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During 1944, an anti-New Deal group of wealthy men known as the Texas Regulars attempted to seize control of the Texas Democratic Party in order to deny President Roosevelt Texas's electoral college votes. Cunningham was one of the leaders of the Texas New Dealers who resisted the Regulars. She ran for governor in 1944 in an attempt to expose Governor Coke Stevenson's ties to the Regulars, and helped establish the Texas Social and Legislative Conference to unite New Deal farmers and unions against the Regulars. When the Regulars attempted to take over the University of Texas, Cunningham organized the Women's Committee for Educational Freedom to defend academic freedom at the university, and to attempt to elect Homer Rainey, an opponent of the Regulars, as governor in 1946.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a leader of immense importance, but he was not the be-all and end-all of US Second World War aims. Perhaps the most important single American war aim directed against Britain related to Middle East oil supplies. Anti-imperialism as a war aim was axiomatic and congenial in relation to allies, as well as to the enemy powers. The rhetoric of Roosevelt’s presidency was uncompromising in its anti-imperialism from the start. As for internationalism, many Americans were obstinately uninterested in foreign policy issues and aims, even while the country was at war. Roosevelt was less willing than over Germany to bow to public opinion in relation to his most important war aim of fashioning a new international order.

In the late 1930s, New Dealers, industrial unionists, and business groups led by the National Association of Manufacturers seized on the language of Americanism and launched public efforts to define the nation in ways that furthered their own political and social agendas. All addressed Americans’ desire to be free of want, and all attempted to connect economic and political concerns. Beyond that, however, they framed issues in profoundly different ways. President Roosevelt, CIO leaders, and others in the New Deal coalition stressed the majoritarian overtones of the word “democracy,” and called for an activist government to ensure Americans’ economic security. Industrialists and their allies, by contrast, emphasized individual rights and the libertarian dimensions of American “freedom.” The ensuing battle—pitting “democracy” against “freedom,” mutualism against individualism, and a progressive ethos against interclass unity—presaged contests that would continue into the postwar era.

This chapter reviews various speeches and rhetorical approaches by President Roosevelt in the 1930s, with a focus on his conceptions of the public. While FDR was no doubt one of the more charismatic and persuasive presidents in American history, he was also one of most intentional when it came to shaping a public to his liking. The chapter reviews some speeches but focuses more intently on confidential conversations with the White House press corps.

This chapter discusses the colonial dimension of the U.S.'s participation in World War II. Though the U.S. adopted an anti-colonial stance during the war, the death of President D. Roosevelt removed the leading American opponent to colonialism, whose hostility to the European overseas empires had never wavered. Roosevelt's successor Harry Truman took a more pragmatic attitude to European colonialism. The American ambiguity over colonialism increased after it began to face worldwide security responsibilities after the war and realized that its own territorial assets were limited compared with those still available to the colonial powers.

This chapter focuses on the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. President Roosevelt received the royals at a state dinner; before approximately three hundred guests, he joined the king in a pledge to “walk together along the path of friendship in a world of peace.” Along with proclamations of international cooperation, the evening also included performances that featured what the White House considered “authentic” representations of American music. The central focus, however, was on African Americans. In evaluating the origins of American music, the program notes for the evening stated, “above all, the negro has made the most distinctive contribution.”

This chapter discusses the New Deal and the relationship of Afro-Americans and the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal gave the blacks hope for a better life and better treatment. The early relief and welfare operations of the New Deal proved to be only marginally more beneficial to blacks. However, due to counterforces the New Deal was pushed toward a more equitable treatment of blacks. Even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt functioned as some form of unofficial ombudsman for blacks.

In response to a public perception of brutality and dishonest play in American football, President Theodore Roosevelt is persuaded to intervene, and he invites coaches and graduate leaders from the Big Three of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale (including Camp) to meet with him at the White House on October 9, 1905. After the meeting, Camp and the other two graduate leaders draft a pledge at Roosevelt’s request, promising responsive action by their schools. Violations of the pledge occur quickly in the 1905 Harvard-Pennsylvania and Harvard-Yale games, and Roosevelt requests visits from a representative of Pennsylvania and separately from Harvard. President Eliot writes Roosevelt, criticizing the Harvard-Yale game umpire, Navy professor Paul Dashiell, whereupon Roosevelt writes Dashiell and criticizes him; Dashiell replies with a strong defense that persuades Roosevelt. Roosevelt continues to correspond with Camp in a complimentary manner.

This chapter sets the stage for how the United States came to establish its first military base in the region, while placing the Gulf in its larger strategic and global context. As the United States became more entangled in the Second World War, the U.S. military grew adamant about securing base installations to support its war efforts. Additionally, the U.S. military needed easy access to the valuable oil resources of the Gulf to buoy its operations abroad. Political pressure from U.S. oil companies operating in the Gulf also helped convince the U.S. government to pursue a more active regional strategy to safeguard significant U.S. investments and other regional assets. The first establishment of a base at Dhahran would be crucial at the end of the war to assist with postwar construction efforts in Europe and Pacific Asia.

