[at-l] Wilderness "Mechanism"

[mfuller@somtel.com (Malcolm Fuller)]

Bob Cummings wrote:

> The logic that created the drive along the ridge of the
> Shenendoahs didn't stop there. The same logic had laid plans
> for a similar drive through the Mahoosucs and into Maine as
> far north at least as Bigelow. Only World War Two kept roads
> away from two thirds of the trail in Maine.

I suspect that the war itself had little to do with it. By
the late thirties local governments were beginning to get 
fed up with needless infrastructure.

We set our WABAC machine to 1938, which of course performs 
flawlessly, and faster than you can say "We Piddle Around"
we arrive at the Oval Office, where FDR is wrangling with
the resurgence of an economic depression that has now become
*even worse* than when he'd taken office five years earlier;
this in spite of his best efforts at New Deal make-work 
spending:

  "Roosevelt was now in the center of a tug-of-war with the 
spenders like Harry Hopkins, Aubrey Williams, Leon Henderson
and Rex Tugwell on one side and Henry Morgenthau, the
frightened spokesman for the conservatives on the other.
Farley reports that he had a talk on he subject with Roosevelt
on March 28, 1938. It is of the first importance as revealing
the precise problem that Roosevelt faced and how he solved it.

  "He told Farley he would have 'to go in for pump-priming
or relief.' Farley agreed. But then Roosevelt confessed to a
difficulty little understood at the time, or since. What would
he spend it on? That was the problem. There is only a limited
number of things on which the federal government can spend.
This grows out of the character of the federal system. The
federal government can build schools, hospitals, roads,
institutions of all sorts. But they are built in cities,
counties, states and the activities which go on in these
buildings are within the jurisdiction of the states. The states
have to pay the teachers or nurses and staffs, have to support 
and maintain the roads and so on. The federal government can
spend money on agricultural experimentation, on scientific
research, on national parks, on power dams, etc. But in the
end the outlays on these things are limited. The one big
thing the federal government can spend money on is the army
and navy. Roosevelt explained to Farley that he could not
spend on local projects because the states and cities did
not want any more buildings and institutions which they would
have to support. They were having trouble enough paying the
bills of those already built. Roosevelt revealed to Farley
that many WPA projects approved by he government were 
abandoned because the states and cities could not raise the
money to support them. He had to spend -- but what could he
spend on? ...

  "... Bridges, roads, and a few more dams? That would
consume a few billions at most. On what, then could it be?
He already had a definite idea in his mind on what it
would be. He had denounced Hoover, among other things, for
spending so much on the military establishment. He had
warned that if the Republicans were not stopped, they would
soon expose the people to the burden of 'a billion dollars
a year on the military and naval establishment.' Now, looking
up at the world from the hole in which he found himself, he
had to swallow all that too. Half thinking aloud in a chat
with Farley he said 'The danger of war with Japan will
naturally cause an increase in our armaments program, which
cannot be avoided.' He had only recently warned Americans
against those politicians who would tell them that a military
industry would produce work for the people and profits for
business. But it would be hard, he had said at Chautauqua
only two years before 'for Americans to look beyond, to 
realize the inevitable penalties, the inevitable day of
reckoning that comes from a false prosperity.' Yet now he
was playing with that very war motif."

-- John T. Flynn
   from "The Roosevelt Myth" (1948)

Damn! I typed that whole thing in from my second printing,
signed by Mr. Flynn himself copy of the book, when the whole
enchilada is available on-line:

http://www.hazlitt.org/e-texts/fdrmyth/hbzfrm.htm

Ignorantly, hatefully (beyond common sense) & fearfully yours,
-MF