCER was a mixed bag. Some organizations like the NCPTA pledged support of the Fess Bill and passed resolutions supporting the NCER. Other groups that wanted to ally with the Committee and actively help it were more of a liability than an asset, and NCER distrust kept these allies at bay. The festering wound that was the relationship with the NACRE only further marginalized the NCER by publicly illustrating that

101 “Table Manners,” Broadcasting 2 no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 22. 150

educational expertise was split and uncertain. The NCER attempt to discredit NACRE struggled,

and the Council’s programs garnered a good deal of praise and popularity. The National

Association of Broadcasters used NACRE and federal officials to its advantage to discredit the

NCER campaign and galvanize the industry to self-regulate. The NCER began the year with a

chance to take the helm of the reform movement, but, at the start of 1932, it had few friends,

numerous enemies, and skeptical federal regulators while its enemies grew more organized and stronger. This did not ultimately mean that reform was impossible, but it certainly placed the

NCER at a serious disadvantage very early in its campaign. 151

IV. PRESSING CONGRESS

At its last meeting of the year in 1931, The National Committee on Education by Radio could reflect upon its hard work during its first year of operation while formulating an overarching strategy for the coming year. It planned to continue attacking the commercialists and to convince Congress that only legislation not modified regulation would help save the noble potential of radio. In its first year the Committee persuaded Senator Simeon D. Fess of Ohio to sponsor a bill calling for a fifteen per cent allocation of air space to non-commercial, educational radio and began printing, Education by Radio, and distributing it to other educators, station managers, FRC members, and Congress. More practically, the NCER began operating its service bureau to aid educational stations when called to testify before the FRC in allocation hearings.

Clearly, the Committee made some significant progress in one year.

Despite its advances in 1931, the NCER also experienced some setbacks. It did not find a

House sponsor for the Fess Bill which died in committee in the Senate. The Committee assembled a large base of support for its campaign, but that support comprised non-technical experts whose knowledge carried little weight in FRC hearings or on Capitol Hill. The NCER essentially began an all out war on fellow educational radio group, NACRE, in an attempt to make sure that the NCER was the dominant educational radio group. At the same time the

National Association of Broadcasters warned its members that the NCER campaign threatened the entire commercial radio industry and used the Committee’s campaign to unify the industry under its tutelage. Finally the Federal Radio Commission’s apparent refusal to support the NCER position or at least meet the Committee halfway was perhaps the most stinging setback for the

NCER in 1931. Even though the Committee tried to work around the FRC—and essentially remove some of its authority via Congressional intervention—the FRC was still in charge of 152

American radio, and, if the NCER was going to succeed in the short-term, it needed to convince

the regulators to protect educational stations. These key obstacles, emerging early in the NCER’s

fight against the commercialists, stood as serious threats to the success of the reform movement.

Nineteen thirty-two looked more promising to the NCER. The Service Bureau continued

aiding educational stations with legal assistance and testimony in support of the stations’ public

service, and the NCER newsletter, Education by Radio, expanded its audience by increasing

circulation. More importantly the Committee saw several new opportunities to promote its

agenda. Senator Fess promised to reintroduce his reallocation bill in the first session of the

seventy-second Congress. Even the NAB believed Congress would address radio matters despite

the pressing concerns about the Great Depression.1 The Committee also continued a campaign to

get a member sympathetic to and representative of its viewpoint appointed to the Federal Radio

Commission.2 In addition, the NCER would lobby for one of its members to be appointed as a

delegate to the International Telecommunications Convention in Madrid in the fall, and it

published Armstrong Perry’s reports of broadcast conditions in Europe to provide alternative

broadcast paradigms as possibilities for reorganizing American radio. The NCER’s plan, if

successful, could have convinced Congress and the Radio Commission that sweeping changes in

American radio were necessary while also demonstrating the broad scope of the NCER’s

expertise. The NCER needed to do more than wage a war of words with its enemies; it would

need to be an active participant in elite level policymaking working to scuttle radio by the

“American Plan.” The NCER believed that it could achieve reform that year; it needed to get the

Fess Bill on the Senate floor for a vote while demonstrating the validity of its expertise to federal

1 Sol Taishoff, “Session of Radio-Minded Congress Nears,” Broadcasting. 1 no. 4 (December 1, 1931): 5. 2 Minutes of the Meeting of The National Committee on Education by Radio, December 11, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 744 153

regulators and Congress. Nineteen Thirty-Two dawned hopeful for the NCER, but it would have

to navigate a field of obstacles in the form of the federal government and commercial interests.

Sir John Reith

Of course the commercialists and regulators were not the only impediments encountered

by the Committee. The NCER proposal labeled radical by the commercial industry did not go far

enough for others and the Committee now had to deal with criticism from fellow reformers. The

Committee admired the BBC plan of radio and its director Sir John Reith. Hoping to get Reith to

submit an article praising the NCER’s efforts to Education by Radio, the Committee asked its

world traveler, Armstrong Perry, to ascertain Sir Reith’s opinion of the NCER. A glowing

review of the Fess Bill and the Committee’s work from Sir Reith would have been valuable

ammunition in the hands of the NCER because such a review could demonstrate support from a

world recognized expert on broadcasting and key government official, albeit a British one. Even

the commercialists could not dispute Reith’s qualifications or the cachet of his office as director

of the BBC because Reith was a technical specialist. However, the Englishman presented a

mixed review of the NCER to Perry. Perry reported that Reith was “very much opposed to the

Committee and the plans it has for working out the whole [radio allocation] question,” because

passage of the Fess Bill would “relieve the commercial group of all responsibility for educational

broadcasts.” Instead, Sir Reith believed that “we should change our whole system and clean

house.”3 This criticism must have stung Joy Elmer Morgan; he crossed out the entire exchange on his draft of the agenda for the December 11, 1931 meeting of the NCER.4

3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 154

In reality, Morgan was probably oversensitive to Reith’s criticism. Reith actually agreed

with the NCER that education was a key duty of all broadcasters. He simply believed that the

NCER should aim to achieve more far-reaching reform. Of course, it was easy for Sir Reith to make this statement because his government had always owned and operated his radio system, the BBC. The British did not fight the battle being waged in the United States between private, commercial interests and educational interests, because the British government had monopolized the airwaves from the beginning of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s.5 More importantly,

because the British had a long history of government ownership of utilities and resources, the

idea of government ownership was not as controversial to them. In communications, for

example, the British government monopolized trans-Atlantic cable communications because it

controlled the gutta-percha plantations in Asia—gutta-percha was the rubber used to insulate all

electric cables—as well as the territories upon which relay stations stood.6 One must view

Reith’s comments about the NCER in this context; he came from a political environment with a

tradition of government control of utilities that produced regulatory decisions in favor of

government control of the ether.

At the same time one must also account for contemporary American attitudes in the

1930s. The Committee faced enough opposition while only asking for a 15% allocation in the

Fess Bill; if it publicly proposed scuttling the entire system of American broadcasting, the NCER

would have invited even more criticism from its opponents and perhaps earned a “Bolshevik”

label. At the height of the Progressive Era, Americans endorsed greater regulatory power for the

federal government and municipal ownership of utilities, but these measures paled in comparison

5 Asa Briggs, The BBC: The First Fifty Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). 6 Robert Britt Horowitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 108; for a full history of the BBC see Briggs, The BBC. 155

to British regulation.7 Later, during World War I, Americans had the political will to back more powerful regulatory and ownership measures, but only to fight a world war. After the war,

Herbert Hoover may have kept some of the associationalist machinery intact, but those

arrangements were, like the Federal Radio Commission, easily coopted by commercial interests.8

Policymakers intended these types of regulatory bodies to “rationalize corporate capitalism” and

provide “an administrative framework within which important interest groups, primarily large

corporations, could bargain, settle conflicts, and legally collude under state imprimatur.”9 There may have been regulation, but such management was not intrusive or heavy handed; it existed simply to help capitalism operate more smoothly while minimizing exploitative and abusive excesses. The icy, death-grip of the Great Depression may have been tightening by December

1931, but few people in America were willing to back such a heavy-handed measure as government control of radio.10

Only later in 1932 would Americans start to hear about solving the Great Depression

through war-like full mobilization efforts and possibly more heavy-handed regulatory

techniques. In his “Forgotten Man” speech, early in the 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt

alluded to World War I when he argued for the “building of plans that rest upon the forgotten,

the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that

build from the bottom up and not from the top down.”11 So, while the members of the NCER

may have admired the BBC system and preferred it to the American Plan as modified by the Fess

Bill, the Committee had to endorse a plan that Americans and their representatives on Capitol

7 Horowitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform, 10-11. 8 Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, 177-184. 9 Horowitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform, 10. 10 Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, 173-179. 11 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The ‘Forgotten Man’ Speech,” The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: Volume I, 1928-1932 the Genesis of the New Deal ed. Samuel I. Rosenman. (New York: Random House, 1938), 625. 156

Hill would accept. One possibility for change arose in January 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt

declared his candidacy for the Presidency. However, there were other powerful Democrats also

vying for the nomination, and Hoover still sat in the White House. Besides that reality, FDR’s

ideas about the future were nebulous; there would be many more speeches and revisions over the

campaign year; he promised recovery and remembrance of the forgotten man, but even FDR was

not sure how he would live up to those promises.12 While the NCER could hope for a more

amenable President, it still had to deal in realities, meaning Hoover and the associationalist

machinery. The NCER would continue to endorse the Fess Bill because the Federal Radio

Commission had no intention of protecting educational stations or non-commercial broadcasting

from commercial raiders. The NCER’s inability to secure an enthusiastic endorsement from Sir

Reith reflected the kinds of challenges the NCER faced in its first year and would confront in the

coming year.

An Active Congress

On December 9, 1931, at the first session of the Seventy-Second Congress, Simeon Fess

reintroduced his bill allocating fifteen percent of the American broadcast airwaves to educational

stations. This was promising news to the National Committee on Education by Radio. The Fess

Bill had died in committee during the last session, and Fess’s reintroduction indicated, despite

the earlier warnings from Frances Payne Bolton, that Senator Fess, the former college professor

and president, was still committed to the NCER and still convinced that the reallocation measure

was viable. Fess may have supported reallocation, but he also had other priorities. Nineteen-

thirty-two was an election year, and, while Fess was not up for reelection, he chaired the

12 David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: the American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 70-130. 157

Republican National Convention that year. His attention would be diverted from legislative matters to ironing out the Republican national platform as well as trying to sell Herbert Hoover to Depression-weary Americans blaming Hoover for the crisis. Taking the duty of party chair during a more normal election would shift focus from legislative responsibilities, but performing it during what was shaping up to be a most bitter contest would be even more taxing on Fess’s time.13 Unemployment in America stood at 16%, and the signals of possible recovery that emerged during the late winter and spring of 1931 had faded by January 1932.14 In the same month, the reform governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt, declared himself a candidate for the Democratic Presidential primary. By April 1932, Roosevelt developed a campaign message that resonated with the growing ranks of the unemployed and disaffected calling them

“the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”15

In addition to the concerns about Fess, the NCER also had to account for his counterparts in the House whose terms expired every two years. It would do the NCER no good to find a

Congressman willing to sponsor the reallocation plan if he was fighting for re-election, and, if he lost his seat, his lame-duck status would only hurt the effort to pass the bill. In addition, the

House of Representatives was in a state of flux by 1932. The Republican majority slipped away after the midterm elections of 1930. Actually Republicans and Democrats tied for an equal number of 217 seats after the election with the tie breaker seat held by a Farmer-Labor party member, but thirteen Congressmen died in the interim before the new Congress could sit which was quite unusual. Most of the thirteen dead were Republicans, and, as the new Congress converged on Capitol Hill, the Democrats were the majority party in the House for the first time

13 Nethers, Simeon D. Fess, 269-403. 14 Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, 173. 15 Roosevelt, “The ‘Forgotten Man’ Speech,” 625. 158

since the Wilson administration.16 Committees had new chairs and members, and if somehow

the election of 1932 swung the balance of power in the House back to the Republicans, the

Committee would have to deal with another set of new or returning committee chairs.

Additionally, new Congressmen may prove more amenable to the NCER than their predecessors

but reluctant to champion legislation already proposed by an ousted Congressman from another

party. The Committee did not appoint a Congressman to introduce the allocation plan in the

House, thinking “it best to wait until the House is organized” before taking action and this course

of action was probably wise.17 Until that time, the NCER would continue to press the Senate to pass S. 4 and engage the commercialists on other fronts. In any case, Fess’s reintroduction of the reallocation bill encouraged the NCER as it waited for its opportunity in the House.

“Session of Radio-Minded Congress Nears,” warned Broadcasting magazine’s December

1, 1931 issue, and its prediction was correct.18 The Fess Bill was just the beginning of an active

radio agenda carried out by the Seventy-Second Congress. Despite the growing problems related

to the Depression in the early months of 1932, Congress undertook two radio items in addition to

the Fess Bill. On February 10, 1932 the House of Representatives passed H.R. 7716, the Davis

Radio Omnibus, which addressed a series of general radio issues including broadcasting. Most

importantly it proposed to alter the zoning of the Davis Amendment, give the Federal Radio

Commission more authority to regulate radio, and limit the role of courts in hearing radio appeals. Senate resolution S. 129, passed on January 12, 1932, sponsored by James Couzens, R-

MI, was the most important radio measure by far. It ordered the Federal Radio Commission to investigate the radio industry and its practices and report the results back to the Senate. In the

16 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 59-61 17 Minutes of the Meeting of The National Committee on Education by Radio, December 11, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 744. 18 Sol Taishoff, “Session of Radio-Minded Congress Nears,” 5. 159

span of three months in late 1931 and early 1932, Congress set to work on two serious radio

measures that questioned the very organization of American broadcasting.

The investigation of commercial radio presented the chance for the most immediate gains

by the NCER in the campaign. The Senate finally asked the questions that the NCER considered

most germane to the case of American radio, and the Committee thought that the inquiry would

“do much to substantiate the contentions of educators who have held that the Federal Radio

Commission had been indifferent to the point of contemptuousness to the rights of educational

broadcasting.”19 Each question mirrored the major charges leveled against the industry by the

NCER, and appeared to play directly into the educators’ hands. The resolution called for an honest assessment of information available on government ownership and operation of radio, and it certainly lifted NCER spirits as the Committee identified radio as a public utility that belonged in the hands of the government. S. 129 ordered an investigation of the prevalence of commercial

advertising on the air and an even further breakdown of the commercial information; the Senate

wanted to know if the more powerful stations tended to carry more advertisements and

commercial programs than small, local stations. This point addressed several issues that the

NCER raised in its campaign. The answer could illustrate that networks possessed licenses to

most of the clear channel frequencies and controlled the commercial industry. At the same time it

could demonstrate the centrality of New York and generally urban interests because New York

and a few other large cities were the centers of network radio. The resolution called on the

Federal Radio Commission to formulate possible plans for curtailing and perhaps eliminating

advertising altogether, to investigate radio systems and advertising policies in other countries,

and to decide whether ads should be reduced to, at most, a simple announcement of the

advertiser’s name. The Senate did not ask if there was too much advertising; it asked how

19 Commercialized Radio to be Investigated,” Education by Radio. 2 (January 21, 1932): 9 160

advertising could be limited thus implicitly admitting commercial stations aired too much of it.

The Senate wanted information on how other countries handled the problem, looking for

alternatives to the American system.20 Finally, S. 129 demanded that the FRC find and disclose the amount of money invested and earned by various broadcasting companies and stations. This component of the investigation could expose the industry as mere profiteers, and, again, it could

hold the networks and East Coast interests accountable. In the end, it looked as if Senator

Couzens’ resolution might lay the groundwork for new radio regulatory legislation and advance

the NCER’s agenda.21 Every point of contention the Committee had raised during 1931 and early

1932 were now the key questions of a serious radio inquiry.

Couzens’ resolution indeed asked some of the most important questions about American radio, but Senator C. C. Dill, D-WA, sharpened the resolution’s edge even more. Dill added eight points to the inquiry that targeted information about educational programming, public service, and the performance of the Federal Radio Commission. “Since education is a public service paid for by the taxes of the people, and therefore the people have a right to complete control of all the facilities of public education,” read point eight, “what recognition has the

commission given to the application of public educational institutions?”22

If Couzens’ questions at least implied sympathy with the NCER, Dill’s questions

explicitly echoed the NCER’s concerns. In part this was because Joy Elmer Morgan helped Dill

write his questions.23 Additionally, any sympathy the Senators may have had with the NCER

campaign was not surprising because these two men had a great deal in common with members

of the Committee. Couzens earned his wealth as a co-founder of Ford Motor Company, but later

20 In fact most other nations only allowed the simple mention of the sponsor name. 21 S. 129 January 7, 1932 (calendar day January 12, 1932). 22 Ibid. 23 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy,142. 161

sold his shares of the company to Henry Ford when Couzens’ politics clashed with Ford’s.

Couzens was a Midwesterner and Progressive Republican who built his career on a platform of

publicly controlled utilities, education, and a graduated income tax. Before his time in the

Senate, as a reform mayor of Detroit, he demonstrated his commitment to public utilities by

ordering the construction of streetcar lines. Couzens would later lose Republican support because

he backed the New Deal.24 By 1932 Dill was a lawyer and a Washington Democrat, but his roots

lay in the Midwest. Dill, an Ohioan by birth, spent his early years after graduating from Ohio

Wesleyan University as a teacher in Iowa and Washington before studying law. As a Senator he

committed himself to education and often spoke at chautauquas.25 Midwestern and Progressive pasts still informed these men’s decision making in 1932. The very premise of their line of questioning was that people had the right to control public education and that radio was a part of public education, positions that came from the Senators’ own life experiences.

Dill called into question the very manner in which the Federal Radio Commission

interpreted the term “public interest.” “I hope that the information,” declared Dill on the Senate

floor, “that will come from the commission will be such as to make the public realize how the

commission has discriminated against educational stations … and that thereby we will build up a

public opinion in the country that will induce the commission to take a proper view of the words

‘public interest’ from the standpoint of education.”26 Clearly Dill was hunting with this

amendment. He demanded that the Commission document the number of educational stations

24 Harry Barnard, Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Couzens (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1958). Barnard’s book is the only full biography of Senator James Couzens. The U.S. Congress also maintains a biographical guide of all Senators and Congressmen. The Couzens profile may be seen at http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000812 last accessed December 27, 2005. 25 Kerry Irish, Clarence C. Dill: The Life and times of a Western Politician (Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, 2000). This is the only full biography of Senator Clarence C. Dill. The Dill profile maintained by the U.S. Congress can be seen at http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000345 last accessed December 27, 2005. 26 Senator C. C. Dill, Congressional Record—Senate. 72nd Congress, 1st sess. January 12, 1932. p. 1760. 162

that had been granted power increases and cleared channels. This was a leading question; no

educational stations were ever granted full, exclusive use of a cleared channel this information

was readily available in the annual FRC reports. The commercialists also made this point clear

when reporting S. 129 in Broadcasting.27 Dill must have asked this question with the intention of

embarrassing the FRC publicly. He went even further by also asking the number of cleared

channels not used by chain broadcasting and the number of Davis Amendment quota units used

by networks. It appeared that Couzens and Dill intended these salvos to show that networks

essentially monopolized premium frequency space as well as airtime, obtaining from the FRC

the best possible medium to deliver quality reception and reach the most possible listeners. At

the same time, the question implicitly accused networks of controlling most of the airspace on a

nationwide scale thus shutting out local voices on the air. Dill also ordered a study of the number

of educational stations that lost licenses to commercial operations, the reasons why the FRC

refused to grant or renew licenses in these cases, and the extent that commercial stations offered

free use of their facilities for educational programming. Finally he asked the Federal Radio

Commission if it believed that education could be safely left to commercial stations. Again these attacks echoed the NCER’s complaints. In short Dill’s addition to Senate Resolution 129 had the potential to expose the Federal Radio Commission as essentially a pawn of the broadcast industry and the industry itself as corrupt, greedy profiteers.28

This resolution looked like a victory for the NCER; every one of the points contained in

the inquiry was also a major contention of the NCER campaign. Robert McChesney argued that

S. 129 essentially hurt the radio reform movement because it gave Congressional leaders an

excuse to stall action on radio legislation until the FRC presented the results of the study, and it

27 Martin Codel, “Radio Advertising Inquiry Proposed,” Broadcasting. 2 no. 2 (January 15, 1932): 8. 28 S. 129 January 7, 1932 (calendar day January 12, 1932). 163

allowed the FRC to conduct the investigation.29 McChesney also claimed that Couzens and Dill

were “staunch defenders of the industry” thus questioning the sincerity of their motives for their

proposition.30 However, the Couzens-Dill resolution was neither the clear-cut win for which the

NCER had hoped, nor was it the “devastating blow” to the NCER that McChesney called it.

Allowing the FRC to conduct the investigation was a serious failure by the Senate since the FRC compiled and interpreted the answers to each point of inquiry from the very perspective that was under investigation. The NCER did not, however, mind waiting for the study because it had already essentially planned for a delay on the Fess Bill. Had the Committee expected swift action on the part of the Senate, then it probably would have scrambled to find a House sponsor to speed the measure along in that body as well. Also, the Committee knew the answers to the

Couzens-Dill Resolution, and if the investigating body presented those results honestly, the

NCER believed that the study would only strengthen its argument for legislation. In fact, during the investigation, the Committee could finally follow the advice its benefactor, Frances Payne

Bolton, who a year earlier had recommended that it “make haste alowly [sic]” and be ready to provide information to aid the inquiry.31

On the other hand McChesney’s final two points were essentially correct. First, the S.

129 attacked the Federal Radio Commission, but the Senate never appointed an independent

committee to conduct the investigation, instead allowing the FRC to compile and report this data

as a kind of internal audit. If the Federal Radio Commission was not living up to its mandate, and

failing to protect educational radio, then why ask it whether it believed if educational

programming could be entrusted as a service provided by commercial stations? Two simple

29 McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Broadcasting,” 326. 30 Ibid., 325. 31 Letter from Frances Payne Bolton to John H. MacCracken dated October 9, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 164

answers arise in this case. It was a politically expedient approach that could garner wide support

on the floor of the Senate. The questions being asked may have been radical, but the people

charged with answering them were not. The FRC already existed, and it could undertake the

study right away without any delay or the extra cost that an independent commission would

bring. Also, the Federal Radio Commission was still considered a body of experts that knew

more about radio than anyone else in the federal government.

From a policy standpoint, having the FRC investigate its own behavior in radio was an

example of “political technology”—power that masks its own functioning—in action. As policy

scholars Chris Shore and Susan Wright explain “political technologies advance by taking what is

essentially a political problem, removing it from the realm of political discourse, and recasting it

in the neutral language of science.” Expertise is “central” to this process.32 The Couzens-Dill

Resolution took a number of questions potentially damning for the FRC which revolved around

decidedly political issues while simultaneously emasculating these questions by allowing a group

of experts, the FRC, to conduct a “scientific” study.

One may question Couzens’ and Dill’s motives in proposing S. 129 wondering if the

Senators were setting up a mere shadow of an investigation designed to clear the commercial

radio industry and the FRC of fault or negligence. However, Couzens had a long history of

fighting corporate abuse of the public, and his move here certainly reflects that tradition. While

Couzens’ intentions may not have been clear, Dill’s were. Dill did not intend to pass a weak

resolution or have a weak investigation. Despite frustration with the FRC he still believed that

his questions would force the Commission’s hand revealing its mismanagement of American

radio. McChesney argued that Dill was a staunch supporter of the commercial radio industry, but

32 Herbert Dreyfus and Paul Rainbow quoted in Chris Shore and Susan Wright, “Policy: A New Field of Anthropology,” Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power ed. Chris Shore and Susan Wright (New York: Routledge, 1997), 8-9. 165

further study of Dill casts doubt upon this assertion.33 Dill disliked commercial radio, but, after

traveling abroad and hearing nationalized radio systems in Europe, the Senator concluded that

the American system was the best available model but could be made even better by protecting

educational stations and cutting commercial proliferation on the ether. He believed that European

systems were inefficient and too expensive for listeners due to taxes on receiving sets, and for

this reason he would not support government control of radio. Still, in 1932, Dill decided that it

would be easier to attack the commercial free-for-all on the air by attacking the regulatory commission and not the industry. He believed that the industry went too far because the FRC allowed it to do so.34 So if Dill was an industry puppet whose loyalty was bought then Dill was,

as his biographer noted, “a poor purchase.”35

Potentially damaging to the NCER cause was the probability that the results of the FRC

investigation would be beyond question for lawmakers because the FRC was a panel recognized

for its expertise. Of course Senate acceptance was not inevitable; the Senate could change its

mind after the FRC reported its findings, but the cause of reform would probably fight an uphill battle in this case. Further damaging to the NCER campaign was the underlying logic behind the resolution. The questions did not necessarily attack the commercial broadcast industry. They were critical of its unimpeded growth at the expense of educational stations, but the Senate

viewed the commercial growth and implicitly the harangues from the reformers as a failure of

the Federal Radio Commission, not the industry. The resolution demanded an accounting of the

quota units and frequency allotments of commercial radio stations and educational stations, but

these assignments were the work of the Federal Radio Commission. Even the sympathetic

Senator Dill explained that this investigation would do a better job of settling radio problems

33 McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Broadcasting,” 325. 34 Irish, Clarence C. Dill, 142-143. 35 Ibid., 139. 166

than “attempting to legislate by provisions of a statute the priorities of different services to be

granted by the commission.”36 In other words, he hoped that this resolution would be a better

solution to the radio problem than the Fess Bill. This statement also shed light on another point

of S. 129: the request for alternate plans of radio organization. If the Senate was indeed

interested in changing the basis of American radio, then the FRC would be making those

changes. Therefore, while Dill’s questions may have sounded radical, in reality they were not.

The Couzens-Dill Resolution also highlighted a fundamental problem with the very

nature of commission government: discourse. During the 1920s and 1930s American

policymakers subscribed to a public interest theory of government with regard to regulatory

agencies. Public interest theory places two large interests in opposition: corporate interests and

public interests. Populists and progressives as well as later policymakers believed that

corporations easily became predatory and dangerous to the welfare of the general public. The regulatory agency or commission was supposed empower the public over predatory corporations and industries because these scientifically managed groups worked to manage competing interests efficiently while placing the general public over the corporation or the industry.

Simultaneously the regulatory commission removed the important questions of public interest

from politics so that they could be studied scientifically and managed.37 The Federal Radio

Commission was an example of this type of regulatory body charged with protecting the public

interest. However, as the NCER campaign and the Couzens-Dill Resoulution demonstrated, the

FRC’s role as champion of the public was at least questionable. Still, it was in this context that S.

129 passed.

36 Senator C. C. Dill, Congressional Record—Senate. 72nd Congress, 1st sess. January 12, 1932. p. 1760. 37 Horowitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform, 23-31. 167

The real crux of this matter, from a policy perspective, was that the field of players was

more complex than the simple binary opposition of corporate and public, and the very definition of public interest was nebulous. These two facts meant that discourse was the key to this regulatory policy process. The FRC, the Congress, the commercialists, and the reformers used different discourses and defined public interest differently on radio in America. As Seidel and

Vidal demonstrate, discourse is “a particular way of thinking . . . which excludes other ways of thinking. Discourses involve naming and classifying. This is a political activity. As such, it is not merely symbolic, but it had material outcomes that impinge upon other people’s lives.”38 One discourse most valued masterful operation of the radio and the other most valued the soul of the listener. The commercialists and federal regulators used a discourse that placed efficiency, capitalism, and technical mastery at the fore of radio regulation that excluded other perspectives.

These parties believed that the radio the served the public best was one free of interference, heavy-handed regulation, and commerce providing “free” programs to the public. The NCER believed that the radio that best served the public had quality content with the power to educate, enlighten, and reflect local voices on the air.

By allowing the FRC to conduct the investigation required by S. 129 the Senate would exclude the NCER discourse from the discussion even though the questions asked of the FRC reflected reformist sentiments. S. 129 did not depoliticize the radio question in the United States, it simply shifted the venue for discussion and managed it. However, all sides in the matter viewed the investigation as a legitimate method of examining American radio. Even though the

FRC was at the helm one cannot expect the NCER to have reacted any differently than it did.

The NCER was a progressive Committee; it too subscribed to public interest theory, and viewing

38 Gill Seidel and Laurent Vidal, “The Implications of ‘Medical’, ‘Gender in Development’ and ‘Culturalist’ discourses for HIV/AIDS policy in Africa,” Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. Chris Shore and Susan Wright, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 59. 168 its positive response to S. 129 as incomprehensible is to remove the Committee from its historical context. Even if the Senate assembled an independent ad hoc commission to investigate the matter, it most likely would have used the same discourse as the FRC.

Finally, S. 129 may have put the FRC in the hot seat, but the measure did not threaten the existence of the Commission. The resolution was a wake-up call for the FRC. Couzens and Dill hoped to push the FRC to stop defining public interest “too narrowly by overemphasizing the part played by advertising over the radio.”39 Never did the Senate challenge the authority of the

FRC in the measure. Actually, the Senate hoped that the FRC would start to use the full authority that it believed the Commission possessed.

The Information Campaign

The NCER lauded the passage of S. 129 in its January issue of Education by Radio believing that it would absolutely prove their case to Congress. “In the face of these specific questions,” argued Education by Radio, “it will be rather difficult for the Federal Radio

Commission to whitewash itself of the favoritism it has shown commercial radio interests and the radio trust.”40 The Committee especially praised Senator Dill’s amendment claiming “Its questions are to the point and inescapable.”41 However, the Committee did not protest the fact that the very organization in question, the Federal Radio Commission, was essentially investigating itself and its own performance. Perhaps this fact proved the efficacy of political technologies. Even the NCER believed in the idea of objective, scientific inquiry even though such inquiry had the potential to scuttle the very political reforms endorsed by the Committee.

39 Senator C. C. Dill, Congressional Record—Senate. 72nd Congress, 1st sess. January 12, 1932. p. 1759. 40 “Commercialized Radio to be Investigated,” 9. 41 Ibid., 9. 169

From January through June—the month the FRC delivered its report to the Senate—the

NCER ran articles attacking the Federal Radio Commission’s past actions hoping to provoke

dissatisfaction with the body. One article noted House discontent with the FRC by citing

Congressman Ralph A. Horr of Washington who called the FRC “one of the most extravagant

and arbitrary government agencies.”42 This was part of a larger assault leveled by Horr who

noted that the FRC had received a significantly greater budget than recommended for it by the

Bureau of Efficiency. More importantly Horr accused the Commission of more serious abuses

“both in regard to its own personnel and in the allocation of its favors the Commission has been guilty of high-handedness scarcely precedented.” Horr argued that the FRC had hired inexperienced friends whom it deemed “expert” just to award them high salaries. He also claimed that the FRC favored a monopoly of the air “evidenced by the hold the NBC and RCA have upon the Commission.”43 This attack was a boon for the NCER because it lent credence to

the Committee’s claim that the FRC lacked necessary expertise. If the FRC was not expert and

scientific, then it failed to fulfill its role in disarming the political hot-potato of reallocation.

Continuing with this theme the NCER ran an article praising Senator Dill for his advocacy of

radio. In the piece Dill claimed that the Commission lied to him about the state of educational radio, abdicating its responsibility to the American public. “He was given to understand that educational authorities did not have the money to finance high-powered stations,” reported

Education by Radio, “This was clearly a subterfuge to cover up [FRC] activities which favored

commercial broadcasting interests.”44 The piece also cited more House dissatisfaction with the

FRC by printing a statement by Representative Ewin L. Davis of Tennessee, the chairman of the

House Committee on Merchant Marine, Radio, and Fisheries, noting how he believed that the

42 Representative Ralph A. Horr quoted in Ibid., 9. 43 Ibid., 9. 44 “The Weakness of American Radio,” Education by Radio 2 (February 4, 1932): 17. 170

Federal Radio Commission had “fallen down” on the job assigned to it.45 Dill and Davis were

key players in Congress and sat on the committees in their respective houses that oversaw radio

legislation. Reading their public comments of dissatisfaction gave the Committee the impression

that Congress was ready to pursue real radio reform.

The NCER, as a way of gaining further Congressional support, published a series of

articles on the broadcasting conditions in Europe using much of the information Armstrong Perry

gathered on his trip in 1931. The report generally illustrated that government run operations in

Europe seriously limited advertising or banned it outright and used small taxes or donations to

pay for programs. Perry noted that the programs exceeded U.S. programs in quality and assured

that the companies would profit. He also declared that most Europeans disdained American

broadcasting.46 Another article praised the Canadian system of broadcasting—it adopted a

system similar to the BBC after a hotly contested debate in which many American reformers

testified—thus illustrating that such a system could be adopted in a place as vast and diverse as

Canada. More importantly it showed that the system could work in North America. 47 Indeed the

NCER was going to take advantage of S. 129 by offering data and evidence that could be used in

the investigation while hoping to demonstrate its own scientific, apolitical mettle. Unfortunately

for the NCER, there was little likelihood that the FRC would use this material in a substantive

way.

The Committee also offered a case study in the Commission’s failure to protect public

service, and, at the same time, alerted Education by Radio readers of the perilous position in

which one of the premier educational stations, WEAO—Ohio State University, found itself.

