Patrick F. Scanlan, The Brooklyn Tablet, and the New Deal

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This paper was originally presented at the Spring Meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, St. Joseph's University, April 16-17, 1993, by Mr. McNamara who is a doctoral student at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. Most historians of American Catholicism would agree that while the 1920's saw a tremendous expansion of the institutional Church, that decade also witnessed a strong increase in the anxiety of many Catholics as to their place in American society. A general resurgence of nativism culminating in the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Presidential election of 1928 led to the reinforcement of a sense of minority © Patrick J. McNamara, 1994 8 status among Catholics. 1 This sense was strengthened by the fact that Catholics expected much from their wartime demonstrations of loyalty and were sadly disappointed, even shocked, by the recurrence of hostility towards them in the decade following the war.

Richard Hofstadter contends that the 1928 election inflicted "upon American Catholics, in their civic capacity, a trauma from which they never fully recovered". 2 With Franklin D. Roosevelt's election, however, Catholics began to achieve a degree of recognition and intimacy previously undreamt of. Roosevelt's catering to the Catholic voting bloc, his comparison of New Deal programs with various aspects of Catholic social thought, and his appointment of Catholic laymen to New York Irish History . . Vol. 8,1993-94 high governmental offices served to assuage "a battered Catholic ego". David O'Brien has noted that during the 1930's Catholics began to move away from the "ghetto", or seige, mentality characterizing so much of their community life. They began to participate more fully in the mainstream of American society. However, this ghetto mentality and a vigorous distrust of outsiders remained dominant in Catholic life at this time. 3 If there indeed existed, as this paper will attempt to demonstrate, a continued sense of Catholic minority consciousness throughout the 1930's, then few historians would deny that one of its primary exponents was the Brooklyn Tablet under its Managing Editor Patrick F. Scanlan. A controversial and outspoken man, Scanlan has been referred to as "Catholic journalism with its sleeves rolled up". In examining his early career and his editorial policy during the 1930's, this paper will focus on the minority consciousness expressed in Scanlan's editorial column "From the Managing Editor's Desk". 4 A Philadelphian by birth and New Yorker by adoption, Patrick Scanlan began his long tenure as Managing Editor of the Tablet in November of 1917 and continued in that position until his retirement on June 14, 1968. A former seminarian and school teacher, he was hired as temporary managing editor to replace Joseph A. Cummings, then serving in the army. When Cummings died of pneumonia in March of 1918, Scanlan's job became permanent.

Over the next five decades Pat Scanlan in a very real sense was the Tablet. For the first twenty-two years of Scanlan's editorship, according to his successor Don Zirkel, "The Tablet's editorial department was a one-man operation, or rather - counting his secretary - a one-man-and-one-woman operation". Scanlan's controversial editorial policy imbued the paper with a style all its own, and this style accounted for much of his popularity among Catholic readers. 5 Although the Tablet achieved a reputation under Scanlan as one of the most conservative Catholic periodicals, Alden Brown has pointed out that this is not so true of the early years of Scanlan's editorship. In later years Scanlan was a staunch supporter of such demogogues as Father Charles Coughlin and Senator Joseph McCarthy, but his early editorials reflect a young man's enthusiasm about the positive contributions which Catholics could make to American society. For example, when in 1919 the Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction was criticized as socialistic, Scanlan championed this program from his editorial column. At the height of the "Red Scare" of 1919-1920, he wrote of Bolshevism: "Ignorance and injustice are the causes, justice and education are the cures". Such a statement is a far cry from the later writings of the man known as the leading anti-communist in the Catholic press. If Scanlan was not a "liberal" Catholic in his early years, he could at least be regarded as having been progressively disposed. 6 What happened to change Scanlan's outlook? Looking at his editorials written during the 1920's, he seems to have been distressed by the resurgence of anti-Catholicism to the point where he adopted a more militant and avowedly conservative position.

