Transcripts For CSPAN3 Free Enterprise The New Deal 20240713

During the rise of the new deal. He is the author of free an american history. Lawrence glickman is in the department of history at cornell. In addition to Free Enterprise in 2019, he has written for other books. He writes on a regular basis for publications including the Washington Post though i am not sure we would call that a popular publication. [laughter] the Boston Review with his articles was named one of the most loved essays in the Boston Review in 2018. Thank you to rachel for all the behind the scenes work, and impeach and erik and christian. And all the organizations that made this possible. I am honored by the size of this audience today. No historian works alone, we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before. I would like to begin to mention some of those scholars to help me identify Free Enterprise. Here i have elizabeth phones wolf, Bethany Morton book kim phillips fine, and wendy l wall the book inventing the american way. Id like to think more people and i really could not have written this book without the vibrant scholarship on this topic. I want to share a few thoughts of my approach. From my mentor, lawrence living, i learn to appreciate a kind of cultural history that is an intellectual history of people who were not instill actuals. As larry said in his book, he was wiping a history not of thought but of people thinking. He was not looking at canonical intellectuals but about how people made sense in the world around him. That is the bottle of history i like to write, the history of people thinking. I wanted in my study, there is a lot of work on conservatism, there are a lot of things that highlight intellectuals and economists, these people all appear in my book. Milton friedman and william f. Buckley and f a hayek. I wanted to look at another strata of thinkers. I look at a bunch of people who are used the term the apostles a Free Enterprise, and i am including people in this category that people we havent heard, of moral thorough the editor of the nations business, for played a crucial role in reinventing Free Enterprise and then late 1920s. I also look at h. W. Prentice, who was the president of the Armstrong Court presentation. For a group that carried a lot about Free Enterprise. And leonard reid who was one of the first conservative think tanks. He is also the author of an essay called i pencil, that is the autobiography of a pencil. Which is a crucial role in chapter six of my book. I also look at people who were better known, but probably not considered intellectuals like herbert hoover, the democrat and conservative congressman samuel vetting gayle, the reverend norm and vincent peel, lewis f. Powell junior, and Ronald Reagan. What these people did, they were not intellectuals but they crafted and enduring political language, that in spite of its extremism came to stand in for kind of american common sense. That brings me to my second introductory point, unlike the pioneer and cultural pioneer who taught that cultural historian should talk about the joke we dont get, i will read the short path itch, the when you realize that you are not getting something a joke a proverb that is particularly meaningful to the natives you can see where the grass before and system of meaning in order to unravel. It my approach is the opposite. Instead of studying the joke that we dont get, i want to study the things that are so common sense, so obvious, that we dont examine them at all, such as Free Enterprise. When asked many people who has heard Free Enterprise everyone raises their hand. And then the fund begins. I will make one more point, a key theme is how often Free Enterprise was paired with common sense. You have a typical headline here Free Enterprise and common sense, this was a common pairing and yet you look at the sub head and it talks about crack pot do idealism. With that let me begin my top. The founder and president of the founder and he wanted his fellow citizens to know why, the six foot six 245pound dewitt emory, pluck claimed advocate of Small Business proponent after more than a decade spent propagating Free Enterprise as the fundamental value and the totalitarianism that was to come emory experienced an incident close to home that suggested how much work remains to be done. As he explains in his newspaper column, the column was called what is it, and widely repainted. He explains that his son james a High School Freshman had been assigned to rightness a on Free Enterprise. A common topic for secondary students in the postworld war ii years. Ive read dozens of such essays. Following his suggestions james look for a definition of the term. He peruse the family encyclopedia, then he checked other reference books, including three dictionaries without finding anything. After satisfying himself that his son had searched emory discussed the beating with his son. Together they came up with the definition to earn james a great of a on the assignment. Not being able to find a deck the nation, worried emory. The next morning he sent to secretary to the library confident that the many thousands of reference works in one of the nations best libraries would contain a definition of this fundamental american term. Three reference librarians unsuccessfully took up the challenge. For emory the lack of definition was a crisis. For more than 150 years freedom of enterprise has been the very backbone of the life of her country. Yet three highly skilled professional librarians working with a large collection of reference books were unable to find the definition of this commonly used term. Emorys history may have been dubious but this statement accurately reflected the panic for, those have believe that a fundamental term has been left out in the basic of all sources of information the dictionary. I begin with this anecdote because it gets to the issue that i seek to highlight, although today we take Free Enterprise for granted as a turn we all understand, for much of history, even as advocates that its deep concern was contested and unclear. By the late 1940s what we might call the Free Enterprise freak out that emory initiated, it was already a wellestablished anna. Indeed as a show in my book, an even bigger kerfuffle was set off five years earlier, when a gallup poll said that only three in ten americans could defined the term Free Enterprise. There is a lot of concern about this. It was dangerous that people were not understanding this term. In my book i talk about this Free Enterprise context, that was ordered by advertisers journal printers ink. It rejected its dozens of entries 86 entries in total. Memories piece also initiated popular concern as well to take one example of the reaction, the enter of a big and win the reporter, like emory secretary came up dry initiated the series with hundreds of readers unscented definitions, or