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The members of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1937. Front row (L-R) Associate Justices Louis Brandeis and Willis Van Devanter; Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes; Associate Justices James Clark McReynolds and George Sutherland. Back row (L-R) Associate Justices Owen Roberts, Pierce Butler, Harlan Fiske Stone, and Benjamin Cardozo. MPI/Getty Images
The first installment in this series described America’s limited and frugal federal government from 1789 until the 1930s. This second installment explains how the stage was set for radical change.
Crisis and Depression
In October 1929, a financial bubble broke. As always happens when financial bubbles break, people lost a great deal and hardship ensued. But bubbles had been breaking for centuries. Wise people knew that in financial panics, most government intervention does more harm than good. They had learned that the best solution was for government to assist private charity in relieving the destitute, but otherwise allow the economy to reorganize and recover naturally.
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor, is Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Mountain States Policy Center and the Independence Institute. He authored “The Original Constitution” (4th ed., 2025) and is a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s “Heritage Guide to the Constitution.”
