“Biography of a President” (June 16, 1937)


“Biography of a President” (June 16, 1937)
by John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949)
14 x 21.5 in., ink on drawing board

On the Purdue campus, where he was a student, McCutcheon (class of 1889) is memorialized in a coeducational dormitory, John T. McCutcheon Hall. The lobby displays an original of one of his drawings, a nearly life-size drawing of a young man.

After college, McCutcheon moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Morning News (later: Chicago Record) and then at the Chicago Tribune from 1903 until his retirement in 1946. McCutcheon received the Pulitzer Prize for Cartoons in 1932.

On February 5, 1937 (20 years to the day before I was born), President Franklin Roosevelt announces a controversial plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it more efficient. Critics immediately charged that Roosevelt was trying to “pack” the court and thus neutralize Supreme Court justices hostile to his New Deal.

During the previous two years, the high court had struck down several key pieces of New Deal legislation on the grounds that the proposed laws delegated an unconstitutional amount of authority to the executive branch and the federal government. The February 1937 plan was to provide retirement at full pay for all members of the court over 70. If a justice refused to retire, an “assistant” with full voting rights was to be appointed, thus ensuring Roosevelt a liberal majority. Most Republicans and many Democrats in Congress opposed the so-called “court-packing” plan.

The Senate buried FDR’s judicial reform proposal in committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s report, released on June 14, 1937, denounced the measure as a “needless, futile and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle.”

The majority opinion acknowledged that the national economy had grown to such a degree that federal regulation and control was now warranted. Roosevelt’s reorganization plan was thus unnecessary, and in July the Senate struck it down by a vote of 70 to 22.

The margin notes:
Under 1: He greets representatives of the Press.
Under 2: He instantly receives many offers from enemies and friends who wish to cooperate.
Under 3: He is obliged to call off all further offers of assistance.

“Yes, It’s About Time to Cut Down on Baby’s Vitamins” (April 21, 1937)


“Yes, It’s About Time to Cut Down on Baby’s Vitamins” (April 21, 1937)
by Hugh McMillen Hutton (1897-1976)
12 x 18 in., ink and crayon on heavy board

Hugh M. Hutton (1897-1976) was an American editorial cartoonist who worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for over 30 years.

Hugh Hutton grew up with an artistic mother. After attending the University of Minnesota for two years, Hutton enlisted in the armed forces and served in World War I. Hutton pursued coursework in art through correspondence school, the Minneapolis School of Art and the Art Students League.

He worked at the New York World from 1930 to 1932 and with the United Features Syndicate in 1932 and 1933, drawing illustrations and comic strips. Hutton relocated to Philadelphia and worked as the cartoonist at the Public Ledger in 1933 and 1934. He became the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial cartoonist in April 1934, where he stayed throughout his career, retiring in 1969.

A mistake was about to happen in 1937 that would be repeated.

In 1937, after five years of sustained economic growth and a steadily declining unemployment rate, the Roosevelt Administration began to worry more about possible inflation and the size of the federal deficit than the ability of the economy to sustain the recovery. Thus, the concern expressed in this cartoon.

As a consequence, in the fall of 1937, FDR supported those in his administration who advocated a reduction in federal expenditures (i.e. stimulus spending) and a balanced budget. The results — which included a massive reduction in the number of people employed by such programs as the WPA — were catastrophic. From the fall of 1937 to the summer of 1938, industrial production declined by 33 percent; wages by 35 percent; national income by 13 percent; and not surprisingly, the unemployment rate rose by roughly 5 percentage points, with an estimated 4 million workers losing their jobs.

The economic downturn caused by the decline in federal spending was commonly referred to as the “Roosevelt recession.” To counter it, FDR asked Congress in April of 1938 to support a substantial increase in federal spending and lending.

In July 2010, coming out of the Great Recession, there was a real danger that the reluctance of Congress to pass even the modest measures of new spending called for by the Obama administration to stall the recovery. The bail-outs, although successful in the end, let the banking leadership off pretty easily, and likely contributed to the right-shift and rise of populism in US politics.