sometimes blocked the whole effort. Nation one a nationwide hunt is on. Free enterprise is neither a dictionary for a father or an exact pdf or a mother. Emory and his silk saw no humor in the matter. They werent the most humorous group. For a time many advocate suggested we naming Free Enterprise or not worrying about its definition as a message of its ad campaign in the 1950 suggest which says that name doesnt matter only the meaning of Free Enterprise. The basic message is, we all know what it means, lets not focus too much about the definition. My favorite moment about this quandary of definitions is when henry kristen, the president of brown university, in 1943 pointed out Free Enterprise is a subject in which it definitions are avoided nearly everyone can agree. True enough. Let me step back and tell you about the broader aims of my book. We have the table of contents here. I try to trace the changing meaning of this straightforward term Free Enterprise. I examine the long history of the term. Dating back to the 18 thirties. The book primarily focuses on the battle that emerged between 19 thirties and the 1970s, between what historians call the new deal order and Free Enterprise. Which emerged as the best. Historians in the u. S. Have a and they have also become increasingly interested in the rise of conservativism. More and more they are seeing these two as continually interacted forces rather than serial events. A growing number of historians, take issue with the view recently put forward in the Huffington Post that put roosevelt vision of powerful remain unchallenged until the election of 1980 with Ronald Reagan. In my book i show a contrast that from the very beginning the new deal faced. I try to demonstrate that Free Enterprise lay at the heart of that attack and that it was a critical slowly just stating Building Block of the conservative revolution of the late 20th century. Some i can talk about some of the other chapters. But i will tell you briefly the first chapter deals with a babble that has become iconic among historians called pell memo. Which was written by Supreme Court justice. A lot of journalist take this to be a very important document in the history of conservatism, i try to show the contrast that the powell memo is a culmination of 40 years of Free Enterprise. It is not an original document it is a system of history. The Second Chapter looks at the prehistory of Free Enterprise before the new deal, from the 18 thirties to the 1920s. The next chapter Free Enterprise versus the new deal order is mostly what i will be talking about today. Chapter four is on flashing and competing definitions of the term. I have a chapter on Free Enterprise and how it played a role in political alignment win the Democratic Party became one of liberalism and the democratic became socialism. I take a look at chapter six, that i pencil and i talk about why it is a very important document. Chapter seven, i look at how civil rights and labor activists refused to concede Free Enterprise to conservatives and try to find alternative means of that race. I talk about things like, the cats revolt the entitlement crisis and how Free Enterprise is a crucial part of that language from the sixties and seventies. The others look at donald trump a president who doesnt use Free Enterprise we can talk about that in question and and sir period. There is a paradox at the part of Free Enterprise. Changed meanings and heavily contested and yet on the other hand it also hardened and froze in one crucial version, the one that emerged in opposition to the new deal order. Somehow that one extreme version associated with new deal is the one that became common sense in american culture. My book traces the tensions between the contest station over what it means and wait became common sense. It also argues that the contestation is why it became common sense. It became hard to define what the term meant but easier to say what it did not. Meme from the 1930s to the seventies that advocates protected Free Enterprise as with the opposite of what they took the new deal to stand for. This version of Free Enterprise, quite distinct from what the term meant, and how others described it in the 20th century, but it helped shape political culture. One other point is crucial to mention even during the period of its visibility when the dominant meaning of Free Enterprise its meaning was contested. Chapter six of my book as i mention explore sway that civil rights and labors promoted alternative meetings to the term rather than abandon it to the right. Many other terms that are widely used since present day discussions, the American Federation Free Enterprise is variously understood and variously defined. The understanding of Free Enterprise preceded by the building enterprise does not coincide with wager and people. As mark starr at the educational director wrote in 1954 Free Enterprise needs restatement to suit our modern needs. Suggesting that arm concept was salvageable. So if one part of my book focuses on the difficulty on defining Free Enterprise, the other side of the coin, which takes up the majority is the way in which it emerged as the new deals opposite. And served as a holding bin for what became known as modern conservatism. What if the points i tried to make in the book is that there is a lot of talk early in the new deal, about the possibility of the Political Parties representing liberal and conservatism. All Party Alignments may vanish if the new deal splits the nation. One of the chapters in my book is about those thoughts. Herbert hoover is one of the people pushing this he said republicans should declare the principles of Free Enterprise of become this the conservative party in the sense of conserving. Hoover said that because he was off that he thought roosevelt had stolen liberalism. He wanted to reclaim that term. Frank jenkins in oregon said how is the Republican Party to consolidate conservative sentiment and defeat the radical new deal. Embracing Free Enterprise was the answer. Glenn frank, the president of the university of wisconsin, you can see how thoughts for changing for what he said from 90 33 to 43 hopes for a conservative Republican Party and their liberal Democratic Party have gone repeatedly into the waist bucket of for land holds. By forties he said we may be heading into a different situation because of the extreme liberalism of the democrats. That is getting ahead of the story, which starts by the Free Enterprise battle. For more than 80 years the idea Free Enterprise despite being ill defined, tasseled with a new deal order, animating the central tension of political culture in the United States. Free the dangers of excessive public spending and red tape about the expansion of the regulatory states. The free enter vice was extremely compelling alternative. It reveals the fierce and reflective challenges that the new deal faced