The New Deal Cometh: Examining The Iceman Cometh and Hughie in Relation to the Rhetoric of the Roosevelt Administration

Wall Street got drunk. . . . It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?

—President George W. Bush, July 18, 2008

We can't afford to let the same phony arguments and bad habits of Washington kill financial reform and leave American consumers and our economy vulnerable to another meltdown.

—President Barack Obama, December 12, 2009

In 1939 Eugene O'Neill completed The Iceman Cometh, his powerful drama about the failed lives and sustaining pipe dreams of the unemployed alcoholics who inhabit a run-down tavern in New York. That same year saw a critical change in American economics as the second-term government of Franklin Roosevelt struggled to reverse massive unemployment and faltering public confidence in the regulatory policies of the New Deal. One year later, as the New Dealers began to shift their economic strategies toward defense preparation, O'Neill began writing Hughie, a one-act play in which two characters conspire to avoid societal isolation. Because of the significance of unemployment and societal deterioration in the years surrounding the writing of The Iceman Cometh and Hughie, the generally reticent attitude toward work and progress expressed by the main characters in these plays deserves careful consideration. Yet, the numerous references to work and unemployment in these two plays have received little critical attention, particularly in the wide range of critical interpretations of The Iceman Cometh.¹ Reading O'Neill's two later Depression-era plays in the light of the New Deal as a promotion of behavioral reform, and with the hindsight of the author's stated critiques of the Roosevelt administration, reveals a complex commentary on the often evangelical nature of economic discourse in American society.

O'Neill's allusions to historically specific occupations and economic situations in The Iceman Cometh are undeniable. Nearly all the characters are initially listed in reference to their occupations, and they define their existence in terms of the work they either do or used to do. The dream of returning to work is the foundation around which the characters build their self-sustaining community illusion. While most scholars have attributed the delusion found in the characters' pronouncements to O'Neill's view of human nature, the communal pipe dream of returning to long-lost occupations also reflects the cultural influence of economics during the Depression years.

In 1937, despite earlier New Deal policies designed to stimulate the economy and increase jobs, the number of unemployed workers in the United States reached a height nearly equal to that of the earliest years of the Depression.² As economic historian Alan Brinkley has shown, the unemployment of 1937 was the result of "an economic crash more rapid and in some ways more severe than the crash of 1929." In theory, the "second Depression" of 1937 was primarily a result of the same economic confusion that had caused the stock market crash of 1929. The self-regulating or "free" economy of the 1920s, which created the conditions for the Great Depression, proved difficult to reform using the policies of the first New Deal. In explaining the Roosevelt administration's response to this crisis, Brinkley states,

The events of 1937 and 1938 had proved, they believed, that the corporate world, when left to its own devices, naturally frustrated the spontaneous workings of the market; that business leaders often conspired with one another to impose high "administered prices" on their customers; that the result was an artificial constriction of purchasing power and hence an unnecessarily low level of production.³

In order to lower the unemployment figures and get the economy moving forward, the second-term Roosevelt administration decided to impose harsher economic controls and regulations, despite the opposition of big business. Because of the stature that the business sector had constructed around the notion of a "free economy," the advocates of the Second New Deal had to sell the public on the necessity of a controlled economy.⁴

In The Folklore of American Capitalism, published in 1937, Thurman Arnold, Roosevelt's head of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and one of the most outspoken advocates of the New Deal, argued that the concepts of rugged individualism and a free economy were outdated myths. Unlike the antimonopoly trustbusters of the past, Arnold believed that big business was an important element in the American economy, but he also advocated a wide range of federal and state regulations controlling the economy.⁵ Using spiritual and psychological terms, Arnold stated that such regulation would establish "a religion of government which permits us to face frankly the psychological factors inherent in the development of organizations with public responsibility."⁶

Following Arnold's suggestion, from 1938 through to 1941 much of the New Deal rhetoric was directed toward demythicizing the business community's negative portrayal of a state-controlled economy. Analogies linking the "free economy" to a myth or illusion were soon appearing in sources other than government literature. For example, in a 1939 issue of the New Republic, editor George Soule withheld complete agreement with the New Deal policies, but he conceded, "we do know that the theory of 'free economy' is so far removed from the actual behavior of our world that it might as well be a metaphysical discussion of the flight of angels."⁷

In the midst of this debate over the myths and realities of the economy, O'Neill completed his large play centered on the illusions of a dozen New Yorkers who have reached the depths of alcoholism and financial despair. Throughout the first act of Iceman the unemployed characters reminisce about their lives, primarily their occupations, and describe their confidence in a rosy future. Each man believes his former job is still available and that he will be rehired when the time is right—in some vague "tomorrow." Each man in the tavern recognizes that each of the others' dreams of tomorrow is impossible, yet all the characters realize that these pipe dreams help them fend off their sordid reality. In keeping with the New Dealers' view of big business, the regulars at Harry Hope's tavern, when left to their own devices (the primary device being alcohol), conspire with one another to support a life of nostalgia and self-deception about their future.

As John Henry Raleigh's historical analysis has shown, Iceman is a nostalgia play on at least two levels.⁸ The play is set in 1912, which is within the years O'Neill spent in the seedy bars of Manhattan. Various biographies and historical studies have identified character sources for Iceman as derived from O'Neill's own drinking buddies during his days at taverns in New York such as Jimmy the Priest's or the Hell Hole.⁹ Moreover, this information demonstrates that the playwright had first-hand experience of a period in American history that the character Larry Slade calls "the flush times of graft when everything went."¹⁰ Thus, the play is nostalgia for the writer, going back more than twenty years in his personal history. But the play also relies on the nostalgia of the characters—mostly memories of an era that Raleigh situates from the late nineteenth century up to 1912. According to Raleigh much of this nostalgia refers to corrupt public policy, specifically the flourishing of Tammany Hall in New York City. This era of graft ended approximately in the year the play is set, primarily as a result of Tammany's transition from illegal vice to more respectable types of fraud.¹¹

In Eugene O'Neill's America: Desire Under Democracy, the late John Patrick Diggins examines Iceman, and most of O'Neill's canon, in terms of a political philosophy that juxtaposes self-realization and individual desire against the "dominant culture of possessive acquisitiveness" that arises from democracy. Diggins argues that the founders established a form of government that would "keep factions in check" so that "desire would be controlled either through institutional arrangements or through responsible leadership in the office of the presidency." In his analysis of Iceman, Diggins focuses on the postwar production of the play and the philosophical aspects of the characters' desire for sustaining illusions in the face of the harsh truths of a politically destructive world. He only occasionally touches on the basic nature of most of the characters' desires in relation to the years prior to and during the writing of the play.¹²

Like many citizens in pre-Depression America, the regulars at Harry Hope's saloon desire easy money for little work, while at the same time defending their self-reliance and work ethic. Although the characters expand their personal histories by recalling the prominence and excitement of their past occupations, it becomes increasingly clear these occupations are not admirable forms of work. Not only did these occupations not require physical labor or contribute much to society, but most were involved in or connected to economic corruption. Three of the saloon characters admit their corruption outright: Ed Mosher boasts of his days as a circus con-man; Pat McGloin recalls the bribes he collected as a police lieutenant; and Joe Mott brags about the gambling casino he operated with the backing of gangsters. These characters alternate between admitting that their jobs were corrupt and denying that they have done anything wrong. Further, they all repeatedly express a desire to return to work, but none of the characters will admit that this is an impossibility.

Rather than being mere examples of historical myopia and past corruption, these characters can be viewed as allegorical of the central consciousness of the 1937-39 period. The contradictions in the characters' statements about work are typical of the attitudes confronting the New Dealers. While the general public and the business sector could not deny the corruption that contributed to the crash of 1929 and, in turn, to the problems of 1938, neither wanted to accept government regulation of the business practices that allowed the corruption.¹³ Similarly, the characters who live in Harry Hope's tavern realize that they have reached the bottom of economic existence, but they refuse to admit that their future will be determined by past misdeeds.

