The American Liberty League was a U.S. organization formed in 1934 by conservative Democrats such as Al Smith (the 1928 Democratic nominee), Jowett Shouse (former high party official), and John Jacob Raskob (former Democratic national chairman and the foremost opponent of prohibition), Dean Acheson (future Secretary of State under Harry Truman), along with many industrialists, notably members of the Dupont family. In their opinion, the the Roosevelt administration was leading the U.S. toward socialism, bankruptcy and dictatorship. The League spent a between half a million and 1.5 million dollars in promotional campagns; it funding came mostly from the DuPont family, as well as leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. It reached over 125,000 members and supported the Republicans in 1936.

In 1934 the League was implicated in the Business Plot to overthrow FDR in secret (but leaked) congressional testimony by General Smedley Butler. The final McCormack-Dickstein Committee report supported Butler's allegations on the existence of the plot, but no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter was mostly forgotten.

The League labeled Roosevelt's Agricultural Adjustment Administration "a trend toward Fascist control of agriculture." Social Security was said to "mark the end of democracy." Lawyers for the American Liberty League challenged the validity of the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act), but in 1937, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute. The League faded away and disbanded in 1940.

References

• George Wolfskill. The Revolt of the Conservatives: A. History of the American Liberty League, 1934-1940. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
• Schmidt, Hans (1998). "Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History", University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813109574. Excerpts of Schmidt's book dealing with the plot are available online.
• http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/John_L._Spivak