User:Orlady/National Economy League

The National Economy League was a U.S. organization formed during the Great Depression to advocate reducing the cost of government by opposing bonuses for military veterans. The organization was short-lived, existing for just two years, but it received substantial national attention during its brief existence.

The National Economy League was organized in the summer of 1932 by a group that included Archibald Roosevelt and Grenville Clark. Prominent people in its leadership included its first chairman and chief spokesman, Admiral Richard Byrd, honorary chairman Nicholas Murray Butler, and an advisory board whose initial six members were former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, 1928 Democratic Presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith, former Secretaries of State Elihu Root and Newton D. Baker, General of the Armies John J. Pershing, and Admiral William Sowden Sims. Byrd Quits as Head of Economy Group,” N.Y. Times, April 26, 1933, at 5.

At its peak, it claimed membership of 60,000, drawn from 45 states.

From http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopicp97.pdf (note 9): The National Economy League was one of the short-lived phenomena of the 1930’s. Organized in 1932, apparently in reaction to the Bonus March, after two years of prominence, it vanished. A revolt of the haves,” dedicated to a radical reduction in government expenditures, its leadership was anything but obscure, however. Mr. Lehrfeld, supra, at 63, states that it had been accorded charitable status, and the right to receive tax-deductible contributions, in a ruling letter dated November 3, 1933. Soon thereafter, it submitted its own economic program to the President and Congress. The New York Times gave front page treatment to the event and printed the text of the entire program. Roosevelt Warned Our Debt Will Rise 4 Billion in Year,” Dec. 18, 1933, at 1.

The extent of benefits to war veterans was the League’s foremost concern. It repeatedly urged that benefits be limited only to those wounded in war. (Appropriations to the Veterans Administration was no small budgetary matter. In praising the League’s stand, the New York Times noted that the appropriations had reached a point where they accounted for one-third of the entire cost of the Federal government, aside from service on the national debt.” Useful Service,” April 26, 1933, at 16.) However, this position brought the League into conflict with Senator David Reed, who also made the veterans’ benefits his chief concern. Lurching unexpectedly leftward, outflanking Pinchot and even Roosevelt, in January 1934, Reed sponsored legislation to restore benefits cut the year before. Reed Leads Fight on Veterans’ Cuts,” N. Y. Times, Jan. 9, 1934, at 5. The League responded by presenting its own plan and excoriating Reed’s. Plan to Simplify Veteran Aid Urged,” N. Y. Times, Feb. 19, 1934, at 4. Reed’s stratagem was successful both as legislation and as the substantive centerpiece of his primary campaign. As Arthur Krock noted in his post-primary analysis of Reed’s victory over Pinchot: Before stripping for the fray, Mr. Reed took the precaution of getting into the money distributing class himself by leading a successful battle against the administration for added benefits and restored government pay. . . . This equipped him with at least half of Santa Claus’s whiskers.” Republicans See Renewed Party in Victory of Reed,” N. Y. Times, May 18, 1934, at 24. The remainder of 1934 was not kind to either the League or the Senator. On July 23, less than three months after the effective date of the lobbying restriction, the ruling letter to the League was cancelled. Lehrfeld, supra, n. 2, at 64. On November 6, Senator Reed was defeated by Joseph F. Guffey, who became the first Democratic Senator elected from Pennsylvania in 60 years.

From Archibald Roosevelt:

In the summer of 1932, Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, William Marshall Bullitt, Richard E. Byrd, and James Harbord, among others, formed a conservative pressure group known as the National Economy League, which called for balancing the federal budget by cutting appropriations for veterans in half.

Resigned. Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd; as chairman of the National Economy League; in Manhattan. Reason: "pressure of personal affairs." -- Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,745463,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,744488,00.html

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=23183 - President Herbert Hoover, Message to the National Economy League. July 26, 1932