NOTES
ROBERT A. TAFT AND
PUBLIC HOUSING
1. Willard Shelton, "Portrait of a
Conservative," New Republic, April 4, 1949, p. 19.
2. William V. Shannon, "The
Politics of Stalemate," Commentary, XXVIII (1959),
373.
3. The Commonweal, LVIII (1953),
458.
4. Eric Goldman, The Crucial Decade
and After: America 1945-1960 (New York,
1960), 53-56. Walter Johnson's
interpretation of Taft, in his perceptive 1600 Pennsyl-
vania Avenue: Presidents and the
People, 1929-1959 (Boston, 1963), p.
227, coincides
with that of the author. Johnson says
that Taft's forthright statements on controver-
sial issues made him appear far more
conservative than he actually was. Johnson says:
"His following included those
old-stock Americans who had not taken well to the new
power of the unions and the minorities
in the big cities. Although he was not as dog-
matically conservative as most of his
supporters pictured him, nor to the degree the
Democrats and his Republican opponents,
including Governor Dewey, encouraged the
public to believe, his forthright
exposition of his views made him appear so." Taft's
biographer, William S. White, in The
Taft Story (New York, 1954), devotes a chapter
(pp. 41-52), to Taft's
"liberal" activities.
5. Most current texts used in courses in
American colleges and universities under-
standably treat Taft in a cursory manner
and attempt to synthesize his views on all
domestic and foreign matters into one or
two sentences. Only two texts discuss Taft's
housing activities: Arthur Link, American
Epoch (New York, 1959), 636, and David
A. Shannon, Twentieth Century America
(Chicago, 1963), 517. Two other texts do not
give specific examples but do say that
Taft cannot simply be understood by the term
"conservative." They are:
Perkins and Van Deusen, The United States of America:
A History (New York, 1962), II, 721, and Patrick, Owsley,
Chitwood, and Nixon, The
American People: A History Since 1865
(Princeton, N. J., 1962), II, 573. The
text by
Blum, Catton, Morgan, Schlesinger,
Stampp, and Woodward, The National Experience
(Boston, 1963), equates Taft with
Senator Barry Goldwater's views (p. 806), and
Hofstadter, Miller, and Aaron, The
Structure of American History (Englewood Cliffs,
N. J., 1964), p. 371, calls Taft
"ultra conservative." George H. Knowles in his The
New United States: A History Since
1896 (New York, 1959), p. 552, refers
to Taft
as "a staunchly conservative
Senator from Ohio." Most texts, however, simply identify
Taft's position by describing his major
political supporters and their views. They
simply assert that Taft derived his
major support from traditionalists who clung to a
laissez faire and isolationist position.
One popular text, for example, refers to Taft
as "the favorite candidate of the
conservative, nationalistic, and Asia-minded element
in the Republican Party." Hicks,
Mowry, and Burke, The American Nation (Boston,
1963), 751. Other important texts which
make this associational identification are:
Morison and Commager, The Growth of
the American Republic (New York, 1962);
Current, Williams, and Freidel, American
History: A Survey (New York, 1961); and
Carman, Syrett, and Wishy, A History
of the American People (New York, 1961).
6. Elmo Roper, You and Your Leaders:
Their Actions and Your Reactions, 1936-1956
(New York, 1957), 190-191.
7. U. S. Senate, 79 cong., 1 sess.,
Special Committee on Post-War Economic Policy
and Planning, Hearings Before the
Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Redevelop-
ment (Washington, 1945), 1606-1608.
8. Paul F. Wendt, Housing Policy: The
Search for Solutions (Berkeley, Calif., 1963),
148-152.
9. William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin
D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940
(New York, 1963), 134-136.
10. New York Times, March 19,
1947.
11. Toward Unity in Post-War Housing (Washington,
1945), 11-14.
12. Congressional Record, 79
cong., 1 sess., 10652-10653.
13. Ibid., 81 cong., 1 sess.,
4843.
14. Ibid., 79 cong., 1 sess.,
10652-10653.
15. Ibid., 77 cong., 2 sess.,
1596.
16. Richard O. Davies, "The Truman
Housing Program" (unpublished Ph.D. disser-
tation, University of Missouri, 1963), 16-27.
17. Congressional Record, 79
cong., 1 sess., 8248.
18. The creation of the subcommittee
resulted directly from congressional action
which killed the National Resources Planning Board, a
liberal-oriented advisory body.
The 1943 NRPB Report called for
extensive study of post-war housing. The anti-
Roosevelt coalition decided to strip the
president of this advisory body to help prevent