Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

In 1938, five years into Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” the US remained mired in the depths of a “Great Depression.” Real income still hadn’t regained its 1929 level. Unemployment stood at six times at level. The nation languished in economic failure with no end in sight, making even the far-from-free-market policies of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, look attractive by comparison.

Then, in 1939, a miracle! Europe went to war!

FDR saw that as a way to put America back to work. He instituted a “Lend-Lease” program, spinning up manufacturing to provide England with arms. He instituted the first US........

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