Thursday, May 21, 1981

Reagan's Mellon Slices

By Robert S. McElvaine

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Soon after taking office, Ronald Reagan informed us that the nation was "in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression." It had become fashionable, even before he made his pronouncement, to point out the similarities between the current economic situation and that of the 1930s.

This is nonsense.

At the time Mr. Reagan spoke, unemployment stood at 7.4 percent. In 1933, the jobless rate was perhaps more than three times higher. Our economic woes today are real enough but are of an entirely different order from those of the Depression years. Today, people may fear that they will not be able to continue to eat well; in the 30's, people were afraid that they would have nothing to eat (a fear that may soon be restored to the poor in our society by Reagan budget cuts).

More ludicrous than talk of similarities to the Depression are comparisons of Mr. Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt. F.D.R.'s supporters rode in freight cars, Mr. Reagan's travel in Lear jets; F.D.R.'s people stood in soup lines, Mr. Reagan's stand at cocktail parties; F.D.R.'s backers sold apples on street corners, Mr. Reagan's are more likely to sell real estate in Orange County, California. Women in President Reagan's constituency wear fur coats; by comparison, in 1935, a New Jersey woman wrote the following to Eleanor Roosevelt: "as it is coming nearer toward colder weather I have nothing for my body to keep me warm and can't see where I will be able to get it. . . perhaps you might have some things you want me to have." Thousands of such letters were sent to Mrs. Roosevelt in the Depression years. The imagination stops short of picturing many similar communications addressed to Nancy Reagan.

The fact is that, whatever his shortcomings, Mr. Roosevelt was a champion of the poor, Mr. Reagan makes little attempt to hide the fact that he favors the rich.

"The taxing power of the Government," President Reagan declared in his February economic address, "must not be used to regulate the economy or bring about social change." Nearly 46 years before, Mr. Roosevelt had sent his own tax message to Congress. In it he said; "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few, and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and power." Mr. Reagan has threatened to veto the tax-cut bill if it does not operate to the unfair advantage of the few.

Many other examples could be offered to demonstrate that Ronald Reagan is the first President since Calvin Coolidge to unabashedly align himself with the rich. It was fittingly symbolic -- and ominous -- that Mr. Reagan had Thomas Jefferson's portrait in the East Room replaced by that of Mr. Coolidge.

How can we account for Mr. Reagan's popularity?

The answer lies in the immense differences between the era of the Great Depression and our time. The basic economic problems of the 30s were, of course, unemployment and the abject poverty that went with it. As unemployment, and the serious threat of it, crept up the social ladder, a majority of the population identified its interests with those of the poor. Accordingly, the people who made up the Roosevelt majority adopted values based upon morality, not simply the unrestricted forces of the market place. They rejected the acquisition, egotistical individualism that had peaked in the 20s, and upon which they blamed the Depression.

The Reagan majority today is not, despite the name taken by a portion of it, a moral majority. The basic economic problem for these people is inflation, not unemployment. People in the middle strata today identify their interest with those of the upper class. Acquisitive individualism is the very stuff of which the Reagan coalition is made.

The Democrats, through their New Deal and later social programs, created much of the middle class as we know it today. Many of the members of that group, now sufficiently well off to have adopted selfish individualism, have turned not only on the Democratic Party but also on the values of cooperation, equity, and compassion that helped them rise.

President Reagan seems determined to follow Andrew Mellons' policies. If Mr. Reagan continues traveling along his current path -- causeway? -- he might yet make his words about the Depression accurate. Then, perhaps, the values associated with the 30s would be restored. That would be a terrible price to pay for a renewed sense of compassion in this country.

Robert S. McElvaine, associate professor of history at Millsaps College, Jackson, Miss., and currently a visiting fellow at Brown University, has completed a manuscript, "Down and Out: Letters From the 'Forgotten Man' in the Great Depression."