Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  She directed her appeal to women and young people particularly, because she thought they were less involved with the past than the men and, therefore, freer to consider new ideas and accept drastic change. At Mrs. Meloney’s annual New York Herald Tribune Forum she called upon youth to become socially militant and to face the fact “that it has to change politics, it has to change business ethics, it has to change the theories of economics and above everything else, it has to change—well, its own weaknesses.” Young people should not be afraid of new ideas and should stick with them “until they have decided whether there is anything in that new idea which is worth while or not.”21

  Her praise of a little book, Prohibiting Poverty, by Prestonia Mann Martin, the granddaughter of Horace Mann, showed her own readiness to examine the most visionary of blueprints in the search for solutions. The book was in its fourth printing when it came to her attention in the autumn of 1933. Many of its ideas echoed Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. At the heart of Mrs. Martin’s “National Livelihood Plan” was the concept—taken over from Bellamy—of a Young Workers Corps or industrial army into which all young people of both sexes would be conscripted from the ages of eighteen through twenty-five. This Young Workers Corps—or National Service Corps, as Mrs. Martin also called it—would produce the “seven cardinal necessities” for everyone—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc. His eight-year service to the nation finished, the young “Commoner” would become a “Capital,” free “to engage in the pursuit of wealth, fame, power, leisure. . . . He may continue to work or not, as he chooses. His basic livelihood is in any case secure.” The National Livelihood Plan, summarized Mrs. Martin, “is a project whereby collectivism would be applied to the production of Necessaries while individualism would be reserved for the production and sale of Luxuries and Surpluses for profit.”

  It was utopian and simplistic and its implementation would have involved a fantastic degree of regimentation. “Where would I be if I listened to that?” Franklin commented dryly when Eleanor gave it to him to read. Utopias taken literally are easy to caricature, but they must be seen, and that is how Mrs. Roosevelt saw Prohibiting Poverty, after an impetuous endorsement that was without qualification—as a stimulant to thought and debate, not as a working blueprint. Prohibiting Poverty was a utopia that was drafted by a woman and, therefore, more likely to interest women, Eleanor felt. It dramatically advocated a national purpose that she favored as strongly as the Socialists did, that given America’s technological progress, poverty could and should be abolished. She was especially enthusiastic about Mrs. Martin’s proposal that the energies of the young, rich as well as poor, girl as well as boy, should be enlisted in the war against want and in the service of the nation.

  At the time Eleanor was in almost daily conference with Harry Hopkins on work projects for the unemployed, especially for women and young people. “It may be possible to try out some of these ideas under the emergency relief,” she wrote an admirer of Prohibiting Poverty. “I wish they could lead us to the point where every one would have security, as far as the basic necessities of life are concerned.”22 Izetta Jewel Miller, a Democratic stalwart who had been commissioner of Welfare in Schenectady, asked whether she (Mrs. Miller) could do anything to promote the plan. Eleanor replied:

  I am afraid that we are due for some criticism for our work here. In the first place, operation. There is a germ of something along that line in the C.C.C. and in the Federal Relief camps for unattached women and girls that are being started this summer. I always speak about the book because the more people read it the more they will try to think along the lines of development for the young people of this country.

  Mrs. Martin asked if her announcement could state that “Mrs. Roosevelt says everyone should read Prohibiting Poverty.” Yes, Eleanor replied, “if you will qualify it by saying that I am not sure at the present time that all of the plans could be put into operation immediately, but I think it has many things that we should be thinking about constantly.”23 She pushed the book’s thesis as “an informing power of the mind,” not as a dream to be realized in practice.24

