Ben Cohen: one who took a different path.

• Author: Eisendrath, John

BEN COHEN: ONE WHO TOOK A DIFFERENT PATH

Not all the architects of the New Deal soldout. A number committed their lives to fighting for progressive ideals well after FDR had died. Perhaps the most selfless was Benjamin Cohen. As much as Thomas G. Corcoran came to be viewed as a venal lobbyist, Cohen was looked upon as a committed public servant. "Ben demonstrated through the 40 years after the New Deal that he believed in New Deal ideals,' says Joseph Rauh, a civil rights attorney who worked for both Cohen and Corcoran in the thirties. "Tommy showed he didn't give a damn.'

For a time Cohen and Corcoran workedtogether extraordinarily well. They were the Hot Dog Boys, Felix Frankfurter's Harvard Law School proteges who, from 1933 to 1940, teamed up to create one of the great lawmaking duos of this century. Together they transformed American public life by writing and pushing through such legislation as the Securities and Exchange Act, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Key programs of the New Deal such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act were swiftly dismantled by the Supreme Court. The legislation engineered by Cohen and Corcoran, however, withstood judicial review and remains today remarkably intact.

Officially Cohen was in the Public Works Administration,Corcoran at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In fact, they worked on everything. The house they shared in Georgetown was an around-the-clock workshop filled with Ivy League law school graduates Cohen and Corcoran had brought to Washington to help save the country.

From the start it was clear Cohen was the soulof the team, the one truly committed to serving the public good. Cohen wrote the legislation. Corcoran rounded up the votes, relishing more, one contemporary recalls, the arm-twisting and exercise of power that got the bills passed than the impact they had on bettering people's lives. In August 1937, The American Magazine described them this way: "Of the two men, Cohen is more the social philosopher, Corcoran more the lawyer working on an assignment with Uncle Sam as his client.' When Corcoran left the government in 1940 to peddle his influence, Cohen stayed on, continuing to peddle his ideals.

During World War II Cohen served aseconomic counselor in the American embassy in London and later helped manage America's war-time economy. Cohen was involved in a number of important wartime transactions...