American Dream/Economic Royalists
At the Democratic Convention in 1936 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt decried what he termed economic royalists in his acceptance speech1. He was referring to the wealthy industrialists and other members of society's upper echelon. Roosevelt's message was clear - that these wealthy individuals would not dictate American policy. Instead, he argued, Americans should not be ruled by the "over- privileged". Roosevelt chose his characterization deliberately - the term 'royalists' referred directly back to the European social hierarchy. Five years previous, the concept of the American Dream was developed in juxtaposition to the European socioeconomic model. James Truslow Adams coined the term in The Epic of America and specifically referred in his text to the European elite, and how they would not understand the concept of the American Dream2.Roosevelt's characterization may have been popular at a time when unemployment was hovering around 20%, but the reality is that those economic royalists were the embodiment of the American Dream. They were individuals who had, through hard work and luck, acquired wealth and power. Many so-called 'economic royalists' had in fact started with almost nothing.
The American Dream, however, gave Americans the motivation to pull themselves out of the Depression. The economic royalists had been unable to pull the country out of the Depression. More importantly, it fueled the post-war expansion. The reference proved evocative, yet was not wholly accurate, because the 'economic royalists' and the American Dream could not, in America, exist without one another. Economic royalty was the end goal of the American Dream, but the point of the juxtaposition was that the Dream was available to all. This apparent conflict remains as unresolved today as it was in Roosevelt's time. It was the belief in the American Dream that propelled the economy after the war, not investment by the elites. What the American Dream embodied was that membership in the economic elite was not full - America was not like Europe and any American could join those ranks. This message then drove America's post-war economic expansion, creating a new American elite. Wealth had been established in ruling families for centuries. The example of the Depression shows that in tough economic times recovery requires the mass mobilization of human capital, rather than the focused mobilization of the elite's economic capital. The United States had a similar pattern of industrialization to the nations of Western Europe. The economic elite in America in the 1930s had become entrenched only over a period of decades, but the Roosevelt's implication was that this group was attempting to exert influence of over government to ensure that they become as entrenched as the European elites3. That characterization, however, had strong implications for American society. There is room for confusion between the two concepts, because the economic royalists both of Roosevelt's time and ours are the most successful embodiments of the American Dream.
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Acceptance Essays
