FATHER COUGHLIN DURING HIS 1930-31 MONTHS ON CBS.
FATHER COUGHLIN
Sundays during Network Radio’s Golden Age meant Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy for comedy, The American Album of Familiar Music for songs and The Shadow for thrills.
And then radio had Father Coughlin, the Detroit priest who used his Golden Hour of The Little Flower to inspire or incite, depending on whose opinion you heard or read. His champions and critics, all emphatic and vocal, numbered into the millions during his broadcasting career which spanned 14 years, from 1926 to 1940. (1)
All would agree, however, that Father Coughlin was one of a kind.
Charles Edward Coughlin was born to an Irish Catholic couple, Thomas & Amelia Coughlin, (KOG-lin), on October 25 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario. Their only child’s future was preordained, (pun intended), as Amelia began toting the infant to daily Mass at the neighboring St. Mary’s Cathedral where Thomas worked as the building’s sexton/caretaker. (2) The strong willed mother had but one objective for her son and pushed him toward the priesthood at every opportunity. Young Charles was eager to please her and willingly obeyed when his parents left him with the Basilian Fathers at St. Michael’s College in Toronto at age twelve to begin his secondary education. (3)
Charles Coughlin developed into an excellent student. The stocky, 5’10" fullback-captain of St. Michael’s rugby team was President of his senior class and a strong member of his school’s debating team who was also given to impromptu monologues in class, to the entertainment of his classmates and teachers. It was only natural that Charles would graduate from St. Michael’s into St. Basil’s Seminary to complete his education and training for priesthood. He took his formal vows on June 29,1916 at the age of 24 and spent the next seven years at the Basilians’ Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, as a popular teacher and coach.
The young priest immediately made himself available to Windsor and Detroit area parishes for volunteer work which included his services as a well-versed speaker on subjects both spiritual and secular as the Church had become more involved in social issues under the direction of Pope Leo XIII. (4) He left the Basilians and Canada in 1923 to serve the Archdiocese of Detroit as an assistant to pastors of large parishes. Coughlin quickly displayed he was capable of greater responsibilities and in 1925 he was assigned to his own parish in tiny North Branch, Michigan, 77 miles north of Detroit. The starter assignment for the 34 year old newcomer was close enough that his superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher, could keep and eye on him, yet small enough not to do much harm if he bungled the assignment.
Hardly a cause for concern, Coughlin’s knack for promotion and raising money turned the little church’s attendance and finances around in short order. Bishop Gallagher realized that the Archdiocese had a valuable new asset on its hands and within six months he gave the young cleric an assignment within twelve miles of downtown Detroit.
In 1926 Coughlin became the founding priest of a new Catholic parish, The Shrine of The Little Flower, in suburban Royal Oak, Michigan. (5) He enthusiastically oversaw the construction of a church to seat 600, reflective of his big ideas for the small suburb with as yet relatively few of his faith. (6) Coughlin had money troubles from the start when he borrowed $79,000 from the Detroit Archdiocese to build the church and weekly receipts weren’t enough to pay the bills despite his arsenal of fund raising promotions. That’s when Father Coughlin and radio discovered each other.
The young priest with money problems called on Leo Fitzpatrick, manager of powerful WJR/Detroit and a devout Catholic. After Coughlin eloquently presented his case, Fitzpatrick agreed to give him a Sunday afternoon hour at a bargain rate for a few weeks to learn if his eloquence translated over the air. Father Coughlin’s first broadcast was his sermon from the Royal Oak pulpit on Sunday, October 17, 1926, just eight days shy of his 35th birthday. Within moments of his first words Fitzpatrick instinctively knew that radio - specifically WJR - had a new voice for Christianity and Catholicism.
As historian Alan Brinkley quotes novelist and historian Wallace Stegner describing Coughlin’s delivery: “His voice was of such mellow richness, such manly, heartwarming, confidential intimacy, such emotional and ingratiating charm that anyone tuning past it on the radio dial almost automatically returned to hear it again…Without a doubt, it was one of the greatest speaking voices of the Twentieth Century.” (7)
That first broadcast drew less than a dozen responses in the mail, but most contained donations to the church. The next week’s sermon pulled several dozen with money. Then a hundred or more a week became the norm and before long Coughlin was getting over a thousand responses a week from all across Michigan wherever WJR’s 5,000 watts of power would reach. (8) In addition, the priest had to add more services to his Sunday schedule to accommodate the crowds who came to Royal Oak to see the priest who had become a Sunday star on Detroit’s Blue Network affiliate. (9)
Bishop Gallagher continued to counsel Father Coughlin in his new radio venture but not all of the church’s hierarchy were so encouraging. William Cardinal O’Connell, leader of the Archdiocese of Boston, for example, called Coughlin’s broadcasts, "...hysterical addresses," and added, “The priest has his place and he ought to stay there.”
Coughlin’s radio presence continued to grow through 1927 that the first wave of 106 clerks and four personal secretaries were hired to handle the huge volume of mail and donations he received. The suddenly moneyed priest was able to begin construction of a large rectory for himself and his assistant priests plus a home for his parents in neighboring Windsor. For a period in 1928, Coughlin’s weekly sermons were broadcast by the Blue Network and later that year crews began construction of the six-story Charity Crucifixion Tower which would house his private apartment and radio studio while serving as the flood-lit landmark for a huge new Shrine of The Little Flower accommodating 2,600 parishioners. The new church was completed five years later and dedicated on October 11, 1933. (10)
Coughlin kept his popularity snowball rolling in 1929 when he bought time to spread his weekly sermons beyond WJR's reach to WMAQ/Chicago and WLW/Cincinnati. His weekly radio bill on the three stations mounted to $1,650 but donations easily covered that sum. Up to this time the priest from The Little Flower had devoted his Sunday broadcasts to spiritual and Biblical matters with only an occasional side venture into social areas and condemnations of the Ku Klux Klan which still had members in Royal Oak.
But by late fall the world was changing and that was no place more obvious than Detroit where the Depression was claiming factory jobs at an alarming rate. (11) As the Depression worsened in Royal Oak, where many unemployed auto workers lived, Coughlin established The God‘s Poor Society to distribute food and clothing to needy families and he began to direct funds from his donations to Detroit charities.
Biographers generally agree that Coughlin’s messages began to change dramatically at mid-season when he angrily denounced communism, (“The Red Serpent”), on his broadcast of January 12, 1930, his first direct shot in a barrage that would continue through the decade. It was obvious that the scrappy priest wanted more listeners and donations to meet for his growing obligations and he figured the way to get them was to confront current social and economic issues head-on in his weekly broadcasts with all the eloquence and emotion he could muster. To obtain this level of effectiveness, he would first confer with Bishop Gallagher on his Sunday topic then closet himself on Thursday afternoon to write, rewrite and polish his radio address until he was satisfied. It was an isolated process that sometimes occupied him until it came time for mass on Sunday.
