Norman Thomas

State: New York

Political Party: Socialist

Notable Events:
Early 1900’s: Attended Bucknell University
1905: Graduated Princeton (magna cum laude)
After College: Worked in settlement houses and traveled around the world
1911: Graduated Seminary school and ordained a Presbyterian minister
1911: Pastor at East Harlem Presbyterian Church (part of Social Gospel
Movement)
1917: Conscientious objector to World War 1 🡪drew him to the Socialist Party
(became a Christian Socialist)
1922: A found of the National Civil Liberties Bureau
1928: Presidential Nominee for the Socialist Party (Ran six times)

Tasks: Please SOURCE the primary source materials by explaining the

PURPOSE of each document
Source (PURPOSE)
1.Importance in America of an immediate program of social insurance, this is reference to the SSA
unemployment relief, agricultural aid, and the guarantee of civil liberty, (Social Security Act) and its
including the right of all workers to organize. importance: helps older
Americans, workers who
become disabled, wounded
warriors, and families in
which a spouse or parent
dies
2…need a program of socialism…a redistribution of the national income on a
basis that will give to workers collectively the fruits of their labor. Without this,
there is no cure for unemployment, bitter poverty, recurring crises and ultimate
collapse.
3. Now a kind of patchwork job of limited redistribution of income can be done, this is a reference to the
as everybody knows, by a program of high taxation on the rich and various unequal wealth distribution
social benefits for the poor. before in the great
depression as most of the
wealth went to the wealthy
people
4. Redistribution of the national income should not be a process of intervention
by government to restore to the robbed a small portion of what has bene taken
from them. It should be a process of ending exploitation and establishing a
scheme of things in which production is naturally and logically for use rather
than for the private profit of an owning class. There is no such scheme of things
which does not require social ownership.
5. …an objective of any desirable program must be the socialization and proper
management of key industries. Socialization is not identical with
nationalization. The next step towards socialization will require a process by
which the national government will take over ownership.
6. True socialization can never lose sight of the great purpose of shared
abundance.
7. On March 4, 1922, a Socialist administration ought to have begun with the this is referencing the us
socialization of banking. In rapid succession it would have taken over railroads, department of treasury
coal mines, and the power and oil industries. Then, as I have already indicated, where their purpose was to
it would have turned its attention to other monopolies. manages Federal finances by
collecting taxes and paying
bills and by managing
currency, government
accounts and public debt
8.This brief discussion of the necessity for capturing political power brings us
face to face with the most challenging of all our American failures. That is, our
failure to organize any strong party which consciously represents the great
masses of workers…
9. Now as everybody knows, or ought to know, the essence of socialism lies in
the end of the class division of income; that is, in planned production for the
general use rather than for the private profit of an owning class. Such planned
production requires the social ownership of the great natural resources and the
principal means of production and distribution. To this principle Mr. Roosevelt
has not even professed allegiance; rather he has declared his support of a profit
system that in one of his official addresses he inaccurately defined. Only in the
Tennessee Valley Authority is there an approximation of a socialist approach to
a great economic problem. For the rest Mr. Roosevelt put the banks in order and
turned them back to the bankers; he set an able administrator or coordinator, Mr.
Joseph B. Eastman, over the railroads, not to socialize them but to help to pull
them out of depression primarily for the benefit of private stockholders whose
railway holdings will thereby be made more expensive if and when the
government takes them over.
10. Mr. Roosevelt’s election, is likely to be less, not more, progressive in this
matter. With a third of our people housed in shacks and slums fit only for
destruction, the builders and the workers in materials were kept in
unemployment on a miserable dole or some form of improvised or
comparatively non-essential public work. And they call this socialism!
11. Or, to take an even more striking example: When the President finally got
around to security legislation, long dear to the hearts of Socialists, he took the
name rather than the substance of any Socialist proposal. Intelligent Socialists
vigorously repudiate any responsibility for the President’s so-called Security
Bill. This omnibus measure neglects altogether the vital matter of health
insurance or any equivalent for it. Its immediate allowance to the states for old
age assistance is meager. The reserve to be set up for old age insurance is very
large and the manner of its investment makes for a dangerous degree of political
control over business in the future, without in the least changing the basic
principles of that control from those appropriate to capitalism to those which
would be necessary under a cooperative common wealth.…
12. The most that one can say is that in 1933 President Roosevelt had to act in a
crisis. The principles to guide any effective action were not to be found in his
own platform, and certainly not in the musty Republican document. Like many a
politician before him, he had to turn to ideas advanced by Socialists. The trouble
is not that he took some of them, but that he took so few and carried them out so
unsatisfactorily. The moral of the tale is that if you want a child brought up right
you better leave him with his parents, not turn him over to unsympathetic
strangers.
13. Mr. Roosevelt has not given or sought to give us the equivalent of a fascist this is talking about how FDR
dictatorship. This or that thing which has been done under or during his actually liked the idea of
Administration can justly be called fascist in tendency. The President’s fascism and some of his
economics are in action, if not in intention, more nearly the economics actions highlighted that
of fascism than of socialism. Yet he himself is less clearly a forerunner of
fascism than was such a demagogue as Huey Long.
14. Our criticism is that the New Deal if it is alive in this vaguely progressive
sense has not been successful. Certainly it has solved no basic problem.
15. What it has done is to let in some of the farmers—by no means all—on the
old game of subsidy; begin some excellent work in protecting the soil from
erosion; give some recognition to organized labor and try to write into law its
right to organize and bargain collectively; abate—at least while N.R.A.
lasted—child labor, long hours, and sweatshop wages; lend money on fairly easy
terms to home owners; give some protection to bank depositors and investors
and speculators in the stock market; ease a little the money stringency and the
burden of debt by devaluing the dollar; definitely assume some federal
responsibility for social security and immediate unemployment relief through
public work and outright doles; set up T.V.A. in the electric power field, and pass
drastic legislation against holding companies. Incidentally it gave a genuine New
Deal to the original Americans, the Indians.
16. That it is fundamentally a failure, is not primarily its fault as a New Deal of
the old capitalist deck; it is the fault of the whole game. Neither the Old Deal nor
the New Deal, nor any variant of them, can bring us plenty, peace, and freedom
as long as our magnificent machinery is geared to the production of profit for
private owners—most of them absentee owners. It is impossible to keep that
system which depends upon relative scarcity and get the good society. This is the
theme of our argument.
17. the Administration…perfected a law to bribe farmers, at the cost of a tax on
consumers, not to plant so much wheat…this is a kind of symbol of the worst
form of social insanity which our crazy world has yet seen.
18. Our generation as instead, in this, the richest country in the world, fled from
abundance. We do not know how to manage it, and therefore, by subsidized
destruction, we return to familiar scarcity, in order to give our farmers prosperity.
We have breadlines keen deep in wheat and our principal effort is to reduce the
supply of wheat.
19. Under the AAA farmers who raise certain staple crops were paid to reduce
acreage. They were paid for the acres they did not plant or, in the case of cotton,
which they plowed under.
20. In order to save farming we must set up an immense bureaucratic machine
over the farmers to tell them just how much they may produce. The decision
will not be reached in the light of the needs of a world or even of America, but
solely on an attempt to estimate the effective demand, at a price regarded by
farmers as reasonable…that way lies disaster and nothing but disaster.
21. In the first place, the attempt to enforce restricted production will be more
difficult than the attempt to enforce prohibition…The successful bootlegging of
a crop will be profitable much as it was the bootlegging of liquor.
22. What does socialism mean for the Negro? As a member of that part of our
American population most exploited and against whom the worst discrimination
has been practiced, he has a right to inquire whether Socialism is aware of his
problem and whether is offers him something more than vague personalities and
the hope of a future Utopia…
22. Even the Negro worker’s brothers in wage slavery are only slowly
learning to accept him as a comrade and an equal. Labor union
discrimination against Negroes in law and in fact has by no means been
abolished even in the North.
23. Our social and economic order is crumbling. The world of capitalism
with its class distinctions and class distribution of income is doomed.
This is no time for the Negro to set up an imitative capitalist society of
his own. The white folks have pretty well monopolized the more
advantageous economic positions. The Negro who fights to rise by
capitalist standards must content himself in a large degree with the
leavings. But even for those leavings his struggle against men of his own
race will have to be hard and bitter if he is to emulate the ruthlessness
which is inherent in the profit system.
24. What I am saying is, of course, a plea for Socialism…there is no law
under capitalism which will bring to white workers, or to colored, plenty,
peace, freedom, security against poverty and against war. This require da
new sort of society.
25. When Mr. Roosevelt, who certainly meant well when he talked of the
abundant life, began to think of what to do for farmers, the only idea
which he could apply under capitalism was to pay farmers not to
produce; in other words, to subsidize scarcity and call it prosperity.
26. …I am saying is a plea for Socialism. It is more than just a plea for one
campaign. It is an argument for Socialism as the one hope of the world
for white and colored alike against war and fascism, against tyranny and
exploitation.
27. May I remind you that neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party
has shown an honest interest in ending lynchings.
28. The Socialist Party now welcomes you (Negroes) as comrades. It asks
you to work with us in the union and in state and national politics to end
discrimination and to establish that equality which treats every man as a
man and judge shim on his individual merit and capacity.
Norman Thomas’s stance on the New Deal is very clear. he wanted the New Deal to focus more on
socialism through government control rather than be ran by individual corporations. He felt that
the New Deal focused on promoting capitalism and preying on the poor. He also felt that because
the New Deal didn’t go far enough it paved the way for facism which was ultimately Thomas’s
biggest fear.

