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Angela Smith
May 4, 2007
political and social conditions of the country, a friend issued a challenge. If the president
succeeded in the task he had set for himself, the friend reportedly told him, he would go
condemned as the worst. “Roosevelt replied quietly, ‘If I fail, I shall be the last.’”1 That
anecdote, repeated in several biographies of the four-term president, indicates how much
of a risk Roosevelt believed he was taking and how critical it was for the nation. When
we look back on the statement today and reflect on what America has survived since the
1930s, it is perhaps difficult to see that the stakes were that high. For those who have
clear that the Great Depression rocked the foundation of the nation and the states that
were part of it. Americans who grew up in that era spoke about it fifty, sixty, and seventy
years later, remembering when entire neighborhoods gathered around a single radio to
listen to Roosevelt as he promised to provide new jobs in areas such as forestry and flood
prevention, to create partnerships in farming and getting the farm goods to market, to end
prohibition and boost the economy with the resulting taxes, and to grant half a billion
dollars to help the states, counties and cities provide “direct and immediate relief” to
those in need.2 The pledges were dramatic and would require not only the trust of the
1
Robert Eden, ed., The New Deal and Its Legacy Critique and Reappraisal, (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 200.
2
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chats of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 7 May 1933,
available at http://www.mhric.org/fdr/chat2.html (5 May 2007).
1
American people that the federal government had their best interests at heart, but also
their trust that their own states would live up to the obligation the federal government
was handing down. The latter was a legitimate concern, since relationships between
individual states and the federal government were never easy. As the New Deal created a
new balance of power between state government and federal government, the
precariousness of the relationship was a legitimate concern. Perhaps nowhere else was
this more pronounced than it was in the South where a desire for self-sufficiency and
fierce individualism characterized the attitudes of most of the region and its lawmakers.
Until the implementation of the New Deal, there had been few federal programs that
allotted money for the states to distribute to the people. While the federal government
sent money to the states, it was generally for bricks and mortar or for broad programs, not
for direct aid to families or to create jobs for local people. Until Roosevelt began his
“alphabet soup” of agencies for economic and social relief, the people had relied on the
became interested in the interaction between the state of Tennessee and the federal
government during the first New Deal. Highlander’s doors opened in November 1932,
and by January founder Myles Horton was involved with the striking coal miners in
Wilder, Tennessee. The Red Cross was trying to help, but a chummy relationship
between a supervisor’s wife and the head of the Red Cross meant help was diverted from
those for whom it was intended. Churches from Nashville and Chattanooga also tried to
help by bringing food, clothing, and medical supplies. It was not enough, however, and
when Roosevelt announced the initial programs of the New Deal, the strikers, as well as
2
many other jobless workers throughout the state, expected relief to come. For them, it
began to come in 1933. The situation at Wilder reflected the shifting relief efforts. After
the strike began in July 1932, help for the strikers initially came from churches and labor
organizations. After the New Deal agencies began to come into play in 1933, advocates
for the strikers managed to find them aid and work through New Deal initiatives such as
the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). In an
effort to help the struggling miners, Horton wrote letters to Arthur E. Morgan, chairman
of the newly formed TVA, and Morgan agreed to give preference to the blacklisted
Wilder miners in hiring for TVA jobs. Hill McAlister, the governor of Tennessee, also
lobbied for jobs on behalf of the striking miners.3 Some of the strikers ended up at Norris
Dam, the first dam TVA built, and a few others were selected as new residents for the
homesteads were an early New Deal project managed by the Resettlement Administration
and were designed to relocate the poorest rural families to new farms where they could
become subsistence farmers on property they would eventually own.4 The younger men
Hardships and outcomes such as these were repeated throughout the state of
Tennessee, indeed throughout communities throughout the country, as the reeling nation
3
Hill McAlister, “Western Union Telegram to Senator Kenneth McKellar,” Governor
Hill McAlister Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 26 May 1933, GP 42, Box 20
microfilm, Tennessee State Library and Archives.
4
Anthony P. Dunbar, Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets 1929-1959
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1981), 14.
5
Brenda Bell and Fran Ansley, “Strike at Davidson-Wilder, 1932-1933,” in Working
Lives: The Southern Exposure History of Labor in the South (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1980), 97.
3
regained its balance. The hardships the depression created, however, made an impact not
only on individuals, but also on the financial stability of state governments. Shrinking
revenues and bank failures rendered Tennessee nearly insolvent in November of 1930.