Response and receipts from the two additional stations in 1929-30 justified the expense of adding more stations to Coughlin’s weekly roster in the fall of 1930. Before any commitments were made, however, he announced formation of The Little Flower Radio League on August 15th with suggested minimum dues of a dollar per year. Clerks at Detroit's Guardian National Bank reported that the Radio League's deposits of dollar bills would eventually reach as much as $20,000 a week.
WMAQ, then a CBS affiliate, arranged a meeting for Coughlin with network officials. Carrying a letter of endorsement from influential Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Coughlin went to New York City and negotiated for a Sunday evening hour that the young network was having difficulty unloading. They settled on a contract with 13-week options from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. beginning on October 5, 1930.
But friction developed quickly between the two when Coughlin’s targets widened to include President Hoover, “unregulated capitalism” and “international bankers,” (with strong hints of anti-Semitism). In his words, “I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern Capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world’s goods. Blow for blow I shall also strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world’s happiness.”
As the Depression deepened, Coughlin‘s tirades grew more intense, calling for conversion to the silver standard and government control of property. CBS President Bill Paley and his Executive Vice President, Ed Klauber, were alarmed by what they heard coming from their network. Klauber called the priest and insisted that his scripts be approved by CBS before each broadcast. Coughlin agreed and submitted his January 4, 1931 script attacking The Treaty of Versailles, which he called, “…that evil document.“ It was the straw that broke the network’s patience.
As Paley recalled in his memoir, As It Happened: We refused him air time for one especially inflammatory advance script and strongly suggested that he confine himself to a religious theme. That Sunday he appealed to his radio audience to write me personally and protest the restrictions imposed upon him. Almost 400,000 letters poured into CBS almost all of them protesting our action”. (12)
The network wasn’t bluffing. CBS notified Coughlin that it was cancelling their contract at the end of 26 weeks on March 29, 1931. Then, to prevent anyone, (i.e. Coughlin), from accusing the network of being anti-religious, it replaced the Detroit priest with The CBS Church of The Air, for which it donated the one o’clock hour on Sunday afternoon to a different denomination every week. It also adopted a network policy of no more paid religious broadcasts. NBC followed suite to prevent Coughlin from approaching its two networks.
The shutout from wide radio exposure took its toll on Coughlin’s audience and donations at a critical time when funds were sorely needed. Once again, WJR’s Leo Fitzpatrick came to the priest’s aid. Over the summer of 1931, Fitzpatrick and WJR owner George A. (Dick) Richards helped create an independent network of 19 major market stations which carried Coughlin’s weekly addresses every Sunday afternoon at 4:00. The 26-week series, paid for by Coughlin at full station rate card prices, began on October 4th and was relayed from Detroit to the Eastern half of the nation via AT&T lines - from WOR/Newark to KMOX/St. Louis.
The independent network concept paid-off with a surge in donations and memberships in The Little Flower Radio League. Coughlin increased the network to 26 stations on October 16 for his 27 week cycle of Sunday broadcasts in the 1932-33 season. The reported weekly cost of $14,000 didn’t faze Coughlin because funds were rolling in at a record pace from his broadcasts which had struck the constant chords of attacking President Hoover and pushing for the election of Franklin Roosevelt to replace him with the slogan, “Roosevelt Or Ruin!” (13)
Considering himself an unpaid confidant of Roosevelt, Coughlin sent the campaigning Democrat the following self-serving advice in the fall of 1932: “Perhaps it would be wise in your Boston address to refer to that radio priest from Michigan who speaks for the rights of the common man. A mention of this certainly would do no harm in this particular spot.” (14) Coughlin assumed his broadcasts were key to Roosevelt’s sweeping victory and was quoted in a November 28th address, “The money changers are being driven from the temple!”.
Broadcasting magazine reported on March 15, 1933, that Coughlin and WJR's Richards attended FDR’s March 4th inauguration and later met with presidential advisor, Economics Professor Raymond Moley. (15) The priest began to speak of the White House and administration officials in familiar terms, referring to Roosevelt as “The Boss,“ and intimating that he possessed inside information. But before Coughlin’s presumptuousness got any further, FDR’s Press Secretary, Steve Early, made it clear to reporters that there was no connection between the President and the outspoken priest. Early added that he doubted if Roosevelt had ever heard any of Coughlin’s broadcasts.
Author Sheldon Marcus in his 1973 biography, Father Coughlin - The Tumultuous Life of The Priest of The Little Flower, quotes former Postmaster General and close Roosevelt friend, James Farley, in remembering FDR's growing impatience with Coughlin at the time when he said: "Who the hell does he think he is? He should run for the presidency himself!" The President's observation wasn't far off the mark.
Father Coughlin’s 1933-34 radio budget of $226,000 was trusted to the Detroit ad agency Grace & Holliday to administer. The result was a series of 26 weeks on a 23 to 28 station independent network that began on October 22nd. No ratings were ever available for The Golden Hour of The Little Flower, but none were needed - the program’s huge mail count told the time buyers all they needed to know. His broadcasts brought in a reported $500,000 during 1933, a year of severe economic depression. By 1935, the Royal Oak post office claimed that during the past two years it had cashed over $2.0 Million in money orders payable to The Radio League of The Little Flower.
Coughlin was also developing what he considered to be new sources of influence, The National Union For Social Justice and its monthly magazine, Social Justice. Marcus reports start-up costs for both were over $76,000. Coughlin's loosely knit political arm and its publication added to what he would eventually, and mistakenly, assume to be his power.
Now more a political ideologue than radio theologian, Coughlin continually preached establishing silver as the new monetary standard in 1934. When he began his 26 week series of broadcasts over 29 stations on October 28th the idea of a silver standard had gained some traction in Congress. Late in the year he traveled to Washington to advocate it before the U.S. House Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures. His newly modified plan called for a combination gold and silver standard: "I advocate using gold and silver together, not separated, in one coin. In this coin which we call the dollar, there will be 25 cents worth of gold and 75 cents worth of silver. Of course, this coin will not be meant for circulation. Paper money will be printed against it."
After Coughlin's congressional appearance FDR gave him an hour appointment at the White House which was described as cordial. But the priest's pet economic concept was opposed by the administration. Pushing its opposition to a greater degree, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau made public a list of heavy silver investors who would profit by a conversion to the policy. The largest in Michigan on that list was Coughlin’s secretary, Amy Collins, who held 500,000 ounces for The Radio League of The Little Flower.
Coughlin immediately responded by calling silver, “...the gentile metal”, a not too subtle reference to Morgenthau’s Jewish heritage. Then he unloaded on Morgenthau's boss, Roosevelt: "We were supposed to be partners. He said he would rely on me and I would be an important adviser. But he was a liar. He never took my advice. He just used me and when he was through with me he double-crossed me on that silver business."
