George W. Norris and the New Deal:
The Culmination of an Old Progressive
Jim Safley

For years scholarly circles have been debating the correlation between the progressive movement and the New Deal. By virtue of their proximity in time, these two manifestations of liberal persuasion seem to have some connection; but their obvious differences bewilder those who attempt to equate the two. For example, the progressive movement, beginning in the late nineteenth century and ending around 1916, is known for its liberal idealism and its attention to moral absolutes.[1] Conversely, the New Deal, while clearly a continuation of the same liberal spirit that fueled progressivism, is noted for its pragmatic experimentation and materialistic focus.[2] It is no wonder, then, that a small majority of those who identified with the progressive movement did not support the New Deal.

But for all their differences, there were also unmistakable similarities. Hence there were those progressives who saw in the New Deal a revitalization of American liberal tradition as well as a welcome departure from the conservative 1920s. One such person – one of the most unique – was Senator George W. Norris from Nebraska. With great conviction this Republican insurgent and staunch progressive actively supported New Deal programs, even amidst the growing resentment of his own party. He sensed no fatal contradiction between progressive morals and the experimental focus of the New Deal. In this he was unique, because he was a progressive whose progressive ideologies were compatible with the pragmatic spirit of the New Deal.

There is no dispute whether the progressive movement and the New Deal represent evolutions of the same American liberal tradition that had been growing and adapting since the classical liberalism of the early nineteenth century. Separated as they were by at least a decade of conservative domination, we find in them a common enemy and a definite continuity of ideas and rhetoric. Norris, with his strong stand for progressive values as well as practical politics, embodied this correlation. In an address to honor Norris, distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. expressed the senator’s significance to American liberalism: “George Norris was a key figure in the transition from classical to modern liberalism… his story and his contribution represent an indispensable episode in the evolution of the American liberal tradition.”[3]

This essay follows Norris throughout his political life, focusing on his rise as a progressive and his contributions to the American liberal tradition. Drawing from his experiences, I will touch upon the similarities between the progressive movement and the New Deal and follow whatever connections I find through the era of conservative rule that separated them. There were other notable progressives who supported the New Deal, but Norris’s demographic background and party affiliations deviate from that of the typical progressive New Dealer. To elucidate this point, I will introduce several progressive senators of the old order who were contemporaries of Norris. Some joined Norris in support of New Deal reforms throughout the Roosevelt era, but each had his own distinct reasons for doing so.

Although most old progressives backed Roosevelt during the 1932 presidential campaign, many did not maintain their early enthusiasm for the New Deal. A majority grew increasingly disillusioned by Roosevelt’s methods, and eventually alienated themselves from the administration. It comes as no surprise that disillusioned progressives were so keen to point out the differences between the progressive movement and the New Deal, just as New Dealers were quick to point out the similarities. To many, the moralistic tones of the progressive movement could not be translated into the pragmatic framework instituted by the New Deal. Progressive ideals – such as “individualism” and “individual initiative” – lost much of their meaning in the economic crisis facing the nation in the 1930s. More and more, progressives could not identify with the course Roosevelt was taking. The obvious exception to this rule was Senator George Norris. Accordingly, in this essay I will illustrate the fundamental differences between the two reform periods, and reveal how Norris reconciled these differences.

Surprisingly, Norris did not always follow the liberal banner. His interest in politics started while he was a boy growing up in rural Ohio. Surrounded as he was by the conservative and Republican influences of Midwestern agrarianism, he was, in his own words, “as intense a partisan as could be found.”[4] His support for the Republican Party began when he was 16, with the presidential candidacy of Rutherford B. Hayes, whose hometown was near his own. After Hayes, Norris actively campaigned for James Garfield, happily partaking in “old-fashioned parades” and other Republican pageantry. He was so devout a Republican that his political sensitivities once digressed to violence. While he was working on a farm in Indiana, the news of Garfield’s assassination reached his field crew. One worker put down his tools and began to celebrate. For this effrontery, Norris “sprang at his throat,” but was held back. The Republican Party seemed an unfailing and even benevolent political force, one that was founded on the “inspired and enlightened leadership of Abraham Lincoln,” and thus worth defending to the last.[5]

After finishing law school, he moved to Nebraska and was appointed as a district court judge. In 1896 he voted for Republican candidate William McKinley against fellow Nebraskan William Jennings Bryan. It was during this time that we witness the antecedents of Norris’s liberal nature. In his autobiography, he reflected:

From a grandstand seat in Nebraska I had seen the full depth of the emotional tides of the election of 1896. I had come into direct contact with agrarian discontent as a judge of the district court. I was shocked and dismayed by the more unreasonable and unjust demands, but I understood and sympathized with the underlying economic causes that expressed themselves in political action.[6]

The “agrarian discontent,” as Norris explained it, represented the already entrenched populism that had become such a defining issue in the campaign. Populists – predominantly composed of Midwestern and Southern farmers – demanded economic relief and stronger political representation. Though he did not entirely agree with the populist cause, Norris’s sympathy for their plight bespoke an underlying fascination with liberalism.

In 1902 Norris was elected to the Fifty-eighth Congress of the United States. He entered his freshman term “a bitter Republican partisan.” Obviously the depths of his partisanship ran deep, and his allegiance to conservative thought still superceded his nascent sympathy for liberalism.[7] On his first months as a Congressman he later confessed: “I was conservative, and proud of it – sure of my position, unreasonable in my convictions, and unbending in my opposition to any other political party, or political thought except my own.”[8] However, now that he had the opportunity to observe his party from within, Norris gradually found that his partisan notions were greatly misinformed:

I discovered that my party organization I had supported so vigorously was guilty of virtually all the evils that I had charged against the opposition. One by one, I saw my favorite heroes wither. Slowly but clearly, and with absolute certainty, I was compelled to abandon my belief in the lofty character of the Republican party.[9]

Here was Norris’s first recognition of the “evils” of partisanship; in his own words, he awoke “to its lack of logic” and its “distortion of patriotism.”[10] He was so disillusioned by his former conservative allies that he willfully turned to liberalism, but nevertheless refused to renounce his party affiliation. The burgeoning progressive movement attracted his attention, and he would soon join the growing number of disaffected Republican progressives.

