The Chief

by David Nasaw

  The Chief took full credit for Roosevelt’s nomination, though it is likely that the governor’s first-ballot strength was such that he would in the end have secured his two-thirds vote without Hearst’s intervention. Millicent, with whom he had been in touch throughout the campaign, was among the first to congratulate him on his victory. “Hope Roosevelt will realize how he got his nomination,” she telegrammed him on July 2. “It was a great piece of strategy on your part ... All send love.”12

  W. R. responded with a long letter, asking Millicent to carry a message for him to the nominee:

  I don’t know how well you know Governor Roosevelt or Senator Farley, but if you know them well enough to consult with them as to how Roosevelt can best be elected, I wish you would do so. I am very anxious to see him elected. I am probably more of a Roosevelt man than any one imagines ... I will work everywhere for him, in our papers and over our radios and in the newsreels....I have some ideas and would like to submit them. First, I think the less debate we have in the campaign the better ... I think the old-fashioned American way of a candidate retiring to his estate and allowing his friends to make his campaign for him is full of impressive dignity.... Second, I think—and this is important—that Governor Roosevelt has all the radical support that there is. He cannot gain any more by being additionally radical. What he needs is the support of certain conservative elements which should legitimately come to him....Of course I am not suggesting any modification of policies. I never modify my own policies and I am the last man to suggest modification of policy to another person. But I think Governor Roosevelt is in fact properly conservative and I think that the reactionaries are the dangerous radicals.13

  The Chief took every presidential election seriously, but he was particularly concerned with the outcome of this one. He feared—and he was not alone in having such fears in July of 1932—that Herbert Hoover, pushed and pulled by Wall Street financiers, international bankers, and profit-hungry, shortsighted businessmen, might very well drive the nation’s working people and farmers to the brink of rebellion by increasing their burdens and ignoring their pain. Those fears were exacerbated when, in July of 1932, Hoover called on the army to drive out the twenty-five thousand veterans who had marched on Washington in May and June to demand early payment of the bonuses that were due in 1945. Hearst had long been in support of the demands of the Bonus Marchers and was outraged when Hoover permitted General Douglas MacArthur to chase them from the nation’s capital—with tear gas and drawn sabers—and burn down their encampments on the Anacostia Flats across the Potomac.

  “I do not care if every paper in the United States comments favorably on Hoover’s action,” the Chief telegrammed Ed Coblentz in New York:

  I think it was the most outrageous piece of stupidity, if nothing worse, that has ever been perpetrated by the government. If the idea is to develop Bolshevism in this country, there is no better way of doing it. Certainly the action of the government cannot be excused or explained, if it had any other purpose in mind.... That is the way I feel about it, and I think our editorials should temperately express that view....I feel like mourning not only the death of the veterans, but mourning the passing of American sentiment and democratic principles. I am afraid this despotic action on the part of the Government will tend to precipitate further conflict between Communism and Fascism which is already developing in the country and which threatens to eliminate the patriotic and Republican principles on which this nation was built.14

  Hearst had become more and more of a conservative as he aged, for the very simple reason that he had more and more to conserve. He had sincerely meant what he had told Millicent in his letter, that he was a Roosevelt man because Roosevelt was “properly conservative and ... the reactionaries ... the dangerous radicals.” As long as centrists like Roosevelt remained in control of the federal government, American democracy and capitalism would remain safe. The greatest threat to the future was not from the Left which remained weak and unorganized, but from reactionaries like Hoover who, in their insensitivity to the legitimate interests of America’s working peoples, were pushing them into the arms of the Bolsheviks.

  From July to November, the Hearst papers attacked Hoover so effectively that they literally frightened him into silence. When in late July Secretary of War Stimson suggested that the president give a speech commending the Kellogg-Briand Pact as a tool to safeguard the peace in Asia, where the Japanese had invaded Manchuria, Hoover vetoed the idea because he was worried about Hearst’s editorial reaction. That evening, a disconsolate Stimson wrote in his diary that the president had become so frightened of Hearst that he was “bringing down the record of his Administration ... to the pattern of what Hearst is going to say about it. That is what made me sad.”15

  While denigrating Hoover in print, Hearst promoted the Roosevelt candidacy in all his media outlets, including his newsreels. As Jane Collings has noted in her dissertation, images of a smiling, confident Roosevelt became a staple of the Hearst Metrotone newsreels:

  Campaign period segments would show FDR sitting casually outdoors in a wicker chair with his campaign manager, swimming with his grandchildren, or introducing his family to newsreel viewers—and letting his little granddaughter announce that the campaign’s song was “Happy Days Are Here Again.” While Hoover might be shown in a long shot, in a long black coat at a public event, FDR would be shown yachting under a voice-over announcing, “Rough or smooth—it’s all the same to the governor who faces another journey on the stormy seas of politics.”16

  The message was transparent: here was a leader, an activist, a healthy, vibrant grandfather who would shepherd the nation to prosperity.