Willie Oban's story provides the most direct connection between the theme of Iceman and the economic situation in which the play was written. In the stage directions for scene 1, O'Neill positions Oban away from the other characters. Soon after the play begins, the bartender, Rocky, explains that Oban is much worse off, physically and financially, than all the other bums. Rocky describes Oban in terms of an economic scheme that we might now call being "under water on your clothing":

Jees, I've seen him bad but never dis bad. Look at dat get-up. Been playin' de old reliever game. Sold his suit and shoes at Solly's two days ago. Solly gives him two bucks and a bum outfit. Yesterday he sells de bum one back to Solly for four bits and gets dese rags to put on. . . . Willie sure is on de bottom.¹⁴

Besides being an example of the destitution common in the depths of the Depression, this character also reveals that the source of his problems parallels one of the direct causes of the national crisis. Oban explains that, while he has never practiced law, his law degree was gained with the support of his father who was "the king of the bucket shops." Bucket shops were illegal stockbrokerages that gambled on the stock market. The bucket shops and other corrupt stock-market practices have been largely blamed for the eventual crash of the stock market, which resulted in the regulating Securities Act of 1933. Of all the "minor" characters in the play, Oban is perhaps the most forthright about the cause and depth of his decline, yet he is also the most adamant about his prospects for reform.

While most of the drunks and minor characters reminisce about former occupations and, in some fashion, mirror the economic corruption leading to the Depression, some of the more central characters in Iceman can be seen as representatives of the various political factions opposing the regulations forwarded by the New Dealers.¹⁵ Harry Hope, the proprietor of the saloon in which the play is set, reveals that his pipe dream of leaving the saloon and walking around the neighborhood is based on his past involvement in the ward politics of New York City. Raleigh comments that operating a saloon was a common stepping-stone toward involvement in the Tammany political machine.¹⁶ In addition, his past political activity is what allows Hope to skirt the regulatory laws governing taverns and hotels in New York.

Many politicians and businessmen who had aligned themselves with the free-market theories popular in the 1920s were threatened by the reforms and regulations proposed by the New Dealers. Prior to the crash of 1929, many business leaders held major positions in both national political parties. However, as the unemployment crisis continued through the 1930s, the relationship between big business and the politicians was strained.¹⁷ In the same way, Harry Hope's slightly illegal liquor business is occasionally threatened by "the fleeting alarms of reform agitation."¹⁸ And while the proprietor firmly believes that his political influence is still intact, it is clear that he has no real political clout.

Conversely, Larry Slade's political position in Iceman is analogous to the political activists who advocated policies similar to the New Deal, yet opposed any centralized regulation of the economy. O'Neill describes Slade as a one-time syndicalist/anarchist, and Hope calls him a "Damned old fool Anarchist I-Won't-Worker." Slade denies any involvement in politics, but the terms of his denial only emphasize his continuing faith in radical political theories. Initially, Larry seems to have avoided self-delusion when stating, "I don't believe in the Movement, I don't believe in anything else either, especially the State. I've refused to become a useful member of its society." These statements are expressions of anarchist philosophy; yet, despite his intentions, Larry is also trapped by his own dismissal of all political structures and structured action.¹⁹ As the play continues, Larry expresses more and more concern for the type of self-determination proposed by the syndicalists. Thus, we understand that Larry's cynical acceptance of the other men's pipe dreams is based on a political belief that workers' organizations, mostly the trade unions, should regulate the methods of production.

By the late 1930s, union membership had increased tremendously; yet, as illustrated by Yank Smith's experience with the IWW in O'Neill's early work, The Hairy Ape, most unions were less militant and more willing to participate in politicized bargaining with the business community and the state. Further, New Deal programs such as the Works Projects Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Department of Labor had been designed by the labor leaders and social activists of the 1920s. For the most part, the policies of the New Deal had co-opted many of the economic reforms proposed by the socialist movement in America.²⁰ In the same manner, Larry's criticism of the myths and pipe dreams of the drunks in Harry Hope's is soon overshadowed by the more direct recovery and reform program initiated by the play's central character, the salesman Hickey.