from the beginning. Although the opposition to the new deal took many forms, the call for Free Enterprise was a common denominator of most criticism. Critics shaped conceptions of the proper role of government even during the height of the deal. The traditional Free Enterprise philosophy are locked in death struggle as many colorado during the new deal years, a new conception of Free Enterprise less than a decade old was invented as an american custom. Anti roosevelts went to Great Lengths to constructed division to say that this new deal radically converged. Many decades or centuries, the New York Times america has always been the land of freedom. And reading that president ial heroes carved into mount rush more, wisconsin pushing the story further back in time others described Christopher Columbus a puritan of new england the cavaliers of new england and virginia as Free Enterprise serves. This is what is called an invented tradition. Although the modern Free Enterprise political vision merch shortly before 1932 it coalesce in opposition to the new deal order that his presidency initiated. Just as the new Deal Coalition was jerry rigged a tense units of a true night do not want to suggest today that they all have the exact same ideas i think their ideas berry, their mission varied but they were united by the idea of this term held a key in opposing what they took to be the biggest dangers of these new deals what united Free Enterprise service was a deep suspicion of the new deal. Not only is this set of policies but as a dangerous philosophy on a spectrum within various forces of fascism and communism that was gaining popularity in europe. Free enterprise components invoked a binary language in which they figured the new deal as a sip id form of totalitarianism or what nixon called the same old socialism bologna no matter how you slice it. Face with an either or political choice, the diversity of the Free Enterprise melted away, we members of this group united in fierce opposition to the new deal which they thought is a critics of liberalism. I really want to emphasize that, when i started my research i thought Free Enterprise was going to be economic discourse, what it was is a political and psychological discourse. These people call for nothing less than preempt him counter revolution, made necessary by the collective this theology of the new deal. The new deal was defined as pale completely. I had in the baltimores sons words a dangerous, updating traditional republican fears. Never before had we seen demagoguery on such a gigantically different scale. At the same here, another republican senator called roosevelt a new deal caesar who ruthlessly attacked Free Enterprise. Gwen frank, even use the term the fascist program of the new deal a phrase that minimize the political differences between the United States and the governments have germany and japan, with which the United States would be at war with. Referring to the other spectrum, in 1940 dismissed and National Health insurance proposal as not essentially different from that one conceived of stolen and london. Others compared the government dictation of the new deal to channel slavery. I will not developed at theme in my top. Rather than depicting the new deal as an outgrowth of a democratic process they treated no deal totalitarianism its a dictatorial and dangerous position. While state is in came in many ships from the binary point of view from the anti new deal Free Enterprise ors the foreman originally its all collectivism in the same dictatorial direction. Hoover and other Free Enterprise ors import other metaphors, to describe the slippery slope to which the weakening of Free Enterprise in this capably led. By stifling progress the straitjacket of governmental control the new deal has started this nation to tell terrine is some said one economist in 39. Employing alarmist rhetoric and depicting freedom as voluble and definition, Free Enterprise critics fear that the system they celebrated was on its last legs. Advocates of this pondered the same question. We may be the last generation of americans to receive an cherish the legacy of liberty warrant samuel pet and gayle. In this view, what became known in the late 1940s as the welfare state was nearly a transitional moment and a brief one on the road to dictatorship. Such apocalyptic language became a cornerstone of modern conservatism. The increasing political for General Electric criticized the medicare plan in 1940 one he expressed concern that our children and our childrens children would loan what it was once like to live in america when men were free only from the fading memories of their grandparents the last generation to grow up in a regime of Free Enterprise. Reagan was drawing in other words from the old Free Enterprise playbook. Facing what they viewed as a dire threats opponents of the deal latched onto Free Enterprise as a free phase that best describe their opposition. This version of Free Enterprise was an invention of the long new deal era. Indeed the history of republican president ial platforms provides really interesting insight into the transformation of this term as a show in chapter to win the phrase first appeared on the gop platform in the 19th century it referred to the attribute of being enterprising. Which is what Free Enterprise meant. The spirit of enterprise. It was a stating that people possess. The term in the process of transforming when i mentioned in the 1932 president ial platform, by 1936 however, after they become familiar to millions of americans it refer to economic systems are contending for the votes of the American People declared the introduction to that platform one is the historic american system of the Free Enterprise at the others called the new deal, which is a system of centralized bureaucratic control. Into sentences the gop laid out the stark choice of systems that they put before the American People well into the 20 american can century. Standing for dangerous and unamerican forms. The Republican Committee described the new deal as a basic conflict with american principles of democracy. Free enterprise mentions and variance of the phrase became obligatory in gop platforms. This was so long after the new deal ended. In 1964 had 11 mentions, 1968 ted 13 after nations of Free Enterprise, 1984 had 21 uses, and 2012 had seven mentions in the first president ial campaign after the passage of obamacares widely seen as a threat. As a show in the epilogue, donald trump he represents quite a departure from this tradition, he is only use the phrase one time. And not since he has become president. And the platform of 2016 mention the term twice, but quite unconscious control parts of the platforms which is opposed to 2012 which was in the second paragraph. The juxtaposition of Free Enterprise and new deal was not confined to gop platforms but was a regular talking point to