Jonathan Dresner kindly puts us in his “History Carnival.” Then, for “the other side,” he links to this post about the “fascist NRA” and how the Roosevelt “Administration targeted Jewish merchants/middlemen for the dual sins of being good capitalists and observant Jews”.
We had the privilege of the excellent Andrew Cohen post on this a while back.
In Shlaes’ portrayal, the Schechter brothers were small immigrant businessmen crushed by a tyrannical federal government exceeding its traditional jurisdiction.
The real story is much more interesting. A.L.A. Schechter & Co. was actually the largest firm in Brooklyn’s $60 million kosher poultry market, grossing over $1 million per year. The corporation had grown by undercutting their five hundred or so rival slaughterhouses, represented by three groups: the Greater New York Live Poultry Chamber of Commerce, the Official Orthodox Slaughterers of America, and Teamsters’ Union Local #167.
The tough guys who ran these organizations tried to bully the Schechters into submission, on one occasion putting emery powder in the crankcase of their trucks. In response, the US government pursued the leading figures in the industry, especially Arthur “Tootsie” Herbert, the business agent of the poultry drivers. Between 1928 and 1932, Herbert and his colleagues endured federal indictments, injunctions, and contempt citations, interventions all upheld in the Supreme Court case Local #167 v. United States (1934).
With the passage of the NIRA in 1933, however, the worm turned. Even as the leaders of the poultry associations were fighting to stay out of prison, they were given the authority to construct a legally enforceable code for their industry. Soon the Schechters found themselves prosecuted for sixty violations of the code. The criminals had become lawmen, and the victims, delinquents.
Interestingly, Andrew reminds us by email that the Schechters voted for Roosevelt in 1936.
Joe [Schechter] told reporters that he was enthusiastic for the re-election of Roosevelt and that all eligible members of his family, including the four brothers involved in the NRA action, had cast their ballots in his favor. “I wonder if it would be possible,” he asked reporters, “to congratulate President Roosevelt through the newspapers and tell him that sixteen votes in our family were cast in his favor.”
Oh, and if you’ve really infinite patience for listening to me talk about the Great Depression and New Deal, you can hear me on EconTalk, with the very polite and kind Russ Roberts, who seems nevertheless a deal closer to Shlaes than to me on this subject. FWIW I don’t think I come off so well as I ought.
The Edge of the American West 
28 comments
December 2, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Jonathan Dresner
Interesting stuff. Context is always worthwhile. That said, the description of NIRA sounds an awful lot like the corporatist use of industrial boards by the Italian fascist state, making Horwitz’s use of the term “fascist” more descriptive than simply derogatory. It’s often overused, certainly, but in this case there’s a historical conjunction that might be worth exploring.
Do the use of quotations on “his ‘History Carnival'” indicate that you are actually unaware of the History Carnival tradition (and its offshoots), or just being snide because I thought readers might like more than one point of entry into the discussion?
December 2, 2008 at 7:03 pm
bitchphd
I don’t think I come off so well as I ought.
Given that you always come off fine on these things, one is beginning to suspect that you have a very high opinion of yourself, indeed.
December 2, 2008 at 7:05 pm
bitchphd
I don’t think Eric is generally snide, by the way. I was assuming the quotation marks were used to indicate a title.
December 2, 2008 at 10:10 pm
eric
B is correct. The only quotation marks in the post are nonjudgmental quotation marks, used to indicate quotations.
December 2, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Jonathan Dresner
OK, thanks.
December 3, 2008 at 8:53 am
AWC
That use of the term Fascism puts you in Jonah Goldberg territory. Sure, both Italy and the US tried corporatist schemes. Lots of countries did in the 1930s. But only one of the two nations embraced the leader concept, imperial conquest, alliance with Nazism, complicity in the Holocaust, etc.