Norris was further energized by the election of Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, during which he admitted that his “growing liberalism seemed to flower.” He found in T.R. a man with “scrupulous honesty and high motives in the attainment of public good,” a man that he could trust as a leader, and – most importantly – an embodiment of his own flowering political philosophy. “I followed Mr. Roosevelt implicitly in the liberal views that he took,” Norris wrote, “and was impressed always with his sincerity and integrity.” The only aspects of the president that troubled him were his “impetuosity” and his “irritation with the technicalities of law” that sometimes prevented the implementation of beneficial reforms.[11] Be that as it may, T.R. provided Norris a political touchstone, a contrast from the partisan politics that he so despised; the president was indeed a Republican, but he was foremost a progressive, willing to reform the inadequacies of the economic system and restore the social balance between the government and its people.

Progressivism was not affiliated with any political party (excluding the relatively short-lived and unsuccessful Progressive Party in 1912); Republican and Democratic progressives worked more or less side by side on issues concerning economic, civil, and industrial reform. This was what attracted Norris to their cause. The formidable barrier of partisanship and his subsequent disillusionment could not diminish his confidence in the progress of America.[12] The progressive movement represented such an optimistic view. Historian Richard Hofstadter writes that the progressive movement was a “widespread” and “remarkably good-natured” endeavor by a sizable portion of the nation to “restore a type of economic individualism and political democracy” that was denied to them by corrupt politicians and large corporations.[13] It was, in effect, a moral uprising against the corruption that had taken hold of government and the business sector. Recognizing his philosophical similarities with the movement, Norris grew in his determination to realize the nation’s full potential by fighting off the strong arms of industry and government – at the risk of alienating conservatives in his own party.

Norris’s progressivism first manifested itself in his leadership of the Republican insurgents. Dominating the House at the time was the Republican political machine, led by Speaker Joe Cannon. Speaker Cannon ruled over House sessions with an iron fist, advancing his conservative program while refusing to hear the opposition. Norris and other more progressive-minded Republicans challenged his autocratic tactics, and eventually succeeded in limiting his power. Yet, for Norris, the insurgent victory was not as extensive as he had hoped. While Cannon’s overthrow “represented a great victory for democratic control of the House,” Norris wrote, “it did not place the power where it would be exercised in the most practical and democratic way.” “The unhorsing of Speaker Cannon” was a step in the right direction, but its outcome nevertheless left too much power in the hands of the “partisan machines” and “powerful monopolies.”[14]

The fight against Cannonism was Norris’s first nationwide assault on partisanship and big business. From then on, he never wavered in his commitment to progressivism. His devotion to his adopted political philosophy was further evident in 1912 when he supported T.R. as the Progressive Party – or Bull Moose – candidate, against the Republican candidate, President William Howard Taft. Although T.R. lost the race, Norris was successful in his own bid for the Republican seat in the Senate. As a Senator, Norris faced much of the same partisanship that had plagued his ten-year stint in the House. He commented that, upon his entry into the Senate, his reputation as a progressive and Republican insurgent had preceded him. The Republican leaders looked upon him as a “party outcast, a troublemaker, and a faultfinder” because of his “unwillingness to accept instruction by the political bosses.”[15] Nevertheless, Norris continued his attacks: “The corporations and monopolies furnishing the sinews of war, putting up the finances which brought Republican victories, were obnoxious and detrimental to public good, and I could not abstain from fighting them, even though they were in my own party.”[16]

To his “delight” he was assigned to both the Committee on Agriculture and the Public Lands Committee, where he undertook a crusade that would occupy much of his political life. It was T.R. who, years before, introduced Norris to the idea of the conservation of natural resources: “a cause to which I had not given much attention, but of which in time I became an ardent supporter.”[17] Indeed, the harnessing and development of natural resources became Norris’s most notable endeavor. Even in the 1920s, amidst the most formidable political opposition, Norris fought for the public ownership of utilities. Ever since the end of the First World War, the progressive movement diminished in both scale and influence, overwhelmed then replaced by conservative political rule and monopolistic private industry. It took a “rare soul” like Norris to continue in the progressive tradition during a time unfavorable to liberalism.[18] In fact, his involvement in the Muscle Shoals controversy prevented private enterprise from absorbing public utilities, and ultimately led to far-reaching, public regional development in the Tennessee Valley.[19]

Norris’s deep-seated abhorrence of partisanship, and his growing distrust in his party’s leadership, is clear in his 1920s voting record. In a decade dominated by Republican leadership, he voted only once for a Republican president. He voted for Warren Harding, but did so “with strong misgivings.”[20] Four years later he voted against Calvin Coolidge, instead emphatically supporting fellow progressive Robert M. La Follette Sr., the candidate for the League of Progressive Political Action. Norris affirmed: “I sympathized with the independent candidacy of Bob La Follette in no less degree than I had supported Theodore Roosevelt in his organization of the Bull Moose movement.” And finally, in 1928, Norris “crossed the political Rubicon” and threw his support to the Democratic candidate, Alfred E. Smith.[21] In the 1920s, Norris displayed an aptitude that many old progressives did not: the ability to disassociate himself from the overarching political conservatism and continue in the independent progressive spirit that had served him since his early days in the House.