Much like the early New Dealers, Hickey is initially a salesman of recovery and a supportive reformer. He pays for all the drinks the men want, while he urges that they change their mode of existence. Hickey agrees to support their leisure habits only if each man will admit that his plan for returning to work "tomorrow," for self-fulfillment, is a pipe dream. Hickey wants the men to stop lying to themselves—to face their pipe dreams. He sums up his goal in one sentence: "You've got to face the truth and then do what must be done for your own peace and the happiness of all concerned."²¹ This involves each man disavowing the myth of his corrupt former occupation—honestly facing the facts. In a letter to his son, Eugene O'Neill Jr., dated May 13, 1933, the playwright revealed that he had been studying American history and presented some sophisticated insight on the risk factors involved in the New Deal policies. In the midst of this economic analysis, O'Neill presented this opinion of the new president, "Roosevelt, whatever mistakes he may make, is a man with guts who is honestly facing the facts and acting upon them."²²

As the business community fought the New Dealers' attempts to impose a regulated economy in the late 1930s, so the men in Harry Hope's tavern see Hickey's interference as a misguided effort. Initially Hickey's plan is dismissed as a joke, but the mere thought of returning to work or facing the truth about their illusions obviously threatens the drunks. The bums' perception of this threat is revealed in an antiwork anecdote that the former circus con man Mosher tells as a rebuttal to Hickey's reform. Mosher quips:

My opinion is the poor sap [Hickey] is temporarily bughouse from overwork. You can't be too careful about work. It's the deadliest habit known to science a great physician once told me. . . . I remember well his saying to me "you are naturally delicate, Ed, but if you drink a pint of bad whiskey before breakfast every evening, and never work if you can help it, you may live to a ripe old age. It's staying sober and working that cuts men off in their prime.

Though this story seems to be a jab against working, before long the point is rescinded. Mosher concludes his argument by revealing that his recently deceased friend was "a victim of overwork, too. . . . Only eighty years old when he was taken."²³ The joke is that the man who advocates avoiding work actually overworks and lives to an old age. Mosher's anecdote is an ironic reversal of the conflict between Hickey and the unemployed drunks. The men in the bar are able to continue drinking and avoiding work by insisting that they will return to work tomorrow. But even as Hickey forces them to see the truth of this contradiction, the men refuse to accept the sordid reality of their situation. The bums in Iceman gladly accept Hickey's financial support until his preaching begins to affect their illusions of self-reliance. Reacting to the pressure of Hickey's persuasion, Oban says, "Christ, you'd think all I really wanted to do with my life was sit here and stay drunk. I'll show him."²⁴ But according to the stage directions, this statement is made with "bitter resentment" and "hatred" directed at the reformer Hickey, rather than expressing a resolve to change.

In fact, these characters do want to merely "sit here and stay drunk." Maintaining their myth of self-reliance is more important than escaping their dependence on alcohol and Hope. This dichotomy is clearly analogous to the economic conflicts threatening the country in 1937-1938. While the business sector conceded that their practices needed correcting, they were reluctant to enforce self-regulation and equally opposed the proposals of the New Deal.²⁵ In this struggle, the myth of self-reliance in the form of a "free-market" economy conflicted with the reality of dependence on government subsidy and control.²⁶ As a response, the government began its campaign to convince the public that regulations were the only possible solution to the rampant unemployment and debt.

The most effective means for capturing the attention of the public were Roosevelt's Fireside Chats of the late 1930s. The president and his writers often combined calls to action with nearly evangelical support of Keynesian economics. In his 1935 chat explaining the Works Relief Program, the president asserted:

Fear is vanishing and confidence is growing on every side, renewed faith in the vast possibilities of human beings to improve their material and spiritual status through the instrumentality of the democratic form of government. That faith is receiving its just reward. For that we can be thankful to the God who watches over America.

Further, the president's address to the nation on April 14, 1938, called for self-restraint and honesty on the part of each citizen, but the following paragraph includes Roosevelt's direct response to the vehemence of opposition to government regulation and the New Deal:

Self-restraint implies restraint by articulate public opinion, trained to distinguish fact from falsehood, trained to believe that bitterness is never a useful instrument in public affairs. There can be no dictatorship by an individual or by a group in this Nation, save through division fostered by hate. Such division there must never be.²⁷

As with the New Dealers, Hickey's purpose is not so much putting the men back to work as forcing the men to realize that the possibility of reverting back to their previous occupations, including the corruption, the easy money, the dream life, is now a debilitating myth. The real goal of Hickey's crusade, then, is not simply a change in the physical existence of the men in the tavern; he also hopes to reform their conscious view of themselves. Many O'Neill scholars have noted that Hickey's exhortations approach a religious level, and his zeal is actually a deterrent to his message. Although the men in Harry Hope's saloon do confront their falsehoods by leaving the bar in search of work, before they leave they have become bitter and divided, and when they return they are not converted. As the fact that Hickey has murdered his wife begins to surface, Larry argues that the salesman has lost confidence in his own message. The drunks' illusions of self-reliance return because Hickey is not able to explain his faith in complete honesty without questioning his own motives.

Hickey's inability to reform his friends matches the failure of the policies promoted by the rhetoric of the New Deal. The Roosevelt administration's plan was dependent on public- and private-sector willingness to surrender the myth of a self-regulating economy and admit that government intervention in the economic process was necessary. If this solution was accepted, the New Dealers believed that the recession of 1937-1938 would be turned around. However, as Lewis Kimmel illustrates in his essay "Keynes, Public Opinion, and The New Deal," the problems of unemployment were never really solved until the World War II defense effort was begun in 1940-41. Kimmel concludes that "neither the new aim of fiscal policy—ensuring the full employment of the factors of production—nor the Keynesian theory with which it is closely allied had been fully accepted."²⁸ Near the end of the war, O'Neill had also soured on Roosevelt. Whereas he had praised the president's "honestly facing the facts" in his 1933 letter, by 1944 his views on Roosevelt's ethics had turned. In two more letters to his son, O'Neill satirized New Deal reforms with a story of "Tiberius Franklin Gracchus, tribune of Tammany Hall" and included a statement that "It's true I feel contempt for his sly hypocritical politician's tricks."²⁹

Though Thurman Arnold originally argued that "economic beliefs are religious in character," he would later admit that the public's distrust of government regulation was "a psychological one, not to be solved by preaching or learning."³⁰ The Iceman Cometh demonstrates that any attempt to solve societal and economic problems in the United States must recognize the tendency toward self-interest and opposition to outside regulation inherent in the system of capitalism/materialism. Perhaps this tendency is best expressed in the very beginning of the play, when Larry Slade, explaining why he left the anarchist movement, states: "I saw men didn't want to be saved from themselves, for that would mean they'd have to give up greed, and they'll never pay that price for liberty."³¹ The questions posed by this drama apply not only to the setting early in the twentieth century; they apply directly to the economic policies debated by the American public throughout the Great Depression and ever since.

In the year after finishing The Iceman Cometh, O'Neill began a cycle of short plays again based on his own memories of the first few decades of the twentieth century. Most of these plays were destroyed by the writer, but the one completed play, Hughie, written in 1941, can be seen as an extension of the same questions addressed in Iceman. The difference is that the characters in Hughie, unlike the unemployed dreamers of Harry Hope's tavern, reshape their illusions and their realities in order to maintain the confidence necessary to survive in difficult times. The main conflict and resolution of Hughie reflect the difficult but necessary partnership of private and public interests as the policies enacted to prepare for war led to increasing government control of the economy.

As early as the end of 1939, the public's attitude about a more hopeful economic future had changed. In an article titled "Farewell to the 1930s," Malcolm Cowley presented a somber view of the public's reaction to the economic changes between the years 1929 and 1939:

The truth seems to be that during the last ten years the American middle class has slowly built up a different set of ideals. Once the whole aim was getting ahead, with hard work and privation willingly endured as the price of ultimate success. Now as opportunities in business become fewer and less dramatic, the aim is security at a somewhat lower level—that and making the best of what one has. . . . There is a growing determination to hold onto one's position in society; and there is a corresponding fear of change, of the private or public misfortunes that might lead to losing one's job.³²

Through Hughie, which is set in 1928, O'Neill asserts that this attitude is not limited to a particular decade, that, in fact, the "determination to hold onto one's position in society" and the "corresponding fear of change" is the attitude of many Americans even at the height of prosperity. The scene description of the small hotel in which the play is set establishes the playwright's sardonic view of the Roaring Twenties as an economic charade:

It is one of those hotels, built in the decade 1900-10 on the side streets of the Great White Way sector, which began as respectable second class but soon were forced to deteriorate in order to survive. Following the First World War and Prohibition, it had given up all pretense of respectability, and now is anything a paying guest wants it to be, a third class dump, catering to the catch-as-catch-can trade. But still it does not prosper. It has not shared in the Great Hollow Boom of the twenties. The Everlasting Opulence of the New Economic Law has overlooked it. It manages to keep running by cutting the overhead for service, repairs, and cleanliness to a minimum.³³

This obvious metaphor reveals that this small play will depict the basic survival of the characters who would inhabit a world where the "respectable second class" has deteriorated to the third-class level. Thus, like The Iceman Cometh, Hughie can be viewed as a commentary on the economic conflicts and strategies of the nation nearer to the time O'Neill was writing the play.

O'Neill originally planned Hughie as part of a cycle of one-act plays to be titled By Way of Obit. According to his notes and his letters to George Jean Nathan, in each play one character would carry on a monologue about a deceased friend while the other character primarily listened. In this play, the two characters are listed as "Erie Smith, a teller of tales" and "A Night Clerk." The stage directions describe Erie as a "small-fry gambler and horse player, living hand-to-mouth on the fringe of the rackets." Labeled as "a Wise-Guy," his physical features are modified with adjectives such as cynical, shifty, suspicious, and guarded. O'Neill writes that "his glances never miss the price tags he detects on everything and everybody." In their biography of the dramatist, Arthur and Barbara Gelb have noted the similarities in O'Neill's descriptions of the gambler and the salesman Hickey.³⁴ The Night Clerk "has been a night clerk in New York so long he can tell time by the sounds in the street."³⁵

Neither Erie Smith nor the Night Clerk has much confidence in the promise of his present situation. The gambler enters the hotel to find that the Night Clerk, who reveals that his name is Charlie Hughes, resembles "Hughie," a deceased previous clerk with whom Erie had formed something of a friendship. As the character who does most of the talking, Erie haltingly reveals that he has had a run of bad luck and has lost all his confidence since Hughie died. The money he used to buy Hughie's funeral wreath came from loan sharks and, he must begin winning again in order to pay off his debt. The conflict of this play is whether the gambler can regain his illusory confidence by building a relationship with the new Night Clerk and convincing him to participate in fixed games of chance.

Some of Erie's statements sound like a brief history of free-market economics in the early decades of the century. O'Neill writes that "With a touch of bravado" the gambler says, "I've been in the big bucks. More'n once, and I will be again. I've had tough breaks too, but what the hell, I always get by" (15). Throughout his monologue, Erie freely states that Hughie was a "sap" or a "sucker" whom he could "take to the cleaners a million times." Further, Erie's description of his friendship with Hughie develops into a basic supplier/ consumer relationship in that the "Wise Guy" provides a vicarious life for the Night Clerk by regaling him with stories of his gambling exploits and "hittin' the high spots" with dames or dolls. Erie refuses to call his exaggerated stories "lies," but he admits that he was feeding his audience a fabrication. In one of the bolder revelations, Erie states "But I soon see he was cryin' for more, and when a sucker cries for more, you're a dope if you don't let him have it" (28). For an audience ten years removed from the Crash of 1929, these boasts of regaling a sucker with stories of easy profit and big scores would be as analogous to their present condition as Willie Oban's reliance on the money from his father's "bucket shops." Nevertheless, as much as Erie Smith revels in deceiving Hughie, he slowly comes to the realization that even the supplier of illusions needs a willing consumer.

Through all of Erie's revelations, the Night Clerk is drooping into a world of daydreams in which all jobs are more exciting than his own. Because the Night Clerk has no confidence in the future of his reality, his dead-end occupation, he allows his illusions to shape his view of the world. At various moments he listens for the approach of the El trains and connects their roaring passage and receding with the passing minutes of the night. When not listening for the train, the clerk imagines himself as the various public service officials who work on the streets at night. First he is a garbage collector banging the cans around: "I'd bang those cans louder than they do!" Then he hears a policeman and hopes for a shoot out with a gunman. He becomes an ambulance driver who asks the doctor, "Will he die, Doctor, or isn't he lucky?" Finally, the Night Clerk hears the sound of a siren. Within the stage directions, O'Neill expresses the clerk's despair: "A fireman's life must be exciting!" His mind rides the engine and asks a fireman with strangely disinterested eagerness: "Where's the fire? Is it a real good one this time? Will it be big enough, do you think? I mean big enough to burn down the whole damn city?" The imaginary fireman replies that there is too much stone and steel in the city: "There'd always be something left." To which the Night Clerk answers: "I wasn't really hoping anyway. It really doesn't matter to me" (19, 17, 24, 26, 27, 30).