This chapter discusses the many gifts and donations that Alexander gave to the museum. It shows that in 1913, Alexander had begun planning an endowment for the museum, due to the continuous growth of its collections and its increasing prominence as a research institution. The chapter then looks at Alexander's disappointment over the fact that the university's president, regents, and faculty of the zoology department failed to recognize the true value of the specimen collections or the research programs she had created. It also mentions the visit of President Theodore Roosevelt to the museum.

When Joseph E. Davies showed the film Mission to Moscow to Stalin in the Kremlin in May 1943, he and President Roosevelt hoped that the film would demonstrate American goodwill and help convince Stalin to act in concert with the major Allied powers throughout the war. Mission to Moscow is a Hollywood-made, pro-Soviet picture based on Davies's diplomatic career and served as one of the films that prepared the American public for improved relations with the Soviet Union. This chapter discusses Roosevelt's “courtship” or “wooing” of Stalin and explains how the film's showing at the Kremlin played a role in Roosevelt's Soviet diplomacy.

Chapter 2 provides a social profile of the 343 Italian civilian internees. Persons who held leadership roles in their communities or possessed special knowledge that could be used against the United States were most feared by the government. This chapter traces the debate among President Roosevelt and his advisors, the War Department, the Justice Department, and legislative committees about whether to evacuate the entire population of Italian aliens from military areas. Italian American politicians and prominent members of the Italian community testified to the loyalty of their community toward the United States. Finally, this chapter shows the distinct variation in the military defense commands’ interpretation of Executive Order 9066 regarding the protection of military areas and policies of individual exclusion and restrictions upon enemy aliens, and explains the factors that resulted in stricter restrictions in the Western Defense Command as compared to those in the Eastern Defense Command.

This is the book's first empirical case study, analysing the Churchill government's perception of Britain's geopolitical role in 1945. Drawing upon themes from the earlier chapters, it argues that Churchill's government perceived there to be a ‘hegemonic division of labour’ within the special relationship - between the global economic and military dominance of the US administration and its own ability to offer leadership to the world order through influence and consent. In turn, the chapter highlights how throughout 1945 Churchill used this British influence to manipulate the American and Russian governments’ foreign policies, in order to allow the British government to continue to exercise an important role at summit meetings between the three countries.

In January 1942, President Roosevelt set up the National War Labor Board to reduce strikes, control wage inflation, develop national policies for union-management relations, and resolve disputes between labor and companies for the duration for the war. This chapter explains the dire situation facing the United States and its allies in the winter of 1941-42, how the NWLB came into being, the board’s members, and the backgrounds and outlook of the young economists and attorneys who did the bulk of the board’s work. Philip Murray, the president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Steelworkers union, called the staffers “the Labor Board boys.”

The Bachmann “combination” process was a breakthrough toward large-scale production of RDX. The spectacular achievement of Tennessee Eastman Company in developing a continuous method of RDX production. Both physical and human obstacles had to be surmounted by the proponents of RDX. The issue of increased production of the explosive reached the desk of President Roosevelt.

This chapter begins with a brief review of the evidence on the causes of the Great Depression and its impact on workers and their families. It examines some of the similarities and differences in the causes of the Great Recession and its impact on workers. It briefly summarizes some of the different policies that presidents Roosevelt and Obama enacted to shorten the crisis and ease the burden on workers. It argues that while presidents Roosevelt and Obama were both called “socialist” by critics, their similarities are limited, and both the short- and long-term impacts of the policies they enacted during these crises are quite different for workers. While the near-term impact of the Great Recession was dwarfed by the Great Depression, the Great Recession exacerbated long-term structural trends that may well leave workers facing far more uncertain futures. Workers' own relative passivity in the face of these dynamics contrasts sharply with their grandparents' generation during the Great Depression. Absent a revival of their activism, we may well see the continued erosion, or even the end, of the New Deal social contract.

E. F. Penrose became chief of the Economic Section at the International Labour Office in Geneva under the American, John Gilbert Winant, formerly chairman of President Roosevelt’s Social Security Board; he offered Edith a position as a research assistant. In June 1939 she left her baby son with her parents and travelled to Geneva. They remained working in Geneva but fled across France and Spain to Lisbon in August 1940 after the Nazi invasion of France. Winant negotiated a wartime base for the ILO in Montreal and E. F. Penrose and Edith worked there, with her son David, until September 1941. Edith began work on Food Control in Great Britain, a study of the production, distribution, and consumption of food during the war.

This chapter analyzes the Great Depression in an attempt to understand the current financial crisis. The Great Depression of the 1930s is known for the combination of financial collapse, economic downturn, increased unemployment, and failed regulatory efforts. Historians and economists sought to identify conditions in the 1920s that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the institutional and policy measures adopted during the administration of former President Roosevelt. The chapter compares these measures with how the Obama administration dealt with the current financial crisis and eventually proposed regulatory overhaul that aimed at preempting similar turmoil in the future.