Eleanor and Franklin

by Joseph P. Lash

  “You’ve done more to influence thought in the past 21 months, than anyone except your husband,” one of her newspaper regulars wrote her at the beginning of 1935.18 Educate! Educate! Educate! That was her theme. It was part of the bond between herself and Molly Dewson. Molly sent her a leaflet advertising a Democratic rally in Michigan with speakers on the “New Work Relief Program” and on the CCC. “Dear Eleanor,” Molly scrawled on it, “Aren’t the men fun imitating the girls and becoming ‘reporters’ on special subjects instead of making general gas talks.”19

  She was “much more interested in possible far-away developments and [the] steady increase of women’s influence, which, I feel, tends to ameliorate bad social conditions,” she told Martha at an early stage in their friendship, “than I am in any immediate political developments.” In a last interview that he gave to Bess Furman of the Associated Press, Louis Howe was equally sanguine about the long-range ameliorative effects that women could have on politics:

  If politics divides, as it may, very sharply along the lines of the humanitarian and there are ten years in which to see how this experiment of females in government is working . . . and if they make good, and if the great mass of the people conclude they want New Deal ideas in recreation, labor, schools, and want to support that line—and if in time there arises some woman who gets the confidence of the people as a whole, there might be the argument advanced that the problems of the day are problems which have been neglected by man since George Washington, and men don’t seem to understand what it’s all about. The people may say: “Let’s try a woman out.” I don’t think it’s at all probable but there’s nothing so clear now as the humanitarian issue.20

  Eleanor had swiftly discouraged Louis when he had broached the idea that she might be the person the country might turn to—with a little prompting from him. But the idea was occurring to others. A Missouri congressman sent her a local column proposing that she be named the vice-presidential candidate in 1936 as a way of rescuing that post from oblivion; the congressman seconded the nomination. But, as Eleanor wrote Martha Gellhorn, she was interested in the mobilization of women’s influence for basic reforms and sensed instinctively that she would be more effective as an educator if she were “in politics but not of it.”†

  Roosevelt’s strategy for the 1936 election placed heavy stress on the campaign as an opportunity to educate and inform the electorate. He outlined his plans to the women at the dinner in mid-December, 1935, that Eleanor had arranged at Molly’s request. It would be a New Deal, not a Democratic party, appeal, with a special effort made to reach the new groups which had a stake in the continuance of the Roosevelt policies—workers, farmers, Negroes, young people, women, independents. The opposition was formidable because of the wealth it commanded and because it had the support of 85 per cent of the press, and thus there had to be a major effort to counter its propaganda and get the truth into every home. The women’s division had the most experience with a campaign based on truth-telling and falsehood-exposing. Roosevelt counted on the women’s division, he told them, and wanted the party to make wide use of their educational techniques. Molly sent Farley a post-dinner synopsis of the session with the president with the admonition that “in carrying out his ideas, we rely on you.” To insure doubly that Farley did not pigeonhole the decisions, Molly sent a copy to Eleanor.21

  Under the plans outlined by Roosevelt the women were to be given more space at headquarters, their budget was to be increased, and they were to have the help of the men in obtaining government officials as speakers. His active campaign would begin with his address at the Jackson Day dinners, he told the women, and from that date on the ban on government officials making political speeches was off and the whole organization should be geared to countering Republican propaganda in the Republican-controlled press. He also said that he wanted a “Friends of Roosevelt” type of organization set up to appeal to those not functioning in the regular party organizations and an effort made to vitalize the Young Democrats through a national contest for the best speech on the New Deal.

  Molly immediately drafted a letter that she asked Farley to send to the members of the cabinet. “Dear Henry, Frank, Harry, Harold, Frances, Arthur, etc.” it read,

  The President has told the Women’s Division of the National Democratic Committee to go ahead full steam in answering the avalanche of Republican propaganda after January 8th, when the Democratic campaign will open with the Jackson Day Dinners.

  He also said that after January 8th there is no ban against government officials speaking at political meetings. No one knows the record better.

  Will you please have prepared for the use of the Democratic National Committee a list of those in your department who are excellent, good and fair speakers upon whom we may call. . . .

