Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [85]
was first struck with the representation of the “All-Seeing Eye,” a Masonic representation of The Great Architect of the Universe. Next he was impressed with the idea that the foundation for the new order of the ages had been laid in 1776 but that it would be completed only under the eye of the Great Architect.
According to surviving records, FDR personally supervised the placement of the heraldic imagery on the back of the dollar bill in 1935, handwriting instructions to reposition the “pyramid” side (the seal’s reverse) in front of the “eagle” side (the seal’s obverse) so that the eye and pyramid would appear first when reading the bill from left to right. Thus most Americans, intentionally or not, were left with the impression that the mysterious pyramid and its heralding of a “new order” were the foremost symbols of the American republic, rather than the more ordinary eagle and shield.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Morgenthau was displeased with the whole affair. He suspected Wallace’s “strange mystical drives,” as he recalled in his memoirs, and questioned his motives. “It was not till later,” an unhappy Morgenthau recalled in Collier’s magazine in 1947, “that I learned that the pyramid … had some cabalistic significance for members of a small religious sect,” by which he meant the Roerich circle. Morgenthau was actually mistaken in connecting the eye and pyramid to Roerich. But it was the kind of judgment that was taking hold and falsely cementing the belief that Wallace was a propagandist for esoteric causes.
After Wallace’s nomination for the vice presidency, rumors arose about the “Dear Guru” letters, and members of the Roerich circle may have been responsible for several that were leaked to the press. But the White House managed to keep the matter quiet, suggesting behind the scenes that no such correspondence was trustworthy—especially coming from Roerich, who at that point was under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. The matter died and Wallace avoided embarrassment. He was a popular vice president, but by 1943 he began to face political losses. As head of the Board of Economic Warfare, Wallace wanted guarantees of fair wages and working conditions for foreign workers producing the raw materials for America’s munitions industry. It was another early attempt at international lawmaking, this time pertaining to global labor standards. But foes in the administration and Congress fought the measures, and Wallace’s initiative floundered when Roosevelt failed to back him. Sensing a more conservative national mood in 1944, Roosevelt was willing to let his vice president twist in the wind. Conservatives and political bosses wanted Wallace off the next presidential ticket, and Roosevelt issued only the most tepid of defenses. While Wallace was greeted with thunderous cheers at the 1944 nominating convention in Chicago, political insiders maneuvered against him. The Missourian Harry Truman was nom inated in Wallace’s place. When a somewhat bewildered Truman approached Wallace to ask whether the two men could still be considered friends, Wallace smiled and replied, “Harry, we are both Masons.”
The years that followed were punishing ones for Wallace. Although he was awarded the enticing consolation of becoming secretary of commerce in the final Roosevelt administration, Wallace first saw the job’s power reduced and then he lost it after FDR’s death, when Truman removed him. Embittered by the experience and alarmed at the decline of New Deal influence in the White House, Wallace determined to mount a progressive challenge to Truman’s reelection. In 1948, he ran for president under the ticket of the leftist Progressive Party. Democrats feared that Wallace could rally the New Deal faithful and steer the election away from Truman, perhaps introducing a real third-party force into national politics. But for Wallace the whole episode amounted to one last political loss when his “Dear Guru” letters finally came to light.
“Am I in America?”
The jaunty right-wing columnist Westbrook