While this interior monologue presents a clear allusion to the desirability and stability of public service work during the 1930s, the Night Clerk's fantasies also serve as an acknowledgment that a change in occupation does not ensure a change in attitude. Throughout his daydreams, the clerk is just as cynical and detached as he is at his real job. Like the drinkers in Harry Hope's saloon, the Night Clerk has become so dependent on his occupational illusion that he has lost touch with life. This situation reflects the conflict between insecurity and public acceptance that Cowley alludes to above. Similarly, when assessing the lessons of the Depression, Arthur Burns, the director of the National Bureau of Economic Research and chairman of the Federal Reserve, determined that: "If prosperity is to flourish, people must have confidence in their own fate and that of their country. This basic truth was temporarily lost sight of during the 1930s in the process of grafting new economic ideas onto the old."³⁶ The struggle to regain confidence in their social position and purpose becomes the main conflict for both Erie Smith and Charlie Hughes. The resolution requires that the men work together to construct a controlled illusion through which each man regains the confidence to face his own reality.

Throughout 1940 and even up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration struggled with convincing labor organizations and business leaders to fully commit to defense efforts. The large labor unions, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), were at odds over membership and political issues, while jointly opposing the increasing influence of management on government programs. Business leaders were suspicious of increasing government intervention in the areas of wage and price controls. Inflation, caused by a scarcity of consumer goods and building materials, as well as a decrease in skilled labor as the military ramped up recruiting efforts, led to conflicts between all three parties: government, business, and labor.³⁷

In his Fireside Chat of May 26, 1940, Roosevelt lays out to the public his general outline for increasing spending for national defense. After explaining prior spending on weaponry and increasing military personnel, the president states that Congress will be voting on "the largest appropriation ever asked by the Army or the Navy in peacetime." Later in this radio program, Roosevelt calls on both business and labor to join him in the defense effort. While requesting that private industry increase production through the expansion of factories and personnel, the President makes clear that "the Government of the United States stands ready to advance the necessary money to help provide for the enlargement of factories, the establishment of new plants, the employment of thousands of necessary workers, the development of new sources of supply for the hundreds of raw materials required, the development of quick mass transportation of supplies." In the next section of this extended "chat" Roosevelt affirms his support for collective bargaining, wage controls, and other labor-friendly regulations instituted by the New Deal.³⁸

More important for the purpose of this analysis of Hughie is the action Roosevelt took in 1940 to bring industry and labor into direct communication with his administration and with each other. Within days after the "On National Defense" Fireside Chat, the president appointed the leaders of General Motors, U.S. Steel, CB&Q Railroad, and the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and a founder of the CIO, Sidney Hillman, to the National Defense Advisory Commission. Later when that group was restructured into the Office of Production Management, Roosevelt appointed Hillman and William Knudson of General Motors to be co-directors. John Kenneth Galbraith, who was the economist in charge of setting wartime price controls, recalled Roosevelt's wartime strategy for dealing with labor and business leaders, "It was a not uncharacteristic Roosevelt compromise: he couldn't give all power to a businessman or credibly then to a union leader so he appointed both."³⁹ The administration needed to coerce business and labor leaders to rethink their goals for their organizations to form a joint defense effort controlled by the government.

In Hughie, the two characters reach the similar revelation that their lives, based on their positions in society, will not change despite their personal illusions. The turning point comes when Erie states that he envies the deceased Hughie because "He's out of the racket. I mean the whole goddamned racket. I mean life." The awakened Night Clerk agrees with this statement of resignation but adds, "We might as well make the best of it, because—Well, you can't burn it all down can you?"⁴⁰ This agreement bewilders Erie, and both men are so confused by their honesty about wanting to hold on to life that they begin to make real contact. The play ends with Erie proposing a fixed game of craps with what little money he has left: "I know you can't afford takin' no chances. I'll stake you, see? . . . It's all my jack, get it? You can't lose." The fake game restores Erie to the confidence-building relationship he had with the deceased Hughie.