  During Howe’s tenure the political chain of command had been clearcut: Roosevelt, Howe, Farley. That, at least, was how Molly Dewson saw it. “Mrs. Roosevelt told me in January that the ‘high command’ which I presumed meant the President, Mr. Farley and Mr. Howe had decided that the bulk of literature issued in the campaign should be the Rainbow Fliers. This statement was based on the reception given the fliers in the 1932 campaign.”22 With Louis gone the question of who was to carry out the commander-in-chief’s directive became acute. Theoretically it was Jim Farley, national chairman, postmaster-general, and chief dispenser of patronage. He was loyal and effective, a professional politician who, however, did not particularly appreciate the New Deal as a movement of ideas and values or have much rapport with many New Dealers.

  Farley was a technician, not a progressive crusader. During a national reconnaissance tour in late winter, 1936, Molly picked up reports on the West Coast that Farley was building a machine to make him president in 1940. “Just imagine JAF as President!!” she wrote incredulously to Eleanor; “for one thing he had better turn Methodist.” Eleanor, who had a warm feeling about Jim, discounted the report: “Molly, I can’t believe this is Jim’s idea.” She got along with the national chairman, but the exchange between the two women indicated their awareness of his limitations. Molly was under attack that spring by Emma Guffey Miller, the Democratic national committeewoman from Pennsylvania and sister of Senator Joseph Guffey, a highly influential Pennsylvania Democrat. Molly did not think Farley supported her in that contest with sufficient enthusiasm. “I go to your defense with loyalty and ardor practically every day,” she wrote him. “The few times I have disagreed with you I have told you and no one else except Mrs. Roosevelt to whom I feel primarily responsible.” Eleanor intervened on Molly’s side. Farley retreated: “Regarding appointments,” he wrote Eleanor, “please be assured that I will discuss them with you, and be governed by your wishes on anything I do relative to the activity of women.”23

  Like the president, Eleanor doubted that Farley and his headquarters staff, oriented as they were toward the traditional party organizations, were able to run a New Deal rather than a Democratic party campaign. Edward L. Roddan,‡ formerly the White House correspondent of the International News Service, was sent into headquarters to back up the redoubtable Charlie Michelson. Eleanor, like Franklin, communicated directly with Roddan although Michelson was supposed to be in charge of countering the attacks of the opposition. “Would you tell Mr. Michelson for me,” Eleanor wrote Roddan, that she had heard that Hell Bent for Election by James P. Warburg, in which this young dissident Democrat charged that Roosevelt had carried out the Socialist rather than the Democratic party’s program, was being “tremendously read and quoted, and perhaps should be answered.” She had also heard that Marriner Eccles, the administration’s leading defender of deficit spending, was very good at explaining “the whole monetary situation. Could he be induced to write an article . . . ?” The pamphlet the committee had prepared, “Little Red Schoolhouse,” was good for speakers and reference material, but the average person would have to be given “something a little easier to read. I have just given the President some campaign leaflets [th
e Rainbow Fliers] and something of that kind is more useful for the average people in cities or rural districts.”24

  The communications to Roddan reflected White House dissatisfaction with the Farley-Michelson leadership. Roosevelt was almost abrupt in rebuking Farley after Farley’s address to Michigan Democrats in which he predicted that “the governor of a typical prairie state” would be the Republican presidential nominee. “He, Too, Came from ‘A Typical Prairie State’” the Republicans countered in a leaflet carrying a picture of Abraham Lincoln. “I thought we had decided any reference to Landon or any other Republican candidate was inadvisable,” Roosevelt sternly wrote Farley. When an unrepentant Farley subsequently referred to Alfred M. Landon as the “synthetic” candidate, Roosevelt called in both Farley and Michelson and told them that no further statements should be issued without White House clearance. Roosevelt was in charge of the campaign, and to the extent that anyone was serving the role that Louis had in previous campaigns, Eleanor did in part, sitting in on budget meetings and through the women’s division as well as through talks with Farley, trying to school him in her husband’s concept of a New Deal campaign.

