National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government
The National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government (NCUCG) also Committee for Constitutional Government was founded in 1937 in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt's Court Packing Bill. The Committee opposed most, if not all, of the New Deal legislation.
Founders of the Committee were Frank Gannett, Amos Pinchot and Edward A. Rumely. Sumner Gerard was the group's treasurer. The organization enjoyed considerable success in opposing the Bill, also because of large mailing list campaign targeted at legal professionals.
Pinchot would later lead an America First chapter in New York City, although the committee itself was silent on the foreign policies of Roosevelt, and included many interventionists as its members. Gannett would become a presidential candidate in 1940.
Other people associated with the Committee were congressmen Samuel B. Pettengill, John M. Pratt, and Ralph W. Gwinn, John T. Flynn, Robert E. Wood, and Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.
The Committee would be thrice investigated by Congress for suspected lobbying activities. Most notably, Rumely would be indicted for Contempt of Congress, twice. In 1946, he would be acquitted in the second Congressional investigation. In 1953, he would be cleared in the third Congressional investigation, a case he pleaded all the way the United States Supreme Court on appeal.
Their headquarters were located at 205 E. 42nd Street in New York.
Contents
Activities
From Time Bomb, page 17:
If we examine the educational activities of the Committee we find that since its founding it has performed the tremendous task of distributing or helping to distribute 82 million pieces of literature, booklets, pamphlets, reprints of editorials and articles, and especially-addressed letters to specific groups. It has distributed more than 760,000 books, more than 10,000 transcriptions of 15-minute radio talks on national issues, besides sponsoring frequent national hook-ups for representatives of the committee. It has sent more than 350,000 telegrams to citizens, attempting to influence their action on national issues. It has sent countless thousands of releases to daily and weekly newspapers and has run full page advertisements in 536 newspapers with a combined circulation of nearly 20 million.[1]
Notes
See also
References
- Polenberg, Richard (1965). "The National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government, 1937-1941". The Journal of American History 52 (3): 582–598. doi:10.2307/1890849.
