National Association of Manufacturers Launches Unprecedented Multi-Million Dollar Anti-New Deal Propaganda Campaign

In 1935, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) under president Robert Lund launches what Business Week headlines as “The NAM Declares War” (December 14, 1935)—an unprecedented multi-million dollar propaganda campaign to discredit Roosevelt’s New Deal and promote “free enterprise” ideology as synonymous with American democracy. NAM’s budget explodes from $250,000 in 1933 to $1.5 million annually by 1937, with 55 percent devoted to public relations by 1937, making propaganda NAM’s primary function. The campaign is bankrolled by 262 “nationally known” corporations including Du Pont (the largest contributor), General Motors (second largest), AT&T, Standard Oil, Monsanto, Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Westinghouse Electric, with larger firms providing 40 percent of revenues as NAM membership doubles.

NAM’s propaganda apparatus, coordinated through the National Industrial Information Council (NIIC), deploys sophisticated multi-platform messaging: 45,000 billboards seen by 65 million Americans daily; films viewed by 18 million; 2 million cartoon copies; 4.5 million newspaper columns from pro-business economists; 2.4 million foreign language news pieces; and 11 million employee leaflets distributed through workplaces. The centerpiece is The American Family Robinson radio program, launched in 1935 as the single most expensive item in NAM’s budget—a “folksy drama” where 15-minute episodes feature sustained dialogue attacking “foreign,” “visionary,” or “utopian” theories involving tax increases or deficit spending. The program is so blatantly anti-Roosevelt that no network will broadcast it; when NAM’s public relations vice president pitches NBC, a script editor writes that “the definite intention and implication of each episode is to conduct certain propaganda against the New Deal and all its work.” NAM circumvents network rejection by having 300 local stations broadcast the program with local corporate sponsors paying for airtime.

The campaign aims to convince Americans that unregulated capitalism equals democracy and that New Deal programs threaten constitutional freedoms, establishing propaganda techniques later adopted by tobacco industry doubt-manufacturing (1950s-1990s), climate denial networks (1990s-present), and corporate-funded think tanks. NAM opposes all major New Deal legislation including the National Labor Relations Act (1935), Social Security Act (1935), and Fair Labor Standards Act (1938), calling on businessmen to defy federal labor law while awaiting hoped-for Supreme Court invalidation. Roosevelt’s landslide 1936 re-election despite this massive corporate propaganda campaign shocks NAM executives, who respond by augmenting centralized campaigns with decentralized local business organizing—a strategy that proves more effective at grassroots opinion manipulation. NAM’s 1930s propaganda infrastructure becomes the template for modern corporate political communications, demonstrating that coordinated business messaging can shape public discourse even when unable to prevent democratic reforms in the short term.