  Among the Bellamyites who were delighted to discover an ally in the White House was Upton Sinclair, whose own plan, End Poverty in California (EPIC), was then sweeping that state and preparing the way for his race for the governorship. At the heart of the EPIC approach was its insistence on state responsibility for bringing together idle men with idle factories and exchanging their products with those of state-encouraged agricultural colonies. Sinclair and his wife were old friends of Prestonia Mann Martin, and he wrote the First Lady to ask if she would permit them to call upon her.25 “Our friends gather round eagerly to ask what you are like, and more especially, what you think,” he wrote after he and Mrs. Sinclair had visited the White House. He sent her a copy of End Poverty in California. “I will probably not be governor,” he added, “but at least I hope to get some new ideas at work in this state.”26

  He was soon writing Eleanor again. He had heard from a friend that she was going to announce publicly her interest in his plan to end poverty in California. She pulled back from his effort to embrace her. Her reply, which was prudently marked “Private—not for publication,” stated, “Some of the things which you advocate I am heartily in favor of, others I do not think are entirely practicable, but then what is impracticable today is sometimes practicable tomorrow. I do not feel, however, that I am sufficiently in accord with your entire idea to make any public statement at present.”27

  She was the teacher, the moralist, the dreamer, but she was also highly practical. The president carried the responsibility. Her proddings and probings had to be carried on in a way that would not embarrass him politically. When Sinclair, having captured the Democratic primary, turned to Mrs. Roosevelt in his effort to obtain White House support in the election, Roosevelt instructed his wife, “(1) Say nothing and (2) Do Nothing”—and she loyally complied.

  There was another sign of her intense practicality—the way she backed up her exhortations to women to take leadership in the fight against war and social injustice with hard-headed political organization. Many women held important positions in the Roosevelt administration, she noted in It’s Up to the Women, and were, therefore, in a stronger position to shape policy than ever before. The book did not say what insiders in Washington knew, that at the center of this growing New Deal political sisterhood was Eleanor Roosevelt.

  “About the most important letter I ever wrote you!” Molly Dewson scribbled on the margin of a seven-page enclosure she sent Mrs. Roosevelt a few weeks after the Roosevelts arrived in Washington. The letter reported on Molly’s talk with James Farley, the postmaster general, about women’s patronage. He would make no appointments of women, Farley assured Molly, without consulting Eleanor, so Molly felt safe about the lists she had left with him, which described the jobs the Democratic women wanted in categories of descending urgency. “Imperative recognition” covered the four appointments to the staff of the Democratic National Committee, followed by the names of fourteen women who warranted “Very Important Recognition” and twenty-five for whom jobs were sought under the classification of “Very Desirable Recognition.” Postmasterships and comparable, minor appointments were listed under the heading of “Worthy of Lesser Recognition.”

  “I think they are ‘100 percent’ friendly toward recognizing the work of the Women and that they will probably do it,” Molly’s letter continued. But she cautioned Eleanor that the men were lobbying for jobs so insistently “that continuous pressure will have to be brought on Mr. Farley on behalf of the women. I mean continuous in the sense of pressure on behalf of one woman today and another woman tomorrow.”28

  Mrs. Roosevelt and Molly Dewson were determined that women’s voices should be heard at every level of the new administration, and they worked as a team to bring this about, although as far as the world knew Molly was the chief dispenser of the New Deal’s feminine patronage. The relationship between
Eleanor and Molly was harmonious and sympathetic. They had a common conception of the importance of building party organization and of using the influence of women to achieve the objectives of the New Deal.