45 Representative Erwin L. Davis quoted in Ibid., 17. 46 “Radio Broadcasting in Europe,” Education by Radio 2 (February 18, 1932): 25-28. 47 The Canadian Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting, “A Proposal for Public Ownership of Radio.” Education by Radio 2 (May 26, 1932): 69-72. 171

“Ohio State University is due to lose some of its best radio broadcasting hours if the report of

Examiner Ralph A. Walker is sustained by the Federal Radio Commission” warned the NCER.48

One of the most vulnerable targets within the Commission was examiners. Due to the overwhelming workload of the FRC, it employed examiners who gathered evidence for appeals and hearings and made suggestions for the FRC. This expedited the hearing process, but in many cases the Commission simply approved the findings of an examiner. Thus the whole appeal and hearing process seemed like a farce, with the decision determined in advance by the examiner. In the WEAO case Walker, an examiner for the Commission, had recommended that WEAO give up some of its current hours of broadcast in return for hours it was not prepared to fill. He awarded the hours it formerly held to commercial station WKBN which shared time with WEAO on the same frequency. Even worse, the examiner found that the “service rendered by Stations

WKBN…is more diversified and of more general interest than are the programs of Station

WEAO.”49 He awarded WEAO Sunday hours—it had been dark on Sundays previously—and he

suggested that it should provide both religious and educational programming instead of just

educational programming on Sundays. WEAO was not equipped to handle this request; it was

not a station affiliated with religion of any kind. The WEAO case was a perfect illustration of the

Committee’s problem with examiners and the FRC. In this case the examiner, an outsider and

supposed expert hired by the Commission to protect public convenience and necessity, simply

catered to a commercial station and then instructed a highly regarded public station what kind of

material to broadcast. The Commission dared not challenge advertising or commercial programs

in this way, telling them what kind of material to air, but did exactly that with noncommercial

stations.

48 “Federal Radio Examiner Proposes to Interfere with Education in Ohio,” Education by Radio 2 (January 28, 1932): 13. 49 Examiner Ralph A. Walker quoted in Ibid., 13. 172

In a different article the NCER continued its attack upon the examiner system and the

Commission by reporting WEAO’s FRC hearing over this matter. It essentially summarizes the

brief filed with the Commission by WEAO attorney, Gilbert Bettman—also the Attorney

General of Ohio—detailing the “glaring” errors and misstatements made by the examiner in his

report.50 Bettman ably argued that the examiner completely misunderstood the sources of

WEAO programming, its costs, and its program quality.51 In short the brief painted the examiner’s report as a tissue of lies, generated by the examiner’s duplicity or sheer ineptitude. If examiners were this inept, after all, and the Commission relied upon the accuracy of examiners’ reports to make decisions, then the FRC was relying upon a broken staff, and its decisions inherently flawed.

The NCER also ran articles that exposed strong links between the commercialists and the

FRC along with the reports of Congressional concern. One piece dissected the commercialists’

and Commission’s record satirically listing them as a series of “principles” which seemed to

summarize the state of American radio. The NCER used the convention of the “statement of

principles” that many newspapers had popularized in the late 1800s and early 1900s to display

the shortcomings of the industry and the FRC. The statements claimed that the commercialists

demanded “control and unlimited use of all of the nation’s broadcasting channels,” refused

access to state and local governments, censored any person they chose, used political speech as

part of an advertising campaign, and bullied small stations.52 The article most obviously

attacked the commercial industry, but it was also a scathing assault upon the Commission since it allowed the industry to operate in this fashion and actually encouraged this broadcasting arrangement. Another piece depicted the FRC as a generally unethical body whose members

50 “Ohio Rises to Defend its People,” Education by Radio 2 (February 11, 1932): 21. 51 Ibid., 21. 52 “The Platform of Commercial Broadcasters,” Education by Radio 2 (March 10, 1932): 37. 173

were rewarded by commercialists. Entitled “The Ideals of a Great Citizen” the short article

lauded the ethical precedent set by William Howard Taft telling the story of how he felt that he

could not accept offers from many law firms upon leaving the Presidency claiming he “could

not…appear before his own appointees as an advocate in private litigation. And he accepted the

small remuneration of a teacher at Yale University.”53 “This action” declared the NCER, “is in striking contrast to the former members and employees of the Federal Radio Commission who have taken positions with the radio monopolies which they had previously been obliged to deal with as members of the Commission, thus placing themselves in a situation where the information they gained as public servants may be used for private advantage contrary to the public interest.”54

Finally the NCER reported the commercialists’ fear of the Couzens-Dill Resolution and

its increased lobbying effort against it. “The commercial radio monopoly interests have at last

begun to realize that the American people are disgusted with the glaring evils which have been

allowed to grow up in American radio by a negligent and commercially-minded Federal Radio

Commission,” the NCER boasted.55 It relayed the text of a letter—passed on to the NCER by an

anonymous source—dispatched by the NAB president to members calling them to action to fight

the Couzens-Dill Resolution, thus demonstrating the seriousness of S. 129 and the industry’s fear

of its conclusions. The letter asked for information and more importantly money to support a

lobby campaign and an internal NAB fact finding mission to counter any possible negative

feedback from S. 129. “Why are broadcasters unwilling that Congress should consider without

prejudice national radio systems which, in other countries, are yielding broadcasting companies net profits of from six to fifteen percent yearly…Why are commercial broadcasters planning to

53 “The Ideals of a Great Citizen,” Education by Radio 2 (April 7, 1932): 56. 54 Ibid., 56. 55 “Commercial Broadcasters to Intensify Lobby,” Education by Radio 2 (March 10, 1932): 38. 174

create a great lobby fund to thwart an honest inquiry which concerns the public intimately and

vitally?” the piece asked rhetorically.56 Clearly the NCER tried to take advantage of the

momentum generated by S. 129 and various grumblings in the House of Representative with its

public campaign in Education by Radio. It further advertised Congressional dissatisfaction with

the FRC, a case study of the practical shortcomings of the Commission, as well as its link with

the commercialists. Even worse for the commercial industry the NCER was able to use the

NAB’s recent actions to depict it as an organization scared of the findings of a simple fact-

finding resolution. If the commercial industry was after all a responsible, dutiful enterprise, then

why should it fear this investigation?

But fear this investigation it did. The NAB had just emerged from a successful national

meeting the previous October. The meeting may have addressed the dangers confronting the

radio industry, promoted unity, heard key government officials praising the radio industry and

radio by the American Plan, but the organization warned its members to continue with the work begun at the meeting. And, even though, some government officials gave the commercialists ringing endorsements, the NAB still realized that some members of Congress were sympathetic to arguments made by enemies of the status quo. Beginning in late 1931, after the national meeting, the NAB received more hints of Congressional action, and it reminded members to adhere to the NAB program. “Session of Radio-Minded Congress Nears,” warned Sol Taishoff in the December 1, 1931 issue of Broadcasting:

Legislative tom-toms already beating on Capitol Hill are calling into session next week the Seventy-second Congress of the United States…The Congress that convenes Dec. 7 will be more worldly wise on matters of radio…nevertheless, it knows nothing about the vicissitudes that broadcasting as a business is still encountering. It may be prone to heed the high-sounding phrases voiced by opponents of Radio by the American Plan and to curry political favor from such factions. The danger is real.57

56 Ibid., 38 57 Sol Taishoff, “Session of Radio-Minded Congress Nears.” Broadcasting 1 no. 4 (December 1, 1931): 5. 175

Taishoff wanted to remind members that despite the success of the October meeting and the

praise given to the NAB at that time, the organization needed to remain vigilant. He listed a

series of bills and proposals on the Congressional agenda for the upcoming session. He first listed the Fess Bill as an immediate threat but tempered this by stating that “The measure will be

identical with that introduced during the last session.”58 This was a reminder that the Fess Bill

had died in committee having never even received a hearing. In fact the only evidence of its

existence was its publication by the NCER and its proposal in the Congressional Record. He also

warned broadcasters about Senator Couzens’ plan to introduce a bill calling for the consolidation

of all telecommunications under a Federal Communications Commission. This measure too had

been introduced in the previous session. The NAB saw it as “by far the most important piece of

radio legislation ever introduced, [but] it is conceded that it cannot complete the legislative

gauntlet at the coming session.”59 Most unnerving to the organization were the unknown plans of

Senator C. C. Dill and Erwin L. Davis chair of the House Merchant Marine Committee.60 They were two of the most powerful radio figures on Congress, and, as such, had definite radio agendas. It seemed as if the NAB was on shaky ground at the start of 1932.

Senator Couzens mollified some of these anxieties and reminded the NAB that it held a better footing than it thought, assuring Taishoff that “nothing tangible will be done about advertising at this session,” but Dill warned that “broadcasters had better get together on some self-regulation…Congress will not be inclined to heed the ‘propaganda’ of the Ventura Free

Press and of other minorities which seek a government monopoly of broadcasting.”61 Couzens

58 Ibid., 5. 59 Ibid., 6. 60 Ibid., 6. 61 Ibid., 6. 176

was in a good position to advise the NAB because he was the chair of the Interstate Commerce

Committee in the Senate which oversaw radio legislation in that chamber of Congress. Therefore his warning to self-regulate and refusal to back government ownership of radio was a mixed blessing. It bought the NAB much needed time to consolidate broadcasting under its tutelage and wage an effective lobby and anti-NCER campaign. However, it still placed the industry in theoretical danger; if it could not get some sort of satisfactory self-regulation working, then

Congress might interfere. Taishoff also predicted upcoming attacks upon the Federal Radio

Commission in Congress. “Periodic outbursts of political oratory against this radio evil,” warned

Broadcasting, “will occur during the approaching session. Many members on both sides of the

Capitol are aroused over local conditions. More than a dozen radio stations have been ordered off the air by the Commission during the year… and [they] are prepared to attack the Commission at the first opportunity.”62 However, despite these grumblings Taishoff predicted “though much

will be proposed, it is doubtful whether any really important legislation will be enacted during the session.”63 In the end the NAB wanted its members on their toes; action might not happen

this session, but without unity and self-regulation, it was sure to take place down the road.

In the meantime the NAB unleashed its counter-reform campaign. In order to combat the

rhetoric of the NCER camp as well as regulatory interest in Congress, the NAB believed that it

needed to inform members and the public about its activities and contributions. So it used its

official mouthpiece, Broadcasting, as well as air time purchased on member stations to get the

message out. One article attacked the Ventura Free Press campaign, lumping all anti-

commercialists in with it.64 Due to the radical nature of the Ventura campaign and the many

62 Ibid., 6. 63 Ibid., 6. 64 “A Vicious Fight against Broadcasting: California Publisher Seeking to Align Newspapers against American Plan in Bitter Campaign,” Broadcasting 1 no. 4 (December 1, 1931): 10. 177

questions surrounding its motives, conflating all reformers with Ventura allowed the NAB to

paint the reformers with a broad brush and identify them all as radicals with questionable

motives. One editorial called the campaign “insidious propaganda” and urged commercial

broadcasters to “tell their audiences the plain and unvarnished facts about their problems…and

the real motives behind those who are fighting to take their hard-earned substance away.”65 In

other words, the propagandistic nature of the reformers was obvious, and if broadcasters merely

alerted the public to this fact, they would have public support in this matter.

The NAB began attacking radio in Europe to counter some of the NCER materials

praising the nationalized radio systems there. One article reported that the BBC might begin to

allow commercial broadcasting while another attacked the many shortcomings of radio abroad.66

This again was a serious blow to the NCER campaign because it held the BBC system as a superior model of broadcasting, and many of its arguments were based on the success of the

BBC model.67 This would also help later in combating S. 129 by demonstrating the commercial

leanings of other broadcast systems. Another piece claimed to demystify the noble image of

educational stations championed by the NCER. In the article the NAB revealed that sixteen of

forty-four educational stations sold advertising time and that educational stations were only

devoting eight percent of their broadcasting time to educational material whereas commercial

stations were devoting more than ten percent of total broadcast time to education.68 This article

was particularly useful because on the one hand it displayed the educational argument as a myth,

yet it also demonstrated that these stations needed to sell time to broadcast material.

65 “Racket,” Broadcasting 1 no. 4 (December 1, 1931): 18; “More Ventura,” Broadcasting 1 no. 5 (December 15, 1931): 18; “Propaganda Lures Parents-Teachers,” 12. 66 “Will BBC Go Commercial?” Broadcasting 1 no. 4 (December 1, 1931): 15; “Views on European Broadcasting Vary in Five Surveys by American Experts,” Broadcasting 2 no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 20. 67 “Will BBC Go Commercial?” 15. 68 “Education Stations Turn Commercial: 16 Out of 44 Sell Time Whereas Business Broadcasters Offer Greater Percentages of Scholastic Programs,” Broadcasting 2 no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 19. 178

During this time, while the NCER was busy weathering attacks from the commercial industry, it had to deal with serious divisions within the reform camp. The Ventura Free Press, also sponsored by the Payne Fund, proposed its own legislation calling for sharp limits on radio advertising during the first few months of 1932. The head of the Ventura Free Press campaign,

H. O. Davis, incessantly called for Frances Payne Bolton to reveal to the NCER that the Payne

Fund also sponsored the Ventura Free Press and to order the NCER to cooperate with it. Recall that Bolton never allowed the NCER to know that the Payne Fund sponsored the Ventura Free

Press, and Joy Elmer Morgan refused to cooperate with its campaign.

By this time, Bolton already demonstrated a preference for the Ventura Free Press over the NCER. Robert McChesney’s account of the Payne Fund radio projects argued that Davis’s efforts to fight commercial radio were realistic at that time while categorizing the NCER’s campaign at this time “surreal,” claiming that the NCER made a serious error by not cooperating with the Ventura group.69 However, while this interpretation of the NCER is valid, it does not contextualize the reform movement in the political climate of 1932 and understand the NCER discourse. The Ventura Free Press may have been providing a great deal of information about the problems of American radio and pushing for advertising limits, but that does not mean that it was worthy of NCER cooperation. The Ventura Free Press contained numerous advertisements and ran sensational stories about fires and crime. Thus the paper contained the very material that the NCER despised on the air and in print. Aligning with the Ventura Free Press could have damaged the NCER’s image, leaving it open to charges of hypocrisy. The commercial industry was already trying to tarnish the Committee’s reputation by associating it with the Ventura Free

Press. The Payne Fund kept its sponsorship of the Venture Free Press secret because Bolton did not want its radical stance to be publicly linked to the Payne Fund or Frances Payne Bolton. If

69 McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Broadcasting,” 326-329. 179 that happened, she feared a terrible backlash against the Payne Fund and possibly her husband’s political career. In addition to the image problem, Davis’s efforts addressed advertising on the air, but it did nothing to help preserve the educational stations the NCER represented or education on the air. It was not feasible for the NCER to work with Davis’s paper because these were two different campaigns using two different discourses; the NCER probably would not have benefited from hitching its wagon to the Ventura Free Press horse.

One Payne Fund member, Ella Crandall, remarked that the NCER did not have a clear grasp of the political situation and Bolton agreed, but, upon closer examination, Crandall and

Bolton may have lacked this understanding. Earning a radical reputation would not help the reformers gain respect on Capitol Hill or before of the FRC. Besides, despite Bolton’s earlier claim of intimate Washington knowledge, her biography painted a different picture. Bolton spent her time in Washington, D. C. more focused on her convalescing son, singing lessons, and the social duties required of a Congressman’s wife. However, Frances Payne Bolton was removed from politics, and her husband, Chester C. Bolton R-OH, did not discuss Congressional matters with her. She was active socially, and enjoyed invitations to the White House to visit Lou Henry

Hoover, but she later avoided these meetings disliking the First Lady’s informality.70 In short, it was Frances Payne Bolton who failed to grasp the political situation here, and the Committee wisely avoided cooperation with the Ventura Free Press to avoid being branded as radical while simultaneously losing Bolton’s confidence.

The NAB Unity and Standards Campaign

Aside from attacking the reformers the NAB also demonstrated its commitment to standards and self-regulation even as it printed a number of editorials opposed to effective

70 Loth, A Long Way Forward, 159-191. 180

government regulation of radio. “When people are standing in breadlines, why should Congress

bother about this propaganda against radio advertising?” queried one anonymous Senator in a

short editorial.71 This piece reminded readers that the federal government had more pressing

concerns than radio, having a Senator question the usefulness of attacking a sound industry when

the public needed its servants to address more pressing matters. One article featured the Federal

Radio Commission’s chief engineer Dr. C. B. Jolliffe explaining briefly how to adhere to

technical standards and solve engineering problems. This was not a counterattack against the

NCER, and the piece did not involve itself directly in the regulation battle.72 But it demonstrated

the NAB’s particular brand of professionalism as evidenced by its mutual discursive

understanding with federal regulators—a type of professionalism to which no educational group

could lay claim.

For is first issue in January 1932, the NAB printed its code of ethics to accompany

another scare piece on possible government interference. “Voluntary elimination of excessive

commercialism” warned Broadcasting “to stave off ‘proper legislation’ limiting advertising on

the air was recommended by the Federal Radio Commission…in a guarded yet firm warning to

broadcasters regarding advertising.”73 Tempering the warning was a statement of support of the industry given by the Commission: “The Commission believes that the American system of broadcasting has produced the best form of radio entertainment in the world.”74 Clearly the

industry had the clear support of the Federal Radio Commission. However, that support might

not have seemed too helpful to the industry at a time when the FRC itself was under attack from

71 “Congress,” Broadcasting 1 no. 4 (December 1, 1931): 18. 72 “Dr. Jolliffee Explains Allocation Standards Used by Commission: Radio Body’s Annual Report Shows Applicants How to Determine Engineering Requisites,” Broadcasting 1 no. 5 (December 15, 1931): 24. 73 “Warning Issued on Blatant Advertising: Commission Proposes Self-Regulation to Stave off Congressional Action, Upholds American System,” Broadcasting 2 no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 12. 74 Federal Radio Commission quoted in Ibid., 12; “Table Manners,” Broadcasting 2 no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 22. 181

reformers and both houses of Congress. Nevertheless, the FRC was still in command of radio

regulation and from a practical perspective, having the Commission’s vote of confidence was

important to the industry even during the upcoming investigation. In another sense it again

demonstrated the willingness of the industry to cooperate with federal regulators as indicated by

the accompanying NAB code of ethics. The code preached fiscal responsibility, extreme

sensitivity regarding advertising, professional cooperation, and strict adherence to the Radio Act

of 1927. More importantly it had the approval of the Federal Radio Commission. The code had

been adopted in 1929, but at this time it became more important than ever before.75 In a political

climate that questioned the industry, it had an FRC-endorsed code to demonstrate its professionalism. It also showed that it had its own enforcement mechanism—the power to

remove violators from the NAB thus singling them out and disassociating their behavior from the

industry.

The announcement of the passage of the Couzens-Dill resolution re-invigorated the NAB campaign. The NAB had mixed feelings about S. 129; it had the power to seriously wound the industry. It also had the power to depict the FRC as a poorly run group thus sparking a call for sweeping change in federal regulation. But the fact-finding would be conducted by the Federal

Radio Commission, so at least the investigators would be sympathetic. Publicly the NAB welcomed the investigation claiming that it would “demonstrate that the American plan of competitive broadcasting, in the hands of private industry is immeasurably superior to the system that prevails in Europe.”76 Despite this public confidence the measure gave NAB directors a

serious scare. Its passage caused them to call a special meeting to address the matter. The

75 National Association of Broadcasters, “Code of Ethics,” Broadcasting 2 no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 12. 76 National Association of Broadcasters quoted in “Radio Advertising Inquiry Proposed: NAB Directors Welcome Couzens-Dill Resolution; Commission Would Gather Data; Delay is Foreseen,” Broadcasting 2 no. 2 (January 15, 1931): 8. 182

confident resolution published in Broadcasting was the public reaction, but privately the

president of the NAB, Philip G. Loucks, drafted a letter sent to all members asking for

cooperation and donations to fight the attack upon the industry and the Commission. Loucks

promised to keep all replies to his letter private.77 Clearly the industry took S. 129 seriously.

After all, it codified many of the arguments used by the radical reformers, and it posited the possbility of adopting a European style of government-supported broadcasting in the U.S.

On the heels of S. 129, the NAB released a ream of articles demonstrating its

contributions to education. In the same issue of Broadcasting that announced the passage of the

Couzens-Dill Resolution, the NAB announced that NACRE had been given prime air time to

present a new series of forty educational programs on NBC. 78 Once again, NACRE became a

valuable asset to the industry. The group of noted educational authorities on a national hookup in

prime-time not only added educational hours to the NAB tally, but it gave educational

programming an outlet that no college affiliated station could afford or provide. In short it helped to deflect criticism that the commercialists, especially networks, did not do a good job of providing educational programs. Of course NBC had already been using the NACRE for such programming since 1931, so the network was not just providing educational programs out of fear of S. 129, but the network now showcased the group. Another piece announced a series covering

Congress and the questions before it. The series was slated to appear in January, 1932 on CBS.

Again the publication demonstrated that another powerful industry member, CBS, was airing material of public service. Most importantly, both the NACRE series and the Congress series

77 Philip G. Loucks quoted in “Commerical Broadcasters to Intensify Lobby,” Education by Radio 2 (March 10, 1932): 38. 78 “40 Education Talks Scheduled on NBC: Noted Authorities Sponsored by Radio Advisory Council,” Education by Radio 2 (March 10, 1932): 24. 183

were sustaining programs, unsupported by advertising. This meant that the NCER camp could

not criticize the programs for “selling out” to advertisers.

Other articles raised pedagogical questions and practical issues with regard to educational

programming. They demonstrated that educational programming could be defined in many

different ways. They also showed that the educators could not agree on how radio should be used

in education, using disputes among educators to cast doubt on their expertise regarding radio.

One piece by Cline Morgan Koon, Specialist in Education by Radio from the U.S. Office of

Education clearly damaged the NCER cause. Koon had worked with the NCER, and was a

member of the NEA. He was a well credentialed, respected educator who was an assistant

director of the Ohio School of the Air, one of the NCER’s closest allies and a recipient of Payne

Fund monies.79 Koon’s article highlighted what he felt were the serious pedagogical limitations

of education on the air and the NCER’s failure to realize these limitations.80 Here was a top

educator admitting that radio was not the wonderful educational tool that reformers heralded, an

educator who questioned the NCER’s professional opinion in the publication of its bitter enemy.

In the end, the National Association of Broadcasters took S. 129 as a serious threat against the

industry, and it redoubled its efforts to shape the inquiry and sway public opinion while

demonstrating its commitment to cooperation with regulators and educators. At the same time it

also amplified its attacks upon the NCER camp, attacking the group’s credibility and the value of

its expertise. But the NAB and the commercial industry still had to survive the federal fact-

finding mission ordered by the Senate.

79 Cline Morgan Koon, “Educational Limitations of Broadcasters: Classroom Instruction by Radio Difficult to Synchronize With School Schedules; Lacks Personal, Local Aspects,” Broadcasting 2 no. 3 (February 1, 1932): 7. 80 Ibid., 7, 21. 184

The S. 129 Findings

The actual data and answers offered by the Federal Radio Commission boded ill for the

NCER’s reform efforts. Its responses to the various questions asked by the Senate all shifted

blame for the proliferation of commerce at the expense of education onto the educational outlets

themselves. Even worse the FRC effectively argued that an alternate organization of radio would

not work in the United States and that education received more than adequate time from

commercial stations.81 In retrospect, the NCER questioned the finer points of the resolution and

closely examined the reasons for its ease of passage. The group saw S. 129 as a victory for its

cause, and it never questioned it on a deeper level publicly or privately. It however had one

complaint at the outset of the investigation: the Commission sent commercial radio stations

questionnaires surveying their broadcast schedules and habits, for the week of November 8 to

November 14, 1931. This was supposedly chosen arbitrarily so that stations could not use

“padded” numbers from a week after the passage of S. 129. However, Armstrong Perry and the

NCER complained that since that week coincided with National Education Week, stations would

be carrying an abnormally high level of educational programs. The Commission, in response,

sent out a supplemental questionnaire evaluating the week of November 1 to November 7, 1931.

This way the FRC could compare the data collected for both weeks.82 Still the data collection

was skewed by using this week, even if the Commission ordered a comparison week as well

since the results from November 8 to November 14 would still be used. The FRC actually

questioned the usefulness of foreign models of broadcast due to the size and diversity of the

United States, arguing that “To apply results obtained in any European country would probably

81 The Federal Radio Commission, Commercial Radio Advertising: Letter from the Chairman of the Federal Radio Commission in Response to the Senate Resolution No. 129, A Report Relative to the use of Radio Facilities for Commercial-Advertising Purposes, Together with a List Showing the Educational Institutions which Have been Licensed (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), 1-201. 82 Sol Taishoff, “Commission Opens Sweeping Radio Inquiry,” Broadcasting 2 no. 3 (February 1, 1932): 5. 185

lead one to entirely wrong conclusions.”83 It also reported that reliable information about foreign

broadcast systems was spotty and incomplete.84 Clearly the FRC had not read Armstrong Perry’s

detailed reports in Education by Radio. The Commission concluded that NBC and CBS, while granted significant allocations, spent most of its broadcast hours supplying sustaining programs that provided education and news to listeners thus rendering a useful public service. The two networks also provided quality reception to the areas they covered.85 In answering the question

of plans that might be adopted to reduce commercial advertising, the FRC claimed that because

this was the American system of radio, new legislation would be needed to alter it, and the FRC

did not have the authority to do this.86 The report also painted a gloomy picture of most

educational stations. The Commission included records of its allocation hearings with many stations illustrating that failure to appear before the Commission at a hearing, voluntary surrender of a license, or failure to adhere to standards cost most educational stations their allocations. It also showed that in several cases the Commission awarded educational outfits greater power and time allocations when they proved to be efficient operators and adhered to regulations.87 This report was devastating to the NCER cause. Even if the schools failed to show

for a hearing due to the excessive cost and travel involved, even if they failed to adhere to

technical standards because they could not afford to purchase the necessary equipment, the fact

was the FRC found these stations negligent or in violation of regulations. The reasons for these

lapses were not given in the report, leaving the Senate to conclude that educational stations must

be inept. The Commission answered the final question “Does the Commission believe that

educational programs can be safely left to the voluntary gift of the use of facilities by

83 The Federal Radio Commission. Commercial Radio Advertising, 2. 84 Ibid.,3. 85 Ibid.,12-33, 40-70, 89-100, 101-106. 86 Ibid., 33-34. 87 Ibid., 71-88. 186

commercial stations?” in the affirmative. So the net conclusion was that the educational

broadcasters were not operating in the public interest and the commercial operations were.

Education on the air, argued the Commission, “can be safely left to the voluntary gift of the use

of facilities by commercial stations.”88 The report also temporarily deflected criticism of the

Commission. It now had data to support its actions, and, of course, the commercial radio

industry.

By June and July of 1932 the NCER was focused on its next attempt of policymaking at

the elite level: the Madrid International Telegraphic Conference. While preparing for the

Conference, Armstrong Perry scored the FRC’s S.129 report in the Air Law Review.89 He

rightfully chided the Commission for omitting a great deal of data collected—especially with

regard to foreign broadcast systems.90 He again complained about the broadcast chosen for the survey and the report’s failure to discuss the financial burdens placed upon educational stations summoned to attend hearings.91 Nevertheless, Perry’s retort was too little too late in coming. The

report had been issued, and his article would not appear until almost a year after the survey was

conducted. All in all, S. 129, which once held a great deal of promise for the NCER’s cause,

turned out to be a disaster for the group. The FRC may have asked the questions that the NCER

had been asking from its inception, but the NCER did not anticipate that the FRC would make a

mockery of the investigation. The questions may have been radical, but the people answering

them were not, and in the end they disarmed the most powerful bombs that the NCER had in its

possession.

88 Ibid., 101. 89 Armstrong Perry, Review of “Commercial Radio Advertising.” Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 744. pp. 1-8. 90 Ibid., 2. 91 Ibid., 2-8. 187

Madrid

In any case, the group forged ahead with its next project in Madrid. Throughout the spring of 1932 the NCER attempted to get some of its members appointed as delegates to the upcoming Madrid International Telegraphic Conference scheduled to take place in the fall of

1932. This conference usually focused on technical matters concerning shared wavelengths

between nations and interference on the world band, but the NCER saw it as a possibility to show its interest in all aspects of radio as well as to talk with delegates from other nations to further its agenda on an international scale. Perhaps it could ally with other nations to force the hand of the commercialists in a way that would favor the educators, bypassing the Federal Radio

Commission.

Joy Elmer Morgan began a letter writing campaign to the White House attempting to get

Armstrong Perry and Tracy F. Tyler appointed as delegates. The White House, stunned that the

NCER was interested, reminded the Committee that the conference was of a technical nature.

However, Morgan reassured him the group was serious, and eventually won Armstrong Perry an

appointment.92 This exchange illustrated a key problem the NCER faced. The White House did

not want to accede to the Committee’s request for a representative at a technical conference.

because it viewed the NCER discourse as unsuited to technical matters. Also it demonstrated that

the Committee acknowledged the importance of the technical approach in radio policy and endeavored to recast itself in that mold.

The NCER entered the Madrid enterprise with great enthusiasm and pride. In a letter to

NACRE in August of 1932, Tracy Tyler bragged about the NCER’s appointment knowing that

92 Correspondence between Joy Elmer Morgan and W. N. Castle. March 30, 1932 and April 14, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 746. 188

NACRE had not received a seat. 93 The NCER’s belief in the importance of Madrid was evident

in a text box in the June 23, 1932 issue of Education by Radio. In the piece entitled “The Menace

of Madrid” referring to its possible danger for commercial broadcasters, the NCER boasted

“Earlier conferences, naturally enough, were meetings of engineers, commercialists, and military

men. This situation has changed since then. The listening public is the major party at interest

today.”94 Indeed the NCER thought that its presence at Madrid would effect some change or at

least challenge the commercialists present and believed that solely based on its seat that now the listening public was represented.

In actuality, the Armstrong Perry’s experience at Madrid proved disheartening. He

realized almost immediately that he had no power to make important proposals, limited contact

with foreign delegates, and no vote on proposals. First, Perry encountered trouble merely

securing permission to report back to the NCER, but was then allowed if his cables were “used

judiciously with interested persons and organizations if it is not published.”95 Perry was told by one member of the American delegation that “this is a conference to make regulations for operating international communications services. Only the government administrations and the operating companies were directly concerned…the public was not supposed to be represented… because the public always wanted free service and no taxes.”96 In other words, the public was

not privy to the information from the conference nor was it supposed to be represented. Only broadcasting companies and governments were supposedly interested in these matters. Some members of the delegation also warned Perry against disputing anything the American delegation

93 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to Levering Tyson. August 6, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, Folder 881. 94 “The Menace of Madrid,” Education by Radio 2 (June 23, 1932): 80. 95 Excerpts from a letter dated October 3, 1932, from Armstrong Perry at the Madrid Conference. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 43, Folder 838. 96 Ibid. 189

proposed. As Perry relayed to his NCER colleagues “One of the members of our American group told me that anyone who went outside of the delegation to oppose anything an American wanted became persona non grata and was not invited again. Captain Hooper of the Navy transgressed last time and was not permitted to come this time.”97 So not only was Perry’s and the NCER’s

point of view not shared at the conference, it was also not welcomed. The NCER sent Perry to

Madrid to express its views on radio, but if he did so the group would not be invited back. Perry

was trapped. The rules imposed upon him by the American delegation essentially relegated him

to the role of a powerless observer with an honorary presence at the conference. Perry’s

confidential cables to the NCER expressed his powerlessness and frustration while further

cementing the NCER’s belief in the conspiratorial nature of the commercial radio industry.

His experience in Madrid only worsened as the conference progressed. He noticed that

the American delegation ignored proposals “on behalf of education” but could be seen “working and fighting hard to put over the proposals for the RCA group.”98 Perry sent letters of complaint

to Judge E. O. Sykes, a member of the Federal Radio Commission and the delegation, and,

though he promised Perry that he would put the matter before the other delegates, he neglected to

mention it at the conference.99 Obviously Perry had no voice or champion at the conference. He

could not influence any of the proposals which awarded great powers and greater status to

telecommunication companies.100

The Madrid convention was yet another setback for the NCER at elite level

policymaking. Despite the importance of the convention, and the Committee’s interest in it, the

97 Ibid. 98 Excerpts from a letter dated October 12, 1932, from Armstrong Perry at the Madrid Conference. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 43, Folder 838. 99 Ibid. 100 See Confidential Report of Armstrong Perry on the International Radiotelegraphic Conference in Madrid” and “Concerning the Madrid Telecommunications Conference” Excerpts from a letter dated October 3, 1932 from Armstrong Perry at the Madrid Conference. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 43, Folder 838; International Telecommunication Convention: Madrid 1932 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1933). 190

NCER could not manage even to voice its point of view without risking its future access to the

conference. Once again, careful management by the commercialists and the Federal Radio

Commission, the main delegates at the convention, muzzled the NCER, and once again the

Committee would get a lesson in political technologies.

The NCER still had one more hope for success in 1932: the Fess Bill. Fess was an

educator and a supporter of the NCER agenda—so much so that he reintroduced the bill after it

had died in the previous Congress. However, by the Summer of 1932, the Fess Bill seemed stuck

in a holding pattern over Capitol Hill. Senator Couzens had remained true to his word to the

NAB that he would not allow any legislation attacking advertising or the broadcast system in the

72nd Congress. Couzens,the chair of the Interstate Commerce Committee in the Senate, the

Committee that oversaw all radio legislation in that chamber, could table any radio legislation at the committee level. The Fess Bill did not make it out of committee, and, in fact, never received a hearing. Nothing happened for the Fess Bill. The S. 129 report also effectively scuttled the measure; the FRC investigation gave no one in Congress any real reason to urge passage of the

Fess Bill. In addition, the champion of the reallocation measure, Simeon D. Fess, had other important matters on his mind by the summer of 1932. He helped renominate Herbert Hoover as the Republican candidate for President at the New York convention that summer. The NCER could have tried to voice complaints to Fess or the White House over S. 129 or Madrid, but the

NCER’s focus lay elsewhere. The Bonus Expeditionary Force converged upon Washington, D.

