In August 1934, a number of conservative Democrats joined with important businessmen to form the American Liberty League for the purpose of opposing President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. The Liberty League argued that the New Deal was an unconstitutional effort to enlarge government and regulate business and that it would impede recovery from the Great Depression and harm the nation’s economy and political system. A significant voice of conservatism in the 1930s, this well-financed organization used speeches and publications to promote its message, but it never gained many followers and disbanded in 1940.
The league’s leadership came largely from wealthy businessmen and members of the Democratic Party who were unhappy with Roosevelt and the New Deal. The Du Pont family provided about one-third of the league’s funding, but such major businessmen as Alfred Sloan of General Motors, Edward F. Hutton of General Foods, Sewell L. Avery of Montgomery Ward, and Nathan Miller of U. S. Steel contributed as well. Important conservative Democrats, including 1928 Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith, former Democratic Party chairman John J. Raskob, and 1924 Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis, also joined the League and played important roles.
Though claiming to be nonpartisan and nonpolitical, the league spoke out against Roosevelt, New Deal programs and many of the people Roosevelt brought to government. Jouett Shouse, a former chairman of the Democratic Party
Executive Committee who headed the Liberty League, explained that the league’s goal was “to defend and uphold the Constitution, . . . [to] teach the duty of government to encourage and protect individual and group initiative and enterprise, to foster the right to work, earn, save, and acquire property and to preserve the ownership and lawful use of property when acquired.” In league speeches and publications Roosevelt was characterized as a tyrant and the New Deal was characterized as fascistic, socialistic, or communistic. (Roosevelt said that the league seemed to him like a group formed to support just two or three of the Ten Commandments.)
In 1936, the Liberty League focused on unseating Roosevelt in that year’s presidential election. At a league dinner in Washington, D. C., on January 25, 1936, Al Smith gave the keynote address, in which he accused the New Deal of causing class warfare and betraying both the Democratic platform of 1932 and the United States Constitution. He said that “there can be only one capital, Washington or Moscow.” The Roosevelt administration turned this speech on the league, arguing that it was merely representing big business and their selfish interests.
In the election of 1936, the league supported Republican Party presidential candidate Alered M. Landon, who saw its endorsement as a liability. The league’s membership (at its peak, reportedly 125,000) fell off following the landslide reelection of Roosevelt in 1936, and the league stopped its public activities and disbanded within a few years.
Further reading: George Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League, 1934-1940 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
—Edwin C. Cogswell
World History
