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 Father Charles Coughlin occupies both a strange and
a familiar place in American politics. Politically radical,
emotionally an almost instinctive democrat, he nevertheless
vented bigotry and irrationality with reflexive anger. Born
in Canada, he settled in 1926 as a parish priest in Royal
Oak, Michigan, outside Detroit. There his church, the Shrine
of the Little Flower, was menaced by the Klu Klux Klan. To
combat the Klan he began a series of radio sermons on
religious fredom and democracy. He was an immediate hit, and
by 1930 his weekly broadcasts drew as many as 40 million
listeners.
As his following grew, he became increasingly
political. Strongly and passionately egalitarian, deeply
suspicious of elites, a champion of what he saw as the
ordinary person's rights, Coughlin frequently and vigorously
attacked capitalism, communism, socialism and dictatorship
in the name of a vaguely defined "democracy." As the
depression worsened, he sharpened his attacks to include the
gold standard, Wall Street plutocrats, international
bankers, and American involvement in politics overseas.
When he attacked the wealthy elites and celebrated
the ordinary American his rhetoric had a great deal in
common with Franklin Roosevelt's. Roosevelt too had attacked
"money changers" and plutocrats, and praised the common
American as the source of the nation's strength. At first
Coughlin welcomed Roosevelt's administration and pledged his
support: the New Deal, he told his audience, was "Christ's
deal." But he quickly soured on the President, disgusted by
both the slow, compromised pace of New Deal reform and by
Roosevelt's unwillingness to involve Coughlin himself in
decision making. By 1935 he began attacking the New Deal
regularly as a tool of banking interests.
In 1936 he helped form the National Union for
Social Justice, which in turn helped form the National Union
Party. The Union Party ran North Dakota congressman William
Lemke for President in 1936. Coughlin pushed Lemke's
candidacy on the radio and through his newspaper, Social
Justice. But despite Coughlin's fervent support, and his
prediction that Lemke would receive nine million votes, only
900,000 Americans cast their ballots for Coughlin's party.
Roosevelt's popularity remained extremely high. The
experience, historian Alan Brinkley suggests, embittered
him. "President Roosevelt can be a dictator if he wants," he
commented on Lemke's defeat, and he vowed to abandon the
airwaves.
But he soon returned to the broadcast booth. From
then on Coughlin's sermons took on a nasty edge of
anti-semitism and lunatic conspiratorial thinking.
Increasingly, his talks combined harsh attacks on Roosevelt
as the tool of international Jewish bankers with praise for
Mussolini and Hitler. The now bitter and delusional tone of
his sermons alienated his larger audience, and though he
maintained a core of followers through his magazine,
Social Justice, his bishop ordered him, in 1940, to
cease all political activity.
The excerpt included here, a 1937 sermon entitled
"Twenty Years Ago," reflects much of what made him popular.
Coughlin began the speech in quiet tones, arguing that
twenty years ago, Americans entered World War I soley to
protect the investments of bankers and capitalists. He
lamented the sacrifice ordinary people's children had to
make to secure wealthy men's profits. As the excerpt shows,
his pleasant, intimate voice alternates between a clearly
North American accent and an odd, stagey sort of
semi-brogue, neither Irish nor Scottish but somewhere in
between. As the sermon goes on Coughlin grows increasingly
heated, finally beginning to rant by the end. He denounces
bankers for saddling ordinary citizens with debt, and
criticizes the New Deal for failing to "drive the money
changers from the temple" of democracy. He argues that
Congress has given up its constitutional power to regulate
money, and has allowed this power to pass into private
hands‹though what he means by this remains obscure. As
he becomes more passionate his arguments become less
precise, and exactly what he means by "democracy" receeds
even further from view. With a kind of free form outrage,
Coughlin attacks both the bond issues floated to finance
World War I and the 1937 "epidemic of sit-down strikes" as
part of the same generalized perversion of "democracy."
Coughlin's growing extremism, his increasing
determination to cast political problems in terms of
free-floating conspiracy, and his persistent attacks on a
popular president made many of his fellow Catholics nervous.
John Ryan, a Catholic priest himself, had long been active
as a social reformer and university educator. In September
of 1936, in a radio speech he describes here, he denounced
Coughlin for his "ugly, cowardly and flagrant" attacks on
FDR. Ryans' address provoked a host of letters, most of
which denouced Ryan himself as a Judas and a tool of "the
banking interests." A selection of the letters is included,
as is Ryan's response to the letters. Historian Alan
Brinkley argued that by 1936 Coughlin's supporters seemed to
be very different people. In 1934 and 1935, his supporters
"had exhibited a measure of realism, intelligence, and
independence; now they spoke with frenzied voices--bitter,
hostile, nearly irrational." A selection of the letters Ryan
received included here reflects the character of Coughlin's
support, and the capitulation to hatred that led to his
political decline.
The "Radio Priest's" relentless anti elitism pushed
Roosevelt to sharpen his own critiques of elites. But
Coughlin's complete failure to articulate precisely what he
meant by "democracy," combined with his willingness to
substitue bigotry, passion and delusion for rational
critique, doomed his movement to disappearance.
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A: "Oh you Poor Laborers and Farmers:" Charles
Coughlin Speaks to the Nation (1937)
In this excerpt Coughlin denounces private bankers for
controlling the money supply, and depicts the New Deal and
the Federal Reserve as tools of those banking interests. It
also expresses his frustration that though "we have tried to
tell you" again and again about the dangers of a privately
regulated money supply, no one seems to be listening. Note:
he is not giving the speech which you hear in that
particular film clip you see.
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