With the failure of the former god Capitalism to make any kind of a comeback, a toughening American spirit turned itself into a vindictiveness against those responsible for the Depression.  For instance, the elderly inventor and business tycoon Samuel Insull fled to France when the Stock Market collapsed, moved from country to country until he was arrested in 1934 by the Turkish government and sent back to America.  Here he was sent to jail for a brief period.  Actually, at his trial, the jury could not find him guilty of violating any particular law or laws, although he certainly was guilty of the moral sin of selling worthless stocks to people who trusted him because of his high position in Wall Street.  Also the collapse of his holding company had wiped out the life savings of some 600,000 shareholders.

Also, in 1938 a jury convicted and imprisoned Richard Whitney, former president of the New York Stock Exchange (1930-1935), after he pleaded guilty to two charges of grand larceny, having embezzled funds from the Stock Exchange Gratuity Fund (and elsewhere) to cover huge personal and corporate financial losses.

At the same time, Americans became much less tolerant of the colorful doings of America's urban bosses and the corruption and violence of the American mobsters. Hot on their trail was the Bureau of Prohibition agent, Eliot Ness – leader of the Untouchables, agents who would not accept bribes.

And bringing many of them (at least the New York operations) to court was New York's Special Prosecutor, Thomas Dewey, who from 1935 to 1937 won seventy-two convictions in seventy-three of his cases (including Whitney's).  So outraged by Dewey's relentlessness was New York mobster Dutch Schultz that he had scheduled a hit on Dewey in 1935 – but was himself gunned down by a rival gang in a Newark, New Jersey, restaurant just a few days before the scheduled event – which thus never took place!  Dewey also ended the career of the New York mob fixer James J. Hines – a Tammany Hall ward heeler who had long protected the likes of Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Frank Costello and Joe Adonis by bribing police and judges – Dewey gaining a conviction and prison sentence for Hines in 1939.

The failure of the high priests of capitalism was also met with the rise in labor militancy, demanding better wages and working conditions – and displaying a readiness to shut down American businesses that did not meet these demands. Labor unions were not waiting around to see what economic wonders might come their way.  They were quick to move to safeguard and extend their economic position wherever they could.  And of course there was a degree, at times quite high, of ideology involved in this dynamic, inspired in part by the American Communist Party, in part simply by the ambitions of labor leaders themselves, and by the continuing infusion in the ranks of American labor by immigrants with European political attitudes – at least Socialist if not even Communist.

Likewise on the business side of the conflict there was an equal ideological-philosophical concern.  Capitalists had not only lost their former place of glory, they had become the object of wrath, for having "caused" the Depression. But they themselves had lost whole fortunes, were struggling to keep business operations going, and were confused and angry – hungry for some kind of idea or philosophy that could restore for them a sense of social pride rather than scorn.

Tensions even beyond FDR’s New Deal operating out of Washington were running hot in the rest of the nation.  In May of 1934 a massive general strike called by the dockworkers of the entire West Coast (joined by merchant sailors) succeeded in shutting down the ports that fed the West Coast.  Working conditions at the docks were tough (as they were also in the mines and factories of America), and the striking workers were demanding $1 an hour wages – and no more than six hours of work per day or 120 hours per month.  And in shutting down the ports, they had a strangle-hold on the cities lining the coast, most violently San Francisco and Seattle where the strike dragged on and in early July turned violent.

Roosevelt tried arbitration, but the strikers were not interested in any compromise. Police and then troops were brought in and two workers were killed.  At the same time, sailors refused to dock their ships to unload their cargoes, and truckers refused to pick up and ship inland goods that had been unloaded – in sympathy with the striking workers.  But eventually no one was gaining much in all this. Finally in October a compromise was reached in which the workers made almost the $1 per hour wage, the promise of safer working conditions, and shorter working hours.