The combination of strong conservative leadership, protracted economic stability, and the success of large industry calmed the passions of many old progressives in the 1920s. Without a viable political cause to stand behind, the progressive movement fell dormant, losing much of its political momentum. Moreover, the increasingly disparate and sectional membership could not overcome internal tensions that ordinarily would have been alleviated by common goals and principles. There was a failure of progressives to unite ideologically, and some went as far as to repudiate their progressive ideals. And, other than the failed La Follette campaign, there was no effective political party or leadership to carry out the progressive platform.[22] But while the progressive movement did suffer major losses, it did not entirely succumb to atrophy (as evidenced in the perseverance of George Norris). Indeed, the end of the decade marked a time of economic chaos that would ultimately reinvigorate the passions of the old progressives.

When the Stock Market crashed in 1929, the subsequent economic repercussions touched every part of American society: unemployment rose, banks failed, industries and individuals went bankrupt. The crisis was dire and pervasive, but President Herbert Hoover maintained that prosperity was around the corner, that the economy would inevitably fix itself. Norris criticized Hoover for his misleading optimism, calling him “the greatest advertiser since Barnum.”[23] Norris explained in an open letter he wrote, titled “Why I Cannot Support President Hoover for Re-Election”:

For more than eighteen months he has been leading the country in a frantic quickstep around imaginary corners to get a glimpse of a prosperity that vanishes like the fleeting will-o’-the-wisp… Every prophecy Hoover has made has proven to be false… and it seems almost an insult that the American people should be asked now, with this record facing them, to entrust him with four more years of power.[24]

With this, Norris continued his support for a Democratic candidate for president, and actively campaigned for New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt.

During the 1932 presidential campaign, Roosevelt stirred the interest of most of the old progressives. He was himself a progressive of the old order, and his commitment to reform echoed the progressive calls to action.[25] Consequently, the newly formed National Progressive League, headed in part by Norris, succeeded in mobilizing the surviving progressive elements in support of the Democratic ticket. The League’s letterhead prominently displayed a Roosevelt quote underscoring the differences between progressivism and conservatism:

Progressives in the right sense of the word mean those who realize that a government must grow and change; that what is wise government today may be foolish government tomorrow. The conservatives are those who believe that things are good enough as they are and should be let strictly alone lest ruin and destruction follow in the wake of any alteration.[26]

Old progressives and new reformers alike identified with the candidate’s thoughts, and gladly elected him president.

Upon Roosevelt’s election, Norris found himself among good company in the new-fashioned political atmosphere. Although there was a noticeable attrition of old progressives in government, the last vestiges of progressive thought found new light in the reforms that Roosevelt promised he would implement in his New Deal. “Old and familiar political battlecries mingled with new,” Norris wrote – seemingly unfazed by the decade of conservatism that separated the progressive movement from the New Deal.[27] He was especially pleased with the nation’s choice for president; he disagreed with some of Roosevelt’s initiatives, but recognized the immediacy of the situation and the need for quick and sweeping reform. Norris’s most accomplished biographer, Richard Lowitt, surmised that “Norris was more at ease and in harmony with Franklin Roosevelt’s administration than with any other during his forty years of congressional service.”[28]

Norris developed a great deal of respect for the new president, finding almost unfathomable how he endured “under the terrible burden” of the present economic crisis.[29] The first hundred days of Roosevelt’s presidency turned out to be one of seemingly chaotic, and distinctly experimental, governmental action. In one of his first fireside chats the president admitted: “I do not deny that we may make mistakes of procedure as we carry out the policy. I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.”[30] In no uncertain terms, Roosevelt was preparing the American people for an unprecedented and far-reaching reform program, founded not on a strict ideology, but rather on pragmatic experimentation. Norris followed the president in this pragmatic approach, impressed that Roosevelt “does not claim to be a superman, thank God, and that is one reason why I feel that the country will still believe in him, even though some of his propositions fail.”[31]

Although he was one of the few remaining Republicans in the Senate, his reputation as an old progressive allowed him many friends in the new administration. High officials were well aware of Norris’s liberalism in the 1920s, and they must have been aware of his disenchantment with the Republican political machine. But Norris’s disenchantment did not stop at his own party: partisanship in any form had no place in the American political system. Norris recognized “that the evil in American life, the corruption that takes its toll of the American people, uses political parties for its convenience.”[32] Because of this, he was naturally suspicious about the expanding bureaucracy in the New Deal. Unless the growth of the federal government could be checked “by some method of appointments which would eliminate party bosses and party machines,” Norris feared that the same lust for power that plagued the Republican Party earlier in the century would soon claim the Democratic Party.[33] Indeed, he saw “no difference between a Republican political machine and a Democratic political machine.”[34] Even so, Norris later concluded that the New Deal, while not abolishing political corruption entirely, did encourage the “growth of nonpartisanship in the administration of government agencies.”[35]

Norris endorsed Roosevelt’s policies so vigorously that it seems that, in the words of one historian, the New Deal was what he “had been working for all along.”[36] But over the following years, many of Norris’s progressive colleagues lost their enthusiasm for the new reform measures, and even became openly hostile to them. In his book An Encore for Reform, Otis L. Graham Jr. studies a group of old progressives who survived into the 1930s and found that a majority opposed the New Deal.[37] Although they supported Roosevelt during his 1932 campaign, they were shocked at the subsequent flood of seemingly chaotic and ill-defined political action. The National Recovery Administration (NRA), the Banking and Economy Acts, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), especially, infuriated them because of their pro-business nuances and deflationary principles. And, unlike Norris, many could not adequately attune their progressivism to the New Deal’s experimental approach to public policy.[38]

One of the most disconcerting aspects of the New Deal to many old progressives was its experimental nature. The progressive movement was characterized by its political ideologies and rational principles. Roosevelt, on the other hand, was quite open about his willingness to try different methods in public policy, and if those failed to work, to try others. This “opportunistic virtuosity in practical politics,” as one historian calls it, was unlike anything the old progressives had experienced, and many found it distasteful.[39] For example, four years after the 1932 election, Senator Hiram Johnson from California, an old progressive and Republican who had initially given his full support to Roosevelt, wrote about the president: “He blunders along here with half-baked and oftentimes half-finished policies.” And although he voted for Roosevelt in the 1936 election, he did so “with many misgivings.”[40]

Another old progressive who had initially supported Roosevelt but was subsequently disillusioned by the direction that the president was taking was Senator Arthur Capper, Republican from Kansas. Unlike Johnson, he was impressed with Roosevelt’s willingness to experiment, even praising him for such controversial measures as the NRA, which he agreed was “necessary to try the experiment.”[41] He reiterated these sentiments when he urged his constituency to support the Agricultural Adjustment Act: “We know this legislation is an experiment… This farm bill is only a part of the big experiment in government toward which we are heading.”[42] However, by mid-decade, the growing national debt and the increasing centralization of administrative power shocked Capper. “Roosevelt is losing ground,” he wrote, “He has gone too far in usurping power that was never intended the President should have.”[43] As a result, Capper threw his support behind Republican candidate Alfred Landon during the 1936 presidential campaign.