  The campaign was running smoothly, but Hearst refused to take any chances. “I think no disaster could happen in this country as great as reelection of Hoover,” he wrote Arthur Brisbane in late September. Three weeks before Election Day, from his hospital bed in Cleveland, where he was recuperating from a minor throat operation, Hearst directed Joe Willicombe to send Joe Kennedy a $25,000 check and ask that it be delivered to the Democratic national campaign fund “with Mr. Hearst’s request that it be used for radio campaigning.”

  The campaign not only solidified Hearst’s connection with Roosevelt, but with Kennedy as Hearst’s conduit to Washington. Hearst’s contribution, Kennedy informed him by return mail, was so large it had been matched by only two others: “I realize that this check coming to the Committee through me helps a great deal in having consideration [given] to any suggestion that I might want to make. You may rest assured, and this I want to say in order to go on record, that whenever your interests in this administration are not served, my interest has ceased.”17

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president on November 8, 1932. “I congratulate you on the greatest fight of your life,” Jack Neylan wrote Hearst from San Francisco, “God Bless You. The American people will thank you some day.” From New York came an almost identical telegram from Millicent. “You must be very happy and delighted today at this great victory. It certainly has been a great surprise to everybody here. I saw Roosevelt last night. He said he was going to telephone you. You are getting all the credit for this victory from everybody I meet.”18

  The Chief returned to California after his operation, in good health and better spirits. “What in Hades is the matter with your fellows, Roy,” he telegrammed Roy Howard, the head of the United Press, after a U.P. reporter had called San Simeon to ask if Hearst had “passed on.” “A couple of months ago I had a small operation about as important as having your tonsils removed and today one of your myrmidons telephoned up to ask me if I was dead. I had to leave a tennis game to tell this gink that I was alive and then I do not think he believed it. Now Roy stop this damned nonsense. I have never been sick in my life nor dead either. Moreover if you want to participate in a little light humor I will bet you one thousand dollars that I attend your funeral.”19

  The Chief had good reason to feel giddy. He had, after almost
two decades in exile, come home again to the Democratic party. On November 14, just six days after the election, W. R. telegrammed Joe Kennedy with advice for the president-elect. He urged Roosevelt, who would not be inaugurated for another five months, to lay low and refrain from cooperating with Hoover on an interim recovery plan:

  Do not let the incumbent unload on our friend any part of his unpopularity or any part of the responsibility for those things which cause his unpopularity. I think it far better for our friend to go into office with a clean slate and with an impressive program for meeting the conditions which are then before him than it is to make some compromise program with the present incumbent which might deprive our friend of part of his prestige and of the opportunity to make the most of his great victory.20

  Hearst also began forwarding to Kennedy his suggestions for Roosevelt’s cabinet. He expected to play a major role—as unofficial senior adviser—to the president-elect and was apparently put off when Roosevelt declined to respond directly to his suggestions. Kennedy, his link to the presidentelect, was also put in an uncomfortable position when Roosevelt neglected to follow through on his promise and invite Hearst to New York for private talks. In late December, Kennedy wrote Hearst to apologize for not having come West to see him while he recuperated from his throat operation. Declaring that his first loyalties were to the Chief, not the president-elect, Kennedy claimed that he was no longer in direct contact with Roosevelt: “My interest in politics and national affairs has not ceased. My contact ceased from the day a certain gentleman neglected to send a telegram to you urging you to come to New York which he told me he would do. In spite of my very close connections during the campaign I have never seen him from that day to this.”21

  The Chief’s response was rather measured. He was, he telegrammed Kennedy, sending him “an opinion” on the cabinet through Ed Coblentz:

  I don’t want to be intrusive but you said that distinguished gentleman wanted me to come East to express such views as I have. Therefore I thought an occasional view on something immediate which would not wait on my visit might not be amiss. If you think it would not be well received do not present it. I can always express my opinions through the papers. My only object in submitting them to him personally is the hope of being of some service. I believe it to be of immense importance to the nation that this Democratic administration should be successful. Therefore I am going as I told you [to] go to great lengths to support him regardless of minor differences of opinion. Consequently if he does not agree with the suggestions I submit I will in no sense be offended but in the hope of sometime submitting something of value will continue to give him my most careful thought, provided he so desired.22

  There was nothing particularly radical in the eleven-point program the Chief presented to Roosevelt and began publishing daily on his editorial pages. He advocated a “Buy American and Spend American” campaign, increased tariffs, a larger merchant marine, the expansion of American air fleets and transcontinental railways, the completion of east-west and north-south automobile highways, and internal improvements of the nation’s waterways and harbors.23

  The centerpiece of his recovery program was, for the time being at least, his “Buy American” campaign. As Dana Frank has written in Buy American:

  Every day for two months, beginning December 26, the front pages of [Hearst’s] twenty-seven newspapers trumpeted at least one, and often three or four, Buy American stories. Every day he wrote an editorial praising the idea. Every day he inserted the Buy American concept into smaller stories throughout his papers. His Hearst Metrotone News Service, meanwhile, carried the message into the nation’s movie theaters. In one especially charming newsreel, entitled “Children Enlist to Aid ‘Buy American,’” a bevy of endearing white children clutched American-made toys (including a black Mammy doll) and asked viewers to admire their “smart” American-made sailor suits. “My mother and dad say that everybody should buy American so lots of people will get jobs,” a nervous little blond girl recited.24