Several months later, when President Roosevelt proposed that the United States join the World Court. Coughlin would have no part of the idea. In his Sunday, January 27, 1935, sermon, “The Menace of The World Court,” he claimed that the body was the tool of “international bankers.” Then, recalling his display of force against CBS in 1931, Coughlin urged his listeners to send telegrams to Washington objecting to the to the move. The massive response overwhelmed Western Union facilities and flooded congressional offices. The World Court treaty was defeated in the Senate on the following Tuesday. (16)
Coughlin had declared war against the Roosevelt administration and won the first fight. It would also be his last victory. He became the target of a campaign which New Republic magazine later commented in August, 1935, was aimed to, “…let the air out of Father Coughlin.”
The first return shot was fired on Monday, March 4, 1935, when General Hugh Johnson, former head of the Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, used Coughlin’s own weapon against him. Johnson took to the Blue Network in prime time and coupling Coughlin with Louisiana firebrand Senator Huey Long, addressed the topic, Defend The Constitution Against The Onslaught of Radical Demagogues.
In Johnson’s words, “ You can laugh at Huey Long, you can snort at Father Coughlin, but this country was never under a greater menace. Added to the folderol of Senator Long, there comes the burring over the air the dripping brogue of the Irish-Canadian priest…musical, blatant bunk from the very rostrum of religion, it goes straight home to souls weary in distress. Between the team of Huey Long and the priest we have the whole bag of sleazy and crafty tricks possessed by Peter The Hermit, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sitting Bull, William Hohenzollern, Hitler and Lenin…boiled down to two with the radio and newsreels to make them effective. If you don’t think Long and Coughlin are dangerous, you don’t know the temper of the country in this distress!”
Administration officials continued assailing Coughlin and he returned their attacks through the end of his radio contracts on April 14, 1935. Then he hit the road for huge Social Justice rallies in major cities attracting large numbers for his support of renewing The Patman Veterans’ Bonus Bill which Roosevelt threatened to veto. (17) Coughlin appealed to the President to sign the bill, claiming it, (i.e.,he), “…had the support of the greatest lobby the people had ever established.” Roosevelt vetoed it on May 22, 1935 and the Senate confirmed his veto.
Roosevelt faced re-election the following year and some measures of his New Deal were failing. His political allies feared a coalition of Coughlin’s National Union For Social Justice and Senator Long’s Share The Wealth movement might become a threat in 1936 as both demagogues demonstrated effective use of FDR’s most powerful communications tool, radio. Washington columnist David Lawrence wrote: “…Both Coughlin and Long are making serious inroads into the administration’s strength.” Democratic Party Executive Secretary Richard Roper warned of Coughlin and Long, “…They may not have decided precisely how to intrude themselves into the 1936 election… But their stars are rising quickly.”
To extinguish the political fire, influential Democrat donor and Coughlin admirer Joseph P. Kennedy proposed a meeting between the President and the priest. Coughlin was eager for the recognition and Roosevelt reluctantly agreed to see the pair at his Hyde Park estate on September 10, 1935. (18) Fate played an uncanny role in that meeting because Huey Long died from an assassin’s bullet early that same morning. Long’s death left much of Coughlin’s presumed power base in shambles and Roosevelt knew it. The President listened politely to Coughlin and Kennedy then dismissed the two without commitment. (19)
After the Presidential rebuff, Coughlin broadened his Sunday program’s network to the West Coast on November 3,1935. He smartly compensated for cost of the expansion to 33 stations by reducing The Golden Hour of The Little Flower to 45 minutes. The priest was now heard nationwide, spreading what had become his call for a third political party and denouncing, “Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt,” and claiming that, "...the money changers have returned to the temple..."
The Union Party became a joint venture of Coughlin’s well-heeled Social Justice activists, Long’s Share The Wealth socialists, (now headed by the late Senator's second-in-command, Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith), and a late comer to the trio, Dr. Francis Townsend, who built a sizable following by proposing broad expansion of 1935’s Social Security Act. The trio covered the nation, enlisting the support of smaller splinter groups with fearsome talk of what would result with Roosevelt’s re-election. As Coughlin put it in a Des Moines speech to farmers, “Democracy is doomed unless…”
The priest claimed to have National Union For Social Justice branches in 75% of the country’s Congressional districts. He was confident that his third party candidate, North Dakota Congressman William Lempke, would receive at least 9 Million votes in the 1936 election an influence in the new administration. Coughlin was so confident that he smugly promised to leave the air if the Union Party fell short of that number. That was a mistake.
The returns from November 3, 1936, provided a landslide re-election for the President with 27,757,431 votes. Republican Alf Landon trailed with 16,681,574 votes. The Union Party‘s William Lempke only received 892,381 votes. A disillusioned Father Coughlin told Mutual's national radio audience four days later that he was leaving the air because, “…less than 10% of National Union members lived up to their promises.” He went on with his convoluted, cloying farewell, “I love my country and my church too much to become a stumbling block to those who have failed to understand. Goodbye and God bless everyone, friends and opponents. You are all friends tonight.”
He wasn’t off the air long. Coughlin returned with a 13 week contract on a 42 station, part Mutual/part independent network on January 24, 1937. (20) Coughlin’s 1937 contract called for 18 stations to broadcast the priest’s 60 minute addresses at 4:00 on Sunday afternoons and 24 stations, (including the ten station Don Lee West Coast network), to broadcast his 30 minute messages at 8:00 on Sunday nights.
His initial broadcast was a eulogy to his former superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit. ("Next to my father the most beloved man in my life."`) Coughlin’s remarks were subdued but he hinted at things to come by saying he had promised Gallagher that he would continue to fight communism among other evils of mankind. Critics responded that Gallagher was no longer alive and able to contradict Coughlin and his new archbishop, Edward Mooney, had nowhere near the tolerance for his subordinate’s rantings that his predecessor did.
The first available recording of Father Coughlin’s broadcasts is from this series, his half-hour address from April 4, 1937, titled, "Twenty Years Ago", equating Good Friday, 1917, with America’s entry into World War I. The 45 year old priest displayed his full arsenal of broad “a’s”, rolling “r’s” and volumes of outrage to blame the Depression on the costs of the war and the European recovery.
Bishop Mooney forced Father Couglin to cancel his return to the air in the fall of 1937 and Pope Pius publicly supported the move. However, Couglin and his superiors came to an undisclosed agreement and he was back with a half-hour on January 9, 1938, broadcast by a coast-to-coast network of 63 stations for 13 weeks.