republican candidates during the new deal era. Whenever you choose to call that republican president ial candidate, these are merely different names for the same things, absolute an arbitrary power in the hands of government. Look at the Campaign Book of that year in the capsule asian of his political philosophy was one of the first books to be titled Free Enterprise. The danger today is not the business it is Big Government. That is a key theme on wilcox book. The same year, 1940 in the case against the new deal, thomas claimed in becoming president ial election which he was the president ial front runner the American People will call be called upon to make a critical decision. The dewy was far from alone invoking the silver war and especially abraham lincolns framing of the faithful choice between competing in opposing economic situations. And world of binary choices the ole lee option was to revive Free Enterprise, quote the system that made american. Great so routinely route that is early as 1936 the New York Times editorialized against over use of this house divided metaphor. The editorialist wrote a good maximum like at the other tool requires judicial handling. We there are no exceptions to this rule. Not only half and half combinations are fatal including the hybrid new deal economy. People in 1936 only noticing this trend. The president ial candidates of 1936, to 48 they were all understood as political moderates, that were well to the left of the center, and denounced by conservative publications for being insufficiently real republicans. Yet they embrace the realistic in dire language of Free Enterprise. That suggest on the question of legitimacy of the new deal there was not significant daylight between their views and more of conservatives. This is not only mimic free rhetoric they helped invent it. For example glenn frank talked about the new deal as a war on business. In his 1940 campaign he repeated churches pills complain that fdr had waged a ruthless war on private enterprise. It was difficult i think and it is difficult to swear moderation with a binary slippery slope language of Free Enterprise that moderates embrace and amplify. In the Free Enterprise collectivism is not something to debate at face value, but suspect in no matter in what form in masquerades, thats what a group of republicans said, Free Enterprise or differ from new dealers because they were naive and duplicitous and were worried about the slippery slope. Political devastation could be quote inevitable. Misleading we advertising himself as a pragmatic effort to save capitalism, thats what fdr did, american collectivism would inevitably lead to totalitarianism. According to the wall street journal, its nothing more than quote and innocent seeming invasion of Free Enterprise domain by government. In this context limited Free Enterprise are suspected incremental reform on the theory that as a group of businessmen declared on the onset of world war ii that the government does not give a power once acquired. Indeed many Free Enterprise are s thought it was born dangerous than socialism because it pretended to be something it was not, they regulate described the new deal as a wolf in sheeps clothing. A dangerous program because of its humanitarian cover. Free enterprise fear that do deal woods lull people into a gradual acceptance of growing government power. Supporters of the new deal spoke on the roosevelt revolution, a positive tremendous formation. They turned an unusual revolution one that restored capitalism. The political scientist mario and audi stressed the extent of the new deal remain in the framework of the capitalist system. New dealers recognized the lack of ideological coherence. And since have notices limits and cons applications. Rather than a total icing force it was inconsistent and confused. Critics of the new deal described that as unitary. Not as reformist but as radical. Not as continuous but as a dangerous departure of age old norms. In the very old days, the tribune labeled it a complete make over of the american system. The revolutionary implications of the new deal. Although roosevelt claimed otherwise the new deal was according to the tribune taking the country on the path of european radicalism. The fear that the new deal might dangerously form the country, unleash an unwanted revolution, long outlasted the certain tee of the roosevelt first term. They feared that as a Business Journal in 41 that the nation was giving way to social revolution via controlled economy. Free enterprise ours differed with by how long the process giving way would take they generally agreed on the need for action to forestall the growth of planning under the new deal. In this context, called for a revolution to bring back the freedoms that we lost. This was the counter revolution that Free Enterprise ors had a. Mind when that would stand in reverse of time. Such language continue to be in the cold warriors, but Many Enterprises continue to see the communist threat as a internal versus external. Some enterprisers unapologetically used counter revolution to describe their goals in the post war years using slightly different language in 47 frederick kayaked holds those who believe in Free Enterprise should open a counter offensive against those who are for excessive government control. The chamber another business groups had argued before the were that the path of counter offensively in the aggressive selling of business. The battle between business and new dealers was not symmetrical Free Enterprisers for all offensiveness and defining sense of victimization declared and fought a onesided war. Ever since the new deal they have claimed under siege taking a psychological disposition than i described as elite victimization. Larry kudlow accurately discs expressed this perspective that capitalism in this country has been under assault since fdr you deal in the thirties. The description of the new deal as in the words of fox news talking head, was a jihad against Free Enterprise. What that does is reverses the balance of the nature of the war by projecting the accommodators as he aggressors and describing those that carry out more as welfare state is defending a civilization under siege. Free enterprise was depicted on a war on diplomacy. Free and risers saw themselves as undermatched babes in the woods, against state coercion. From this perspective vigilance require that Free Enterprise ares be required and prepared for the war that needed to be fought to prevent the assault on their new system that new dealers regularly launched. For their part do dealers and their supporters claim to believe in the Free Enterprise system they held that the government and they believe the history of the 19 thirstys brought out this claim. The necessity for government interference when Free Enterprise finds itself in trouble behind itself repairing capabilities. A group of economists and 38 said something very similar, that the new deal was necessary to prop up a Free Enterprise system. Left to its own devices is no longer capable of approaching full employment. For anti new deal Free Enterprise slurs with self correction was the essence of the system. Counted as an attack, not a statement of support. The Free Enterprise critique of the new deal became the default position and the conventional wisdom not just of conservatism but of a big chunk of the broader political culture. Its basic president s is reactionary. Namely in the long run said theres no such thing as moderate reform. All regulatory per fossils tend to an overwhelming status some. If one believes that they do deal fostered authoritarian government, than any accommodation appeared unwise and irrational. Examining the leader culture narrative, allows us to see how partial in tentative that consolidation was and how vocal and powerful my own authority challenged it during its supposed years of height, those negation of American Freedom have an outside. Free enterprise when he said in 1935 that roosevelts proposed reform cut so deep as to threaten not only the forum but the spirit of our institutions. Year after year Free Enterprise ors framed elections, debates and regulatory battles as stark and usually by eric choices with potentially devastating consequences to america. Failed pride predictions of apocalypse did not fit stop them from guessing that disaster would hit. New dealers and their successor succeeded on many fronts they spent a surprising mount of time during the era of the new deal era on the defensive, confronting the charge that they were undermining basic american principles. We should not be too quick to grant the enterprise or victory on the new deal, we should not forget that despite opposition the new deal succeeded in changing the political landscape. If it can be ever said that anything is permanent in american politics it can be said that the new deal is permanent, that may seem overly optimistic these days, but it is undeniable that many of the new deals court. The conservatives have generally agreed with this settlement. Indeed the pioneering libertarian thinker claimed the new deal was here to stay in 1934 long before most dealers wouldve made that statement with any confidence at all. Even in the wake of the success of the conservativism counter revolution that began in the seventies, the status innovations of the new deal have by and large survived. In 2011 the conservative writer reflected on the end of the new deal order, the house the fdr built sits on a wildly wobbly base. Indeed Free Enterprise service have often to pick themselves as the vanquish party, during obama everything from an increase in minimum wage to legal enforcement of nondiscrimination was quote the death of Free Enterprise. The Heritage Foundation claimed that people who believe in the power of individual liberty and Free Enterprise have had a rough time lately. Reflecting a sense of being in battle in Free Enterprise discourse. Let me conclude by saying rather than deal the new deal order with serial events, it is more accurate to view the new deal, a Free Enterprise ordeal these forces were in contention with each other neither totally dominant even during their periods of hegemony. Tracking the battle between the two shows that the pundits were premature to claim a victory. It also suggests that scholars may be incorrect to pronounce its defeat in the 1970s and 80s, and that influential book Steve Frazier straight framed its history as a rise and fall. It might be more accurate for every alfred sloan, the spell of rich monte shun has been broken and sets the stage for Free Enterprise. The death of the new deal has been greatly exaggerated. If it did not succeed fully in vanquishing the new deal order it helped make the Free Enterprise one of the dominant political languages of the 21st century. Thank you very much. applause we have a good block of time for questions and discussions, our rules remain the same, please wait to be called upon. Wait for the microphone to be reaching you. And identifier self before you ask a question. Can i start off with a question about true believers versus those might exploit the term. In your section on the new deal and immediate post new years, the thirties and forties, the people you write about come off as true believers, as ideologically committed, and as meaning what they say. They see the new deal is a slippery slope, and the u. S. Is already going down that hill. Fast forward to the fifties or the seventies and beyond, and when conservatives are in power they dont dismantle the new deal order, or roll back that welfare state dramatically. They complain a lot but they dont do it. So, i cant tell for the latter sections of the book a Free Enterprise becomes a rhetorical device that in a general way is used to pushback some regulation to cut back some texas, but not to overhaul the entire social order. Those folks using this language are not adverse to accepting federal contracts, investments from the government for industrial development, they accept bail outs, so is there is an inconsistency here. They are happy to take it but they will rail about it in other settings. So is there a shift from true belief to a pragmatic exploitative use of this concept, that signifies a real shift in the people who are using this language and what they think and what theyre doing . Thank you for that. I try to take people at their word. My strategy is to take seriously what people say, lewis powell who wrote that memo that i mentioned, one of the things that really struck me about that memo was that it was written in 71 but so much of it couldve been written 20 years earlier. The claims were almost identical. I have no reason to believe that powell didnt really think this was so. I think he thought Free Enterprise was under threat. One of the things i try to show is Free Enterprise ors did try to make a distinction between Free Enterprise and laissezfaire. Faye knew they were not the same the government can have some role, a role that usually did help them, a convenient way to divine the term, i have no doubt that some people used it cynically. But my sense is that lewis powell and Ronald Reagan really did believe this language. Thank you. Right back here at the very end. Im going to say im skeptical between the Free Enterprise ors and the new idealists. Im a big fan of your book. I just wrote a Second Edition Book which is called great a. M. P. Which is about the trade store wars of the thirties. This story is big business was killing off Small Business, the mom and pop stores were being driven out of business by capitalist giants. The question was what should the federal government doable this. The reality is, there is no partisan split here at all. You had many many people on the republican side, punitive Free