Juan Trippe's New Deal

CXXIII

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the second Roosevelt to occupy the White House,  was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. He promised America a “New Deal” and he delivered, obtaining passage of hundreds of pieces of economic and social legislation within the first 100 days of his first Administration.  After 1933, the date of all future Presidential inaugurations was shifted to January 20th in order to let the President-Elect get a head start on issues confronting the nation. FDR is the only President to be elected to as Chief Executive four times

The laissez-faire “Republican Decade” that began with the 1920 election of Warren G. Harding to the Presidency, a man who promised a “return to normalcy” after the massive disruptions and vast government expansion of the World War I years, ended in economic disaster in 1933. The Crash of ’29 had ushered in the Great Depression and had undone virtually all of the economic gains America had made since the war years. By 1932, only the wealthiest Americans were not feeling the crushing weight of the Great Depression, but even most of them had watched their fortunes contract if not vanish. 

“The Republican Decade”: President Warren G. Harding served from 1921-1923. His post-World War I motto was “Back to Normalcy.” His scandal-ridden Presidency saw the onset of Prohibition and the start of the Roaring Twenties

President J. Calvin Coolidge served from 1923-1929. “Silent Cal” rarely said anything, but one of his most famous quotes was, “The business of America is business”

President Herbert C. Hoover served from 1929-1933. Although by far the most competent and experienced of the Republican Decade Presidents, Hoover watched with seeming disinterest as the national economy collapsed after the Crash of 1929. In truth, he did encourage Congress to pass remedial legislation but he presumed that the free market would eventually right itself with minimal government intervention. It didn’t

During the Great Depression homeless and unemployed people lived in abject poverty in bitterly-nicknamed “Hoovervilles” often in the shadow of working if underused factories. This Hooverville was in Seattle. Note the smoke rising from the smokestack in the background

At the same time that many urban Americans were reduced to living in Hoovervilles, rural Americans faced the collapse of their farm economies. Poor soil conservation practices led to vast swaths of the rich topsoil of the heartland being blown away by the Great Plains winds. The Dust Bowl destroyed many lives, both economically and physically. Many people died simply from having their lungs fill with flying dirt

The grand irony of the Great Depression was that the billboard was correct and that the endless line of people waiting for a bowl of soup existed nonetheless. This all-black segregated line was not an uncommon sight. Black unemployment during the Great Depression soared to well over 50%, and New Deal programs in the South were initially closed to blacks; only when FDR threatened to cut services to the white South were New Deal  programs made available to African Americans

Desperation drove Americans to otherwise-unthinkable lengths

Florence Owens Thompson, the mother in this famous photograph, was only 32 when the picture was taken. She had seven children. Her family had fled Dust Bowl-shattered Oklahoma for the supposedly more lush pastures of California where work was not so readily available and wages were unlivably low. Many of the migrant "Okies" starved to death amidst plenty on the Pacific Coast

Herbert Hoover, who had done so much to put America on a war footing in 1917 as head of the U.S Food Administration found himself elevated to Secretary of Commerce in 1928. However, his experience as Commerce Secretary during a period of affluence did not help him when he became President in 1929. The next Presidential election cycle saw Americans desperate for a new deal, and a New Deal was what Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered them. 

Juan Trippe had little use for FDR, and indeed had little use for a New Deal. He was wealthy. His Eastern Establishment Republican friends were wealthy. His business, relying mostly on affluent private passengers and corporate travelers, was not only thriving, it was expanding.

(Top) In 1932, many places in America saw families were living in shacks, abandoning ruined and foreclosed farms, and selling their children so that adults could survive and little ones get a meal from the kindly strangers who might take them in, but Pan American’s passengers were clearly not of that ilk. Income inequality made the well-off unaware of the widespread suffering of average Americans. The rich often seemed callous. Calls for social justice were becoming insistent in this year, the worst of the Depression (Bottom) The exterior of an S-42, the type of flying boat being used by Pan Am's passengers in 1932

It may seem ironic to 21^st Century Americans, but what Trippe and his Republican friends feared most from a Democratic Administration was de-regulation of the airlines. The last thing Juan Trippe wanted was the overturning of the complex aviation regulations he had written or had had written for Harding and Coolidge and Hoover and their replacement with free market rules that would allow upstart airlines to chew away at Pan American Airways’ own monopolistic hold on U.S. foreign air routes. 