Senators Johnson and Capper were among the many Republican progressives who lost their faith in the Democratic president. Indeed, so many Republican progressives lost faith that old progressive opposition to the New Deal might well have been a factor of party affiliation. In his study, Otis Graham found that, out of 55 progressive Republicans, only six could be defined as pro-New Deal.[44] In another study, Ronald L. Feinman found that out of twelve Republican progressives in the Senate in the 1930s, only Robert La Follette Jr. and George Norris remained congenial to New Deal reform measures.[45] But no matter their political affiliation (Republican or Democrat), many old progressives grew increasingly estranged by the New Deal.[46] Roosevelt’s cooperation with big business, largely deflationary economic policies, and experimental approach to reform did not sit well with their progressive ideologies. They were further incensed with Roosevelt’s Supreme Court “packing” scheme, which revealed the president’s underlying desire for unprecedented executive power.

But for some old progressives, the New Deal did not pose such problems. To them, the three major purposes of the progressive movement – desire for social reform, the restoration of honest business practices, and the destruction of political machines – were finally reintroduced by Roosevelt after being suppressed by more than a decade of conservative leadership.[47] Those programs that dealt with public relief, public housing, and social security revealed a fundamental progressive emphasis on social reform. Moreover, the two political movements shared common enemies; the old enemies of the progressive movement – archconservatives, industrialists, and, to a lesser degree, political bosses and the wealthy – came under attack during the New Deal. “We love [Roosevelt],” George Norris once wrote, “for the enemies he has made.”[48]

In An Encore for Reform, Graham offers a list of the types of old progressives who supported Roosevelt’s reform measures. First and foremost were certain social and occupational groups. Those progressives who went into social work – and thus “permitted occupational and/or residential proximity to the urban lower classes” –were more apt to identify with the urban character of the New Deal. Along these lines, many progressives who worked within city government witnessed firsthand the desolation of urban poverty and became active in “municipal reform.” Also coming into contact with the urban poor were progressive clergymen who preached the “social gospel” – that is, sermons intended to stimulate grass-root reform. These groups saw in the New Deal a proactive, albeit unproven, solution to the social ills of the inner city. They were, in Graham’s view, “the progressive types most likely to accept gracefully the clumsy interferences of a liberal government.”[49]

Moving away from social and occupational groups, we enter into the more obscure area of personal characteristics. Graham believes there were three types of personal dispositions in particular that endeared old progressives to the New Deal: the politically flexible, the politically ambitious, and the “angry man.”[50] William Gibbs McAdoo, Democratic senator from California, was a fine example of a politically flexible old progressive. Throughout his career he exhibited a remarkable capacity to be open to new ideas and not stay ideologically anchored to a certain political belief. He wrote in his autobiography: “I do not like ideas that are suspended in air. There is not much metaphysics in my temperament.” McAdoo’s lifelong willingness to accept “movement and change” as a political reality conformed to the pragmatic nature of the New Deal.[51]

Progressives who supported the New Deal due to political ambitions included conservative opportunists and party loyalists. Some old progressives derived from a right-of-center background and thus were more unlikely to accept Roosevelt’s overtly liberal policies; nevertheless, there were those who, for their own personal reasons, were unashamed to vote for New Deal measures. Joseph T. Robinson, senator from Arkansas, was one such man. He ranked himself a “conservative” and admitted that he found much of the New Deal “distasteful”; but surprisingly he voted down the line for New Deal reforms.[52] Clearly, he pushed aside his political concerns in order to put himself in a favorable light with the president, who alone could appoint him to the Supreme Court – something that he wanted above all. Another type of political ambition was loyalty to the party. The Democratic Party gained an immeasurable influence during the 1930s, and many old progressive Democrats, hoping for a piece of the political pie, flocked to Roosevelt’s side in a show of unconditional support.[53]

There were also those progressives whose lifelong defiance to conservative regimes found an outlet in the liberal New Deal policies. These “angry men,” as Graham calls them, threw their support behind Roosevelt because he embodied the fight against the enemies of progressivism.[54] The New Deal was but a continuation of the progressive spirit, an effective and successful frontline against economic privilege, industrialism, and political corruption. Allowing for his outwardly calm demeanor, Senator George Norris could be qualified as an “angry man.” His battle against conservatism is conspicuous in the title of his autobiography, Fighting Liberal. Completed only eight weeks before his death, the book is replete with combative vernacular: “I am sure that, from among America’s fighting men and others, warriors will appear to fight the unending battle for good government.” He continues: “I am sure that, so long as there are men, there will be knights to lift their swords and press their shields against the enemies, corruption and evil.”[55] It is clear that Norris saw himself as a righteous combatant against the injustices and inequities of society. Franklin Roosevelt appreciated Norris’s determined spirit, once calling him a “gentle knight of American progressive ideals.”[56]