During the 1920's many American Catholics feared that mainstream movements of moral reform, such as prohibition, were directed against them. Scanlan, for example, characterized prohibitionists as "scientific political-religious grafters". But the Klan did more than any other group to reinforce Catholic minority consciousness. To Scanlan, Klansmen were a far greater threat than the "Bolshevists or the out-and-out anarchists". (An important point here is that during the 1920's Scanlan, like most Americans, did not really see domestic radicalism as a great threat.) 7 Two other events in the 1920's served to reinforce Scanlan's sense of exclusion from the mainstream of American life: the Mexican question and the Presidential election of 1928. The rise of Catholic persecutions in Mexico starting around 1926 particularly irked the managing editor. What bothered him even more, however, was the unwillingness of the mainstream liberal establishment in America to join Catholics in condemning these persecutions.Walter Lippmann and Oswald Garrison Villard, among others, were berated for their inattention to this issue, as was the American Civil Liberties Union. Scanlan lamented their "bias, because they absolutely refuse to recognize a decent or Godgiven right to freedom of religious worship, especially if the oppressor is a ranking anti-clerical". Scanlan also criticized his fellow Catholics for their lack of solidarity on this issue. The Mexican question again rose to prominence in the 1930's. 8 The 1928 election disgusted Scanlan with its blatant display of anti-Catholicism. While he did not take sides during the election, the campaign reinforced for him the idea that Catholics were still outsiders and so must remain militantly united against the hostile Protestant establishment. While the Commonweal trusted in the good will of non-Catholics, the editor of the Tablet took a different approach. He held that "scamps and scoundrels predominate among those who exploit religious prejudice and lead in attacks on the Church". He further wrote: "Between the Church and a successful football team there is an analogy. Both have to fight". These statements indicate a defensive, introverted posture and a distrust of the world outside of the "Catholic ghetto". 9 The stock market crash of 1929 raised a new set of issues for the Tablet. Like many, Scanlan was distressed by Herbert Hoover's inability to halt the depression. Therefore, he looked with hope to Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise of a New Deal. On the other hand, like many of his fellow Catholics, he feared the increase in governmental power which accompanied many of the proposed reforms of the New Deal. David O'Brien notes that many American Catholics saw "constitutional limitations on the national government as protective bulwarks against a potential anti-Catholic persecution". Nonetheless, the burdens of economic hardship prevailed over minority fears, and American Catholics were more receptive toward the employment of governmental action in combatting this crisis. For the most part, then, at its outset the New Deal was widely greeted by the American Catholic community. 10 Two aspects of Scanlan's 1930's editorial policy deserve particular attention. The first is a growing disillusionment with FDR and the New Deal up to 1935, with an outright refutation of previous support thereafter. Meanwhile, on the local level in New York City there was a growing sense of Catholic, specifically Irish Catholic, minority consciousness. At a time when many Catholics were starting to feel like insiders, the Brooklyn Tablet reflected the fears of those who still felt like outsiders and considered the mainstream of American society hostile to their interests. In doing so, the paper became one of the primary exponents of this fear in the Catholic press of 1930's America.

In 1933, like the majority of spokesmen in the Catholic press, Scanlan enthusiastically greeted the proposed reforms of the New Deal. In the wake of the inauguration Scanlan wrote that it was too early to assess Roosevelt's ideas, but at least he was to be commended for doing something. Any kind of action was better than Vo/. 8,1993-94 none at all at this point. The President's leadership was said to be "motivated by a Christian Philosophy". Scanlan was also inclined to compare Roosevelt's message of social and economic reform with that found in the encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. 11 Over the next two years, several events served to lessen Scanlan's enthusiasm. These events led to a growing disillusionment, first with the Roosevelt administration and eventually with Roosevelt himself. The first of the se was the official recognition of the Russian Soviet government in November of 1933. For Catholics, Communism had long been seen as the "avowed enemy of all religion". American Catholics were appalled by the idea that their government would grant recognition to a regime which persecuted their co-religionists. In response many, including Scanlan, lobbied heavily and unsuccessfully against it. Russian recognition marked the beginning of a decline in Scanlan's enthusiasm for the Roosevelt administration. He later wrote that "widespread eyebrow lifting commenced" after this event. 12 Scanlan was also distressed by the administration's lack of attention toward the resurgence of persecutions in Mexico. Throughout 1934 and 1935, the Knights of Columbus and other Catholic organizations unsuccessfully lobbied Roosevelt to use his influence to halt the persecutions in Mexico. What seemed to most Americans "commendable restraint" on Roosevelt's part was perceived by Catholics as "callous disregard". As such, it served to reinforce their minority consciousness. 13 David O'Brien has written that in 1933 "[t]he pressures of the depression reduced minority fears and helped create a climate of opinion receptive to the use of government power to alleviate suffering, and unemployment, restore prosperity and reform American business practices. By 1936, however, the pressures had relaxed and divisions reappeared so that, during the election year, American Catholicism again spoke with many voices on the issues of the day". While FDR stalwarts such as John A. Ryan remained adamant in their support of the New Deal, by 1935 Patrick Scanlan was reassessing and offering some specific criticisms of it.

