Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience

Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987

Walter A. Jackson

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780807844601, 9780807819111
• eBook ISBN: 9781469620602
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) influenced the attitudes of a generation of Americans on the race issue and established Myrdal as a major critic of American politics and culture. Walter Jackson explores how the Swedish Social Democratic scholar, policymaker, and activist came to shape a consensus on one of America’s most explosive public issues.

1
Finding a Tocqueville

Although fundamental changes in the economic, social, and political status of blacks occurred in the 1930s, American elites were only vaguely aware of these developments. The poverty of Afro-Americans in the South, the continued migration of blacks to the North, and the high rates of black unemployment in all parts of the country rarely made the headlines. While the Scottsboro case and the fight for an antilynching bill were reported in the national press, most white leaders in business, education, and the professions remained ignorant of the growth of a more militant political movement among Afro-Americans and the radicalization of a generation of black intellectuals. The planning structure of the New Deal ignored blacks for the most part, and few economists studied the dynamics of racial discrimination or offered policy suggestions for combating black unemployment.

During the first three decades of the century, American philanthropic foundations had come to playa significant role as planning agencies, undertaking studies of subjects that neither government nor corporations chose to support. These large, tax-exempt foundations constituted a new sphere of private power, and Americans debated the issue of whose interest the foundations served.¹ Though these philanthropic organizations sought to bring expert opinion to bear on social problems in the 1930s, most of them remained locked into the assumptions of an earlier era with respect to black-white relations. Several of the foundations had invested substantial sums in a complex strategy of improving southern black education within the separate and unequal framework of segregation. Though the foundations gave significant resources for the education of black southerners, their policies often helped to perpetuate the system of racial inequality.² In their conceptualization of black education, moreover, many foundation officials in the 1930s retained traces of an imperial mentality and perceived a similarity between the education of Afro-Americans in the South and the education and development of colonial peoples in Africa and Asia. As the president and one of the trustees of the Carnegie Corporation grew concerned about America’s “Negro problem” in the middle and late 1930s, they were caught between a desire to draw upon expert knowledge to plan for a more just future for blacks and impulses deeply rooted in the racism of the nation’s past.

Frederick Keppel and the Carnegie Corporation

The institution that would bring Gunnar Myrdal to the United States was the creation of one of America’s most flamboyant and inventive millionaires. Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland in 1835, had immigrated to the United States as a boy and had risen to become the master of the steel industry and one of the world’s wealthiest men. In 1889, Carnegie had shocked his fellow millionaires by declaring that it was a disgrace to die rich. According to Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth, it was the duty of the rich man, after providing moderately for himself and his family, to distribute the bulk of his fortune during his own lifetime for the public good. He should “consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds which he is called upon to administer. . .—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.”³ Carnegie threw himself into the task of distributing his wealth with the same flair and determination that he had brought to the business world. He built libraries and supported programs for adult education, provided churches with organs and cities with music halls, endowed scientific research institutes, and supported a pension plan for college teachers.

Carnegie also thrust himself into the arena of international diplomacy and attempted to mediate between the German kaiser and the British government in 1907. He was strongly interested in the arbitration of international conflict, and he gave the money for the construction of the Peace Palace at The Hague.⁴ An enthusiastic champion of American institutions, Carnegie sought to encourage his native Britain to adopt a republican form of government, even going so far as to propose that Britain and Canada should become part of a Reunited States, with the capital in Washington, as part of a grand design of “race imperialism” based on his belief in the superiority of the English-speaking peoples.⁵

By the age of seventy-five, however, Carnegie had tired of his efforts to supervise personally the distribution of his wealth. He was besieged by applicants and found it difficult to apply a consistent doctrine of “scientific philanthropy.” Although he had given away $180 million, he had nearly as much left and found himself in danger of dying rich and thus disgraced. His lawyer Elihu Root suggested that Carnegie create a foundation and assign most of his remaining wealth to it. Carnegie did this in November 1911 by establishing the Carnegie Corporation of New York “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge.” He gave it an endowment of $125 million, making it the largest philanthropic organization in the world. Although Carnegie had championed many causes, he decided not to limit his trustees to any narrow set of concerns. Writing with the reformed spelling with which he hoped to modernize the English language, Carnegie explained his purpose to his trustees:

My desire is that the work which I hav been carrying on, or similar beneficial work, shall continue during this and future generations. Conditions upon the erth inevitably change; hence no wise man will bind Trustees forever to certain paths, causes or institutions. I disclaim any intention of doing so. On the contrary, I giv my Trustees full authority to change policy or causes hitherto aided, from time to time, when this, in their opinion, has become necessary or desirable. They shall best conform to my wishes by using their own judgment. . . . My chief happiness as I write these lines lies in the thot that, even after I pass away, the welth that came to me to administer as a sacred trust for the good of my fellow men is to continue to benefit humanity for generations untold, under your devoted and sympathetic guidance and that of your successors, who cannot fail to be able and good men.⁶

The board of trustees consisted of the presidents of the five smaller, more specialized foundations which Carnegie had previously established as well as his three secretaries. Carnegie himself served as the first president of the corporation and ran it from his home at 2 East Ninety-first Street in Manhattan until he became ill in 1915. He remained titular president until his death in 1919 and was succeeded by James R. Angell, who resigned in 1921 to become president of Yale University⁷

The task of shaping the Carnegie Corporation as a modern American institution fell to Frederick P. Keppel, who was president of the foundation from 1923 to 1941. A man who moved easily in academic, philanthropic, and corporate circles, Keppel assumed the presidency of the corporation after holding a variety of administrative posts. Born on Staten Island in 1875, he was the son of an Anglo-Irish immigrant who had established a prosperous business as an art dealer in New York. Keppel attended public schools in Yonkers and worked in his father’s firm before enrolling in Columbia University, from which he received an undergraduate degree. After working for the publishing company of Harper & Brothers, he became a university administrator and served as dean of Columbia College from 1910 to 1917. During the First World War, Keppel was appointed assistant secretary of war under Newton D. Baker, with whom he formed a close friendship. In the War Department, Keppel was responsible for dealing with problems of morale, vocational education, and recreation. After the war, he was director of foreign operations for the American Red Cross and served as the American representative of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. Keppel returned to the United States in 1922 and was briefly secretary of the Plan of New York before his election as president of the Carnegie Corporation. He was married to Helen Tracy Brown, a niece of Mrs. J. P. Morgan, and they lived in Montrose, New York, in northern Westchester County.⁸

During the 1920s, Keppel eased the foundation out from under the shadow of its famous donor and established it as an independent institution. While Andrew Carnegie had been brash, opinionated, and eccentric, Keppel established a reputation for moderation, learning, and tact. Several of Carnegie’s enthusiasms lived on under Keppel’s regime. Adult education and the arts were major passions for both men. Aiding education in the British Empire and Dominions remained a charter obligation, though Keppel’s deferential consultations with British officials replaced Carnegie’s personal ventures in international arbitration. When Keppel assumed the presidency, a sizable proportion of the corporation’s funds had already been committed to several large projects, a situation that would limit Keppel’s flexibility throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.⁹

With patience and diplomacy, Keppel gradually wrested control of the foundation from the trustees who had been close associates of Andrew Carnegie. Keppel had inherited an anomalous situation in which the majority of the trustees were presidents of the smaller Carnegie foundations that applied to the corporation for additional funds. He was forced to deal with these people both as grantees and as bosses. But a charter reform at the time Keppel took office provided that the board should be enlarged and that a majority of the trustees should be persons who were not officers of other Carnegie foundations. Keppel gradually added to the board leading businessmen, lawyers, and university presidents whom he knew personally. In this way the Carnegie board gained such members as Newton Baker, Wall Street lawyer Nicholas Kelly, and AT&T vice-president Arthur W. Page. The board members closest to Keppel were lawyer Henry James, the son of the philosopher William James, and Russell Leffingwell, Keppel’s boyhood friend and a partner of J. P. Morgan & Co. Keppel thus transformed the Carnegie board from a parochial group that had formed around an industrial magnate to a cross section of the American establishment. The change of trustees also allowed Keppel the freedom to develop a more active role for the foundation.¹⁰

