Pragmatic Liberal or Naive Dogmatist?:
BRAEMAN, JOHN
Pragmatic Liberal or Naive Dogmatist? Oswald Garrison Villard. By D. Joy Hume. Syracuse. 276 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by John Braeman Department of History, Ohio State University As editor of the...
...World tensions would cease only after immediate and complete disarmament...
...Villard's cure for the evils of big business was government ownership in some fields —notably the railroads, public utilities and natural resources—along with the threat of nationalization in others...
...In his autobiography, he castigated Theodore Roosevelt for intellectual dishonesty and political cowardice, ignoring the importance of TR's New Nationalism in laying the groundwork for Federal regulation of industrial life...
...Wilson's achievements — the Clayton Act, the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission—are briefly praised and dismissed...
...such references might have demolished the author's contention that Villard bridged the liberalism of the turn of the century and the New Deal...
...He battled the Klan, lynching and immigrant restriction...
...The blame for the country's plight, Villard wrote in 1932, lies "less with the economic and political system under which we have lived than with the men we have chosen to work it...
...The bill was a landmark in the development of the doctrine of Federal responsibility for relief of the nation's distressed...
...Nothing, for instance, is said about his attitude toward FDR...
...it led to the corruption of public officials by business...
...Roosevelt, he charged, "has led the country into a most dangerous militarism...
...In Oswald Garrison Villard, Liberal of the 1920s, Miss Humes has accepted without question Villard's own appraisal of his liberalism...
...Villard stood, D. Joy Humes concludes, for "the best in American liberalism...
...Villard's doctrinaire pacificism, which again allied him with the forces of reaction and special privilege, made FDR's "militarism" unforgiveable...
...Woodrow Wilson is flayed for betraying peace as well as his own noble war aims...
...Although as early as January 1918 Villard favored a permanent organization of nations, he subsequently became a leading antagonist of the League of Nations...
...a period generally regarded as the nadir of American liberalism, Oswald Garrison Villard won renown as a "fighting liberal.' He assailed the Espionage and Sedition Acts of World War I, the Palmer raids, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti...
...Miss Humes contends that 20th century American liberalism has had both continuity and consistency, and that the liberalism of 1918-32 was a connecting link between the more articulate liberal programs which preceded and followed it...
...He demanded government action to remedy social and economic ills—but what specific proposals did he support...
...Hence his fight for civil liberties and minority rights—issues that represented no threat to the domnant power structure of American society...
...He denounced militarism and called for international cooperation to prevent war— but how would he implement this program...
...The liberal is a pragmatist, a believer in progress, a man who feels that social institutions must be adapted to changing needs...
...Far from being a pragmatist, Villard was really an absolutist...
...Shrinking from any drastic overhaul of American society, he held fast to the belief that men, not institutions, were responsible for the nation's ills...
...Thus the Nation, in the name of internationalism and liberalism, fought the League side by side with Henry Cabot Lodge...
...For all his good will, he displayed an appalling naivete and lack of realism in dealing with the major issues of his time...
...largescale industry was here to stay, he believed...
...But his enthusiasms, while noble, were marginal to the larger question of the locus of political and economic power...
...Villard was also hostile to the three great reforming Presidents of the 20th century...
...Contradictory material is either ignored or glossed over...
...The farmer's salvation,' the Nation advised, "lies chiefly in cooperation, in the abolition of the tariff, and in the opening up of foreign markets...
...The hallmark of this continuing liberal tradition is a faith in positive government action to remedy the ills of the less fortunate members of society and thus provide the conditions that will allow the common man to realize the dignity to which he is by nature entitled...
...He defended the Negro, the foreign-born, the Jew...
...Even the great depression failed to shake this faith...
...While granting that the promise of the New Deal "has not been wholly lost," he bitterly denounced FDR for "his blunders, his unstable leadership, his lack of sound economic beliefs, his insistence on playing the political game...
...Villard could neutralize the more dangerous questions by demanding pure reform without regard for the political realities...
...This was the heart of the indictment...
...If the rest of the world refused to act, then the United States must disarm alone...
...Time and again, he rejected the possible to pursue the will-o'-thewisp...
...Villard, the author argues, was the personification of this liberal tradition in the 1920s...
...No group, for example, shared less in the prosperity of the 1920s than did the farmers...
...Not surprisingly, he was a champion of the protest vote...
...Villard was personally a man of means with a deep-seated respect for the capitalist system...
...He condemned the evils of rugged individualism and laissez faire and called for government action to solve pressing social needs...
...The League, he complained, was "fatally involved with the wickedness" of the Treaty of Versailles...
...More damning still is Villard's hostility toward the Democratic Roosevelt...
...Reviewed by John Braeman Department of History, Ohio State University As editor of the Nation from 1918-32...
...A similar naivete marked Villard's approach to the probem of big business and the dangerous concentration of economic power...
...This belief was reinforced by his fears of revolution unless the needs of the underprivileged members of society were met...
...To relieve farm distress, rural leaders in Congress sponsored the McNary-Haugen bill to guarantee "fair exchange" or "parity" prices for farm products...
...Nor was regulation the answer...
...Villard's defense of civil liberties and minority rights certainly did him honor...
...No less doctrinaire was his stand on international questions...
...This absolutism allowed him to win his reputation as a "fighting liberal" without seriously altering the status quo...
...The inner tension between his libertarian heritage and his own privileged status, between his fear of social upheaval and his own feelings of guilt, were resolved by ritualistic liberalism...
...He rejected trust-busting as "backward...
...Her uncritical admiration and long block quotes are no substitute for the really critical study of Oswald Garrison Villard which is still needed...
...Heir to a libertarian tradition (both from his grandfather, William Lloyd Garrison, and his father, who had fled Germany after the abortive Revolution of 1848) Villard believed that the man of wealth must display a sense of social responsibility...
...But Villard denounced handouts to farmers as no less wrong than favors to business...
...The McNary-Haugen bill represented for him a brand of special privilege as hateful as the tariff...
Vol. 44 • April 1961 • No. 15