C. and Hoover had to deal with the fallout over the armed dispersal of the impoverished veterans of the Great War. The Depression worsened over the course of the year and showed no signs of letting up. The reallocation measure does not even appear in Fess’s own personal records, and 191

his lone biography makes no mention of S. 4 or of his connection with the NCER.101 Simply put,

the NCER had two opportunities to have its voice heard in 1932, but encountered determined

resistance which scuttled it efforts. Moreover, the country’s attention shifted to election politics

and desperate, Depression-weary citizens.

Nineteen Thirty-Two was a daunting year for the reform movement. It began with

promise that included the NCER in elite level policymaking, but its involvement was carefully

managed from start to finish. Sure it was included in these endeavors, but in name only, a

situation akin to political theatre. The Couzens-Dill Resolution, the Madrid Conference, and the

Fess Bill all included the NCER as if it were a key player. The federal government led the

Committee to believe that its point of view mattered and that it would be taken seriously.

However, in each case, the Federal Radio Commission, the commercial radio industry, and

powerful members of Congress cast aside the NCER point of view and limited the Committee’s

participation in the process. In the end, each situation looked as if it was an impartial process

where the government weighted both sides of a disagreement equally, analyzed evidence, and

arrived at a decision.

The year was also a powerful policy lesson in political technology and the centrality of discourse to policymaking. The NCER tried to join the debate, but the discourse used by commercialists and the federal government valued efficiency of operation, technical expertise, and commerce above all other things in radio, and devalued and excluded the NCER perspective in the process. In the process the very regulatory system charged with protecting the public from predatory industrial and corporate interests used the system to isolate the NCER because the regulators and the industry shared the same discourse. The NCER had a voice and equal participation in this debate, but the federal regulators devalued the expertise the NCER offered.

101 Simeon D. Fess papers, Ohio Historical Society; and Nethers, Simeon D. Fess. 192

If the American system of radio was the result of a debate, then it was a carefully managed debate controlled by powerful actors who supported the commercialist side or at least viewed radio from the same perspective.

193

V. EXPANDING HORIZIONS

“The National Committee on Education by Radio…has made substantial progress and has laid the foundation for still further work of importance,” boasted NCER chair, Joy Elmer

Morgan, in his yearly report of activity to the Payne Fund in 1932.1 Despite being rebuffed at every level of activity in Nineteen thirty-two, the NCER seemed upbeat about its past accomplishments and its prospects for the following year. The commercial radio industry and the federal government may have stymied the Committee, but the NCER made important steps in its effort to reform American radio simply by forcing itself into the process. The Committee’s participation had not yet yielded the results it wanted, but it still found reason for hope.

Despite recent setbacks, the new year held promise for the NCER. In 1932, the

Committee lost it reallocation battle in the Senate as the Fess Bill never made it to a hearing and essentially died with the passage of the Couzens-Dill resolution and the 1932 elections. Still, all was not lost, the political landscape once dominated by the great engineer, Herbert Hoover, would change in 1933. Hoover’s inability to lift the country from its economic morass and manage his image—allowing an armed dispersal of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, for example—torpedoed his bid for reelection in November of 1932 and many fellow Republicans in

Congress sunk along with the “man for all emergencies.” The President-elect, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, gave many Americans hope for reform and an end to the Depression. A Democratic ascendancy meant a reordered House and Senate as well. New Congressmen or at least new committee chairs could improve the chances for the NCER to get radio legislation in the upcoming Congress. Except supporters of Prohibition, reformers of all types believed that FDR would be more receptive to their ideas than his predecessor and rallied to him. Of course, FDR,

1 National Committee on Education by Radio, “Memorandum of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio.” September 15, 1932. p. 11. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 194

hoping to garner as much support as possible, tried to encourage their perceptions. During his

early days he even successfully gained the support of national firebrands Huey Long and Father

Coughlin, though in reality he disliked and distrusted both men. But he still danced a clever

political minuet with them to keep supporters of Long and Coughlin while neutralizing the

dangers posed by these popular icons.2 By the close of 1932 and during the early months of

1933, FDR still only gave hints and general statements about his New Deal, allowing him to court all comers who could read their own agendas into FDR’s plans. The NCER was no different. Roosevelt hinted at a New Deal for radio; surely a New Deal implied some kind of change from the American Plan.

By the start of the year, the commercial broadcast industry had tightened its grip on the

radio spectrum as well as the federal regulators thus making the industry a more formidable foe

than it had been when the NCER began operations. The commercialists accelerated a smear

campaign against the Committee led by the NAB attacking NCER proposals and interpretations

while also leveling personal attacks to cast further doubt upon the intentions of the group. The

mass public did not read NAB’s trade publication and main outlet, Broadcasting. Instead, people

in the industry, FRC members, and some members of Congress read it. Therefore, the campaign

might not have tarnished the image of Joy Elmer Morgan and company in the public mind, but

the public had little voice in the radio debate. Rather, the trade paper targeted other people in the

industry to foster unity within the profession, while tugging at the ears of federal policymakers

and regulators involved in radio matters about the radical nature of the NCER. Finally many

Congressmen and especially the new President had used radio as a key outlet in their campaigns.

2 For more on the relationship between FDR and Coughlin and Long see Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest; David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 227-248. 195

During this time the commercial industry built relationships with them and expected some

loyalty in return.

The Great Depression may have been the central focus of the new President and the

Congress, but major radio events also occurred that year. First, FDR had linked the Depression

remedies to radio with his promised New Deal for radio, so the NCER still planned on pursuing

reform legislation. Second, the NCER would focus on the upcoming North American Radio

Conference hoping for better results than it got at Madrid. Finally, the NCER planned to take the radio debate to the public by getting the radio ownership debate adopted as the national debate for high schools and colleges and founding of an American Listeners’ Society. All of these efforts had a chance to succeed and help accomplish the goal of reform. The Committee would continue to do battle with the commercial industry along the same fronts as it had in its previous years while expanding the body of people engaged in the debate. The NCER hoped that the changing political tide at home and abroad combined with greater public engagement would turn the tables on the commercial radio industry. In short the NCER needed to find a way to involve the public in its call for reform while demonstrating that radio reform and economic recovery went hand in hand.

However, the Payne Fund did not share the NCER’s optimism about its past activities

and future plans. The NCER did not even know the extent of Payne Fund directors’

disillusionment with it. In September 1932, while Joy Elmer Morgan was at work preparing his

positive report of the NCER’s activities for 1932, the Payne Fund Board of Directors discussed the possibility of canceling the NCER’s funding because they believed that the NCER had

neither accomplished anything nor pursued a competent course of action.3 Frances Payne Bolton

3 Notes on Meeting of Board of Directors of the Payne Fund Inc. Held September 18, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 1, Folder 7, 2-6. 196

expressed serious reservations about the NCER to the assembled Payne Fund Directors

describing the NCER as “standing out like a sore thumb” and its 15% proposal “impracticable,”

later adding that “I don’t think anybody who has lived through government ownership of the

railroads would trust the Government with anything.”4 Bolton doubted the efficacy of Education by Radio and the NCER’s boast that it generated a great deal of legislative attention to the radio problem quipping, “They [the NCER] of course took the glory for a lot of legislative activity.

They think their bulletin has done that alone. Let them have a little of it, but don’t let them have the sense of having done the whole thing.”5 Other Payne Fund directors added to these

complaints. One director complained that the NCER was “quite arbitrary with their Ph.D. degrees,” and he wanted to appoint a non-academic to the NCER to “bring in anything but the

Ph.D. attitude.”6 Another director expressed his complete disregard for Joy Elmer Morgan,

stating, “I am afraid of Morgan. I think the less that is said the better. I think you can just present

about four things to him that will be right down his alley.”7 One director proposed that the Payne

Fund attempt to steer the NCER through its representative on the NCER, Armstrong Perry, but,

even then, Frances Payne Bolton had reservations about Perry’s ability claiming that “We can

use Perry. We know Perry isn’t a forceful person, that he can’t stand up against Morgan...use

what you can get in the way of people. It may be that after a while you have to can them, but you

circumvent them in the meantime.”8 In short, by late 1932, Payne Fund directors were growing tired of the NCER campaign and was not satisfied by its progress. Further salting this festering wound was the fact that the Payne Fund Directors had a low opinion of the NCER’s Joy Elmer

Morgan and Armstrong Perry.

4 Ibid., 2-4. 5 Ibid., 2. 6 Ibid., 4. 7 Ibid., 5. 8 Ibid. 6. 197

Compounding their disapproval of the NCER’s activities was the Payne Fund Directors’

discovery that they could not revoke the NCER’s funding. The Fund issued the NCER grant in

the form of a contract, and, the Payne Fund Directors learned that if the Payne Fund refused to

provide the funds contractually required of it, then the NCER could sue the Payne Fund for

support.9 Some of the directors urged Bolton to cut the funding preferring the court fight to

extending the life of the NCER. Some believed that the Payne Fund could argue that the NCER

never lived up to its part of the contract because it conducted activities against Payne Fund

wishes, but the Board concluded that such action would be unsuccessful. The Payne Fund would

sponsor the NCER through 1935 according to its original agreement. In the meantime, the Board

resolved that it would do its best to steer the NCER for the remainder of its grant, and encourage

the Committee to push for a major investigation of radio.10

A Sign of Things to Come

The Committee’s 1932 annual report to the Payne Fund reflected its optimism arguing

that the NCER had gained important ground in the battle for reform over the previous two years.

Still, the Committee’s work moved slowly, and Morgan knew that it would need more years of

funding to continue the fight. His report requested additional funding since “the magnitude of

the world-wide economic emergency” meant that the “task which the committee set for itself

cannot be completed by 1935 and that this factor must be taken into account in the plans which

are made for the next two or three years.”11 Morgan’s report was neither an admission of defeat

9 Ibid., 2. 10 Ibid., 2-6. 11 National Committee on Education by Radio, “Memorandum of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio.” September 15, 1932. p. 11. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. p. 3 198 nor a cover of his true feelings. Rather, he was simply trying to provide a realistic timetable for radio reform and believed that the NCER would achieve its ultimate goal.

The entire yearly report reflected a defiant and resilient attitude about the NCER record.

Morgan interpreted as victories all key areas in which the Committee came up short in 1932. The committee believed that the public and educators were joining its ranks philosophically if not physically. The report attributed sluggish radio sales to poor programming and advertising supplied by commercial broadcasters rather than the economic depression that had eroded spending across the nation. The NCER noted that if public demand for its bulletin, Education by

Radio—as measured by its circulation list—was a “fair index” of public interest in the radio problem then it was “growing by leaps and bounds.”12 The implication being that more people were not only interested in matters of radio policy and their effects upon program quality, they were interested in the NCER view of these matters. Morgan certainly had a good point. The

Committee offered the bulletin free of charge and originally had only sent it to policymakers and select educational groups. By 1932, the bulletin had a circulation over 8000, still offered free of charge, but only to people who requested it. However, news about Education by Radio was not all positive. A special agent of the NCER, Eugene Coltrane, while on a tour of the western U.S., noted in his report to the NCER that he had “interviewed a great many persons who have been receiving Education by Radio but admitted they were not reading it but promised to read it in the future.”13 Clearly the newsletter did not receive the wonderful reception that the NCER claimed in its report, but Coltrane’s letter arrived one month after Morgan completed the report to the

12 Ibid. p. 4. 13 Eugene J. Coltrane was hired by the NCER as a special assistant. He mostly was a public face for the Committee touring states and educational broadcast facilities in an attempt to get those stations under NCER influence. Report of Eugene J. Coltrane to the National Committee on Education by Radio, October 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39 Folder 749. 199

Payne Fund so he could not have had this information. Morgan only had circulation numbers,

and they indicated substantial growth of the NCER bulletin.

The Committee also pointed to the success of the service bureau in keeping educational

stations on the air and holding back commercial challenges to educational stations’ frequencies.

The report attributed a drop in commercial challenges of educational frequencies from 21.8 per

month in 1931 to 14.6 in 1932 to the hard work and success of the service bureau. This statement

was perhaps the most unfounded in the report. The only evidence the Committee provided

regarding this fact was simply the statistical drop in challenges. While the drop in challenges

during that first year was significant—and the service bureau certainly helped stations win those challenges—Morgan did not mention that there were fewer educational stations by 1932 and the

reduction in the raw number of challenges also reflected fewer educational stations to challenge.

Nevertheless the Committee took refuge in the fact that there were fewer challenges leveled

against educational stations and the NCER indeed helped many educational stations keep their

licenses. Morgan argued that this positive development was the result of the Committee’s hard

work.14

Despite Frances Payne Bolton’s opposition to the NCER’s legislative campaign and its

Congressional sponsor, Simeon D. Fess, the Committee boasted that its legislative efforts were

succeeding. The Fess Bill died on Capitol Hill twice. It did not receive a hearing at the

committee level and most certainly did not reach the Senate floor for debate. However, the

NCER claimed that it succeeded in its legislative activities despite the death of the Fess Bill

because the measure “did much to arouse discussion” and show “where the opposition is

14 National Committee on Education by Radio, “Memorandum of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio,” September 15, 1932, p. 5. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 200

centered and has helped to consolidate the friends of reform.”15 Morgan also highlighted the

Committee’s role in S. 129—the Senate ordered investigation of commercial broadcasting. The

resolution, Morgan argued, exposed the “biased nature” of the Federal Radio Commission as he

expected, and the biased report was “resented by leading members of Congress.”16 In both cases

Morgan made good points. The Fess Bill scared the commercial industry so much that the NAB began a unity campaign to counter the reform movement if not the Fess Bill in particular. The

Couzens-Dill Resolution investigated radio, and the NCER aided Senator Dill in drafting it. The findings of the investigation may not have favored the NCER, but they exposed the FRC as biased against educational radio stations while catering to commercial radio interests. Recall that the FRC report lauded commercial radio station efforts at providing education on the air—

conducting its survey during National Education Week—while excoriating educational radio

stations themselves. In the end the Committee succeeded in pressing the cause of reform on all

fronts; it may not have achieved reform yet, but it was making progress. In December, three

months after the report to the Payne Fund, Dill would reassure Morgan that “there should be

much stricter regulation on some phases of radio than has heretofore been exercised."17 By this

time, Dill wanted to scuttle the Federal Radio Commission and replace it with a more powerful

regulatory commission that would regulate commercial radio rather than cater to it. Additionally

Dill proposed legislation imposing fees on broadcasters that would be used to financially support

radio regulation.18

15 Ibid. p. 7. 16 Ibid. p. 7. 17 Letter from Senator Clarence C. Dill to Joy Elmer Morgan dated December 20, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 43, Folder 824. 18 Kerry E. Irish, Clarence C. Dill, 143-145. 201

Legislative Activity and Payne Fund Tensions

In its first meeting of the year, the NCER approved a legislative program that included

the reintroduction of the Fess Bill as a top priority.19 Once more the NCER persisted and hoped

to convince either Senator Fess or someone else to sponsor the bill again. This was no small

task. The Committee as well as members of Congress were uncertain about the entire legislative

situation of the country in 1933. FDR and Congress considered economic recovery their top

priority in the United States, and legislators wondered what Roosevelt would propose when he

took office. Many plans and proposals had been circulated during the campaign, but no firm

details were forthcoming. With regard to radio, the NCER realized that no Congressman could

guarantee a revamped Fess Bill would get a hearing or catch FDR’s eye. The Committee

reported to the Payne Fund that it was “too early to form any opinion as to what the attitude of

the new administration is to be.”20 Thus the NCER would have to find a sponsor willing to

incorporate the radio question into an already full legislative schedule.

One target was Senator Wallace White. The Payne Fund had originally suggested White

as the sponsor of the reallocation bill in 1931, and the NCER had heeded the parent organization’s plea. However, White was not receptive to the NCER’s legislative ideas, so it still

worked with Fess. The Payne Fund neglected to press the matter despite reservations about

Fess’s abilities and rapport with the remainder of the Senate.21 However, Senator White refused

to go along as a sponsor for such a scheme by 1933, and despite the many times he declined the

19 Minutes of the Thirteenth Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Washington, D.C., January 16, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 749. 20 Statement of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 21 Letter from Frances Payne Bolton to John H. MacCracken dated October 9, 1931. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 768. 202

duty, Payne Fund officials had to scold the NCER to leave him alone.22 Other Senators and

Representatives, at least ones who sat in the appropriate committees, were equally unenthusiastic

about reintroducing the bill, and the Fess Bill died in 1933 without being proposed in Congress for lack of a sponsor.

The NCER’s problem was that it needed more than just any old member of Congress to

introduce the measure; the NCER needed someone who sat on the Senate Committee on

Interstate Commerce or the House Marine and Fisheries Committee which oversaw radio

legislation in their respective houses and conducted the hearings on proposals. The NCER

needed someone sitting on that committee to help steer the measure through the legislative labyrinth so that it could reach the floor for a vote. The men in Congress who would have sympathized with the NCER and shared its Populist/Progressive perspective did not sit on the appropriate committees. Thus those Congressmen might be useful for a floor vote, but not in this

early phase of legislation.

The “Progressive bloc” in Congress comprised of former Progressives certainly shared

this perspective and included Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, Republican

Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska—Joy Elmer Morgan’s home state—Republican Senator

Gerald Nye of North Dakota, and Republican Senator William Borah of Idaho.23 Wheeler seemed like a perfect target for the NCER. He had run for the Vice-Presidency on the

Progressive ticket in 1924, and by 1933 he was still calling for a “free silver” policy, complaining about Eastern economic domination and its role in the Depression, and offering support to Father Coughlin. All of these factors put him in the same mold as the NCER. Alas, in the 73rd Congress (1933-1934), Wheeler sat on the Committee on Indian Affairs. (Ironically,

22 Letter from S. Howard Evans to Tracy F. Tyler dated February 2, 1934, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 905. 23 Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest, 121. 203

after Congress would make its fateful decision about radio in 1934 with the passage of the

Communications Act of 1934, Wheeler would serve on the Committee on Interstate Commerce

in the 75th Congress (1935-1936).24 George W. Norris, an Ohio farm boy who taught school

while reading the law, also appeared to be a good target. He had been an educator, and he too

shared the fear of Eastern domination. In 1933 and 1934 Norris sat on the Committee on the

Judiciary.25 Nye, the Progressive and former newspaper man from Montana, was not helpful to

the NCER because he sat on the Committee on Public Lands in the 73rd Congress.26 Finally,

Borah, a former “Silver Republican” also spent his career fighting Eastern domination of the

West, but in the 72nd and 73rd Congresses he sat on the Committee on Foreign Relations.27

The NCER courted members of Congress serving on the proper Committees hoping to foster beneficial relationships that would result in successful legislation. Special assistant to the

NCER, Eugene J. Coltrane, drew this assignment, and, over the course of 1933, he became the point man for the NCER in legislative matters. Coltrane first attempted to cultivate a relationship between the NCER with Senator Dill in the wake of his statement that he did not favor government control but believed in stricter regulation of radio. Still, Dill informed Coltrane that he refused to commit in any way to sponsoring an educator on the FRC—a plan that the NCER proposed in 1931 and 1932, and would again propose in 1933. Dill’s resistance to the NCER

24 For more on Burton K. Wheeler see Burton K. Wheeler, Yankee from the West: The Candid, Turbulent Life Story of the Yankee-Born U.S. Senator from Montana (New York: Octagon Books, 1977); and Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, Burton K Wheeler http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=W000330 date last accessed January 1, 2006. 25 Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, George W. Norris, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=N000139 date last accessed January 1, 2006; Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: Persistence of a Progressive, 1913-1933 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971); and George Norris, Fighting Liberal: The Autobiography of George W. Norris (New York: Collier Books, 1961). 26 Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, Gerald Nye, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=N000176 date last accessed January 1, 2006. 27 Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, William Borah, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000634 date last accessed January 1, 2006; Leroy Ashby, The Spearless Leader, Senator Borah and the Progressive Movement in the 1920’s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972); and Marian C. McKenna, Borah. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961). 204

proposal was probably due to his belief that the FRC would be disbanded by legislation he

intended to propose, and, by the time he could secure a post for an educator on the FRC, it would

be either a lame duck commission or extinct.28 He also refused to back the NCER objection to the advertisement of liquors should prohibition be repealed. Finally he reasserted that he would not support any plan for reallocation or government investigation of radio.29 Dill’s response to

the Committee may have seemed unfavorable, but Coltrane viewed him as “somewhat friendly to

our cause,” and he would need “careful cultivation.”30 Dill was on record publicly and privately

as not supporting a single NCER proposal, but he still believed in greater regulation making him

more amenable to the NCER than others Senators and he had worked with the NCER on S. 129.

Besides, Dill’s value to the NCER was rising by 1933; he would be the chair of the critical

Committee on Interstate Commerce in the Senate during the 73rd Congress. Fess had merely sat on that committee in the 72nd. If the NCER could get Dill’s support for legislation, it would stand

a better chance of passage by virtue of Dill’s position.

Coltrane later met with other members of Congress trying to draw them into the NCER

camp. He held meetings with more than thirty members of Congress over the course of January

and February of 1933 and reported that many had “expressed themselves as being interested in a

study of radio broadcasting with a view to bringing about some changes which would improve

the situation.”31 In fact a bill had been prepared by Representative Fulmer of South Carolina to

call for a study of radio that he intended to introduce in the new session of Congress. Coltrane believed the bill would most likely need reintroduction in at least the next three sessions before

28 Kerry E. Irish, Clarence C. Dill, 144-145. 29 Report of an Interview with Senator Dill, January 11, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 40, Folder 774. 30 Ibid. 31 Report of Eugene J. Coltrane, Special Representative, The National Committee on Education by Radio, January and February 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 749. 205

any action could be taken because of Depression related legislative proposals that would receive

priority attention in Congress.32 Coltrane viewed his Congressional lobbying as a success.

“Without a basis of confidence it is practically impossible to make any progress with members of

that body,” Coltrane advised, “for that reason I have sought to make myself available for

information, and not to impose myself or my views upon members of Congress.”33 He believed that this practice resulted in a friendly attitude from members of Congress, and this was essential to developing a strong bond with them. This process was especially important, he noted, in the current climate in which “members of Congress are rather chary about the programs of various national organizations.”34 Essentially Eugene Coltrane tried to build a cordial relationship, and

part of that process meant that the NCER needed to take a more docile approach to Congressmen

to build trust in the Committee and not be seen as “propagandists.”35 Fulmer’s bill was another

positive sign for the NCER. It was an independent project that was not coordinated with the

Committee, but it demonstrated at least some Congressional dissatisfaction with radio.

Coltrane’s methods may have won him cordiality and some trust from Congress, but there was no radio legislation in 1933. Congress had banks to save, a depression to fight, and a new

President with a full legislative agenda which did not include radio.

During this time the NCER experienced some serious tension with the Payne Fund. Some

of the Committee’s methods annoyed the parent organization which attempted to steer the NCER

down a new path. The NCER had run material criticizing the role radio played in the election

campaigns that year prompting a reprimand from the Payne Fund founders Frances Payne Bolton

32 Ibid and Minutes of the Fourteenth Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Washington, D.C., March 6, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 206

and Charles Castle Bolton informing the NCER that its attacks went too far.36 Charles Bolton

was a Congressman from Cleveland, and he used the radio during the campaign, as did his

friends in Congress. The Committee never singled out Bolton or any of his campaign tactics; it

simply attacked all politicians with campaign ads on the radio. The NCER feared that the

commercial industry’s charitable response to politicians during the campaign might lead it to

expect that the politicians who used radio might turn a blind eye to transgressions by the

commercialists. In any case, the Boltons’ admonishment was a continued attempt to make sure

that the NCER would not be a political liability for Chester, and it was also a part of his plan to

keep Payne Fund projects separate from his work in Congress.

Once again, the Ventura Free Press sparked tensions between the NCER and the Payne

Fund. The Ventura reform campaign held the most in common with the NCER, but its fiery rhetoric often brought vicious attacks and criticism upon the Committee and caused many people

to associate the two as co-propagandists. Some NCER members received information that linked

the Ventura campaign to Payne Fund money, but it never found confirmation of this fact. In fact,

the only NCER member to know the real affiliation between the Payne Fund and Ventura was

Armstrong Perry, a Payne Fund employee on loan to the NCER. Tracy F. Tyler, acting on behalf

of the NCER needled the Fund for information, and finally the Payne Fund sternly assured the

Committee that the Payne Fund did not sponsor the Ventura Free Press.37 The Payne Fund did

sponsor the Ventura Free Press, but did not want the radical nature of the paper to be traced back to Chester C. Bolton and possibly tarnish his reputation in Congress. Clearly the Payne Fund and the NCER had a bumpy relationship in late 1932 and 1933.

36 Letter from Frances Payne Bolton and Charles Castle Bolton to the National Committee on Education by Radio dated November 5, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 904. 37 Letter from S. Howard Evans to Tracy F. Tyler dated March 28, 1933, WRHS, Payne und Inc., Box 47, Folder 904. 207

A serious gaffe by the NCER further angered the Payne Fund. In an attempt to expose the

commercialists’ weak commitment to educational programs sans advertising, the NCER ran an

article in Education by Radio reporting that the Damrosch Hour had narrowly escaped cancellation that year. The Damrosch Hour was a one hour program completely funded by NBC that educated listeners about classical music, and the network used the program as an example of the fine education available on commercial radio. The Damrosh Hour’s content was not in question; all sides including the NCER believed it to be a fine educational program. NBC’s lack of commitment to the program was the issue here. The NCER learned of the possible cancellation in a confidential and used it a centerpiece for its Damrosch article.38 While the

Payne Fund did not mind that the NCER attacked NBC, it did object to the publication of its confidential memos. The Payne Fund quickly dispatched a letter to the Committee admonishing

it for reprinting a confidential memo and declaring that there were “no excuses” for this

behavior.39 Clearly, the NCER and its sponsor were not enjoying a smooth relationship, and the

NCER had seriously jeopardized any trust between the two organizations with its methods.

For the rest of 1933 the Payne Fund would try to get the NCER to back off any legislative

proposals—as it had since late 1931—and to serve as an information clearinghouse in order to

prevent people from accusing the NCER of being a propaganda group.40 This took the form of

convincing the Committee to allow outsiders and even some opponents in the radio battle space

in Education by Radio since “nothing would take your bulletin out of the class of a propaganda

sheet…so much as putting the bulletin at the disposal of these supposedly antagonistic forces.”41

38 “NBC Changes Policy,” Education by Radio 3 (April 27, 1933): 21. 39 Letter from Crandall to Tracy F. Tyler dated May 4, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 904. 40 Letter from S. Howard Evans to Tracy F. Tyler dated July 21, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 905. 41 Ibid. 208

This appeal was mostly unsuccessful. The only NCER antagonists allowed to publish in

Education by Radio were Levering Tyson and FRC commissioner Harold Lafount, and their

articles appeared mainly to act as supplemental materials for the National University Extension

Association sponsored debate on radio in high schools and colleges that year.42 Instead of Tyson

and LaFount offering alternatives or disputing NCER claims, their articles discussed simple facts

about on-air teaching pedagogy or the duties of the Federal Radio Commission.

Another part of the Payne Fund’s attempt to tame the NCER campaign concerned the

Committee’s attacks on the possibility of liquor advertising should prohibition be lifted under the

incoming Roosevelt administration. The NCER ran an article attacking liquor commercials in

January 1933.43 Afterward the Payne Fund tried to convince the Committee that such a campaign

would alienate many of its supporters because many people interested in radio might be alienated

and essentially view the NCER as conducting a “general Puritanical crusade on everything.”44

Finally the NCER received the worst possible news from the Payne Fund in 1933; it cut the

Committee’s budget by 25% due to financial problems at the Payne Fund resulting from the

Depression.45 Another contributing factor may well have been Payne Fund dissatisfaction with

the Committee, and its refusal to take direction.

The North American Radio Conference

A more promising forum for the Committee was the North American Radio Conference

held in Mexico City. From July through September of 1933 the U.S. participated in the North

42 Harold Lafount, “Broadcasting in the United States,” Education by Radio 3 (September 28, 1933): 45; and Levering Tyson, “Program Experimentation of the Council,” Education by Radio 3 (October 26, 1933): 50. 43 “Shall Radio be Used for Liquor Propaganda?” Education by Radio 3 (January 19, 1933): 5-7. 44 Letter from S. Howard Evans to Tracy F. Tyler dated January 21, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 904. 45 Letter from Frances Payne Bolton and Crandall to Joy Elmer Morgan dated July 7, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 209

American Radio Conference with the goal of working out an agreement with Canada and Mexico

to solve interference problems and frequency allocations for each country. The U.S. had already

signed agreements with Canada concerning radio allocations in the past, but it had not signed a radio treaty with Mexico or other Latin American nations. This fact alone made the conference much more important than the Madrid Conference the previous year, but the conference was also important because these nations used airspace that more directly interfered with U.S. frequencies. Getting an agreement in the hemisphere would help clear more frequency interference from the dial. While the Madrid Conference was important on a broad level, the

Mexico Conference covered more pressing and immediate technical concerns for the United

States and its radio stations. The allocations discussed were amongst neighboring countries which had no general agreement yet, and any agreement made would almost certainly mean that the U.S. would need to reallocate frequencies to comply.U.S. participation in the Conference was also an important component of the Roosevelt administration’s Good Neighbor Policy with Latin

America.46 The U.S. itself did not call the conference. Rather, the Mexican government initiated

the meeting and hosted the talks.

Once again the NCER took part in an international radio conference designed to settle

frequency and allocation disputes between nations. The consideration the federal government

had given to the Committee that allowed it to participate in the Madrid Conference still applied, so it was able to participate in the Mexican Conference. Also, the NCER earned an invitation because Perry kept quiet in Madrid, withholding many of his criticisms. This time the NCER prepared itself better for the Conference. The Committee hired an engineer, T. A. M. Craven, to help represent it at the U.S. strategy meetings before the Conference. This way, the Committee

46 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933,” The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two, The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), 14. See the rest of this volume for Roosevelt’s statements stressing his Good Neighbor Policy. 210

could not be simply cast aside as an irrelevant human interest group delving into purely technical

matters; it aimed to present an image of professionalism as understood by most people by 1933.

In fact, all parties at the pre-conference meeting—the government, the military, the

commercialists, and, of course, the NCER—all respected Craven and his abilities. In fact

Craven’s work at these meetings stood out as extremely diplomatic and impartial, but his

diplomacy emphasized underlying fissures separating the parties involved.47 In fact Craven

reported to the NCER that he “purposely avoided advocating the special needs of education and

have directed my efforts solely to securing an engineering basis of allocation.”48 Craven, like

Coltrane, was attempting to bottle the NCER acid and to work with other radio men diplomatically, even if that meant NCER positions were not voiced at meetings.

The pre-Conference planning meetings were abject failures that did not produce a

coherent strategy for the Conference. The planning stage failed because the groups called to the

meetings had different ideas about the goals of the Conference and were generally unwilling to

make any kind of compromise so that the U.S. would have a coherent plan and strategy. The

planners knew that Mexico would demand several clear channel frequencies and other

frequencies that would require the U.S. to vacate them. In other words, the U.S., already short of

space in the radio spectrum, would have to give some up. This meant another possible series of

reallocations. Even worse for the U.S. was the fact that the Mexican government had invited

other Latin American nations to attend and participate in the meeting. These nations would also

demand frequencies occupied by U.S. stations and require their surrender. In fact the best chance

47 Statement of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Submitted to the Payne Fund by the National Committee on Education by Radio, April 4, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. p. 4. 48 Confidential Report of T. A. M. Craven, April 22, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. p. 3. 211

for the United States to leave the Conference with its frequencies intact was to find a way to

make it collapse without any resolutions passing.

This possibility frightened the commercial broadcasters, who advocated a three pronged

solution. First, the commercialists demanded that the only nations allowed to vote at the

Conference be Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Their chief fear was that the small nations

or “Little Entente” invited to the Conference—whom the NAB described as “virtual nonentities

in the radio picture”—“could control all issues if they voted together.”49 Simply put, the commercial interests did not want to surrender any frequencies especially powerful cleared channels, and they believed that if small nations were able to vote, they would build a coalition that would wrestle away American spectrum for very small populations. The NAB argued that the Latin American nations had populations too small to justify use of cleared channels whereas the U.S. needed them to serve its population. All cleared channels in the United States were occupied by the major networks. If another country took one of those channels, it would immediately scuttle an entire network. However a report that the representatives from the smaller nations might attend only as observers assuaged the NAB’s fear.50 Lastly, the NAB demanded

that the section of spectrum designated for broadcast be widened arguing that doing so made

perfect engineering sense and would help meet the wave demands of other nations without

requiring a massive reallocation of extant frequencies. Thus current stations did not need to

worry, and broadcast hopefuls in Mexico and other Latin American nations would gain new

access to broadcasting.51 Of course the NAB solution was self-interested, but it did make some

solid engineering sense. Cuba, for example, demanded a cleared channel, but Cuba was too small

49 “Wave Meet Slated July 10,” Broadcasting 4 no. 12 (June 1, 1933): 8, 34; and “U.S. Delegation to Wave Parley Completed, Policy Undecided,” Broadcasting 4 no. 13 (June 15, 1933): 12. 50 “U.S. Delegation to Wave Parley Completed, Policy Undecided,” Broadcasting 4 no. 13 (June 15, 1933): 12. 51 Confidential Report of T. A. M. Craven, April 22, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 212

to warrant using a clear channel station to cover all of it.52 However, this proposal attempting to

preserve American broadcasting alienated another group at the pre-Conference meetings: the

“mobile group.”

The “mobile group” as it was called represented the demands and needs of other radio

users: ship-to-shore communications, wireless telegraphy, and the military. The NAB proposal to

widen the band would cut into space then allocated for the “mobile group.” Despite NAB claims

that such an expansion would not cause interference with mobile applications, the mobile group

disagreed. As a counter to the mobile argument, the NAB attempted to show that the only reason

for interference would be outdated equipment, placing blame for interference squarely on mobile users themselves.53 The objections of the mobile group to broadening the available spectrum for

broadcast pitted it against the commercialists and neither side would budge. This matter was further complicated by the government position to protect American interests and also carry out the Good Neighbor policy. The Conference Committee reached an impasse.

It was Craven who actually attempted to break the deadlock while representing the

NCER. This move was critical because it indicated that the NCER was capable of civil

participation in such matters. Second Craven’s proposal illustrated that the NCER backed sound

engineering principles. Most importantly, Craven’s proposal demonstrated deft maneuvering by

the Committee at an elite level of policy-making. In this case the NCER and the NAB shared a

common interest, and Craven actually agreed to a large extent with the NAB and commercialists.

This kind of cooperation was not something he cleared with Morgan ahead of time, but it still made practical sense for the Committee. Any kind of frequency surrender at the Conference

52 A clear channel station would blanket an area from roughly New York City to the Mississippi River and even beyond. 53 “Radio Industry Looks to Mexico City,” Broadcasting 5 no. 1 (July 1, 1933): 9; Confidential Report of T. A. M. Craven, April 22, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 213

would mean that even less space would be available for educational radio. A widening of the

band would make more space available to other nations and the U.S., he believed, making it

possible for educational stations to fight for space on the expanded spectrum. To solve the

standoff, Craven proposed a compromise that would open less space for broadcasting than the

NAB had demanded. This move, he hoped, would satisfy the other nations’ and American needs,

pacify the NAB, and allay the fears of interference held by the mobile group. It would also show

some good faith toward the other nations and hopefully advance Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy. Unfortunately, the Craven compromise did not convince the mobile group, and the Crave proposal did not pass. However, as Joy Elmer Morgan reported to the Payne Fund, Craven’s actions drew the NCER “closer to the Federal Radio Commission,” and the Committee was

“commended for its vision in lending the technical assistance of Commander Craven to the

American group.”54 The compromise may have failed, but it helped the NCER bridge differences with other radio interests involved in the meeting. However, in the end, the Conference

Committee broke camp for Mexico City without having reached internal consensus or agreement on a policy proposal.55

Any goodwill that may have been generated between the commercialists, the

government, and the NCER due to Craven’s work quickly eroded as the Conference began. By

the end of the Mexican Conference the NCER suffered bitter attacks again at the hands of the

commercialists. Craven’s involvement in the Conference ended with the pre-Conference

meetings; Armstrong Perry, the NCER Director of the Service Bureau, represented the NCER at

54 Statement of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Submitted to the Payne Fund by the National Committee on Education by Radio, April 4, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. p. 4. 55 For a full account of the meetings see Confidential Report of T. A. M. Craven, April 22, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750; “Radio Industry Looks to Mexico City,” Broadcasting 5 no.1 (July 1, 1933): 9; and A Supplementary Report Covering the Activities in Mexico City of Its Counsel, Submitted to the National Committee on Education by Radio, September 6, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 214

the Conference itself. This move was probably corrosive; Perry was not an engineer, and he

lacked Craven’s diplomatic skill. However, Perry had been the NCER’s international face and

had built connections with radio heads around the world in his world trip of late 1931 and

presence at the Madrid Conference the previous year. Perry also better represented the less

technical complaints of the NCER than Craven, and this meant that he would actively promote

the NCER agenda as he did in Madrid in 1932 and invite the same treatment. First, he was shut

out of the rail car carrying the delegation to the Conference despite having a reservation. The

railroad later told him that he needed to travel on a different car because the official car was for

government officials only, but Perry later observed that commercial radio representatives

occupied that car as well. Any conferences held in that car let alone informal parleys were barred

to Perry, and once again the NCER found itself permitted to observe policy-making at the elite

level without being allowed to participate actively.56

The NCER’s exclusion became even more pronounced at the conference itself. Perry, as

an observer but not an official delegate was barred from attending most sessions of the

Conference. However, he learned that U.S. demands angered the Latin American delegations and

threatened to scuttle the Conference. Hoping to better inform the Latin American representatives

about American commercialism, Perry sent financial information about radio broadcasting in

different countries and NCER materials to all Latin American delegations. Later, individual

delegates from Latin American nations wanted to speak with him concerning this material. The

material itself was innocuous; Perry merely sent them his reports of his world survey conducted in 1931. However, Perry’s actions infuriated members of the American delegation who accused

Perry of “dealing with the enemy,” and ruining the American position at the Conference.57 He

56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 2-3. 215

further complicated matters by telling Latin American delegates that only 90 channels were needed by the United States and even fewer channels if the U.S. changed power ratings and locations.58 With these actions, Perry further alienated other members of the American

delegation. His statement on America’s frequency needs disagreed with Craven’s findings, and

his proposal would have also cost educational stations. If the Conference agreed on the proposal,

the U.S. would have needed to vacate many channels and made it more difficult for educational

stations on the air to survive. Perry did note that the “Latin Americans expressed appreciation of

the attitude of the National Committee in exchanging information.”59 Unfortunately, Perry did

not need to convince those nations of the merits of his cause; these countries were prepared to

accuse the U.S. of hoarding the radio band. The groups Perry most needed to convince now held

him in the utmost contempt because he appeared to be a traitor to U.S. interests.

The Mexican Conference broke down by August of 1933 without any agreement, and

Perry’s ill-advised actions soon became the scapegoat for the Conference’s failure. The NAB

immediately capitalized on Perry’s blunder. It blamed the collapse of the conference on the

demands of Latin American nations who called for 43 of the 96 channels used by the United

States. But this was a proximate cause for failure. It laid the ultimate cause at the doorstep of

Perry and the NCER. The NAB railed against Perry for distributing materials to “impress upon

the Latin countries that the United States had more frequencies than it needs,” and those

materials were “heard everywhere as boomerangs to whatever the American delegation

proposed.”60 Even worse for the NCER, a well respected radio lawyer attacked Perry for giving

“aid and comfort” to the enemy, and one editorial questioned his loyalty for derailing a mission

58 Ibid., 3. 59 Ibid., 3. 60 Sol Taishoff, “Mexico’s Demands Break Up Wave Parley: Reallocation in U.S. Postponed as Status Quo is Reatined; Future Diplomatic Pact Feared; Perry Rapped,” Broadcasting 5 no. 4 (August 15, 1933): 5. 216

called for by President Roosevelt and called for “a committee of Congress [to] inquire into his

activities at Mexico City.”61 These attacks certainly hurt the NCER at least among policymakers and the commercial industry because Perry appeared to be working against his own government and President Roosevelt.

The NAB also attacked the NCER because it feared that with the failure of the Mexican

Conference, diplomats would solve the Pan-American radio question and the radio industry

would not be able to participate. The NAB reported secret meetings between the American

delegation and the Mexican delegation, and feared these were preliminary discussions to arrange

a diplomatic solution.62 NAB fears were not unjustified. President Roosevelt announced that

“though not on the agenda [of the meeting], it is probable that the question of radio communications will be taken up,” at the Conference of American States in Montevideo in

December of 1933.63 Perhaps American broadcasting would become a casualty of the Good

Neighbor policy. A discussion of broadcasting was held at the Montevideo Conference, but the

attendees did not reach any major decisions, eliminating any international allocation threat to the

commercialists. In fact the commercialists soon realized that Perry’s blunder probably benefited

them, since the delegation reached no agreement and therefore no channels were forfeited.64

Also it called for time to allow the Mexican government to normalize its own radio problems, with the help of the American commercial industry, before calling an international conference.

This would put the commercial industry in a position of advantage at any later conference if it

61 Paul M. Segal, “Mexican Conference—An Evaluation,” Broadcasting 5 no. 4 (August 15, 1933): 6, 40, 44; and “Failure in Mexico,” Broadcasting 5 no. 4 (August 15, 1933): 18. 62 Sol Taishoff, “Mexico’s Demands Break Up Wave Parley,” 5. 63 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “White House Statement of the Conference of American States in Montevideo—A Practical Expression of the Good-Neighbor Policy. November 9, 1933,” The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two, The Year of Crisis, 1933, 463. 64 James W. Baldwin, “Moratorium on Radio Conferences?” Broadcasting 5 no. 6 (September 15, 1933): 14, 30. 217

were able to gain influence in the Mexican radio system.65 In the end, the Mexican Conference

may not have produced any international agreements or solutions, but the industry was able to

keep its frequencies and publicly convict the NCER in the process.

Meanwhile the NCER, as usual, had to execute damage control. In an attempt to discredit

the NAB campaign against Perry and the NCER, Tracy F. Tyler sent a letter to all radio station

managers in the United States accusing the NAB of spreading misinformation about the

Committee’s role in the Conference.66 Armstrong Perry’s report of the Conference in Education by Radio also attempted to shift any blame from himself and the NCER by pinning the failure of the Conference on greedy commercialists, secret meetings, and network influence. He highlighted Craven’s pre-Conference work and mentioned that sharing information with a Latin

American country should not be considered dealing with an enemy especially under the Good

Neighbor Policy.67 Perry’s defense made little impact. Most station managers receiving the letter

were NAB members inclined to blame Perry anyway. In the eyes of the radio world, the NCER

and Armstrong Perry were dangerous and traitorous propagandists.

In the end the Committee’s participation in the North American Radio Conference did

more to damage its reputation and harm its reform cause than if it had not participated at all. First

it counteracted any positive gains by Craven’s able representation before the Conference by

alienating the American delegation. The information Perry gave to the Latin American nations

simply served as ammunition to use against the American delegation demands for widening the

spectrum and non-transfer of channels. This worked against reformers’ wishes because only a

preservation of current channels or an increase in their number would have helped the educators;

65 Ibid., 14, 30. 66 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to all station managers, October 13, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 67 Armstrong Perry, “Conference Increases International Distrust,” Education by Radio 3 (September 28, 1933): 45- 47. 218

a shrinking band meant that already scarce space on the dial would become even more scarce

possibly increasing challenges to commercial frequencies. Craven understood that point; Perry

did not. Also his attempt at diplomacy derailed a conference that could have subjected some

commercial operations to reallocation. If there had been a Conference resolution, it would have

awarded frequencies to other countries requiring some American commercial stations to forfeit

theirs. Therefore he only helped the entrenched interests.

New Directions: The American Listeners Society

Aside from the NCER’s legislative and conference activity, the Committee expanded its

operations in 1933 by trying to involve the general public in the radio debate. First, in its meeting

in November of 1932, Joy Elmer Morgan and John MacCracken proposed an organization called

the American Listeners Society. The ALS would be a national group with chapters comprised of

ordinary people committed to “the use of radio…for the welfare of home, school, and

community life.”68 Essentially the group would have a structure similar to the National Congress

of Parents and Teachers. So, like the PTA, the ALS would function as a grassroots structure that

exercised power on the local as well as national level, exerting pressure on commercialists

through people who could not be condemned as pedagogues or elitists. The ALS would have a

seven point program which included publishing a regular newsletter, encouraging research,

developing a radio broadcast institute for educational station personnel, developing an

educational broadcasting library, creating listener defined programming, and pursuing legislative

action.69

68 Minutes of the Twelfth Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Washington, D.C., November 12, 1932. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 749. 69 Ibid. 219

In fact the ALS was everything the NCER was not in terms of image. However, this did not mean that the NCER would take a backseat in the movement or be subsumed by the ALS.

The NCER created the group and selected its first director, NCER chair Joy Elmer Morgan, and membership was allowed only through invitation and payment of dues. Therefore Morgan could easily coordinate activity between the Committee and the ALS and steer the direction of both organizations. The NCER would be the puppeteer pulling the strings of this new organization and subsidizing it operations.70 The idea of public involvement was a new and promising direction for the Committee.

The American Listeners Society was a beleaguered organization from the start. The announcement of the ALS attracted the criticism of the commercialists who saw the group as nothing more than a puppet organization that would help fund the NCER after its Payne Fund grant terminated in 1935. Simultaneously, the commercialists argued that the NCER would use the ALS to prove to the Payne Fund that the NCER was worthy of its current endowment. “For a new endowment,” Broadcasting magazine argued, “it must show results of a constructive nature.”71 Of course the implication in this argument was that the NCER had not accomplished anything constructive in its past endeavors, and the ALS was a last-ditch effort to put it back in the good graces of the Payne Fund. In fact, the commercialists saw the establishment of the ALS as the NCER’s admission of its “failure of its plan to break down the existing system of broadcasting in this country.”72 The organization also suffered from a lack of publicity; the

Committee did not advertise the ALS the way that it had promoted itself in its early years, and,

70 Ibid. 71 “Morgan Committee Starts New Scheme,” Broadcasting 4 no. 7 (April 1, 1933): 33. 72 Ibid., 33. 220

while it did enroll some members, it never got off the ground in any substantial way.73 Of

course, the NCER had a smaller budget by this time, and it had to split funds between its own

operations and the ALS while contending with the Payne Fund budget cut. Also, since

enrollment was by invitation only, the organization was populated with people generally

sympathetic to the NCER already; it never reached out to a wider audience.74

New Directions: National Debate

The Committee’s other attempt to include the public in the radio debate involved the

National University Extension Organization. The NUEA sponsored a yearly national debate

contest for high school students, and the NCER successfully lobbied the NUEA make

broadcasting the focus. The idea originated from T. M. Beaird, the chair of the debate committee

of the NUEA, who reported that, when polled, more students and teachers requested a debate

question concerning the federal control of radio.75 Since the NUEA was a member organization

of the NCER, this was a rare case where the Committee possessed the proper connections to

achieve one of its goals.

The actual debate question presented to students, “Resolved: That the United States

should adopt the essential features of the British system radio control and operation,” posed

some problems for the NCER—it never officially endorsed that the U.S. adopt the BBC model of

broadcasting and often came under fire because commercialists already accused the NCER of

endorsing such a model—but the adoption of the question was indeed a positive development for

73 Minutes of the First Meeting of the American Listeners Society. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box39, Folder 749; Minutes of the Second Meeting of the American Listeners Society. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 74 Constitution of the American Listeners Society. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 913. 75 Meeting of the Committee on Debate Materials and Interstate Cooperation of the National University Extension Association. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 49, Folder 749. 221

the Committee.76 First it brought the radio question into the homes and classrooms of many high

school students, and thus exposed more common folk to radio issues. These people had not been

involved in the debate as such, and, by involving them, the NCER attempt to summon broader

support and engage the public. Many of these people had not been exposed to alternative

organizations of radio. Many were unaware of the different systems in Europe and elsewhere. In

fact, few knew that radio was controversial. Many of the people involved happily listened to the

material broadcast by the commercial outlets, and maybe a few had complaints which they

voiced to the stations themselves, but fewer voiced their opinions to a Congressman.

The debate was also important for the NCER because the Committee would supply a

good deal of the research materials. It provided debate handbooks and ran a variety of articles

related to the debate topic in Education by Radio throughout the remainder of the year.77 The

NCER had always run favorable articles concerning the BBC system and other foreign broadcast systems, but in 1933 it carried more features on this topic than ever before, including articles such as “British Approve Present Radio,” “Opposes Radio Advertising,” “British are Satisfied,” and “British Adult Education.”78 In addition to the more robust coverage of the BBC system in

the new issues, interested parties could also obtain and peruse old issues of the newsletter

provided to school libraries to find more information on the topic. Making these materials

available to the public encouraged more educators and other people to read the NCER

newsletter. Perhaps the debate could mobilize more concerned citizens and do so under the

76 “1933-34 Debate Topic,” Education by Radio 3 (April 27, 1933): 24. 77 See all of Volume 3 of Education by Radio. 78 Education by Radio. 3 (March-August 1933): 20, 22, 30, 35, 40, 42; and Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to Levering Tyson dated August 7, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 45, folder 887. 222 direction of the NCER. In short, this deft move by the NCER exposed a number of people who were not part of these elite level campaigns to the radio question.79

The NCER celebrated this promising development in 1933. The Committee had engineered a series of national debates that had the potential to provide the Committee with a wide audience in terms of class background and location. Perhaps the greatest advantage the

NCER held in this situation was that it was controlling the debate in a realm where its enemies had little influence. Finally the Committee found a forum in which its expertise—education— presented it with better connections than the broadcasters. The NUEA was an educational organization that also had a representative, J. O. Keller, in the NCER. The Committee could manage this debate by virtue of its profession the way that the commercialists manipulate technical radio matters within their professional domain.

The NCER also took heart in the greater than expected participation in the debate as well as the serious interest students and teachers had in the topic. The NUEA reported that this debate question was the most popular ever selected among 1500 colleges and 6000 high schools in 33 states. “More copies of the 1933-34 official debate handbook have been ordered than in any year since the work has been organized,” touted one article in Education by Radio.80 the NCER interpreted the demand for the official handbook—the one created and published by the NUEA and filled with materials from the NCER—as evidence of wide dissatisfaction with the American

Plan of radio. Furthering this belief was the fact that the NCER had “letters pouring in” from

“highschool [sic] and college students and members of faculties…business men [sic], housewives, and other public spirited and thoughtful individuals” which led the NCER observe

79 “1933-34 Debate Topic,” 24; “Radio Question Popular,” Education by Radio 3 (June 22, 1933): 28. 80 “Radio Question Popular,”28; and “Debate Handbooks in Demand,” Education by Radio 3 (August 31, 1933): 44. 223

the “keen interest which the 1933 debate question is arousing.”81 The debate was now, in the minds of the NCER, creating a shockwave of interest among all kinds of people, attracting it hoped, a wider audience outside of educators. Also demonstrating interest is the fact that schools could have easily bowed out if they wished, and clearly a swarm of letters requesting information from people not directly involved in the debate signaled widespread interest in the topic. For the first time in the short history of the National Committee on Education by Radio, it seemed poised to assume a commanding position or at least a position of strength, taking an offensive stance rather than the defensive one provoked by the NACRE or the NAB.

But once again, the National Association of Broadcasters found and exploited

weaknesses in the Committee’s participation in the debate. The NAB reminded its audience that

the NCER perspective did not represent the opinions of all professional educators as evidenced

by the disagreement between the NACRE and the NCER. The NAB attacked the official

handbooks distributed by the NUEA. “Though its editors undoubtedly have been sincere in their

efforts,” concluded a reviewer in Broadcasting, “the resulting product is by no means a balanced

and impartial analysis of both sides of the question.”82 The Handbook lacked any NAB

material—including readily available material such as proceedings from its annual meetings and

articles from Broadcasting. The commercialists also took issue with the NCER’s “official

analysis” that legal costs were the bulk of U.S. radio expenditures, American programs were

inferior, radio operators discriminated against certain political parties, and stations offering the

best programming were losing the most money.83 For the first time in the fight for radio control,

the radio profession as represented by the NAB and commercialists were shut out. With no

81 “Radio Debate Creates Interest,” Education by Radio 3 (November 23, 1933): 53; and Meeting of the Committee on Debate Materials and Interstate Cooperation of the National University Extension Association. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 49, Folder 749. 82 “U.S. vs. British Radio Plan Discussed in Handbooks,” Broadcasting 5 no. 7 (October 1, 1933): 27. 83 Ibid., 27. 224

control or influence over the mechanisms of the debate, they found themselves occupying the

position oft relegated to the reformers. The best that the commercialists could do was simply to

attack the information as biased. They made sure not to attack the debates themselves or the editors of the Handbooks, knowing that such an approach might have undermined the NAB’s credibility. Such attacks could have cast doubts upon the NAB, and it therefore attempted to take a more academic approach to the whole matter.

In response to the NCER salvo the NAB leveled its strongest public attacks to date on the

Committee. In an editorial it described the NCER as a “clique” of a “few zealots who want to

justify the jobs they are holding.”84 The commercialists reveled in how “bitter the educators,

with all their claims of liberalism, can get toward one another,” and ridiculed the NCER for

being “manifestly jealous of the success . . . achieved by the National Advisory Council [the

educational group working with the commercial industry].”85 Again the NAB attempted to show

that the NCER was neither a mainstream educational group, nor a professionally responsible

group like the NACRE.

The debate question itself also became a liability for the NCER. One of the most frequent

charges leveled against the Committee was that it desired to implement the BBC system, or, at

least, it wished to use a foreign model as the basis for American broadcasting. Officially, the

Committee expressed approval of such a system in the United States. However Armstrong

Perry’s tour of European broadcast facilities in 1931 and his subsequent reports published in

Education by Radio and read into the minutes of Congress certainly gave many people the

impression that the NCER backed some sort of European arrangement for American Radio.

Unfortunately for the NCER, at the moment that it was finally getting the radio question debated

84 “When Educators Differ,” Broadcasting 4 no. 11 9June 1, 1933): 20. 85 Ibid., 20. 225 on a large scale, the question focused less on the American problem, than on the British system of broadcasting.

The NAB capitalized on this situation, highlighting and challenging the NCER for lauding foreign broadcast arrangements, especially the BBC. First the NAB demonstrated the fragile nature of broadcasting when it was in government hands and the ease with which the spectrum could be used to stifle free speech and promote other “un-American” practices. The

NAB’s most powerful expose ran in May, 1933 detailing the Nazi takeover of German broadcasting earlier in the year. It described the Nazi use of German broadcasting frequencies to run propaganda during the national elections. The German broadcasting system, the Reichs-

Rundfunk-Gelleschaft (RRG), had been used for Nazi electioneering. The only programs available to Germans were live coverage of the torchlight rallies, pro-Hitler speeches, the opening session of the new Reichstag, Hitler’s addresses, and state opera presentations.86 The

NAB article also detailed the new German broadcast programming policy which banned jazz because it was “nigger” music and promoted “plays and concerts devoted entirely to national events and to past Prussian history.”87 German radio programs according to Goebbels, now the head of the Ministry for the enlightenment of the People and Propaganda and thus the RRG, stressed “he would do his utmost to infuse the national culture spirit into broadcasting, and to eliminate…all those who did not work with that end in view.”88 The Nazi party swiftly replaced many formerly prominent German broadcast officials because they were Jewish. The Nazis sent

Herr Schaffer, former Chief Engineer and a Jew “on leave; he committed suicide a few days later…and it is generally believed that further dismissals are yet to follow.”89 The most

86 “German Revolution and Broadcasting,” Broadcasting 4 no. 9 (May 1, 1933): 11. 87 Ibid., 11. 88 Joseph Goebbels quoted in Ibid., 11. 89 Ibid., 11. 226 disturbing staff change to the outside broadcasters was the resignation of Dr. Kurt Magnus, the former Managing Director of the RRG. Magnus left because “the present revolution in Germany has done away with the old idea that broadcasting should or might be an unpolitical instrument of entertainment and education…or might be used as an open for all points of view, political or otherwise.”90 The BBC was not immune to these attacks either. The NAB printed reports of the

BBC as being “shy of politics,” giving listeners “a positive minimum of British public affairs talks.”91

The Nazi expose and the attack on the BBC served several purposes for the NAB. Clearly these were cases of a radio system operated by the government—supposedly for the public good—easily corrupted by a new regime. The abuses that the NAB listed were meant not only to lament the German situation but also to serve as a warning to people who might endorse such ideas in the United States. Radio by the American Plan may have aired advertising, but it never broadcast the political propaganda of only one party over all channels or categorically disallowed political speech. The NCER often referred to its plan as a way to guarantee free speech, and this was a case of the NAB demonstrating that government ownership led to un-American practices and censorship. The article also attacked the ease with which radio experts—supposed non- partisans—were summarily fired and ousted in other ways only to be replaced by propagandists.

Also the lamentations over the Nazi use of the RRG during the elections served to remind the reader of the recent role radio played during the 1932 campaign in the United States. Many commentators and candidates praised the open and free coverage provided by the commercial broadcast industry. The article was a reprint from the April issue of World-Radio, a BBC publication. Not only did this news eat away at some of the Committee’s public stances, it also

90 Dr. Kurt Magnus quoted in Ibid., 11. 91 William Hard, “Hail Hitler or Hail U.S.A.?” Broadcasting 5 no. 3 (September 1, 1933): 9. 227

came from a source that the NCER highly respected. A little more than one year earlier,

Armstrong Perry favorably described the German radio system, and now that favorable review,

despite being made before the Nazi ascendancy, came back to haunt the NCER. One of the

systems it praised was now a propaganda mill that ousted respected radio officials and spewed

fascist hatred; and the other model system seemed to be stifling political speech.

The NAB campaign to characterize the NCER as an advocate of the BBC had mixed

results. There is no evidence to prove that the NAB succeeded in convincing the mass public or

policymakers that the NCER was supporting a BBC system. The Committee’s past statements

had already somewhat linked it to supporting a BBC-like system. All the NAB did was to paint basically the NCER as advocating a foreign, “un-American” system. The notion was that any government controlled broadcast system would automatically abuse its authority over free speech. One loyal NCER ally had already associated the NCER with the BBC system. In a letter to the Committee, Mary Langworthy, of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, attached a newspaper clipping describing the fight between the BBC and Winston Churchill. The BBC denied Churchill access to speak on the air because he disagreed with the then current British policy on the question of Indian independence. He was leading a fight to get independent political speakers allowed time on the air and not just official party leaders in agreement with

British policy. Langworthy also noted that the article “illustrates one of my chief objections to

your preference of government control.”92 The attached article did not even question the

NCER’s intentions; Langworthy automatically assumed that the NCER desired a British arrangement in the United States. Tyler responded attempting to explain that such practices were

92 Letter from Mrs. B. F.(Mary) Langworthy, National Congress of Parents and Teachers to Tracy F. Tyler dated October 4, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 46, Folder 884. 228

a uniquely British practice and would not happen in the United States.93 Further complicating

matters, Tracy F. Tyler made no real effort to distance the NCER from any pro-BBC stance, and

did little to try to win this group back into its camp. In short the NAB might have convinced

some people that the NCER endorsed a radical or “un-American” radio system, but its results are

inconclusive. Even organizations long familiar and sympathetic to the NCER associated the

Committee with the BBC demonstrating that they knew little about the Committee. Despite

Langworthy’s reservations, the PTA appeared to be more supportive of the NCER than

Langworthy indicating that the NAB attacks did little to discredit the Committee among its core

followers. Throughout 1933, Tracy F. Tyler received numerous letters from individual PTA

chapters and members expressing unwavering support for the NCER. One PTA member

conveyed that she was “impressed and inspired… with Mr. Morgan’s diagnosis of a great radio

malady and the workable remedy he proposes” and pledged “to become an evangel of this new

radio gospel for America.”94In sum the NAB’s counter-information campaign may have

appealed to commercialists, but it did little to dissuade the core supporters of the NCER.

In the end the debates netted no real support for the NCER cause. They engaged the

public, escaped the control of the commercialists, but the NAB provided a counter-information

campaign that cast aspersions upon the NCER’s intentions and impartiality. Overall NCER

activities in 1933 were promising. Its legislative activities produced no legislation, but it looks as

if the Committee was gaining some important Congressional support and might get radio legislation proposed after the whirlwind of economic and relief legislation Congress had to tackle. The NCER’s participation in the North American Radio Conference was not a promising as its legislative program. The NCER began North American Radio Conference hopeful that its

93 Ibid. 94 Letter from Jennie Nichols to Tracy F. Tyler dated November 2, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 46, Folder 884. 229 representative, Armstrong Perry, would be allowed greater participation. Unfortunately the

Conference ended with serious criticism of the Committee and accusations that it was un-

American and traitorous. The NCER association with the BBC and other foreign systems of broadcasting furthered these notions introducing questions about the Committee the eyes of radio professionals and other organizations. The American Listeners Society also began, but it never really got off the ground in any effective way. In the end, the NCER again failed to gain necessary support for reform, and, in fact, jeopardized the little support that it held. Nineteen-

Thirty-Three was a mixed-bag for the NCER, but 1934 held promise as President Roosevelt looked to matters other than emergency economic relief. Despite its setbacks during 1933, the

NCER forged ahead hopeful that 1934 would be the year of radio reform. 230

VI. A NEW DEAL FOR RADIO, 1933-34

The inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in March of 1933 introduced a new series of

problems and possibilities for the National Committee on Education by Radio. Roosevelt had

promised a New Deal for radio, and many reformers believed that the Roosevelt administration

would terminate the laissez-faire practices of the 1920s as well as the statist cooperative schemes

between government and industry that typified Herbert Hoover’s administration. Some of this

optimism was warranted; FDR alluded to dramatic policy changes during his campaign speeches

and the transition period. Many Americans viewed the election of 1932 as a referendum against

Hoover’s statist policy. But Roosevelt’s past political record and his campaign speeches revealed a sphinx whose 1932 campaign promises left room for wide interpretation because they were delivered in generalities that, in the end, promised only recovery.1 Brain Truster Rexford

Tugwell called this process “secret amputation” comparing FDR’s refusal to outline any specific

plan to a surgeon who does not inform his patient of the impending amputation.2 Columnist

Walter Lippman would conclude that Roosevelt was a man who lacked “very strong

convictions” and was “too eager to please.”3 During the transition phase and FDR’s early days in

office he was still a puzzling figure to many political courtiers. FDR listened to all who came to talk to him, from Jacob Coxey to Huey Long, never disagreeing face to face or indicating that he did not find merits in their arguments. It led Huey Long to conclude that perhaps “he says ‘Fine!’ to everybody.”4 In the end reformers and many other Americans did not know FDR’s real

intentions, and his general silence and secretive deliberations with his Brain Trust during the

1 Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 18- 45, 60-82; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 110-130. 2 Bernard Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 39- 50. 3 Walter Lippmann quoted in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 101. 4 Huey Long quoted in Ibid., 113. 231

transition period only added to the suspense. Many Americans simply believed that FDR would

try to find a way to navigate the U.S. out of the Depression because his speeches exuded optimism while leaving room for all Americans to read into them whatever they wished.

FDR’s enigmatic character was a source of anxiety and anticipation for both sides of the

broadcast battle. FDR’s promise of a New Deal for radio at first threatened the commercial

industry, which had spent the previous six years building its image, solidifying key relationships

with Congressmen and members of the Federal Radio Commission, and trying to outmaneuver

reformers. Many commercial broadcasters simply wondered what “new” policies would make up

the New Deal and whether those directives would threaten the industry. Reformers believed that

the New Deal would include a serious reordering of the American broadcast system. The

reformers never specifically elaborated on which kinds of reform would take place under FDR.

Instead the reformers believed that FDR would reorder American business and society in the

name of recovery and radio would be included in this process. Still both sides hedged their bets,

and reformers attempted to ingratiate themselves with FDR. The commercial industry all but

severed ties with Republicans and Hoover in late 1932, and, while not officially endorsing him,

nonetheless promoted FDR. Networks awarded Roosevelt prime time air slots on their stations

both during and after the campaign.5 The NAB and the commercial industry refrained from

criticizing any of Roosevelt’s plans so much so that opponents accused the radio industry of

campaigning for FDR. This attack was a stretch but only slightly.

The NCER had no frequency or time to give to FDR, so it was more difficult for the

Committee to curry favor with him at an early stage. Even worse for the NCER was the fact that

its legislative hero, Simeon D. Fess, sponsor of the reallocation bill on two different occasions,

5 “Better Days Ahead,” Broadcasting 4 no. 6 (March 15, 1933): 16; “A Point Missed,” Broadcasting 4 no. 8 (April 15, 1933): 20; “Astute Use of Radio,” Broadcasting 4 no. 10 (May 15, 1933): 18. 232

was a Republican, and the Republican National Committee Chairman in 1932.6 Simply put, the

NCER’s most powerful ally was the man trying to get Herbert Hoover reelected. This was not a

serious liability because FDR worked with noted Republicans during his administration, but it

probably did not help the Committee curry favor with Roosevelt. Also the fact that the NCER neither owned nor operated any stations made it powerless to promote FDR effectively and made the Committee invisible to him.

Both sides of the radio issue knew a few key things about the upcoming Roosevelt

administration. First they knew that his New Deal for radio would most likely include some type

of regulatory reorganization. Any regulatory change would be the result of new radio legislation

which would mean that FDR would appoint new regulators. Second they knew that all of his

policies would revolve around economic recovery. The reformers also believed that the

possibility of legislation meant that reallocation might be proposed again. In the end, both sides

had to take this information and develop a strategy accordingly.

Motion picture reformers of this time reflected the same guarded optimism toward FDR

believing that his campaign criticisms of U.S. capitalism would inspire policies targeting the

social well-being of people in addition to their economic security. The film reform movement

exhibited divisions similar to those of the radio educators with one group working within the

commercial system and another group calling for a complete restructuring of film production and

distribution practices. Catheryne Cooke Gilman led a coalition of motion picture reformers

similar to the NCER, refusing to cooperate with the motion picture industry because it valued

profits over quality and produced racy features that threatened children. The attempts by the film industry to undermine reform closely paralleled radio. The Motion Picture industry’s trade organization, The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, had the Will Hays

6 “Convention Opening Fails to Stir Crowd,” The New York Times (June 15, 1932): 10. 233

Office and showpiece woman reformer, Alice Winter, to combat Gilman’s crusade. This

arrangement bears striking resemblance to the way that the NAB used the NACRE to undermine

the NCER. Like the two sides of the radio battle, opponents in the film war viewed the New Deal with guarded optimism. Gilman, like Morgan, railed against FDR’s promise to end Prohibition automatically, viewing Prohibition and humanitarian reform as congruous, but still hoping that the New Deal would value public welfare over industrial success.7 In the end, reformers in a

variety of campaigns wondered what shape FDR’s New Deal would take while expressing

optimism that it would support their agenda.

