Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,428

This is the grave of Herbert Croly.

Born in 1869 in New York to a family of prominent journalists–both mom and dad were well known–it was almost predestined that this is where young Herbert would end up. His mother Jane–who wrote as “Jenny June” was a famous reporter on women’s issues (she pretty much wasn’t allowed to write about other issues) for the Times and other big time publications. His father David was also famous and a long time Times reporter, though he also was a racebaiter and big time hater of the Lincoln administration. In any case, Herbert and his siblings grew up wealthy. He went to City College for a year and then transferred to Harvard. His father was a real pain and tried to control his son’s education like those parents today who forbid their students from being anything but a STEM or business major. In this case, David was a follower of Comte and hated everything else, so he interfered when his philosophy loving son wanted to take courses on other types of philosophy. In any case, the old man died in 1889. Herbert never did graduate from Harvard though, despite floating in and out of the university for years.

Well, he did fine. He was cagey about what he did after leaving Harvard and no one actually knows today, but he probably went to Paris briefly before coming back to New York. He got a job at Architectural Record and was involved in the art world. He vacationed frequently at the Cornish Art Colony in New Hampshire and while there and talking to his intellectual world friends such as the architect Charles Platt and the judge Learned Hand (still remains perhaps the greatest name in American history), he came upon an idea for a political project.

This became The Promise of American Life, which was a big sensation when published in 1909. It was a major statement of the Progressive Movement, one that argued for an active government in American life. It was overtly pro-union (which many Progressives really were not) and it pushed for economic planning. In short, it was one of the key books laying the bridge between the early Progressives and their emphasis on voluntarism and individual work for good and the New Deal’s big planning mentality. In short, he wanted Americans, and especially the middle and upper class Americans who were his readers, to understand that their ideas about the individualistic America they cherished had been completely washed away by the forces of industrial capitalism. Thus, planning and unions were not only good for the poor, they were good for the rich too, for they would create a functional modern society that would lead America to its next stage of greatness. He wasn’t a dystopian on individualism. He still believed that the individual had a big role to play through choosing to be involved in the struggle to improve the nation. This certainly separated him out, from say, the Communist Party as it developed under Stalin’s authority in Moscow. The book was attacked by a lot of people–especially those who really valued individualism and hated anything that smacked of socialism. On the other hand, Theodore Roosevelt, who had just left the presidency, gave it a very positive review. Even if Roosevelt didn’t agree with everything in it, the big ideas made a lot of sense to him.

Well, The Promise of American Life made Croly a leading national figure. He still needed money and wrote a hack biography of the Gilded Age conservative and kingmaker Mark Hanna because he got paid by Hanna’s son. I think Croly was somewhat embarrassed by this but you do what you have to do. In any case, when Roosevelt ran with his Bull Moose Party against Taft in 1912, he probably took his “New Nationalism” term from Croly; they were friends by this time in any case. Of course Wilson won that election so Croly didn’t have a front door to the presidency, but he was now a very influential figure. He moved to Washington and started writing Progressive Democracy, which was published in 1915 and which picked up on the themes of The Promise of American Life. One of his big insights here is that the Constitution had to be a “living Constitution,” not something from the deep past that had nothing to say to the modern world. This has of course outraged conservatives from then until now, with Alito and Thomas and Scalia and other terrible justices seeking to repeal Croly’s world entirely. The book attacked Wilson’s belief in the individual and stated that a reform minded nation with an emphasis on bigness was the key to the future. Croly certainly had no problem with big corporations, another way he was a huge influence on the New Deal. After all, the goal of New Dealers was not to break up Ford, it was to bring unions to Ford.

Croly also started The New Republic in these years. The reason was pretty straightforward–he hated Harper’s. He though that magazine was just wrong about everything and that reformers needed a voice that promoted his ideas instead. So that became one of the standard magazines of American liberalism, at least until the odious Martin Peretz took it over many decades later. Croly co-founded it with Walter Lippmann and Walter Weyl. Croly came around to Wilson over foreign policy–in fact, he and TR totally broke in 1914 over this–and supported World War I until sometime in 1918 when he finally turned on Wilson again.

The postwar period was a disaster for the magazine and it is surprising it survived. The Spanish flu epidemic wiped out some of its leaders, including Willard Straight, who funded it, and Randolph Bourne, one of its leading writers. Weyl died soon after, only 46 years old. He and Lippmann ended up breaking over different interpretations of the Treaty of Versailles. The magazine went bankrupt in 1924, but managed to keep publishing. Meanwhile, the 20s attacks on unions were devastating to Croly, who thought the nation had completely turned its back on all the progress it had made in the 1900s and 1910s. He wasn’t totally wrong about that either. Croly became tremendously depressed. His faith in democracy declined as the nation turned on the Progressive Era. He stopped believing that the federal government could make positive change.

Then in 1928, Croly had a massive stroke. He never fully recovered and died in 1930, only 61 years old. It is very interesting to wonder what would have happened with Croly had he remained healthy into the Roosevelt administration. One has to think he would have regained the faith given how influenced so many New Dealers were by his ideas. But who knows.

Herbert Croly is buried in Gilkey Cemetery, Plainfield, New Hampshire.

If you would like this series to visit other people associated with The New Republic, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Unfortunately, Martin Perez lives. But Gilbert Harrison, who unfortunately sold the magazine to Peretz in 1974, is in Chicago and Randolph Bourne is in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.