Government meddling in business, Bailey believed, not only prolonged the Depression but also ruined any chance of real economic recovery and sapped individual Americans’ integrity and hardiness. Bailey also regretted that progressives co-opted free-market terminology: “I am a great liberal when it comes to the fundamental meaning of the word,” Bailey wrote North Carolina Gov. O. Max Gardner, “but I am not a liberal when they interpret liberalism in terms of a return to the old reactionary system of centralized power and control of the individual . . . .”
Reelected to the U.S. Senate in 1936, Bailey no longer feared political reprisal. In 1937, America experienced an economic recession, and partisan lines blurred when conservative Republicans and southern Democrats opposed FDR’s court-packing schemes. When Roosevelt charged businesses to bring the nation out of economic recession yet refused to deregulate, Bailey had had enough.
He then formed a bi-partisan alliance to oppose further New Deal legislation. The torchbearers of liberty and delimited government worked secretly to draft the Conservative Manifesto. But word soon leaked. Fearing political repercussions, many Senators denied co-authoring the document. Bailey, however, accepted responsibility.
By Troy L. Kickler, North Carolina History Project
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