  She accompanied her husband on the “nonpolitical” tour that he just happened to take at the same time the Republicans were meeting in Philadelphia. There were stops and speeches in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Indiana. The nomination of Governor Landon was no surprise, Eleanor reported in one of her “nonpolitical” columns during the trip, but what platform would he run on? “For once the Republican Party seems to be made up of as many varying elements as the Democratic has often been!” But she was concerned about the Democratic platform: “We are on the move and things are better, but we have not yet arrived and we must not lull ourselves to sleep with a false sense of achievement.”25

  Two weeks later the Democrats convened in Philadelphia. Molly organized a breakfast for women delegates in order to deploy her forces. Eleanor thought it wiser not to come: “I would love to be at a breakfast in Philadelphia but am afraid I will only be able to come over for the day with Franklin. Otherwise, I might get myself into trouble!”26 Although she was not at Philadelphia, her influence was felt. For the first time women were granted parity with the men on the platform committee, a measure of how far they had traveled since 1924 when Eleanor and her feminine colleagues had sat outside the locked door of the Resolutions Committee. “Women are more interested in the policies of the Democratic Party than in any question of power or patronage, and we are exceedingly grateful that the Convention has taken this tremendous step,” a delighted Molly Dewson commented. Eleanor had conveyed the women’s views on the Republican platform to Franklin, who was personally supervising the drafting of the Democratic document: “It might be useful in Democratic planks of interest to women.” The women were jubilant over the Democratic document. “I have been telling you girls for years why I believed in the Democratic Party,” Molly exulted to her cohorts, “but I could never tell you in such beautiful language.” On every seat in the convention hall the women’s division had placed a packet of Rainbow Fliers. There were 219 women delegates and alternates at Philadelphia compared to the 60 who had been at the Republican convention, and eight of the Roosevelt seconding speeches were made by women. Their large role at the convention symbolized the recognition they had achieved under Roosevelt. Much of the credit belonged to Molly Dewson, the best “she-politician” of his time, said Michelson, but Frances Perkins, after she had finished her formal speech at the women’s breakfast, brought the audience to its feet in a spontaneous ovation when she added,

  I know that many women in this country when they go to vote in November for Franklin Roosevelt will be thinking with a choke in their throats of Eleanor Roosevelt. . . .

  She has gone out courageously, in the face of unfavorable criticism, not only to meet the people as a friend but to use that contact to make of herself a channel through which the needs and hopes and desires of people could be carried to places where solutions could be found to their problems.

  If ever there was a gallant and courageous and intelligent and wise woman, she is one.27

  While this eulogy was being delivered in Philadelphia, Eleanor was at the Arthurdale commencement handing out diplomas. Two days later she accompanied the president to Philadelphia for his acceptance speech before the more than 100,000 people packed into Franklin Field. The Philadelphia Symphony had played, Lily Pons had sung, and John Nance Garner had formally accepted renomination as vice president. But it was a crowd that was waiting for Roosevelt. He arrived at the podium on the arm of his son James—after a “frightful five minutes” when in the crush his steel brace had buckled and, out of sight of the crowd, he had fallen. Composed, buoyant, and smiling, he came forward.

  “We have conquered fear,” his speech began, and he proceeded to recall the troubles of 1932–33 and what his administration had done to overcome them. Now there were “new difficulties, new problems” which must be solved. Freedom was “no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.” This nation was poor, indeed, if it could not “afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world.” When he said “this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny,” the huge crowd “nearly went crazy,” said Agnes Leach, one of the leaders of the women.

  “The greatest political speech I have ever heard,” commented Ickes. For ten minutes the crowd roared its approval, as Roosevelt, surrounded by his family, stood and waved. Eleanor’s thoughts were less on the drama than on the expectations of the people as a consequence of her husband’s speech: “A man must come to a moment like this with a tremendous sense of responsibility, but that must be very much augmented when he realizes by watching the crowd about him what his thoughts and words are going to mean to innumerable people throughout the nation.”