Will FDR Endorse Reform?

“While it is too early to form any opinion as to what the attitude of the new administration is to be,” reported Joy Elmer Morgan to the Payne Fund in 1933, “we are encouraged to believe that the attitude will be more favorable than under the previous

administration.”8 Morgan was optimistic, but conceded that only time would reveal FDR’s plan for radio. The NCER suspected that the commercialists felt threatened by the change of administration—many commercial broadcasters rushed through license applications just before

FDR’s inauguration.9 Morgan also believed that Roosevelt would scuttle the Federal Radio

Commission in favor of a new regulatory scheme and that the NCER would be available to

present assistance and information if needed. In short, Morgan concluded that “educational

7 Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 134-135. 8 Joy Elmer Morgan “Radio Under the new Administration,” Statement of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Submitted to the Payne Fund by the National Committee on Education by Radio, April 4, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 9 Ibid. 234

stations may expect more helpful consideration both from Congress and the White House” under

the new administration.10

The NCER’s first matter of business with FDR was to urge him to appoint an educator to

the Federal Radio Commission. The Committee had lobbied for this since 1931, until, finally, in

February 1933, lame-duck President Hoover appointed J. C. Jensen, a professor of engineering

who also ran Nebraska Wesleyan’s radio station, as a commissioner to fill a vacancy on the

FRC.11 The Senate, however, did not act on the appointment which lapsed when FDR entered

office the next month. Jensen wrote a letter to FDR reminding him that he had been appointed

because of his expertise and point of view as an advocate for the rights of the listener.12 The timing of Jensen’s appointment was an unfortunate development for the NCER. Jensen had been the Committee’s chosen candidate since it began lobbying for an educator on the FRC, and the

Senate held up his appointment for political reasons unrelated to Jensen’s abilities or qualifications for the post. The Senate’s inactivity had nothing to do with the qualifications of J.

C. Jensen; rather Congress ignored Hoover’s proposal because it had no desire to make any appointments so close to a change in administration. In sum, Jensen’s rebuff was the result of politics and not his record. It was also a low moment for the NCER because it finally won one of the key resolutions made during the October Conference, and politics again stymied its efforts.13

Jensen was savvy enough to realize that despite his solid background, good reputation,

and qualifications for the FRC, he posed a possible problem for FDR: Jensen was a Republican.

Jensen wrote FDR acknowledging that FDR may wish to appoint a Democrat to the post because

10 Ibid. 11 Federal Radio Commission, Seventh Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year, 1933. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1933), 1. 12 Letter from J. C. Jensen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated March 18, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 13 Sol Taishoff, “Commission Shakeup Seen after March 4,” Broadcasting 4 no. 4 (February 15, 1933): 5. 235

it was a swing seat.14 In principle, Roosevelt did not object to appointing Republicans to

positions in his administration, but the new Federal Radio Commissioner would shift the balance

of power on the FRC, and as Broadcasting magazine noted, “A Republican bearing the

endorsement of Vice President Curtis . . . stands scant chance of being confirmed at the current

session of Congress or of being re-appointed by President-elect Roosevelt.”15 FDR owed

political favors to many backers, and traditional protocol required that he appoint members of his

own party in such cases, especially when doing so would provide the Democrats with a majority

on the FRC. Recognizing the importance of politics and hoping to influence the FRC even

without his appointment, Jensen and the NCER offered FDR an alternative candidate suggesting

Dr. Bruce Mahan of WSUI at the University of Iowa another qualified educator who was also a

Democrat.16

The NCER and Jensen were concerned for good reason. In January 1933 Armstrong

Perry learned that Roosevelt considered appointing Eddie Dowling, an entertainer, to the Federal

Radio Commission. Dowling had performed in Ziegfeld’s Follies, crooned on the radio, and

starred in movies. Dowling had also been the Chairman of the State and Screen Division of the

Democratic Party in 1932 helping sell FDR to America on the silver screen.17 After hearing the

report, Perry observed some NAB officials rejoice “That’s fine! That will just complete the

cast!”18 The possibility of Eddie Dowling becoming a member of the Federal Radio Commission represented two intolerable realities to the NCER. First, Dowling had been an entertainer who

14 Letter from J. C. Jensen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated March 18, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 15 Taishoff, “Commission Shakeup Seen after March 4,” 5. 16 Letter from J. C. Jensen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated March 18, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 17 Marquis Who’s Who on the Web. Eddie Dowling. http://0- search.marquiswhoswho.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/executable/SearchResults.aspx?db=E 18 Letter from Armstrong Perry to S. Howard Evans dated January 4, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 1076. 236 performed questionable material and would, presumably, prefer it to educational fare. Secondly,

Dowling was a commercial system insider who would most likely side with the industry over educational interests. Clearly the NCER had reason to hedge its bets on FDR’s intentions regarding radio.

Much to the relief of the NCER, Roosevelt did not appoint Eddie Dowling to the Federal

Radio Commission choosing James H. Hanley of Nebraska instead. Hanley’s appointment was political quid pro quo; he received the position because FDR owed one of Hanley’s political friends, Arthur F. Miller, a favor. FDR originally offered Miller, the Democratic National

Committeeman from Nebraska, the post after originally being promised a cabinet position, but

FDR offered the FRC position instead. When Miller declined, FDR allowed him to name the candidate for the vacant FRC seat. Miller chose Hanley, an early supporter of Roosevelt’s candidacy, who had traveled the U. S. organizing “Roosevelt for President” clubs between 1929 and 1932.19 Hanley, like FDR, was a mystery to the NCER having so few qualifications for the

Federal Radio Commission that the other commissioners dubbed him “rookie.” By his own admission, he had no experience in radio; he was only a “casual listener,” and radio meant “no more to him than it did to the average man on the street.”20 This situation posed some serious problems for the NCER and the commercial industry. The commercialists and the FRC had been cultivating an image of expertise and impartiality regarding radio regulation. With Hanley as commissioner, this image of expertise could be questioned, and the political nature of Hanley’s appointment might also undermine the impartial image of the FRC. In addition, Hanley’s lack of

19 Letter from Ella Phillips Crandall to Tracy F. Tyler dated April 12, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 47, Folder 904; and Gerald V. Flannery and Brian P. Atkinson, “Hanley, James H. 1933- 1934,” Commissioners of the FCC, 1927-1994 ed. Gerald V. Flannery. (New York: University Press of America, 1994), 19-22. 20 Ibid., 19. 237

radio knowledge and experience could make him vulnerable to manipulation by the

commercialists.

Hanley’s appointment also presented some possibilities for the NCER. During his confirmation hearing, Hanley echoed some NCER complaints, and his background was more similar to NCER than to FRC members. Hanley had been a school principal from 1903-1907 and the first Nebraska Prohibition Director from 1922-1924. At his hearing he stated that he opposed monopolies, supported educational programming, and believed that educational stations should receive better treatment and more frequencies.21

Hanley’s educational perspective and support for Prohibition led NCER members to

believe that he would be sympathetic to the educators’ arguments before the FRC, and that he

might consider banning liquor ads in the event the 18th Amendment was repealed. More importantly he also might support NCER positions against the growing power of networks and

RCA. He supported, at least vaguely, the idea that educational stations needed to be protected to

some degree. When Tracy F. Tyler met with Hanley at his hearing, he “formed a most favorable

impression of him.”22 From this information, Morgan concluded that “although large and influential groups supported the idea of an educator on the Commission, it is believed that Mr.

Hanley will be friendly to the cause of radio education.”23 In short, by April of 1933 the NCER

was cautiously optimistic about the new administration’s plans for radio. It may not have gotten

J. C. Jensen seated on the Federal Radio Commission, but it had come close, and the eventual

appointee had a background in education and appeared sympathetic to the educators.

21 Ibid., 20. 22 Joy Elmer Morgan “Radio Under the new Administration,” Statement of Progress of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Submitted to the Payne Fund by the National Committee on Education by Radio, April 4, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 750. 23 Ibid. 238

At the same time the commercialists had also been busy carrying out their strategy for

courting FDR and casting him as a friend to the commercial industry. The commercialists and

their trade organization, the NAB, used a two pronged strategy, offering a great deal of airtime to

FDR whenever he needed it and publicizing FDR’s use of the radio. The first part of the strategy

was directly aimed at Roosevelt while the NAB used the second to reassure the industry that

FDR was an ally who needed the commercial broadcasters. The commercialists’ efforts implied

that the industry, like the NCER, remained uncertain of FDR’s intentions, and, while the NAB

expressed optimism, many member stations did not.

From February through May of 1933 the NAB, in an attempt to quell member’s fears, ran

a series of articles stating that the incoming administration posed no threat to the commercial

industry despite FDR’s desire to rewrite existing communications regulatory legislation. Indeed,

Roosevelt supported a plan to create a new regulatory agency to oversee all communications,

replacing the extant system of separate regulatory bodies for radio, telephone, and telegraph. The

commercialists had spent several years developing a rapport with the Federal Radio

Commission; they enjoyed relative stability under that body, and any change could upset the

status quo under which they had flourished. Sol Taishoff, editor of Broascasting, assured NAB

members that “Even if blanket authority to reorganize governmental agencies is proposed in

pending legislation it is seriously doubted whether President-elect Roosevelt would choose at

once to disband the Radio Commission as such or to tighten up the regulation of radio.”24 In

Taishoff’s view, even if FDR called for immediate change, such change would still take some time before it could be implemented, and this change would focus on regulatory organization not radio law. He added that FDR “is said to regard very highly the manner in which the broadcasting industry has acquitted itself, having had a vast amount of experience with both

24 Taishoff, “Commission Shakeup Seen after March 4,” 5. 239

networks and with independent stations both prior to and during the 1932 campaign.”25 Taishoff

reminded readers that FDR had praised the current radio establishment during the campaign and

turned to commercial broadcasters to promote his bid for the White House. Presumably, FDR

would not forget his generous friends in the industry.

Even more importantly the NAB stressed that advertising and the commercial industry greatly aided FDR’s efforts; the industry was an active and necessary participant in the recovery campaign claiming that during the bank holiday “keen advertisers…actually seized the occasion of the banking holiday to calm the buying public and to proffer extended credit, using radio time as well as printed space.” 26 This kind of boosterism also coincided with a similar program

supported by advertising agencies through 1933 and 1934, arguing that the federal government

needed to spend money on advertising campaigns to convince people to support the New Deal.27

This campaign was significant because it not only presented radio as a loyal ally to FDR’s

candidacy; it also equated commercial radio itself with economic recovery. “There was,” the

NAB concluded, “no more potent force than radio in calming the public during the critical

days.”28 Overall, the NAB encouraged commercial broadcasters not to fear Roosevelt because

the industry was useful to his recovery plans serving as an important cog in the American

economy while the advertising system performed a public service.29

The Tugwell Bill and the NAB

If commercial broadcasters worried about their fate at the hands of the Roosevelt

administration, then the Tugwell Food and Drug Bill proposed in June 1933 certainly did little to

25 Ibid., 5. 26 “Better Days Ahead,” Broadcasting 4 no. 6 (March 15, 1933): 16. 27 C. B. Larrabee, “Advertising as Public Duty Pays Big Dividends,” Printer’s Ink 168 no. 1 (July 5, 1934). 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid; also see “Astute Use of Radio,”18. 240

assuage their concerns—at least initially. Rexford G. Tugwell, a professor of economics at

Columbia University, had risen in importance by becoming one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s

closest advisors in 1932 and 1933 as a member of the Brain Trust during the election and early

days of the New Deal. FDR relied upon his Brain Trust for information and help in explaining

the causes of the Depression and finding mechanisms for recovery. In this capacity Tugwell

served two important roles. First, FDR was most persuaded by Tugwell’s explanation of the

causes of the Depression. Secondly, Tugwell consistently maintained that consumers were the

key to recovery. In the end, FDR’s view of the Depression and approach to recovery would be

informed by Tugwell’s ideas. 30

Consumerism had always been one of Tugwell’s fascinations dating back to his time in

graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. He lamented the fact that most reform acts

such as the Pure Food and Drug Act included vague references to protecting the public interest

while leaving regulators and judges wide latitude to define public interest. The regulators and

judges, in Tugwell’s view, usually interpreted this hazy language in ways that favored producers at the expense of consumers.31 Roosevelt appointed Tugwell as Assistant Secretary of

Agriculture, and in this capacity Tugwell’s first major effort was to improve and revise the Pure

Food and Drug Act of 1906. Tugwell desired to implement a strengthened code that would

protect consumers from corporate abuse and give them a more equal footing with producers in

the eyes of the law. The actual legislation bore Tugwell’s name despite the fact that it was

drafted by two law professors and proposed by Senator Royal Copeland, D-NY because Tugwell

was FDR’s point man on it and conducted the hearings that would eventually shape the text of

the bill. Tugwell’s initiative addressed three main concerns: misleading labels, toxins, and false

30 Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal, 11-72. 31 Ibid., 91-101. 241

advertising. It was the matter of false advertising that most disturbed the commercial radio

industry.32

The Tugwell Bill threatened the commercial industry in three ways. It contained a clause

that any drug advertising would be held as misleading and in violation of the law if its claims

could not be proven scientifically or substantiated by reliable medical opinion. The first danger

for commercial radio stations was one of liability. Even though the industry through the NAB

had attempted to self-police by banning such fraudulent ads in its code of ethics, the Tugwell Bill

provided stricter definitions of false advertising than the NAB did. Stations feared that if they aired material judged questionable, they would be held liable. The second danger was that the bill’s strict nature could decrease advertising support for stations. Broadcasters might reject all advertising accounts from drug companies for fear that the ad may violate the law. This would be especially detrimental to radio, a major industry that had weathered the Depression better than most. Without advertising from major pharmaceutical and cosmetic firms, then the commercial radio industry might start to feel the bite of the Great Depression. Finally, the language of the

Tugwell Bill and the logic behind it echoed many of the attacks leveled by reformers against the commercial industry. The NCER had been assaulting the commercialists over advertising various remedies and quack doctors. If the Tugwell Bill passed it could allow reformers to use the new

Food and Drug Bill to cripple the industry.

The NAB again waged a campaign to quell industry fears while it offered to cooperate

with Tugwell. The NAB could have opposed the Tugwell Bill, but opposing a key piece of his

legislation spearheaded by a close advisor might have alienated FDR. During the early New Deal

only the most devout Republicans—including Frances Payne Bolton and Chester C. Bolton—

32 Ibid., 91-101 242 would oppose FDR’s legislative program.33 In response to the FDR honeymoon, Bethuel

Webster of the American Bar Association quipped that it was “little less than treason nowadays even to examine closely any part of the President’s program.”34

During the bill’s drafting stage, Tugwell held a series of conferences with advertisers, broadcasters, and print media representatives to discuss the reform legislation. He did not include the NCER, because he anticipated that only the commercial industry would be affected. Even so, the NCER could have offered valuable information about drug and cosmetic advertising such as an analysis of its excesses and its effects on children. During the conferences in April 1933, industry representatives supported the reform measure in principle but attempted to convince

Tugwell that the media outlets running advertising should not be held equally liable with the drug manufacturer or retailer in question.35 This attempt to protect stations could have alienated the advertisers, who patronized radio, but the advertisers had no real viable alternatives to radio; if they wanted to pitch products to a wide audience they would have to use radio. At the same time the broadcast industry began a campaign to appear supportive of the Tugwell measure as part of its larger policy to support the Roosevelt administration. The article detailing the activities of the meetings with Tugwell also assured readers that “even after legislation is drafted and submitted to Congress, it is likely that full hearings will be held before appropriate committees of House and Senate.”36 In other words the Bill still had to endure the Congressional process, and, as such, it was not guaranteed to pass as written and could be eviscerated indicating there was a possibility that it would not be as threatening if it ever became law.

33 Loth, A Long Way Forward, 174-180. 34 Bethuel M. Webster Jr., “Notes on the Policy of the Administration with Reference to the Control of Communications.” American Civil Liberties Union, General Correspondence, 1934. ACLU 107, volume 698. 35 “Progress Made on Regulatory Program for Securities, Food-Drug Advertising,” Broadcasting 4:10 (May 15, 1933): 10. 36 Ibid., 10. 243

Even more reassurance came in the form of clarification from Tugwell himself in June

1933. Again the NAB acknowledged that the measure was important to radio “because of the

large number of accounts on the air sponsored by food, drug, and cosmetic companies.”37

However the article cited good news for the broadcasters from Tugwell himself stating that

“Prosecution for false advertising will be directed against the source rather than against the medium in which it appears. This will put the responsibility for truthful advertising squarely upon the manufacturer, distributor, or dealer.”38 At least individual stations could rest easy

knowing they would not be held liable for false claims made by advertising clients. That

responsibility would rest squarely upon the advertisers, manufacturers, and dealers of products.

However, the measure was still dangerous to the commercial industry because it attacked a group

responsible for a majority of advertising dollars. If the legislation harmed these companies, it

followed that commercial broadcasters would suffer as well.

Tugwell took even greater measures to reassure the broadcast industry in September,

1933 penning a major article for Broadcasting explaining his key concerns about food and drug

regulation and advertising. During the balance of 1933 and throughout 1934, he authored a series

of articles for popular magazines to clarify any misconceptions and generate public support for the measure. In Broadcasting he made three key assertions that pleased the commercial industry and the NAB. First he reiterated that broadcasters would not be held liable for any suspect advertising. He believed that no radio station had the expertise to make scientific determinations

about the quality of suspect products, and hiring experts to rule on the matter would cost more

than the station earned from the advertising. The only request that he made of broadcasters was

that they cooperate with federal authorities by supplying names and contact information along

37 “Food-Drugs Law Revision to Await January Congress,” Broadcasting 4 no. 11 (June 1, 1933): 16. 38 Rexford G. Tugwell quoted in Ibid., 16. 244

with copies of ads chosen for investigation.39 In short, liability would remain with the

manufacturers and suppliers of questionable products not commercial broadcasters. This made

the broadcasters responsible for incriminating their own customers, but the drug and cosmetic

companies needed the broadcasters more than the broadcasters needed them.

Secondly, Tugwell worked to assuage broadcasters’ fears about the potential of lost revenues. He admitted that some companies with current advertising accounts would probably be prosecuted and convicted of violating the measure if it passed. However, removing such advertisers could actually benefit the broadcast industry by ensuring that only reputable producers purchased ad time. The Tugwell Bill would, in effect, make ads more respectable and trustworthy in the eyes of the listener, producing long term gains that would more than offset any short term revenue losses.40 This potentiality would not only generate more funds over the long

term, but it would also protect the commercial industry from questionable advertisers while

helping disarm reformers who pointed to such advertisers as reasons for the necessity of reform.

If the commercial industry violated the public interest, as the NCER alleged, then the

commercialists’ support of the Tugwell Bill cast doubt upon the NCER’s charge. The

cooperation between the industry and Tugwell over the new Pure Food and Drug Bill

exemplified the administration’s support of the commercial industry as Tugwell bent over

backwards to accommodate the commercialists.

Lastly Tugwell encouraged the industry to regulate itself through government approved

trade organizations like the NAB. While the Tugwell Bill moved forward, the NAB presented

itself as the official trade industry of radio under the National Industrial Recovery Act. Tugwell

stressed that the NAB’s Code of Ethics banned false advertising, making additional government

39 Rexford G. Tugwell, “How Food and Drugs Bill Would Affect Radio,” Broadcasting 5 no. 6 (September 15, 1933): 5-6, 36-37. 40 Ibid., 5-6, 36-37. 245

regulation of commercial radio unnecessary.41 Tugwell’s faith in the NAB code praised the

NAB’s member stations as honest businesses trying to protect consumers, while reinforcing the

image of unity, service, and expertise that it had been trying to create over the past two years.

This cast a good light on the organization and its work within the NRA structure. In the same

issue of Broadcasting the NAB agreed with Tugwell on these key points and, in the end,

concluded that “the bill is one of the cornerstones in the administration’s drive to protect the

consumer all down the line. Its long range effect should benefit everybody, whatever may be its

present defects.”42

Still the NAB refrained from endorsing the Tugwell Bill and pursued a neutral course for the balance of 1933. This turned out to be an effective strategy, assuring that the NAB offended neither its advertising clients nor the administration. The November issue of Broadcasting ran an

article by William P. Jacobs, Secretary-General Manager of the Institute of Medicine

Manufacturers, attacking the proposal as so far-reaching as to threaten honest drug companies.43

In December it ran a defense of the Tugwell measure by W. G. Campbell, Chief of the FDA.44

While both articles took definite positions on the Tugwell Bill, neither came from the NAB nor a member radio station. Instead the articles were written by a member of the advertising industry and a federal regulator. The NAB trade paper appeared to act as an impartial forum for discussing radio legislation; editorials in the last two issues of the year argued opposing sides, but each concluded that broadcasters should support the Bill with a few changes.45

41 Ibid., 5-6, 36-37. 42 “The Tugwell Bill,” Broadcasting 5 no. 6 (September 15, 1933): 18. 43 William P. Jacobs, “Medicine Makers’ View of the Tugwell Bill,” Broadcasting 5 no. 9 (November 1, 1933): 7, 40, 44. 44 W. G. Campbell, “An Answer to Critics of the Tugwell Bill,” Broadcasting 5 no.11 (December 1, 1933): 7, 32. 45 “Tugwell Opposition,” Broadcasting 5 no. 11 (December 1, 1933): 20; and “Common Sense Approach,” Broadcasting 5 no.12 (December 15, 1933): 24. 246

On the other end of the spectrum, the Tugwell Bill at first appeared to echo the

sentiments of reformers, and it had the potential to gore the commercial industry. However, any

thoughts of this nature extinguished when Tugwell himself assured the commercial radio

industry that it would not be liable for any suspect ads. The NAB also used the Tugwell Bill to

show that the commercial industry was cooperating with the Roosevelt administration and had

built some rapport with Tugwell himself. The NCER could not do anything about this matter,

and the Tugwell Bill highlighted one of its key weaknesses: access. The NCER did not actually

own or represent stations in a literal sense, and those stations did not air advertising. Therefore

there was no need for the NCER to be involved in the matter, as far as the federal government

was concerned, and Tugwell ignored it at his conferences during the drafting stage. The NCER

ran only one article in support of the Tugwell Bill in its newsletter.46 Armstrong Perry attempted

to fuel NCER support of the Tugwell Bill; he wrote to J. C. Jensen asking him to talk to Tugwell

and present the reformers’ point of view of the commercial industry. Perry reminded Jensen that

Tugwell was also an educator—he had been a professor of economics at Columbia University—

and Tugwell might be interested to hear the educators’ side of the situation.47 Even if Jensen complied with Perry’s request it was unlikely that Jensen would have had an audience with

Tugwell. The Brain Truster was too busy fighting an uphill battle with Congress and the drug industry for the need of a stronger Food and Drug Act.

In the end, the NAB stance on the proposal was the most favorable taken by any industry.

Indeed, the advertising industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and others attacked the Tugwell

Bill as unnecessary and unwise, hurting viable companies during the Depression. The bill also

provided opponents of the Roosevelt administration an opportunity to criticize it in a way that

46 “The Drug and Beauty Racket,” Education by Radio 3 (October 26, 1933): 49-50. 47 Letter from Armstrong Perry to J. C. Jensen dated November 4, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 55, Folder 1059. 247

did not necessarily directly attack FDR—something that might have provoked a public backlash

and alienated consumers. More and more, groups that wanted to attack FDR did so indirectly by

targeting one of his advisors or Brain Trusters like Tugwell himself.48 In any case, the NAB

monitored the progress of the Bill until Congress and FDR scuttled the measure in 1934,

focusing instead on more pressing matters.

The National Industrial Recovery Act and the NAB

“The business of broadcasting, along with all other industries, may be vitally affected by the administration’s new industrial recovery and control bill,” reported Broadcasting magazine in June, 1933. “Many trade organizations, including the NAB, are taking steps for compliance with it on the apparent theory that it will benefit them in the long run.”49 The NAB may have

supported FDR enthusiastically, but that enthusiasm did not extend to his NRA. “Opinion

within the industry,” the article continued, “is somewhat divided as to whether the measure will

be beneficial.”50 The commercial radio industry would approach the National Industrial

Recovery Act cautiously. Some commercialists feared the NRA would make the NAB too

powerful, but, at the same time, commercialists also recognized that membership had the

potential to place American radio solidly in the hands of the commercial industry through the

NAB.

Under the National Industrial Recovery Act the federal government worked with trade

organizations to establish codes on employment, wages, and operational practices as a way of

stimulating the economy. Trade organizations in some cases would be joined by other interested

48 Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal, 223. 49 “How Industrial Control Bill Affects Radio,” Broadcasting 4 no. 14 (June 15, 1933): 7; and “Administration’s Relief Plan Vitally Affects Radio Industry,” Broadcasting 5 no. 1 (July 1, 1933): 8. 50 Ibid., 8. 248

parties as NRA code authorities which had the power to arbitrate complaints within the industry

and mete out punishments for violators. However, the trade industries often dominated the NRA

system, and code members outside the trade industry had limited voice. The NRA was also a

voluntary arrangement; trade associations could choose to participate and submit to the code or

opt out.51 With regard to radio, the National Association of Broadcasters had served as the trade

organization of the industry because there were no other competing organizations that

encompassed the radio industry. In theory, the NAB represented all radio stations, but it clearly

favored the commercial system and essentially catered to for-profit radio stations supporting the

American Plan of radio. In so doing, the NAB shut out any real dissension in its ranks. One

might also conclude that the NCER and the educational stations it indirectly represented should

have been included in the NRA, but the educational stations and the NCER were not part of the

commercial radio industry, and did not take part in the NRA process. In the end, Philip G.

Loucks, managing director of the NAB, received an invitation to attend the conference of trade

association executives and administration officials to discuss the NRA code, but no member of

the NCER or any other educator received an invitation.52 The NCER was an outsider just as it

had been in the Tugwell matter, a situation that clearly disadvantaged it while enabling the

commercial industry to legitimize its practices and police itself.

This distinction was critical because the elevation of the NAB from simple trade

association to NRA code authority gave its interpretation of American radio a government seal of

approval or, at least, FDR’s apparent seal of approval. Again the NCER was shut out of a critical

piece of radio policy-making simply because it lacked the proper organizational connections to

51 For more on the NRA see Ellis Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966), 19-146. 52 “How Industrial Control Bill Affects Radio,” Broadcasting 4 no.14 (June 15, 1933): 7; and “Administration’s Relief Plan Vitally Affects Radio Industry,” Broadcasting 5 no. 1 (July 1, 1933): 8. 249

radio. Once more one sees Michel Foucault’s concept of political technology—the ability of

power to mask itself through bureaucracy—in operation. In this case the policy-making

infrastructure—the NRA—influenced policy outcomes more than actual informational flows and

debates by disregarding relevant knowledge making it appear irrelevant. How could educators

contribute to a meeting about technical and labor matters in the commercial radio industry? So

by virtue of its organizational expertise and its structure, the NCER had no opportunity to

participate in the early stages of radio under the Blue Eagle despite its relevant expertise.

Despite some doubts by individual radio stations in the NAB, the NRA presented an

unalloyed good for the industry and the NAB. Even in the early stages the NAB knew that it

would most likely be the governing body of radio under the code, a status that would subordinate

all commercial stations to it. NRA membership also meant that the industry could self-regulate—

a key platform of the NAB since 1931. In one address Senator Wagner stressed that the measure

was intended “to give each trade industry the right to govern itself.”53 One NAB lawyer echoed

these sentiments: “The bill is so framed as to leave initiative to trade groups if they will take it.

Otherwise the government will dictate.”54 In other words the NAB had a choice as did other

trade organizations in the United States; it could regulate its industry under the code, or it could submit to regulations dictated to it by the federal government. Therefore the NAB concluded that the best alternative for the commercial industry was to cooperate with the NRA and join the Blue

Eagle campaign.

Other, more practical advantages accompanied cooperation with the NRA. First the

commercial radio industry seriously attacked rate-cutting—a practice that the NAB had been

fighting for years—and imposed harsh penalties on violators. The NAB did not stand alone;

53 Text of address made by Senator Wagner, (D.), N.Y. quoted in Ibid., 8. 54 Text of article by F. H. Figby quoted in Ibid., 8. 250

many industries flocked to the NRA because they also realized that the wings of the Blue Eagle

would shield their cartel-like systems from anti-trust action. 55 At the same time and for many of

the same reasons the Motion Picture industry, also under heavy attack by reformers for crass

pictures and commercial predation, moved to participate in the NRA. However, film studios

flocked to the Blue Eagle primarily because they were facing financial ruin or had already

plunged into receivership.56 On the other hand, the commercial radio industry was not

experiencing the financial trouble that movie studios did, so it wanted to join the NRA to allow

self-regulation while protecting it from anti-trust action. Additionally, the NAB could use the code to develop advertising quotas per broadcast in an attempt to find a happy medium of advertising that would not offend listeners, and, at the same time, thwart criticism of advertising on the air and protect radio from reformers. In short, the NIRA gave the commercial radio industry a chance to accomplish many of the goals it had been working toward for several years with government approval. At the same time NRA participation enabled the commercialists to strike a major blow to reformers by cooperating with the federal government in wiping out many of the practices which drew the most intense criticism by using its police-like power over the radio.57 “The immense power and influence it [the NAB] will wield,” under the NRA, boasted

one editorial, “will become readily apparent.”58

By July, 1933, the commercial section of the NAB—a sub-committee of the NAB that

specifically examined matters related to commercial advertising—convened during a meeting of

the Advertising Federation of America to decide whether or not to participate in the NRA.59

55 Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, 54. 56 Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 148-162. 57 “Signing Up,” Broadcasting 5 no. 3 (August 1, 1933): 18. 58 Ibid., 18. 59 The NAB had several sub-committees to focus on specific facets of broadcasting. The commercial section looked specifically at commercial matters. There were also sections for small stations, networks, and technical matters. 251

FDR sent a letter to the convention imploring all present to affirm that “the high standards which

have made good advertising an economic and social force of vital importance to us all will be

continued.”60 The NAB decided to cooperate with the recovery plan, and, at the meeting it urged

the advertising industry to do the same. More important than this matter of business was FDR’s

statement to assembled members. While in one respect FDR simply used gentle flattery to nudge

advertisers into cooperation, in doing so, he also conveyed his belief in the legitimacy of radio

advertising. While this admission seemed incongruous with the Tugwell Bill, in reality it was

not. The Tugwell Bill targeted a specific group of advertisements that could be interpreted as

rogues within the industry; organizing under the N.R.A. could help the industry self-regulate and

prevent such abuses in a way that required minimal government interference. In the end,

Roosevelt’s letter to the meeting simply demonstrated that he was not interested in a “scorched-

earth” policy regarding advertising in all media including radio. In fact he hoped to ensure its

success under the Blue Eagle—a program whose government proponents would use the same

advertising theory and practice that radio did.

Throughout the summer of 1933 the NAB developed its NRA code and prepared its

campaign to sell the code to members during its annual meeting in October, 1933. Arthur

Church, general manager of a commercial station and the chair of the NAB committee charged

with writing the NAB code, urged the standardization of commercial copy and advertising

rates.61 In an article in Broadcasting Church attempted to sell this idea to NAB members as a way to “solve the problems in the business of broadcasting today” and advertise in a manner that did not alienate listeners.62 By setting standards for commercial copy, the NAB could eliminate

60 Franklin D. Roosevelt quoted by John M. Henry, “Station Managers Map Plans to Plug Radio’s Weak Spots,” Broadcasting 5 no. 1 (July 1, 1933): 29. 61 Arthur B. Church, “Standard Units of Sale and Rate Practices,” Broadcasting 5 no. 2 (July 15, 1933): 9. 62 Ibid., 9. 252 questionable advertisements on the air and thus eliminate a weakness that broadcast reformers regularly exploited. In the same issue, the NAB offered a much stronger piece of advice to members: “Stations which indulge in rate-chiseling…now face a new nemesis—the Federal

Radio Commission.”63 The editorial warned stations that the FRC had punished a number of stations for slashing advertising rates to compete with other commercial stations. It concluded that the FRC had “ample precedent to consider rate-chiseling as against the public interest” and would take rate-cutting into account when considering a station’s license renewal.64 The editorial was a scare tactic; any station that engaged in questionable advertising practices and refused to follow the NAB model would be disavowed by the trade association and face serious consequences from the FRC. The editorial also presented an implicit reward for backing the

NAB/NRA code. The code would allow the NAB to set standards and enforce rate-cutting violations without fear of anti-trust action. Therefore all stations, even violators, had good reason to support the NRA, and, in the end, there was little debate within the NAB over membership in the NRA. Individual broadcasters had little choice in the matter because if they wished to remain protected by the NAB they had to adhere to the NAB decision to participate in the NRA. By

August of 1933 the NAB had declared its intent to organize under the Blue Eagle, and urged all industries to participate in the NRA.