Norris respected the president’s abilities so much that he gave him the benefit of the doubt in many controversial reform measures. The experimental nature of the New Deal, for example, did not conflict with Norris’s own progressive sentimentalities. Unlike fellow Republican senator, Hiram Johnson, Norris was sympathetic to Roosevelt’s pragmatic position. Once when he was asked if the president was doing the proper thing on a particular policy, he responded: “There are a good many places where nobody knows just what is the proper thing to do… I think he has made some mistakes, but I think anybody would make some.”[57] Moreover, when asked what he thought his Republican hero, Lincoln, would have done to alleviate the national crisis, Norris answered while admitting his own fallibility: “Lincoln would be just like me. He wouldn’t know what the hell to do.”[58] Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. describes Norris’s unique form of pragmatism:

One can see intellectual defects in the formulation of Norris’s political creed. He was not a political philosopher. He was a pragmatist, reacting with intelligence and compassion to a series of specific situations. But what mattered was not the consistency or profundity of his political ideas but the quality of his moral faith.[59]

Even though many progressives opposed the National Recovery Administration for its violation of existing antitrust laws, some reluctantly saw it as a necessary step in the alleviation of unemployment. Norris, for example, had his reservations but saw in it a practical middle ground between industrial regulation and industrial self-government.[60] Like many other progressives, the Nebraska senator was troubled by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration’s policies on crop destruction, especially at a time when so many Americans were undernourished. But he was nevertheless confident in the capabilities of Roosevelt and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, believing they were “moved by the very highest of motives.”[61] Although the AAA was not the perfect answer to rural problems, it was the most practical answer at the time.[62]

Closest to Norris’s heart during the 1930s was the legislation that finally actualized his dream of far-reaching regional development in the Tennessee Valley. From his early enthusiasm for the conservation of natural resources to his assault against the power trusts in the Muscle Shoals affair, Norris displayed a determined spirit worthy of a Bull Moose progressive. The largely impoverished Tennessee Valley population suffered annually from costly floods and unproductive land. Norris insisted that by building a series of dams along the valley rivers, the floods could be controlled while, at the same time, providing electricity to the people. To Norris, widely available electricity was essential to the betterment of society. Ever since his boyhood on a “primitive” farm in Ohio, he was fascinated by the “possibilities of electricity for lightening the drudgery of farms and urban homes, while revolutionizing the factories.”[63] He was angered by the motions of private power trusts to take hold of the American electrical industry: “This natural resource was given by an all-wise Creator to his people and not to organizations of greed. No man and no organization of men ought to be allowed to make a financial profit out of it.”[64] His solution – a solution that would finally emerge under Roosevelt’s administration – was government ownership and operation of the dams.

Signed into law in 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was instituted to develop the Tennessee River and its tributaries in the interest of flood control and the production and distribution of electricity. Because it snubbed big business, and realized a progressive dream for public power, old progressives enthusiastically rallied behind the TVA. Even right-leaning progressives like Senator Hiram Johnson were caught up in the emotion: “Roosevelt has taken such a remarkable position concerning Muscle Shoals that we can forgive him many other things.”[65] Norris continued to take part in the application of the program, and even expanded upon it in hopes of establishing a “little TVA” in his home state.[66] Without a doubt the TVA was a labor of love for Norris, and its establishment further endeared him to Roosevelt and the New Deal.

After a few years, many old progressives became disaffected by Norris’s seemingly blind faith in Roosevelt’s abilities. Five years after the TVA was established, Hiram Johnson backed away from his early enthusiasm and called Norris “a sad figure these days because of his insanity over the TVA.” He continued his attack, writing that Norris had always been a politician “who wanted to go to the stake, and who took real pleasure in being burned alive, but now in his old age, while senile, because of Roosevelt’s gift to him of the TVA… anything that Roosevelt does, or anything that he says, Norris will defend… He is truly a pathetic figure now.”[67] Such harsh words were typical of Johnson, who was known for being self-centered and cynical.[68] But his sentiments were indicative of a mood among many old progressives (usually Republican) that Norris had sold his soul to Roosevelt’s brand of liberalism at the expense of his progressive background.[69]

In 1936, Norris exacerbated these feelings by refusing to campaign for the Senate as a Republican. Over his long career, his opinion of the Republican Party had slowly deteriorated. He thought in the beginning that political patronage and partisanship were superficial problems – obstacles that he was sure would eventually self-destruct; but he soon discovered the true depths of corruption in his party. During the 1930 senatorial campaign, the Republican political machine in Nebraska devised a scheme to nullify Norris’s primary votes by pitting him against another person of the same name.[70] The scheme was ultimately unsuccessful, but it left Norris entirely disillusioned by his party. As a consequence, Norris decided to run as an independent in the 1936 senatorial elections. In his autobiography Norris affirms: “Under no circumstances could I have been induced to have become a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1936. Under no circumstances would I have accepted a Democratic nomination.”[71]

Throughout the tumultuous 1930s, Norris never lost sight of his abhorrence of partisanship, and maintained that in supporting Roosevelt he was not supporting the Democratic Party; rather, he was supporting Roosevelt’s policies, which he commented would put “some humanity on our statute books.”[72] Roosevelt once echoed Norris’s condemnation of partisanship and chastised those “men and organizations” that sought party patronage, “whether it be Republican or Democratic”; he suggested that it was this “type of bad citizenship” that spoke most loudly against virtuous “public servants like Senator Norris.”[73] Emphasizing his move to independence, Norris maintained that national progress could only be brought about by “thinking men taking independent action” – a far cry from his early days as a proud, partisan Republican.[74]

Norris’s independent campaign coincided with Roosevelt’s second bid for office. Even amidst his busy reelection campaign, Norris and his progressive colleague, Senator Robert La Follette Jr., established the Progressive National Committee, an organization similar to the National Progressive League. As in 1932, the Committee was designed to reinvigorate progressive support for Roosevelt. Its first conference attracted quite a few leading progressives and reformers; but conspicuously absent were many of the old progressives who had previously been delighted to support Roosevelt.[75] Nonetheless, Roosevelt was reelected president, ensuring four more years of New Deal reform.

