Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Her “obvious affection” for Farley, wrote Hick, had “a healing effect,” as the bitterness on the floor subsided with her first words. “For many years I have worked under Jim Farley and with Jim Farley, and I think nobody can appreciate more what he has done for the party, what he has given in work and loyalty. And I want to give him here my thanks and devotion.” Then she addressed the devastating moment that framed this convention: “I know and you know that any man [in office today] faces a heavier responsibility, perhaps, than any man has ever faced before in this country. Therefore, to be a candidate of either political party is a very serious and very solemn thing. You cannot treat it as you would an ordinary nomination in an ordinary time. We people in the US have got to realize . . . that we face a grave and serious situation.”

  A candidate who was also a sitting president could not run an ordinary campaign.

  He must be on the job. So each and every one of you . . . assume for yourselves a very grave responsibility because you will have to make the campaign. You will have to rise above considerations which are narrow and partisan. . . . No man . . . can carry this situation alone. This is only carried by a united people who love their country and who will live for it to the fullest . . . with the highest ideals, with a determination that their party shall be absolutely devoted to the good of the nation . . . and to doing what this country can do to bring the world to a safer and happier condition.

  ER’s brief presentation, with its “impressively delivered appeal for a united country,” was initially greeted by “sustained silence,” noted Times reporter Kathleen McLaughlin. “It was striking after the pandemonium,” ER would recall. As she returned to her seat, the organist broke into “God Bless America,” and the hall burst into tumultuous applause. ER’s appearance was unprecedented. She was, as McLaughlin noted, “the first wife of a President or nominee to address a major political party.”

  Farley was pleased—she had saved the convention for the president. With Jimmy Byrnes and others, he had lobbied the delegates in favor of the president’s preference. Byrnes had repeatedly asked, “For God’s sake, do you want a president or a vice president?” In the end, Wallace was nominated, but it was close. Of 1,100 votes, 627 went to Wallace, 327 to Speaker Bankhead, and 83 to others, many of whom had withdrawn on FDR’s behest—including McNutt, Rayburn, and Farley.

  Back on the tarmac, as ER was about to take off, her plane was flagged to a halt. There was an urgent message from the president—FDR wanted to thank her and said she “had done a very good job.” Harry Hopkins, on another phone, also thanked ER. You young people know nothing about politics, she told him. “Then I dashed back to the plane and we took off.”

  In addition to the enthusiastic press coverage, she was most pleased by Senator George W. Norris’s letter of gratitude. Independent and progressive, a great American maverick, Norris had been allied with ER and Esther Lape since their 1923 campaign for the World Court and a democratized League of Nations. He also supported the best of the New Deal. Both FDR and ER considered him, as a leader and a visionary, “the perfect, gentle knight of American progressive ideals.”

  The day after her speech, Norris sent ER a long typed letter. As a lifelong crossover Republican who considered issues before party and championed government responsibility for all its citizens, he was appalled by the opposition to Wallace, and by the convention’s failure to court the independent vote. Above all, he was committed to Roosevelt and opposed to Willkie—who had been a lifelong Democrat, until his virulent opposition to the TVA:

  I listened over the radio to the proceedings . . . and for a while it looked to me as though the convention was going to “blow up.” At this stage of the proceedings, when it seemed to me all of the good work President Roosevelt had done, all of his great accomplishments, all his ability to continue his work in the future, were about to be overthrown and cast aside, at this juncture, when it seemed the battle for righteousness was about to be lost, you came on the scene, and what you said in that short speech caused men of sense and honor to stop and think before they plunged. Like Sheridan in the Shenandoah, you stopped the fleeing warriors; you renewed the faltering courage of those who believed in righteousness, who for the moment had been stampeded. You turned a rout into victory. You were the Sheridan of that convention. Perhaps you do not realize it now. It may be that you never will, but I am convinced . . . that the country owes you a debt of gratitude it can never repay and which it does not now fully comprehend.

  As a humble citizen, with no personal ambition of my own . . . representing as I believe I do millions of progressive, patriotic citizens throughout the country, I thank you and I congratulate you.

  The victory, Norris concluded, was entirely due to ER: her presence and her words “made you heroic, and unknown and unseen, citizens all over our land are today thanking God that you were there at the right time, to say the right thing in the right place.”

  ER treasured that letter and on the back wrote: “File carefully, in file of always to keep!”

  The FDR-Wallace ticket remained embattled, and the convention created a disturbing international legacy. According to the Democratic platform, “We will not participate in foreign wars, and we will not send our army or navy or air force to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas.” Promoted by Burton Wheeler’s group of isolationists but supported widely, the plank was unacceptable to FDR—who had insisted they add “except in case of attack.”