While the stock market crash of 1929 had little effect in many areas in an already
struggling Tennessee economy, it did affect banks and employers throughout the state. In
1930, 26,000 businesses failed; in 1931, 28,000 more businesses followed. By 1932,
3,500 banks holding the money of millions of citizens had failed.6 The failure of banks
and businesses impacted the lives of citizen where they lived by creating massive
administration had been slow to act because of a firm belief in the ability of the market to
self-correct. The country had been through depressions before and he believed they could
ride this one out as well. Initially Hoover’s conservative approach was seen positively by
those in power in the South, however, as the crisis worsened with no relief in sight
attitudes began to change. Leaders throughout the South called out for action. In 1931
Hoover did act, although ultimately unsuccessfully, when he created the Reconstruction
insurance companies, railroads, and other large companies. The effort failed because the
companies hoarded the money out of fear. By the election year of 1932, the nation’s
confidence in Hoover had eroded throughout the nation. The RFC’s failure to kick-start
6
Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, The Century (New York: Doubleday, 1998),
149.
7
David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940 (Chicago, IL: Ivan R.
Dee, 2002), 209.
4
the economy pushed Hoover to his boldest move in July 1932. He created the Emergency
Relief and Reconstruction Act, which provided substantial federal money to states and
cities and federal public works projects; these efforts, however, were characterized as too
County Welfare Commission caseload was 1,757 in January 1932, and by September it
had increased to 2,494.9 When Hoover authorized the distribution of relief funds to the
states in July 1932, Tennessee created the State Relief Committee to administer the
money. The committee’s three members, the commissioner of finance and taxation, the
assigned and supervised the workers, not surprisingly since Tennessee politics was
traditionally a “good ole boy” affair. That deep-seated structure was evident in a feud
between Luke Lea of Nashville, publisher of the Tennessean, and Edward “Boss” Crump,
former mayor of Memphis who served in Congress from 1931-1935. It ended in 1931
with a triumphant Crump. Lea, a former senator and partner to the Caldwell banking
empire of Middle Tennessee, had taken a long fall due to fallout from suspicious business
dealings with the state. Lea was the primary advisor to Henry Horton, governor from
1928 until 1932. It was this association that brought about Lea’s downfall when he
secured the Caldwell banks as the bank for state business. The stock market crash wiped
8
Roger Biles, The South and the New Deal (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky
Press, 1994), 33; and John Dean Minton, The New Deal in Tennessee, 1932-1938 (New
York: Garland Publishing Company, 1979), 53-55.
9
John Dean Minton, The New Deal in Tennessee, 1932-1938 (New York: Garland
Publishing Company, 1979), 53.
5
out all other assets from the banks and they survived through the election of 1930 on the
money deposited by the state. After the election, Caldwell and Company collapsed and
set off a panic throughout the South. With this failure, the state of Tennessee lost seven
million dollars it had placed in Caldwell banks.10 One outcome of this disaster was that
Lea was forced out of Tennessee politics; the other was the elevation of Crump’s
machine. Wayne Moore, assistant state archivist in Tennessee, describes the state’s
During the relief efforts begun in 1932, jobs were the primary measurement of power
in the state. It was the currency Crump used to rule Tennessee from Memphis. Crump
believed if he could enlist the help of the Shelby County legislators to get the governor
and at least one senator elected, he could maintain his power in the state. The jobs were
essential because, by 1932 and 1933, Tennessee’s relief crisis completely outstripped the
ability of the local agencies and churches to deal with it. In such a climate, the state’s
politicians were happy to have help from the federal government because state funds,
10
Paul H. Bergeron, Stephen V. Ash, and Jeanette Keith, Tennesseans and their
History (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 255-256.
11
Wayne Moore, Message of the Governors of Tennessee 1933-1945, vol. 11
(Nashville, TN: The Tennessee Historical Commission, 1998), 4.
6
already unreliable, became increasingly shaky as the Great Depression tightened its grip.
The New Deal programs, however, relied on state and local government for their
implementation, and in Tennessee, those governments were plagued not only by the
current economic struggles, but also by a long history of intensely politicized operation.
The state, under an 1870 Constitution, in effect empowered the governor and the General
Assembly to control both state and local political action, but the governor and many
assembly members owed their election to the Crump machine. An infusion of money
from the federal government might help the jobless and hungry, and it would also help
the state’s coffers. This “new deal,” however, required change at the state and local
levels, and change was not easy in a system Crump had operated off the federal grid.
Among the difficulties was the beginning of a shift from Crump’s job-based political
currency to a system where federal bureaucrats wielded more power than in the previous
system.
It fell to five-term state treasurer Hill McAlister to take on the crisis in Tennessee. A
Nashville native and Crump’s candidate, McAlister was elected to the first of two two-
year terms as governor in November 1932 and sworn in January 17, 1933. He inherited
the State Relief Committee/RFC structure from his predecessor Henry Horton. McAlister
commented in February 1933, “I do not see how the destitute people of our State could
have been cared for during this winter without Federal aid.”12 The early relief programs
involved both shelter, food aid to the destitute and hungry (direct relief), and employment
on government managed projects (work relief). Roosevelt was elected at the same time as
McAlister, and by June 1933 Federal Emergency Relief Agency headed by Harry
12
Ibid, 44
7
Hopkins began its work. In a letter to the governor dated June 27, 1933, Hopkins
requested that a Tennessee Emergency Relief Agency be appointed for work relief
disbursements in the state.13 McAlister replied two days later with this statement:
For the past year the administration in Tennessee of relief funds provided
by the Federal Government has been in the hands of the Governor and
local committees in each county. Recently, the President of the United
States has directed that the expenditure of these funds in all of the States
be under the direction of a central committee to be appointed by the
Governor . . .They will hereafter have charge of the administration of
relief funds in all of the counties of the state, and the local committees
heretofore appointed by me can be continued or changed in part or entirety
as this commission may decide.14
The Roosevelt administration clearly was attempting to centralize the aid distribution
within the state, and the governor felt the impact of this change.
After Hopkins handed down the federal directive, there were jobs that would bring
relief, but McAlister no longer controlled them for political capital for himself or for the
Democratic boss, Crump, in West Tennessee. “The advent of the New Deal brought an
infusion of federal funds that dwarfed all previous aid to the region,” Wayne Moore
level of federal spending taxed the ingenuity and traditional limits of state government,
and the McAllister administration adjusted slowly to its new role in the administration of
13
Harry L. Hopkins, “Letter to the governors from the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration,” Governor Hill McAlister Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 27 June
1933, GP 42, Box 19 microfilm, Tennessee State Library and Archives.
14
Hill McAlister, “Central Committee Relief Work Statement,” Governor Hill
McAlister Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 29 June 1933, GP 42, Box 19 microfilm,
Tennessee State Library and Archives.
8
work relief and federal entitlements.”15 Among the people accustomed to seeking jobs
because of political loyalty, however, the governor was still the go-to guy. Research in
company owner from Nashville, wrote: “Pardon me for asking again if it is possible at
this time to give my son some kind of minor position with the state. You will remember
that in the early spring I had this matter up with you, and you very kindly tried to do
something at that time, but were unable to place him then, and thought that something
would come up later that would enable you to do something for us. Governor, I do not
want to annoy you, but I feel that as your life long friend and loyal supporter that is
perfectly natural to ask this of you.”16 Another letter from a Chattanoogan, W.T. Bales,
reported abuses in the Hamilton County office of the R.F.C., and McAlister responded,
I duly received your letter relative to relief work in this state. The method
of handling this money was entirely changed by President Roosevelt about
June 1st, and, at his direction, all local committees appointed by the
Governor were relieved, and the entire work is now being handled through
a Central State Committee, who, in turn, is required to work through social
welfare workers or Red Cross representatives. All of the matters that you
speak of are entirely out of my hands, and have been since the first of
June.17
15
Wayne Moore, Message of the Governors of Tennessee 1933-1945, vol. 11
(Nashville, TN: The Tennessee Historical Commission, 1998), 44.
16
A.C. Andrews, “Letter to the governor,” Governor Hill McAlister Papers 1933-
1937, Nashville, TN, 4 September 1933, GP 42, Box 1 microfilm, Tennessee State
Library and Archives.
17
Hill McAlister, “Personal Letter to W.T. Bales,” Governor Hill McAlister Papers
1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 6 October 1933, GP 42, Box 1 microfilm, Tennessee State
Library and Archives.
9
McAlister’s response reveals that he believed he was ineffective against some of the state
machinery of the New Deal. Another letter written to McAlister in January 1935 by C.C.
County (Dayton, Tennessee), reported, “We are unable to get a job for anyone in the
TERA in Rhea County. We could not find one man or woman in the entire organization
that supported your or Senator Bachman. We do not like to talk politics in the T.E.R.A.
but when the employees say openly that you can not get a job in Rhea County if you
voted for Hill McAlister, and back it up by asking who is Supervisor or Foreman or
anything else that supported the Administration in Rhea County that has a job. We are
rubbed the wrong way.”18 The governor’s answer echoes with the same tone as the letter
to Bales in 1933: “I have your letter of January 29th about T.E.R.A. operations in Rhea
County. The conditions that you describe in your county are by no means exceptional. I
have had the same story from many other sections of the State, but I think I have
explained to you that they are matters over which I have not, and never had any control.
The outcome of it is even yet doubtful, as the matter is entirely in the hands of the
Washington authorities.”19
At the same time McAlister felt powerless over much of what was going on
around him, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins sent a telegram that explained the latest
New Deal plans for reorganizing the United States Employment Service:
18
C. C. Keith, “Personal Letter Governor Hill McAlister,” Governor Hill McAlister
Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 29 January 1935, GP 42, Box 22 microfilm, Tennessee
State Library and Archives.
19
Hill McAlister, “Personal Letter to C. C. Keith,” Governor Hill McAlister Papers
1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 8 February 1935, GP 42, Box 22 microfilm, Tennessee State
Library and Archives.
10
“First, direct operation of Public Employment Offices is best done by the state and local
governments. Second, the function of the federal government is to assist state and local
governments to develop, maintain, and extend adequate employment services with high
standards and common procedures and to weld them together into an effective nation
wide system.”20 In this telegram, Perkins delegates ample power to the state, though she
makes it clear the hand of the federal government is establishing the guidelines.
Governor McAlister’s papers contain many references to the Wilder coal strike of
1932-1933. In one petition presented to the governor, his help is asked in a statement that
begins, “To His Excellency, Hill McAlister, Governor of the State of Tennessee.” The
petition further appealed to him “to appoint ten or twelve local men from the various
counties bordering on the mining section as State Policemen or Patrolmen with authority
to take charge of the situation and wipe out the lawless anarchic condition that cannot be
controlled otherwise.”21 Using a royal title such as “His Excellency” surely must have
seemed strange to the governor as he dealt with such overwhelming issues as getting the
state on solid financial footing, providing relief to struggling families, and implementing
the New Deal in the state. Additionally, issues like the Wilder Strike continued to
confront McAlister. He revealed his insight into the dynamics of the strike in a letter to
U.S. Senator Nathan L. Bachman, who had taken Cordell Hull’s seat when the latter
became Roosevelt’s secretary of state. McAlister told Bachman that there were twice as
20
Francis Perkins, “Western Union Telegram to the Governor,” Governor Hill
McAlister Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 29 April 1933, GP 42, Box 20 microfilm,
Tennessee State Library and Archives.
21
J.T. Moore and other petitioners from Putnam County, Tennessee, “Petition to
Governor Hill McAlister,” Governor Hill McAlister Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN,
January 1933, GP 42, Box 20, Folder 3, Tennessee State Library and Archives.
11
many unemployed miners seeking work as there were jobs available, and he requested
assistance:
In this instance, McAlister’s plea was in part because the ugliness was on his mind
and in part because virtually all his power came from the political practice of providing
relief by finding jobs for those who were calling on him by the hundreds for help. In this
mining crisis, just as in previous crises, he wanted to demonstrate his power and ability to
impact situations in the state using jobs as currency, an ability that was in many ways his
singular power. The ugliness he spoke of clearly showed his awareness of the
about but did not act on. During the strike, there were viable threats from the coal
companies against the life of union leader, Barney Graham. Highlander’s Myles Horton,
who visited the miners in Wilder on several occasions, documented men hired by the
mining company and reported his findings to the local authorities, to Graham himself,
and even to Governor McAlister. In every case, however, Horton found that no action
could be taken until a crime had been committed. Horton describes the horror of the
situation in his autobiography, “I wrote a story for one of the labor presses at the time, in
22
Hill McAlister, “Personal Letter to Senator Nathan Bachman,” Governor Hill
McAlister Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 5 June 1933, GP 42, Box 20 microfilm,
Tennessee State Library and Archives.