Along with Charles E. Coughlin's Social Justice, the Brooklyn Tablet became Roosevelt's strongest critic in the Catholic Press. 14 For Pat Scanlan, the New Deal's job was "to provide recovery rather than to institute vast reforms". His major difficulty with this reform program was "its adoption of so many impractical, absurd and seemingly insane projects-most of them proposed by the socalled brains trust with the grand object of wasting millions of dollars". Dealing with wages and hours was fine, but the big problem was essentially the increase in governmental power with its "vast, impersonal bureaucracy". When the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional, Scanlan applauded this move. He hailed the Court as the "citadel of the defense of American liberties". 15 Another looming concern of Scanlan's was the support of American Communists for FDR. He feared that this support would require some kind of payback on Roosevelt's part. It might even lead to communist infiltration of the government. 16 The government's lack of attention to such concerns as the Russian and Mexican questions, the resurging fears of governmental centralization, a distrust of the "liberal" establishment, and a sense that the New Deal was not achieving satisfactory results all led Scanlan to move away from his earlier pro-Roosevelt statements. Once again, he argued for the necessity of constitutional 10 . New York Irish History e !!• »"" flute feMMMi IT IK. VI",IIKKlI"fll itut rt$ AMQCtATtCN mi »!, taxmae »mn "us •mvicx »»a Utt in lorai foreign m"uri Icti h»vi *lnc" proven contl ntlon. Here It mo-- ter Whlle'i >•• Brooklyn Tablet Archives bulwarks against possible persecutions by the "liberal" elite in America. This "elite" was seen as having aims inimical to the interests of American Catholics. It included Rex Tugwell, Felix Frankfurter and Harry Hopkins, among others. Rather than abetting Scanlan's own minority fears, therefore, the New Deal ultimately served to reinforce them. 17 On both the national and local level Scanlan represented Catholics who felt besieged by the outside world. On the New York scene, his paper served as the spokesman for the Irish Catholics who felt socially and economically displaced. Ronald Bayor has written that "[AJlthough the Tablet during this period was ostensibly a general Catholic newspaper, it actually represented mainly an Irish viewpoint". 18 The depression exacerbated ethnic tensions in New York, especially between the Irish and the Jew s. Many Irish felt a loss of control in New York City, particularly in the areas of civil service, law and politics. In a private letter, Scanlan wrote: "As for our fellow citizens being suspicious of what would happen if we got control, I bid them look at New York. We were supposed to control this city for years, but I must confess the Protestants got a much better deal then than they do now when we no longer control". This loss of control was expressed by many Irish in a resentment toward the Jews, who were blamed for the loss of Irish prestige and power in New York. The fact that the Jews were hit less hard by the depression was another area of discontent. 19 Scanlan feared that Catholics were being discriminated against by the city government. Their interests, he felt, were being ignored by the LaGuardia administration which was catering to the newer immigrant voting blocs. A further point of discontent was the lack of attention paid to the Mexican question by non-Catholics in New York, especially the Jews.

A final matter of great concern was the rise of domestic communism. In 1930 Scanlan wrote in his editorial column: "We have often had unemployment periods in this country but this is about New York Irish History . . Vol. 8,1993-94 the first time we have ever heard of them given as an excuse for communism". Like many of his contemporaries, Scanlan tended to associate Jews with radical activity. This issue, it will be shown, came into greater prominence later in the decade. 20 Regarding the lack of attention paid to Catholics, in 1934 Scanlan complained about their underrepresentation in the Emergency Relief Bureau. He felt that there were a disproportionate amount of leftists employed. Catholics were urged to apply for these jobs in greater numbers. Relief should be administered, he wrote, by people "without diplomas or fancy salaries". Another worry of the editor was the lack of Catholics in the areas of social work and public education. Two things are evident here. First, there is a sense that Catholics were being ignored in these spheres.