Norris was also victorious in his independent bid for the Senate. He continued his endorsement of Roosevelt’s policies, though the controversy surrounding the president’s Supreme Court “packing” plan caused him some consternation. Norris, like most old progressives, was critical of the judicial branch’s overarching power in American government. As a Roosevelt loyalist he was incensed that the Supreme Court invalidated the AAA and NRA, believing it amounted to “an impediment, not an aid, to human freedom and liberty, and an instrument of destruction.”[76] But when Roosevelt called for a reorganization of the Court, Norris asserted that the president’s plan would be only a temporary fix and required more strict regulation. This was in contrast to progressive Republicans, who lamented that the reorganization plan revealed Roosevelt’s “sinister grasp of power,” and that America would soon “be very close to a Dictatorship.”[77] Instead, Norris introduced several constitutional amendments that would impose more permanent limitations on the Court, none of which passed. Norris’s fight for Supreme Court reform was cut short when he fell ill, and by the time he returned to business the controversy had subsided.[78]

Overall, Norris came out of the New Deal a liberal, pragmatic, and independent-minded man. As old progressives gradually moved away from Roosevelt’s brand of liberalism, he resolutely stood by, undeterred by the clear contrasts between the progressive movement and the New Deal.[79] He recognized the need for Roosevelt’s experimental approach to public policy, just as he recognized the need for increased presidential power. Although he did not entirely agree with some of the president’s initiatives, he recognized that “there must be room in a successful democracy for differences of opinion.”[80] Reflecting on the political and social changes in the 1930s, Norris wrote: “These changes… presented America with ten years of tumultuous action. In their objective and in their possible mechanical mistakes, they have carried the American people through days of extreme peril with remarkable facility. Health slowly returned to a nation that had been very sick.”[81] The Depression forced the government’s hand in far-reaching social reform, and Norris jumped at the opportunity to further his chief progressive goals: public power and nonpartisanship. While many other old progressives could not reconcile their progressivism to the New Deal, Norris had no such trouble. It seems that the progressivism he forged under Theodore Roosevelt finally culminated under the Franklin Roosevelt administration.[82]

Norris’s largely positive reaction to the New Deal illustrated his increasingly liberal tendencies.[83] Norris once commented on the “future course of liberalism”: “No matter how temporarily dark and depressing the skies may be, social progress, despite its setbacks, always has been upward and onward. Each reverse resulting from a reappearance of reactionary practices and thought has been followed by new peaks of enlightened social conceptions.”[84] In his view, great liberal periods in American history were separated by periods of conservative and reactionary political thought.[85] From the conservative late nineteenth century came the populist and progressive movements. Out of the progressive movement came a period of conservative domination, which eventually succumbed to the New Deal. For all their differences, these periods of reform were rooted in America’s liberal tradition. Norris understood that progress could take many forms, determined as it is by historical context and political necessity.[86] The progressive movement, with its emphasis on predetermined ideologies and moralism, and the New Deal, with its emphasis on pragmatic experimentation, were, in effect, two sides of the same coin.

Months before his death in 1944, Norris declared that his ultimate “faith” in America was that “liberalism will not die.”[87] He entered public service as a “bitter Republican partisan,” but left a liberal and pragmatic independent, forging a path for progressive-minded individuals to follow. He was confident that the American people would continue in the course that he helped lay out:

In forty years in the Congress, I have been impressed most by the great strength and vitality of the American people. In the spirit of democratic institutions of government, they have made, and they will make, their mistakes. But so long as an unselfish leadership remains for their guidance – a leadership untainted by corrupting personal ambition – a leadership inspired by the simple strength that oozes from the soil and the humble ranks of the poor… I am sure America can continue to be the bright beacon toward the eyes of the world’s oppressed and downtrodden ever will turn for inspiration and hope.[88]

Notes

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[1] Several historians are critical of “moral absolutism” in the progressive movement. Richard Hofstadter, for example, writes: “My criticism of that period is… not that Progressives most typically undermined or smashed standards, but they set impossible standards, that they were victimized… by a form or moral absolutism.” Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 16.

[2] Several other historians are critical of President Franklin Roosevelt’s pragmatism during the New Deal. Edgar Robinson, for example, criticizes the president for implementing inferior programs for immediate gain, without considering their long-term effects: “Roosevelt’s failure lay in his unsuccessful attempt to justify the means or establish the ends he had in view.” Edgar Eugene Robinson, The Roosevelt Leadership 1933-1945 (Cambridge: De Capo Press, 1972), 408.

[3] George W. Norris, Fighting Liberal, with an introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1945; Collier Books, 1961), 9. The address was held at the Norris Centennial, Washington, DC, May 16, 1961.

[4] Norris, Fighting Liberal (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1945), 32. Unless otherwise stated, all citations from Fighting Liberal are from the original hardcover edition.

[5] Ibid., 144, 143.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 89. Norris wrote: “I believed that all the virtues of government were wrapped up in the party of which I was a member, and that the only chance for pure and enlightened government was through the election of only Republicans to office.”

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 92-93.

[10] Ibid., 89.

[11] Ibid., 142, 146, 145.

[12] For a comprehensive account of Norris’s transformation from a partisan conservative to a progressive, see Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Making of a Progressive, 1961-1912 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1963).

[13] Hofstadter, 5-6. Some other historians deny that the “progressive movement” even existed; rather, it was an “ambiguous” and “inconsistent,” collection of disparate individuals, each with their own political and social agendas. Therefore the term “movement,” which implies coherent organization, could not apply. While this argument is not entirely untrue, it is simply a question of semantics. See Peter G. Filene, “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement’,” American Quarterly Vol. 22, Issue 1 (Spring 1970): 20-34.

[14] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 119. By fighting Cannonism, Norris hoped to “strengthen my party in its position in this country, and to free it from influences which in my eyes were lessening its usefulness and destroying its opportunities to be a party of service to the American people.” Ibid., 149.

