Coughlin, Charles (1891–1979)

FATHER CHARLES E. Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest and popular radio personality, significantly influenced American opinion during the Great Depression. A priest of the Diocese of Detroit and pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan, Coughlin began broadcasting his sermons on the radio in 1926. His program, The Golden Hour of the Little Flower, on CBS radio, quickly gained a national audience.

However, Coughlin's harsh denunciations of President Herbert Hoover caused the station to discontinue his program. Not to be dissuaded, Coughlin formed his own network, which grew to more than 30 stations. Coughlin's Golden Hour was heard by as many as 40 million listeners throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. In addition to religious matters, Coughlin spoke frequently on economic and political issues, focusing on the Depression and the evils of modern capitalism. His theory of economic populism consisted of a radical reform of the monetary system in America, challenging Wall Street, the gold standard, and the international banking system. He advocated a return to currency based at least partially on silver and the creation of a Bank of the United States of America to ensure democratic fairness by replacing the Federal Reserve system, which Coughlin considered dominated by bankers. He frequently ridiculed wealthy industrialists and financiers who he believed were more connected to the economic problems of the Great Depression than to their solution.

At first, Coughlin supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan of reforms known as the New Deal, and Coughlin himself had been considered for a post as one of Roosevelt's economic advisors. Coughlin, however, became disenchanted with the slow pace of reforms and beginning in 1934 denounced the president's program as a grand deception. Coughlin formed his own organization, the National Union for Social Justice, in 1934 and launched an affiliated publication, Social Justice, in 1936, eventually amassing a readership of one million. In 1936 Coughlin opposed Roosevelt's reelection as president, instead helping to organize a rival political faction. The Coughlin-supported Union Party selected William Lemke as their candidate but Lemke received fewer than one million votes, hardly enough to counter Roosevelt's 27 million supporters.

Coughlin's message appealed to a broad cross section of America, including Protestants and Catholics, laborers, and small business owners in cities and farms in the American heartland. His message of reform was particularly attractive to those with little hope of material prosperity, discontented and poor first- and second-generation Americans, ethnic minorities, and the unemployed, as well as an emerging middle class that had lost its sense of economic security during the Depression.

At the high point of his influence, his listeners numbered one-third of Americans. His reforms were not as controversial as his assessment of blame for the Great Depression. Anti-Semitism tainted his message and by 1938 he routinely targeted Jews as the cause of economic hardship in America. He leveled frequent verbal attacks against Jews, Freemasons, Nazis, fascists, communists, and atheists as part of “Satan's organization” aimed at overthrowing America and Christianity.

Despite his criticism of Nazis and fascists, as his message became extreme, he spoke of his sympathy for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. His influence launched the Christian Front, a group of anarchists centered [Page 215]in Brooklyn, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts. Because of mounting pressure from his religious superiors and lack of financial support from listeners, Coughlin abandoned the airwaves in 1940. He ceased all public political and economic activism in 1942, the same year the U.S. Postal Service refused delivery of his publication, Social Justice, under the government's Espionage Act (1918). Coughlin continued his work as a parish priest in Detroit until retiring in 1966.

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