It is also important to note that a certain amount of anti-intellectualism or class conflict on Scanlan's part is implied in his distrust of people with "diplomas". 21 In 1934 Mayor LaGuardia appointed Dr. Charles Fama as medical director for the City Employee's Retirement System. An Italian Protestant, Fama was accused of having written several articles of an anti-Catholic nature back in the 1920's. He had also recently criticized the prominence of Irish Catholics in city affairs. Along with several other papers representing Irish interests, the Brooklyn Tablet called for Fama's dismissal, but to no avail. Fama's retention sharpened Scanlan's perception of the LaGuardia administration as anti-Irish and therefore anti-Catholic. 22 During the early 1930's the American public was becoming more aware of the anti-semitic persecutions in Nazi Germany. Scanlan, however, was more concerned with anti-Catholic persecutions. The lack of public attention to his concerns greatly distressed him. In 1933 he wrote: "When one attempts to launch a campaign of protest against the persecution of Catholics,...Protestants and Jews lift the eyebrows as though we represented a group of a dozen longshoremen. It would be a fine thing if some outstanding co-religionist got up a similar petition on Mexico, Spain and Russia and asked every solitary person and paper that signed the Hitler protest to affix his name to a far longer, a more extended, and a more bitter persecution which exists in the countries we now mention". 23 From 1936 on, the Tablet became more strident in its opposition to the President. Its support for Charles E. Coughlin also increased. Eventually John Ryan would refer to Scanlan as a preeminent "Roosevelt hater". Roosevelt was no longer seen as exercising power in the best interests of the American people. To Scanlan, the attempted courtpacking plan of 1937 and the Reorganization Bill of 1938 were attempts by FDR at establishing a dictatorship which would be inimical to Catholic interests. 24 The Spanish Civil War was almost unanimously supported by the American Catholic press and hierarchy. On the other hand, the American public at large had reservations about the establishment of a Fascist regime in Spain. For the Tablet, the war was a clean cut issue. It was "a fight between the pagan and Christian philosophies of life...[Spain] fights Red Marxism, the gospel of hate and destruction". Scanlan was becoming increasingly concerned with Communism as the epitome of everything threatening Catholic welfare, and like many of his fellow Catholics, saw Fascism as a useful tool in combatting it. 25 On the other hand, American Jews saw Fascism as the main threat, both at home and abroad. By 1938 Father Coughlin, the "Radio Priest", emerged as one of the foremost proponents of American anti-semitism. In a radio show on November 20, 1938, Coughlin justified Hitler's persecutions as a defense mechanism against communism and blamed Jewish bankers for starting the Russian Revolution. He was subsequently barred from New York's WMCA radio station. This action was strongly resented by Coughlin's supporters, especially those in the Irish-American community. In an editorial column shortly after Coughlin's broadcast, Scanlan wrote: "We wonder why it is that there is a general suppression of the far worse persecution of Christians and a morning, noon and night denunciation of the lesser persecution of our friends the Jews". 26 For those hard hit by the depression and harboring anti-semitic views, Coughlin "provided an explanation for his followers' economic problems, and a rationalization for their group hostilities". Nowhere was this more true than in New York, the home of the rapidly anti-semitic Christian Front. Composed mainly of displaced working class Irish and Germans, the Front got a good amount of support from the Tablet until its downfall in 1940. Frontists found encouragement in Scanlan's assertion that "the lining up of Jews with the loyalist anarchists and communists...is a far more fearful indictment than Father Coughlin ever uttered". Letters from leading Frontists appeared frequently in the Tablet's "Readers' Forum" and their activity received a significant amount of attention over a two year period. Aside from its anti-semitism, the Front shared with the Tablet strong anti-Roosevelt and isolationist views. 27 If he was not outrightly anti-semitic, Scanlan had expressed a strong distrust of Jews throughout the 1930's. His biased stance toward the Irish-Jewish conflict in New York and his strong sense of minority status encouraged his receptive attitude toward Coughlin and the Front. It is quite likely that he sincerely believed anti-Christianity, and not anti-semitism, to be the predominant issue. The sense of the loss of Irish control in New York and the lack of Jewish attention to the Catholic concerns served as additional motivating factors. It is clear, though, that Scanlan saw Irish Catholics and not Jews as the embattled minority.