Enterprise folks, who fought very much that the government should crack down on big bid sniffs. Free enterprise meant protecting mom and pop and acting against foreign companies. That were killing off Free Enterprise, meanwhile you had democrats who had both sides of this dispute as well, this burned on throughout the new deal and beyond. Its really hard to see this as a dispute over for and against Free Enterprise and its more along the traditional lines of we like some Free Enterprise but not too much. It just depends if our neighborhood grocer is being put out of business. I am a big fan of your book. I guess i would say a couple of things. One is that i try to say that it is wrong to say that Free Enterprise was a republican discourse, because both parties were far more ideologically diverse in the 1930s. I do think that Free Enterprise had a number of meanings and i think you are referring to an antitrust version of Free Enterprise that someone like ralph nader later embraced as well. I think that tradition is there, but one of the interesting things about Free Enterprise discourse of the sort i am writing about is that it is the reverse of what you are talking about, which is a lot of big is this people speaking as if they were Small Business people. That is the essence of one of my chapters, and one of the things you constantly see from the president of gm that gm is no different than the Corner Grocery or the peanut vendor and so forth. A lot of these business lobbies used that language repeatedly, where the economy is made up of entrepreneurs and individuals but not of large corporations. The Free Enterprise discourse im talking about completely it is usually spoken by people who come from that world but who deny its existence altogether. I dont think it is in contradiction. This is a term that has many uses. I accept that there were other versions out there and i do treat them in my book. Up against the wall in the back there. Two questions about language, the first does Free Enterprise ever carry a legal meaning . So like a word that i puzzle over like manufacturer has a lot of ambiguity to it, do you ever see Free Enterprise in the law . Secondly what do you think of meal is. Love me do the second first. My book does talk about that, i wrote an essay for Boston Review about the history of the term liberalism. One of the things i show in my book is that when it was first used in the 1930s what a neoliberal was, is what might be considered an ultra liberal, and i put it in the context of this debate of what is liberalism. Which is a huge debate in the early new deal years. I think that some people who later called them Free Enterprise markets but the pairing wasnt always exact, so you find a lot of people like morally talking about how he represents free repertoire enterprise but new deal represents new liberalism. I didnt do it, i didnt do a lot of Legal Research so i cant really answer that question. You spent ten years answering and writing a book and then you realize there are whole areas you didnt research at all. Thank you good question. Right over here. Im a political scientist so i dont know the literature that you are referring to, this may be a silly question. In your description before the 1930s and the 1930s and again in the seventies, you have a point of view which is opposition to the government participation in the economy, and the governments enthusiasm for regulations which might limit business. But of course there is the carve out if some of that can help out. Its very opportunistic in that sense. I think we all saw the compromise there. I said the 1970s because deregulation seems to be an anachronistic to what you are talking about but the revival of the Free Enterprise thought. We have at least a century or so of antinew deal and antiregulation. How do you essentially update this sort of thought on Free Enterprise when it comes to the contemporary debate on health care russian mark right now, one thinks that the major issue of the election is whether medicare for all is a good idea versus others versus public option. There are various issues. It seems to go into the heart of the book, which is how much, basically, should the government be in the economy if the economy is also health care. I do deal with the 2012 Mitt Romney Campaign which framed Free Enterprise versus obamacare. One of the interesting thing about Free Enterprise discourse is that it is a puzzle for historians. Our whole job is to study change over time, what do you do with a discourse that is frozen in amber. That is one of the thing about Free Enterprise that people employed in different contexts. What i say in my book is that Free Enterprise text remains the same, but the context changes constantly. The way in which it is used really varies. When youre asking is very interesting. Mitt romney when he ran in 2012 had a history of a republican who traditionally used Free Enterprise and believed in it, donald trump does not, and ive noticed that before impeachment stuff over the summer, he was really framing a freedom versus socialism setup. Im sure were going to come back to it quite a lot. But he wasnt using the language of Free Enterprise. Some people others do. One of the rnc subgroup leaders wrote something this summer which framed the coming election as Free Enterprise versus socialism. Largely referring to the health care debates. Right up here. I associate Free Enterprise with people who are conservative. But with the reaction of Free Enterprise to the trillion dollar deficit in the bindle of a boom be . In the middle of a boom be . I talk about this in my final chapter, Free Enterprise critique of public spending. They did talk somewhat about the deficit, but they did talk about excessive public spending is very dangerous. With that is excessive taxation, which is a mode of an freedom, my guess is that they would not have liked it for that much. It was not one of their favorite boats of discourse. inaudible for the most part no but there may be some overlap. This is intellectual history and also economical and psychological. I question about your sources. Some of them are obvious. You mention chicago tribune, but on top of that there are dozens of other newspapers that you use, how did you go about it . One of the main archival sources i used which is a great source is that museum and library in wilmington delaware. It has the papers of the manufacturers they are probably the leaders are Free Enterprise and they have a huge collection there. I also highly recommend for historians a subscription to newspapers. Com. My library gets newspapers which are the bigger ones, about 17 of the bigger ones, but newspapers. Com let you into thousands of local newspapers when you come across people like the wet emory. His syndicated column was not going to appear in the New York Times, but it appeared in hundreds of small town newspapers. So