[15] Ibid., 154.

[16] Ibid., 371. At the time Norris was convinced that the Republican Party could be cured of partisanship and corruption, an idea that he ultimately, and ruefully, abandoned.

[17] Ibid., 145.

[18] Hofstadter, 285. For a comprehensive account of Norris’s political activities during the 1920s, see Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Persistence of a Progressive, 1913-1933 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971).

[19] Another of Norris’s achievements during the 1920s was his help in the exposure of the Teapot Dome scandal. See Lowitt, Persistence, 193-196; Norris, Fighting Liberal, 224-233.

[20] Ibid., 214.

[21] Ibid., 286-287.

[22] Arthur S. Link, “What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920’s?” The American Historical Review Vol. 64, Issue 4 (July 1959): 839-842.

[23] Norris, “Why I Cannot Support President Hoover for Re-Election,” box 2, folder 1, p. 1, George W. Norris MSS, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[24] Ibid., 5.

[25] Otis L. Graham Jr., An Encore for Reform: Old Progressives and the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 61-62.

[26] National Progressive League letterhead, box 2, folder 1, Norris MSS.

[27] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 368.

[28] Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Triumph of a Progressive, 1933-1944 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 9-10.

[29] Norris to Carl Marsh, April 8, 1933, Norris MSS; quoted in Lowitt, Triumph, 14.

[30] Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1938), 1:165; quoted in Roger Biles, A New Deal for the American People (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991), 46.

[31] Norris to Mrs. Bradstock, June 26, 1933, Norris MSS; quoted in Lowitt, Triumph, 14.

[32] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 371.

[33] Norris to N. P. Dodge, April 8, 1933, Norris MSS; quoted in Lowitt, Triumph, 13-14.

[34] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 371.

[35] Ibid., 368. Norris was, however, distressed by the prominent use of political patronage during the New Deal. For example, because of his close ties to Roosevelt during the 1932 campaign, he was solicited many times for patronage. He refused, explaining: “I would be charged at once by my enemies all over the United States with having made a corrupt deal with Governor Roosevelt and having supported him on his promise that he would put my friends into office, in case he was elected.” Norris to Oscar H. Fenstermacher, April 3, 1933, Norris MSS; quoted in Lowitt, Triumph, 30. In his autobiography, Norris wrote that the government’s “greatest efficiency will be attained only when Civil Service, or the merit system, is applied in genuine fashion to all employees of government… It will bring to political parties a new appreciation of political responsibility beyond the spoils involved in the reward of faithful party workers. Norris, Fighting Liberal, 368-369.

[36] Graham, 106. Other old progressive senators who the author believes were completely attuned to the New Deal were Edward P. Costigan, William G. McAdoo, and Joseph T. Robinson.

[37] Graham separates 168 old progressives into six categories: “consistently more radical than the New Deal” (5), “supported the New Deal” (40), “opposed to the New Deal” (60), “other” (10), “retreated from political concern” (10), and “no (or insufficient) data” (43). Ibid., 192-193.

[38] For many of the reasons why old progressives did not endorse the New Deal, see Graham, 27-100.

[39] Hofstadter, 319. Those old progressives who were in law – and there were many – were especially anxious about the experimental nature of the New Deal. Otis Graham writes that “the frequency of the criticism that the New Deal was intellectually incoherent hints that a sort of mental tidiness, a desire to think carefully and have the theory straight before acting, was common among men of the law and as much as anything else set them against the intellectually chaotic program of Franklin Roosevelt.” Graham, 58-59. This, obviously, did not apply to George Norris, who practiced law for twenty years and still became an ardent supporter of the New Deal.

[40] Ronald L. Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism: The Western Republican Senators and the New Deal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 105-106.

[41] Ibid., 66.

[42] Ibid., 73.

[43] Ibid., 101.

[44] Graham, 198, “Table 4, Party Affiliation.”

[45] Robert La Follette Jr. was, however, more openly critical of Roosevelt than Norris. In 1938, La Follette joined his brother in working to form a new political movement that would voice its concerns over Roosevelt’s controversial policies. The resulting organization, the National Progressives of America, was short-lived and unavailing. See Dolald R. McCoy, “The National Progressives of America, 1938,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 44, Issue 1 (June 1957): 75-93.

[46] Graham finds that, by a very slight margin, Democratic progressives were more likely to oppose than support the New Deal. Graham, 198, “Table 4, Party Affiliation.”

[47] For more detailed reasons why some old progressives saw in the New Deal a fulfillment of their progressive agendas, see Graham, 103-105.

[48] Norris to Conference of Progressives, September 11, 1936, box 5, Norris MSS; quoted in Graham, 104.

[49] Ibid., 107-111. Norris was also sympathetic to the cities, especially in his rhetoric concerning the positive effects of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration on urban areas and industry. Norris, Fighting Liberal, 248-249.

[50] Graham, 112-119.

[51] William Gibbs McAdoo, Crowded Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 44, 291; quoted in Graham, 113. Included in the ranks of the politically flexible are Finley Peter Dunne, Raymond B. Fosdick, Homer Folks, E. A. Ross, Mary Woolley, and Lillian Wald. It seems that Norris could also be categorized as politically flexible; indeed, his impassioned support for both the progressive movement and the New Deal bespeaks his comfort with “movement and change.”

[52] Quoted in Nevin E. Neal, “A Biography of Joseph T. Robinson” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oklahoma, 1958), 472; quoted in Graham, 117.

[53] Ibid., 118. Included in the ranks of the party loyalists are Josephus Daniels and J. Lionberger Davis.

[54] Graham, 113-114. Included in the ranks of “angry men” are Francis Joseph Henry, Judge Ben Lindsey, Peter Witt, Herbert Seely Bigelow, Harold Ickes, and George Norris.

[55] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 410.