  To her schoolgirl friend Bennett (Mrs. Philip Vaughn) she wrote the same day: “For the good of the country I believe it is devoutly to be hoped that he will be reelected, but from a personal point of view I am quite overcome when I think of four years more of the life I have been leading!”28

  Elated by the convention, several of the women—Molly, Agnes Leach, Caroline O’Day, Democratic national committeewoman Mrs. William H. Good, Frances Perkins, and Dorothy Schiff Backer, a recruit from the Republicans—turned up at Val-Kill the next day to rehash the convention and get their marching orders from Roosevelt. The president was in no hurry; he had his own clear picture of how he intended to pace his campaign: August in Washington with “nonpolitical” forays into the areas of flood and drought, no political speeches in September either, and four or five major political speeches in October. Two weeks after the convention he took off on a cruise with three of his sons; his destination was Campobello, where Eleanor would report to him on the situation at headquarters. “We are losing ground every day,” Ickes fretted. “Meanwhile, the President smiles and sails and fishes and the rest of us worry and fume.”29

  While Franklin was cruising on the Sewanna, before going to Campobello his wife stopped in at headquarters to meet with Farley, who dealt with her as one professional to another, for she was a woman, he felt, who had a “real ‘sense of politics’” and a “genuine gift for organization work.”30 She also had sessions with Molly Dewson, Stanley High, a former clergyman whose journalistic aptitude made him a fluent speech writer, and Michelson. Afterward she drafted several brisk memoranda. The basic one went to the president with copies to Farley, Michelson, High, Early, and Molly Dewson: “My feeling is that we have to get going and going quickly.” She listed the questions she had brought up in her conferences at headquarters, to which she thought there ought to be answers in black and white that would reach “us” at Eastport by July 27 or 28 “when the President expects to be there.” She urged that the publicity-steering committee be organized immediately, asked that minut
es be kept of its meetings and that a copy be sent to the president, “and if the committee is willing, one to me as well.” Some of the questions: Who was responsible for suggesting answers to charges, etc.? Who would actually do the radio work under the aegis of the publicity committee? Who was in charge of research? (“I gather if the President o.k.’s it, the aggressive campaign against Landon’s record will begin before Landon’s acceptance speech.”) Who was collecting and organizing the Landon data? There were twelve questions in all, ending with the suggestion that Representative Sam Rayburn of Texas, who was to head the Speakers Bureau, should come in “at once to plan the policy and mechanics” and the additional suggestion that it would be well

  to start some Negro speakers, like Mrs. [Mary McLeod] Bethune to speak at church meetings and that type of Negro organization. More and more my reports indicate that this is a close election and that we need very excellent organization. That is why I am trying to clarify in my own mind the functions at headquarters and have the President see a picture of the organization as clearly as possible in order that he may make any suggestions that he thinks necessary.

  A supplementary letter to Farley expressed the hope “that when Ed Flynn gets back you will draw him into headquarters not only for consultation but for some definite responsibility. He is a pretty good executive organizer and Louis found him very valuable in the last campaign.” Louis had trained her well.31

  The memos she requested arrived at Campobello: two pages from Charlie Michelson; a “things are beginning to click” outline from Stanley High, who was heading up the Good Neighbor League; an explanation from Steve Early that he had been tied down at the White House and able, therefore, to spend only one day at headquarters; a letter from Rayburn’s assistant saying he would reply when he arrived in New York (which turned out to be August 18); and a nine-page single-spaced letter from Farley. Yes, he would draw in Ed Flynn “full time.” They were keeping minutes at headquarters and Eleanor and the president would receive copies. Leon Henderson, formerly chief economist of the NRA, was being brought in to head up research. Eddie Roddan was compiling the material on Landon. He (Farley) would cooperate in every way with the Labor party that Sidney Hillman was organizing in New York State and thought it would bring an added 150,000 voters to the national ticket. He reviewed the situation state by state and promised to send her all reports and letters that came in from the states. So far as Negro participation in the campaign was concerned, Will Alexander, Tugwell’s deputy at the Resettlement Administration, was drafting the committee’s plans. Farley did not think it wise to move too actively in August, he summed up, except to tool up the headquarters operation; but the president should, as he had planned, travel widely and inspect New Deal projects.