While organizing under the NRA had definite advantages for the NAB, endorsing this

New Deal program provided another benefit. The trade organization offered the “wholehearted cooperation of the broadcasting industry in the campaign” offering the NRA “free run of the ether over all member stations,” while networks allowed “practically unrestricted use of their

63 “A New Nemesis,” Broadcasting 5 no. 2 (July 15, 1933): 18. 64 Ibid., 18. 253

facilities to further the campaign.”65 Once again, the commercial industry had the facilities to aid

the FDR’s recovery campaign, and it used those resources to project a patriotic, loyal, service-

minded image of the industry. Whether it truly believed in FDR and his measures or not, the

NAB went to great lengths to demonstrate its loyalty believing that it would be rewarded.

The Code, as written by the NAB, was fairly generous to all commercial stations, and the

code also established a more lenient membership policy allowing, for the first time, stations

grossing less than fifteen thousand dollars per year to join. This clause meant that the NAB could

include the smallest commercial stations in the country.66 Stations solely devoted to public

service and education were not included because they did not exist to make profits and many

existed as part of a university or college and not as a business. Overall, the code regulated

minimum wages, employee hours, practices, and advertising rates. Most importantly, the NRA

code gave the NAB the chance to police and unify the industry under the auspices of the federal

government. A unified industry was important from a business standpoint, but it was even more

valuable as a defensive mechanism against reformers’ attacks.67 First the code forbade member

stations from defaming or disparaging a competitor—an activity that not only violated the spirit

of industrial unity but also provided reformers with ammunition. Secondly, as a concession to

Tugwell, the code forbade the broadcast of material that the station could not substantiate by

“specific evidence.”68 This resolution solved two key problems. It again demonstrated the willingness of the industry to work with FDR, and it blunted any impact reformers’ critiques of ads may have had. When reformers attacked radio advertising as false, government regulators

65 “Radio Plunges into Recovery Campaign,” Broadcasting 5 no. 3 (August 1, 1933): 5; and “Industry is Backing NRA 100 Per Cent,” Broadcasting 5 no. 4 (August 15, 1933): 10. 66 Sol Taishoff, “Broadcast Industry Submits Code to NRA,” Broadcasting 5 no. 5 (September 1, 1933), 5-6; and “Full Text of Proposed Code for the Broadcasting Industry,” Broadcasting 5 no. 5 (September 1, 1933), 7, 35. 67 Ibid., 7, 35; and “Broadcasters Submit a Code,” New York Times (September 3, 1933): X7. 68 Ibid., X7. 254

and the industry could simply state that such ads violated the code and would incur punishment

for their sponsors. In other words, the industry could argue against advertising reform, because it had already imposed strict regulations on ads.

The progress of the NAB code from proposal to acceptance took only a few months, and

faced little opposition from within the government or the commercial industry. The NAB

submitted its code to the NRA on August 29, 1933 and published it for all members to see in

September, just before the annual October meeting. President Roosevelt signed and accepted the

NAB Code in November. Most criticism of the Code from within the industry came before its

passage and targeted the minimum wage provisions. Many smaller stations argued that they

could not pay the required minimum wages, especially after the code’s advertising provisions

disallowed lucrative accounts. In response the NAB included a provision that awarded relief to

stations that experienced financial hardship as a direct result of following the NAB Code.69

Peculiarly, this important moment received little note in recent histories of the battle over broadcasting, but it was a critical moment—one that again demonstrated the marginalization of the NCER and other kinds of expertise, but also one in which the NCER could have mounted a much more effective opposition.70 The NCER may have been shut out of the internal matters of

the NAB and its draft process of the code, but all NRA codes had to be approved at a public

hearing, and the NCER certainly could have attended and presented evidence. Perhaps its lack of

action in this case is the reason other scholars ignored this important moment. Critics of other

industries participated in the NRA code public hearings presenting evidence against the industry

69 Taishoff, “Broadcast Industry Submits Code to NRA,” 5-6; Sol Taishoff “Broadcasting Code Approval Seen Shortly,” Broadcasting 5 no. 9 (November 1, 1933): 5-6; Sol Taishoff, “Broadcast Code Awaiting Final Approval,” Broadcasting 5 no. 10 (November 15, 1933): 5, 22; and “Broadcasting Code is Signed; Becomes Effective December 11,” Broadcasting 5 no. 11 (December 1, 1933): 10. 70 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy; McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Radio Broadcasting.”; and Rosen, The Modern Stentors. 255

and the code. Motion Picture reformers at this same time appeared at the code hearings and hotly contested the code criticizing its lack of a morals code and using the moment to rally a larger public outcry against the movie industry. The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors downplayed these objections as unfeasible and the NRA administrators agreed preferring economic recovery in the short term over the long term concerns about cultural welfare.71

The NCER chose not to wage a similar campaign at this time, and it did not even mention any kind of participation at the NRA hearings leaving one to speculate as to why this was the case. There were four probable reasons for the NCER’s absence. First during the time when the

NAB wrote and submitted its code the NCER was already heavily involved in three other projects which diverted its principal members: Joy Elmer Morgan, Armstrong Perry, and Tracy

F. Tyler. Recall that Morgan and Tyler at this time were preparing the material for the NUEA debate on radio control while also trying to create an American Listener’s Society as part of a campaign to engage the public. At the same time, Armstrong Perry, probably the most likely

NCER representative to present at the code hearing if the NCER chose to attend, was in Mexico

City as a representative at the North American Radio Conference. Thus, in order to attend and testify, the NCER would have had to neglect its other activities. Secondly, NCER involvement in this process might have further angered its benefactor, the Payne Fund, seeing this as another

NCER foray into legislative matters. The same was true of the Motion Picture Research Council also sponsored by the Payne Fund. It did not appear at the NRA hearings preferring to stay out of politics while retaining its scientific, apolitical, professional image.72 Third, the NCER may have

feared that publicly objecting to the NAB code would further alienate FDR. Finally, if the NCER

presented objections at the hearings and made counter proposals that were accepted, it would

71 Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 148-154. 72 Ibid., 150-151 256

require the Committee to work with the commercial radio industry—a kind of compromise to

which Morgan would never submit. The commercial radio paradigm would not be altered in the

NRA arrangement, and Morgan would have to accept this fact in order to work within the NRA

system. One the one hand, participating in the NRA process could have given the NCER some

short-term gains, including the preservation of educational stations, but the more important

criticisms of the American broadcast system would not be welcome in the NRA.

Still, the NCER missed a key opportunity at the code hearings that might have helped it

achieve some of its goals and would have at least obtained publicity for its objections. The

NCER could have appeared at the hearings and argued for including several measures in the final

code. For example the NCER might have proposed a rule requiring that all educational programs

broadcast on commercial stations be free of commercials and broadcast during favorable hours.

Additionally, the NCER could have proposed that non-profit, educational stations be allowed to

join the NAB. If accepted these measure would not have accomplished Morgan’s ultimate goals,

but they could have helped by better protecting one aspect of educational broadcasting and

forcing the NAB to require all stations to follow this rule. Additionally, it could have placed the

educational stations under the blanket of NAB protection and used their NAB status to shield

them from commercial challengers; the NAB, after all, discouraged competition between its

members. Finally, it could have helped establish educators’ expertise as valid with regard to radio matters. Of course such proposals also would expect the NCER to cooperate within the commercial paradigm which it always refused to do. Then, if the NCER still wished to pursue a grander solution, it could press on for an investigation that could achieve broader results. One may argue that this would have only been a temporary solution which would have evaporated with the Schenk decision which toppled the NIRA. However NCER participation could have 257

made these practices widely accepted placing greater public scrutiny on commercial stations.

Such measures might not have passed, but by absenting itself from the NRA process, the NCER

sacrificed what might have been an opportunity to exercise some influence over federal radio

policy.

By the close of 1933, the commercial broadcast industry had more firmly entrenched

itself as the official organ of American broadcasting even as it actively worked to ingratiate itself with President Roosevelt by cooperating with his recovery measures. At the same time, the educational reform movement under the NCER, lost key ground to commercial radio, because the latter was more effective at presenting itself as representative of the radio industry. So, although the NAB and the NCER were uncertain at first, they quickly learned how FDR’s

policies would affect radio. Commercial radio representatives acted quickly to demonstrate that

FDR could rely on them for help; FDR in turn reassured them that he did not intend to destroy or

even harm the commercial radio industry. The NCER also moved quickly to support FDR,

believing that he would support radio reform. The Tugwell Bill attacked the source of the

NCER’s most vehement criticism abusive advertisers, but the Committee soon learned that the

federal government and the commercial industry worked together. The final version of the

Tugwell Bill prevented the federal government from holding commercial radio stations at fault

for airing questionable material. In short, the Tugwell Bill and the recognition of the NAB as the

NRA code authority for radio demonstrated that the commercialists and the government were not only cooperating, but FDR accepted the commercial radio industry as the legitimate representative of American radio. Commercialists had, for all intents and purposes, won over 258

President Roosevelt. They had access to him and granted him access to commercial broadcast

facilities. By late 1933, the NCER knew that it was shut out of FDR’s plans for radio.73

The Communications Act of 1934

In his inaugural address in 1933, President Roosevelt called for facilitating recovery

through “national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of

communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character.”74 The

Communications Act of 1934 was FDR’s attempt to reorganize communications regulation. For

many years historians viewed the Act as a mere restatement of the old Radio Act of 1927 with

one key difference. It consolidated communications regulation—wireless telegraphy, broadcast

radio, amateur radio, military radio, television, telephone, and experimental use of radio

spectrum—under one body, the Federal Communications Commission. Many histories presented

the 1934 act as a piece of legislation that merely restated the Radio Act of 1927. This myth enabled the commercial radio industry to present the 1934 Radio Act—which legally defined the

American broadcast paradigm—as noncontroversial and produced by a collaboration of industry experts, federal regulators, and legislators. At the same time, this solid unity between government and industry enabled the commercial industry to remove reformers and the debate over American radio from the official story. To be sure, a significant part of the Communications

Act of 1934 indeed restated the Radio Act of 1927, but the latter measure was a more complex piece of legislation because it encompassed all communications technology. The same histories

73 Letter to Marvin McIntyre from John H. MacCracken dated December 14, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 757; letter to John H. MacCracken from Marvin McIntyre dated December 18, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 757. In December, the NCER made its first effort to meet with FDR to discuss radio and education. John H. MacCracken requested a ten minute meeting with FDR receiving a reply that FDR was interested in all aspects of education but did not have time to meet with him. 74 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933,” The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: Volume Two, The Year of Crisis, 1933, 13. 259

also depicted the passage of the Act from a consensus standpoint; in their view all players knew

the faults and troubles of the old Radio Act, and policymakers moved to solve these problems in

an uncontroversial manner that generated little or no opposition.75

In 1934, the NCER and other reformers made their last great effort to change radio when

Congress considered the Communications Act. Communications scholar, Robert McChesney

viewed the fight over the Act as a “brief window of opportunity” for broadcast reformers, and

argued that the commercialists’ goal was to “see this window opened for as brief a historic

moment as possible and to assure that as little of the Congress or the public as possible could

take advantage of its existence.”76 Still, McChesney concluded that the “broadcast reform

movement was almost hopelessly overmatched from the outset; in this sense the conventional

wisdom [that the reformers did not stand a chance] is virtually unimpeachable.”77

However, understanding the fight over American radio requires more than simply recognizing that the presence of a reform movement made the Communications Act of 1934 a moment of debate rather than consensus. McChesney correctly notes that the Communications

Act of 1934 opened an opportunity for reformers and threatened the commercial industry, but he underestimates the possibilities that opening afforded reformers. The Communications Act of

1934 appeared to invite free and open debate on all sides of the radio matter while powerful

Congressmen and, later, the Federal Communications Commission managed the debate at every

turn. Even so, the Communications Act of 1934 did not enjoy the clear-cut, easy victory for the

commercial broadcast industry that historians and McChesney himself have indicated.

Roosevelt requested a change in communications regulation in his inaugural address, but

this was not his first word on the issue. Indeed, during Hoover’s last months in office, FDR

75 For more see Archer, Big Business and Radio; Barnouw, The Golden Web; and Rosen, The Modern Stentors. 76 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 188. 77 Ibid., 260. 260

began to broach the subject. He did not advocate a radical reorganization of radio broadcasting;

rather, he wanted to streamline regulation of all communications in the United States to provide

more cost-efficient management of communications. 78 In his message to Congress in February,

1934, FDR reiterated his reason for requesting a new communications bill arguing that the

legislation was necessary “for the sake of clarity and effectiveness” because, with regard to

communications, there was no “single Government agency charged with broad authority.”79

However, creating an agency with broad regulatory power might well involve fundamental reorganization of some of the affected industries. The Federal Radio Commission’s authority was limited, and if the new FCC held broader powers over radio than the FRC, there were no guarantees that the FCC would enjoy the same rapport with the commercial industry as did the

FRC. In late 1933, Roosevelt directed Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper, to form an interdepartmental committee to investigate communications in the United States and formulate a plan to make communications regulation more efficient, cooperative, and supportive of recovery.80 This endeavor would have no connection with the other two measures involving

radio: the Tugwell Bill and the NRA. The Communications Bill would encompass all

communications media—telephone, telegraph, radio, experimental television—and would not be

concerned with regulating advertising agencies and reopening discussion about radio labor

issues. FDR wanted a Communications bill passed before Congress adjourned, and trying to fold

in such matters could have threatened to stall the legislation for a fight on Capitol Hill.

78 Barnouw, The Golden Web, 23. 79 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “A Recommendation for the Creation of the Federal Communications Commission, February 26, 1934,” The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt with a Special Introduction and Explanatory Notes by President Roosevelt, Volume Three, The Advance of Recovery and Reform, 1934 (New York: Random House, 1938), 107. 80 Rosen, The Modern Stentors, 174. 261

In retrospect, Roosevelt’s decision to use Roper to head the investigation into radio and

communications might well seem like an important early blow to the radio reformers. Roper was appointed primarily as a political favor he owed to William McAdoo. McAdoo had broken the nomination deadlock at the Democratic National Convention in 1932 by casting California’s

votes for FDR and securing his nomination. FDR awarded the position of Secretary of

Commerce to one of McAdoo’s close friends, Daniel C. Roper.81 Roper had served in the Wilson

Administration as first assistant postmaster general and commissioner of the Internal Revenue

Service. Brain Truster Raymond Moley remembered him as a “sincere, likeable, and crisp

administrator,” but Roper had no experience in radio and little familiarity with the ongoing battle

over the American airwaves.82 Finally, Roper was a more fiscally conservative member of

FDR’s administration and throughout his tenure Roper continued to urge business-government

cooperation.83 In any case, Roper’s belief in business-government cooperation indicated that he

might privilege the commercial radio industry over reformers in his investigation of

communications. Despite Roper’s cooperative inclinations, it was not inevitable that he would

endorse close cooperation between the industry and the government in his inquiry, and, even if

Roper did, there was no guarantee that FDR would accept and adopt the Roper Committee

findings. Raymond Moley noted that FDR treated Roper “in a light manner,” meaning that FDR

did not trust or depend upon Roper, and, by the Spring and Summer of 1934, FDR had tired of

placating and cooperating with industry leaders.84 Also the public and NCER reformers still

believed in the possibilities for reform posed by the New Deal; one NCER article argued that the

New Deal should “bring to radio the same careful study it has brought to agriculture, finance,

81 Raymond Moley, The First New Deal (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966),. 74-75. 82 Ibid.,74. 83 Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, 152-153; and Moley, The First New Deal, 74. 84 Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, 153; and Moley, The First New Deal, 74. 262

and industry” in order to protect the public from business opportunists who shirked their public

service duties.85

Roper appointed men with long established track records in radio: Admiral Hooper of the

Naval Communications Service; J. H. Dellinger, member of the Bureau of Standards; Herbert L.

Pettey, secretary of the FRC; W. M. W. Splawn, former president of the University of Texas and

economist; Charles McK. Saltzman, the former FRC Commissioner; Irvin D. Stewart, State

Department; Major General I. J. Carr, chief Signal Officer of the Army; and E. M. Webster, U.

S. Coast Guard. Roper also appointed the two Congressional chairs responsible for steering

communications legislation: Senator Clarence C. Dill, chair of the Interstate Commerce

Committee in the Senate, and Congressman Sam Rayburn, the chair of the House Commerce

Committee.86 The Roper Committee membership served two important functions. First, it

convened well-regarded radio experts to work together to formulate a legislative plan. Most were

experts by virtue of having worked within the commercial broadcast system and the FRC.

Despite the NCER’s work since 1930, including the plethora of information and studies it

conducted, its representatives were not even considered for membership.

Still, the NCER remained undaunted, entering 1934 with renewed hope after hearing that

FDR charged Roper with establishing such a committee. It pounced on the opportunity and

viewed FDR’s call for a new communications bill as raising a new possibility for reform. During

its last meeting in 1934, Dr. Arthur G. Crane, NCER member from the National Association of

State Universities, suggested that “now is the time for the Committee to be studying and

preparing schemes which might be used in discussion with Congress. . . when the. . .question

85 “Radio Censorship in America and England,” Education by Radio 4 (February 15, 1934): 6. 86 Rosen, The Modern Stentors, 174-175; “Roosevelt Studying Sweeping Radio-Wire Control,” Broadcasting 5 no.12 (December 15, 1933): 39. 263

was being seriously considered, the Committee should have definite proposals to make.”87 In a

similar vein, Joy Elmer Morgan, attempted to prepare the committee for Congressional action,

ordering the NCER to draft a statement of the Committee’s objectives and send Roper a letter

requesting a thorough study of broadcasting and a study of preferred educational and cultural

broadcasting. Roper responded that he would give the matter “serious consideration.”88 Clearly the NCER thought that it would have an opportunity to be heard at some point in the coming year despite having been shut out of discussions on the Tugwell Bill and the NRA code for broadcasting. The Roper Committee seemed to promise the NCER more influence.

In January, the NCER continued its preparations despite some disappointing internal developments. An internal audit recommended that it refrain from making any contractual

obligations that would continue beyond the fiscal year. This meant, for example, that the NCER

could not make long-term commitments to its lawyers working in the Service Bureau. The

shortage of funds also prohibited the NCER from hiring T. A. M. Craven (the engineer who

helped it during talks before the Mexican Conference) to help develop its legislative proposals.

Craven was not a reformer; he was a well-respected engineer for hire who, by 1934, advertised

his services in Broadcasting, attracting clients who paid up to one thousand dollars

compensation for his services. In stark contrast, the NCER could offer him only one hundred

dollars.89 Despite budgetary setbacks, the NCER carried on making its preparations as best it

could. The Committee charged Armstrong Perry with revising NCER proposals to Congress and

87 Minutes of the Sixteenth Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Washington, D. C., November 20, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 88 Ibid; and Letter from the National Committee on Education by Radio to Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper dated December 19, 1933, and letter from Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper to the National Committee on Education by Radio dated December 20, 1933, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 89 Minutes of the Seventeenth Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Washington, D. C., January 15, 1934, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 264

discussed a plan to publicize its activities better in the press, and planning a conference of

national leaders to discuss “the radio question from the point of view of the public interest.”90

Matters looked better for the NCER in February; Roper appeared receptive to Committee materials and information. Tracy F. Tyler, disturbed by a newspaper report that the Roper

Committee would rely heavily upon the FRC’s 1932 report “Commercial Radio Advertising,”

[the result of S. 129] wrote Roper to protest using the report and asked Roper to challenge the validity of the report.91 The next day, Morgan telephoned and later wrote Roper in an attempt to

have Cline Morgan Koon, Special Assistant in the Office of Education, appointed to the Roper

group hoping that “this arrangement can be made so that the Office of Education will be directly

represented on the [Roper] Committee even tho [sic] arrangements might be made for an

educational advisory committee which would include Dr. Koon.”92 Roper kindly responded

simply stating that he did not have any completed plans as of that date; he thanked them and

again said that he would consider their proposals.93 The NCER continued its battering ram style

trying to get its point of view across to Roper who always kept the NCER at bay thanking the

NCER but reporting that the work on broadcasting was not yet organized, and Roper did not

know when that work would begin.94

Morgan and Tyler’s correspondence revealed two key assumptions made by the NCER

with regard to the Roper Committee. First the move to have Koon appointed to the Roper group

assumed that educators would be welcome to participate officially in the Roper investigation.

90 Ibid. 91 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper, dated February 12, 1934, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 92 Letter from Joy Elmer Morgan to Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper, dated February 13, 1934, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 93 Letter from Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper, to Tracy F. Tyler dated February 15, 1934, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 94 Letter from Joy Elmer Morgan to Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper, dated February 19, 1934, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751; and Letter from M. Kerlin to Joy Elmer Morgan dated Febraury 26, 1934, Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 751. 265

The NCER hoped to get an educator’s perspective on the committee, and it also demonstrated that the NCER hoped that there would be an advisory commission of educators also appointed to the Roper Committee. The letter was an attempt to place the NCER in a position to be such an advisory group. If the plan worked it could then force its agenda upon the investigation. The correspondence also assumed that the Roper Committee seriously considered launching an investigation into radio broadcasting.

Unbeknownst to the NCER, the Roper Committee had been meeting and making decisions since December of 1933, focusing on the communications matters that most concerned

FDR while ignoring NCER overtures. The closest the Roper Committee ever came to considering a reform proposal came when Josephus Daniels suggested that the U. S. government take over all radio stations—an idea Daniels had also proposed after World War I. Daniels sent a similar cable to Roosevelt and FDR directed Roper to consider the suggestion. Daniels and FDR had been close since FDR worked under Daniels in the Department of the Navy so the President held Daniels’s opinions in high esteem. But the Roper Committee opposed Daniels’s idea, voting unanimously, in secret sessions, against the Daniels proposal. The Roper Committee reported its plan to the President in December suggesting a Federal Communications Commission and passage of many of the components of the Radio Act of 1927 while informing FDR that the

Daniels plan would impede recovery and anger the public.95 The Roper Plan called for all communications to be governed under one regulatory body, a Federal Communications

Commission, retaining the main provisions of the Radio Act of 1927. The Roper plan also called for cooperation between the industry and the government. None of these provisions threatened the commercial radio industry, making the Roper Plan seem like a clear victory for the commercialists. The Roper Plan did include, however, one provision that alarmed commercial

95 Rosen, The Modern Stentors, 174-177. 266

radio. As a bow to the NCER and Senator Clarence C. Dill, the plan also required a thorough

investigation of broadcasting, and that investigation could pose a serious threat to the

commercial radio industry.

If the commercial industry feared any Congressional action in the new session it tried not

to show it publicly. One NAB editorial reported that the new session might sponsor an

investigation because radio had been a “favorite political football” for Congress.96 The editorial

displayed a veneer of nonchalance and lack of urgency compared to its counterparts in 1931 and

1932. The editorial did not demand that its members unite to repel attackers, but it did launch a

series of salvos against detractors pointing out that the state of radio itself was not a concern, but

that investigations of radio were simply fishing exercises engaged in for political gain. In other

editorials the NAB again simply accepted that a radio bill would go to Congress but would have

little impact on the status quo.97 The NAB went so far as to assure readers that the

“legislature…is far too busy with fiscal affairs to bother…with the possible exception of the

proposal for a Federal Communications Commission.” It went on to characterize the FCC as an

entity that would “simply…shift control of broadcasting from one agency to another.”98

FDR endorsed the Roper Committee findings soon upon their release. The same day that

Roper’s assistant sent his last communiqué to the NCER, President Roosevelt presented the

Communications Act of 1934 to Congress. The Act basically copied the Roper Plan. At this time

Senator Dill and Congressman Rayburn, both largely absent from the Roper Committee meetings

due to the press of other legislative priorities, began working with Roper on the measure to prepare it for their Congressional committees. Dill’s and Rayburn’s absence from the Roper

96 “Congress and Radio,” Broadcasting 6 no. 1 (January 1, 1934): 22. 97 “Roper Plan’s Fate Held by Roosevelt; Dill Drafting Bill,” Broadcasting 6 no. 2 (January 15, 1934): 19; “Congress Shows Little Desire to Disturb Radio Control Now,” Broadcasting 6 no. 3 (February 1, 1934): 12. 98 “The Grand Old Game,” Broadcasting 6 no. 3 (February 1, 1934): 22. 267

meetings was unfortunate. Dill had worked with the NCER before and had been somewhat

sympathetic to its cause. . Rayburn, the former Texas farm-boy, built his career championing the

rights of agrarian states and promoting old Populist and Progressive ideas including the income

tax, inheritance tax, direct election of Senators, and publicly funded educational facilities for

rural children.99 Because Rayburn and Dill shared a good deal of the NCER’s ideology, their absence absented the NCER’s perspective from the Roper Committee meetings.

One might assume that if Dill and Rayburn objected to the Roper Plan, they could have

rewritten it while preparing it to go to Congress but such a rewrite would have been difficult for

the two legislators. FDR wanted the communications measure passed quickly, and any rewrites

by Dill and Rayburn would have delayed it. In addition, both men were committed Democrats

trying to help FDR accomplish his legislative agenda. Rayburn, who was cultivating a budding

friendship with Roosevelt, was determined to push FDR’s proposals—any proposals—through

the House. In order to accomplish this goal, Rayburn tried channel all important New Deal

proposals to his committee so that he could personally move the matters through Congress.

While preparing the Communications Act, Rayburn even went to the House parliamentarian to

make sure that bill would be referred to his committee vowing that if the rules forbade it,

Rayburn would rewrite the House rules.100 The two men supported the Communications Act, but they discussed their support in terms of political expediency. They wanted to pass FDR’s new deal for communications quickly, leaving controversial questions to the new FCC. McChesney views Dill’s and Rayburn’s support of the Communications Act as evidence of their philosophical agreement with the principles embodied in it, failing to appreciate that the men

99 Booth Mooney, Roosevelt and Rayburn: A Political Partnership (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1971), 1-15. 100 Rosen, The Modern Stentors, 174-178; and Booth Mooney, Roosevelt and Rayburn, 46-47. 268

stressed the Act’s political expediency over its actual substance.101 In sum, even if Dill and

Rayburn had personal objections to the Communications Act of 1934, they were unlikely to voice them because the Act was part of a larger New Deal agenda that the two men did support.

Some NCER contemporaries also saw Dill as an industry puppet, criticizing the organization for its faith in Dill.102

By mid-February, the NAB learned of the Roper Committee’s findings and viewed the

communications bill as relatively harmless because it proposed little change in the law. The

NAB did object to the Roper Committee’s proposed study of broadcasting but did not expect the

study to take place because Dill and Rayburn were moving the bill along so quickly. 103 The

NAB again reassured its members. Radio might be the “most investigated industry extant,” and

if the investigation was “conducted by the new committee, there will be the usual parade of

calamity-howling reformers…but if the facts prevail, there can only be one answer on the major

issue—retention of the status quo.”104 If, however, commercial broadcasting was as safe as the

NAB claimed, it probably would not have issued so many of these reassuring editorials.

On Febraury 27, Dill and Rayburn introduced the bills in their respective houses of

Congress and took them to their committees while the NCER, seeing the Communications Act of

1934 as an opportunity for reform took action.105 The NCER’s efforts during the period between

February 1934, when the Communications Act was proposed, and June of 1934, after the Bill passed, have been criticized by communications scholar, Robert McChesney, as minimalist and inept.106 In stark contrast, McChesney finds much merit in the actions taken by NCER

101 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 194-195. 102 McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Radio Broadcasting,” 330. 103 Sol Taishoff, “Roosevelt Demands Communications Bill,” Broadcasting 6 no. 4 (February 15, 1934): 5-6. 104 “If Facts Prevail,” Broadcasting 6 no. 4 (February 15, 1934): 20. 105 “Roosevelt urges Board of Control on Wires, Radio,” The New York Times (February 27, 1934): 1. 106 McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Radio Broadcasting,” 329-330; and McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy, 196-210. 269

contemporary, Father John B. Harney, superior general of the Paulist Fathers, who ran a small

religious radio station, WLWL. WLWL had been losing broadcast time to a CBS station,

WCCO, and, as a result of his dwindling radio presence, the previously quiet Harney sprang into action during March and April of 1934. The enraged priest met with Senator Henry Hatfield (R-

WV) and Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) and convinced them to introduce an amendment to the

Communications Act of 1934 mandating that twenty-five percent of radio frequencies be

assigned to non-profit groups. Harney’s most likely met with Hatfield and Wagner due to

political considerations. Dill would have been unreceptive to Harney’s proposed reallocation just

as Dill had opposed reallocation when the NCER proposed it. Also Dill and Rayburn would have

refused to support the Harney proposal because it would be a controversial matter bound to hold

up passage of the Communications Act, and they promised FDR the Act would pass quickly.

Harney sent out a propaganda pamphlet about his broadcast difficulties to 20,000 Catholic

parishes across the country.107 Harney’s bold move resembled the NCER’s strategy with the Fess

Bill by attacking the commercial industry, defending public service broadcasting, and seeking a

preserve on the air. The NCER took no part in this campaign, did not mention his work in

Education by Radio, and, as a result, earned Harney’s criticism in 1934 and McChesney’s sixty

years later.

One may wonder why Harney met with such success especially considering that he was

new to the radio reform battle, lacked the resources of the NCER, and demanded even more airspace than the ill-fated Fess Bill had. But Harney emerged alongside the Catholic Legion of

Decency, a motion picture reform organization that threatened a nationwide movie boycott and

107 “WLWL Seeks New Law: Paulist Station Seeks Backing in Move for More Time,” The New York Times (April 11, 1934): 15; and McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Radio Broadcasting,” 329-330. 270

brought not only millions of Catholics, but also Protestants and Jews into its movement.108 Not

all film reformers agreed with the Legion of Decency campaign. Catheryne Cook Gilman, for

example, feared that the Catholic campaign would fall victim to the industry by agreeing to

cooperate with it.109 Senator Wagner represented New York, a state with a large Catholic

population and Senator Hatfield hailed from West Virginia, a state with a large and devout

protestant population. Their support for Harney’s radio proposal may have reflected their desire

to ride the political coattails of the Legion of Decency. Additionally New Deal politics also

played a role in Hatfield’s sponsorship of the amendment because Hatfield was a Republican and

outspoken critic of the New Deal. Hatfield may have simply used Harney’s proposal as a way of

impeding the passage of yet another New Deal measure.110

The three sections of the Wagner-Hatfield Amendment resembled the Fess Bill, but

differed in some fundamental ways. The first section would render all current radio licenses

issued by the FRC null and void within ninety days. In the interest of uninterrupted radio service, the second section stipulated that during the ninety day period following passage of the measure, the FCC would begin a frequency reallocation process.111 The third provision required the FCC

to assign twenty-five percent of radio channels to non-profit groups. Had the amendment stopped

there, Joy Elmer Morgan might have endorsed this plan, but, like Catheryne Cook Gilman in

films, he opposed the Wagner-Hatfield measure because it allowed for a practice that Morgan

had railed against for four years. The final section also permitted stations run by non-profit groups to be self-supporting—allowed to sell airtime to support the operation of the station. The final section scuttled any possible cooperation between a Morgan-led NCER and the Paulists.

108 Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 165-166. 109 Ibid., 166-171. 110 Irish, Clarence C. Dill, 148. 111 Congressional Record—Senate. (May 15, 1934), 8828. 271

Harney’s proposal still required stations to be self-sustaining meaning the financial burdens still

lay with the station ownership and management which would privilege stations that sold time

over stations that operated as part of a university or college.112 Also, Morgan criticized

educational and commercial stations for running advertising that could prove harmful to children

and for polluting education by educating through advertising and, like Merlin Aylesworth,

paying professors to promote industry doctrine in classrooms. On these issues, the NCER would

not compromise. While the Wagner-Hatfield measure may have presented an opportunity to get

some of what the NCER wanted, the compromises it required would have violated NCER

principles.

The Wagner-Hatfield amendment had other practical problems. First, the measure

required the new FCC to reallocate all American channels within ninety days. The Federal Radio

Commission took more than one year to allocate fewer channels in 1927. Additionally, the amendment failed to provide for the possibility that insufficient non-profit stations existed to occupy twenty-five percent of the airwaves. Also the language that allocated the twenty-five percent to non-profits simply stated that the “Commission shall reserve and allocate . . . one fourth of all the radio broadcast facilities in its jurisdiction” to educational, religious, and public

service stations.113 The Fess Bill may have targeted only fifteen percent of the airwaves, but it read “not less than fifteen percent,” meaning that non-profits could be assigned more space, but never less than fifteen percent. In contrast, the Wagner-Hatfield amendment imposed a ceiling of twenty-five percent. Finally, allowing non-profit stations to sell time blurred the boundaries between legitimate non-profit and commercial stations.. In sum, the Wagner-Hatfield

112 Ibid., 8828. 113 Ibid., 8828. 272

amendment may have offered the possibility of guaranteed allocations for educational, religious,

and community broadcasting, but it also threatened to blur distinctions among them.

While Harney lobbied Senators Hatfield and Wagner, the NCER was active even as it refused to support Harney’s bill. Instead the NCER chose a more circumspect course of action,

continuing its information campaign, sending its newsletter to members of Congress, and

planning a major conference on “Radio as a Cultural Agency” to be held in Washington in the

Spring of 1934. While the Communications Act went through committee, the NCER continued to spread propaganda with its muck rake by attacking ads, exposing programming that was harmful to children, and revealing the profits of the radio corporations.114 At the same time the

NCER’s by-invitation-only conference held on May 7-8 in Washington, D. C. focused on the

cultural impact and possibilities of radio. Not coincidentally, the conference also coincided with

the final stages of the committee’s hearings on the Communications Act. The conference gave

lawmakers easy access to its expert conclusions about radio, but the NCER was only looking to

inform lawmakers not agitate for legislation because the NCER believed in the upcoming investigation of radio. In retrospect the NCER’s failure to lobby during this period and trust in the promised investigation appears politically maladroit. Of course it is easy to come to this conclusion in hindsight, knowing how the debate unfolded. The NCER leaders were Progressives who remained convinced of the value and legitimacy of studies and expert commissions despite their experience over the previous four years. The organization’s very existence relied, in part, upon such faith, and the Committee spent a good deal of time over its four years attempting to establish the legitimacy of its expertise. Secondly, the NCER had already tried a legislative approach to the radio problem only to meet with resistance and failure. One may suggest that

114 “Can America Get the Truth about Radio?” Education by Radio 4 (March 15, 1934): 9; “Who Profits from Radio Broadcasting?” Education by Radio 4 (April 12, 1934): 13-14; “A Mother’s Viewpoint,” Education by Radio 4 (May 10, 1934): 17-18. 273

there was greater potential for the NCER to promote legislation at this time because Congress

was working on communications matters and the Paulists seemed to have generated a stir.

Perhaps an NCER-Paulist alliance would have finally broken the back of the commercial radio industry, but the NCER had been down that road before in 1931 and 1932 when it promoted the

Fess Bill. Additionally, in those years, public dissatisfaction with radio was even greater than in

1934. Thirdly, the NCER was also probably resigned to the fact that since most of FDR’s early legislative measures in 1933 and 1934 swiftly moved through Congress, the Communications

Act would do the same. Opposing the measure might anger FDR and further arm the commercialists. Instead NCER leaders decided to focus on preparing to take action during the broadcast investigation process, hoping that, by not opposing the Communications Act, they had increased the likelihood that they would be called on to participate in the investigation. Fourthly, the Wagner-Hatfield amendment may have called for a twenty-five percent allocation to non- profit organizations, but the measure also allowed such stations to air commercials.115 The

NCER had taken a firm stand against educational, religious, and community stations airing

commercials, and its chair, Joy Elmer Morgan, viewed frequency reservation legislation as a

stop-gap measure that might even derail real radio reform.

Of course NCER leaders did not all agree on the proper course of action. Morgan and

Tyler were the true architects of NCER policy at this time. Armstrong Perry differed with them

and wanted to support Harney and the Paulists. Perry even wrote of his frustrations to the Payne

Fund, hoping to generate support for the Paulist proposal, but he found few backers outside and

none within the NCER. Perry’s move, later lauded by McChesney, was ill-advised because his

personal support of Harney could be used by commercialists as proof of official NCER support

of the Harney proposal providing even more ammunition the industry could use against the

115 Senator Robert Wagner, Congressional Record—Senate. (May 15, 1934), 8828. 274

NCER. Perry had already proven politically naive in Madrid and Mexico City, and his actions

there brought serious criticism down upon on the NCER including questions of the

organization’s loyalty. Also Perry was a Payne Fund member attached to the NCER; he did not

necessarily share the ideological vision of the educators.

The NCER was not alone in its faith in studies and investigations; the NACRE—the

NCER’s rival—and the ACLU all advocated a serious study of broadcasting. A special report by

Bethuel M. Webster, a member of the American Bar Association and the ACLU as well as a former General Counsel for the FRC, argued that “any attempt to deal with communications without special study of and provision for broadcasting is foreordained to be disappointing.”116

In March, 1934 the ACLU officially called for a federal investigation of broadcasting by an independent commission which the NCER eagerly reported in Education by Radio. The NCER used the ACLU resolution as evidence proving greater support of an investigation of radio as opposed to the Wagner-Hatfield amendment.117 The ACLU also accused FDR, Dill, and

Rayburn of ineptitude. Their urgency to consolidate the control of communications, the ACLU

argued, ran roughshod over numerous problems in all realms of American communications.118

The call for a comprehensive study of broadcasting and careful planning echoed throughout the

panels at the NCER conference in May, 1934. Dr. William G. Carr, the Research Director for the

NEA, argued that radio needed a study much like the Payne Fund Study of movies.119

The conference essentially summarized the key NCER positions on American radio and

education, the same ones it had been developing since its first meeting in 1930. The first session

116 Bethuel M. Webster, Jr., “Notes on the Policy of the Administration with Reference to the Control of Communications,” ACLU Radio Committee File, 1934. Microfilm ACLU reel 107, volume 698. p. 40. 117 “For a Federal Investigation of Radio Broadcasting,” ACLU Radio Committee File, 1934. Microfilm ACLU reel 107, volume 698; Education by Radio 4:4 (April 12, 1934): 15. 118 Bethuel M. Webster, Jr., “Notes on the Policy of the Administration with Reference to the Control of Communications,” ACLU Radio Committee File, 1934.Microfilm ACLU reel 107, volume 698. 119 Dr. William G. Carr, Radio as a Cultural Agency: Proceedings of a National Conference on the Use of Radio as a Cultural Agency in a Democracy, 99-100. 275

of the conference identified the power of radio upon American culture. The opening remarks by

George F. Zook, the U.S. Commissioner of Education, used radio’s power—for good and for

ill—to explain the great paradox presented by the NCER. Zook noted that while the NCER and

like-minded reformers wanted to preserve local control of education and local voices on the air

in the face of network domination, these reformers also desired to take advantage of the radio to

reach a national audience and influence a national culture.120 Other panelists reminded the

audience of the receding number of educational stations squelched by commercial challengers as well as the degeneration of radio into a sales-mart.121 The following two sessions echoed these

sentiments while calling for greater responsibility of teachers, parents, and the public on the use

of the radio and screening the content to which their children listened.122 Again these were not

new ideas to the conferees. However, four key points surfaced throughout the first three sessions

and emerged as the consensus view of the assembly. First most members agreed that the federal

government needed to appoint experts to plan national culture as it spread via the radio. Secondly

the control of radio by private interests encouraged censorship enabling commercial broadcasters

to deny any speaker who might criticize capitalism, the government, or certain companies’

business practices. The conferees agreed that this type of censorship threatened democracy.

Thirdly, the conference should unite behind the NCER as opposed the NACRE to provide a

strong front of opposition to commercialists. Finally the assembly agreed that the government

needed to conduct a thorough study of broadcasting.123

120 George F. Zook, “Opening the Conference,” Ibid., 2. 121 Jerome Davis, “The Radio, a Commercial or Educational Agency?” Ibid., 3-10; Thomas E. Brenner, “Radio and the Cultural Depression,” Ibid., 10-14; James A. Moyer, “Adult Education by Radio,” Ibid., 14-18; Harold B. McCarty, “The Wisconsin Radio Plan in Practice,” Ibid.,18-23; and Joy Elmer Morgan, “A National Culture—By- Product or Objective of National Planning?” Ibid., 23-32. 122 C. R. Mann, Otis T. Wingo Jr., Mars. Harriet A. Houdlette, William H. Bristow, George F. Bowerman, “On Whom Rests the Responsibility for the Cultural Use of Radio?” Ibid., 51-60. 123 Ibid., 125-138. 276

At the end of the third session, one participant, Gross W. Alexander, rose to address the

conference. Alexander, a Methodist minister from Los Angeles, reminded the audience of the

three alternatives for control of broadcasting: government control, industry control, and philanthropic control.124 Narrating his own experiences with radio, Alexander argued

passionately for government and philanthropic control of American radio. Alexander had battled

commercial challenges to his small religious station including attacks from RCA. Dr. Robert A.

Millikan of the California Institute of Technology once supported Alexander’s efforts but later

withdrew his support after Cal Tech received a three million dollar grant from AT&T and AT&T

subsidiary, Westinghouse, retained Millikan as a consultant.125 Alexander then noted Millikan’s

role as head of the NACRE which Alexander considered “a smokescreen behind which this

powerful plutocracy [the radio industry] could entrench itself and indirectly control even such education by radio as would ensue.”126 Alexander also called into question the ethics and leadership of NBC president, Merlin Aylesworth reminding all assembled that the Federal Trade

Commission found Aylesworth’s behavior as head of the National Electric Light Association conspiratorial and corrupt.127 Alexander’s address demonstrated that the NCER was not alone in its beliefs, and suggested that the accusations it made—to the chagrin of Frances Payne Bolton

[not present at the conference but aware of its proceedings]—were not conspiratorial fantasies.

The threats the NCER warned about were real; Alexander’s story simply personalized them. At

the closing session of the conference the assembly backed a resolution to be sent to FDR, urging

that American radio policy reflect listeners’ choice, allow minority voices, protect children,

provide the best culture America had to offer, allow discussion of controversial issues, finance

124 Gross W. Alexander, Ibid., 109. 125 Ibid., 109-110 126 Ibid., 110. 127 Ibid., 112-113. 277 radio publicly, and allow for a thorough, impartial study of radio; a later amendment, proposed by Alexander, also called upon FDR to appoint an educator to the Federal Communications

Commission if the Communications Act passed Congress.128

The NCER and the Payne Fund considered the May Conference a great success for the group. The Committee had been able to gather a number of important people from many educational, civic, and religious organizations as well as government officials like George F.

Zook to discuss the problems of American radio policy. The NCER believed that despite its past experience, the upcoming investigation of radio would include the perspectives of these kinds of experts as well as the technical expertise already in use. Most importantly the NCER successfully steered the conference to approve a resolution supporting its views on American radio while also discrediting its rival group, the NACRE. Finally the NCER seemed poised to take advantage of apparent consensus among the people it regarded as important, and now it was ready to present FDR with a resolution and demonstration of its collective expertise.

On May 15, 1934 the Communications Act of 1934 reached the Senate floor for a vote, and the Bill moved swiftly, but not before provoking a heated and frank discussion about the state of American broadcasting in the Senate. Criticism of the commercial radio industry and the state of broadcasting came from a member one might expect by this point, Simeon D. Fess, but others too voiced their displeasure with American broadcasting. James Couzens as well as the

Progressive coalition including George Norris and William Borah expressed their discontent in terms that reflected their progressive and populist leanings.

The Communication Act’s author in the Senate, Clarence Dill, informed his fellow

Senators that despite the length of the bill, 104 pages, most of the Bill simply rewrote the old

128 “Report of the Committee on Fundamental Principles which Should Underlie American Radio Policy,” Ibid., 126-128. 278

communications laws into the text of the current measure. The new provisions of the Bill

established the Federal Communications Commission and its powers and function and ended some old problems with the Radio Act of 1927.129 For example, the new measure allowed

challenges and appeals over broadcast frequencies to be held in district courts to eliminate the

old, expensive process that required station representatives to argue their cases in Washington,

D. C. The new measure also limited the holdings of communications companies preventing consolidation and monopolies. Senator Couzens, the former Detroit reform mayor, fearful of a communications trust, began the session making sure that radio, telegraph, and telephone companies could not consolidate into one massive corporation.130 Very quickly the discussion

gravitated to the Wagner-Hatfield amendment. Dill explained Section 307c of the

Communications Act—his answer to the Wagner-Hatfield measure—which called for a study on

religious, educational, and community broadcasting to be conducted by the new FCC which

would ascertain whether or not Congress needed to legislate radio further or if the FCC could

handle the problem.131 After Dill finished reviewing the Bill, Senator Wagner introduced his amendment.

The debate over the Hatfield-Wagner Act exposed the frustrations of many Senators with

American radio. Even Senators generally opposed to the idea of forced allocation by percentage

found themselves attracted to some of its provisions most notably, Simeon D. Fess. Fess declared

“I do not like the kind of legislation that the amendment carries, and yet at the same time it

seems to me that it is quite essential that something of this sort be done.”132 Fess objected to the heavy-handed nature of the reallocation, yet he realized that “pollution of the air” was rampant.

129 Congressional Record—Senate. (May 15, 1934), 8822. 130 Ibid., 8823. 131 Ibid., 8824-8825. 132 Ibid., 8830. 279

Fess then recounted his own failed attempts at reallocation legislation and the commercial industry attacks on the Fess Bill arguing that the Wagner-Hatfield measure was tempting. Dill noted that the Fess Bill was different, because it tried to protect stations that sold no time whereas the new measure would allow the non-profits to act like commercial stations by selling time.133 Senator Couzens noted that the amendment did not require the stations to air any

educational, religious, or community service material, and this final note convinced Fess and

Couzens not to support the measure.134 At this point in the discussion, Dill read into the minutes

the NCER resolution. Others, despite their dissatisfaction with the amendment, still leaned

toward supporting it because it would guarantee station allocations in their home states.135 In the end the vote on the Wagner-Hatfield Amendment broke down along geographical rather than party lines. Republicans and Democrats alike voted against the amendment while members of the old progressive coalition representing states in the West and Midwest voted for the measure. The amendment lost by a vote of 42 nays to 23 yeas with 31 abstentions.136 Shortly after the defeat of

the Wagner-Hatfield amendment, the Communications Act of 1934 passed by voice vote; the

Senate preferred an FCC investigation of broadcasting to the hasty reallocation called for by the

Wagner-Hatfield measure.137 A few weeks later, on June 9, the House approved the

Communications Act of 1934 and sent it to FDR for his signature.138 The New Deal for radio

was underway.

In the end, the National Committee for Education by Radio performed as well as it could

in the face of great obstacles in 1933 and 1934. It participated in government policy making

133 Ibid., 8830. 134 Ibid., 8830. 135 Ibid., 8842-8846. 136 Ibid., 8846. 137 Ibid., 8854. 138 “Congress Passes Wire Control Bill,” The New York Times (June 10, 1934): 28. 280

whenever possible with the notable exception of the NRA hearings. It clung to the image of

impartial, helpful expert while avoiding the pitfall of angering FDR and making compromising

alliances that would violate its central principles. As it stood in the summer of 1934, the NCER

would have its investigation of radio by the new FCC, and it hoped to participate in that

investigation. While some scholars may view the death of the Wagner-Hatfield amendment as

the death of radio reform and blame the NCER for refusing to back the measure, such insight is

gained only through hindsight. This is, to be sure, part of a historian’s job, but the other part is to

contextualize and explain the people from the past in their own contexts rather than simply

passing judgment. Expecting the NCER to have supported the measure and defining its refusal as inept or a failure is to misunderstand the Committee and expect it to have been possessed of a divine prescience.

281

VII. Conclusion

FDR signed the Communications Act of 1934 into law on June 20, 1934 along with

thirty-nine other bills. The New York Times marveled at the number and later reported that

FDR’s flurry of legislative activity had been the highest volume ever achieved by a sitting

President during one week.1 It also further demonstrated the relative importance of the

Communications Act indicating that communications policy was a priority for FDR. But the

Communications Act was merely one piece of legislation surrounded by other recovery related

measures such as the Silver Purchase Act and an industrial loan measure. While FDR considered

the Communications Act an important piece of legislation, he was still more focused on recovery

measures.2 The new communications law took effect on July 1, and the administration had to

appoint members to the new Federal Communications Commission by that date. Sworn in and on

the job by July 11, the FCC members were “recess” appointments who would not receive Senate

confirmation until January 1935.3 Thus the FCC would hold its Fall hearings and make its

decision on the future of American broadcasting without having been confirmed by the Senate.

Although the FCC appointees’ status as recess appointments was in part a practical matter

resulting from the timing of the passage of the Communications Act, but it was also part political

maneuvering.

The seven men appointed to the FCC, for the most part, were fresh faces at the federal

level, but the chair, Eugene O. Sykes, and the vice-chair, Thad H. Brown, had served on the

Federal Radio Commission. The other appointees boasted a wide range of experiences. Paul

Walker was a lawyer who had spent most of his career on the Oklahoma Corporations

1 “40 Bills Signed by the President,” The New York Times (June 21, 1934): 2; “Roosevelt Sets Record for Office,” The New York Times (July 2, 1934): 8. 2 “40 Bills Signed by the President,” 2. 3 Sol Taishoff, “Seven FCC Members Named by Roosevelt,” Broadcasting 7 no. 1 (July 1, 1934): 5. 282

Commission—a body that regulated utilities in the state of Oklahoma. Norman S. Case had been

governor of Rhode Island before taking the FCC post. George H. Payne of New York had been a publicist, journalist, campaigner, and New York City Tax Commissioner. Hampson Gary was a

Texas lawyer and a diplomat who served the U.S. as consul General to Egypt. Irvin M. Stewart,

on the other hand, was not new to communications regulation; he had served as an adviser to the

American delegation at the Madrid Conference in 1932 and the Mexico City Conference in

1933.4 The Commissioners’ experiences or lack thereof with radio and communications were

important because they indicated that the new body might hold a vision of communications,

specifically broadcasting, compatible with that of the old Federal Radio Commission. Yet

enough men on the new FCC were not part of the old regulatory infrastructure, suggesting the

possibility that a new view of broadcasting and regulation might emerge. The outgoing FRC

believed that the new Communications Act and the FCC would not make any radical changes,

and Senator Dill concurred that the law itself was not “revolutionary,” but could be interpreted that way depending upon the make up of the new FCC..5 In short, the Communications Act may

not have been a radical new approach to communication in the United States, but the new FCC

could have made it so.

The new FCC organized itself into divisions with each division focusing on one aspect of communications. The most important division to the NCER and the NAB was the broadcast division, and by August 1934 the FCC broadcast division included three men: Chairman Sykes

(member ex-officio), Thad Brown (Chairman), and Hampson Gary (Vice-Chairman).6 This

arrangement struck a preemptive blow to the radio reformers because two of the members had

4 “Seven Rulers of the Air,” The New York Times (July 15, 1934): XX15; Flannery, Commissioners of the FCC, 1-3, 7-9, 33-44 5 “New Law Effective Today,” The New York Times (July 1, 1934): XX17. 6 Sol Taishoff, “Broadcasting Division of FCC Formed,” Broadcasting 7 no. 3 (August 1, 1934): 5. 283

been Federal Radio Commissioners, and the other member, Gary, was a political appointment

who lacked real experience in radio. Gary’s dearth of radio experience suggested that he could easily be led by the other two men thus indicating that the section of the FCC conducting the Fall hearings and making decisions about broadcasting most likely would hold the same perspective as the old Federal Radio Commission.

The lack of a formal Senate confirmation process allowed Sykes and Brown to obtain

appointments to the FCC. Both men had powerful enemies in the Senate who, angry with their

performance on the FRC, would have challenged their appointments. Armstrong Perry later

learned that Senator James Couzens (R-MI) did not support Thad Brown’s appointment, and

Senator Theodore Bilbo (D-MS) attacked Sykes’s appointment because he believed Sykes had

used his position in the FRC and the new FCC to secure time for some political candidates

during the 1934 campaign.7 Had these men been required to undergo the confirmation process in

June and July 1934, it might have prevented their appointment and thus changed the makeup of

the broadcasting section of the FCC. In any case, when the FCC began its work on July 11, 1934

few people knew how it would interpret the new law or its Fall Hearings on broadcasting.

The Fall Hearings

On October 1, the long awaited Fall hearings opened, and the NCER had scheduled itself

to be the first group to testify. One might expect that the NCER experienced serious difficulty in

reserving time to testify given its exclusion from the Roper Commission, but it did not. As soon

as the FCC released the hearing dates, it informed all interested groups and encouraged their

participation. The NCER chose to testify at the Fall Hearings because it believed that this

7 Letter from Armstrong Perry to S. Howard Evans dated January 24, 1935. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc. Box 56 Folder 1080. 284

investigation of radio would produce results it desired unlike the NRA hearings. The NCER

viewed the FCC fall hearings as more directly connected to the possibility of reform. Joy Elmer

Morgan presented first, recounting the history of the NCER and the struggle of educational

stations during the previous four years, proposing that the FCC protect existing educational and

public welfare stations, reserve a portion of frequencies for them, and consider public welfare in

determining public interest with regard to radio stations.8 Following Morgan, Armstrong Perry

testified to the weaknesses of American commercial broadcasting while praising radio

broadcasting in other countries. Prone to gaffes at critical moments, Perry also bungled when

asked by Commissioner Brown if he believed that a 15% allocation to educational stations would

be too much space or too little by stating that 15% was more than what was needed at the present

time.9 This kind of statement undercut other NCER arguments made since 1931 that 15% was a

bare minimum and only a stop-gap measure. Other NCER members echoed the testimony of

Morgan and Perry—excepting Perry’s estimate that 15% would be more than was needed—and

Tracy F. Tyler provided rebuttal later in the hearings. Tyler defended the Committee against

charges of radicalism and accusations that it launched the Wagner-Hatfield Amendment, denying

any association between it and the NCER.10 The lack of synchronicity was probably the result of

the short preparation time that Tyler had to prepare for the Fall hearings. The NCER charged

Tyler with the task of organizing the presentations at its September 24th meeting, giving Tyler six

days to prepare the NCER for its fight before the FCC.11

8 Testimony of Joy Elmer Morgan in Digest of Hearings of the Federal Communications Commission, Broadcast Division under Sec. 307 (c) of “The Communications Act of 1934,” October 1-20, November 7-12, 1934. p. 5. 9 Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., “Congress Wants It,” The New York Times (October 14, 1934): X11. 10 Statement by Tracy F. Tyler in Digest of Hearings of the Federal Communications Commission, 22. 11 Minutes of the Nineteenth Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, Washington, D. C., September 24, 1934. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39, Folder 732. 285

Following the NCER’s testimony NACRE provided its last great service to the

commercial radio industry. On its behalf, Levering Tyson and Dr. Harry W. Chase contradicted

the NCER’s presentation, undermining its credibility by indicating that educators did not agree.

Unlike the NCER, NACRE described its relationship with commercial broadcasters as solid and

declared its support for the American Plan of radio.

Two other developments during the hearings undercut the NCER. First, the NCER failed

to organize all of the educators who testified before the FCC. Many educators appeared after the

NCER had made its case, offering proposals that were, at times, contradictory. For example,

some educators argued in favor of full government ownership while others simply wanted the

government to subsidize educational broadcast facilities. The NCER proved unable to unify the voice of educators. At the same time, the commercial radio industry spoke in one voice in a well-organized presentation before the FCC. Secondly, Joy Elmer Morgan encouraged the

NCER’s sympathetic ear on the TVA, Dr. Floyd W. Reeves to testify in support of the NCER.

The NCER had been flirting with the TVA since the Spring of 1934, inviting TVA director Dr.

Arthur Morgan to speak at the May Conference. The mission of the TVA represented

progressive action and attitude to Joy Elmer Morgan, and the TVA director’s talk about public

utilities and providing power to rural areas resonated with Joy Morgan’s populist and progressive

sentiments. Reeves had been an educator before joining the TVA as personnel director, and

believed that the federal government should own a radio network that served all areas of the

country, carrying educational and public-service programs free of commerce. Reeves’s work on

a project designed to provide power to rural areas clarifies his view of radio as simply another

utility, like electricity, which should be in the hands of the government. Morgan tapped Reeves

to propose to the FCC, in the final days of the hearings, that the federal government own, operate 286 and fund a public network of stations to broadcast education and public service programs. 12 Joy

Elmer Morgan believed that Reeves’s support would bolster the NCER’s case because he “spoke for the TVA” and thus represented the Roosevelt administration.13 On the contrary, Reeves’s testimony angered FDR and TVA director Dr. Arthur Morgan who sent a telegram to the FCC disavowing the Reeves testimony and supporting “non-governmental, and non-partisan control and direction” of broadcasting.14

The FCC’s Fall hearings closed on November 12, 1934 leaving the decision about the future of American broadcasting in its hands while the NCER waited for the final report. In the meantime, according to McChesney, the Committee appeared to be breaking apart in the fallout of the November hearings, but no evidence supports this claim.15 Actually, as the FCC deliberated, the NCER suffered no internal disunity but was hard at work planning its future. It may have had disorganized testimony at the hearings, and Perry may have contradicted one major point, but its members were still on good terms and ready for more work. At its January

21, 1935 meeting, the NCER elected its officers for 1935, its last year under the original Payne

Fund Grant, with Joy Elmer Morgan again voted in as Chair. Had the NCER experienced the internal divisions that McChesney claimed, unanimity on such an important decision would have been unlikely. Morgan’s most important order of business at this time was to search for possible

12 Statement by F. W. Reeves in Digest of Hearings of the Federal Communications Commission, 178-179 13 F. W. Reeves quoted in “Federal System Proposed in Radio,” The New York Times (October 20, 1934): 17. 14 Statement by Dr. Arthur Morgan in Digest of Hearings of the Federal Communications Commission, 179. 15 McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Radio Broadcasting,” 332. McChesney cited a letter from Armstrong Perry to the Payne Fund dated November 28, 1933 telling the fund that Morgan had insulted a group of educators at a November 20 meeting of the NCER. See Letter from Armstrong Perry to S. Howard Evans dated November 28, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 56 Folder 1080. However, McChesney argued this letter demonstrated disunity in the NCER in November of 1934. The NCER did not meet in November 1934, but it did meet in November 1933. It is easy to understand how McChesney could misinterpret this document because it was full of typos and other stylistic errors that are inconsistent with Perry’s other correspondence indicating he wrote the letter in haste without the aid of a typist. However, when the letter is cross referenced with the NCER’s meeting minutes from November, 20, 1934 one sees that Morgan’s letter chided a group of educators present at the meeting who were not NCER members. In short, the letter does not reflect any internal NCER conflicts in 1933 or 1934. See Minutes of the Sixteenth Meeting of the National Committee on Education by Radio, November 20, 1933. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39 Folder 751. 287

sources of future philanthropic support. The search for new support was a practical consideration, but it probably also reflected Morgan’s dissatisfaction with the Payne Fund and

the realization that the Fund would not grant the NCER a new endowment.

Several days later the FCC issued its official report to Congress. It represented a clean

sweep for the commercialists. The FCC commended the commercial radio industry for devoting

a good deal of its time to education, finding that commercial stations provided “ample

opportunity for the development of [educational]…radio activities under present arrangements,”

and opposed any arrangement that “would place the burden of maintaining broadcast stations

upon educational institutions.”16 The FCC recommended that no reallocation of frequencies or

fixed percentages be assigned to educational and public service broadcasting arguing that doing

so would “lessen the responsibility” of commercial broadcasters to air public service material

while saving educators the burden of financing their own stations.17 The FCC’s finding turned

one of the central complaints made by the NCER against it. The NCER argued that shaky

finances left educational stations at a disadvantage compared to commercial stations. Instead of

viewing this reality as a reason to protect these stations by allocating a fixed percentage of the air

to them, the FCC concluded that it should relieve educators of this burden altogether. In an

attempt to appear impartial, the FCC did make one concession to the NCER, proposing an

investigation into future license applicants and stations that leveled frequency challenges

(especially against educational stations). The purpose of the investigation was to ascertain the fitness of its application, and if the FCC determined the challenging party was unfit, then the application would be terminated immediately without need for a hearing.18 This was a minor

16 Report of the Federal Communications Commission to Congress Pursuant to Section 307 (c) of the Communications Act of 1934. pp. 2-3. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc. Box 48 Folder 922. 17 Ibid. pp. 4-10. 18 Ibid., 8-9. 288

concession which Tracy F. Tyler called a “straddle” position.19 However, the NCER was not

disheartened believing that a new legislative campaign might win reform. In fact Tyler quickly

urged all educational radio stations to press for new legislation noting that the “next fight will

occur in the halls of Congress” and encouraging educational station directors to contact Senate

Interstate Commerce Committee Chairman, Burton K. Wheeler to initiate appropriate

legislation.20 Wheeler, one of the progressive insurgents of the New Deal, was still in the Senate

where he occupied a powerful position as a member of the Senate Committee on Interstate

Commerce. Once more it appeared that the NCER would pursue a new legislative agenda

through fellow progressives with populist sympathies like Wheeler. Tyler argued that from

Wheeler “progressive legislation will undoubtedly eminate [sic].”21

Despite such rumblings the following months saw an NCER headed in a different

direction. At its March meeting the Committee voted in favor of a plan calling for a government

broadcasting network to broadcast educational and public interest material.22 In the following

months, worn from his battle with the commercial radio industry and the Payne Fund, Joy Elmer

Morgan resigned from the NCER, citing exhaustion and other duties, leaving Arthur G. Crane,

the Vice-Chairman, as Acting-Chairman.23 The Payne Fund, in a final statement of

dissatisfaction, categorized Morgan’s retirement six months early as “quite in keeping with his

general performance during the past two years,” meaning that the Payne Fund believed that

19 Letter to directors of all educational stations from Tracy F. Tyler dated January 24, 1935 Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund, Inc. Box 39 Folder 752 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Minutes of the Twenty-First Meeting of the National committee on Education by Radio, March 25, 1935. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund, Inc. Box 39 Folder 753. 23 Letter form Joy Elmer Morgan to Ella Phillips Crandall dated Spetember 6, 1935. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 68, Folder 1346. 289

Morgan had not been fit to lead the NCER.24 In contrast, the NCER passed a resolution thanking

and praising Morgan for his work “in the face of well-nigh insuperable obstacles.”25 Morgan would continue as editor of the NEA Journal and participant in educational causes publishing books detailing the importance of Horace Mann and promoting civics and world citizenship, but his days on the front lines of radio activism were done.26

After Morgan’s departure, the NCER continued on in a diminished role sponsored by a

new grant from the Payne Fund which was only forthcoming because of its change in leadership.

Arthur Crane’s NCER campaigned for a public network of radio stations, but most of the

NCER’s work was geared toward research and cooperation with the commercial radio industry.

It never again reached the level of agitation and legislative action that it attained between 1931

and 1934. Ironically, as the NCER moved toward cooperation with the commercial industry, the

NACRE publicized its failed efforts to cooperate with the commercial industry.27 Now that the

commercial industry exercised nearly complete control over American airwaves, it no longer

needed NACRE and promptly dropped its support. Tracy F. Tyler left the NCER by 1936 to pursue other research projects. Armstrong Perry continued his work with the NCER and other

Payne Fund projects until 1936; he died in 1938.28 Perry’s passing took with it the core of the

radical NCER, and, while the organization continued in name, the memory of its radical activity

faded away. An NCER history commissioned by the Payne Fund merely categorized the NCER’s

early years as “colorful” and did not even mention Joy Elmer Morgan. Chester Bolton died in

24 Letter from Ella Phillips Crandall to Arthur G. Crane dated August 28, 1935. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund, Inc., Box 68 Folder 1346. 25 Letter from Tracy F. Tyler to Joy Elmer Morgan dated September 16, 1935. Western Reserve Historical Society, Payne Fund Inc., Box 39 Folder 754. 26 See Morgan, Horace Mann at Antioch: Studies in Personality and Higher Education; Joy Elmer Morgan, The American Citizens Handbook (Washington, D. C.: The National Education Association, 1946); and Joy Elmer Morgan, The School that Built a Nation (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1954). 27 The National Advisory Council on Radio in Education, Four Years of Network Broadcasting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937). 28 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, 231. 290

office in 1938, and Frances took his place in Congress eventually winning the seat on her own

and serving until 1969. She continued to operate the Payne Fund until her death in 1977.

At the same time, the commercial radio industry and its trade organization, the NAB,

began the process of what Robert McChesney called the “ideological consolidation of the status

quo.”29 The commercialists began to commission histories of radio celebrating the many

achievements made by commercial radio and networks while washing away the contributions,

objections, and existence of a broadcast reform movement. In its place, the histories offered a

story of heroic discovery by inventors, risk-taking radio companies, and great men like David

Sarnoff who pioneered the American Plan of radio. Most importantly the commercialists portrayed the commercial development of radio as an inevitable and logical process that resulted in the best broadcast system in the world.30 McChesney concluded that the reformers’ fight for

American broadcasting was never a real threat to the commercial industry, but resistance to the

commercial paradigm existed to a greater extent than previously believed, and the broadcasters

took the threat seriously.31 Additionally, he maintained that the defeat of the broadcast reform

movement indicated that the public lacked a voice in deciding the type of broadcast system used

in the United States.32 He called the NCER an incompetent and “feeble lobbying force” that

failed to coordinate its activities with other reformers to present a united front against a powerful industry.33 In another study, McChesney lavished praise upon the Payne Fund for its support of

reform and educational broadcasting.34 Finally, he argued that while the broadcast reform

29 Ibid., 226-251. 30 Archer, Big Business and Radio; Archer, History of Radio to 1926; Hettinger, A Decade of Radio Advertising; and Hettinger, Practical Radio Advertising. 31 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, 252-253. 32 Ibid., 256. 33 Ibid., 261. 34 McChesney, “The Payne Fund and Radio Broadcasting,” 334. 291

movement might have succeeded later in the 1930s as government management became part of

the New Deal, even then there was little chance for success.35

My study not only disputes a few of these claims, but strives to understand the NCER in

its proper context of Progressivism, the New Era, and the New Deal. Reciprocally, the NCER

and its battle present new insights into our understanding of Progressive ideology and its effects

on the New Era and the New Deal.

The NCER may not have been politically adroit, but neither was it the bungler or the

complete failure McChesney described. The NCER was, in fact, a victim of a combination of

forces that worked against its ability to accomplish its goals. But more than any other radio

reform group, it held fast to key principles and provided the most consistent resistance and

opposition to the status quo. First the Committee felt bound by its October Conference mandate

to urge for reservation of radio channels which ultimately became the Fess Bill. In its campaign

to accomplish this goal, NCER members used the political language and logic they knew best—

the Populist and Progressive thought of their youth. The NCER clung to these ideas and

conducted its campaign like old muckrakers, unaware, just as reformers waging similar

campaigns in other media like film, that its particular form of expertise and the language it used

would soon render it irrelevant.