that was a key source. My subscription is on auto renew. With the right sleeve coming out of the jacket. The question a Free Enterprise seized to be carefully chosen to free market. I wonder if you might comment on that distinction. And if Free Enterprise allows more wiggle room perhaps . Or allows the anti communist labor movement, was the American Labor movement to embrace free unionism free trade unionism as opposed to state based . In that sense in free market is much more closely associated with antiregulation, harkens back to laissezfaire, could you comment on . That that is a great set of questions. Partly i just went by usage. My sense is that free markets, free market only overtakes Free Enterprise in the fifties or sixties. I think Free Enterprise was more capacious language, psychological, political, but largely Free Enterprise service were strictly limiting themselves to purely economic. It was much more discourse on liberty and freedom. That is what they care about. I p think, in the period betwen the thirties and seventies, that Free Enterprise was the term of choice by maybe the 80s the market had overtaken it. One interesting thing about unionism, one of the figures i write about is walter truther who was a big user of the Free Enterprise term. And another one of those thinkers on the left side, the labor spectrum who wanted to resuscitate and redefined the term in some way in the fifties. Right here. David walsh, grad student at winston. To build on that point, i was interested in the rear appropriating Free Enterprise term. For the right wingers who used the term Free Enterprise, what was there vision of what labor it looks like in a Free Enterprise system . Let me step back from that because this is part of what is in my chapter and it is an important transition. My argument is that in the 19th century, free surprise was really a subset of the free labor vision. So you find a lot of people who for debt promote free labor ideology who believe that Free Enterprise, and enterprising character is part of what makes up a free labor society. One of the points and make and my book is that in the 20th century, those flipped and then what happened was that Free Enterprise became the more important term and free labor was a subset of it. You do find a lot of corporate leaders, especially during the era of the 1950s when labor unions were quite high, who talked about the role of free labor in a Free Enterprise society. A lot of it was constrained by what was being talked about when labor was popular, membership was high. Being seen as very antilabor was probably not going to be that effective politically. I find a lot of rhetoric about free labor in that general sense, but i would say the two main constraint on freedom that Free Enterprisers identified was i have the quote from one to wilkie, where he said, it is not big business we need to fear anymore. A lot of Free Enterprisers were former progressives who came of age critical of big business and so forth but what they said was what they said was now Big Government has taken that place and now we have to worry about Big Government. That was evidently what they saw as the biggest constraint on freedom but i would say secondly was organized labor and they were concerned about that as a possible constraint on freedom. In the far back there. Im doing research and the question i have is, im probably one of the younger ones in the crowd, i think i found that especially with recent the caucus with senator sanders becoming popular, i find that a lot of people in my generation, we hear terms like Free Enterprise or free market, and like its a wall for us. A lot of my friends or colleagues talking about student debt, the environment is about fall apart, politics and etc, do you see a generational divide between the understanding of freedom especially for Free Enterprise and free market, and i also dont see a lot of young people think these ideas are important anymore. Young people are worried about financial security, financial security, climate security, so why would this concept be important for the Younger Generation . Are the sentiments of a Younger Generation giving any insights into concepts of freedom might go forward. That is a wonderful question. I have a lot of things to say. One of the things is that i try to show is that Free Enterprise works is the oppositional ideology. When the new deals at its strongest so is Free Enterprise, as it weekends Free Enterprise is used less and less. In the eighties and nineties its more this digital. Youre not seeing it as much. Romney used a lot. You are right it is not necessarily, have the same place as it once did. That is in part because weve been living in the age of reagan for a long time. You could argue that what Free Enterprise is opposing islah strong new and less important. You are right to single out security, this is a main thing that enterprisers criticized, they really thought that security was the opposite of freedom. They believe that risk was what brought society to grow. The profit and loss system, there was a whole debate, we should say profit and loss is because we want to show that you can make a profit but you could also take a loss. That is the chance well take for that was the kind of language. That was used. We are really interesting moment in regard to the way young people are thinking about politics, the Free Enterprise versus show chalets and binary is really changing in interesting ways. The long time the issue was the republicans use free in enterprise and democrats run away from socialism, now democrat front runner socialism is embracing it so its an interesting moment. I wrote a piece about three years ago about the debate between Free Enterprise and socialism, when i things i positive there, whether Bernie Sanders by saying yes i am a socialist, what are you going to do about it, whether he has or he made inoculate that charge. Im not saying he will, i think it is an interesting moment in regard to that binary that is driving politics for the last hundred years. Right there in the purple. Part of the aspect of Free Enterprise that seems important is the capacity to take an individual and get them on a huge hook of debt or obligation to sign someone up to a long contract and some of the sanders people subscribe to not being gouged by a Health Care Company orin kerr company or a bank. How does this continue to perpetuate itself . Is it the argument that someone has to be cast out of the flock is a protective mechanism. I dont the guy talked about it today, but a key theme of my book is the word system, the idea there is a Free Enterprise system which means it is beyond an individual company and we are all part of the system. System is an interesting word as they used it because the idea was that this was a natural system in the sense that it was the result of marketbased decisions by people and companies