  From as far away as Australia, the press protested America’s ongoing failure to grasp realities. The Democratic platform seemed a “retreat” into isolationism, commented the Sydney Herald, after FDR’s promises of aid to “sorely beset Britain.” But perhaps there was hope, editorialized the Melbourne Herald: FDR was, after all, “ahead of his party,” and his renomination might be evidence that public opinion was more with him than with his isolationist opponents. Both papers reported that ER’s speech was “broadcast throughout Australia.”

  Back at Val-Kill, ER was satisfied with her efforts but distraught by the stunning opposition to FDR and his policies. She worried about her husband’s health, the fate of the New Deal, and the ongoing refusal of so many Democrats to consider Europe’s woes as America’s concern. The catastrophic fall of France and the bitter Democratic convention had stirred her deeply. Her thoughts returned to the book she had been unable to write all year. Now she was prepared to focus on The Moral Basis of Democracy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  War and The Moral Basis of Democracy

  After Chicago, ER had a renewed understanding that her words mattered, and with the world in a state of siege, there was no time to waste. Every column, every radio program, every letter might make a difference. She confronted crises, traveled nonstop, supported rescue efforts—and worked to complete her remarkable meditation upon democracy.

  The process of writing The Moral Basis of Democracy helped her to hone her own vision. What defines individual responsibility, ethical commitment, and moral vision in brutal, chaotic times? ER hoped her words might “stimulate the thoughts of many people so that they will force themselves to decide what Democracy means.” Can they “believe in it as fervently as they can in their personal religion?” Is it worth “a sacrifice”? Her first paragraph defined the urgency of her quest: “At a time when the whole world is in turmoil and thousands of people are homeless and hungry, it behooves all of us to reconsider our political and religious beliefs . . . to clarify in our minds the standards by which we live.”

  As totalitarian dictators stormed the globe, ER considered democracy’s roots in religion and the evolution of “the right to any religion, or to no religion.” The principle of individual “responsibility . . . for the well-being of his neighbors,” and the precept “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” remained the root of “the Democratic ideal.” Today, as dictators crushed individual liberty and rights beneath the boots of state power and terror, dem
ocracies depended on freedom of expression, the rule of the majority in an environment of cooperation, and service. For democracy to survive, ER wrote, we must “live cooperatively” and serve the community. For our “own success to be real, [we must] contribute to the success of others.”

  ER’s second chapter detailed the history of democratic theory from the Magna Carta of 1215, which ensured certain basic individual rights and freedoms: “No taxes shall be imposed except by common counsel. No man shall be imprisoned, exiled or destroyed except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. To no one is right or justice sold or refused.” Then came religious freedom for dissenters and freethinkers, Pilgrims, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers. As democratic theory unfolded, William Penn, Thomas Paine, and “radicals” prepared for the American Revolution. Paine’s Common Sense (1776) and The Rights of Man (1791) codified “the fundamental principles for representative” government and made Paine “the leader of the republicans in France and the radicals in England.”

  ER’s journey through the American Revolution from Patrick Henry to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson—from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution to the Bill of Rights—was, she wrote, a study in cooperation. In the politically diverse world, “we must all compromise when we come together to formulate plans for the public good.” Progress toward “the rights of the individual had to be obtained by continuous vigilance in those days just as the rights can only be maintained today.”

  She reviewed these rights: The right to freedom and equality and political liberty; the rights and responsibilities of all citizens; the right of habeas corpus; the right to hold opinions without fear of molestation; the right to freedom of expression (“one of the most precious”); the right to demand accountability of public service agents—each of these rights, as she saw it, contributed to the dignity of the individual and helped citizens to live full and unoppressed lives.

  Through the eighteenth century, as democracy was codified and limited, Thomas Jefferson represented a visionary departure from tradition, she affirmed. He “believed in the education of all classes” and called for an end to slavery. Although a slave owner, “he realized that slavery was the denial of the equality of man.” To deny man’s equality was to lose “the basis of Democracy.” While the “ideal of Democracy” persisted, if “we are honest with ourselves . . . we will acknowledge that we have not carried it out, and in our lack of faith we have debased the human being.” We still have slavery, in different forms among different groups, she emphasized, and we have yet to “accept the brotherhood of man as a basic truth.”

  The 130 million people who make up our great nation come “from every nation” on the globe. Asians, Africans, Europeans, and Latin Americans truly make us “the melting pot of the world.” We now face “almost an entire continent of vast resources.” But “we have allowed a situation to arise where many people are debased by poverty or the accident of race in our own country, and therefore have no stake in democracy; while others appeal to this old rule of the sacredness of property rights to retain in the hands of a limited number the fruits of the labor of many.” Today issues of economic opportunity and security define our problems. “It is often said that we are free, and then sneeringly . . . ‘free to starve.’” That is not an amusement. Nobody can say the “Indians or Negroes of this country are free.” Racial prejudice enslaves, and “poverty enslaves.” Other “racial and religious groups . . . labor under [other] discriminations.”