At any rate, it is important to note that whatever Scanlan was saying, it sold newspapers. Edward C. McCarthy notes that in 1939 the "Brooklyn Tablet had a readership of 52,490 subscriptions. The Catholic News of the Archdiocese of New York, which had avoided the Coughlin issue almost entirely, held 51,450 subscriptions. In 1940, at the height of the Christian Front movement, the Tablet's subscription rate rose to 80,898, while that of its neighboring paper rose to 55,263. Such statistics make it apparent that many American Catholics shared Scanlan's outlook. The 1930's, it should be noted, was the greatest period of growth for the Brooklyn Tablet, and Patrick Scanlan played a major role in that growth. The Tablet's 1933 subscription rate of 46,000 had almost doubled to 91,000 by 1941. 28 Although he held a consistently isolationist stance throughout the 1930's, Scanlan nonetheless urged his readers to rally around the flag when war was declared in 1941. National unity was seen as more important than minority fears, and the Tablet wholeheartedly supported the war effort. By 1943, John Ryan noted in a private letter that the Tablet had cooled down quite a bit. 29 The Tablet, in the postwar years, put a lesser emphasis on the internal threat of anti-Catholicism. Instead, the paper concentrated more on the international menace of Soviet Russia. Its editor also 11 Vol. 8,1993-94 tended to be more receptive to non-Catholics involved in the anticommunist movement. Postwar prosperity served to lessen ethnic tension, and there was less of an association of Jews with radicalism. Also, by this time Catholic anti-communism had converged with the mainstream sentiment of Cold War America.

The years after 1945 truly ushered in a new era of Catholic participation in American society. Catholics as a whole enthusiastically participated in the postwar prosperity. More importantly, they began to be assimilated into the mainstream, of American society on a more widespread basis than had been true previously.

This assimilation resulted in the decline of the Catholic ghetto and its bulwark, the "immigrant neighborhood". More and more Catholics were moving into the suburbs. The Catholic ghetto, in which Patrick Scanlan's writings thrived, was entering into its final years. Yet the minority consciousness which he so often expressed and represented lingers on in a somewhat modified form.

