The Home Front

BOHN, WILLIAM E.

THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Americans for Democratic Action Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary Precisely ten years ago, I sat with a couple of hundred men and women in Washington's old...

...I am tempted to retire in Arthur's favor and fill the rest of my space with his account of how and why the ADA was born and through what twists and turns of fate it has developed to its present size and influence...
...The ADA plank won in the convention, and with it candidate Truman won before the voters...
...They face each issue with common-sense solutions...
...a lot of plain, ordinary people who are distinguished only by their alive-ness and alertness to what is going on in the world...
...By the millions they are moving to the suburbs and buying multi-colored cars...
...In every case, the liberal candidates have proudly proclaimed their connection...
...In those days, we were assured that the country had entered on a new economic period, that our system had reached a new level above and beyond the reach of depressions...
...It is a great forum where progressive Americans can meet, unify and clarify their ideas and encourage one another for the great push forward which is required in these trying times...
...David Dubinsky was there, and so was Walter Reuther...
...And to play their part they would have to retain enough of the forward look to keep in mind the fact that the reforms had not all been made...
...In the first place, these ADAers are practical, reasonable people...
...It was a time for the tough two-front war that Reinhold Niebuhr kept talking about...
...Much remained to be done, and the men who dominated the 80th Congress were not likely to get on the job...
...It counts because of its quality rather than its quantity...
...Robert R. Nathan, the New Deal economist who is to serve as national chairman of the organization during the coming year, gave an impressive list of our legislative achievements during the past twenty years and then continued: "Yet, in spite of all this, millions of Americans—perhaps a fifth of our nation—languish in poverty that is unpardonable because it is avoidable...
...It is useless to consider now how much better things would have been if Congress had taken the lead in 1948 rather than leaving the matter to the Supreme Court for action in 1954...
...We needed practical people who knew enough about history and political theory so that they would not be taken in by any "popular front...
...As I listened to the discussions, two convictions grew in my mind...
...At the organization's tenth convention, an exceptional amount of attention was given to history...
...It is not a mass organization...
...Often in the public discussion and in private conversation in and around the convention, the question was raised as to why this organization was founded just when it was, why it has grown as it has and developed influence out of proportion to its numbers...
...More citizens than ever have satisfactory incomes...
...When many Northern delegates seemed inclined to compromise with the Southern wing and accept a watered-down civil-rights plank, Hubert Humphrey, one of the ADA's most active members, stood out for an uncompromising statement...
...That was in 1947...
...Mrs...
...It cannot scare candidates with hundreds of thousands of votes...
...2) improve race relations and eradicate racial and religious discrimination...
...Although Franklin Roosevelt had been two years in his grave, it was a Roosevelt crowd...
...These two facts defined the new problem for liberalism...
...Rauh took part in a hot public debate with Roy Cohn, the sparkplug of the McCarthy Committee...
...While President Eisenhower and Senator McCarthy's colleagues kept still, Joseph Rauh, who has served the ADA two terms as national chairman, led the battle against the man who wanted to prove that everyone who did not agree with him was a Communist...
...3) seek a broader distribution of property and power...
...The discussions were carried on by such men as Senators Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, Republican Governor Theodore McKeldin and trade-unionist James B. Carey...
...Such liberal statesmen as Douglas...
...Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr...
...I recall that Mrs...
...Wayne Morse and Richard Neuberger have had a uniform experience with ADAers in their campaigns...
...Their opponents have shouted that these men are dangerous radicals, and is proof thev ha\c ulvcrtised the fact that they belong to that terrible organization, ADA...
...Because these men and women are alive and alert, they have influence in their communities...
...Slowly they gained...
...In the Automobile Workers union and many another, Communists had worked their way up to the highest ranks...
...The common quality shared by all the group is the eagerness to do their share in seeing that the world is run right...
...It numbers in its ranks a lot of first-class people—many of them young...
...They have conscientious interest in public affairs— enough to lead them to devote time and energy to the routine jobs of political campaigns...
...Among them are trade-union men, college professors...
...The other was the rise of reaction at home, as expressed in the 1946 Congressional elections and the 80th Congress...
...Roosevelt, in her greeting to the convention, spoke of translating the words of the New Deal and the Fair Deal into deeds, banishing poverty and discrimination from our country and helping America to take its proper place in the worldwide struggle for peace and human dignity...