I find it particularly amusing that Shlaes and Horwitz paint the Schechters as the defenders of Jewish tradition against the Roosevelt administration. Long before NIRA, the brothers had fought the organizations charged by the rabbis with enforcing kashrut in New York City. And it was Hoover’s justice department that continually harassed the organized shochtim in the name of anti-monopoly.
Anyway, my beef is less their politics than their misrepresentation of the history. The Schechter story is far more interesting than their dogma can contain.
December 3, 2008 at 12:32 pm
John V
AWC,
Your critique of Horwitz’s use of the word “fascist” is historically incorrect.
You say:
“That use of the term Fascism puts you in Jonah Goldberg territory. Sure, both Italy and the US tried corporatist schemes. Lots of countries did in the 1930s. But only one of the two nations embraced the leader concept, imperial conquest, alliance with Nazism, complicity in the Holocaust, etc.”
Well, that’s all fine and good but the actions in the last sentence of that quote actually have little to nothing to do with true fascism in the economic sense that Horwitz accurately employs.
You are using the popularized and somewhat vague and incomplete idea of “fascism” that has evolved 60-70 years after the fact…replete with images of militarism, Holocaust, ritualized hand waves, Dear Leader and all that jazz. This all misses the point about what everyday, mundane fascist ECONOMIC POLICY looked like in real time in Germany and Italy and what it entailed. Mussolini himself defined fascism (his own invented term) as the marriage/joining of government and corporate interests (insofar as corp. interests forwarded a state theme) whereby they work together for the “good of society”…which is, in turn, subservient to the state. This is what REAL fascism is all about. And the idea of government and business working together in a blatantly dirigiste sense to forward an agenda adopted by the state (at the expense of other agendas preferred spontaneously in a liberalized economy) is plainly and simply “Fascist” in the historically true sense of the term. And yes, this can exist without all the militaristic and duce/fuhrer imagery.
In summary, it wrong to criticize Horwitz’s historically correct use of the termin the economic realm simply because it doesn’t fit with the popularized and incomplete idea of the same term. Jonathan Dresner also makes this point in his first comment.
Horwitz reply covers this all very well.
December 3, 2008 at 1:07 pm
eric
You guys, and Horwitz, certainly read a lot into a pair of quotation marks. I should have thought that especially among historians, quotation marks were clearly understood to indicate quotations.
December 3, 2008 at 1:49 pm
John V
BTW, Mr. Rauchway,
I listened to the podcast with Roberts yesterday and thought it was very good. You seemed very fair and measured in responses.
That said, I’m a bit surprised that you would take issue with Horwitz’s use of the term “Fascist”. As a historian, you I would think you’d be fully aware of the full context and meaning of that term in its original sense. Moreover, the passage you cite says nothing against Horwitz’s use of the term….even though that appeared to be your intent.
December 3, 2008 at 2:08 pm
AWC
John V–
You’re missing my point. You can call corporatism Fascist. You can even argue that Mussolini viewed corporatism as the essence of Fascism. But that doesn’t implicate all corporatists in the US and elsewhere with the subsequent crimes of the Fascists.
As for Horwitz’s reply, I’ll simply say this: nowhere in my piece do I either defend NIRA, or attack the Schechters, as he asserts. My point is that the Schechter story does not fit either a liberal or conservative fantasy. Attempts to shoehorn the story inevitably fall foul of the facts.
December 3, 2008 at 2:39 pm
eric
I’m a bit surprised that you would take issue with Horwitz’s use of the term “Fascist”
John V: where did I take issue with Horwitz’s use of the term “Fascist”?
December 3, 2008 at 2:45 pm
John V
AWC,
When you make a point, I assume it is somehow related to the point of the person you are citing…in this case: Horwitz.
——-
“that doesn’t implicate all corporatists in the US and elsewhere with the subsequent crimes of the Fascists.”
——-
Is this your point? If it is, I don’t really see why you make it. This point would seem relevant if Horwtiz had something to that effect…which he didn’t. He simply said that some NRA policies…like the one in question…were “fascist” in nature. It’s true. They were. If they quote above was indeed your point, I don’t really see the need for it. It’s at the same very obvious and very irrelevant….that is, like I said, UNLESS Horwitz’s point was to say otherwise…which it wasn’t.
Horwitz is talking about economic fascism. Period. Whether that government perpetrating that economic fascism is also playing to the popular militaristic dictator stereo-type associated with fascism that has endured is another matter.
December 3, 2008 at 2:51 pm
John V
eric,
I got that impression when you quoted it. If you didn’t, I apologize. Of course, a backdrop to all this is an overly common and misguided perception of fascism truly is in an economic sense.
As a historian, you’ve surly seen a lot of misuse/selective use of the term.
In my experience, people are very quick to associate the militaristic/nationalist/dictatorial imagery of fascist/Nazi dictators like Benito and Hilter respectively which fascism…but they generally avoid or are not aware of the reality of economic policy fostered by these regimes.
December 3, 2008 at 3:13 pm
AWC
John V sez:
“Horwitz is talking about economic fascism. Period. Whether that government perpetrating that economic fascism is also playing to the popular militaristic dictator stereo-type associated with fascism that has endured is another matter.”
It’s not “another matter.” It’s the crux of why Horwitz uses the term. He wants to evoke stormtroopers. Accuracy has nothing to do with it.
December 3, 2008 at 3:15 pm
John V
AWC,
A final thought on all this:
Fascism is what it is. It has a consistent policy record on all fronts. Some are well known. Some are not. In the economic realm, it is very dirigiste. Most people actually don’t know that.
We, as people living generations later, do not have the right to pick and choose what fascism means. It is very common to see people, on the first whiff of subservience to nationalism, militarism or socially engineered or coerced social conservatism along with a strict adherence to a preconceived national identity, to identify fascism on social grounds. What is far less common is for people to see the economic policies that went hand in hand with it and correctly identify that as fascism.
For me, it is incorrect to only cite the former and not latter as fascism. They are all components of fascism. If a government has fascist economic policies, the term fascist is not disqualified from use simply because that government lacks the other components on the social side. Of course, using the word “fascist” in this sense, does not mean that the government, like FDR’s in this case is, in its essence, fascist. But the policy can still be fascist in its nature.
December 3, 2008 at 3:19 pm
John V
AWC,
“It’s not “another matter.” It’s the crux of why Horwitz uses the term. He wants to evoke stormtroopers. Accuracy has nothing to do with it.”
sez you.
And, the pin drops. YOU attribute this motive to Horwitz. YOU and you alone.
Again, this is not about your own personal imagery of fascism and stormtroopers. This is about Horwitz’s use of the term in the economic sense. IOW, I didn’t miss the point at all. My first response was right on the mark.
December 3, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Anderson
The Nazis built roads; the New Deal built roads; hence, the New Deal was fascist?
If all that Mussolini had been about was corporatism, then “fascist” would not be the term of opprobrium that it is today.
Silly comparisons to Fascists and Nazis lead the lay reader to suspect that the comparers don’t have any valid criticisms of the New Deal. When was the New Deal Exception to Godwin’s Law enacted?
December 3, 2008 at 3:46 pm
AWC
John V–
Compare my original post to Horwitz summary of the same. Then tell me whether you still believe I should give him the benefit of the doubt about his motives.
December 3, 2008 at 4:01 pm
John V
Anderson,
Regardless of what fascism is remembered for, fascism, properly defined, remains a set of policies that we can verify. And no, simply building roads is not fascist.
However, the idea of undermining free enterprise via the promotion cartels to curb competitive forces with the explicit aim of micromanaging and directing the economy to a state-defined end is 100% economic fascism.
No valid criticisms of the New Deal? Did you read any of the cited material?? let alone my last paragraph….