Secondly the Payne Fund’s advice was often poor, discouraging, and directed at forcing

the NCER to play within boundaries set by the Fund. The Payne Fund’s interpretation of the

legislative situation and Congressmen themselves between 1931 and 1934 often contradicted

reality. If there was a bungler, it was the Payne Fund and its disdain for several prominent

Congressmen such as Simeon D. Fess. Additionally, the Payne Fund’s insistence that the NCER

35 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, 262-270. McChesney believes that there was little chance for changing the commercial broadcast paradigm in the United States because capitalism itself is safe from criticism. 292

should court Senator Wallace White despite White’s numerous rebuffs certainly sharpens our

view of the Payne Fund’s “mastery” of Capitol Hill. Aside from funding the NCER, the Payne

Fund effort certainly did not help it accomplish fundamental reform, and periodically considered revoking the its funding. Frances Payne Bolton’s husband, Chester, who served in Congress at that time, refused to back the NCER’s legislative proposals. Additionally, Frances Payne’s rigid

Hooverian Republican tendencies—opposing government management of any commercial industry—and demand that the NCER pursue study after study served no useful purpose. The studies, though submitted as evidence and used at hearings, were disregarded by examiners, and the time would have been better spent allowing the NCER to pursue its legislative campaign combined with studies.

Finally, the Payne Fund’s insistence that the NCER cooperate with other educators—

even those who worked against the NCER by cooperating with commercial broadcasters and

allowing advertising on educational programs in schools—also undercut the NCER. To blame

the NCER for lack of cooperation is to misunderstand its core values and to forget that such

cooperation would have undercut its anti-commercial campaign. In fact, cooperation might have

only weakened the Committee. A cooperative campaign with the Ventura Free Press would have

left the NCER open to greater public attack because of the newspaper’s radical statements and

lack of expertise. Even worse, the publication ran questionable print advertising on one hand

while attacking commercial radio for doing the same with the other hand. Cooperation between

the NCER and the NACRE would have been equally damaging because the industry could use

such cooperation as a sign of implicit NCER approval of the American Plan of radio. A

considerable portion of blame for the NCER’s failure to accomplish reform must rest upon the

broad shoulders of the Payne Fund and the legislative snipe-hunt on which it sent the NCER, not 293

the overworked Joy Elmer Morgan trying to wage a principled campaign in a zero-sum game with modest financial and human resources at his disposal. Perhaps this understanding can help us rethink the accomplishments of the NCER given the opposition it faced and rediscover some of its successes. One might consider the NCER a success because it waged a four year battle against a titanic industry while participating in elite level policymaking and clinging to its core values and mandate. The easiest thing the NCER could have done would have been to compromise and agree to work within the industry, but at least during the years Morgan led the organization, it refused to do so. At the very least, the NCER was content to live or die by its principles.

The NCER’s principled campaign gives us greater insight into the meanings and

importance of Progressive ideologies and their effect upon modern governance. First, the

NCER’s campaign reveals divisions within Progressive discourse other scholars have discounted. Maureen Flanagan has argued that the Progressive movement division between humanitarian reform and managerial reform fell along gender lines.36 I do not contest this notion.

In fact the NCER’s humanistic and feminized language of reform disadvantaged it while trying

to convince technocrats of the educators’ expertise and relevant knowledge. However, one must

account for one other factor in order to explain the NCER. The NCER demonstrates the

importance of Populist thought which mostly resided on the humanistic side of Progressive

reform. The NCER’s campaign for educational radio aimed to protect educational radio outlets,

but it wanted to do so as a way of preserving redemptive spaces in the ether that would preserve

the United States from the cultural dominion and the commercial imperialism of the northeastern

establishment based in New York City. The NCER’s greatest complaints about the entertainment

and other material provided by the commercial broadcasters centered on two key ideas. First the

36 Flanagan, Seeing With Their Hearts; and Flanagan, “Gender and Urban Political Reform,” 195-219. 294

commercialists offered urban entertainment that was often seemed dangerous and was offensive

and objectionable to a national audience. Second the commercialists brought the parlance and

attitude of New York City and its commercialism into the private space of the home. The home was supposed to be a safe place protecting people from the threats of the city. Simultaneously, commercialists were wiping out local stations in the Midwest, West, and South that carried educational and public welfare material and allowed local areas to have greater control over the

type of material presented. When an educational station succumbed to a commercialist challenge

and was replaced by a network affiliate, another piece of territory seemed lost. These are cultural

arguments that echoed the Populist fear of Eastern economic domination, urbanization, and the

death of yeoman farming. The economic battle may have been decided by 1898, but the cultural

battle raged in the 1930s. Ironically, educators had originally celebrated the potential of radio to

nationalize American culture, but they did not intend for that national culture to derive from

Eastern big-city values.

Yet even as the NCER, like the Farmers Alliances of the early 20th century, continued to

drag Populist thinking into the twentieth century, it also incorporated these ideas into a logic that

firmly endorsed the Progressive reliance on studies, commissions, and expertise. Unlike

Populists, the NCER did not claim to be cut from the same cloth as “the people.” Quite the

opposite, the NCER used its expertise to justify its proposals and place its ideas above “the

people.” During the height of the Progressive movement, people like Frances Payne Bolton and

Joy Elmer Morgan supported policies intended to make government more responsive,

democratic, and efficient by brokering progress through the use of scientific methods and

expertise while remaining far away from dirty politics. The use of the expert commission by

Congress and the White House was a product of such Progressive agitation, and, by the 1930s, 295

such commissions were common. Progressives believed that relying on expertise would help to clean up democracy by removing the taint of political bargaining and profiteering and replacing it with scientific improvement of society. However, commissions simultaneously removed many traditional elements of the democratic process because they relied upon the specialized knowledge of experts to prescribe policy to the public. This legacy is perhaps the ultimate irony of the NCER’s battle for radio. The very system that people like Joy Elmer Morgan championed during the early 1900s to make government more responsive to human needs, crushed the

NCER’s humanistic campaign for radio reform in the 1930s.

The NCER was comprised exclusively of men, but its campaign further reinforces the

idea of the gendered nature of Progressive reform. The NCER conducted a campaign bearing

great resemblance to the Progressive municipal housekeeping efforts of the early 20th century.

These were humanistic campaigns led by Progressive women in an attempt to clean up the city with regular trash collection, public sanitation, and public baths that would create in the city what Daphne Spain calls redemptive spaces.37 These civic-minded women also focused their

efforts on saving children and vulnerable adults from the horrible influences and vices of city

life. The NCER engaged in the same kind of program, except, by the 1930s the cityscape

transcended physical boundaries as its values and entertainments beamed into the home over the

air. The NCER attacked commercial radio because it believed the commercialists delivered the

vulgarity of the public sphere into the private and safe space of the home imperiling children. It supported non-commercial, educational fare as a nurturing and constructive influence on

children. At the same time, the NCER used an expansive definition of children that also included

immigrants, working class adults, and others who were part of “the army mentality”—a slightly

37 See Spain, How Women Saved the City. 296 veiled reference to the many men who performed poorly on the Army IQ test administered during the WWI draft.

Still this does not explain how a group of men came to fight a reform campaign on behalf of children using a feminine approach. Even the NCER’s counterpart in the movie reform campaign, the Motion Picture Research Council, had women members and leaders but was, in fact, very mixed-sex and usually the chair was a man. The NCER fought its campaign in this way because, most importantly, its knowledge and discourse came from a field of expertise that had become identified with women. All of the NCER members except Armstrong Perry were educators, and, while many men remained involved in education, the foci of educators were the child, public health, the cultivation of the mind, and the development of the learner. These concerns overlapped those of female humanistic Progressives, in no small part, because of their interest in the welfare or children. Some scholars have dated Progressivism’s death with the election of 1920, but the NCER’s campaign reminds us that an ideology does not die with elections. Instead the NCER’s activities demonstrate that Progressive thought lived on to in the form of opposition to entrenched and commercial interests. The NCER’s campaign also compels us to acknowledge the Populist roots of at least one branch of Progressive thought. Finally, the

NCER’s battle for radio reform reminds us of the important Progressive legacy of reliance upon expertise and commission style governance which promised to enhance government protection of the public interest. Progressives, however, could not foresee that these mechanisms would provide incomplete protection because competing expertise could sabotage this system.

The NCER campaign also reminds us about the many sacrifices made at the altar of recovery during the New Deal. The NCER faced powerful opposition from the commercial radio industry, other reform groups, and even its benefactor. Some scholars have argued that the 297

NCER campaign was ill-fated from the start because of the powerful nature of the industry

combined with the political realities of the New Deal. Indeed, the politics of recovery was probably a more powerful factor in the defeat of the NCER campaign for radio reform than the opposition of the commercial radio industry. FDR’s single-minded pursuit of recovery rushed through policies that had long-term impact. Allowing the NAB to organize under the Blue Eagle may have aided recovery, but it also gave the commercial industry a great deal of government- sanctioned authority over American radio waves. The Roper Commission and the

Communications Act of 1934 were measures geared more toward political expediency than to inquiring seriously into American broadcasting and communications. The authors of the

Communications Act of 1934 deliberately framed a noncontroversial bill (from a Congressional perspective) that would sail through the New Deal Congress in a sea of other bills. One may consider the Communications Act of 1934 conspiratorial legislation passed by industry-friendly

Congressmen and a radio dependent President with the aim of upholding the status quo.

However, such arguments underestimate the volume of legislation FDR wanted passed and the speed with which he wanted it passed to aid economic recovery. Placing the Communications

Act of 1934 in this context provides greater understanding of its relative importance in 1934.

Additionally, when the law charged the FCC with investigating radio in the Fall of 1934, using the FCC to investigate was also a matter of political expediency. It did not require extra funds to find an independent commission, and it also saved time because the FCC was appointed and available for work, but an ad hoc committee would take up the Congress’ valuable time.

Some have also attacked the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC as aberrations

unrepresentative of the New Deal.38 However, Ellis Hawley’s argument that considerable

continuity existed between the Old Deal or “Raw” Deal under Hoover and the first New Deal

38 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, 254. 298

under FDR sheds light on the battle for American radio.39 Susan Smulyan concurred with this

view arguing that the Communications Act and the FCC exemplified FDR’s attempts at recovery

through government-business cooperation during the First New Deal.40 Arguments to the

contrary define scholars’ characterizations of FDR’s Second New Deal. This model does not,

however, apply to the Communications Act and the FCC because they were part of the First New

Deal. One may also argue that FDR granted concessions to commercial broadcasters because

they supported his New Deal policies at a time when most print media opposed him. But FDR

could have taken over radio and used it to publicize his New Deal even if such a move would

have made him look like a fascist especially to his great opponents like William Randolph

Hearst. Furthermore, the battle for American broadcasting probably would have been more

effective had it emerged in the post-Schecter or Second New Deal period. McChesney disagrees

arguing that the industry would have been too ensconced, the Communications Act of 1934

would have been in effect, and citizens would have tolerated only minor government

management of the economy.41 However this argument does not take into account FDR’s

practical approach to policy and willingness to experiment with legislation. Also Americans

grew more comfortable with greater government management of the economy and private

industry as the U.S. began war production.

Nor did the battle for American radio represent an anti-democratic moment. Actually,

every step in the legislative process followed legitimate and democratic procedures. Reformers,

the industry, and the federal government all accepted the commission system of regulation that

relied upon experts as a legitimate part of the democratic process by the 1930s. That the FRC and the FCC reached conclusions opposed to reformers’ arguments and discounted them, does not

39 See Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. 40 Smulyan, Selling Radio, 152-153. 41 McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, 260-269. 299

mean this process was anti-democratic because the reformers were indeed included in this

process. The Communications Act of 1934 also went through a process all sides considered

democratic and acceptable even if all parties did not agree with its results. One may argue that

the consolidation of American broadcasting under the Communications Act of 1934 signified an

anti-democratic moment because it never engaged the masses. However, this criticism overlooks

the fact that few pieces of legislation ever truly engage the masses or elicit mass response—even

in the century before the consolidation of the media. Additionally the most concrete reform

proposals did not appeal or generate the interest of the great mass of Americans. Actually both

the NCER’s and the commercial industry’s arguments rested upon their expert knowledge and

professionalism which, in turn, distanced them from the masses. Both sides claimed to represent

the masses, but their professional knowledge put them in a privileged position relative to the

public, a position from which they rather paternalistically informed the public what it needed.

The system of radio the NCER proposed was not a democratic one. Just because it would

not have been commercially dominated did not mean that its programming would have been

democratically decided. The NCER would have called for a national board of educators to make programming decisions based on what they felt the public needed. Lastly, one must also view

FDR’s resistance to government control of American radio as a democratic moment. Other leaders at that time nationalized the radio system and their governments owned all broadcast facilities. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini all nationalized radio as part of their larger economic recovery programs and heavy-handed fascist and totalitarian rule. Armstrong Perry’s studies even praised some of these radio systems. Yet FDR resisted the kind of heavy-handed action taken by his contemporaries in Germany and Italy. In the end, this leaves the question of how 300

one categorizes the battle over American radio if not, as McChesney claims, an anti-democratic

moment.

First, the battle for American radio demonstrated how the complexities and discourse of

technology can be used to separate political decisions from the political process. The legitimacy

of commission regulation and investigation derived from two sources. The first source was the

Progressive political legacy that developed the commission system of governance as a method to

govern and regulate efficiently and effectively. The second source was the Congressional belief

that certain technologies were too complicated to be entrusted to elected officials. Rather,

Congressmen needed a board of experts to whom they could defer a variety of decisions about

the regulation of technology.42 In this system, federal regulators became radio experts often by virtue of their experience within the radio industry and fluency in the technical discourse because

that was the only source of this field of knowledge. Thus the expert regulatory commissions

valued and understood radio in the same way that the commercial industry did because that

industry justified and produced the regulators’ expertise. Additionally, “outside” but relevant expertise threatened the centrality and importance of technical radio expertise. The technocratic view became the only accepted expertise.

The NCER’s battle for reform clearly demonstrated that most key decisions about radio

technology also had serious non-technical aspects which lay outside of the regulators’ and

industry’s knowledge—aspects that had to be decided politically.43 The NCER’s discourse came

from a different and feminized knowledge: education. Ultimately the Congress and federal

regulators reached the decisions that defined American radio policy because they valued one

kind of knowledge over another. Any objections to the decisions this knowledge produced had to

42 Colton C. Campbell, Discharging Congress (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2002), xiii-xv. 43 Also see Starr, The Creation of the Media. 301

be constructed in a discourse that reflected technical knowledge. Each time the NCER succeeded

in getting Congress to investigate radio—using the political process—Congress entrusted the

investigation to the expertise and knowledge of its radio regulators. The regulators, in their

minds, honestly investigated radio, but they processed information and interpreted the meaning

of evidence within the context of their discursive field: technology. The NCER, too, presented statements and evidence that were valid, but that were written in a discourse produced by a kind of knowledge largely disregarded by federal regulators. Congress, in turn, accepted these expert findings to answer political questions. In sum, the battle for American broadcasting followed the democratic process as applied and legitimately accepted in the United States in the 1930s. The decisions about broadcasting were not the result of a ham-fisted conspiracy. Rather, policymakers made decisions and shaped American broadcasting in a complex process of weighing competing knowledges and their discourses.

Secondly, the NCER’s battle for radio reform illustrates how competing parties in a

democracy co-opt and commodify knowledge in a policy battle. In the fight over American

radio, the Payne Fund and the NAB organized their own educational groups to validate their

policy proposals with the educational “good housekeeping” seal of approval. The Payne Fund wanted to reform radio, so it supported a group of educators to critique American broadcasting while operating within limits that the Fund delineated. The commercial broadcast industry used the NACRE the same way that Will Hays and movie studios used Alice Winter, local better movie movements and film councils in movie reform to cooperate within parameters set by the industry while projecting an image of educational approval.44 The commercial radio industry

chose this course of action because the oppositional language of the NCER threatened the

legitimacy of its knowledge and hold over the American radio spectrum. In order to protect itself

44 Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 73-95. 302

from Congressional (political) action, the NAB purchased its own group of educational experts

to project an image of inclusiveness while demonstrating the internal divisions of the oppositional knowledge: education. Still there was room for opposition and resistance from the

educators. The NCER refused to work within the boundaries set by the Payne Fund most of the

time between 1930 and 1934 because the Payne Fund’s wishes violated the very principles in

which the NCER believed. The NACRE eventually decided that its cooperation with the

commercial industry was a failure and published a warning about such efforts. In sum, expertise

is so important in modern policy battles that, when opposing parties purchase certain knowledge,

the policy process appears conspiratorial. Even so, as the NCER shows, there has been room for

resistance.

Thirdly the battle for American broadcasting further illuminates the conflation of

democracy and commercialism or purchasing as the definition of 20th century democracy.

Roland Marchand illustrated the concept of American voting through consumption in a

“democracy of goods,” and, by the 1930s, this belief developed even further to include

broadcasting.45 Equal access to free radio and the ability to consume equally made people equal;

they participated in wars and peace through consumption or changing patterns of consumption.

Both the NAB and the NCER argued that their chosen system best represented democratic ideals.

The NAB believed people voted with their radio dials just as the Motion Picture Producers and

Distributors Association insisted that movie patrons voted with their tickets.46 Because the

NCER did not share this view of democracy, it fought to preserve actual government

participation and struggled to generate true public action. At the same time the NCER battle also

reminds us that the nature of commission government, though accepted as legitimate by citizens,

45 Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 217-222. 46 Leigh Ann Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 159. 303

Presidents, Congress, and the Supreme Court, is terribly anti-democratic in the traditional conception of democracy. In this traditional conception, the people vote for their policymaking representatives or on policy itself. Federal regulators are appointed and not subject to public vote, and, in many ways these regulators make law. But, in the context of the 20th century, it is synchronous with democratic ideals. The belief that the battle for American broadcasting was an anti-democratic moment is only valid if one defines democracy in the same way the NCER did: by using an earlier conception of democracy that no longer existed in fact by the 1930s. During this debate people voted with their radio dials and their purchases while ignoring larger matters.

At the same time these people learned to live a modern, urban life as instructed by the commercials and advertisements they consumed.47 They are still learning and voting one purchase and ad at a time.

47 Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 233. 304

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Collections

The Payne Fund, Inc., The Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

Simeon D. Fess Papers, The Ohio Historical Society Library, Columbus, Ohio.

American Civil Liberties Union, General Correspondence, 1934. Microfilm, ACLU reel 107, volume 698.

American Civil Liberties Union, Radio Committee File, 1934. Microfilm, ACLU reel 107, volume 698.

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Broadcasting volumes 1-5, 1931-1935.

Business Week 1931-1935.

The Christian Century volumes 47-52, 1930-1935.

Education by Radio volumes 1-5, 1931-1935.

New Outlook volumes 139-165, 1925-1935.

Newsweek, 1933-1935

The New York Times, 1925-1935.

Radio Broadcast volumes 1-16, 1922-1930.

Radio Digest volumes 25-30, 1930-1933.

School Life, 1925-1935.

School and Society volumes 23-41, 1926-1935.

The University Debater’s Annual, 1932-1934.

305

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Meier, Kenneth J. The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol, and Public Policy. (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1994).

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Milkis, Sidney M. and Jerome M. Mileur, eds. The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002).

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Mooney, Booth. Roosevelt and Rayburn: A Political Partnership. (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1971).

Morgan, Joy Elmer. The American Citizens Handbook. (Washington, D. C.: The National Education Association, 1946).

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Mulder, Ronald. The Insurgent Progressives in the United States Senate and the New Deal, 1933-1939. (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1979).

Muller, Helen Marie. Education by Radio. (New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1932).

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Norris, George. Fighting Liberal: The Autobiography of George W. Norris. (New York: Collier Books, 1961).

Odegard, Peter. Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928).

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Paper, Lewis J. Empire: William S. Paley and the Making of CBS. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).

Pegram, Thomas. Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800-1933. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998).

Pollack, Norman. The Populist Response to Industrial America. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1962).

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Purdue University. Some Achievements of WBAA, an Educational Broadcasting Station: October 1st to December 19th 1932, a Service Rendered by Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana. (Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1932).

Purdue University—Radio Station WBAA. Thirty Five Years of Service, 1922-1957. (Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1957).

Richardson, Jeremy J., ed. Pressure Groups. (New York: Oxford University, 1933).

Roosevelt, Franklin D. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: Volume I, 1928-1932 the Genesis of the New Deal. Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Random House, 1938).

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---. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt with a Special Introduction and Explanatory Notes by President Roosevelt, Volume Three, The Advance of Recovery and Reform, 1934. Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Random House, 1938).

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Articles

“Abuses of Radio Broadcasting.” Current History and Forum 33 (December 1930).

“Air Piracy and Chaos.” The Literary Digest 89 no. 5 (May 1, 1926).

Aylesworth, Merlin. “Radio's Accomplishments.” Century 118 (June 1929).

Bent, S. “Radio Squatters.” The Independent 117 (October 2, 1926).

Bercovici, H.L. “Station B-U-N-K.” American Mercury 16 (February 1929).

Beuick, M.D. “Limited Social Effect of Radio Broadcasting.” American Journal of Society 32 (January 1927).

Blair, H. “You and Your Government: New Educational Series of the National Broadcasting Company.” Education 52 (May 1932).

“To Break the East’s Radio Monopoly.” The Literary Digest 97 (April 7, 1928).

“Britain’s Radio Monopoly.” The Independent 116 (March 13, 1926).

“The Broadcasting ‘Moron’.” The Literary Digest 93 no. 8 (May 21, 1927).

“Broadcasting Statements Regarding Schools.” Elementary School Journal 25 (December 1924).

“Broadcasting Stations by Frequencies Effective November 11, 1928.” Congressional Digest 7 (October 1928).

Brokaw, F. C. “Nobody Loves the Radio.” The Forum and Century 92 no. 1 (July 1934). 317

Buchholz, H. E. “The Pedagogues at Armageddon.” The American Mercury 29 no. 114 (June 1933).

Butsch, Richard. “Crystal Sets and Scarf-Pin Radios: Gender, Technology, and the Construction of American Radio Listening in the 1920s.” Media, Culture and Society 20 (October 1998).

Calahan, J. C. “Hour of Power: Father Coughlin's Broadcasts.” Commonwealth 13 (January 28, 1931).

“Can Radio Be Rescued?” The New Republic 52 no. 864 (October 19, 1927).

“Can Radio Be Rescued?” The New Republic 67 no. 864 (June 24, 1931).

“Can we Eliminate Fear?” The Forum and Century 91 no. 2 (February 1934).

Carskadon, T. R. “Radio: A Progress Report.” The New Republic 80 no. 1030 (August 29, 1934).

“Church Use of the Radio.” The Literary Digest 99 (October 13, 1928).

“College Course by Radio.” The Literary Digest 84 no. 11 (March 14, 1925).

Corbett-Smith, A. “British Broadcasting and the Art of Enlightenment.” The Fortnightly 124 (December 1925).

Crosby, W. F. “Who Pays for Broadcasting?” St. Nicholas 53 (June 1926).

Crowell, Chester T. “The Business End of Broadcasting.” The Saturday Evening Post 199 no. 35 (February 26, 1927).

“The Dangers of Radio Control.” Commonwealth 15 (February 17, 1932).

“The Dangers of Radio Control.” Commonwealth 15 (March 9, 1932).

Davis, Ewin L. “The Regulation of Radio Advertising.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 177 (January 1935).

Dawson, Mitchell. “Censorship on the Air.” The American Mercury 31 no. 123 (March 1934).

Dellinger, John Howard. “The Empery of the Empyrean.” The Forum 77 no. 1 (January 1927).

Denison, Merrill. “Why Isn’t Radio Better?” Harpers Magazine 168 (April 1934).

Dowdle, Lois P. “Radio and Extension Teaching.” The Journal of Home Economics 19 (May 1927).

318

Dowling, Eddie. “Radio Needs a Revolution.” The Forum and Century 91 no. 2 (February 1934).

Durstine, Roy S. “The Future of Radio Advertising in the United States.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 177 (January 1935).

Eckhardt, G.H. “What do People Listen to on the Radio?” Etude 50 (July 1932).

“Educational Opportunities in Radio during February, 1930.” The Journal of the National Education Association 19 (February 1930).

“Educational Opportunities in Radio during January, 1930.” The Journal of the National Education Association 19 (January 1930).

“Educational Opportunities in Radio during March, 1930.” The Journal of the National Education Association 19 (March 1930).

Edwards, Alice L. “NACRE First Annual Assembly” The Journal of Home Economics 23 (September 1931).

Filene, Peter G. “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement’.” American Quarterly 22 no. 1 (Spring 1970).

Fisher, Cyrus. “Clear the Air! A Listeners’ Guide to a Radio Revolution.” The Forum and Century 91 no. 6 (June 1934).

Flynn, John T. “What Happened to Radio Stock: Insiders Form a Pool.” The New Republic 73 no. 949 (February 8, 1933).

“German Radio Melodrama.” The Literary Digest 99 (November 17, 1928).

“The Gift and Favor form of Bribery.” The Journal of the National Education Association 21 (February 1932).

Goetz, J.H. “Newer Developments and Tendencies in International Law.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 136 (March 1928).

“For Greater Harmony on the Air.” The Independent 117 (October 2, 1926).

“The Growth of Radio.” The Literary Digest 92 no. 10 (March 5, 1927).

Hamilton, Mary Agnes. “Broadcasting—A British View.” Harpers Magazine 170 (December 1934).

Hard, William. “Europe’s Air and Ours.” The Atlantic Monthly 150 no. 1 (October 1932).

319

Harbord, J.G. “Shall America Lead in Radio?” The Saturday Evening Post 201 (June 21, 1929).

Harding, A. “What Radio has done and what It Will Do Next; Interview with David Sarnoff.” American Mercury 7 (March 1926).

“Hearing Plants Grow by Radio.” The Literary Digest 101 (March 6, 1929).

Hedges, William S. “Should the Zone Provisions of the Present Radio Law be Retained?”Congressional Digest 9 (March 1930).

Hettinger, Herman S., ed. “Radio the Fifth Estate.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 117 (January 1935).

“Hoover on the Ether’s Howls and Growls.” The Literary Digest 87 no. 12 (December 19, 1925).

Howard, W.S. “Adding Insult to Injury.” American Mercury 29 (June 1933).

Ingersoll, Ralph McAllister. “The Magic Disk: Face to Face with the Radio Public.” The Saturday Evening Post 197 no. 18 (April 18, 1935).

“Interference in Radio.” The Literary Digest 83 no. 6 (November 8, 1924).

Kaltenborn, H. V. “On the Air: Radio's Responsibility as a Molder of Public Opinion.” Century 112 (October 1926).

“To Kill off Broadcasting Pirates.” The Literary Digest 93 no. 6 (May 7, 1927).

“Are Large Broadcasting Stations violating the Radio Law?” Congressional Digest 7 (October 1928).

Larrabee, C. B. “Advertising as Public Duty Pays Big Dividends.” Printer’s Ink 168 no. 1 (July 5, 1934).

Lee, F.P. “Federal Radio Legislation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 142 (March 1929).

Marconi, Guglielmo. “Radio and the Future.” Commonwealth 21 (January 18, 1935).

Morgan, Joy E. “The Public’s Rights in Radio.” The Journal of the National Education Association 19 (December 1930).

“The National Committee on Education by Radio.” School and Society 33 no. 837 (January 10, 1931).

Nixon, E. W. “The Menace of Radio Quackery.” Hygeia 13 (May 1935).

320

Ojemann, Ralph H. “Investigation of the Iowa Radio Child Study Program.” The Journal of Home Economics 26 (January 1934).

Orton, William. “Unscrambling the Ether.” The Atlantic Monthly (April 1931).

“Patriotism before Profits.” The Forum and Century 91 no. 6 (June 1934).

“Paying the Radio Piper.” The Independent 120 (March 3, 1928).

Perry, Armstrong. “Weak Spots in the American System of Broadcasting.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 177 (January 1935).

Perry, Elisabeth Israels. “Men are from the Gilded Age, Women are from the Progressive Era.” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 no. 1 (January 2002).

“The Problem of Radio Reallocation.” Congressional Digest 7 (November 1928).

“The Problem of Radio Reallocation.” The Independent 119 (July 16, 1927).

“Quackery in Medicine.” Hygeia 8 (June 1930).

“Is the Radio Corporation’s Patent Control Against the Public Interest?” Congressional Digest 9 (March 1930).

“Radio Debunking the Campaigns.” The Literary Digest 99 no. 6 (December 1, 1928).

“Radio and Education.” The Journal of Home Economics 23 (September 1931).

“The Radio and Education.” The New Republic 63 no. 819 (August 13, 1930).

“Radio: The Farmer’s Stock Ticker.” The Literary Digest 99 (November 3, 1928).

“Radio: A New Force in Education.” The Journal of the National Education Association 21 (January 1932).

“Radio as a Medium for Recreation Programs.” Recreation 27 (March 1934).

“How Radio is Operated in Other Countries.” Congressional Digest 12 (August 1933).

“Radio is the Prize Infant Industry.” Current Opinion 78 (February 1925).

“Radio: A Progress Report.” The New Republic 80 no. 1030 (August 29, 1934).

“Radio Reallocation Rumpus.” The Literary Digest 99 (November 10, 1928).

“Radio Still ‘Up in the Air’.” The Literary Digest 90 no. 4 (July 24, 1926). 321

“Radio Welcomes Government Control.” The Literary Digest 93 no. 2 (April 9, 1927).

Reeves, E. “Radio Broadcasting: British Way, American Way.” Rotarian 44 (May 1934).

“Regulating Radio Communication.” The American City 41 (September 1929).

“Regulating Radio Interference by Ordinance and Statute.” The American City 40 (April 1929).

Reservation of Broadcasting Channels for Educational Institutions.” ed. J. McKeen Cattell and William McAndrew. School and Society with which is combined the Educational Review 32 no. 831 (November 29, 1930).

“Rights of the Little Broadcaster.” The Literary Digest 97 (April 7, 1928).

Robinson, Ira E. “Who Owns Radio?” The Journal of the National Education Association 19 (December 1930).

Rodgers, Richard T. “In Search of Progressivism.” Reviews in American History 10 no. 4 (December 1982).

Rorty, James. “The Impending Radio War.” Harper’s Magazine 163 (November 1931).

“Schools Go on the Air.” The Journal of the National Education Association 23 (November 1934).

Seldes, Gilbert. “Listening In.” The New Republic 50 no. 642 (March 23, 1927).

Shepherd, William G. “Gold Bricks by Radio.” Collier’s 88 (August 22, 1931).

---. “We Know What We Want.” Collier’s 79 (November 26, 1927).

“Significant Program in Radio Education.” Elementary School Journal 33 (October 1932).

“Sizing up the Radio Audience.” The Literary Digest 100 (January 19, 1929).

Spender, Harold. “The Crisis in Wireless.” The Contemporary Review 129 (January 1926).

Spitzer, Marian. “The Freedom of the Breeze.” The Saturday Evening Post 197 no. 25 (December 6, 1924).

Stanley, Grace C. “Radio in California Schools.” The Journal of the National Education Association 15 (May 1926).

“Survival of the Loudest.” The Independent 117 (December 11, 1926).

322

Teilhet, Darwin L. “What America Listens To.” Forum 87 no. 5 (May 1932).

“Unscrambling the Ether.” The Literary Digest 92 no. 10 (March 5, 1927).

Volkening, Henry. “Abuses of Radio Broadcasting.” Current History and Forum 33 (December 1930).

---. “The Radio in Our Republic.” School and Society 33 no. 857 (May 30, 1931).

“The Voter and Radio.” The New Republic 55 no. 703 (May 23, 1928).

“What is the Limit of Radio Monopoly.” The Literary Digest 105 (May 31, 1930).

“Wisconsin Uses Radio for Education.” The Journal of the National Education Association 20 (April 1931).

Wivel, Claude Burns. “Education by Radio.” Education 51 (April 1931).

Yorke, D. “Radio Octopus.” American Mercury 23 (August 1931).

Young, Own D. “Mr. Owen D. Young Replies.” The New Republic 73 no. 949 (February 8, 1933).

Government Documents

Congressional Record—Senate. 71st Congress, 3rd session, December 12, 1930-January 15, 1931 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office).

Congressional Record—Senate. 72nd Congress, 1st session, January 12, 1932. (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office).

Congressional Record—Senate. 73rd Congress, 2nd session, May 15, 1934. (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office).

Federal Communications Commission, ed. Digest of Hearings of the Federal Communications Commission, Broadcast Division under Sec. 307 (c) of “The Communications Act of 1934,” October 1-20, November 7-12, 1934.

Federal Communications Commission. Report of the Federal Communications Commission to Congress Pursuant to Section 307 (c) of the Communications Act of 1934.

Federal Radio Commission. Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year ended June 20, 1927. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1927).

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The Federal Radio Commission, Commercial Radio Advertising: Letter from the Chairman of the Federal Radio Commission in Response to the Senate Resolution No. 129, A Report Relative to the use of Radio Facilities for Commercial-Advertising Purposes, Together with a List Showing the Educational Institutions which Have been Licensed. 72nd Congress, 1st Session. Senate Document No. 137. (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932).

Federal Radio Commission, Second Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year, 1928. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1928).

Federal Radio Commission, Third Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year, 1929. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1929).

Federal Radio Commission, Fourth Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year, 1930. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1930).

Federal Radio Commission. Fifth Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1931. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1931).

Federal Radio Commission, Sixth Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year, 1932. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1932).

Federal Radio Commission, Seventh Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission to the Congress of the United States for the Fiscal Year, 1933. (Washington, D. C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1933).

International Telecommunication Convention: Madrid 1932. (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1933).

Senate Resolution No. 129. January 7, 1932 (calendar day January 12, 1932).

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Films

Reefer Madness, director Louis J. Gasnier, 1936.