Trippe, unlike some of his country club cronies, wasn’t truly stupid or cold-hearted. The poorest boy in the richest circles, he inherently understood that average Americans were going to vote for what he and his friends privately derided as “socialism.” He knew he would have to take steps to offset or at least cushion the blow that the New Deal might strike against Pan Am. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney was Juan Trippe’s best pal for a while. He had interests in aviation, mining, horseracing and moviemaking (he funded the making of Gone With The Wind ) among other interests. He was also noted for his philanthropy and his humanitarianism. Ultimately, political and business differences drove a wedge between Trippe and C.V.  

Trippe’s first move on the political chessboard was to encourage his friend and fellow Pan Am Board member and CEO Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, to run for public office as a Democrat from his home district of Roslyn, New York. 

It was a close race. Although the scion of Republican parents, Sonny had unusual Democratic bona fides; when he had first gone to work for his father, Harry Payne Whitney, Harry had put him to work in the mines. Although he was only a “supervisor” of sorts and the “owner’s son,” Sonny was deeply affected by the harsh conditions in which men labored beneath the earth. In his father’s employ, he advocated for better working conditions and more pay for the men. When he founded the Hudson’s Bay Mining Company in 1931, he did not discourage unionization. Sonny was, ultimately, a popular, if losing, candidate in 1932, claiming 48 percent of the vote. His neighbor, Robert L. Bacon won with 51 percent. FDR was thankful, and always made time for Sonny thereafter.  

As soon as Roosevelt’s victory was declared, Juan published an announcement in the major papers: Pan American Airways has been a friend to all Administrations and a favorite to none.

And though it might have galled him privately, after the inauguration Trippe traveled to Washington to pay his respects to the President in person. He effusively referred to the President as the “godfather” of Pan Am, reminding Roosevelt that had FDR not smoothed the path for Juan to enter the Naval Aviator Corps in 1917, Pan Am might never have been born.  

The President saw these initial efforts at cooperation as metaphorical Peace Pipes from the staunchly Republican Trippe, and he smoked them graciously.

He accepted Trippe’s carefully-drafted plan for a Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) which became part of the New Deal’s “alphabet soup.” Trippe chaired its initial meetings and presented its first finding of fact. 

Despite these positive beginnings, the relationship between the Roosevelt Administration and Pan American was to be fraught with tension. Much of the tension was due to Trippe’s own attitudes. He had never thrived, as politicians did, on compromise; rather, Juan bulled and bullied to obtain what he wanted exclusively on his own terms. He also thoughtlessly cast the Democrats as villains in his own mind, presuming in every interaction that he was fencing with an enemy. 

One of the more subtle but real (if seemingly absurd) difficulties faced by Juan Trippe as a result of the regime change in Washington in 1933 was the very real rivalry and distrust evinced by Harvard and Yale men each against the other. Although graduates of the two institutions had far more in common than not, the Crimson Men of Harvard (who made up the mass of the New Dealers including the President) held the Old Blue Boys of Yale (who made up the vast majority of Pan American’s upper echelons) in sneering contempt --- and vice-versa. Cooperation was a rarity between them largely because each prefaced every interaction with the question, “What slimy thing does he have up his sleeve?” As the following partner in this uneasy courtship dance, Juan felt the imbalance most keenly. 

  

To counteract what Trippe expected to be an unfriendly New Deal attitude toward Pan Am’s role as the de facto U.S. flag air carrier, Juan hired a Pan Am Washington lobbyist. It was in so doing that Trippe showed himself to be a political babe in the woods, especially compared to the especially savvy Roosevelt, and his crude efforts at influencing U.S. aviation policy ultimately impacted Pan American’s future in a most negative way. 

Robert Walton “Cuz” Moore, FDR’s Assistant Secretary of State, cocktail hour buddy, and cousin

Although Sonny Vanderbilt already had an open door to the Oval Office, Trippe persuaded R. Walton Moore, an Assistant Secretary of State, to help promote Pan Am’s interests within the White House walls. Moore and Roosevelt were relatives, and jocularly referred to one another as “Cuz.” 

