ABSTRACT
The project has been described either as an impulsive act born of the huhris created by FDR's landslide victory in 1936 or as a calculated plot hatched many months before in angry resentment at the Schechter verdict. Roosevelt hims~lf never did anything to dear up the confusion. Three weeks after the President launched the proposal, Senator Hiram Johnson of California wrote a friend: "He has been beaten from pillar to post upon when he conceived the brilliant idea, and how he conceived it."3