A regulated economy, like a fake game of craps, boosts consumer confidence and allows for a leveling of fiscal and emotional involvement: the highs and lows are not so extreme. Thus, the resolution of Hughie can be seen as a subtle commentary on the stabilizing controls and agreements enacted by the Roosevelt administration and on the cyclical nature of the regulated American economy. In his assessment of the New Deal, "Business and the Public," economic historian Thomas Cochran contends that, while Wall Street and big business lost almost all of the prestige gained during the 1920s, the irregular length of the Depression "forced business and government to work more closely together, to form a kind of partnership which grew in importance in later years"⁴¹ Similarly, in June of 1941 the major unions agreed to a pact with the administration through which the workers gave up the right to strike and ceded the choice of jobs and allocation of building materials to government regulation in return for established wages and overtime pay, uniform work shifts, government mediation of all labor disputes, and, most notably, a guarantee that only AFL union workers would be hired for defense-related construction.⁴² This agreement not only increased employment rates, which were bound to improve with the advent of the country entering World War II, it also boosted the stature of the AFL and the CIO and paved the way for future government intervention in labor disputes.

If the play seems to be unusually optimistic or, if that is too strong a term for an O'Neill work, at least hopeful, it may be because both men cooperate in their struggle to regain their purpose in life. However, as Laurin Porter has suggested, these two characters are also caught up in a "cycle of mutual self-deception" because the play ends with the beginning of the same "Wise Guy" and "Sucker" relationship Erie once had with the deceased night clerk. Thus, the interaction of these characters produces no real progress: it only emphasizes the illusionary nature of perceived progress.⁴³ Similarly, in the fall of 1939, New Republic editor George Soule concluded an article titled "Toward A Planned Economy" by arguing that "we probably cannot abolish the business cycle without a fairly complete renovation of our economic and political structure, but we could, without drastic changes avoid a few of the more egregious errors."⁴⁴ A study of business cycles of the United States shows that between 1854 and 1945 the country experienced six severe depressions averaging three years in length and some form of monetary contraction occurred every four years. After World War II, in the much more regulated economy, recessions have occurred every five years but have generally ended in half the length—that is, until the deregulation of banking practices and the "fancy financial instruments" alluded to above ushered in the "Great Recession" of 2008.⁴⁵

In his conclusion to Eugene O'Neill's America, John Patrick Diggins emphasizes that O'Neill recognized that the freedom promised by a truly democratic state could not withstand the conflicts caused by individual passions and desires.⁴⁶ In The Iceman Cometh and Hughie, these desires are occupation-based: the drunks in the Harry Hope's saloon collectively express that their pipe dreams are to return to the careers they have lost or abandoned, and both the Night Clerk and Erie Smith require only the illusion of escape from their meager livelihoods. Each drama depicts the necessity of a stable social and economic structure, no matter how corrupt or "fixed," for maintaining each individual's basic desires. Such a society or government must promote a public discourse to persuade its members to participate in whichever economic theory will be the guiding principle of the day. Whether it be "industrial progress" shaped by the "free hand of the market economy" or "full employment" guaranteed by "well regulated capitalism" or possibly by "job creators," economic rhetoric pervades our culture and influences our desires.

Of course, theater has always been one of the main channels for propagating the rhetoric of societal stability. In comparison to the polemical dramas of the 1930s, The Iceman Cometh and Hughie are not didactic or overtly political. Nevertheless, in a letter of advice to Michael Gold, a younger, more politically inclined playwright, O'Neill wrote: "My quarrel with propaganda in the theatre is that it's such a damned unconvincing propaganda—whereas, if you will restrain the propaganda purpose to the selection of life to be portrayed and then let that life live itself without comment, it does your trick."⁴⁷ Unfortunately, most propaganda in the American theatre and in American politics does not heed this advice. In the New Republic article quoted above, Malcolm Cowley notes that in the late 1930s Americans were becoming more and more interested in overtly melodramatic versions of pre-Depression history. Demonstrated by the success of plays such as Abe Lincoln in Illinois, this collective nostalgia allowed Cowley to draw a conclusion that can be advanced as an O'Neillian stage description for the main characters of both Iceman and Hughie:

A man rising in the world is not concerned with history: he is too busy making it. But a citizen with a fixed place in the community wants to acquire a glorious past. . . . By that past he is reassured of his present importance; in it he finds strength to face the dangers that lie in front of him.⁴⁸