Soon FDR found himself being visited far too often by Sonny Vanderbilt and “Cuz” Moore, both of whom routinely importuned his ears with Pan American Airways matters.  Juan Trippe also began and continued an ongoing and mostly one-way correspondence with Roosevelt concerning Pan Am.

Given the fact that Roosevelt was busy horsetrading with Congress to pass the New Deal and was keeping a weather eye on dark political developments in Europe, he had little time to concern himself personally with the operations of a single airline. He began to consider Trippe a supremely irritating boor.

Roosevelt’s tenure was nothing like that of Calvin Coolidge’s. President Coolidge had routinely taken summers off, disappearing from Washington D.C. for up to four months at a time to go fishing in the South Dakota countryside. By and large, this was the tenor of “The Republican Decade” as a whole, with government functioning autonomically.   

Elected at the nadir of an American economic disaster, Roosevelt had no choice but to be a hands-on President. And so he politely directed Sonny Vanderbilt and “Cuz” Moore to take their concerns to the Department of Commerce (certainly they would have gotten what they wanted having been sent by the President). Sonny got the hint and absented himself.

“Cuz” Moore continued however to visit Roosevelt’s office regularly, occasions during which the President began serving drinks and jawboning about family matters, pointedly ignoring the subject of Pan Am. 

Edward Reilly Stettinius Jr. was Roosevelt’s Secretary of State and Juan Trippe’s brother-in-law

Betty Trippe acted as Juan’s social conscience throughout their long marriage. Pan Am’s many instances of corporate humanitarianism were born out of the gentle heart of Mrs. Trippe (seen in this photo with Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, left, and Juan, right). During and after World War II she headed up many private Social Services groups and was active in public Social Work as well

Roosevelt’s ire was aroused finally when his own Cabinet officer,  Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. began broaching the subject of Pan American Airways. Stettinius was the brother of Elizabeth “Betty” Stettinius Trippe, Juan’s wife. Juan and Ed were close, and apparently Juan had decided to use his brother-in-law as yet another conduit to the President. FDR, laden with domestic and international matters ranging from the Hoover Dam to Hitler, had heard more than enough about Pan American Airways from Whitney, Moore, and Trippe himself, and now here was Trippe’s brother-in-law joining the chorus. “I don’t give a good goddamn about Pan Am!”  FDR exploded one afternoon at Stettinius. Edward left the President’s office horribly embarrassed. 

Whether Juan Trippe had intended to harangue the President incessantly with Pan American’s corporate propaganda (very unlikely) or whether he had just been obtuse and ham-handed in his approach to the new Administration (far more likely), FDR took an intense dislike to Trippe and to anything connected to his airline. 

The annoyed President eventually took steps to curb Pan American Airways’ influence in his Administration and in the air. He packed Trippe’s brainchild, the CAB with people unfriendly to Pan Am. He ordered an investigation of U.S. airmail contracts. Roosevelt told people that he wanted to promote healthy business competition, and by far the best way to do that was to pull in the reins on Pan American Airways and offer routes to other airlines. According to Roosevelt, Pan Am’s international monopoly was ultimately un-American. In a widely-quoted comment Roosevelt averred: Juan Trippe cannot have it all.   

When these words eventually reached his ears, Juan was outraged. He, typically, never saw himself as the ultimate author of FDR’s remarks; instead, he concluded that the Democrat in the White House really was the enemy.

It would be some time however before Roosevelt publicly disavowed Pan American. During the Great Depression and during most of World War II he needed the airline to do things for America that America chose not to do for itself.

Along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a rare man, one who was larger than the Presidency itself. A complex figure born of privilege but tempered by personal crisis, FDR was avuncular, sensitive, canny, ruthless, flexible and single-minded all at once.  The American people loved him: "FDR knows what kind of a sonofabitch my boss is," said one voter. Juan Trippe, on the other hand, was the type of sonofabitch the voter was referring to. The man who led the nation through the Great Depression and World War II considered Juan Trippe’s self-serving fixation of garnering advantage for Pan American Airways to the exclusion of all else to be rather obnoxious. Trippe, who often did not know when enough was truly enough, made an enemy out of FDR uneccessarily, much to Pan Am’s later misfortune