In a random search for interesting newspaper reports about the Austrian economist Gottfried Haberler during his early years on the Harvard faculty, I came upon a report of a Spanish Civil War rally held at Harvard featuring the Montana one-term Congressional democrat, Jerry O’Connell, that had taken place on March 27, 1938 in Emerson Hall. The U.S. Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker reported that a number of Harvard faculty members signed a petition to support an anti-fascist amendment to U.S. neutrality legislation of the time. They included the economists:
Gottfried Haberler
Alvin Hansen
Wassily Leontief
Edward Mason.
The amendment would have prohibited commerce with aggressor nations [Germany and Italy] and have opened American markets to the victims of aggression [the Loyalist Republicans].
This naturally leads to questions as to why these economists took a side and why other senior colleagues did not? I presume lower ranks of the faculty (instructor-tutors) also signed the petition, but all my casual research has uncovered is found in the article transcribed below.
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Backstory of the O’Connor Peace Bill
In March 1938 Representative Jerry O’Connell introduced a House resolution to amend the existing neutrality legislation, including the Spanish embargo. Sam McReynolds, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, initially agreed to hearings before finally refusing. James Roosevelt claimed that the hearings were stopped by the State Department to avoid public discussion of the Spanish embargo. On 24 March Breckinridge Long, employed as a lobbyist by pro-Loyalists, visited Roosevelt to argue in favor of repealing the embargo. FDR, sympathetic but noncommittal, suggested that Long talk to Hull. A week later Hull told Long that the embargo might be lifted if fascist intervention could be proved: ‘‘Hull said he would reconsider if he received sufficient factual information about Italo-German invasion in Spain—so sufficient to justify a change of policy so the president could revoke the Proclamation of Neutrality and embargo of war implements. The Spanish Ambassador today furnished him with substantial proof of alleged ‘invasion’ of Spain. Whether that is sufficient remains to be seen.’’
Long did secure a promise that the embargo issue would be placed before the president. But on 10 April Long thought that no change of policy was likely, primarily because the Loyalists looked close to military collapse. Late March was also the height of the fight in Congress over reorganizing executive agencies, and FDR was particularly reluctant at this time to engage in a violent political quarrel to lift the embargo. On 5 April Byron Scott introduced a House resolution to repeal the Spanish embargo, but this effort also failed. Hull, who favored wider neutrality reform but not the repeal of the Spanish embargo, telegraphed the U.S. embassy in Spain in early April to state that repeal was ‘‘not in prospect.’’ But a few weeks later Roosevelt was told that Senator Key Pittman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, might act on the Spanish question. On 2 May Senator Gerald Nye introduced a resolution to allow arms sales to Loyalist Spain.
… there is little evidence that Roosevelt sought to lift the Spanish embargo in the spring or summer of 1938.
Source: Dominic Tierney. FDR and the Spanish Civil War Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America, Chapter 7: Covert Aid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 92-94.
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46 Harvard Faculty Members
Back O’Connell Peace Bill
16 Professors Among Signers of Petition
Montana Representative Main Speaker at Peace Rally in Cambridge
— Points to Danger From Reactionaries in U.S.
(Special to the Daily Worker)
BOSTON, Mass., March 27. —A group of 16 prominent Harvard professors in addition to 30 other members of the university faculty presented a petition supporting the O’Connell Peace Bill, yesterday afternoon to Representative Jerry O’Connell of Montana on the occasion of his address at a peace rally of undergraduates in Emerson Hall.
The professors who signed the petition for the Act, which would empower the President to name the aggressor nation in case of war, and apply economic sanctions against that aggressor, were:
Professors:
Arthur Holcombe—Government
Ralph Burton Perry—Philosophy
David Prall—Philosophy
Walter B. Cannon—Harvard Medical School
Hassler Whitney—Mathematics
Gordon Allport—Psychology
Gottfried Haberler—Economics
Alvin Hansen—Economics
Wassily Leontieff—Economics
Edward Mason—Economics
Kenneth Murdock—English
H. L. Blumgart—Harvard Medical School
T. Morrison—English
C. L. Kuhn—Fine Arts
Ernest Simmons—English
W. C. Greene—Classics
Speaks on Fascist Danger
In his address, Rep. O’Connell stressed the recent unparalleled spread of fascism through Europe. He pointed out the danger to American democracy from certain reactionary business interests in this country. O’Connell traced the recent development of collective security sentiment in the country and in Congress. After drawing a vivid picture of Loyalist Spain under the bombs of fascism, O’Connell urged his audience to write letters to the House Foreign Affairs Committee urging immediate consideration and passage of his Peace Act. “To keep America out of war,” he said, “keep war out of the world.”
The meeting was sponsored jointly by the Harvard Student Union (local A.S.U, chapter), the American League for Peace and Democracy, and the Cambridge Teachers’ Union.
The petition read: “We wholeheartedly support the proposed O’Connell amendment to the Neutrality Act. This amendment would prohibit commerce with aggressor nations and open American markets to the victims of aggression.”
Source: Daily Worker (New York), March 28, 1938, p. 4.
Image Source: Harvard Class Album, 1942.