...The original Truman Civil Rights Committee, which contained a number of conspicuous ADA members, produced a straightforward and honest report which proposed ending segregation as a part of American life...
...This organization is a nonpartisan political body, but it is much more than that...
...If the anti-Communist fight had been left to the conservatives and reactionaries, the Stalinists would soon have dominated a large section of the trade-union movement and their political party might, in the course of time, have cut as great a figure here as it did in France and Italy...
...I have just returned from the tenth convention of the organization which we set up in 1947...
...Paul Douglas suggested four things which need doing: (1) guard the social gains we now have from erosion and make further improvements in them...
...In the midst of this purr of contentment, the ADA sends up a cry of warning...
...The leaders of the ADA threw themselves into the fight...
...It was in the Democratic Convention of 1948 that the ADA stood out most conspicuously...
...Eleanor Roosevelt and Senator Herbert Lehman played an active part...
...Their influence is in proportion to their devotion...
...Both the Communists and the reactionaries were on the rampage and seemed to have a mortgage on the future...
...One was the spread of confident and aggressive Communism abroad, along with the persistence of clandestine Communist influence and activity in the United States...
...Here is his picture of the causes behind the project: "Two conspicuous facts dominated the scene in late 1946...
...This led to the final debacle in the attack on the Army...
...Now the very safety measures which were enacted under the New Deal are used to promote the same assurance...
...The New Deal did not give us a complete new world...
...It was obvious, as the discussion went on, that the ADA members have their minds set on the election of 1958 but not just on that election or on any election...
...FDR was gone...
...Among the others were a number of the younger and more forward-looking New Deal activists and trade-union officials...
...And in every case they have been elected by large majorities...
...All the members of Congress who participated in our convention agreed that this is a time of conservative relaxation...
...It seems to me significant that we have here, in the richest country in the world, a large group of practical, active, alert and nonpartisan citizens thinking in this direction...
...The next great fight was against McCarthyism...
...The memory of the New Deal President and the ideas of the New Deal period were greeted with enthusiasm whenever reference was made to them...
...From this point he went on to suggest the "updating of our social, political and economic institutions...
...A statement of principles was adopted and a program for foreign and domestic action drawn up...
...The first big fight, of course, was against the Communists...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Americans for Democratic Action Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary Precisely ten years ago, I sat with a couple of hundred men and women in Washington's old Willard Hotel and helped to start an organization which we christened Americans for Democratic Action...
...The most brilliant chapter in the history of the organization is connected with the fight for civil rights during the Truman regime...
...4) strive to make this a better world for the teeming populations of the earth...
...What was necessary now was to restate the liberal faith in terms which would make absolutely categorical the liberal commitment to individual freedom and liberal determination in combat totalitarianism in all its forms—and at the same time to do this in a wax which would not lose sight of the complex truth that individual freedom can be complete only in a context of social opportunity and justice...
...They knew what it was all about, and they had good democratic and liberal names...
...The worst thing that can be said about the Eisenhower Administration is that something about it seems to encourage this Utopian notion that our civilization is complete...
...More than one likened what is happening now to what took place during the 1920s...
...We met in the same hotel but in a much larger room, for this time there were some 1,200 of us from all over the country...
...He proved before the whole country that the Fort Monmouth "investigations" were a hoax...
...The ADA published McCarthy's financial record...
...More than once, the question was asked: "Why is this particular group so bitterly traduced and denounced by the reactionaries...
...But the main point about them is that they have their faces set toward the future...
...Government officials, experts of all sorts and, too...
...And they listen to other people's arguments...
...It was no time for dreamers or softies...
...The Communists gradually lost their influence, and in 1948 the Wallace Progressive party was disastrously defeated...
...This country is, after all, still America...
...was conspicuously on hand, and to the handsome program he contributed a little masterpiece of historical writing...
...There were thousands of softies following Henry Wallace in the Progressive party...
...They were, in fact, doing their best to get back to the attitudes of the 1920s...
...Their attitudes on any special problem are not predetermined by loyalty to a doctrine...
...This tends to prove two things: The American people are not afraid of liberals, and ADAers are good ones to have on your side...
...The great New Deal period was ended...

Vol. 40 • April 1957 • No. 15


 
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