Sunday, May 08, 2005

Agriculture and the Reds, Nathaniel Weyl

The New York Times obit on Nathaniel Weyl touches on the close connection between farm programs and communism and lawyers:

"Mr. Weyl (pronounced 'while') had been active in leftist student groups while he was an undergraduate at Columbia College. He left academic life for Washington in 1933 and joined the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, where he was recruited into a communist cell that, he would later testify, included Hiss."
The "communists" were in the Office of the General Counsel, and basically were purged in 1935 in a controversy over the treatment of sharecroppers in the South. AAA was a magnet for young talent, along with Hiss both JK Galbraith and Adlai Stevenson worked there. It may have been similar to the Peace Corps under JFK. For the communists and other leftists the job meant a chance to make a difference, to satisfy one's moralistic idealism by working on behalf of the poor and powerless. I suspect they also had a romantic view of agriculture, shared by such current writers from different perspectives as Wendell Berry and Victor Davis Hanson.

As it's Mother's Day, it's appropriate to be sentimental. The obit boils Weyl's life down to early communism, spying, and then testifying against Hiss. But a recent article in the American Historical Review pointed out the contribution that the old left made to the cause of civil rights and feminism in the 30's and 40's. It seems that some charges of the segregationist leaders in the 1950's about leftist influence on civil rights had more validity than I wanted to admit. Yes, it's a fault of the young to want their causes to be pure and true; it's wisdom in the old to realize the best of men have mixed motives and even the worst may achieve some good.

No comments: