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MacARTHUR FOUNDATION, formally known as
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
is a private general-purpose foundation created in 1978
and headquartered in Chicago. At the time of his death,
John D. MacArthur (1897–1978) was one of the three
wealthiest men in America and the owner of the nation’s
largest privately held insurance company, Bankers Life
and Casualty Company. Catherine T. MacArthur (1909–
1981) worked closely with her husband and was a director
of the Foundation until her death.
One of the nation’s ten largest foundations, the MacArthur Foundation’s assets are around $4 billion and it
distributes approximately $180 million in grants annually.
It is organized into four divisions: Human and Community Development, focused on public education, juvenile
justice, mental health policy and neighborhood development, with special emphasis upon Chicago and Florida;
Global Security and Sustainability, with grants for conservation, international peace, population and reproductive health, with special initiatives in Russia, south Asia
and sub-Saharan Africa; the General Program, which
provides institutional grants to such organizations as
National Public Radio; and the controversial MacArthur
Fellows Program, which awards between twenty and
forty five-year fellowships, or “genius grants,” of around
$500,000 to “talented persons” who “show exceptional
merit and promise of continued and enhanced creative
work.” The Foundation has field offices in Florida, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, India, and Russia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MacArthur Foundation Web site. Home page at www.mac
found.org.
The Work Ahead: New Guidelines for Grantmaking. John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation: Chicago, 1998.
Fred W. Beuttler
See also Foundations, Endowed; Philanthropy.
McCARRAN-WALTER ACT (1952). The act revised and consolidated all previous laws regarding immigration, naturalization, and nationality. It retained the
national-origin system of the Immigration Act of 1924,
which gave preference to immigrants from the United
Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. But it also removed race
as a bar to immigration and naturalization, so that countries whose citizens were previously ineligible were assigned annual quotas of not fewer than 100 persons. In
addition, it removed gender discrimination; gave preference to aliens with special skills; and provided for more
rigorous security screening. The law aroused much opposition, mainly on the grounds that it discriminated in
favor of northern and western European nations. It passed
over President Harry S. Truman’s veto and remained in
effect until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hing, Bill Ong. Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy, 1850ⳮ1990. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1993.
Ueda, Reed. Postwar Immigrant America. Boston: St. Martin’s
Press, 1994.
Charles S. Campbell Jr.
Andrew C. Rieser
See also Immigration; Immigration Restriction; Naturalization.
McCARTHYISM has been misnamed. Often identified with the bizarre antics of the Wisconsin senator
Joseph McCarthy, the anticommunist political repression
to which he gave a name had been in operation for years
before he appeared at a Republican banquet in Wheeling,
West Virginia, in February 1950. And it was to continue
for several years after he self-destructed before the nation’s television viewers at the Army-McCarthy hearings
in the spring of 1954. There was nothing unique about
McCarthy’s charges of subversion in high places. Ever
since the 1930s, conservative politicians and journalists
had been attacking the New Deal administrations of
Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman for being “soft on
communism.” But it took the Cold War to bring the originally partisan issue of anticommunism from the margins
into the political mainstream.
Although McCarthyism came in many flavors, all its
adherents agreed that it was essential to eliminate the
danger of American communism. They differed, however,
in their assessment of what that danger was. Rightwingers, hostile to everything on the left, attacked liberals
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M c C A RT H Y I S M
wise moderate and even liberal Americans were able to
collaborate with it. Claiming to deplore the excesses of
the congressional investigations, they nonetheless applied
sanctions against the people McCarthy and his allies had
fingered.
Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Wisconsin Republican’s own
actions in pursuit of communism in the early 1950s played
only one part in the longer Cold War period of excessive zeal
named for him. AP/Wide World Photos
as well as communists, while moderates, who were willing
to purge actual Communist Party members, tried to protect noncommunists from unfounded persecution. They
did not always succeed. In the supercharged atmosphere
of the early Cold War, the anticommunist crusade spun
out of control, creating the most widespread and longest
lasting episode of political repression in American history.
By the time that repression sputtered to an end in
the late 1950s, thousands of men and women had lost
their jobs, hundreds had been deported or sent to prison,
and two—Ethel and Julius Rosenberg—had been executed. Most, but not all, of these people had once been
in or near the American Communist Party. Because that
party had been the most dynamic organization on the
American left during the 1930s and early 1940s, thousands of activists gravitated into its orbit, attracted by its
opposition to war and fascism and its support for the labor
movement and racial equality. Most of these men and
women were idealistic individuals who had not anticipated that their political activities would get them into
trouble years later, when anticommunism came to dominate American politics.
What made McCarthyism so powerful was that so
many different agencies and individuals took part in its
operations. It functioned in accordance with a two-stage
procedure. The supposed communists were first identified; then they were punished—usually by being fired.
Most of the time, an official body like the Federal Bureau
of Investigation or the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) handled the first stage, while a public or private employer took care of the second. Because
it was common to identify McCarthyism only with the
initial identification stage of the procedure, many other-
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They now realize they were wrong. The sanctions
imposed on thousands of school teachers, longshoremen,
film directors, union officials, civil servants, automobile
workers, and housewives during the late 1940s and 1950s
seriously violated those people’s constitutional rights. But
at the time, most Americans believed that communists
were Soviet puppets who might subvert the government,
steal official secrets, or sabotage defense plants whenever
their Kremlin masters gave the word. Since some American communists had spied for the Soviet Union during
World War II, that demonized stereotype, though exaggerated, was quite plausible. The highly publicized cases
of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs reinforced the stereotype, convincing liberals and conservatives alike that communists were so dangerous they did not deserve the same
rights as other Americans. That consensus made it possible for a wide range of government officials and private
employers to punish people for their political views and
affiliations.
Washington led the way. Not only did the federal
government create and carry out some of the earliest anticommunist purges, but it also developed the ideological
justification for them. The FBI and its militantly anticommunist director, J. Edgar Hoover, oversaw the process.
Much of the information about communism that fed the
loyalty-security investigations, criminal prosecutions, and
congressional hearings that dominated the McCarthy era
came from the FBI and reflected that organization’s distorted view of the red menace. In addition, because Hoover and his men were so eager to eradicate American communism, they supplemented their normal operations with
a wide range of unauthorized and even illegal activities,
including wiretaps, break-ins, and leaks to right-wing
journalists and politicians.
HUAC and the other congressional investigators
were among the main recipients of those leaks. Not
only did the committees identify specific individuals as
communists, but they also helped disseminate the anticommunist scenarios that fueled the purges. Friendly witnesses told stories about their experiences in the Communist Party and identified its members, while unfriendly
witnesses remained silent. Most of them would have been
willing to talk about their own political activities, but they
balked at describing those of others. However, because
the Supreme Court did not protect people accused of
communism during the late 1940s and early 1950s, witnesses who did not want to name names had to rely on
the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination and refuse to answer any question that might subject
them to prosecution. Although they did not go to prison,
most of these “Fifth Amendment” witnesses lost their
jobs.
McCORMICK REAPER
The most well-known unfriendly witnesses were the
so-called Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and
directors who had defied HUAC on First Amendment
grounds in 1947. Even before they went to prison, the
Ten were on the street, early victims of an informal but
highly effective blacklist that kept hundreds of men and
women out of the entertainment industry during the
1950s. Similar blacklists emerged in other sectors of the
economy, thus ensuring that most of the people who tangled publicly with an anticommunist investigation or were
targeted by the FBI would lose their jobs. As the repression spread, unorthodox opinions or controversial activities could also invite dismissal.
The threat of unemployment was a powerful deterrent. People shrank from involvement in anything that
could conceivably be linked to the left. Because of the
stigma and secrecy that surrounds McCarthyism, it is
hard to assess its impact. If nothing else, it narrowed the
political spectrum, marginalizing if not silencing all critics
of the status quo.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ceplair, Larry, and Steven Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood:
Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960. Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979.
Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe
McCarthy. New York: Free Press, 1983.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.
Theoharis, Athan G., and John Stuart Cox. The Boss: J. Edgar
Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1988.
Ellen Schrecker
See also Anticommunism; Blacklisting; Communist Party,
United States of America; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Hiss Case; House Committee on Un-American
Activities; Rosenberg Case; and vol. 9: Censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy; Senator Joseph McCarthy: The
History of George Catlett Marshall.
McCLELLAN COMMITTEE HEARINGS. The
McClellan Committee opened Senate hearings on 26
February 1957 to investigate corruption, criminal infiltration, and illegal activities in the nation’s labor unions.
Chaired by Democrat John McClellan, the committee included John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater, along with
Robert Kennedy as chief counsel. The committee’s investigation focused on the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, Teamster president Dave Beck, and Beck’s successor Jimmy Hoffa. In televised hearings watched by 1.2
million American households, the committee detailed the
Teamsters’ misuse of union funds and ties to labor racketeers and organized crime. While the inquiry led to the
conviction of more than twenty individuals including Beck,
it failed to convict Hoffa and in fact, strengthened his
leadership. The investigation also led to the Teamsters’
expulsion from the American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations in December 1957.
The McClellan Committee’s efforts culminated in
the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of
1959, which established for the first time close regulation
of unions by the federal government. The law created
requirements for union elections and for annual financial
reports to the Labor Department, banned convicted criminals from holding union office, and established union
members’ rights against coercive labor practices.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hearings before the Select Committee on Improper Activities
in the Labor or Management Field. 85th Congress, 1st session, 1957; 85th Congress, 2nd session, 1958; and 86th
Congress, 1st Session, 1959.
Kennedy, Robert F. The Enemy Within. New York: Harper and
Row, 1960.
McClellan, John L. Crime Without Punishment. New York: Duell,
Sloan and Pearce, 1962.
Petro, Sylvester. Power Unlimited: The Corruption of Union Leadership: A Report on the McClellan Committee Hearings. New
York: Ronald Press, 1959.
James Tejani
McCORMICK REAPER. The machine with which
the name of Cyrus Hall McCormick has always been associated had many inventors, notably Obed Hussey, who
patented his machine in 1833, a year before the first McCormick patent. Hussey’s machine was the only practicable one on the market before 1840. It was the McCormick reaper, however, that invaded the Midwest, where
the prairie farmer was ready for an efficient harvester that
would make extensive wheat growing possible. In 1847
McCormick moved from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where the first machine was built, to Chicago.
Perhaps, as his biographer contends, McCormick (or
his father, Robert McCormick) did most effectively combine the parts essential to a mechanical grain cutter. Other
improvements came in the 1850s and 1860s—the selfraker, which dispensed with the job of raking the cut grain
off the platform, and then the binder, first using wire to
bind the sheaves and later twine. The first self-raker was
sold in 1854, seven years before McCormick produced
such a machine. The first wire binder was put on the market in 1873, two years before the McCormick binder.
Through effective organization the McCormick reaper
came to dominate the field. The invention helped facilitate the rapid economic development of the rural Midwest, and the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company’s massive factories in Chicago helped transform that
city into an industrial giant.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hutchinson, William T. Cyrus Hall McCormick. New York: Da
Capo Press, 1968.
McCormick, Cyrus. The Century of the Reaper. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1931.
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