What in the World was Happening in 1937?

Many critics of the MTA complain that congress should have paid more attention to the issue between the introduction of the House bill in mid-April and the Senate hearings in mid-July 1937. The Congressional Record indicates that representatives and senators did not appear to question in any significant way the assumptions underlying the law nor the evidence presented to support legislation. A fuller appreciation of the context of the time renders congressional actions (and lack thereof) more understandable.

Most importantly, government officials are predisposed to take a protective, risk-averse approach to phenomena that appear to present a threat: better safe than sorry. Very few legislators or regulators will contemplate allowing an actual or potential problem to fester because a vague chance exists that some uncertain benefit could possibly accrue at an indeterminate future point. It is hardly reasonable to excoriate federal officials in 1937, expecting them to eschew marijuana regulation because someday someone might discover the substance might yield significant medicinal or commercial value. Local and state officials across the country had already experienced sufficient pressure from their constituents to impose sub-national control regulations.[1] National legislators and executive branch agencies recognize that they are responsible; they are acutely aware of being accountable to the electorate and taxpayers of their own time. No reasonable observer could have expected them to act differently with regard to marijuana given the circumstances and weltanschauung of the later 1930s. Indeed, no appreciable criticism of the MTA arose for a quarter-century, which indicates that their generation found no major fault with the country’s marijuana policy. Serious critique of the MTA only arose with an unprecedented sea change in cultural mores and societal values that emerged in the later 1960s.

Moreover, congress passes hundreds—sometimes thousands—of laws during every session, most of which receive little notice at the time. No-one can tell which laws might generate significant unintended consequences decades later. None of the original MTA historiographers from whom all subsequent authors draw upon benefited from professional historical training, save the MA earned by Musto. Consequently, no analysis to date evinces a holistic grasp of the news-universe within which the MTA hearings took place. For example, an infinitesimal percentage of the totality of news accounts between 1934-1937 addressed the marijuana question (See my comments under "Becker" in "The Original MTA Historiographers" section). Given the array of immediate challenges they faced, federal officials acted responsibly in placing cannabis low on their list of priorities.

Indeed, two overweening issue-constellations consumed the American body politic in 1937: (a) the stubbornly problematic Great Depression, and, (b) the increasingly unstable international situation. Unemployment bottomed out at a still-unacceptable 15% in spring 1937 (approximately 7 million Americans remained unemployed). Then, frighteningly, unemployment began to rise again. Note, for example, how the framers of the MTA bent over backwards to accommodate the interests of even the smallest industries that utilized any portion of cannabis sativa to make salable products—no government official wanted to be blamed for destroying a single job. Tensions between workers and employers generated multitudinous labor actions and retaliatory measures. Those opposed to the New Deal filed numerous lawsuits, which threatened to dismantle the many programs and agencies created during Franklin Roosevelt’s first term. To protect those initiatives, the president proposed various schemes to “pack” the Supreme Court, which ignited a political firestorm. The headline public health issue of the day was certainly not drug abuse, but rather polio. Schools and public places—especially pools—routinely closed out of fears of spreading what many considered a communicable disease. Abroad, the last vestiges of stability proffered by the post-Great War security arrangements collapsed. Aggressor nations seized the initiative across Afro-Eurasia, portending another descent into global conflict. A very select list of headline newspaper items for the first 8 months of 1937 (the period during which the MTA evolved from the draft stage to signed legislation), as well as an inventory of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Robert Doughton’s mail illustrates why Americans—quite understandably—afforded so little bandwidth to the issue of marijuana as a potentially addicting substance: cannabis policy constituted a minor problem given the context of the times.

A VERY SHORT LIST OF MAJOR NEWS EVENTS, JANUARY-AUGUST 1937

(Principal MTA-related events highlighted in bold.)

January

1 = U.S. Social Security system began levying taxes on workers’ wages.

6 = U.S. government banned the shipment of arms to either side in the Spanish Civil War.

13 = U.S. government prohibited U.S. citizens from fighting for either side in the Spanish Civil War.

20 = Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated for his second term.

27, continuing into February = Flooding devastated areas all along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

30 = Adolph Hitler formally abnegated Germany’s obligations under the Versailles Treaty and demanded the return of German colonies.

February

5 = President Roosevelt proposed enlarging the U.S. Supreme Court, igniting a major political firestorm.

7 = Former Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elihu Root died.

March

18 = Approximately 300 students and teachers killed by a natural gas explosion at New London, Texas school.