It appeared to be business as usual when Coughlin returned to the air with an hour long Sunday afternoon program on an independent chain of 44 stations later in the year on November 6, 1938. But it didn’t take long for him to create controversy. His sermon, "Persecution - Jewish & Christian", of November 20, 1938 reveals a theme of anti-Semitism in claiming that the Nazi persecution of Jews was the result of the role “atheistic Jews” played in establishing communism to counter an unfair economic system developed after World War I by Jewish bankers. Stations were flooded with protests and originating station WJR/Detroit claimed innocence, assuming Coughlin’s superiors had approved his remarks. (22)
During the following week, fearing more anti-Semitic remarks, WMCA/New York City, WDAS/Philadelphia and Chicago stations WJJD and WIND refused to broadcast Father Coughlin’s hour long program without seeing his scripts in advance. Coughlin quickly blamed the stations’ Jewish ownership and refused to comply with the ultimatum. As a result, a mob of 500 began picketing WDAS when the station cancelled its contract. Another group began nine months of picketing and chanting anti-Semitic slurs on the sidewalk in front of WMCA during the time of Coughlin’s Sunday afternoon broadcasts.
Nevertheless, Coughlin and his representatives were reported in June to be enlisting stations around the country for a new set of daily 15 minute and half hour programs fed from his church's studio at different times during the day.
By his broadcast of September 10, 1939, Europe was at war and Father Coughlin was preaching an isolationist message in calling for keeping the provisions of The Neutrality Act which forbade the United States from supplying war materials to its allies. His address titled, “Cash & Carry Will Evolve to Credit & Carry,” is pocked with technical problems but provides an example of how Coughlin’s emotional scale begins with calm reasoning and climaxes in exhausting passages of shouting. Were it anyone but the 48 year old priest, listeners would suspect the speaker was losing control of himself.
He continued the theme in his address of September 24, 1939, (preceded by 40 seconds of dead air). It begins with a schedule of rallies sponsored by isolationist groups to protest the new, Roosevelt-endorsed Neutrality Act of 1939 and continues with the sermon, “No Prosperity In Machinegunning Our Brothers In Christ.” He again exhorts his listeners to bombard Washington with 10 Million letters to continue the embargo against arms shipments. He lost - The Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed allowing the shipment of arms to England and France.
Father Coughlin was also losing his standing with broadcasters, On October 3, 1939 the National Association of Broadcasters ruled the controversial addresses of Coughlin, Unitarian minister Walton Cole and Jehovah Witness spokesman Joseph Rutherford violated its Code by blasting other religions and advocating social change. It subsequently pressured the 44 stations carrying the broadcasts from Royal Oak to cancel them. WJR immediately protested the move and WEW/St. Louis, operated by St. Louis University, refused to abide by it. Nevertheless, most of the stations on Father Coughlin's network dropped his broadcasts and he announced his "temporary" retirement from the air in the September 23, 1940 issue of Social Justice.
The Golden Hour of The Little Flower had been forced from the air under public, industry and government pressure. The vast majority said it rightfully so, his vocal minority of supporters claimed Father Coughlin it was unjustly misunderstood. And that's the way it would always remain. Social Justice magazine followed suite and ceased publication in 1942. Father Charles Coughlin remained pastor of his parish for another 14 years and retired in comfort, if not satisfaction. He died two days following his 88th birthday in 1979.
Perhaps the best way to sum up Father Coughlin’s rise and fall in Network Radio, (networks mostly of his own making), are with his own words, summing up the decade in his New Year’s Eve address of Sunday, December 31, 1939, “A Review of The Past Ten Years.”
Whether or not you agree with Wallace Stegner’s appraisal, “He has one of the greatest speaking voices of the Twentieth Century,” you have to admit Father Charles Coughlin certainly had a way with words and he sure knew how to use them.
(1) No published audience measurements are available for Father Coughlin’s broadcasts.
(2) Amelia Coughlin gave birth to a daughter, Agnes, in 1892, but the child died in infancy.
(3) Although Charles was now living at school 40 miles from home, Amelia Coughlin visited her son every Sunday afternoon.
(4) Coughlin had no trouble crossing into the United States at will. He was a dual-citizen because his father was an American and his mother was Canadian.
(5) The Royal Oak church was named to honor Saint Therese of Lisieux, aka The Little Flower of Jesus, canonized in May, 1925.
(6) Coughlin also faced problems from the Ku Klux Klan which welcomed his new church by burning a wooden cross on its front lawn.
(7) Brinkley in Voices of Protest - Huey Long, Father Coughlin & The Great Depression, (Vintage Books, 1983), quoting Stegner in The Aspirin Age, (Simon & Schuster, 1949).
(8) WJR increased its power to 10,000 watts in 1931 and the maximum 50,000 watts in 1935.
(9) WJR switched its affiliation from Blue to CBS on January 29, 1935.
(10) Coughlin claimed that he vowed in 1926 to someday build a cross, “… so high that neither man nor beast can burn it down,” on the site where the KKK burned the cross on his church’s lawn.
(11) Over 70,000 jobs were lost in Detroit’s auto industry from 1929 to 1930. That number tripled by 1931 to over a quarter-million unemployed.
(12) Some accounts of the incident, (including Coughlin’s), claim that over a million protests were received by CBS.
(13) Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy arranged a meeting between Roosevelt and Coughlin in 1932 during which the priest told the presidential aspirant that he couldn’t outright endorse his candidacy, but he could increase his attacks on Hoover.
(14) Erik Barnow in The Golden Web, (Oxford University Press, 1968).
(15) Moley, who coined the term, “New Deal,” was an important early advisor to Roosevelt but broke with the President and the Democratic party in 1936 over FDR’s economic policies and endorsed his 1940 opponent, Wendell Willkie.
(16) Coughlin claimed that 200,000 telegrams opposing the World Court resulted from his broadcasts. The priest was given to exaggeration, (once claiming 40 Million listeners per week), but the messages he inspired obviously had an impact on the World Court decision.
(17) Authored by Texas Congressman Wright Patman, his Bonus Bill would have awarded $1,000 to all U.S. Veterans of World War I. It was eventually passed in 1936.
(18) Roosevelt made no secret to confidants that he didn’t trust Coughlin. Curiously enough, this stemmed from the fact that Coughlin supported him for the 1932 Democratic Presidential nomination against Al Smith, the first Catholic to run for the office in 1928.
(19) The Nashville Banner commented, “…The real threat of a new political party passed away with the death of Huey Long.”
(20) Coughlin’s 1937 contract called for 18 stations to broadcast the priest’s 60 minute addresses at 4:00 on Sunday afternoons and 24 stations, (including the ten station Don Lee West Coast network), to broadcast his 30 minute messages at 8:00 on Sunday nights.
(21) A set of Father Coughlin’s 1937 to 1940 broadcasts can be found at www.otrrlibrary,org.
(22) It was no secret in the broadcasting industry that George A. Richards, owner of WJR/Detroit and WGAR/Cleveland was an outspoken anti-Semite who wanted to, “…get the Jews out of Washington.”