● But Thomas felt that, even though the New Deal was coddling capitalism, it would not be able to
revive it. Recovery was slow, unemployment persisted, fascist mobs were in the street, and
charismatic leaders like Huey Long (whom Thomas publicly debated at one point about Socialism)
were gaining a following. There was fear that fascism was coming to America
 ● I understand that FDR was put in a situation where he had to act very quickly and I think that he
hasn’t done that bad of a job, I just want him to focus more on socialism (which he is not) rather
than what I think to be fascism and capitalism

● Thomas thought that the New Deal would transition to something, but he hoped that it would be
Socialism, not Fascism or Communism. For Thomas, a transition to Socialism would be much
more peaceful. Thomas also did not care for FDR’s “big-navy program”, or Assistant Secretary of
War Harry Woodring’s idea of incorporating the Civilian Conservation Corps into the army.

● Thomas came to have problems with elements of the New Deal; Thomas regarded the NRA “as a
potential back door to Fascism”

● Thomas opposed how the AAA curtailed crops and livestock in a time when people were starving,
believing that it was an attempt “to save capitalism at the expense of the poor”

● Thomas felt that FDR laid the groundwork for capitalism more, I prefer him to have focused more
on socialism

QUESTIONS

● How come the New Deal seemed to over promote capitalism when people were clearly suffering?
(FDR)
● How come the New Deal seemed to put black ppl in the rearview; why did they seem to be an after
thought? (FDR)
● What makes you think the New Deal is trending towards communism? (Elizabeth Dilling)