  Eleanor persuaded Farley to make the women’s division a full-time functioning department of the Democratic National Committee, and then she and the president prevailed upon Molly Dewson to come to Washington to head the department. On January 15, 1934, despite her ban on political subjects, Eleanor presented Molly at her press conference to describe the new setup of the women’s Democratic organization. When Molly said that women Democrats had long hoped for such an organization and were now about to achieve it “for many reasons,” Ruby Black of the United Press, who knew Mrs. Roosevelt’s decisive role behind the scenes, mischievously blurted out, “name three.” Eleanor gave her a humorously reproving glance, and Molly, after a pause, said, “This Democratic party really believes in women, and the plan was presented to it properly.”29 Molly arrived in the Capital with the names of sixty women qualified on the basis of their work in the campaign and their past records to hold high government positions. By April, 1935, the Associated Press reported that there were more than fifty women in such positions,30 and many of them made public pronouncements under Eleanor’s auspices. Secretary of Labor Frances W. Perkins announced the establishment of camps for unemployed women at one of Eleanor’s press conferences. It was in Eleanor’s sitting room that Mrs. Mary Harriman Rumsey, the chairman of the NRA Consumer’s Advisory Board, described her group’s effort to combat rising prices through local consumer organization. And the plans of the Civil Works Administration to provide 100,000 jobs for women were first disclosed by the new director of the CWA’s women’s work, Mrs. Ellen S. Woodward, at a joint press conference with the First Lady.

  “I do happen to know, from my close connections with the business and professional women, of the resentment felt against Hoover because he did not recognize women,” Judge Florence E. Allen of the Ohio supreme court wrote Eleanor in expressing her pleasure in the new administration’s appointment of women.31 Such recognition did not come automatically—not even in the New Deal. Molly fought vigorously to enlarge the number of positions open to women. Sometimes she won her point on her own, but if not, she went to Eleanor, and Eleanor, if she ran into difficulty, turned to Louis or Franklin. Occasionally nothing worked. When Secretary of State Hull recommended the appointment of Lucile Foster McMillin to the place on the Civil Service Commission that traditionally had gone to a woman, Molly complained to Eleanor, “Don’t you really think that Secretary Hull has enough recognition and power in his own job not to take away from the regular organization women the few jobs that have always been marked out for them?” Why didn’t he appoint Mrs. McMillin to a diplomatic post? But then, she added apologetically, “Of course, I realize I may be asking more from you than is possible at this stage of woman’s development.”32 Hull had his way and Mrs. McMillin was named Civil Service commissioner, but several years later he did name two women as American ministers—“the first time in our history that women had been named to head diplomatic missions,” he would proudly write, adding with male condescension, “They both proved competent, and made excellent records.”33

  Harry Hopkins was much more receptive to the wishes of the women, especially Eleanor. He was as passionate a reformer as she and just as ready for bold experimentation. He cultivated her interest in the Civil Works Administration and encouraged her to take the lead in setting up the women’s end of the CWA. “You may be sure that under the new Civil Works program women will not be overlooked,” Eleanor assured a woman correspondent who was upset that the president’s announcement of the CWA omitted specific mention of women. A program for unemployed women was hammered out at a White House conference called and keynoted by Eleanor and attended by the leading figures in the field of social welfare. By the end of 1933, 100,000 women had CWA jobs.

  The irascible and aggressive Harold L. Ickes was touchier to deal with. When Eleanor went to him with a request, she was usually careful to preface it with the statement that the president had asked her to do so. This was the case when she urged that the post of assistant commissioner of education, “which is now held by a woman [should] be retained by a woman” and that under the plan to provide work for unemployed teachers, half the positions should be allotted to women. Ickes agreed on both points.34

  While she sought through patronage to build up the women’s division of the party, Eleanor insisted that appointments had to be on the basis of merit, not just party loyalty, particularly as she felt that “during the next few years, at least, every woman in public office will be watched far more carefully than a man holding a similar position.”35 Farley, under pressure from a female party worker for one of the top jobs in the administration, turned to Eleanor, who noted that “as head of the Children’s Bureau, she [the woman in question] would be appalling. . . . I imagine she is entitled to something if it can be had and I also imagine that she needs the money badly, but I would not sacrifice a good job for her.”