Keppel became an articulate spokesman for the foundation through his books, lectures, and annual reports. He saw the foundation as an agent of innovation, which should identify neglected areas of research, initiate experimental programs, and move into areas of public concern where governments and industry could not act. In order to allow for flexibility in foundation policies, he sought to prevent the foundation from committing its resources to long-term projects. Instead, he believed that the foundation should continually change the emphasis of its programs, responding to new ideas and new opportunities in society. Keppel argued that the foundation should not interfere with the research of grantees nor should it use conditional grants to force policy changes in recipient institutions. He differed from other “philanthropoids” of his day in his skepticism that philanthropy, social science, or public policy could be made exact sciences.¹¹

A major theme of Keppel’s administration was the importance of the foundation supporting the exceptional individual. He believed that the foundation should actively look for scholars to undertake research projects that it thought valuable, and he was fond of quoting Andrew Carnegie’s maxim: “Find the exceptional man and, having found him, give him a free hand.”¹² For Keppel, nurturing the research of exceptional men took precedence over building institutions. One of his favorite stories involved a conversation he had allegedly overheard at the Century Club between two university presidents who had come to New York seeking foundation money. One advised the other: “If you want to build a racetrack, go to Rockefeller. But if you want to buy a racehorse, go to Carnegie.”¹³

Keppel sought to keep a certain distance between the foundation and the federal government. He had never been active in party politics, and as foundation president, he assumed a stance of nonpartisanship and a diplomatic caution in discussing controversial issues. His political attitudes had been formed at the turn of the century, and like many progressives, he believed that most men of good will could agree on what constitutes the public interest. He assumed that there was an underlying harmony of interests in the polity, rather than fundamental conflict, and he believed one of the key functions of the foundation to be facilitating education and communication among different groups. Keppel’s experience in Washington during the First World War had strengthened his sense of vocation as a public servant but had not left him with a thirst for political power. Instead, he came out of the experience with an abiding distrust of the federal government and of large bureaucracies in general. He acknowledged the need for planning and the coordination of efforts to solve problems, but his speeches stressed the importance of voluntarism, public-spiritedness, and an informed citizenry. Like most foundation officials of his day, Keppel assumed that elites, working through private foundations, could act on behalf of the public interest. He was not an active social reformer, and he never publicly challenged corporate power. Although Keppel voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936, his relations with the New Deal were not close, and he was privately critical of the extent of the expansion of the federal government under the New Deal. Keppel strove to live up to his ideal of the disinterested public servant and saw his role as that of a steward of a great public trust. Serving the public interest meant, for Keppel, that the foundation should innovate but should not stray too far from the mainstream of American politics.¹⁴

Informality was the hallmark of Keppel’s administration of the Carnegie Corporation. He prided himself on conducting foundation business with a personal touch, and he ran the foundation as a one-man show, receiving a large number of grant applicants in his office. His associates praised his “buoyancy of spirit,” “vivacity,” and zest for meeting people, hearing new ideas, and launching new projects.¹⁵ While the Rockefeller Foundation expanded into a large bureaucracy with staffs specializing in medicine, social science, education, and other fields, Keppel employed only a small staff.¹⁶ He worked intuitively in developing foundation programs, and his erratic personal style was something of an anomaly in an age of increasing specialization and bureacratization. His assistant John M. Russell remarked that “FPK never approached a problem in a conventional way. His way was original, and hence interesting and creative.” Russell observed that “it was sometimes difficult for the legal or academic person to appreciate him fully,” because Keppel “had too much of t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Finding a Tocqueville
• 2 Social Engineering and Prophylactic Reform
• 3 Encountering the “Negro Problem”
• 4 My War Work
• 5 An American Dilemma: The Text
• 6 The Study to End All Studies
• 7 The Rise and Fall of a Liberal Orthodoxy
• 8 Dreamer, Planner, and Fighter
• Notes
• Essay on Sources
• Index