and so forth but that if you tried to mess with it through artificial means you could destroy that system. They were very systematic in that sense, but as i tried to say, you could point to a lot of things about their addictions that didnt come true but that is probably true of all of us, where we have a certain bias to think that our prayers are right even when evidence that might undermine it emerges. It is interesting that the greatest ever essence of Free Enterprise thought came at the height of the Great Depression went a lot of businesses were failing but the argument is why they were failing and how was that was maybe perpetuating those failures rather than solving them. Right up here. I think the young man mentioned a test case for Free Enterprise was Climate Change. Forcing the people to decide role of government in solutions persist Free Enterprise. And then you get some hybrids like what is going on in australia with the fires and government said, we are going to make sure we export the coal that is causing our people to inhale all of the carbon. I think it is putting Free Enterprise ideologues on their back feet. At what point do you say the Free Enterprise system is more important than the survival of the species . That is a big one. I think it is really interesting that the comparison to the Free Enterprise economy to an ecological system and so forth and that says that they are similar in nature, both of them need to be left alone to work at their best. I think that one of the things that i find about Free Enterprisers is they say they recognize that Government Intervention was necessary at certain points but they are almost always backward looking. During the new deal, a lot of Free Enterprise advocate said we needed the progressive reform Social Security will kill us so we cant do it. And then we see people saying medicare and medicaid that we needed it but obamacare will be the last straw. There is a lot of that sort of thinking. I havent really researched the relationship between Climate Change and Free Enterprise so i dont really know exactly how to address that other than that i think that these were people confident that this was the best system to promote the bertie and freedom promote liberty and freedom. Your perspective as a historian comes from a cultural context. You view that an that seems to come through in your discussion. I wanted to take it further backwards and say what about democracies and individuals him and spiritualism and the other aspects of the american character. How they play into this notion that youve latched onto here in the 20 century . So right asking how Free Enterprisers talked about individualism . Im asking how did the american cultural context affect this discussion . Nothing i try to show at the beginning of my top, is that enterprisers believes that cyst the captured the evolution of the american character. A lot of things that they did, was they read back a version of Free Enterprise that they had invented. Into the distant past. The term was used in the 19th century but it had very different meaning that when it came to mean in the 20th century. But i would say that in regards to your question, the key issue to individualism and liberty was very important to Free Enterprise ors. The question is how do we maximize that freedom. Thats one of the things they thought Free Enterprise could do. They beat all kind of arguments about how that was possible. Other hands are questions . Back here. I am from the department of justice antitrust division. Awesome, i write about Robert Jackson who was the head in the 1930s. I have a question about the rise of the cold war and how that couldve compromised the Free Enterprise ors and the targets of their rhetoric, the rise of the cold war couldve repositioned their Free Enterprise ors to attack foreign enemies instead of domestic enemies. I ask about this because i read speeches from the heads of and i see that in the fifties a sharp rise in the term of Free Enterprise. Thats what maybe come to the presentation and read your book. I wonder if you have any thoughts on the rise of the cold war and Free Enterprise . That is a great question. One of the things i think is that, maybe the cold war was less important than Free Enterprise discourse than other things. It certainly lead to another discussion, because it made the battle against communism that much more apparent to everyone. I follow what kevin cruz wrote in his book, about Corporate America and religious discourse in the fifties. What is that book called . Anyway, i believe its called one nation under god. The avett is a walking bibliography. David is a walking bibliography. The degree to which the fear of internal subversion was so much stronger than say a communist takeover. It did definitely raise the stakes. There is a lot of stuff which i researched but didnt include in the book about very big in the state department in the 1950s was exporting free to prize to latin america. Alison rockefeller was hugely involved in this. I want up having to cut that out because i didnt have space for it. Im not saying it wasnt a really important flashpoint but i dont think it dramatically changed the discourse that much in the discourse was one that the real problem is internal subversion and not for an attack. One of my favorite anecdotes in the book comes from 1944 when the communist party leader endorses Free Enterprise as center to the United States. If only the commonness hadnt done the sectarian turn in 19451946 in 1945 or 1946. One last question over here. Yeah i am excited to read the book so i am sorry if you addressed this. How is this history gendered . I do some gender analysis in the book. It is a topic you can see from my figures are almost all white men. There were no African American and women Free Enterprise ares compared to the white men. But there was definitely a race gendered discourse through and through. A lot of the questions came up about security versus freedom. The North Carolina senator democrat very anti new deal, he talked about Free Enterprise versus the wet nursing of franklin roosevelt, you find a lot of discourse that security is feminine, and risk is masculine, it is a very Common Thread throughout this period. I think you cannot do justice to understand this term which is called elite victimization without understanding the fragility of the male ego. It is really central to the story we. On that note i will unfortunately draw this to a close. Before you pack up and head out, let me invite you to a light reception next door for a glass of wine or some of our wonderful nuts. We will invite you back for next week for a talk that was scheduled for last december but weather prevented it from taking you all for coming out today. And thank you thank you all for coming out today, and thank you to larry glickman. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] music