December 3, 2008 at 4:01 pm
BP in MN
John V,
AWC may be ascribing motives to Horwitz that do not exist; I haven’t followed his writing and cannot say. Still, I find the use of the term fascist problematic unless it’s assumed that the audience is aware of the strict economic sense of the term, because of the connotations AWC cites which Anderson points out are likely to mislead the lay reader.
The word fascist has become so bound with Naziism that I think it needs to be explicitly disentangled if the author wishes not to be misunderstood. Had Horwitz written “the economically fascist NRA” or something similar, it would have helped readers understand it as a descriptive term. Alternately, had he spent a sentence earlier in the piece explaining that the NRA was part of a worldwide trend of corporatist experiments, it similarly would have helped the reader understand the context for his use of the term fascist. But if you argue that people should identify economic fascism, then you should advocate for use of the phrase that highlights how certain policies fit into that rubric. Otherwise you invite the reader to assume that that you mean the more commonly understood social aspect, and should not be surprised if they react accordingly.
December 3, 2008 at 4:05 pm
John V
AWC,
you’re going to have to spell it out or point it out because I don’t see what you’re getting at.
December 3, 2008 at 4:06 pm
John V
BP,
Still, I find the use of the term fascist problematic unless it’s assumed that the audience is aware of the strict economic sense of the term,
I thought that was a safe assumption given the audience.
December 3, 2008 at 4:09 pm
John V
BP,
Otherwise you invite the reader to assume that that you mean the more commonly understood social aspect, and should not be surprised if they react accordingly.
I’m never surprised. I expect it…unless the person is a historian or clearly a student of history. However, once the matter is cleared up and explained, as it has been, the persistent against this clarity is a little surprising.
December 3, 2008 at 4:10 pm
ari
No valid criticisms of the New Deal? Did you read any of the cited material??
You’re going to have to spell it out or point it out because I don’t see what you’re getting at.
December 3, 2008 at 4:36 pm
John V
ari:
from the link provided:
The National Recovery Administration was part of the early New Deal and was Roosevelt’s attempt to cartelize American industry to prevent it from suffering the consequences of too much competition. The thinking was that too much competition was keeping prices too low, which was undermining incomes and purchasing power, and dragging the economy down. Matched with Hoover’s and FDR’s attempts to keep wages up, the NRA’s similar attempt with prices made for a highly misguided combination that contributed to the length and depth of the Great Depresssion. As part of its legislation, the NRA had all kinds of detailed codes for individual industries, describing to the letter how firms must do their business. The Schechters fell under the “Code of Fair Competition for the Live Poultry Industry of the Metropolitan Area in and About the City of New York” (and you thought Atlas Shrugged was fiction….). Among the things the code prohibited was “straight killing” which meant that customers could buy a whole or half coop of chickens, but did not have the right to make any selection of particular birds (such individual selection was “straight killing”).
Start there.
December 3, 2008 at 4:41 pm
ari
John, if you read Eric’s posts — or, better still, his book — you’ll note the he agrees that the NRA was bad business. So, too, do most historians and economists, regardless of their politics. That said, the NRA was a just tiny fraction of the broader New Deal, and thus a criticism of that agency hardly constitutes a meaningful critique of the New Deal writ large.
December 3, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Matt W
Two bits from Steven Horwitz’s post:
“Why didn’t this sour more Jews on FDR? And why, when you take this case and FDR’s too little, too late approach to the Holocaust, is FDR still viewed so positively by so many Jews? I can offer a few answers to that question, many of them obvious I think, but it remains interesting that his sins were, and are, overlooked by many Jews.”
“Justice McReynolds, one of the great defenders of liberty of contract and the Constitution in the early 20th century….”
Link, admittedly, added.
December 3, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Anderson
“However, the idea of undermining free enterprise”
Wow.
People at the time thought that the Depression had already done a pretty good job of that.
I believe that FDR thought that some price controls etc. were necessary to SAVE free enterprise. Incorrectly, perhaps. As the saying goes about the French Revolution, it may be too soon to tell.