April

12 = U.S. Supreme Court ruled the 1935 National Labor Relations Act unconstitutional.

14 = House Ways and Means Committee Chair Robert L. Doughton introduced the MTA bill.

26 = Air attacks on the city of Guernica by German Condor Legion planes supporting the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War generated major international opprobrium.

27-30 = House hearings on the MTA bill.

May

1 = Neutrality Act of 1937 prohibited U.S. ships from transporting any passengers or articles to belligerents, and forbad U.S. citizens from traveling on belligerent nations’ ships.

3 = Margaret Mitchell awarded Pulitzer Prize for authoring Gone With the Wind.

4 = House hearings on the MTA bill concluded.

6 = German airship Hindenburg disaster.

23 = Millionaire industrialist John D. Rockefeller died.

28 = Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic.

28 = Neville Chamberlain named Prime Minister of Great Britain.

June

3 = Recently-abdicated King of England Edward VIII married Wallis Simpson.

3 = U.S. Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 signed: popular with most farmers because it promised higher prices for agricultural goods.

7 = Actress Jean Harlow died.

11= Marx Brothers’ “A Day At The Races” released.

22 = Joe Louis knocked out Jim Braddock, inaugurating his reign as world heavyweight boxing champion.

July

2 = Pilot Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean as they attempted equatorial circumnavigation of the globe.

7 = The Marco Polo Bridge Incident inaugurated a major escalation of fighting between China and Japan, which many now consider the beginning of World War II. Beijing and its port city of Tianjin fell to Japanese forces by late August.

11 = Composer George Gershwin died.

12 = Senate hearings on MTA bill redrafted in light of earlier House hearings.

22 = U.S. Senate voted down President Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

24 = State of Alabama dropped charges in the “Scottsboro Boys” case.

August

2 = President Roosevelt signed the MTA, to go into effect October 1.

5 = Stalin’s Great Purge began.

13 = Fighting between Japanese and Chinese forces erupted in Shanghai.

14 = Dedication of the Appalachian Trail.

25 = Pullman signed a contract with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the first substantive minority labor victories.

26 = President Roosevelt signed the Judicial Procedure Reform Act, a compromise after defeat of his original judicial reorganization plan.

AN OVERVIEW OF CONGRESSMAN DOUGHTON'S MAIL, April 1934-June 1939

Congressman Robert L. Doughton (Democrat, North Carolina), who introduced the Marijuana Tax Act, chaired of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee from 1933 to 1947. In February 2019 I spent several days researching his papers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The boxes consisted entirely of constituent correspondence; they contained no records about issues of interest such as how or why legislation was drafted.

The most common questions one sees in the files have to do with basic constituent services:

- Can you get me (or a member of my family, or a friend, or a colleague) a federal job?

- Can you get our town a new federal building, or get an appropriation for repair of our current structure?

- Can you get the road in front of my house fixed?

- Can you get direct mail delivery by rail instituted/restored to our town?

Constituents also opined about principal issues of the day, especially basic pocketbook concerns:

- Don’t raise taxes on my business (principal industries in Doughton’s district included tobacco, textiles, and furniture manufacture).

- Pursue ASAP opening sections of the Appalachian Trail and the Great Smoky Mountains Park so we can benefit from the revenue tourism will bring to our locale.

- Support proposed federal legislation designed to restrict access to firearms by “members of the underworld.”

- Workers wrote in support of proposed federal minimum wage and maximum working hours legislation, while employers wrote to oppose such bills.

- Provide support for a particular Great War veteran I know who is suffering from wounds, old age, or lack of employment.

- (Beginning February 1937) Do *not* support the president’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court.

Drug companies, doctors, and pharmacists wrote to Doughton about those and other issues, but none mentioned concerns about addicting or controlled substances of any type.

An intriguing question is why Doughton sponsored the MTA, since not a single piece of correspondence from his constituents between 1934 and 1939 mentioned marijuana or hemp. People wrote about even very minor industries such as tapioca and cassava; it is clear no-one in Doughton’s district had anything to do with licit cultivation or use of cannabis plants.

I found only one document that referenced marijuana/hemp, which came from the Amhempco Company of Illinois during the time the MTA was under consideration by congress (see "Images of Archival Documents"). The significance of that document will be dealt with elsewhere in this website; it lends credence to the interpretation that, rather than acting out of any expressed concern among his constituents, Doughton sponsored the legislation at the request of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

[1] See Rathge dissertation.