Footnotes 'See Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1985), pp. 353- 354. For an account of the anti-Catholic activities of the Klan, the best work is Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). See also John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (Second Edition (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1988), Chapter Ten. For a discussion of the effects of the 1928 campaign on the American Catholic community, see David J. O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 45-46. See also Alan J. Lichtman, Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), p. 235. 2 Lynn Dumenil, "The Tribal Twenties: 'Assimilated' Catholics Respond to Anti-Catholicism in the 1920's", Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Fall 1991), p. 27. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), p. 300. 3 George Q. Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1932-1936 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968), p. ix, xi. James Hennessey, S.J. American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 260. O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, pp. 223-227. For a discussion of the Catholic "ghetto mentality" of the time see Martin E. Marty, "The Catholic Ghetto and All the Other Ghettos", Catholic Historical Review, Vol. LXVI1, Number 2 (April 1982), p. 205. See also Garry Wills, Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubts, Prophecy, and Radical Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 38. 4 There are two major studies of the Brooklyn Tablet: John F. Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet, 1908-1942" (M.A. Thesis, St. John's University, 1942) and Alden V. Brown, The Tablet: The First Seventy-Five Years. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: The Tablet Publishing Company, 1983). There is no biography of Scanlan, but useful information is to be found in his obituary in the Tablet, April 28, 1983, p. 1A, p. 12A. See also Alden V. Brown, "Friends for a While: Patrick F. Scanlan of the Brooklyn Tablet and John A. Ryan on America's Challenge to Catholicism", a paper presented at the Conference on the Culture of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame, October 5, 1985. It should be noted that from its founding in 1908 until June 6, 1931, the paper was entitled the Tablet. From that date until March 11, 1939, the official title was the Brooklyn Tablet. The second name change occurred because the paper "was extending beyond its diocesan limits, and...had assumed a nation-wide circulation", see Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet", pp. 3-4. Scanlan's personal papers have been lost. See Brown, The Tablet, p. 7. The Tablet, April 28,1983, p. 12A. Although Scanlan's personal papers are not available, he did not fail to forcibly state his opinion on a variety of subjects throughout his tenure as managing editor. This characteristic accounted for much of his and the Brooklyn Tablet's popularity. 5 Brown, The Tablet, pp. 18-19; Brown, "Friends for a While", footnote #34. The Tablet, April 28,1983, p. 12A. 6 Brown, "Friends for a While", p. 1. The Tablet, January 25, 1919, quoted in Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet", p. 41. This paragraph owes a tremendous amount to Brown's article and his book. See Brown, "Friends for a While", . New York Irish History pp. 2-3; Brown, The Tablet, pp. 21 See also Dumenil, "The Tribal Twenties", p. 34. 'Dchtman, Prejudice and the Old Politics, p. 235. The Tablet, March 13, 1920, quoted in Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet", p. 45. Ronald H. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish, Germans, Jews and Italians of New York City, 1929-1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 6. The Tablet, January 15, 1921, quoted in Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet", p. 46. 8 Brown, "Friends for a While", pp. 4-5; Brown, The Tablet, p. 26; See also Robert H. Vinca, "The American Catholic Reaction to the Persecution of the Church in Mexico, 1926-1936", Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. LXXIX, Number 1 (March 1968), p. 13. The Tablet, July 6, 1929, p. 9. Ibid., July 13, 1929, p. 6. See Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, p. 96. 'The Tablet, June 1,1929, p. 10. Ibid., September 28,1929, p. 5. '"O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, p. 213, p. 51. "Brown, "Friends for a While", p. 7. The Brooklyn Tablet, March 18, 1933, p. 9. Ibid., May 13, 1933, p. 9. See Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, p. xi, p. 17. 12 The Brooklyn Tablet, March 25, 1933, p. 1. For an account of Catholic efforts to halt Russian recognition, see Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, Chapter Seven. The Brooklyn Tablet, November 2,1935, p. 9. 13 See Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, Chapter Eight. For Scanlan's views see the Brooklyn Tablet, March 16,1935, p. 1; November 2,1935, p. 9. Hennessey, American Catholics, p. 270. "O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, p. 51. "The Brooklyn Tablet, December 1, 1934, p. 9. Quoted in O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, p. 6. "For example, communist influence in the WPA is lamented in The Brooklyn Tablet, "Moscow Drama", March 21,1936, p. 11. "O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, p. 217. It should be noted that at this time Scanlan was not directly attacking Roosevelt, but rather Roosevelt's advisers, whom he felt were manipulating the President in a dangerous manner. See O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, p. 75. 18 Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, pp. 175-176. In a speech given in 1923, Scanlan stated: "The Irish race-and I am merely stating the historical facts-has examplified and typified from the very beginning its right and title to the possession of the greatest nobility of character the world has ever beheld among men...". Speech entitled "Address at St. Gabriel's Church, Brooklyn, March 18, 1923", Box entitled "Speeches-Patrick Scanlan", Tablet Archives, Brooklyn, New York (hereafter referred to as TA). 19 Quoted in O'Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform, p. 269. See Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, Chapter Two. '"The Tablet, July 26, 1930, p. 9. For an early association of Jews with radicalism see Ibid., Septembers, 1930, p. 9. a Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, p. 28. 22 Quoted in Ibid., pp. 37-38. z'The Brooklyn Tablet, March 25,1933, p. 9. ^Quoted in Brown, "Friends for a While", p. 11. Brown, The Tablet, p. 36. 25 James Hennessey quotes a Gallup poll of December 1938 in which 83% of American Protestants supported the Loyalists while 58% of American Catholics supported Franco.

Clearly there was a disparity in views over this issue. See Hennessey, American Catholics, p. 270. The Brooklyn Tablet, August 15,1936, p. 1, quoted in Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet", p. 87. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, p. 92. K The Brooklyn Tablet, December 3,1938, p. 11. "Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, p. 88. Quoted in Ibid., p. 194. Edward C. McCarthy, "The Christian Front Movement in New York City, 1938-1940" (M.A. Thesis, Columbia University, 1965), p. 80. Leaflet entitled "Christian American Committee to Keep America Out of War, New York City", File entitled "Christian Front I", TA. 23 McCarthy, "The Christian Front Movement", p. 101. Budway cites a readers' questionnaire sent out by the Tablet in 1934. The responses showed that an average of four people read a single copy of the paper. They also showed that Scanlan's editorial column was the most popular feature. See Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet", p. 78, p. 104. By 1947, the paper sold 120,000 copies weekly and had an audience of over 400,000 readers, twenty percent of whom lived outside the Diocese of Brooklyn. See John K. Sharp, A History of the Diocese of Brooklyn, 1853-1953: The Catholic Church on.Long Island (New York: Fordham University Press, 1954), Volume II, p. 270. ^The Tablet, September 9,1939; June 15,1940, p. 1; August 24,1940, p. 10; cited in Budway, "A History of the Brooklyn Tablet", p. 94. Francis L. Broderick, Right Reverend New Dealer, John A. Ryan, (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 231. 12