Leading the way through all this was the very charismatic labor union leader John L. Lewis – not only willing to take on big-business (actually not so big at this point) but also the Republican Party, which traditionally had stood so strongly in support of American capitalism.  A favorite target of Lewis was Kansas governor Alf Landon, running as the Republican presidential candidate in the 1936 elections, whom Lewis accused of being a mere puppet of the steel industry.

There were, of course, still many unemployed men out there eager to find jobs. And when union members went on shutdown strikes against their employers their employers were more than happy to offer the positions of the absentee workers to newcomers – or "scabs," as striking workers called them.  The hatred of the two groups, strikers and scabs, became very violent, as for instance during the 1937 Republic Steel strike in Cleveland, in which a battle between the two groups (and police) resulted in eighteen deaths.

While the country seemed to be falling apart in a desperate scramble of Americans simply to find work, feed a family and stay alive, Germany clearly had its act together.  The contrast between the precise order of Germany and the listless wandering of America was quite upsetting to many Americans.

Indeed, it even seemed in America to be a very bad time for democracy – and for its cousin, free market economics or capitalism.  State-managed (even dictated) life seemed to work better in providing the people a much better life than a free market capitalist economic system and a democratic government representing directly the clear voice and will of the people themselves.  Strong leaders (such as the German Führer, Hitler; the Italian Duce, Mussolini; the Soviet First Secretary, Stalin; etc.) seemed to know better what would work best for the people than the people themselves.  Political elitism seemed to be the better way to embrace the future.

Indeed, America (as also other countries such as Great Britain and France and Spain) seemed to be producing their own varieties of Fascist or Communist or Populist leaders.  The times seemed to demand bold leadership.  And there were a number of American candidates willing to put themselves forward as just the answer to the nation's problems.

Through his radio reach to forty-five million regular listeners, this powerful Catholic priest put forth stinging social commentary on the times.  He could be really biting in his attack on the flaws of the country.  Eventually he moved more and more to the ultra-Conservative Right, becoming increasingly anti-Semitic and anti-New-Deal – even pro-Fascist with respect to events in Europe.

Quite a different style was forthcoming from this ambitious Southern Populist, who talked about taking the money from the rich and giving it to the poor so that there could be a chicken in every American pot.  Statistically that made no sense, because confiscating the wealth of the rich would have made little financial difference to the millions of poor Americans.  But the rhetoric sold well – until an irate medical doctor shot and killed this little Führer wannabe.

A thesis argued back and forth is the idea that Roosevelt's New Deal actually saved capitalism.  There is no way actually to prove or disprove what exactly it was that were Roosevelt's true thoughts and actual intentions concerning capitalism.  He certainly picked up much of the language of the radical Left in attacking capitalism as an insensitive, deficient economic philosophy, although it has been argued that he did so only to steal the thunder of a small but growing American Communist Party, the American Labor Party, and the Farmer-Labor Party, rising political movements which advocated all-out Socialism as the policy that America must turn to in order to save itself.  Roosevelt purposely opened the ranks of his New Deal organization to rising leaders within those Leftist movements, to undercut the possibility of them becoming third-party movements which would steal millions of votes from the Democratic Party, thus preventing these parties from inadvertently (as third-party movements always do) advancing the Congressional position of the Republican Party opposition.

Certainly, given the rising anger of impoverished Americans – on the farms and in the industrial cities – Roosevelt helped head off the political urge of millions of Americans (perhaps as much as a quarter of the citizens) to want to push America toward the National Socialism (Italian Fascism or German Nazism) on the one hand or the Workers' Socialism (Russian Communism) on the other that seemed to be working so well in Europe.  But exactly how Roosevelt’s politics saved capitalism is not quite clear, because throughout the rest of the 1930s – until World War Two when American capitalists were called on to rebuild a huge wartime economy – capitalism itself remained the bad boy in popular thinking.

Meanwhile, all this economic stress was also shaking the very spiritual foundations of the country.  What had happened to America?  It seemed almost as if America’s God had failed the country.  In fact, who exactly was at fault?  And what exactly at this point could be done to get the country up and moving again?

