Franklin D. Roosevelt vs Albert C. Ritchie

Add to the world price of staple commodities "the amount of a reasonable tariff protection," giving agriculture the protection industry enjoys; in exchange farmers agree to plan production to reduce surpluses and end dumping abroad; repeal the Farm Board's stabilization purchases; the plan "does not

Make restoration of farm purchasing power an essential part of a national recovery program, on the theory that industrial employment depends on farmers being able to buy. Method left unspecified in April; developed into the Topeka farm plan in September (see 1932-fdr-topeka-farm-plan).

Strengthen and impartially enforce the antitrust laws against monopoly and unfair trade practices, and revise them to better protect labor and the small producer and distributor.

Sever affiliated securities companies from, and divorce the investment-banking business from, commercial banks; restrict use of Federal Reserve facilities for speculation; more rigid supervision of national banks to keep depositors' money out of speculation; quicker realization of assets of suspende

Continuous publicity of political contributions and expenditures; strengthen the Corrupt Practices Act with severe penalties for misappropriating campaign funds; condemn paid lobbies and excessive money in politics.

Treat the abolition of child labor and sweatshops as settled social policy; keep children in school to sixteen.

Continue the Children's Bureau and federal child-welfare work (no economies there); federal government as a clearing house and incentive for higher state standards; children in school to age sixteen; more vocational education — without taking from the states their control of education.

Government to bring "enlightened information" to producers and consumers so they can avoid "headlong plunges into excessive debt"; explicitly not "complete Government control over the use of credit." Interference to stabilize business "kept at a minimum, limiting itself perhaps to wise dissemination

Preserve a sound currency "at all hazards" and call an international monetary conference to consider the rehabilitation of silver and related questions. Reverse the Republican "inflation" used to fund deficits.

Government-led planning of production and distribution, drawing on the War Industries Board precedent, organized as a "concert of interests" among sections and economic groups rather than class control or a fully regimented economy. Long-term, not only for the emergency. Methods deliberately unspeci

Heads of finance and industry to "work together to achieve the common end," sacrificing private advantage in "reciprocal self-denial"; government to restrain the "lone wolf" who drags an industry toward anarchy, and to intervene if the group abuses its collective power; formal economic regulation "o

Enact the Wagner employment-service bill Hoover vetoed: a nationally coordinated system of employment offices operated by the states with advisory boards of employers and employees; federal leadership to stimulate and coordinate state systems.

Maintain the national credit by a federal budget balanced every year on accurate executive estimates, with revenues raised on the ability-to-pay principle; stop borrowing to cover deficits. Relief and protection of savings to be paid for by "saving in one place what we would spend in others, or by a

Extend federal credit to states for unemployment relief wherever their diminishing resources make it impossible to provide for the needy; the federal government to "assume bold leadership in distress relief" while primary responsibility stays with localities.

Keep relief a state, local and private responsibility; urge programs sponsored by the business community; refuse RFC loans (Maryland took none until mid-1933).

Immediate and drastic reduction of federal expenditure by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus and eliminating extravagance, to save "not less than twenty-five per cent" of the cost of the federal government; states urged to do proportionately.

Ask Congress for "a complete reorganization of the means provided to operate in the field of agricultural finance," coordinating the at least seven federal and quasi-federal agencies dealing with farm mortgages so federal farm-credit policy "may be guided by a single purpose."

Reorganize the USDA to cut unnecessary functions and useless jobs and redirect it toward "a program of national planning" in agriculture, replacing "heterogeneous and disassociated" agency efforts.

Inaugurate "a definite long-range plan for dealing with all phases of public health and welfare" that are a proper federal concern, consolidating the "multiplicity of unrelated agencies," on the New York model.

Government to assist the development of "an economic constitutional order" under which every man has a right to a comfortable living through his own work and a right to the safety of his savings, restricting "the speculator, the manipulator, even the financier" where necessary. The era of expansion

Government, "without becoming a prying bureaucracy," to act as a check or counterbalance to the financial oligarchy so as to secure "the chance to work and the safety of savings"; oppose regimentation whether by private economic government or by the state; "equality of opportunity for all, the right

Government to withdraw from all fields of private enterprise, with the exception of developing public works and natural resources in the common interest.

Unspecified: a "party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number," pursuing "work and security" for the mass of the people and "more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth." Explicitly po

Sickness insurance for industrial workers, named with old-age and unemployment insurance as minimum requirements; no mechanism given.

Count tearing down slum areas and building modern housing as essential public works eligible for federal cooperation with states and cities — while questioning new buildings that leave slums standing.

Endorse Hoover's effective restriction of immigration; curb enforcement abuses against families.

Reorient policy from the producer to the consumer; ensure all willing to work receive at least the necessities of life; raise the average reward for a day's work and reduce the reward to capital, especially speculative capital. No mechanism specified.

The United States to invite an international monetary conference (silver, exchange stability) and an international economic conference to restore trade; take the lead in "asking for a general conference to establish less changeable fiscal relationships."

Substantial reduction in the hours of labor and encouragement of the shorter week, applying the principle first in government service; "definite steps to shorten the working day and the working week."

A federally initiated, federal-state economic soil survey (especially in the East) to map and classify land for crops, marginal use, or tree crops; retire poor land from cultivation (New York model: $10 million voted, 200,000 acres bought and reforested); accompanying efforts to decentralize industr

No interference in the internal affairs of other nations; cooperate with the nations of the Western Hemisphere to maintain "the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine" (i.e., collectively rather than unilaterally).

Use the Presidency's influence, as he used the Governorship, for a national movement to reorganize local government — fewer taxing districts, units and offices — and to separate national, state and local fields of taxation so as to lift some of the tax burden on land.

Base the size of the Army and Navy on a fact survey of the existing establishments so that peacetime defense spending, "fast approaching a billion dollars annually," is reduced.

Make it an objective of the federal government to give the small home-owner and farm-owner at least as much help against mortgage foreclosure as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation gives big banks, railroads and corporations. Specific machinery came later (Springfield, Ill., Oct 21).

Pursue international agreements to reduce armaments.

Old-age insurance enacted by the states rather than a federal system.

Grant independence to the Philippine Islands; ultimate statehood for Puerto Rico; Panama Canal operated by American citizens.

Treat the change in the dollar's commodity value as a problem to be met "straightforwardly": either restore commodity prices to roughly the level of several years earlier, or accept continued defaults and write-downs of debts contracted at the higher level. Method not stated in May; became the "soun

Congress to propose immediately a repeal amendment to be ratified by state conventions; states to regulate the liquor traffic, promote temperance and prevent the saloon's return, with federal help against importation into dry states; pending repeal, modify the Volstead Act to legalize beer and raise

Repeal national Prohibition and return liquor control to the states; Maryland had refused to enact a state enforcement act.

Federal development of Columbia River power as the fourth regional "yardstick" project alongside the St. Lawrence, Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam, with the federal government never parting with sovereignty over its power resources.

Where the public owns a power site, a public authority builds and permanently owns the dams and powerhouses; transmission and distribution are offered first to private capital at a price built from plant amortization plus a reasonable return on actual investment; if private capital refuses those ter

A letter over Roosevelt's signature to Lowe Shearon, circulated among the unemployed, pledged support for self-liquidating public works — water resources, flood control, land reclamation — 'to provide employment for all surplus labor at all times' and asserted 'the inherent right of every citizen to

Do not rely on huge federal, state and local public-works expenditure to solve unemployment; treat it as a temporary expedient and attack causes (farm purchasing power, mortgages, tariff) instead. Later superseded by the Boston program of October 31 embracing public works and federal relief (see 193

Expand the federal program of "necessary and useful construction affected with a public interest" (flood control, waterways, the St. Lawrence deep waterway) as an emergency employment measure; works should be self-sustaining so bond financing is sound; adopt advance planning of public works.

(1) Government support for a specified period, conditioned on scaling down top-heavy fixed charges, planned jointly by the RFC and ICC under a national transportation policy; (2) overhaul federal railroad and utility receivership law; (3) ICC regulation of competing motor carriers; (4) relieve the I

Convert many millions of acres of marginal, abandoned and cut-over land into timberland through reforestation, giving employment to a million men, financed by bonds secured on the future timber crop; a national land policy on the European model. Modeled on the New York program.

Two executive policies requiring no legislation: (1) end the practice by which international bankers sell foreign securities on the implied understanding that the State Department has passed on them; (2) high officials of the next administration "will neither by word nor by deed seek to influence th

Regulate "to the full extent of federal power" holding companies that sell securities in interstate commerce, the rates of utilities operating across state lines, and exchanges in securities and commodities.

Require that all offerings of foreign and domestic stocks and bonds file with the government, and carry in advertisements, true information about bonuses, commissions, principal invested and the sellers' interests.

Replace the Hawley-Smoot schedules with tariffs set "on the basis of a reciprocal exchange of goods": bilateral or group agreements letting other nations pay for American exports with goods that do not seriously unbalance any domestic industry. Not a flat across-the-board cut; negotiated, item by it

Rates equalizing differences in cost of production — not prohibitory rates; restore the Tariff Commission as a fact-finding body reporting to Congress rather than the President; enact the vetoed 1932 bill making Commission-recommended rate bills unamendable as to other items; appoint a public counse

Taxation "on the principle of ability to pay": graduated income, inheritance and profits taxes; oppose taxes on food and clothing that fall on consumers per capita.

Unemployment insurance enacted by the states rather than a federal system.

Public servants at every state capitol and in the national government to "restore the fundamentals of public control": rates based on wisely and necessarily invested cash, adequate service, and the credible threat of public operation if private capital will not serve at a fair return.

Justice and generosity for war veterans "who have suffered disability or disease caused by or resulting from actual service in time of war" and their dependents. The platform and candidate say nothing about immediate cash payment of the adjusted-service bonus.

Do not consider anticipating payment of the adjusted-service bonus while the government runs deficits; only after "a balanced budget, not only on paper, but with a surplus of cash in the treasury."

Oppose cancellation of the debts owed by foreign governments; instead lower tariffs and revive trade so the debtors can pay from trade profits.

Adherence to the World Court with the pending Senate reservations; settlement of international disputes by arbitration; make the Pact of Paris effective by consultation and conference when treaty violations are threatened; sanctity of treaties; no interference in other nations' internal affairs.