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Raymond Moley
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Raymond Charles Moley (27 September 1886–18 February 1975) was a leading New Dealer who became its bitter opponent.
Born in Berea, Ohio the son of Felix James and Agnes Fairchild Moley, he was educated at Baldwin-Wallace College at Oberlin College and received his PhD from Columbia University in 1918. He taught in several schools in Ohio until 1914. In 1916 he was appointed instructor and assistant professor of politics at Western Reserve University and from 1919 was director of the Cleveland Foundation.
In 1918–19 he was also director of Americanization work under the Ohio State Council of Defense.
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Encyclopedia
Raymond Charles Moley (27 September 1886–18 February 1975) was a leading New Dealer who became its bitter opponent.
Born in Berea, Ohio the son of Felix James and Agnes Fairchild Moley, he was educated at Baldwin-Wallace College at Oberlin College and received his PhD from Columbia University in 1918. He taught in several schools in Ohio until 1914. In 1916 he was appointed instructor and assistant professor of politics at Western Reserve University and from 1919 was director of the Cleveland Foundation.
In 1918–19 he was also director of Americanization work under the Ohio State Council of Defense. He joined the Barnard College faculty in 1923. He was well-known as a specialist on the criminal justice system.
Moley supported then New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt and recruited fellow Columbia professors to form the original "Brain Trust" to advise Roosevelt during his presidential campaign of 1932. Despite ridicule from editorial and political cartoonists, the "Brain Trust" went to Washington and became powerful figures in Roosevelt's New Deal. Indeed, Moley claimed credit for inventing the term "New Deal," though its precise provenance remains open to debate. Praising the new president's first moves in March 1933, Moley concluded that capitalism "was saved in eight days."
He broke with Roosevelt in mid-1933 and became a Republican. As a columnist for Newsweek magazine, he became one of the best-known conservative critics of the New Deal and liberalism in general. For example, he likened Roosevelt to "the fairy-story prince who didn't know how to shudder. Not even the realization that he was playing ninepins with the skulls and thighbones of economic orthodoxy seemed to worry him." Moley's After Seven Years (New York: 1939) was one of the first in-depth attacks on the New Deal and remains one of the most powerful. Moley was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon on April 22, 1970.
He wrote the majority of Roosevelt's first inaugural address, although he is not credited with penning the famous line, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Raymond Moley also wrote various pamphlets and articles on the teaching of government.
Publications
He wrote several books including:
- Lessons in Democracy (1919)
- Commercial Recreation (1919)
- Facts for Future Citizens (1922)
- After Seven Years (1939)
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