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Herbert Agar and Free America: A Jeffersonian Alternative to the New Deal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

William E. Leverette Jr  and
David E. Shi
William E. Leverette Jr
Affiliation:
William E. Leverette, Jr is Professor of History at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina 29613.
David E. Shi
Affiliation:
David E. Shi is Associate Professor of History at Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina 28036.
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Extract

In analyzing the thought of the 1930s, historians have usually concentrated on the reactions of various liberal and leftist critics of Roosevelt's New Deal reform programs. A few, however, have stressed that in opposition both to the New Deal's regulated welfare capitalism and to the left's many-faceted demands for a more openly radical program, the period also witnessed some significant theorizing that remained conservative and even reactionary. Considerable attention, for instance, has been given to the Nashville Agrarians who in November 1930 published I'll Take My Stand, their ardent manifesto of Southern cultural independence from the capitalistic, urban-industrial north. Yet it is not so well known that the Jeffersonian social theory they espoused was the basis for a broader, national effort to promote the decentralization of American government and industry and to foster greater economic self-sufficiency through a wider distribution of property. For ten years, 1937–1947, the journal Free America served as an organ for this “decentralist” movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , August 1982 , pp. 189 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

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13 Agar to Collins, 10 Dec. 1934, SCP.

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16 Agar to Collins, 15 Feb. 1936, SCP. See also Agar to Tate, 15 Feb. 1936, ATP.

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18 Tate to Davidson, 28 Sept. 1935, DDP. On the Catholic rural life movement see Shapiro, Edward S., “Catholic Agrarian Thought and the New Deal,” Catholic Historical Review, 65 (10 1979), 583–99Google Scholar.

19 Tate to Agar, 9 Dec. 1936, ATP.

20 By correspondence with Chauncey Stillman and Agar in 1978, the authors learned that neither kept any records from their Free America associations. The Collins Papers include an Agar file, and the Tate, Davidson, and Owsley Papers also contain correspondence relating to the magazine and its contributors. (Most of the Agrarians other than Tate, Davidson, and Owsley did not contribute to Free America.)

21 Tate to Collins, 27 Jan. 1937, SCP; Tate to Agar, 7 Jan. 1937, ATP; Tate to Owsley, 20, 26 Nov. 1937, FOP; Collins to Belloc, 11 Feb. 1937, SCP.

22 Borsodi made clear his opposition to government-sponsored back-to-the-land movements, a favorite aim of the New Deal, under several agencies. See Conkin, Paul, Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program (Ithaca, 1959)Google Scholar; Dorn, Jacob H., “Subsistence Homesteading in Dayton, Ohio, 1933–1935,” Ohio History (Spring 1969), pp. 75–93Google Scholar.

23 Free America, 1 (01 1937), 12, 14–16Google Scholar. (Hereafter FA.)

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25 FA, 2 (10 1938), 17Google Scholar. Lewis Corey also commented, from a Marxist perspective, on the illusory nature of paper holdings. He claimed that of the 3.3 million stockholders in the United States in the 1920s, only 0.5% were wage workers. See his The Decline of American Capitalism (New York, 1934), 335Google Scholar.

26 Corey, , “A Marxist Looks at Distributism,” FA, 1 (03 1937), 8–10Google Scholar; Agar, “The Marxian Myth,” ibid., 11–12. For defenses of distributism from charges of fascism see Nickerson, Hoffman, “Distributism or Democracy?” 1 (08 1937), 5–7Google Scholar and Borsodi's rebuttal, ibid., 7–9. On Corey, see Pells, , Radical Visions, pp. 91–95Google Scholar; Agar, , The Land of the Free (Boston, 1935), p. 264Google Scholar.

27 Day, Dorothy, “Catholic Agrarian Notes,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 13Google Scholar; Stringfellow Barr, “Freedom Through Discipline,” ibid., 6 (Sept. 1942), 7–10; Arthur Morgan, “Design for a Small Community,” ibid. (Feb. 1942), 3–6.

28 ibid., 1 (June 1937), 3.

29 Agar, , A Time for Greatness (New York, 1942), pp. 169, 170Google Scholar.

30 On the Bankhead bill see “Editorial,” FA, 1 (04 1937), 4Google Scholar. Representative articles on the New Deal include: Davidson, , “An Agrarian Looks at the New Deal,” 2 (12 1938), 3–5Google Scholar; Borsodi, , “Planning: For What?” 3 (12 1939), 16–18Google Scholar, and “The Changing Order,” 4 (Jan. 1940), 18. On attitudes about the implications of electrical power for rural life see Brown, D. Clayton, Electricity for Rural America: The Fight for the REA (Westport, Conn., 1980)Google Scholar. Borsodi was a great champion of domesticated, small scale technology and electricity. See Leverette and Shi, “Agrarianism for Commuters.” The Agrarians themselves had mixed reactions toward the TVA, as Shapiro, Edward indicates in “The Southern Agrarians and the Tennessee Valley Authority,” American Quarterly, 22 (Winter 1970), 791–806CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Borsodi, , “Homestead Notes,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 12Google Scholar.

32 “Editorials,” ibid. (Feb. 1937), 5.

33 Chamberlain, John P., “Principles of Decentralization,” FA, 3 (12 1939), 6Google Scholar.

34 Agar, , Land of the Free (Boston, 1935), p. 262Google Scholar; “Editorials,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 3–4Google Scholar. On the uses of technology see Van Dresser, Peter, Free America's leading writer on the subject: “Growing Up to Technics,” FA, 1 (02 1937), 9–12Google Scholar; “The Technics of Decentralization,” 2 (June 1938), 10–12; “An Agrarian Looks at Planning,” 3 (April 1939), 13–15; “Humanizing the Machine,” 3 (June 1939), 13–15.

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37 See Fowler, Bertram, “Food for Victory,” FA, 6 (03 1942), 3–6Google Scholar; Dorothy Thompson, “The Volunteer Land Corps,” 6 (June 1942), 3–7; Lewis Mumford, “Decentralization: The Outlook for 1941,” 5 (Jan. 1941), 15; Wright Patman, “Post-War Domestic Economy and Decentralization,” 7 (Winter 1943), 16–17.

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40 “Editorial,” FA, 9 (Winter 1945), 2Google Scholar.

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