Financial History Issue 129 (Spring 2019) | Page 32
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Glass-Steagall Act, June 16, 1933. Behind the President (L–R) are Senator
Allen Barkley, Senator Thomas Gore, Senator Carter Glass, Comptroller of Currency JFT Connors, Senator William G. McAdoo,
Representative Henry S. Steagall, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, Representative Alan Goldsborough and Representative Robert Luce.
act, “Arbitrary, senseless, and brutal”
and “Hitlerism.” After Brandeis and his
Supreme Court colleagues declared the act
unconstitutional, Brandeis told Roosevelt’s
aides, “This is the end of this business of
centralization… I want you to go back and
tell the President that we’re not going to
let this government centralize everything.
It’s come to an end.” More generally, Glass
railed against the vast increase in federal
power during the New Deal, stating that
“the federal government [is] protruding
its nose into all kinds of business,” and
predicting “the righteous failure of every
damned project that these arbitrary little
bureaucrats are vainly endeavoring to put
in effect.” Similarly, Brandeis stated:
The United States is too big to be a
force for good; whatever we do is
bound to be harmful. We have bitten
off more than we can chew. Good can
come from small countries. The United
States should go back to the federation
idea, letting each state evolve a policy
and develop itself. There are enough
good men in Alabama, for example,
to make Alabama a good state. But the
tendency is to put responsibility upon
the federal Government.
In one of his diatribes against the New
Deal, Glass let slip his racist fears that a
federal government with the power to
interfere with private economic rights
could equally interfere with race relations.
In his 1937 radio address attacking Roos-
evelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court,
Glass defended the Court by arguing, “It
was the Supreme Court of the United
30 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring 2019 | www.MoAF.org
States that validated the suffrage laws of
the South [preventing blacks from voting]
which saved the section from anarchy
and ruin in a period [Reconstruction] the
unspeakable outrages of which nearly all
the Nation recalls with shame.” Brandeis
did not make such racist public remarks.
However, Brandeis never addressed in his
judicial decisions, books, articles or pub-
lished correspondence the major Ameri-
can dilemma of race relations.
Popularity of the New
Nationalism Approach
Since World War II, the nation gener-
ally has followed the New Nationalism
approach of imposing greater regulation
on the financial sector, rather than the
New Freedom approach of fragmenting