A far less well-known movement of the 1930s was inspired by the gaunt self-styled guru Dr. Francis E. Townsend, who during the Depression proposed that retired citizens over the age of sixty be paid a monthly pension of $200, funded by sales taxes, which would free them from privation and fear. By putting more money into circulation and having more people able to spend it, he also hoped to stimulate a national economic recovery. Because the pension was to be offered to all retirees over sixty, it advanced “a democratic understanding of citizens’ entitlements,” Gordon writes, though its leaders “probably had little concern for elderly Black people or people of color in general.” Still, she is largely sympathetic toward the burgeoning movement, which soon included local dues-paying chapters with merchandise for sale, such as buttons, posters, and even busts of Dr. Townsend.
Gordon admits that the Townsend plan was impractical, unenforceable, and unrealistic. Its sales tax was regressive. Yet she argues that it helped inspire the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 and create the “senior citizen” voting bloc. She even wonders if the lack of scholarship on this movement is a form of ageism, which it may well be. But it’s also true that arguments for old-age pensions, as they were called, existed before the restless and, according to Gordon, audacious and idealistic Townsend took the national stage. (As early as 1912, for instance, the Progressive Party platform included old-age pensions, and in 1930 New York representative Fiorello La Guardia argued for them in Congress.) Still, Gordon appreciates the movement’s ability to bring political pressure to bear on the government and thereby to make Social Security—and old age itself—acceptable. And though Townsend soon allied with Father Coughlin, she adds that in 1948 he supported the Progressive Henry Wallace for president.
Despite their flaws, Gordon is partial to the other left-leaning social movements of the 1930s that tackled unemployment, which she identifies in a thicket of acronyms. There’s the CP (Communist Party), the SP (Socialist Party), and the UCL (Unemployed Citizens’ League). This last is notable because it engaged in “prefigurative politics” (italics hers), which she defines as the effort “to be a microcosm of an ideal democratic society and economy.” That is, the organization, through its rules and procedures, embodied the ideal society it was trying to create. Even better, the group also aimed to be a “participatory democracy” (italics hers), meaning that every member shared in decision-making, and in the case of the UCL its “members rather than professionals were dispensing relief” so as not to embarrass or humiliate anyone who might need financial help. There was also the CPLA (Conference for Progressive Labor Action), organized by the orator Abraham Johannes Muste, which soon became the NUL (National Unemployed League) before it turned into the American Workers Party, which emphasized patriotism and “appealed to native-born whites with conservative race and gender values.”