Pushing those up at a level they could not afford. National Recovery Association . Guest the governments deal that would stimulate the economy was given this giant plan to make the industrial sector booming again. Roosevelt signed it early on it in 33. When you look at law it is a bunch of political impulses expressed on a piece of paper, instatued and then enforced. So the impulses were economy of scale is good. Big is always better because at that time we because at that time we are all hostage to fashion. The economy of scale bigger is better was hot. Bigger is always better and you want to question that i am not sure if it is necessary. Another premise was Consumer Choice is bad. If the consumer pics he slows down the assembly line. Because if uuniform and uuniform is faster and better. You told that to the starbucks shareholder because it is a product premised on choice. We can take that extra 18 seconds to pick exactly what kind of milk to have in our law take. They believe choice slowed it down and you cant even in the case if you couldnt even pick your chicken from the chicken coop you have to take the chicken youve got in the name of efficiency those are the principles in that law. Host from 1929, octobe october 1929 to 1940 how big does the government get, what was the change in the tax revenue cracks. Guest the government got a lot bigger than before. Imagine a country until the 1930s the state had in total a bigger government in washington. He went there may be a few felt like it but you couldnt get sick. That is what the family thought there was an air conditioning either. It didnt seem to me to go there. What mattered was the state capital. He always said that the United States and plural. They were at the power then in the 30s the government began to spend first under her birth h to her and then of course under Franklin Roosevelt and by about 1936 if you look at the charts and the Tax Foundation from the government you will see all of a sudden the federal government is bigger than the state. That didnt happen before but now in peacetime we didnt really go back. That was the change is that as great as we got now backs nowhere near as great as might be five, 617, eight, nine or ten. But it was a lot bigger than before and it was the expectation that it was the rescuer, the three d. Manner, that was the new thing in the 1930s. 1930s. Guest when you think about hobby lobby. They have a religious concern about the health care law. Maybe it relates to something thats important to the owner which is contraception or abortion. It was challenged and what was interesting and ive wrote about this in the National Review, too, it was challenged by the case that had an element of real agenda in brooklyn new york, and i liked them very much. One of the pieces of fun was researching the sectors because they didnt expect the government to make them heroes that the government challenged them and invited their business from breaking the rules including letting people pick their chicken. Maybe the government contended that they sold a sick chicken. They were going to go to jail. They were paying the wrong amount or maybe too little in him wage component. Maybe people were working different hours and rules and a sony were addressed. They were selected politically. They were selected to beat the case because they did have to be tested. It was an emergency law and then they were for roosevelt. Host yo the right they were frustrated to government didnt understand the consequences of its own allegations. They broke the code and that was all the government lawyers understood. But to suggest they were not fit is also to suggest something that they view it as far worse. It was to suggest that the kosher slaughterhouse wasnt really kosher so unworthy of customers and other words the poultry code officers have done something worse than angered the sectors. They had affected their dignity. Guest this is something interesting. You have the washington law and the higher power. In the census we looked up the sector and it says about their father, the rabbi. Maybe it means hes read a lot of books in the congregation and what it meant is that he was a serious father when it came to religion. They would be shamed in their market and community. And you want to remember today health is a big story. They had no antibiotics just. So it happened often that it was bad. Must have tuberculosis all the time so this was a life or death obligations for the sectors. Thats what makes the case kind of interesting you see one against another they took it very serious. There was attention and i tried to bring that out because there is an element that makes sense so they had one old o law and oe new fighting with each other. Host clearing out the forces that brought the crash in the first place seemed to be the new dealers. It had been a year of experiment. 1934 would be a year of prosecution. It wasnt for th of the qualityt you expect. In the new deal you have some spectacular Growth Numbers that you are not getting back to where you started. If you find success is back where i was in 1929, we were not there so the government got angry and they began to assign blame and go after companies prosecuting him a new way. One was the poultry business and in the forgotten man i talked about a much more significant company, the great electricity man in chicago they are like the tramways we have in chicago and he y one year to the city and it was wiped out by the prosecutions of people that grew up in chicago never heard his name. I never knew he built the opera house where i went with my father said there was a sort of the racing of Business Leaders through the prosecution. They were very aggressive business. He called it the princes of properties which he was more aggressive than either party would be. Host post their conflict with people speaking out against it was at uuniform of people were supporting him in his efforts . Guest people knew the business had some responsibility in the crash. Mr. Whitney here in new york and so the economy wasnt Getting Better maybe