The very popular early 20th century American philosopher John Dewey, who more than anyone else shaped modern American Liberal views on education and social reform, was a self-avowed Humanist who believed completely in the power of human logic and in man’s basic goodness.  There was no place in his worldview for God – though he did not attack the idea directly.  He simply moved on past the idea of God to build his ideas of secular Liberal reform entirely around the notion of man’s instinctive logic and good intentions.  In this he was very typical of a growing segment of intellectual America.

To Dewey's way of thinking, Christianity needed to be pushed out of its central position as the foundational worldview of Western society and culture in order that the way could be made for the birth of a new religion, a secular religion originally identified as Humanism (referred to more often today as Secular Humanism, or just simply Secularism).

In 1933, thirty-four individuals well-placed in the world of academics, the publishing industry, and Unitarian ministry, published a Humanist Manifesto – calling for a new religion and an accompanying social order focusing on the powers of man.  Among those signers was, unsurprisingly, John Dewey.

The goal of the Humanist Manifesto was to take up the responsibility of restoring a bright light of human optimism in the midst of a very gloomy Great Depression America.  The Manifesto declared that the time had passed for "mere revision of traditional attitudes."  It was time to come to terms with "new conditions created by a vastly increased knowledge and experience." Thus:

The Manifesto's fifteen affirmations made clear the specifics of this necessary new religion ("Religious Humanism").  Its beliefs were: no creation but simply self-existent creation; man as an evolved natural creature; truth only through scientific study; the end to theistic (God based) religion; social concern and service to replace the self-serving profit motive of capitalism; the need to embrace life rather than flee from it (seeing traditional religion, as the famous psychiatrist Freud claimed it to be, as escapist in nature).  Of particular interest are several of the Manifesto’s affirmations.

In the Ninth Affirmation it claims that humanists will replace "old attitudes involved in worship and prayer" with "a heightened sense of personal life" and "a cooperative effort to promote social well-being."

In the Tenth Affirmation the Humanists proclaim that in their Humanism "there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural."

In the Eleventh Affirmation they claim that in approaching life’s crises, employing "reasonable and manly attitudes" – acquired through education (their version of education, of course) – that their Religious Humanism "will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking."

In the Thirteenth Affirmation, they make it very clear that the intent of Religious Humanism is to remake the religious life of the nation around their modern religious ideals and to see that particular traditional church practices and activities "be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows, in order to function effectively in the modern world."

It is very important to note that the Humanists of the 1930s were well aware that in their fervor for Humanism they were pushing for the establishment of a new religion in America. They intended at that time to do so simply by appealing to the common sense of a greatly distressed American people (thanks to the Depression) to see that the old days were gone.  It was time to go modern.

But things did not ultimately go that way.  World War Two came, the Depression consequently disappeared, America came out of that war victorious and ever stronger in its Christian faith.  This was not the way the Humanists wanted to see things go and did not give up their battle.  But instead of appealing to the American people, they eventually went to the federal courts, complaining that Christianity’s central place in American culture was in violation of the Constitution’s "separation of church and state" – their own (and Jefferson’s) interpretation of the words of the First Amendment.¹  And therefore something "not religious" – like supposedly their "secular" Humanism – should properly be the only foundational cultural principle supported and defended by the federal courts.

In this quest, the Humanists got the Supreme Court finally to bow to the Humanist viewpoint in the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman.  In that case the idea that secular Humanism was itself a fundamental worldview or religion was not mentioned (of course not).  The embarrassing 1933 Humanist Manifesto (which would have made a complete lie of the Humanists' position in the case) was conveniently overlooked.  And the Humanists were quick in 1973 to come out with Humanist Manifesto II, which drops the affirmation that what the Humanists are doing is pure religion, and instead recasts Humanism as simply "scientific Truth." But all religions are about what a community sees as fundamental Truth, the kind of Truth that everything else about their society’s norms and laws flow from faithfully.

But anyway, there it is, the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, admitting that it is seeking avidly to bring America to a new religion.

¹"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."