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Hugh Samuel Johnson was born in Kansas in 1882. After graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1903, Johnson became an officer in the US Army. Johnson served under General John Pershing in Mexico during 1916 and the following year became deputy provost marshal general in Washington.

When the United States entered the First World War Johnson helped draft the Selective Service Act. By 1918 Johnson had reached the rank of brigadier general.

In 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed General Hugh S. Johnson, as the person to administer the National Recovery Administration (NRA). This involved organizing thousands of businesses under fair trade codes drawn up by trade associations and industries.

Johnson became an administrator of the Works Progress Administration in 1935 but also worked for the Scripps-Howard group of newspapers during the thirties. Hugh Samuel Johnson died in 1942.

 

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(1) John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (1944)

First, and most important, was the NRA and its dynamic ringmaster, General Hugh Johnson. As I write, of course, Mussolini is an evil memory. But in 1933 he was a towering figure who was supposed to have discovered something worth study and imitation by all world artificers everywhere. Such eminent persons as Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler and Mr. Sol Bloom, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House, assured us he was a great man and had something we might well look into for imitation. What they liked particularly was his corporative system. He organized each trade or industrial group or professional group into a state supervised trade association. He called it a corporative. These corporatives operated under state supervision and could plan production, quality, prices, distribution, labor standards, etc. The NRA provided that in America each industry should be organized into a federally supervised trade association. It was not called a corporative. It was called a Code Authority. But it was essentially the same thing. These code authorities could regulate production, quantities, qualities, prices, distribution methods, etc., under the supervision of the NRA. This was fascism. The anti­trust laws forbade such organizations. Roosevelt had denounced Hoover for not enforcing these laws sufficiently. Now he suspended them and compelled men to combine.

At its head Roosevelt appointed General Hugh Johnson, a retired Army officer. Johnson, a product of the southwest, was a brilliant, kindly, but explosive and dynamic genius, with a love for writing and a flair for epigram and invective. He was a rough and tumble fighter with an amazing arsenal of profane expletives. He was a lawyer as well as a soldier and had had some business experience with Bernard Baruch. And he was prepared to produce a plan to recreate the farms or the factories or the country or the whole world at the drop of a hat. He went to work with superhuman energy and an almost maniacal zeal to set this new machine going. He summoned the representatives of all the trades to the capital. They came in droves, filling hotels and public buildings and speakeasies. Johnson stalked up and down the corridors of the Commerce Building like a commander­in­chief in the midst of a war.

He began with a blanket code which every business man was summoned to sign ­ to pay minimum wages and observe the maximum hours of work, to abolish child labor, abjure price increases and put people to work. Every instrument of human exhortation opened fire on business to comply ­ the press, pulpit, radio, movies. Bands played, men paraded, trucks toured the streets blaring the message through megaphones. Johnson hatched out an amazing bird called the Blue Eagle. Every business concern that signed up got a Blue Eagle, which was the badge of compliance. The President went on the air: "In war in the gloom of night attack," he crooned, "soldiers wear a bright badge to be sure that comrades do not fire on comrades. Those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance. That bright badge is the Blue Eagle." "May Almighty God have mercy," cried Johnson, "on anyone who attempts to trifle with that bird." Donald Richberg thanked God that the people understood that the long awaited revolution was here. The New Dealers sang: "Out of the woods by Christmas!" By August, 35,000 Clevelanders paraded to celebrate the end of the depression. In September a tremendous host paraded in New York City past General Johnson, Mayor O'Brien and Grover Whalen ­ 250,000 in a line which did not end until midnight.

 

 

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