we should blame them more and roosevelt felt the public was on his side and he prosecuted these people then he won 46 out of 48 states. There was also dissent particularly in the newspapers. To get our modern technology. You can see a lot of the papers were skeptical about whether it would bring recovery. They went after the treasurer to imagine one secretary now going after mr. Paulson or mr. Greenspan from the other arab they went after the treasury secretary in the 20s and mr. 30s mr. Morgan paul did that and he ordered his staff newgistics ordered his lawyers to go after mr. Melvin just because it kind of felt good. Very grason and political. One secretary brings down another. I was going to say the newspapers noticed this. They were less progressive and less leftleaning than they are today and they fought back quite a bit since the new deal. Host how did the tax code change . Guest well, the great achievement was to bring down the wartime tax levels. The taxes have gone quite high. Coolidge and harding and even wilson about the taxes down to the top marginal rate of 25 . 25 is often they think 25. Then already under cooper because of the trouble and the downturn after 29 it went up into the 60s and roosevelt pushed it even higher so that i dont know, when our parents were younger it was in the 90s come even 1950s the top marginal rate many of us look at was in the 90s and roosevelt said no 25 of the have to pay more. He also liked whil both taxes. The most diverse for the attacks in the new deal was the socalled undistributed profit tax. Whats with wax lets see, you save your money, dont distribute your money, that tax is controversial and it was a big new deal idea to get the rich People Holding onto their money they must disparage it to the government. Host heres a letter that you include in your book the forgotten man from fdr to the irs commissioner. Dear commissioner, im closing my income tax return for the calendar year 1937 with a check of 15,000. I am wholly unable to figure out the amount of tax for the following reason and then it goes on to list the reasons. The president of the United States cannot figure out the tax code. Guest i cant figure out what the authorities want. They tried. Its kind of mischievous and amusing and kind of lovable and that is an example of him playing the lovable and humble. I cant figure out my taxes to the dark side of that is that he could ask and not get in trouble. A lot of us have dealt with the irs they dont always tell you whats right. There is a lot of uncertainty and that caused sphere. It was pretty ironic that roosevelt himself couldnt figure out his taxes and we talk about that in both versions of the book. Host welcome to the indepth program and this month we are in our new york studio with historian and a common us and the nich amity shlaes, the e within which came out in 1991 followed by the forgotten man and a vancouver which is her most recent book safe for the graphic novel the forgotten man which just came out as well and you reference to this. Guest this is a cartoon history of the Great Depression. Its very popular. The graphic novel of the cartoon books that are like movies. I think they are like art. Its not dumbing down, so we took the artists and made the whole story and pictures and some of them are little because the tax rate has been overruled. A lot of the new deal was about people not getting what they thought they would get. We often failed. There is a lot of sorrow in the new deal when the government figures realize the policies were not working so we try to capture the humor of that and in the back of the book there is a cast of characters. Every character is drawn beautifully so we are offering this as a teaching tool and a lot of people use it as a gift for clients because it is a fun take on the new deal. Host but there is a superhero. Who is the superhero . Guest Wendell Wilkie. He was the electricity man who had accompanied the thought he would light up the south. Instead they trashed the compa company. The book is a self the story becoming angrier and angrier and the climax of it is when he speaks truth to power. By being so obnoxious with business and putting our documents think we are hurting the whole country because we cannot hire people. If you are bitter you dont get very far. You can be angry. I love drawing and more seeing paul draw him. He comes out in the end and has the lowest claim that existed in the news and the literary editor of the tribune so that was going to draw her and i want to say thank you to the familie familyt have all helped me with learning about Wendell Wilkie. There is a great attorney and his brothers, so that was a fun story. And if this book is a demon and we had trouble trying to decide thabut i didnt vilify him but i dont know i guess it is Henry Morgenthau and then there is also a great figure for saying what the government meant i think i could be fair to say its like rahm emanuel today. Hes a little bit of demon in the cartoon version. He was the head of the Farm Security administration and it didnt even make it but he was definitely the bright mind. The economist, the enthusiast, very lovable but wrong in my view and he was thrown out because he was too far left and he went off looking for a job and we traced back. But i admire people who served even if i dont agree with their ideas because service has cost. Host 202 is the area code if you want to participate. 