When Good Government Meant Big Government
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WHEN GOOD GOVERNMENT MEANT BIG GOVERNMENT: NATIONALISM, RACISM, AND THE QUEST TO STRENGTHEN THE AMERICAN STATE, 1918–1933 by JESSE TARBERT Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August 2016 ii Copyright © Jesse Tarbert All rights reserved. iii CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Jesse Tarbert, candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy*. Committee Chair David Hammack Committee Member Joseph White Committee Member Peter Shulman Committee Member John Flores February 29, 2016 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. iv CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi ABSTRACT ix INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: The National Budget 15 Bringing Business Methods to the Federal Government CHAPTER 2. SOCIAL POLICY: Veterans’ Relief 62 Scandal, Reform, and State-Building CHAPTER 3. LAW ENFORCEMENT: Prohibition 102 Good Government and the Expansion of National Authority CHAPTER 4. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: Executive Reorganization 135 Bringing Business Efficiency to the Federal Government CHAPTER 5. SOCIAL POLICY: Education 179 Nationalism, Localism, and the Limits of Americanism CHAPTER 6. LAW ENFORCEMENT: Anti-Lynching 218 White Supremacy and the American National State CONCLUSION 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY 252 v LIST OF TABLES 4.1. Committee on Executive Reorganization, National Civil Service Reform League, announced May 12, 1927 161 5.1. Native, Non-White Residents, age 10 or over, in states with legally mandated school segregation, who had “no schooling whatever” in 1920 192 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The extensive primary research that this project required would not have been possible without generous funding from the following institutions: the Department of History at Case Western Reserve University; the History Associates (the organization of friends and alumni of the Case Western Reserve University Department of History); the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University; the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming; the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association; the History Project of the Harvard University and University of Cambridge Joint Center for History and Economics, supported by the Institute for New Economic Thinking; the Roosevelt Institute of Hyde Park, New York; the Friends of the Princeton University Library; the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York; and the Hagley Library in Wilmington Delaware. I owe special thanks to Sean and Sara Vanatta for their generous hospitality during my visit to Princeton. Many of the arguments contained herein were presented in a preliminary form at the Business History Conference, the Policy History Conference, the Social Science History Conference, and the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Comments from David Stebenne, Klaus Petersen, Alice O’Connor, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Mark Rose, and Pam Laird helped me to improve these arguments considerably. This project also benefited from discussion with Mary Yeager, Steve Tolliday, Ken Lipartito, and Pam Laird at the vii 2014 Oxford Journals Doctoral Colloquium in Business History, in Frankfurt, Germany. The Department of History at Case Western Reserve University has been an ideal institutional home as I have tackled this project. Few dissertations in the department would be complete without giving thanks to Peter Roufs. My fellow grad students, especially Tony Andersson, Nathan Delaney, Sam Duncan, Elise Hagesfeld, Emily Hess, Corey Hazlett, Michael Metsner, Erik Miller, and Beth Salem, have all been good company over the years. Nathan Delaney, in particular, provided much-needed encouragement and assistance at a critical moment. The faculty and staff of the Department of History are unsurpassed. Department Assistant Bess Weiss cheerfully and ably helped me to solve many administrative problems. Jonathan Sadowsky and Ken Ledford (who both served as chair during my time in the department), as well as Alan Rocke and Gillian Weiss (who both served periods as interim chair), were generously accommodating in response to all of my reasonable requests. John Grabowski enabled me to spend a rewarding year as Ralph M. Besse Fellow and associate editor for the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Dan Cohen provided invaluable support as coordinator of graduate studies; as a teacher, he provided the benefit of his deep knowledge of historical scholarship, and the shining example of his own scholarly rigor and discipline. Ted Steinberg is geniality and generosity unbound. The members of my dissertation committee—Peter Shulman, John Flores, and (from the Department of Political Science) Joe White—each improved this project immeasurably through insightful criticism and careful encouragement. Joe White’s contribution was characteristically above and beyond the call of duty. viii Although it has become academic boilerplate to say that I wish I had been capable of incorporating all of their suggestions, I am now acutely aware of that statement’s profound truth. It has been a great pleasure to work with my dissertation advisor, David Hammack. His insight, skill, and wit are unmatched. Throughout my work on this project, I have had the liberating sense that I have been boldly striking out on my own through uncharted territory. Readers who are familiar with David’s work, however, will see evidence of his influence on every page. If this dissertation can be considered a success, it is primarily thanks to him—as well as to the others named above. As for the omissions, errors, inaccuracies, elisions, and overstatements that remain: I claim them as my own. Friends old and new provided needed support throughout this process and have helped me to maintain a tenuous connection to the non-academic world. Kevin Kawamoto deserves special thanks; my transition from journalism to academia would have been much more difficult (and likely disastrous) without his expert guidance. Lastly, I have been lucky to be able to rely on family. My in-laws and parents all deserve thanks. My daughters, Vivian and Elenora, have endured much in this process, and have provided welcome distraction. My wife, Jamie Rue, has been unyieldingly supportive from the start, despite being busy with her own academic and professional work. Nothing would be possible without her love and encouragement. I dedicate the text that follows to my grandmother, Karen Platt, who long ago encouraged my interest in history and writing, and who died days after I completed the first draft. ix When Good Government Meant Big Government: Nationalism, Racism, and the Quest To Strengthen The American State, 1918–1933 Abstract by JESSE TARBERT This dissertation follows the efforts of nationalist Republicans, business leaders, and philanthropists to build central power in the federal government against resistance from Southern Democrats and others who feared central power. This forgotten quest to strengthen the American state brought together a loose-knit group of bankers, corporation lawyers, corporate executives, genteel reformers, and liberal educators who worked with the Republican presidential administrations of the 1920s to form an administrative reform coalition that sought to apply the logic of business organization to national policy problems that emerged after the war. They viewed the triumph of large-scale private corporations as the product of two basic managerial innovations developed in the late 19th Century: central executive responsibility subject to shareholder oversight; and a functionally efficient administrative structure that enabled the corporation to implement policy set by the executive. Although these reformers opposed an expansive regulatory or welfare state in these years, they naturally sought to apply business ideals to the institution commonly viewed as “the largest corporation in the world”: the federal government. The administrative reformers’ commitment to business-derived ideals of economy and efficiency—the principles x of good government—led them to support solutions that amounted to big government. The administrative reformers did not always get their way, however, even in this business-friendly era. Proposals to strengthen the national government faced opposition from Southern Democrats and others who feared central power because it threatened Jim Crow and other local institutions of power. The evolution of central power in the national government in this period, then, was driven by the conflict between these two agendas: a nationalist movement to increase central power, and an effort to restrain national power in order to preserve local arrangements. The impact of this conflict was not limited to these years, however. The efforts of elite administrative reformers in the 1920s helped launch a reform agenda that would eventually—during the New Deal and after World War Two—help give shape to the modern American state. At the same time, the opposition to these efforts formed a seedbed from which grew the antistatist coalition of the late 20th Century. 1 INTRODUCTION THE RISE OF big government in America has been punctuated by stops and starts. For historians of the American state, the period under study in this dissertation has been notable mainly as a time when efforts to strengthen the national government seemed to come to a sudden and emphatic halt. The 15 years that