Rice University a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
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RICE UNIVERSITY Fighting a New Deal: Intellectual Origins of the Reagan Revolution, 1932-1952 by Gregory Teddy Eow A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE: L-, Thomas L. Haskell, Samuel G. McCann Professor of History, Chair Allen Matusow/William Gaines Twyman Professaf'of History George Sher, Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Philosophy HOUSTON, TX MAY 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3256685 Copyright 2007 by Eow, Gregory Teddy All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 3256685 Copyright 2007 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COPYRIGHT GREGORY TEDDY EOW 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Fighting a New Deal: Intellectual Origins of the Reagan Revolution, 1932-1952 By Gregory Teddy Eow This dissertation locates the origins of the modem conservative movement in the intellectual history of the 1930s and 1940s. I argue that it was during the years of the Great Depression, when laissez-faire capitalism was most discredited, that a group of conservative academics and intellectuals began to lay the foundations for its postwar resurgence. Angered by the New Deal, those intellectual activists honed their free market ideology and began to develop a network through which to distribute it. As a result, they began to lay the intellectual and institutional foundation for the conservative movement. This dissertation recovers a number of narratives that reveal the rudimentary makings of a movement. It was during the 1930s and 1940s that economist Henry Simons worked to turn the University of Chicago’s economics department into a bastion of free market sentiment; Leonard Read, after a decade of free market advocacy, created the first libertarian think tank, the Foundation for Economic Education, in 1946; legal scholar Roscoe Pound, worried by the spread of legal realism in the academy and growth of government in Washington, dramatically moved to the political right to make common cause with conservatives; Albert Jay Nock, his protege Frank Chodorov and Felix Morley created a network of conservative writers and publications that paved the way for William F. Buckley’s National Review, and writers such as Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Paterson made the case for laissez-faire in the pages of popular publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and the New York Herald Tribune. Historians have generally attributed the rise of the modem right to the conservative political mobilization in response to the civil rights movement, campus agitation of the 1960s, and the campaign for women’s rights. As a result, historians tend to view the modem conservative movement as a distinctly postwar social and political phenomenon. This dissertation enriches that account by revealing the ties the modem conservative movement has to the years of the Great Depression and the debate over the government’s role in the economy. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I thank my adviser Thomas L. Haskell, who has been everything a graduate student could hope for in a mentor. He has been unfailingly generous, patient, and kind. He has set a professional example that I will strive to emulate in my own career. I consider myself exceedingly lucky to have been able to work with him. I also thank Professors Allen Matusow and George Sher for serving on my dissertation committee. I thank the history department staff, Paula Platt, Rachel Zepeda, Verva Densmore, and Anita Smith for always being at the ready with encouragement and advice. I must also thank an able and supportive cohort of colleagues and friends. Despite the fact that the dissertation did not fall in their area of expertise (or, in some cases, even area of interest), Kersten Biehn, Uzma Burney, Christina Diaz, Ryan Foster, Ryan Indovina, Rush Simpson, and Nick Zolas all read parts of this dissertation and offered helpful comments. Marty Wauck went beyond the call of duty by spending some time in the University of Chicago library procuring archival materials for me. I am also indebted to Justin Simard, who read through multiple draffs and gave me a timely reminder that there might be something of use in Karl Mannheim, and to Jacobo Rodriguez, who convinced me that the early Chicago School of Economics was a worthy topic to pursue. I have benefited from the assistance of people who were unknown to me when I began this dissertation. At an early stage in the project, George H. Nash, the author of the best intellectual history of conservatism that now exists, generously treated me to lunch in his hometown in Massachusetts. Dr. Nash provided me with a number of helpful suggestions. I received travel funds from both the Herbert Hoover Presidential Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Library Association, and H. Russell Pittman (who prodded me to finish when I ran into him at the gym). I have also benefited from fellowship support from the Institute for Humane Studies. I am grateful to the archivists and staffs at the Foundation for Economic Education (especially Richard and Anna Ebeling, who graciously allowed me access to the Foundation’s archives), the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the University of Chicago’s Special Collections Research Center, and the UCLA Library’s Department of Special Collections. Of the libraries I used, none was more important to me than Rice University’s Fondren Library. For much of the last six years, Fondren has been my home away from home. The Interlibrary Loan Department tirelessly fulfilled requests for materials, and this project would have been immeasurably more difficult without their help. Even more importantly, the Kelley Center for Government Information and Microforms provided me with a job during the final year of dissertation writing and gave me a new career focus. I thank Ann Bazile, Esther Crawford, German Diaz, Eva Garza, Linda Spiro, and Siu Min Yu for being such wonderful colleagues. I also thank my family for their support. The completion of the Ph.D. marks the end not only of graduate school, but many years of earlier schooling. Some of those years were difficult, not only for me but for my family (who know what I’m talking about), and I thank my parents for standing by me without fail. I like to think that I get my interest in politics, as well as my skeptical disposition, from my parents. It is to them that I dedicate this dissertation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Ch. 1: Schumpeter’s Department..................................................................................14 Ch. 2: Henry Simons and the Chicago School of Econom ics...................................65 Ch. 3: Leonard Read and the Foundation for Economic Education ................... 109 Ch. 4: The Second Thoughts of Roscoe Pound ..................................................... 160 Ch. 5: The Remnant: Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov, and Felix Morley .... 200 Ch. 6: Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson Defend Modernity ..........................237 Conclusion: The Laissez-faire Religion .................................................................... 265 Bibliography..................................................................................................................270 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 Introduction. I have often said that my election victories in 1980 and 1984 were not political victories so much as they were triumphs of ideas. - Ronald Reagan, 19851 This dissertation provides an answer to a question: how did a particularly aggressive brand of laissez-faire capitalism become so predominant in the closing years of the twentieth century? Surveying the early history of the twentieth century, the sudden proliferation of free market policies comes as a surprise. From the close of the nineteenth century through the first third of the twentieth century, the debate over government involvement in the economic affairs of the nation dominated American politics. On one side of the debate were economic conservatives who supported a system of