Gleaming pink, starkness, he gave the president a full shot, frontal shot. The president was embarrassed and started to back out. Think nothing of it, thundered churchill. The Prime Minister has nothing to hide, from the president of the United States. Hopkins, whether true or not, some say its not, hopkins behind out on that story for years. He was a gambler on horses and cars, even the time of day. Married three times, between the second and third marriages, he dated glamorous womenhave movie stars like paulette goddard, actress dorothy hale, who actually she jumped from her apartment in new york to her death, allegedly because she had been jilted by Harry Hopkins. The former paris editor of the harpers bazaar, who he married actually on the second floor of the white house the summer of 1942. He regarded money, his own and other peoples as something to be spent as quickly as possible. To put people into two categories. Talkers and doers. And harry was definitely a do or. So the hopki
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastAbout the authors: James Roosevelt, Jr. is a grandson of President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Henry Scott Wallace’s grandfather, Henry A. Wallace, served President Franklin Roosevelt as Secretary of Agriculture, Vice President, and Secretary of Commerce.Pop quiz: Who said this?“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”Well, most recently, it was Donald Trump, in an angry Truth Social post on the second day of his c
New Deal hampered recovery by causing businessmen to fear policy changes that might render their investments unprofitable.)
Insull s Monstrosity
The 1935 Revenue Act wasn t the only measure that had businessmen and investors shuddering that August. Less than a week after it became law, FDR signed the still-more controversial Public Utility Holding Company Act, granting the SEC the power to break up the nation s utility holding companies.
On the eve of the Depression, Paul Mahoney explains, most U.S. electric and gas companies were directly controlled by trusts or holding companies. Groups of smaller utility holding companies were in turn controlled by a smaller number of larger holding companies, and so on for several layers. Three gigantic holding companies at the apex of this holding company pyramid ultimately controlled more than 80 percent of the nation s power companies.
The New Deal and Recovery, Part 12: Fear Itself SHARE This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. …[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself. FDR, in his first inaugural address. There is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain. Thomas Hobbes, on the state of nature, in
Leviathan.
Not the Sum of its Parts
So far, I ve tended to look at the New Deal as a set or sequence of distinct government policies and programs, remarking on how each either contributed to or hampered economic recovery. I ve also dealt only with those New Deal policies generally understood to have had promoting recovery as their aim.