  “Some of us have too much of this world’s goods,” she wrote, and we “are thereby separated too widely from each other” to appreciate daily hardships and suffering others endure. Clearly, “we do not completely practice the Democratic way of life,” especially “in our relationship to submerged people.” We must consider what has become of our “sense of obligation” regarding our community and “the welfare of our neighbors,” which is essential to democracy’s success.

  Political democracy requires economic democracy, while greed debases it: “either we must make our economic system work to the satisfaction of all our people,” or we will lose the competition, the war already under way. The New Deal introduced a “type of revolution,” and we now recognize that government is responsible for social conditions. But there “is still much to be done.” A minimum standard of security, and “equality of opportunity,” are required for every child. We must achieve “an economic level below which no one is permitted to fall.” But we have not yet discovered the economic secrets of full employment, and far too many “are left with nothing to do, and therefore without the wherewithal for living.”

  Yet the questions of democracy are not merely economic. Our failure to expand democracy at home and “to spread [democratic] values throughout the world” is rooted in our failure to appreciate “the spiritual concepts” that define democracy. We have been too devoted to “the gods of Mammon.” Humanity must “rise above purely selfish interest” and take responsibility for one another. Democracy “necessarily involves the spirit of social cooperation.”

  In this era of catastrophe and danger, ER continued, instituting change requires having a bold new vision for the future that will transform “our whole attitude toward life and civilization” and motivate us to seek “an exciting new world,” steeped in principles of democracy and justice. We must build “a social conscience and a sense of responsibility.” We need a new national purpose that guarantees “each individual” a secure and meaningful life, setting new standards “for good health, equal education and equal opportunity to achieve success according to each individual’s powers.” These opportunities involve every “line of work, either of hand or head,” and mean for everyone a share of “full responsibility” for the well-being of “the whole people.”

  To be sure, those with affluence and leisure build great galleries and museums, fund science and research projects, and support learning and recreation. Foundations and charities are worthy, but “it is time to take a new step in the progress of humanity.” The education and enlightenment of people “for the benefit of our country as a whole is a concern of the whole country.” Public support for the arts and sciences needs to be developed everywhere, with opportunities for engagement for everyone. It will occur slowly, when we have a “better understanding of people of different races and creeds.” But it will occur, and the United States will be a model of such understanding for the world.

  Some say that “human nature cannot change,” but change is under way. Look at the changes wrought “by Nazi and Fascist dictators.” Life is never static. Education, “moral and physical training,” affects all of us. “If human beings can be changed to fit a Nazi . . . or a Communist pattern, certainly we should not lose heart at the thought of changing human nature to fit a Democratic way of life.”

  Religious leaders must address social questions, for “religion [is] a way of life which develops the spirit.” Too often churches have failed to provide spiritual haven in troubled times. Too often they limit their efforts to ensuring their own survival and no longer consider humanity’s needs. But “if human beings can be trained for cruelty and greed and a belief in power which comes through hate and fear and force, certainly we can train equally well for gentleness and mercy and the power of love which comes because of the strength of the good qualities to be found in the soul of every individual human being.” ER called for a new “spiritual, moral awakening” that depended on no specific church or religion. We must seek “the spiritual force which the life of Christ exemplifies . . . [or] the life of Buddha,” specifically the tangible ideals of love and compassion “for our neighbors.”

  Taking our “democratic experiment” forward to “its fullest development” will require a great amount of “individual responsibility,” not only in our leaders “but in the people as a whole.” ER called upon leaders to proclaim these aspirations for democracy in “clear words” for all the people to heed. Here she was m
aking a call, though coded and indirect, for her husband to move democracy forward with a bold statement of intention.

  Ultimately, ER believed, we will change our definition and “standards of success” to celebrate those who create “a place in the community through service to the community,” those who contribute to others more than those who benefit themselves alone. For too long, democracy has failed to challenge traditional “selfishness.” For democracy to go forward, we must ask, “What are we prepared to sacrifice?” Might we imagine “the fruits of our labors” not exclusively our own but as “a trusteeship” for “the greatest number of people”?

  With such participatory democracy, we will “know what we believe in, how we intend to live, and what we are doing for our neighbors.” Our neighbors are not limited to our families down the road but consist of “all those who live anywhere within range of our knowledge. That means an obligation to the coal miners and share-croppers, the migratory workers, the tenement-house dwellers and farmers who cannot make a living.” ER’s radical definition of democracy was service for all, and her definition of neighbor was global: We are many; we are everywhere; we are all.

  Ultimately there was nothing modest about ER’s proposal. For democracy to work, every individual needed to participate in the government. For the government to work, it must be responsive to the people:

  We must make that will and desire of the people the result of adequate education and adequate material security. We must maintain a standard of living which makes it possible for the people really to want justice for all, rather than to harbor a secret hope for privileges because they cannot hope for justice.