5853880 in the east and central time zones, 585388 5853881 ine mountain and pacific time zones. If you cant get through on the phone line and still want to communicate try social media. booktv is a reporter handle you can send a tweet for our Facebook Page facebook. Com booktv or email booktv cspan. Org. We will be taking calls in a few minutes. You seem to be working your way backwards through history. Start with the 30s and now your last book, Calvin Coolidge. Guest i like positive stories. The forgotten man could be called how they blew it. They are democrats and republicans, politicians through prophecy policy. How do you make something that better . You think about Eastern Europe and they say that its easy to make fish soup from an aquarium. They did fix the economy so its kind of an inspiring story and i went back to it and i looked at president harding who did more than people say. He has a terrible reputation. If he were a stock he would be in the toilet. You read these as stocks. He was wrongly evaluated in history. How harding and coolidge and he does deserves a much higher rank so that became a lifework restoring this hero unknown. Cspan gives him some time but most people dont. Lets see if we can give him the everything that he deserves. He did have that tax rate thats lower than Ronald Reagan. He balanced the budget and he cut the budget and today if somebody gets on cspan and they talk about cutting the budget they mean reducing the rate of increase. Coolidge actually cut the budget. You can go in the same Tax Foundation tables and in the government tables and the National Accounts that he cut the budget. So why didnt we know about this quiet silent guy . I became very intrigued with him and wrote his biography. Host and in the book that came out last year, you write that coolidge wasnt particularly proud of being president. He walked around quietly touching things from time to time and smiling to himself. He still wore the suspenders of a vermonter and that made him a site in the great quarters. Nonetheless starling also sold at coolidge wasnt afraid. He slid into the office naturally. After all the pediments over the doors in the office were not so different from those of the Governors Office in montpelier. Guest thats right. There are different notions of how you use the office. So, Theodore Roosevelt, doris kearns goodwin, in my pool but im going to enjoy it. We all know people who do their job as if they are driving a racecar. This is my racecar, my paper, my office. He said im serving and i am here as a servant. A very oldfashioned. Its not about me. Of course i mean. But im going to try to suppress it in the name of service. Very different conception of politics and i was attracted to this. I think theres a lot to learn from it and a lot of others are attracted, too. I took a snapshot this spring at the foundation in plymouth vermont where hes from and if you look at his grave is it isnt bigger than all the other ones. It is huge but the coolidge monument is pretty small because he believed in modesty. He wasnt comfortable with what was going on at mount rushmore. Maybe the heads are too big. He did into the lead in the great men of history. He was all about service. You think of cal ripken junior the baseball player that also shows up for good. They are generally about service. And that mark is on the presidency. What you see when coolidge is fixing the environment because there were scandals when harding was a he was meticulous about cleaning up. I think that he did make a living aquarium fish soup. He absolutely a port of the scandal. The exploitation of the presidency, how much . While committee would cut the name out of his suit because someone would sell them as the president and make a profit commercializing the office. Its what they accepted from the gifts, there were not many. They made his son dress up for dinner and play around at the white house. He was strict but it was for a reason. We are serving the public. We are not just here because of our self. Host how did he become the Vice President and what was the relationship between harding and coolidge . Guest he was with harding just to remind the viewers. I think that he wanted to be the president ial candidate and he had a good argument. He was the governor of massachusetts and as of now there is a big issue may be very far, maybe take over the cities. That is what happened. Remember, there is an enormous pommel after world war i and the workers were not paid well enough. They were right about that and the inflation and it is somewhat similar. They were at that time thinking about it and in the chain of command he was at the top for the police in boston. The policemen that for his constituents mostly irish he was famous for getting the irish voted into the gop was the immigrant party, there were rats in the station houses. He had 18 reasons to go on strike. They affiliated with a nice union, not the communist union and they were fired and coolidge backed off the commissioner that fired them. He said there is no right to strike against the safety by any wind or anywhere or anytime. The Public Sector was going too far and here was the governor drawing the line the way the governor can and you see that and everyone looks. Then they actually lined up behind the governor. He had showed up. I dont think they should because there were riots and death and he had to call out the guard in the state. Everyone riding in on the train with bayonets and it was terrible. He thought he had an election coming up and thought i might not win this. You could see that in the correspondence with his father. A wonderful book that we have. Well maybe i am not going to win this time. But i think it was the right thing to do yet he was reelected as the governor and that gave him a National Standing he went on the ticket of calming things down. Normalcy was the phrase and they did get along although as i noted in the buck this is harding was tough. She was hard on mrs. Coolidge and mrs. Coolidge was younger. Every color looked good on her and mrs. Harding they are evident and mrs. Harding didnt want them to have a very nice house so a hotel was fine. But there is no evidence of dislike between coolidge and harding and harding did something extremely magnanimous. He invited the president into the cabinet meetings. Not every president did that. He was grateful because being Vice President is purgatory as many of the noted. And therein the senate he was still the president of the senate but the real president was of course the senator from his own state and massachusetts who gave him an unrelenting hard time so he was grateful to harding and respected him and very sad when he died in the summer of 1923. H