Man & Plan

"The tide is definitely turning," said the frail old man. "My crackpot idea is becoming the idea that will save America from economic serfdom and will bring happiness and prosperity." The time was 1937, and Dr. Francis E. Townsend was almost right: his Townsend Plan, a Depression-born pension panacea, had caught the fancy of legions of elderly Americans. At flood tide, more than 4,000,000 members in 10,000 Townsend clubs gave the lanky, mesmeric country doctor immense political power, and their contributions, in a river of nickels and dimes, flowed in at the rate of $4,000,000 a year.

Conceived with a Curse. Like so many oddball Utopias, the Townsend Plan began in Southern California.*Because of fragile health, Francis Townsend had given up a horse-and-buggy practice in South Dakota's Black Hills and headed for Long Beach with his wife (his former nurse) at age 50. One morning in the bleak year of 1934, when he was down to his last $500, he happened to see three aged crones pawing through a garbage pail in search of food. The sight outraged Townsend's sensibilities, and he began to curse in such a loud voice that his wife begged him to be quiet. But Francis Townsend would not be hushed: within a month his plan was written, and before a year had passed, the wrathful Savonarola of the senescent was heard across the U.S.

Townsend proposed to pension off every citizen on his 60th birthday with $200 a month, and to pay for the $20 billion annual cost by levying a staggering 2% tax on every business transaction in the nation. (He later lowered his sights to a minimum $135-a-month pension, to be paid for by taxing personal incomes.) The plan promised all things to all men of all ages: by forcing the retirement of oldsters, it would create new openings for younger men and thus solve the unemployment problem; and by requiring every pensioner to spend all of his $200 every month, it would keep money in constant circulation.

Cheers over Jeers. Economists hooted at Townsend and the unworkability of his plan. But the cheers of Townsend's followers drowned out the jeers, and the Townsend Plan assumed ominous proportions as a religio-political movement with clubs in 42 states, a well-organized lobby in Washington and a Recovery Song (sample lyric: "Old folks will take their ease and have a bit of fun/And will be grateful to Townsend!").

As his movement gathered strength and power, Townsend got into politics with some old cronies. In 1936 he helped found the cryptofascist Union Party, with Gerald L. K. Smith, the pitchman of Huey Long's Share the Wealth program (and later a founder of the America First Party and a convicted subversive in World War II), and Father Charles E. Coughlin, priest-leader of the notorious "social justice" movement. Their presidential candidate, North Dakota's Representative William Lemke, polled a mere 891,000 out of 44,000,000 votes. Later, for refusing to answer a congressional committee, Townsend was sentenced to 30 days in jail for contempt. But Franklin Roosevelt recognized the portents of martyrdom, granted him "an unsolicited pardon."