Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia was a democrat who came from a family that had fallen on hard times in the early 1900s. In 1902, at the age of 15, he took over the family newspaper -- Winchester Evening Star -- and, through hard work and long hours, made the paper prosperous.
Then he purchased apple orchards and made that prosperous too. By 1930 75% of his crop was exported. Then, as a result of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the cost of exporting apples rose so much that Europeans stopped buying his product and he was forced so sell domestically to stay profitable. He had to pay his employees $1.00 per day, a drop from $2.50 per day in the 1920s when business was booming.
Byrd was among the opposition to FDRs programs because he believed in the free market system. He grew his company from the ground up because the economic environment created by Harding and Coolidge via tax cuts and by getting government out of the way was great for business.
Byrd was a major critic of the AAA, and when he approached FDR, FDR made Byrd look like it was Byrd who was the bad guy. FDR said, "I know what's the matter with Byrd, he's afraid you'll force him to pay more than ten cents for his apple pickers."
FDR put Byrd on the defense just like liberals today chant things like republicans don't care about the poor when they preach for tax cuts for the rich, or that republicans are prejudiced because they don't support affirmative action.
FDR was a great word twister. The truth was that it was FDR who was destroying the economy by making himself a totalitarian dictator. Yet people didn't see this at the time because FDR was such a great speaker, and people were mistakenly brainwashed into believing capitalism created the 1929 crash.
No comments:
Post a Comment