by FDR
* The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (46 Stat. 590 (1930)) almost doubled the already high American duties on imports and is widely credited with accelerating the decline in world trade and exacerbating the Depression as other nations quickly raised tariffs in response. President Hoover ceremoniously signed the act with six golden pens and, despite the almost unanimous opinion of the nation’s economists to the contrary, proclaimed it a significant advance in protecting American jobs. 1 State Papers of Herbert Hoover 314–318, W. W. Myers, ed. (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1934). Also see Douglas A. Irwin, “From Smoot-Hawley to Reciprocal Trade Agreements,” in Michael D. Bondo, Claudia Goldin, and Eugene N. White, eds., The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century 325–344 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
* “I have given Mr. Howe a check for $5,000 out of principal [not income],” Sara wrote Franklin on May 9, 1932. “If you are not nominated, I should not weep, but it would be money thrown away.” FDRL. (Sara’s emphasis).
* Charles Michelson, the publicity director of the DNC and no friend of the Roosevelt campaign, later described Farley’s journey with awe: “The hard-boiled, Tammany-tainted politician they expected to find in the West turned out to be a genial, personable fellow who neither drank nor smoked, who carried along pictures of his wife and children, who attended church with regularity, and who never obtruded his abstentions on those convivially inclined.” Michelson, The Ghost Talks 135 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944).
* The blue-ribbon panel appointed by Williams was composed of Dr. Samuel W. Lambert, former dean of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University; Dr. Russell A. Hibbs, surgeon in chief of the New York Orthopedic Hospital; and Dr. Foster Kennedy, professor of neurology at Cornell University Medical College and president of the New York Neurological Society.
† Looker offers an insight into an era of different standards:
When Roosevelt first came to Albany as governor the newspaper correspondents were confronted with the necessity of deciding whether or not to comment on his walking. They decided that no comment was required. It was a gentleman’s agreement among themselves which soon included the news photographers in Albany. As happens with all public men, the cameras have sometimes caught the governor in an awkward pose. Without suggestion from anyone interested, the plates have been destroyed by the photographers themselves. They have done this because they feel that the awkward pictures do not give a true impression of the governor.
Earle Looker, This Man Roosevelt 146–147 (New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1932).
* Four cities had been in contention for the convention: Atlantic City, Chicago, Kansas City, and San Francisco. FDR preferred Kansas City, where Tom Pendergast’s organization could pack the galleries, but settled for Chicago to avoid Atlantic City and San Francisco. An Atlantic City convention would have fallen under the control of New Jersey boss Frank Hague, a Smith stalwart, and in San Francisco newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst would have held sway. Roosevelt and Hearst shared a long-standing antipathy. “I take it we shall be able to prevent the Convention from going to Atlantic City or San Francisco,” FDR wrote a friend on the eve of the National Committee vote. Steve Neal, Happy Days Are Here Again 12–14 (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).
* Long before FDR announced his candidacy, Farley had collected the names and addresses of all Democratic precinct captains in the United States—roughly 140,000. When Roosevelt announced on January 23, he sent each one a letter and Farley followed up with several more, always signed in his trademark green ink. Rarely has a primary campaign been more meticulously organized. Roy V. Peel and Thomas C. Donnelly, The 1932 Campaign: An Analysis 68–69 (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1935).
* Two Columbia faculty members who did not work out were the distinguished political scientist Lindsay Rogers and the equally distinguished economist James W. Angell. Rogers committed the unpardonable error of submitting the same tariff memorandum to Roosevelt and Al Smith, while Angell proved unable to provide the crisp answers FDR wanted, unencumbered by academic hedging. Raymond Moley, After Seven Years 15–17 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939); Adolf A. Berle interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.
* Roosevelt’s Oglethorpe University speech was drafted by Ernest K. Lindley of the New York Herald Tribune. Lindley was one of the pool of reporters covering FDR and had teased Roosevelt about the quality of his previous speeches. FDR jokingly dared Lindley to do better, and Lindley, with the assistance of other members of the pool, drafted the speech. Roosevelt made only minor changes. Ernest K. Lindley, interview with Earland Irving Carlson, in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fight for the Presidential Nomination, 1928–1932 417n (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1955).
* On May 3 Garner had won an unexpected victory against FDR and Smith in the California primary. Supported by the Hearst newspaper chain, California drys, and the hundred thousand members of the Texas Society of California, Garner polled 216,000 votes to FDR’s 170,000 and Smith’s 138,000, despite the fact that Roosevelt had the backing of the state party organization. Howe and Farley can perhaps be forgiven for not anticipating that the hard-drinking John Garner should win on the votes of California drys.
* Aside from Prohibition, the 1932 Democratic platform was a remarkably harmonious document, drafted by A. Mitchell Palmer and Cordell Hull in Washington and brought to Chicago with FDR’s endorsement. Totaling fewer than 1,500 words, it was the shortest platform of any major party in American history. The Depression was blamed on the disastrous economic policies pursued by the Republicans: “They have ruined our foreign trade; destroyed the values of our commodities and products, crippled our banking system, robbed millions of our people of their life savings and thrown millions out of work, produced widespread poverty and brought the government to a state of financial distress unprecedented in time of peace.”
Proclaiming the platform “a covenant with the people,” the Democrats pledged to reduce federal expenditures, balance the budget, and maintain a sound currency. Yet the core of the document shouted for aggressive government action: an income tax based on the ability to pay, reciprocal tariff agreements, unemployment relief, extensive public works, flood control, aid to agriculture, mortgage assistance, regulation of the securities industry, protection for bank deposits, campaign finance reform, independence for the Philippines, and statehood for Puerto Rico. For the text, see Proceedings of the 1932 Democratic National Convention 146–148. (Washington, D.C.: Democratic National Committee, 1932).
* Eleanor was unenthusiastic about FDR’s nomination. “From a personal standpoint, I did not want my husband to be president. I realized, however, that it was impossible to keep a man out of public service if that was what he wanted and was undoubtedly well equipped for. It was pure selfishness on my part, and I never mentioned my feelings on the subject to him.”
What ER did was confide her doubts to Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman. On the eve of FDR’s nomination she wrote to Cook, who was in Chicago with the campaign. Cook shared the letter with Dickerman and then with Louis Howe. According to Dickerman’s account, ER’s tone was almost “hysterical.” She could not “bear to become First Lady!” She did not wish to be “a prisoner in the White House, forced onto a narrow treadmill of formal receptions, ‘openings,’ dedications, teas, official dinners.” Howe’s face darkened as he read the letter. When he finished, he tore it into shreds and dropped the pieces into his wastebasket. “You are not to breathe a word of this to anyone, understand? Not to anyone.”
In her 1970s interviews with the historian Kenneth S. Davis, Marion Dickerman went on to say that ER wrote that she intended to file suit for divorce and run away with Earl Miller. Because the information was privileged and confidential, Davis chose not to report it until after Dickerman’s death. Blanche Wiesen Cook appears to accept Dickerman’s version, and Earl Miller’s denial, reported by Joseph Lash, is less than categorical. What we know fo
r certain is that after the election FDR took Sergeant Gus Gennerich to the White House but Miller remained in Albany, where he was appointed personnel director of the New York State Department of Corrections.
Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember 69 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949); Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The New York Years, 1928–1933 330–331 (New York: Random House, 1979); Blanche Wiesen Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 445–447 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992); Joseph Lash, Love, Eleanor 119–120 (New York: Doubleday, 1982). Writing later, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Conrad Black report ER’s unhappiness at the prospect of becoming first lady but exclude the reference to Earl Miller. Goodwin, No Ordinary Time 90 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt 239–240 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003). David B. Roosevelt, ER’s grandson, reports Eleanor’s romance with Miller but makes no mention of divorce. Grandmère: A Personal History of Eleanor Roosevelt 139–141 (New York: Warner Books, 2002).
* Shortly after the convention adjourned, Long went into neighboring Arkansas to support the Senate candidacy of Hattie Caraway against the conservative Democratic establishment. Mrs. Caraway was the widow of Senator Thaddeus Caraway and was serving out his unexpired term when she decided to run for the full six-year term. No one gave her a chance. Long barnstormed the state for ten days, and when the votes were counted Mrs. Caraway carried sixty-one of Arkansas’s seventy-five counties and her popular vote equaled the total of her six opponents’. Mrs. Caraway was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. T. Harry Williams, Huey Long 583–593 (New York: Knopf, 1969).
* The Ford 5-AT Tri-Motor, often referred to as the “Tin Goose,” had a top speed of 110 miles an hour. Built with a corrugated aluminum exterior, the plane had a seventy-seven-foot wingspan, was almost fifty feet long, and weighed 13,000 pounds. It had three propellers, low-pressure tires for landing on rough surfaces, and a swiveling rear wheel with a shock absorber. “With its fixed landing gear, exposed air-cooled engines, and boxy shape, it exemplified the problems of drag that designers were trying to identify and fix in the late 1920s,” wrote the aviation historian R. G. Grant. Flight: 100 Years of Aviation 140–141 (New York: D. K. Publishing, 2002).