Copyright © 2018, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Sundays during Network Radio’s Golden Age meant Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy for comedy, The American Album of Familiar Music for songs and The Shadow for thrills.
And then radio had Father Coughlin, the Detroit priest who used his Golden Hour of The Little Flower to inspire or incite, depending on whose opinion you heard or read. His champions and critics, all emphatic and vocal, numbered into the millions during his broadcasting career which spanned 14 years, from 1926 to 1940. (1)
All would agree, however, that Father Coughlin was one of a kind.
Charles Edward Coughlin was born to an Irish Catholic couple, Thomas & Amelia Coughlin, (KOG-lin), on October 25 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario. Their only child’s future was preordained, (pun intended), as Amelia began toting the infant to daily Mass at the neighboring St. Mary’s Cathedral where Thomas worked as the building’s sexton/caretaker. (2) The strong willed mother had but one objective for her son and pushed him toward the priesthood at every opportunity. Young Charles was eager to please her and willingly obeyed when his parents left him with the Basilian Fathers at St. Michael’s College in Toronto at age twelve to begin his secondary education. (3)
Charles Coughlin developed into an excellent student. The stocky, 5’10" fullback-captain of St. Michael’s rugby team was President of his senior class and a strong member of his school’s debating team who was also given to impromptu monologues in class, to the entertainment of his classmates and teachers. It was only natural that Charles would graduate from St. Michael’s into St. Basil’s Seminary to complete his education and training for priesthood. He took his formal vows on June 29,1916 at the age of 24 and spent the next seven years at the Basilians’ Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario, as a popular teacher and coach.
The young priest immediately made himself available to Windsor and Detroit area parishes for volunteer work which included his services as a well-versed speaker on subjects both spiritual and secular as the Church had become more involved in social issues under the direction of Pope Leo XIII. (4) He left the Basilians and Canada in 1923 to serve the Archdiocese of Detroit as an assistant to pastors of large parishes. Coughlin quickly displayed he was capable of greater responsibilities and in 1925 he was assigned to his own parish in tiny North Branch, Michigan, 77 miles north of Detroit. The starter assignment for the 34 year old newcomer was close enough that his superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher, could keep and eye on him, yet small enough not to do much harm if he bungled the assignment.
Hardly a cause for concern, Coughlin’s knack for promotion and raising money turned the little church’s attendance and finances around in short order. Bishop Gallagher realized that the Archdiocese had a valuable new asset on its hands and within six months he gave the young cleric an assignment within twelve miles of downtown Detroit.
In 1926 Coughlin became the founding priest of a new Catholic parish, The Shrine of The Little Flower, in suburban Royal Oak, Michigan. (5) He enthusiastically oversaw the construction of a church to seat 600, reflective of his big ideas for the small suburb with as yet relatively few of his faith. (6) Coughlin had money troubles from the start when he borrowed $79,000 from the Detroit Archdiocese to build the church and weekly receipts weren’t enough to pay the bills despite his arsenal of fund raising promotions. That’s when Father Coughlin and radio discovered each other.
The young priest with money problems called on Leo Fitzpatrick, manager of powerful WJR/Detroit and a devout Catholic. After Coughlin eloquently presented his case, Fitzpatrick agreed to give him a Sunday afternoon hour at a bargain rate for a few weeks to learn if his eloquence translated over the air. Father Coughlin’s first broadcast was his sermon from the Royal Oak pulpit on Sunday, October 17, 1926, just eight days shy of his 35th birthday. Within moments of his first words Fitzpatrick instinctively knew that radio - specifically WJR - had a new voice for Christianity and Catholicism.
As historian Alan Brinkley quotes novelist and historian Wallace Stegner describing Coughlin’s delivery: “His voice was of such mellow richness, such manly, heartwarming, confidential intimacy, such emotional and ingratiating charm that anyone tuning past it on the radio dial almost automatically returned to hear it again…Without a doubt, it was one of the greatest speaking voices of the Twentieth Century.” (7)
That first broadcast drew less than a dozen responses in the mail, but most contained donations to the church. The next week’s sermon pulled several dozen with money. Then a hundred or more a week became the norm and before long Coughlin was getting over a thousand responses a week from all across Michigan wherever WJR’s 5,000 watts of power would reach. (8) In addition, the priest had to add more services to his Sunday schedule to accommodate the crowds who came to Royal Oak to see the priest who had become a Sunday star on Detroit’s Blue Network affiliate. (9)
Bishop Gallagher continued to counsel Father Coughlin in his new radio venture but not all of the church’s hierarchy were so encouraging. William Cardinal O’Connell, leader of the Archdiocese of Boston, for example, called Coughlin’s broadcasts, "...hysterical addresses," and added, “The priest has his place and he ought to stay there.”
Coughlin’s radio presence continued to grow through 1927 that the first wave of 106 clerks and four personal secretaries were hired to handle the huge volume of mail and donations he received. The suddenly moneyed priest was able to begin construction of a large rectory for himself and his assistant priests plus a home for his parents in neighboring Windsor. For a period in 1928, Coughlin’s weekly sermons were broadcast by the Blue Network and later that year crews began construction of the six-story Charity Crucifixion Tower which would house his private apartment and radio studio while serving as the flood-lit landmark for a huge new Shrine of The Little Flower accommodating 2,600 parishioners. The new church was completed five years later and dedicated on October 11, 1933. (10)
Coughlin kept his popularity snowball rolling in 1929 when he bought time to spread his weekly sermons beyond WJR's reach to WMAQ/Chicago and WLW/Cincinnati. His weekly radio bill on the three stations mounted to $1,650 but donations easily covered that sum. Up to this time the priest from The Little Flower had devoted his Sunday broadcasts to spiritual and Biblical matters with only an occasional side venture into social areas and condemnations of the Ku Klux Klan which still had members in Royal Oak.
But by late fall the world was changing and that was no place more obvious than Detroit where the Depression was claiming factory jobs at an alarming rate. (11) As the Depression worsened in Royal Oak, where many unemployed auto workers lived, Coughlin established The God‘s Poor Society to distribute food and clothing to needy families and he began to direct funds from his donations to Detroit charities.
Biographers generally agree that Coughlin’s messages began to change dramatically at mid-season when he angrily denounced communism, (“The Red Serpent”), on his broadcast of January 12, 1930, his first direct shot in a barrage that would continue through the decade. It was obvious that the scrappy priest wanted more listeners and donations to meet for his growing obligations and he figured the way to get them was to confront current social and economic issues head-on in his weekly broadcasts with all the eloquence and emotion he could muster. To obtain this level of effectiveness, he would first confer with Bishop Gallagher on his Sunday topic then closet himself on Thursday afternoon to write, rewrite and polish his radio address until he was satisfied. It was an isolated process that sometimes occupied him until it came time for mass on Sunday.