  While pressing for the appointment of Democratic women, Eleanor would not agree to the removal of outstanding women who happened to be Republicans. The head of the Children’s Bureau, Grace Abbott, a Republican, had been one of the three top-ranking women in Washington under Hoover. Although she militantly championed children’s rights, ambitious Democrats tried to use Miss Abbott’s party affiliation as an excuse for Farley to force her out. Eleanor advised Farley to write the woman who was after Dr. Abbott’s job “that no change is being made in the Children’s Bureau and that Miss Abbott has the backing of most of the organized groups of women interested in child welfare.”36

  Although she wanted the Democrats to become the majority party, which it was not in 1932, Eleanor did not hesitate to urge women to be ready to reject the party and its candidates “when the need arises.”

  This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.37

  Basically what she hoped might result from the inclusion of women was a humanization of government services and programs.

  At a dinner honoring the new secretary of labor, Eleanor stressed that the post had been given to Frances Perkins “not only because there was a demand on the part of the women that a woman should be given a place in the Cabinet, but because the particular place which she occupies could be better filled by her than by anyone else, man or woman, with whom the President was acquainted.”38 But beyond that, Miss Perkins exemplified the new type of public servant who was being brought to Washington by the New Deal.39

  When Frances Perkins says “I can’t go away because under the new industrial bill [NIRA] we have a chance to achieve for the workers of this country better conditions for which I have worked all my life,” she is not staying because she will gain anything materially for herself or her friends, but because she sees an opportunity for government to render a permanent service to the general happiness of the working man and woman and their families. This is what we mean as I see it by the “new deal.”

  If this attitude toward public service struck people as new, “the women are in part responsible for it.”

  Louis Howe, who shared Eleanor’s view that women were in the forefront of the revolution in thinking that was back of the New Deal, believed that revolution would soon make it possible to elect a woman president. “If the women progress in their knowledge and ability to handle practical political and governmental questions with the same increasing speed as they have during the last ten years, within the next decade, not only the possibility but the advisability of electing a woman as President of the United States will become a seriously argued question,” he wrote, adding that if politics continued to divide along humanitarian-conservative lines and the people decided they want
ed a New Deal approach to such issues as education, recreation, and labor, “it is not without the bounds of possibility that a woman might not only be nominated but elected to that office on the grounds that they better understand such questions than the men.”40

  Louis was so persuaded that the country might in the not-too-distant future say “Let’s try a woman” that one day he came into Eleanor’s sitting room, propped himself cross-legged on a daybed, and said, “Eleanor, if you want to be President in 1940, tell me now so I can start getting things ready.”41

  One politician in the family was enough, was her reply to such proposals, seriously meant or not. She did not deceive herself about the real attitude of the country, and doubted that the election of a woman was as imminent as Louis thought. “I do not think it would be impossible to find a woman who could be President, but I hope that it doesn’t happen in the near future. . . . I do not think we have yet reached the point where the majority of our people would feel satisfied to follow the leadership and trust the judgment of a woman as President.” Some day it might come to pass “but I hope it will not be while we speak of a ‘woman’s vote.’ I hope it only becomes a reality when she is elected as an individual, because of her capacity and the trust which a majority of the people have in her integrity and ability as a person.”42

  Women would have to learn that no amount of masculine chivalry was going to give them leadership if they could not actually “deliver the goods.” They should leave their “womanly personalities” at home and “disabuse their male competitors of the old idea that women are only ‘ladies in business.’” Women must stand or fall “on their own ability, on their own character as persons. Insincerity and sham, whether in men or in women, always fail in the end in public life.”

  It’s Up to the Women, which came out in November, 1933, was her first book, and like most first authors she soon was inquiring of her publisher, Frederick A. Stokes, how well it was going. “The book is not running away but is selling very steadily,” he replied. Eleanor wanted to be successful, and she cared about her influence. Women leaders were conscious that the New Deal meant that more women were involved in government, that more strongholds of masculine privilege were being infiltrated, and that Eleanor Roosevelt was at the hub of this movement. “For some time I have had a collection of statesmen hanging upon my wall,” wrote Carrie Chapman Catt, “but under the new administration, I have been obliged to start a new collection and that is one of stateswomen. Now it is ready and you are the very center of it all.”43