Elizabeth Kirkpatrick was born in 1894. She studied music and languages at the University of Chicago but did not graduate. She became a concert harpist, having studied under the renowned harp virtuoso Alberto Salvi. She married engineer and lawyer Albert Dilling.
To the Soviet Union
In 1931, the Dillings traveled to Russia. Elizabeth was shocked by what she saw and filmed it- impoverished people begging, disease, genocide, and half empty stores. She was also shocked by the atheistic propaganda in Russian cathedrals as well as propaganda in a Soviet guidebook, "Our world revolution will start with China and end with the United States." When she got back home, she went on tour showing her movies. This ended her music career.
On the other hand, liberal intellectuals who visited the Soviet Union in the 1920's came away optimistic. Men like Paul Douglas and Rexford Tugwell did not embrace communism and the repression, but saw the potential of some centralized planning in the American economy. Some of those liberals would sign on to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to try out their ideas.
Reds in the Roosevelt Administration
Dilling kept track of those ideas. Using her newsclipping files and government reports on radical activity, she published The Red Network in 1934. She accused Roosevelt Brain Trusters Tugwell and Douglas, and cabinet secretaries Frances Perkins, Harold Ickes, and Henry A. Wallace of being members of a communist cabal that controlled the New Deal. Her evidence was their support of Soviet Russia recognition, stipends from the leftist Garland fund, or bylines in certain magazines. She listed Eleanor Roosevelt as a socialist sympathizer and pacifist.
In 1936, Dilling published The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background. It reiterated the New Deal's passion for the Soviet Union. According to historian Richard Gid Powers, her proof consisted of piles of misleading facts, such as Eleanor Roosevelt's encouragement of radical groups supporting the New Deal. Dilling even labeled staunch anticommunist and ultraconservative Mississippi senator John Rankin a socialist for his support of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
American Liberty League
Besides publishing, Dilling supported the American Liberty League, a collection of wealthy businessmen and conservative Democrats who disapproved of the New Deal. She and her husband attended a League banquet in Washington D.C. in January of 1936. The headline speaker, former New York Governor Alfred Smith, assailed the New Dealers and gave a warning, "There can be only one capital, Washington or Moscow."
At another time, Dilling issued her own warning of sorts. She was concerned that Labor Secretary Perkin's criticism of women's hat styles might lead the New Deal to dictate fashions for American women in the Russian style. She was determined to "resist dictation and limitation to a specific number of hat and dress models standardized and authorized by the Department of Labor."
Elizabeth Dilling's questionable logic and extreme ideas discredited the legitimate anticommunist movement in the 1930's. However, she filled a significant void between the Red Scare of 1919 and the McCarthyism of the early 1950's.
Sources
Powers, Richard Gid, Not Without Honor, Free Press: New York, 1995.
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order, Bookspan, 2002.
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., The Politics of Upheaval, Houghton-Mifflin: Boston, 2003.
 |