  Hearst was so committed to this campaign that he appeared in one of his newsreels to give his “Buy American” pitch. The footage was shot outdoors at San Simeon, with Hearst looking like a kindly grandfather, dressed warmly in hat and overcoat. To the accompaniment of military band music, the spot opened with the large block-lettered newsreel title, “‘Buy American’ to Help Prosperity says W. R. Hearst. Noted publisher launches nation-wide movement to aid U.S.” The music ended, the title disappeared, and Hearst took up the screen, speaking confidently to the camera in his peculiarly high-pitched voice. Ironically for a “Buy American” campaign, the backdrop for his speech was the sixteenth-century Spanish wrought-iron door grille, which, with extensions made by Ed Trinkkeller, a Los Angeles artisan, stood at the front entrance of Casa Grande.25

  In early January, Roosevelt invited Edmond Coblentz to his New York City townhouse to discuss Hearst’s cabinet suggestions and his eleven-point program. The president-elect, Coblentz wrote the Chief after their meeting, was “very earnest in his expressed desire to talk with you personally, and suggested that you come to Warm Springs between the 20th of this month and the 4th of February, where he said he could confer with you at leisure and without interruption....He thought you could come by way of New Orleans to Warm Springs and thus avoid any risk of running into cold weather. If I may be permitted to say so and if your personal affairs do not stand in the way, I feel you would be accomplishing a great good for the nation by acceding to his request. He said that he would have his plans on paper and would like to discuss them with you in detail.

  “Unquestionably,” Coblentz continued, “you would be able to crystallize many of his policies, which to me at present seem in a rather vague and nebulous state. You could give direction and force to many of his ideas. I think he needs your advice and I think the country would benefit by your personal contact with him.”26

  Hearst replied, in a note to Roosevelt, that while he was “sincerely anxious to make the trip East,” his “tyrannical doctor” refused to let him do so. Hearst continued:

  I have been following your course very closely and think I have a good general idea of your plans; and I can assure you that I am in hearty accord with those plans as I understand them to be. Doubtless if I had gone East I could have done but little more than express my great gratification at the result of the election, and my earnest desire to be of service in support of your soundly Democratic ideas. I have written Mr. Coblentz of the New York American and our other editors to this effect, and when you ... are in New York, I shall ask Mr. Coblentz to discuss with you the effective course for the papers to pursue.27

  Hearst’s letter to Roosevelt reveals a good deal about what the Chief wanted from his relationship with the president-elect. We don’t know whether he declined to go East because his doctors had truly forbidden it or because he was piqued at FDR’s delay in making the invitation. But he was now demanding closer ties with the president than he had had with the candidate. In return, he promised the full support of his communications empire.

  Hearst’s interest in the president-elect’s recovery plan was more than academic. The effects of three years of economic downturn were beginning to hit home. Not even William Randolph Hearst was immune to the effects of the Depression. While the Chief continued to hope that the economy would, in due course, heal itself, he was running out of time. In December of 1932, Jack Neylan, his financial adviser and unofficial second in command, arrived at San Simeon to urge the Chief to retrench and cut salaries across the board. Hearst’s initial reply was that he’d “rather go broke than do that.” Neylan insisted that there was no other option. His publishing revenues had declined to the point where they were no longer sufficient to pay off the interest on his loans and mortgages and meet his payrolls and publishing costs. The only way to forestall bankruptcy was to reduce expenditures and institute an across-the-board wage cut. Frightened by Neylan’s facts and figures, the Chief authorized him to proceed.28

&
nbsp; Tom White, who was the general manager of the newspaper division, had not been consulted and tendered his resignation immediately (though he later withdrew it). White, born in Ireland, had emigrated at age fourteen with his mother who had come to Chicago in 1893 to sell lace at the World’s Columbian Exposition. His first job with the Hearst organization was selling newsprint, but he had risen from there to become head of the magazine, and then the newspaper division. Hearst trusted him as much as anyone in the organization, and would in 1934 make him its first general manager.

  White was furious at the size of the reduction—39 percent—and at Neylan’s decision to implement it forty-eight hours after announcing it. “If Mr. Hearst and you would only examine our payroll,” White wrote Neylan, “you will find that, except for your stellar people who will be largely immune anyway ... you can put on the fingers of two hands the people who could stand an adjustment such as I am starting out to-day to place on everybody who will take it.”29

  Cutting the payroll by nearly $7 million was a significant step away from bankruptcy, but, unfortunately, far from sufficient. Hearst refused to sell any assets and the banks would not lend him any more money, so Neylan had to raise new capital by selling more Hearst Consolidated stock to the public. When he suggested that Hearst’s employees be directed to sell stock as part of their job descriptions, White was infuriated and protested to Hearst: