"This generation has a rendezvous with destiny," announced Franklin Roosevelt in the depths of the Great Depression, when his own "generation" ranged in age from its mid-fifties to its late seventies. As crisis approached, the aging and authoritarian Missionaries moved comfortably into place as stewards of social and economic regimentation.60
Members of the Missionary Generation were visionary elder stewards during the Great Depression--World War II Crisis, 1932-1945, extending from the bleakest Depression year and Franklin Roosevelt's election and ending with V-J Day.61
With the demise of Prohibition and the rise of the "New Deal coalition," the urban-rural schism expired--partly through cooperation in the face of peril, and partly through the leadership of urban modernists like Al Smith. As the midlife Lost Generation mellowed, they joined Missionary elder leaders in staking America's future on a rising generation of good-scout Greatest. "The interest of Roosevelt was with the younger man," recalled his adviser Barbara Armstrong. Most elder Missinaries--including pension activists such as Francis Townsend and John McGroarty (dubbed the "Poet Laureate of California")--ultimately accepted the intergenerational quid pro quo of Roosevelt's Social Security legislation. The young were promised new jobs, a "family wage," and (in the words of Senator Wagner) "new places available for the strong and eager." The old got a meager and much-delayed pension upon "retiring," but, far more important to them, they retained the moral authority to set national priorities in an era of economic and wartime emergency.62
Although Missionary political leaders founded Social Security in 1935, fewer than one in twenty of their generation ever received retirement-related benefits from the program. And those who did got an average of $23 per month (about $302 in 2002 dollars), which remained unadjusted for inflation throughout the 1940s. By today's poverty standard, 60 percent of Missionary elders (age 67 to 89) were poor in 1949--versus 34 percent of all Americans between ages 15 and 64.63
It would have been a cruel "New Deal" for any other generation. Economically, the Missionaries had sacrificed their own interests by directing most available public resources toward youth. But these elders had few complaints. They took too much pride in directing the sacrifices of others. During a decade and a half of crisis, they consolidated their social authority--over ineffective opposition from the Lost Generation and often with the encouragement of the Greatest Generation.64
In politics, they remained the undisputed leaders of now-graying Presidential cabinets, Congressional committees, and state assemblies. Missionaries also retained elective national office until very late in life. They kept a majority share of Congress and governorships until fifty-five years after their last birthyear (1937) and a 25 percent share until sixty-three years afterward (1945)--both figures unmatched by any other generation before or since. From 1925 to 1945, the age of congressmen, governors, and cabinet members climbed to its highest level in American history.65
In social legislation, they became "the social-work progressive crowd" and academic "Elders"--those whom historian Otis Graham, Jr., describes as "a small ascetic fraternity, the visible saints of Twentieth Century reform" (and whom Mencken less respectfully labeled "the New Deal Isaiahs").66
In war, they became the guiding patriarchs (Secretaries Henry Stimson and Cordell Hull; Admirals "Bull" Halsey and Ernest King; Generals MacArthur and Marshall; industrialists Henry Kaiser and Bernard Baruch; physicist Albert Einstein).
Elder Missionaries (especially women) achieved unprecedented gains in American longevity. From the 1930s on, mortality rates fell by 20 to 30 percent in all age brackets between 65 and 85 as Missionaries aged through them. This became the first generation in which women outlived men.67
Today's older Americans remember the serene self-assurance and unquestioned authority commanded by these elders--and not just in America. During the war, the entire Free World knew Roosevelt as simply "the President" or "Dr. Win-the-War"; after the war, it knew George Marshall as "Europe's Savior." When MacArthur left the Philippines proclaiming "I shall return," his righteous self-esteem energized people of all ages; when he came home from Korea, awestruck younger congressmen likened him to "God Himself."68
After World War II, though the Lost Generation finally assumed command, eightyish visionaries continued to symbolize what all Americans called their "Great Crusade." They retreated into old age like the global missionary and 1946 Nobel Peace Prize laureate John Mott, who (in the words of a younger admirer) had "something of the mountains and the sea" in him and "went away with that calm, unhasty step, with that manner that seemed never ruffled, never excited, . . . very simple and a bit sublime."69