12
which I predicted the death of Barney Graham. I named the people who would shoot him
and sent photographs of the thugs. I had their history and all the evidence. … Barney was
shot a week later.”23 McAlister knew about this. After Graham’s death, he revealed his
unease with the situation in a letter to Albert Barnett, a Methodist minister and professor
I duly received your letter of May 2nd written me from Memphis relative
to the killing of Barney Graham of Wilder. This situation is something that
has troubled me for some three months greatly, and even now I don’t
know how to handle it. I would like to set in motion an arbitration of the
difficulties up there, but the operators have let it be know, in every way,
that they will not go into such an agreement. I do not wish to make idle
gestures. You ask me to use the authority of my office to get at the bottom
of this tragedy. Prosecutions for crime, as you of course know under our
constitution, are entrusted to a local grand jury, trial court, and prosecuting
attorney. There is not question as the identity of the killer, but I presume
the usual self-defense pleas will be made. This is entirely a judicial matter
in which the courts alone can take cognizance. Your suggestions that the
‘state act vigorously in seeing that the murderer is brought to justice;
should be made to the prosecuting attorney.24
McAlister’s letter to Barnett once more demonstrated that the governor’s power was very
limited. Not only was he unable to facilitate the process of giving jobs to Tennesseans, he
was also unable even to begin a process that would impact a situation that was robbing
people of their jobs. While McAlister was in that already weakened position, the very
powerful TVA director Arthur Morgan showed him clearly that not all New Deal
Agencies were open to working with the state. Morgan was particularly clear with
McAlister that it was not part of the agency’s mission to remedy the unemployment
23
Myles Horton, with Herbert Kohl and Judith Kohl, The Long Haul, An
Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 40-41.
24
Hill McAlister, “Personal Letter to Albert Barnett,” Governor Hill McAlister
Papers 1933-1937, Nashville, TN, 16 May 1933, GP 42, Box 1 microfilm, Tennessee
State Library and Archives.
13
situation in Tennessee. TVA, Morgan told him, was much more interested in creating
new economic development in the Tennessee Valley. McAlister got the message and
helped TVA officials get the legislation they needed to implement their programs in
Tennessee. His acquiescence exemplified the change that was taking place. “In
McAlister’s compliance with whatever TVA desired,” Wayne Moore notes, “one can
detect the federal government beginning to take over functions historically reserved for
the states.”25
While the New Deal brought in unprecedented money to Tennessee, the governing
structure of the state was ill equipped to deal with the change the increased federal
funding required. The 1870 state constitution was not designed for the size and
complexity of Tennessee’s government in the 1930s. This constitution designated that the
governor and state legislature serve two-year terms, and these short terms helped create
the situation for the cronyism that eventually enveloped the state government.
During the early New Deal, Tennessee got its share of money and even more. The
seniority of the state delegation to Washington ensured this with their key committee
appointments and willing state partners. New Deal programs such as TVA, CCC, and
FERA brought thousands of jobs, and many improvements throughout the state.
Implementation of these programs created a shift in the way Tennessee politics worked.
Before the New Deal, the primary currency for the state’s politicians was the ability to
control state government jobs to create a constituency; after the New Deal was in place,
jobs were still central to state power, but the volume was exponentially larger than it had
25
Wayne Moore, Message of the Governors of Tennessee 1933-1945, vol. 11
(Nashville, TN: The Tennessee Historical Commission, 1998), 49.
14
ever been before, plus the federal government had a hand in the distribution of those jobs,
thus diluting the power of the governor and the state legislators.
15
Bibliography
Bergeron, Paul H., Stephen V. Ash, and Jeanette Keith. Tennesseans and their History.
Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1999.
Biles, Roger. The South and the New Deal. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky
Press, 1994.
Dunbar, Anthony P. Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets 1929-1959.
Charlottsville: University of Virginia Press, 1981.
Eden, Robert, ed. The New Deal and Its Legacy Critique and Reappraisal. New York:
Greenwood Press, 1989.
Governor Hill McAlister Papers 1933-1937, GP42, Tennessee State Library and
Archives, Nashville, TN.
Horton, Myles, with Herbert Kohl and Judith Kohl. The Long Haul, An Autobiography.
New York: Doubleday, 1990.
Jennings, Peter, and Todd Brewster. The Century. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
Kyvig, David E. Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee,
2002.
Minton, John Dean. The New Deal in Tennessee, 1932-1938. New York: Garland
Publishing Company, 1979.
Moore, Wayne. Message of the Governors of Tennessee 1933-1945. Vol. 11. Nashville,
TN: The Tennessee Historical Commission, 1998.
16