Response and receipts from the two additional stations in 1929-30 justified the expense of adding more stations to Coughlin’s weekly roster in the fall of 1930. Before any commitments were made, however, he announced formation of The Little Flower Radio League on August 15th with suggested minimum dues of a dollar per year. Clerks at Detroit's Guardian National Bank reported that the Radio League's deposits of dollar bills would eventually reach as much as $20,000 a week.
WMAQ, then a CBS affiliate, arranged a meeting for Coughlin with network officials. Carrying a letter of endorsement from influential Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Coughlin went to New York City and negotiated for a Sunday evening hour that the young network was having difficulty unloading. They settled on a contract with 13-week options from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. beginning on October 5, 1930.
But friction developed quickly between the two when Coughlin’s targets widened to include President Hoover, “unregulated capitalism” and “international bankers,” (with strong hints of anti-Semitism). In his words, “I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern Capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world’s goods. Blow for blow I shall also strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world’s happiness.”
As the Depression deepened, Coughlin‘s tirades grew more intense, calling for conversion to the silver standard and government control of property. CBS President Bill Paley and his Executive Vice President, Ed Klauber, were alarmed by what they heard coming from their network. Klauber called the priest and insisted that his scripts be approved by CBS before each broadcast. Coughlin agreed and submitted his January 4, 1931 script attacking The Treaty of Versailles, which he called, “…that evil document.“ It was the straw that broke the network’s patience.
As Paley recalled in his memoir, As It Happened: We refused him air time for one especially inflammatory advance script and strongly suggested that he confine himself to a religious theme. That Sunday he appealed to his radio audience to write me personally and protest the restrictions imposed upon him. Almost 400,000 letters poured into CBS almost all of them protesting our action”. (12)
The network wasn’t bluffing. CBS notified Coughlin that it was cancelling their contract at the end of 26 weeks on March 29, 1931. Then, to prevent anyone, (i.e. Coughlin), from accusing the network of being anti-religious, it replaced the Detroit priest with The CBS Church of The Air, for which it donated the one o’clock hour on Sunday afternoon to a different denomination every week. It also adopted a network policy of no more paid religious broadcasts. NBC followed suite to prevent Coughlin from approaching its two networks.
The shutout from wide radio exposure took its toll on Coughlin’s audience and donations at a critical time when funds were sorely needed. Once again, WJR’s Leo Fitzpatrick came to the priest’s aid. Over the summer of 1931, Fitzpatrick and WJR owner George A. (Dick) Richards helped create an independent network of 19 major market stations which carried Coughlin’s weekly addresses every Sunday afternoon at 4:00. The 26-week series, paid for by Coughlin at full station rate card prices, began on October 4th and was relayed from Detroit to the Eastern half of the nation via AT&T lines - from WOR/Newark to KMOX/St. Louis.
The independent network concept paid-off with a surge in donations and memberships in The Little Flower Radio League. Coughlin increased the network to 26 stations on October 16 for his 27 week cycle of Sunday broadcasts in the 1932-33 season. The reported weekly cost of $14,000 didn’t faze Coughlin because funds were rolling in at a record pace from his broadcasts which had struck the constant chords of attacking President Hoover and pushing for the election of Franklin Roosevelt to replace him with the slogan, “Roosevelt Or Ruin!” (13)
Considering himself an unpaid confidant of Roosevelt, Coughlin sent the campaigning Democrat the following self-serving advice in the fall of 1932: “Perhaps it would be wise in your Boston address to refer to that radio priest from Michigan who speaks for the rights of the common man. A mention of this certainly would do no harm in this particular spot.” (14) Coughlin assumed his broadcasts were key to Roosevelt’s sweeping victory and was quoted in a November 28th address, “The money changers are being driven from the temple!”.
Broadcasting magazine reported on March 15, 1933, that Coughlin and WJR's Richards attended FDR’s March 4th inauguration and later met with presidential advisor, Economics Professor Raymond Moley. (15) The priest began to speak of the White House and administration officials in familiar terms, referring to Roosevelt as “The Boss,“ and intimating that he possessed inside information. But before Coughlin’s presumptuousness got any further, FDR’s Press Secretary, Steve Early, made it clear to reporters that there was no connection between the President and the outspoken priest. Early added that he doubted if Roosevelt had ever heard any of Coughlin’s broadcasts.
Author Sheldon Marcus in his 1973 biography, Father Coughlin - The Tumultuous Life of The Priest of The Little Flower, quotes former Postmaster General and close Roosevelt friend, James Farley, in remembering FDR's growing impatience with Coughlin at the time when he said: "Who the hell does he think he is? He should run for the presidency himself!" The President's observation wasn't far off the mark.
Father Coughlin’s 1933-34 radio budget of $226,000 was trusted to the Detroit ad agency Grace & Holliday to administer. The result was a series of 26 weeks on a 23 to 28 station independent network that began on October 22nd. No ratings were ever available for The Golden Hour of The Little Flower, but none were needed - the program’s huge mail count told the time buyers all they needed to know. His broadcasts brought in a reported $500,000 during 1933, a year of severe economic depression. By 1935, the Royal Oak post office claimed that during the past two years it had cashed over $2.0 Million in money orders payable to The Radio League of The Little Flower.
Coughlin was also developing what he considered to be new sources of influence, The National Union For Social Justice and its monthly magazine, Social Justice. Marcus reports start-up costs for both were over $76,000. Coughlin's loosely knit political arm and its publication added to what he would eventually, and mistakenly, assume to be his power.
Now more a political ideologue than radio theologian, Coughlin continually preached establishing silver as the new monetary standard in 1934. When he began his 26 week series of broadcasts over 29 stations on October 28th the idea of a silver standard had gained some traction in Congress. Late in the year he traveled to Washington to advocate it before the U.S. House Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures. His newly modified plan called for a combination gold and silver standard: "I advocate using gold and silver together, not separated, in one coin. In this coin which we call the dollar, there will be 25 cents worth of gold and 75 cents worth of silver. Of course, this coin will not be meant for circulation. Paper money will be printed against it."
After Coughlin's congressional appearance FDR gave him an hour appointment at the White House which was described as cordial. But the priest's pet economic concept was opposed by the administration. Pushing its opposition to a greater degree, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau made public a list of heavy silver investors who would profit by a conversion to the policy. The largest in Michigan on that list was Coughlin’s secretary, Amy Collins, who held 500,000 ounces for The Radio League of The Little Flower.
Coughlin immediately responded by calling silver, “...the gentile metal”, a not too subtle reference to Morgenthau’s Jewish heritage. Then he unloaded on Morgenthau's boss, Roosevelt: "We were supposed to be partners. He said he would rely on me and I would be an important adviser. But he was a liar. He never took my advice. He just used me and when he was through with me he double-crossed me on that silver business."
