Garet Garrett

Garet Garrett was born at Pana, Illinois, on 19th February, 1878. His father owned a farm near Burlington, Iowa. After leaving school he found work as a printer in Cleveland.

Garret became a journalist and in 1898, he moved to Washington, where he covered the administration of William McKinley. In 1900, he moved to New York City, where he became a financial journalist and by 1910 he was working as a columnist for the New York Evening Post. Garret became a close friend of financier, Bernard Baruch. According to Carter Field, the author of Bernard Baruch: Park Bench Statesman (1944): "He (Garrett) would drop in frequently and talk with Baruch. The two men discussed their larger hopes and aspirations, their doubts, misgivings, and occasional despair."

In 1913, he became editor of The New York Times Annalist , a new financial weekly, and, in 1915, he joined the editorial council of the New York Times. The following year he became the executive editor of the New York Tribune. Garret, who held very conservative views, was soon clashing with the editor of the newspaper, Ernest Gruening. He later argued: "Garrett, despite his birth and lifetime residence in the United States, spoke with something resembling a British accent... Garrett had pretty well inculcated the idea in the staff that the conduct of the war was being bungled by President Wilson, and that somehow it was the Tribune's function to correct this."

On 7th June 1918 Robert Benchley wrote an article in praise of African-American regiments on the Western Front. Gruening later explained in his autobiography, Many Battles (1973) what happened: "On Sunday, June 7, he scheduled a half-page picture of a contingent of Negroes of Colonel Hayward's 169th Infantry which had distinguished itself in recent engagements in France, and two of whom - their pictures were shown separately - had been decorated with the Croix de Guerre for bravery in action. As the page was being made up, Bob received a photograph of the lynching of a Negro man in Georgia being witnessed by a large crowd. Bob thought that running these pictures together might prove useful as a plea for racial tolerance and I agreed."

The photograph of the lynching in Georgia with the article on the soldiers who had won the Croix de Guerre caused problems for Benchley with Garet Garrett. Benchley's son, Nathaniel Benchley, later pointed out: "The page went to press.... and the first copy hadn't been upstairs more than three minutes when there was a dropping of pencils, a ringing of bells, and then a great clanking sigh of the presses ground to an emergency stop. Robert was summoned down to the office of Garet Garrett and there he found Garrett, Rogers and Ogden Reid, the Editor in Chief standing in a semi-circle and looking with frozen horror at the lynching picture. He was told it was pro-German, that it was a terrible thing to run "at this time" and that he would damned well get another picture to replace it because the Alco Company had already been notified to make a new press cylinder."

Garrett continued to criticise Benchley's choice of photographs used in the New York Tribune. "Garrett began to criticize Robert's choice of pictures with remarkable vigor... He and Gruening had a long argument about a picture of the Kaiser that Robert had run, Garrett maintaining that to show the Kaiser as a normal human being, walking down the street, tended to weaken the public's hate for him. The policy was that any picture that showed a German not cutting off a child's hand was a bad picture. Gruening disagreed and told Garrett exactly what he thought of such a policy, but it had no effect. Three days later Garrett pounced on a picture Robert had scheduled... showing a U-boat crew picking up survivors of a ship they had torpedoed. This, it seemed, was as good as a pro-German picture, because they weren't machine gunning the survivors." As a result of this interference, Benchley and Gruening resigned from the newspaper.

In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Bernard Baruch as chairman of the new War Industries Board. This was a United States government agency established to coordinate the purchase of war supplies. The WIB encouraged companies to use mass-production techniques to increase efficiency and urged them to eliminate waste by standardizing products. The board also set production quotas and allocated raw materials.

Garrett worked closely with Baruch and according to Carter Field, the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune: "Every time Garrett came to Washington he would spend some time with the Chairman of the War Industries Board, and every time he would emerge with a brand-new idea about some phase of war production that ought to be investigated.. All this shows that Baruch sometimes resorted to channels outside his official sphere in order to bring pressure on agencies over which he had no control, in the hope of expediting the war effort."

In 1922 he became the principal writer on economic issues for the Saturday Evening Post. The Wall Street Crash in October 1929, created the worst depression in American history. President Herbert Hoover was slow to provide federal relief to farmers and stubbornly refused to give help to the unemployed in urban areas. Hoover vetoed a bill that would have created a federal unemployment agency and also opposed a plan to create a public works programme. Garrett, however, remained a strong supporter of Hoover's laissez-faire approach. This was reflected in his book, The American Omen (1928) and A Bubble That Broke the World (1932). Ludwig von Mises argued: "His keen penetration and his forceful direct language are...unsurpassed by any author."

Garrett was a strong opponent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, arguing that these measures undermined America's individualist values. In 1940, he became the newspaper's editorial-writer-in-chief. Garrett was also an isolationist and warned Roosevelt against becoming involved in the Second World War. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Garrett supported the war but was still fired from the Saturday Evening Post. From 1944 to 1950 he edited American Affairs.

Garet Garrett died on 6th November, 1954, at his home in Tuckahoe, New Jersey. His book The People's Pottage, was adopted as one of the "twelve candles" of the John Birch Society.

Primary Sources

(1) Ernest Gruening, Many Battles (1973)

On Sunday, June 7, he scheduled a half-page picture of a contingent of Negroes of Colonel Hayward's 169th Infantry which had distinguished itself in recent engagements in France, and two of whom - their pictures were shown separately - had been decorated with the Croix de Guerre for bravery in action. As the page was being made up, Bob received a photograph of the lynching of a Negro man in Georgia being witnessed by a large crowd. Bob thought that running these pictures together might prove useful as a plea for racial tolerance and I agreed.

(2) Nathaniel Benchley, Robert Benchley: A Biography (1955)

The page went to press.... and the first copy hadn't been upstairs more than three minutes when there was a dropping of pencils, a ringing of bells, and then a great clanking sigh of the presses ground to an emergency stop. Robert was summoned down to the office of Garet Garrett and there he found Garrett, Rogers and Ogden Reid, the Editor in Chief standing in a semi-circle and looking with frozen horror at the lynching picture. He was told it was pro-German, that it was a terrible thing to run "at this time" and that he would damned well get another picture to replace it because the Alco Company had already been notified to make a new press cylinder...

Garrett began to criticize Robert's choice of pictures with remarkable vigor... He and Gruening had a long argument about a picture of the Kaiser that Robert had run, Garrett maintaining that to show the Kaiser as a normal human being, walking down the street, tended to weaken the public's hate for him. The policy was that any picture that showed a German not cutting off a child's hand was a bad picture. Gruening disagreed and told Garrett exactly what he thought of such a policy, but it had no effect. Three days later Garrett pounced on a picture Robert had scheduled... showing a U-boat crew picking up survivors of a ship they had torpedoed. This, it seemed, was as good as a pro-German picture, because they weren't machine gunning the survivors.

(3) Carter Field, Bernard Baruch: Park Bench Statesman (1944)

Every time Garrett came to Washington he would spend some time with the Chairman of the War Industries Board, and every time he would emerge with a brand-new idea about some phase of war production that ought to be investigated... All this shows that Baruch sometimes resorted to channels outside his official sphere in order to bring pressure on agencies over which he had no control, in the hope of expediting the war effort.