Francis James Westbrook Pegler (August 2, 1894 – June 24, 1969) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. journalist described as "one of the godfathers of right-wing populism". He was a newspaper columnist popular in the 1930s and 1940s for his opposition to the New Deal, labor unions, and anti-lynching legislation.
As an ardent proponent of States' rights, Pegler criticized a variety of targets whom he saw as extending the reach of the federal government, including Herbert Hoover, FDR ("moosejaw"), Harry Truman ("a thin-lipped hater"), and John F. Kennedy. He also criticized the Supreme Court, the tax system, labor unions, and any federal intervention on the issue of civil rights. In 1962, he lost his contract with King Features Syndicate, owned by the Hearst Corporation, after he started criticizing Hearst executives. His late writing appeared sporadically in publications that included the John Birch Society's American Opinion.
Background
James Westbrook Pegler was born on August 2, 1894, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Frances A. (Nicholson) and Arthur James Pegler, a local newspaper editor.
Career
Journalism career
Westbrook Pegler was the youngest American war correspondent during World War I, working for United Press Service. In 1918, he joined the United States Navy. In 1919, he became a sports writer for United News (New York).
In 1925, Pegler joined the Chicago Tribune. In 1933, he joined the Scripps Howard syndicate (through 1944), with his inaugural column opposing the passage of an anti-lynching bill that was before Congress, in which he first coined the term "bleeding heart liberal" to describe the proponents of the bill attempting to outlaw lynching at the federal level.
Pegler worked closely with his friend Roy Howard. He built up a large readership for his column "Mister Pegler" and elicited this observation by Time magazine in its October 10, 1938 issue: At the age of 44, Mr. Mister Pegler's place as the great dissenter for the common man is unchallenged. Six days a week, for an estimated $65,000 a year, in 116 papers reaching nearly 6,000,000 readers, Mister Pegler is invariably irritated, inexhaustibly scornful. Unhampered by coordinated convictions of his own, Pegler applies himself to presidents and peanut vendors with equal zeal and skill. Dissension is his philosophy. In 1941, he won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing criminal racketeering in labor unions. The same year, he finished third (behind Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin) for Time Magazine's "Man of the Year".
In 1944, Pegler moved his syndicated column to the Hearst's King Features Syndicate. He continued there to 1962.
Contempt for Franklin Roosevelt
Pegler supported President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initially but, after seeing the rise of fascism in Europe, he warned against the dangers of dictatorship in America and became one of the Roosevelt administration's sharpest critics for what he saw as its abuse of power. Thereafter he rarely missed an opportunity to criticize Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, or Vice President Henry A. Wallace. The New York Times stated in his obituary that Pegler lamented the failure of would-be assassin Giuseppe Zangara, whose shot missed FDR and killed the mayor of Chicago instead. He "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt.
Pegler's views became more conservative in general. He was outraged by the New Deal's support for labor unions, which he considered morally and politically corrupt.
Opposition to the New Deal
At his peak in the 1930s and 1940s, Pegler was a leading figure in the movement against the New Deal and its allies in the labor movement, such as the National Maritime Union. He compared union advocates of the closed shop to Hitler's "goose-steppers." The NMU sued Hearst and Associated Press for an article by Pegler, settled out of court for $10,000. In Pegler's view, the corrupt labor boss was the greatest threat to the country.
By the 1950s, Pegler was advocating government dissolution of the AFL–CIO federation of unions, admitting that while such an act would be fascistic in nature, he could, in his words, "see advantages in such fascism."
Support for removal of Japanese and Japanese-Americans from the West Coast
At the beginning of World War II, Pegler expressed support for moving Japanese-Americans and Japanese citizens out of California, writing "The Japanese in California should be under guard to the last man and woman right now and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over."