JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
In the pamphlet collection here there are hundreds if not thousands of odd publications printed int eh 1850-1945 period that have little bits and pieces of design elements--apart from their content--that make them irresistible.
The logo may be recognized by some of you--it belonged to the League for Independent Action (LIPA), which was a far-left organization that last for about eight years from 1928-1936 (the last two or three being moribund). LIPA had a number of pretty heavy hitters--or at least the United Action Campaign Committee of LIPA did. The chair of this and LIPA was John Dewy, and among the others involved with the group (it seems as though there were never more than 5,000 dues-paying members) were Charles Beard, Heywood Broun, Stewart Chase, Henry Pratt Fairchild, Fiorello LaGuardia (!), Reinold Niebuhr, and dozens of others.
The election of FDR in 1932 seems to have sunk their boat, though in reading this pamphlet a little Roosevelt really wasn't liberal enough for them--he did though attract a lot of their membership to the Democratic Party, and LIPA in short order shrank and drowned.
In fact, according to the pamphlet in which this logo was found, Roosevelt was more "a threat than a promise" to American life. And, then this: that the New Deal "if carried to its logical conclusion...will introduce Fascism into the United States". One part of this was the continued entitlements of the upper classes, "withholding the people from the blessing of security, leisure, and high living standards".
And: "In truth, what President Roosevelt has been doing in Washington...will [transform the old, individualistic laissez-faire] capitalism of yesterday into the controlled capitalism of Mussolini and Hitler".
I've seen these attacks on FDR before, but think not this early, not in the first year of his presidency.
I guess--given to the limited space given to this post--that it would be mostly fair to say that LIPA was a Socialist organization, at least, and the politics of the Roosevelt administration was not nearly Socialistic for them. There's much more in this pamphlet, but it will have to wait for another time.
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