ABSTRACT
Stuart Chase wandered all over the ideological map during the Great Depression, from technocracy to collectivism, and finally back to something approaching orthodoxy by the end of the 1930s. Chase ultimately exerted less observable influence on the New Deal than either Coyle or the Committee for the Nation. Coyle's primary value for Roosevelt and the Brandeisian New Dealers lay in his ability to present to the public cogent justifications for a variety of seemingly unrelated actions, even of giving to seemingly punitive policies an economic rationale that went beyond simply a "soak the rich" motivation. In short, no story of Roosevelt and the New Deal is complete without greater attention being given to Coyle, Chase, and the Committee for the Nation than has thus far been the case. Scholastic magazine observed in late 1936 that Coyle was "credited with influencing more Americans than any other writer on phases of the New Deal."