Several months later, when President Roosevelt proposed that the United States join the World Court. Coughlin would have no part of the idea. In his Sunday, January 27, 1935, sermon, “The Menace of The World Court,” he claimed that the body was the tool of “international bankers.” Then, recalling his display of force against CBS in 1931, Coughlin urged his listeners to send telegrams to Washington objecting to the to the move. The massive response overwhelmed Western Union facilities and flooded congressional offices. The World Court treaty was defeated in the Senate on the following Tuesday. (16)
Coughlin had declared war against the Roosevelt administration and won the first fight. It would also be his last victory. He became the target of a campaign which New Republic magazine later commented in August, 1935, was aimed to, “…let the air out of Father Coughlin.”
The first return shot was fired on Monday, March 4, 1935, when General Hugh Johnson, former head of the Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, used Coughlin’s own weapon against him. Johnson took to the Blue Network in prime time and coupling Coughlin with Louisiana firebrand Senator Huey Long, addressed the topic, Defend The Constitution Against The Onslaught of Radical Demagogues.
In Johnson’s words, “ You can laugh at Huey Long, you can snort at Father Coughlin, but this country was never under a greater menace. Added to the folderol of Senator Long, there comes the burring over the air the dripping brogue of the Irish-Canadian priest…musical, blatant bunk from the very rostrum of religion, it goes straight home to souls weary in distress. Between the team of Huey Long and the priest we have the whole bag of sleazy and crafty tricks possessed by Peter The Hermit, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sitting Bull, William Hohenzollern, Hitler and Lenin…boiled down to two with the radio and newsreels to make them effective. If you don’t think Long and Coughlin are dangerous, you don’t know the temper of the country in this distress!”
Administration officials continued assailing Coughlin and he returned their attacks through the end of his radio contracts on April 14, 1935. Then he hit the road for huge Social Justice rallies in major cities attracting large numbers for his support of renewing The Patman Veterans’ Bonus Bill which Roosevelt threatened to veto. (17) Coughlin appealed to the President to sign the bill, claiming it, (i.e.,he), “…had the support of the greatest lobby the people had ever established.” Roosevelt vetoed it on May 22, 1935 and the Senate confirmed his veto.
Roosevelt faced re-election the following year and some measures of his New Deal were failing. His political allies feared a coalition of Coughlin’s National Union For Social Justice and Senator Long’s Share The Wealth movement might become a threat in 1936 as both demagogues demonstrated effective use of FDR’s most powerful communications tool, radio. Washington columnist David Lawrence wrote: “…Both Coughlin and Long are making serious inroads into the administration’s strength.” Democratic Party Executive Secretary Richard Roper warned of Coughlin and Long, “…They may not have decided precisely how to intrude themselves into the 1936 election… But their stars are rising quickly.”
To extinguish the political fire, influential Democrat donor and Coughlin admirer Joseph P. Kennedy proposed a meeting between the President and the priest. Coughlin was eager for the recognition and Roosevelt reluctantly agreed to see the pair at his Hyde Park estate on September 10, 1935. (18) Fate played an uncanny role in that meeting because Huey Long died from an assassin’s bullet early that same morning. Long’s death left much of Coughlin’s presumed power base in shambles and Roosevelt knew it. The President listened politely to Coughlin and Kennedy then dismissed the two without commitment. (19)
After the Presidential rebuff, Coughlin broadened his Sunday program’s network to the West Coast on November 3,1935. He smartly compensated for cost of the expansion to 33 stations by reducing The Golden Hour of The Little Flower to 45 minutes. The priest was now heard nationwide, spreading what had become his call for a third political party and denouncing, “Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt,” and claiming that, "...the money changers have returned to the temple..."
The Union Party became a joint venture of Coughlin’s well-heeled Social Justice activists, Long’s Share The Wealth socialists, (now headed by the late Senator's second-in-command, Reverend Gerald L.K. Smith), and a late comer to the trio, Dr. Francis Townsend, who built a sizable following by proposing broad expansion of 1935’s Social Security Act. The trio covered the nation, enlisting the support of smaller splinter groups with fearsome talk of what would result with Roosevelt’s re-election. As Coughlin put it in a Des Moines speech to farmers, “Democracy is doomed unless…”
The priest claimed to have National Union For Social Justice branches in 75% of the country’s Congressional districts. He was confident that his third party candidate, North Dakota Congressman William Lempke, would receive at least 9 Million votes in the 1936 election an influence in the new administration. Coughlin was so confident that he smugly promised to leave the air if the Union Party fell short of that number. That was a mistake.
The returns from November 3, 1936, provided a landslide re-election for the President with 27,757,431 votes. Republican Alf Landon trailed with 16,681,574 votes. The Union Party‘s William Lempke only received 892,381 votes. A disillusioned Father Coughlin told Mutual's national radio audience four days later that he was leaving the air because, “…less than 10% of National Union members lived up to their promises.” He went on with his convoluted, cloying farewell, “I love my country and my church too much to become a stumbling block to those who have failed to understand. Goodbye and God bless everyone, friends and opponents. You are all friends tonight.”
He wasn’t off the air long. Coughlin returned with a 13 week contract on a 42 station, part Mutual/part independent network on January 24, 1937. (20) Coughlin’s 1937 contract called for 18 stations to broadcast the priest’s 60 minute addresses at 4:00 on Sunday afternoons and 24 stations, (including the ten station Don Lee West Coast network), to broadcast his 30 minute messages at 8:00 on Sunday nights.
His initial broadcast was a eulogy to his former superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit. ("Next to my father the most beloved man in my life."`) Coughlin’s remarks were subdued but he hinted at things to come by saying he had promised Gallagher that he would continue to fight communism among other evils of mankind. Critics responded that Gallagher was no longer alive and able to contradict Coughlin and his new archbishop, Edward Mooney, had nowhere near the tolerance for his subordinate’s rantings that his predecessor did.
The first available recording of Father Coughlin’s broadcasts is from this series, his half-hour address from April 4, 1937, titled, "Twenty Years Ago", equating Good Friday, 1917, with America’s entry into World War I. The 45 year old priest displayed his full arsenal of broad “a’s”, rolling “r’s” and volumes of outrage to blame the Depression on the costs of the war and the European recovery.
Bishop Mooney forced Father Couglin to cancel his return to the air in the fall of 1937 and Pope Pius publicly supported the move. However, Couglin and his superiors came to an undisclosed agreement and he was back with a half-hour on January 9, 1938, broadcast by a coast-to-coast network of 63 stations for 13 weeks.
