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1937: 0 ,-.'") You Are There~ ....1 CO Depression were the old fogies sitting on the Court. He would fix them, he thought, and the American people who re~elected him with such acclaim would approve his actions. The plan was simple but flawed. He would persuade the Democratic Congress to pass legislation that would increase the number of Supreme Court Justices from nine to fjfteen (maximum) if they refused to retire at 70, This would give the President an opportunity to appoint new judges who were sympathetic to his programs. If you are reading this', you may remember what was going ~n in 1937, or you may think fifty years a~o is ancient history. In either case, youjmight be surprised by the kinds of ideas and events which dominated 1937. the year in which the Northern Colotado Water Conservancy District came i~to existence. Perhaps you will also appreciate the dedication of Coloradans whq persisted in getting financial support for the C~ BT at a time when the federal gove$ment was backing away from its spending policies of the previous four years. ; It was still the era of the New DeaL President Franklin D. Roosev~lt had been re-elected in the fall of 1936:with the greatest landslide electoral vdte since James Monroe defeated John:Quincy Adam, in 1820. FDR beat the J;\epublican GovemorfromKansas, AlfredM. Landon, by a margin of 523 to 8 and qarried every state but Maine and Vermond, while Democrats picked up majoritifs in the Hou,e (331-89) and Senate (76-16). Rarely has a President of;the United States had such an apparent mapdate from the people to lead. At the same time, the New Deal was getting more cridcism than this election victory would inqicate. During the first year of his sec9nd term (1937), people were ,oon grumbling about the Roosevelt Depression, and jFDR was frequently written as IIPranklin pepression Roosevelt. " ' What happened? In his acceptance speech a.t the Democratic Convention, FDR SHake of the nation!s "rendezvous with destiq,y," promising an unending war against the "economic royalists" (conservatLves) who opposed his programs. On Inauguration Day, January 20, 1937, he tried t~reignite the crusading spirit that had matked the 1932-1936 period. , He spoke of Iltens of milHoqs of citizens. . . . who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what c~e very lowest standards of today call th~ necessities of life. . . . I see," hejadded, "one~third of a nation ill~housedli ill~clad, ill~nourished.... Thetestofourp~gress is not whether we add more to die abundance of those who have muth, it is whether we provide enough for tho$e who have too little." By 1937, however, not everyone was willing to follow his: lead, least of all his sternest critic: the Supreme Court of the United States. ' The Court had already invalidated much of the New Deal's social and economic legislation. Minimum w~ge laws, collective bargaining rights, and parity payments to farmers, to name ~ut a few, were seen by the conservatlve!Court as revolutionary and unconstitutional. Roosevelt came to believe that theionly real obstacles to full recovery from the Unfortunate1yfor Roosevelt, the plan was rejected by an angry Congress which felt he was perverting the Constitution and using his popularity to upset the balance of power between the three branches of government. Even so, the Court got the message and began disciplining itself. While the pros and cons were still being argued in Congress, Justice Van Devanter, an outspoken foe of the New Deal, retired. He was replaced by Hugo Black, a Roosevelt aHy, and in very short order the Court approved a minimum wage law for women, social security legislation, and the right to collective bargaining for unions. Roosevelt lost the battle but won the war. During the remainder of his term as President, he appointed six additional Justices to the Court. Still, the Second New Deal encountered rough' going as the economy sputtered. During the summer of 1937, Congress approved legislation authorizing low~interest loans to farm tenants and to laborers who wanted to buy farms. It also made money available to public agencies which desired to build low~cost public housing and closed some loopholes in the income tax laws. But the national debt had soared to $36.000,000 ($263 per capita); fear of inflation was in the air, and by the end of Augu,t, FDR himself wa, talking about cutting back expenditures and balancing the budget. When capital investment slowed down at the same time that federal monies stopped entering the economy, the country was hit by a recession. In late August, the Stock Market started a plunge that did not reverse itself until March of 1938. To appreciate the significance of these events, one must be reminded that President Roosevelt approved the appropriation bill which included $900,000 to start construction of the C~ BT on August 9, 1937, a week before the Stock Market began its decline. It was also during this period that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau persuaded Roosevelt to spend less and balance the budget. UDestiny," in this instance, appeared to favor the folks from northeastern Colorado. Most Coloradans were pretty ignorant of the momentous events taking place in Washington, and struggled to make ends meet, grateful that the worst of the Depression had passed. In a typical middle class family of 1.6 children, the gross annual income was $1,348. Four hundred and fifty dollars a year was spent on housing, heat, utilities and furnishingsl and about the same amount on food and booze. Halfof the people owned a car, on which they spent $75 a year, while the rest of the money went for clothing, taxes, recreation, and medical expenses. An "average" family saved about $80 a year. Instead of television, household entertainment centered around a radio which dominated the liVing room and had a pervading and somewhat godlike presence in our homes. Beginning in the morning, there were soap operas (Our Gal Sunday, the Romance of Helen Trent, Life Can Be Beautiful), but it was in the evening that the family convened to listen to the news, to the mellow and reassuring fireside chats of President Roosevelt, and to the comedy of Amos n' Andy, Charlie McCarthy, George Bums and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, and many others. For the children, hungry moments before supper also meant being entertained by the Lone Ranger, Jack Armstrong, Tom Mix, and The Shadow. After supper I the entire family listened to the Hit Parade, The Answer Man, The Old Gold Puzzle Contest, and the latest news on the shocking romance between the American Wallace Warwick Simpson and the Duke of Windsor. Other events with an international flavor had to be taken more seriously in 1937. Over the air waves came news of the Hindenburg disaster on May 6. Nursing toward its mooring mast at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, New Jersey, this giant airship, powered by four 1050 horsepower Daimler Benz Diesel engines, and with German swastikas on both vertical stabilizers, was no more than thirty 5