[56] Franklin D. Roosevelt speech, McCook, Nebraska, September 28, 1932; quoted in Alfred Lief, Democracy’s Norris: The Biography of a Lonely Crusade (New York: Stackpole Sons, 1939), 399. Roosevelt was correct in calling Norris a “gentle knight”; unlike most of the other progressives classified as “angry men,” Norris was rarely, if ever, “openly pugnacious”; rather, he diverted his fighting spirit to more productive avenues, such as public policy and reform measures.

[57] Quoted in Lief, 439.

[58] Richard L. Neuberger and Stephen B. Kahn, Integrity: The Life of George W. Norris (New York: Vanguard, 1937), 359; quoted in Graham, 126.

[59] Norris, Fighting Liberal, with an introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 18.

[60] Norris found that the NRA placed too much power in the hands of large corporations at the expense of small businesses: “the small fellow is getting the worst of the deal and the big fellow is profiteering.” But he admitted that “to save our government and our civilization,” the industrial program must continue. Norris to Donald Reichberg, December 14, 1933, Norris MSS; Norris to Clarence M. Westbrook, June 5, 1933, Norris MSS; quoted in Lowitt, Triumph, 34, 13.

[61] Norris to A. Barnett, April 8, 1933, Norris MSS; quoted in Feinman, 61.

[62] Norris to Charles E. Franklin, April 12, 1935, Norris MSS; quoted in Feinman, 74.

[63] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 248. Norris’s interest in electricity extended to his involvement with the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). A natural development of the TVA, the REA extended an electrical infrastructure to rural areas nationwide. See Ibid., 318-327.

[64] Ibid., 161. Norris further accused the power trust of being “the greatest monopolistic corporation that has been organized for private for private greed.” Ibid., 160.

[65] Hiram Johnson to Hiram Johnson Jr., February 4, 1933, Hiram Johnson MSS, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; quoted in Feinman, 55.

[66] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 374-275. For more information on Norris’s struggle for “little TVAs,” see William E. Leuchtenburg, “Roosevelt, Norris and the ‘Seven Little TVAs’,” The Journal of Politics Vol. 14, Issue 3 (August 1952): 418-441.

[67] Johnson to Johnson Jr., April 2, 1938, Johnson MSS; quoted in Feinman, 141.

[68] Ibid., 7; Richard Lowitt illustrates that the relationship between Johnson and Norris was not outwardly bitter: “Lunching at the ‘progressive’ table in the Senate restaurant provided a daily respite that Norris enjoyed. For many years Senator Hiram Johnson was a favorable tablemate. This relationship continued even as the two began to drift apart in their views.” Lowitt, Triumph, 169.

[69] Norris wrote: “I cannot talk with some of the best friends I have in the Senate because they at once become angry, excited, and illogical if I dare to suggest that the President, in any given action, has not exceeded his constitutional right. I cannot make a move without incurring their animosity and hatred.” Lief, 526-527.

[70] This interesting episode in Norris’s political career is explained in detail in Norris, Fighting Liberal, 286-307. He was so incensed by his party’s actions that he contemplated an independent candidacy in 1930: “I had no desire to be the candidate of a party whose state and national leaders had undertaken to steal an election by imposing a dummy candidate bearing my name unknown to the people of Nebraska.” Ibid., 369.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Norris radio speech, September 18, 1936; quoted in Lowitt, Triumph, 152; Lowitt wrote: “As an independent candidate, Norris was wedded to the policies and programs not of the Democratic Party, whose patronage and partisanship he denounced, but of Franklin Roosevelt, whose New Deal offered rural America a chance for survival over the oppressive conditions afflicting it since World War I.” Ibid., 150.

[73] Franklin D. Roosevelt speech, McCook, Nebraska, September 28, 1932; quoted in Lief, 399.

[74] Norris speech, McCook, Nebraska, September 28, 1932; quoted in Lief, 398.

[75] Feinman, 111-112.

[76] Norris to editors and editorial associates of The Nation, May 21, 1936, Norris MSS; quoted in Feinman, 121.

[77] Johnson to Johnson Jr., February 6, 1937, Johnson MSS; quoted in Feinman, 123.

[78] For detailed accounts of Norris’s response to the Supreme Court reorganization, see Feinman, 123-124; Lowitt, Triumph, 186-191. Surprisingly, Norris mentions very little about the Court controversy in his autobiography.

[79] Hofstadter wrote: “At the core of the New Deal… was not a philosophy… but an attitude, suitable for practical politicians, administrators, and technicians, but uncongenial to the moralism that the Progressives had for the most part shared with their opponents.” Hofstadter, 325. It can be argued that Norris was a moralist – indeed, his dogged fights against power trusts and political corruption during the New Deal were reminiscent of the earlier “moral crusades” of the progressive movement – but because of his acceptance of change and compromise, he transcended the “absolutist” label.

[80] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 406.

[81] Ibid., 378.

[82] Edgar Kemler, one of the first writers to dispute the correlation between the progressive movement and the New Deal, wrote that Norris was among the few old progressives to “survive in a changing scope and declining morality and still stick to the cause,” and that Norris “has not permitted his outmoded prejudices to interfere with his faith in the moving front of the progressive struggle.” Edgar Kemler, The Deflation of American Ideals (Washington, DC, 1941), 81-82; quoted in Lowitt, 331.

[83] For a well-organized outline of Norris’s liberalism throughout his lifetime, see David Fellman, “The Liberalism of Senator Norris,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 40, Issue 1 (February 1946): 27-51.

[84] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 406.

[85] This view is comparable to Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s thesis in his The Cycles of American History – that is, the recurring struggle in American history between liberalism and conservatism, pragmatism and idealism. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).

[86] Graham, 125.

[87] Norris, Fighting Liberal, 410. Norris continues his glorification of liberalism: “It is indispensable to life as the pure air all around about… It is deathless – it marches forward – and it will continue to march after those who have carried its standards in past struggles are gone from this earth.”

[88] Ibid., 401-402.