It appeared to be business as usual when Coughlin returned to the air with an hour long Sunday afternoon program on an independent chain of 44 stations later in the year on November 6, 1938. But it didn’t take long for him to create controversy. His sermon, "Persecution - Jewish & Christian", of November 20, 1938 reveals a theme of anti-Semitism in claiming that the Nazi persecution of Jews was the result of the role “atheistic Jews” played in establishing communism to counter an unfair economic system developed after World War I by Jewish bankers. Stations were flooded with protests and originating station WJR/Detroit claimed innocence, assuming Coughlin’s superiors had approved his remarks. (22)
During the following week, fearing more anti-Semitic remarks, WMCA/New York City, WDAS/Philadelphia and Chicago stations WJJD and WIND refused to broadcast Father Coughlin’s hour long program without seeing his scripts in advance. Coughlin quickly blamed the stations’ Jewish ownership and refused to comply with the ultimatum. As a result, a mob of 500 began picketing WDAS when the station cancelled its contract. Another group began nine months of picketing and chanting anti-Semitic slurs on the sidewalk in front of WMCA during the time of Coughlin’s Sunday afternoon broadcasts.
Nevertheless, Coughlin and his representatives were reported in June to be enlisting stations around the country for a new set of daily 15 minute and half hour programs fed from his church's studio at different times during the day.
By his broadcast of September 10, 1939, Europe was at war and Father Coughlin was preaching an isolationist message in calling for keeping the provisions of The Neutrality Act which forbade the United States from supplying war materials to its allies. His address titled, “Cash & Carry Will Evolve to Credit & Carry,” is pocked with technical problems but provides an example of how Coughlin’s emotional scale begins with calm reasoning and climaxes in exhausting passages of shouting. Were it anyone but the 48 year old priest, listeners would suspect the speaker was losing control of himself.
He continued the theme in his address of September 24, 1939, (preceded by 40 seconds of dead air). It begins with a schedule of rallies sponsored by isolationist groups to protest the new, Roosevelt-endorsed Neutrality Act of 1939 and continues with the sermon, “No Prosperity In Machinegunning Our Brothers In Christ.” He again exhorts his listeners to bombard Washington with 10 Million letters to continue the embargo against arms shipments. He lost - The Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed allowing the shipment of arms to England and France.
Father Coughlin was also losing his standing with broadcasters, On October 3, 1939 the National Association of Broadcasters ruled the controversial addresses of Coughlin, Unitarian minister Walton Cole and Jehovah Witness spokesman Joseph Rutherford violated its Code by blasting other religions and advocating social change. It subsequently pressured the 44 stations carrying the broadcasts from Royal Oak to cancel them. WJR immediately protested the move and WEW/St. Louis, operated by St. Louis University, refused to abide by it. Nevertheless, most of the stations on Father Coughlin's network dropped his broadcasts and he announced his "temporary" retirement from the air in the September 23, 1940 issue of Social Justice.
The Golden Hour of The Little Flower had been forced from the air under public, industry and government pressure. The vast majority said it rightfully so, his vocal minority of supporters claimed Father Coughlin it was unjustly misunderstood. And that's the way it would always remain. Social Justice magazine followed suite and ceased publication in 1942. Father Charles Coughlin remained pastor of his parish for another 14 years and retired in comfort, if not satisfaction. He died two days following his 88th birthday in 1979.
Perhaps the best way to sum up Father Coughlin’s rise and fall in Network Radio, (networks mostly of his own making), are with his own words, summing up the decade in his New Year’s Eve address of Sunday, December 31, 1939, “A Review of The Past Ten Years.”
Whether or not you agree with Wallace Stegner’s appraisal, “He has one of the greatest speaking voices of the Twentieth Century,” you have to admit Father Charles Coughlin certainly had a way with words and he sure knew how to use them.
(1) No published audience measurements are available for Father Coughlin’s broadcasts.
(2) Amelia Coughlin gave birth to a daughter, Agnes, in 1892, but the child died in infancy.
(3) Although Charles was now living at school 40 miles from home, Amelia Coughlin visited her son every Sunday afternoon.
(4) Coughlin had no trouble crossing into the United States at will. He was a dual-citizen because his father was an American and his mother was Canadian.
(5) The Royal Oak church was named to honor Saint Therese of Lisieux, aka The Little Flower of Jesus, canonized in May, 1925.
(6) Coughlin also faced problems from the Ku Klux Klan which welcomed his new church by burning a wooden cross on its front lawn.
(7) Brinkley in Voices of Protest - Huey Long, Father Coughlin & The Great Depression, (Vintage Books, 1983), quoting Stegner in The Aspirin Age, (Simon & Schuster, 1949).
(8) WJR increased its power to 10,000 watts in 1931 and the maximum 50,000 watts in 1935.
(9) WJR switched its affiliation from Blue to CBS on January 29, 1935.
(10) Coughlin claimed that he vowed in 1926 to someday build a cross, “… so high that neither man nor beast can burn it down,” on the site where the KKK burned the cross on his church’s lawn.
(11) Over 70,000 jobs were lost in Detroit’s auto industry from 1929 to 1930. That number tripled by 1931 to over a quarter-million unemployed.
(12) Some accounts of the incident, (including Coughlin’s), claim that over a million protests were received by CBS.
(13) Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy arranged a meeting between Roosevelt and Coughlin in 1932 during which the priest told the presidential aspirant that he couldn’t outright endorse his candidacy, but he could increase his attacks on Hoover.
(14) Erik Barnow in The Golden Web, (Oxford University Press, 1968).
(15) Moley, who coined the term, “New Deal,” was an important early advisor to Roosevelt but broke with the President and the Democratic party in 1936 over FDR’s economic policies and endorsed his 1940 opponent, Wendell Willkie.
(16) Coughlin claimed that 200,000 telegrams opposing the World Court resulted from his broadcasts. The priest was given to exaggeration, (once claiming 40 Million listeners per week), but the messages he inspired obviously had an impact on the World Court decision.
(17) Authored by Texas Congressman Wright Patman, his Bonus Bill would have awarded $1,000 to all U.S. Veterans of World War I. It was eventually passed in 1936.
(18) Roosevelt made no secret to confidants that he didn’t trust Coughlin. Curiously enough, this stemmed from the fact that Coughlin supported him for the 1932 Democratic Presidential nomination against Al Smith, the first Catholic to run for the office in 1928.
(19) The Nashville Banner commented, “…The real threat of a new political party passed away with the death of Huey Long.”
(20) Coughlin’s 1937 contract called for 18 stations to broadcast the priest’s 60 minute addresses at 4:00 on Sunday afternoons and 24 stations, (including the ten station Don Lee West Coast network), to broadcast his 30 minute messages at 8:00 on Sunday nights.
(21) A set of Father Coughlin’s 1937 to 1940 broadcasts can be found at www.otrrlibrary,org.
(22) It was no secret in the broadcasting industry that George A. Richards, owner of WJR/Detroit and WGAR/Cleveland was an outspoken anti-Semite who wanted to, “…get the Jews out of Washington.”
Copyright © 2018, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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