FOURTEEN
NOTHING TO FEAR
Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, MARCH 4, 1933
“THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in a political campaign is to make as few mistakes as possible,” wrote Ed Flynn, and the 1932 Democratic presidential campaign was nearly flawless. Roosevelt “seemed to have a sixth sense that enabled him to do the right thing at the right time.”1 Add Farley’s meticulous organization, Louis Howe’s encyclopedic knowledge of the nation’s political byways, and the well-adapted speeches flowing from Moley’s brain trust, throw in the ineptitude of the Hoover campaign, and FDR would probably have won even if the country had not been gripped by economic despair. As Brooklyn’s Democratic boss, John H. McCooey, noted, “Roosevelt could have spent the entire summer and fall in Europe and been elected just the same.”2
So it seemed in retrospect. FDR captured the initiative with his dramatic flight to Chicago and his rousing acceptance speech, and never looked back. Before Roosevelt left the platform that evening he had received the endorsement of Nebraska’s senior senator, George W. Norris, the grand old man of American progressivism, followed quickly by Norris’s fellow Republicans Hiram Johnson of California, Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, and Bronson Cutting of New Mexico. The wheels were coming off the Republican wagon.
With his progressive flank secure, FDR turned right to repair the breach in his own party. Following his acceptance speech, Roosevelt dined with the ninety-six members of the Democratic National Committee at the Congress Hotel. Raskob presided for the last time, and FDR devoted the bulk of his remarks to soothing old wounds, going far out of his way to praise “my very good and old friend, John Raskob” and “my old friend Jouett Shouse.” He thanked his former adversaries for their service to the party and invited their help in the coming campaign.3
Al Smith posed another problem. He had left Chicago in a huff, and the campaign worried that he would blast FDR when he arrived in New York. His train was intercepted at Harmon-on-Hudson by mutual friends, and the Happy Warrior was persuaded to hold his peace. When the dust settled, Smith rallied to the ticket. He and Roosevelt forced the gubernatorial nomination of Herbert Lehman over Tammany’s objections and, to the delight of onlookers, made up publicly on the floor of the state Democratic convention in Albany. “Hello, you old potato,” shouted Smith as he pumped FDR’s hand. “Hello, Al, I’m glad to see you too—and that’s from the heart.” Farley remembers the pair grinning like schoolboys, “with hands clasped together, while the excited photographers took picture after picture.”4
Perhaps only Roosevelt could have launched his campaign by sailing with three of his sons—James, Franklin, Jr., and John—in a battered thirty-seven-foot yawl three hundred miles from Port Jefferson, Long Island, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “My son Jimmy has rented a yawl for $150,” FDR told his first postconvention press conference. “It was cheap and that’s why we could afford it. We are going to do our own navigating, cooking, and washing. I’m going to do the navigating.”5*
On July 11, 1932, nine days after accepting the Democratic nomination, FDR set sail across Long Island Sound into the New England waters he knew so well. Because the yawl had no engine, a wharf boat towed it from the dock into the harbor and the stiff breeze whipping across the water. “Get out of my wind,” Roosevelt jokingly called out to reporters aboard the press boat following behind.6 The drama of Roosevelt and his sons sailing a choppy sea captured the public’s imagination. Daily press and newsreel accounts showed a robust blue-water sailor, muscular and self-confident, beaming and laughing with a remarkable zest for life—a stark contrast to the starchy, buttoned-up demeanor of Herbert Hoover in the White House. “I think [grandfather] instinctively knew there would be a general sense of admiration for someone who could sail a boat with his sons that distance,” said FDR’s grandson Curtis Roosevelt.7
Aside from putting to rest questions about FDR’s health, the sail allowed him to mend fences with Smith’s supporters in New England. When his boat anchored in Stonington, Connecticut, and again in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Roosevelt played host to visiting state delegations. In Swampscott he charmed Massachusetts governor Joseph B. Ely, a Smith loyalist who had delivered the Bay State to the Happy Warrior in the primary. At the conclusion of the voyage FDR motored to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, to deliver his first speech of the campaign to a throng of 50,000 persons gathered at the fairgrounds.8
The final disaffected organization brought into line was that of Frank Hague in New Jersey.9 Like most old-line bosses, Hague was a Democrat first and foremost. Candidates come and go, platforms wax and wane, but the party survives. Hague had opposed Roosevelt fiercely at Chicago but had no problem extending an olive branch. If FDR would come to New Jersey early in the campaign, he told Farley, he would provide the largest political rally ever held in the United States. Roosevelt agreed, and Hague kept his word. In early August FDR went to Sea Girt, New Jersey, to address a summer crowd bused in from across the state estimated at 115,000 persons. “If it wasn’t the biggest rally in history, it must have been very close to it,” Farley recalled.10
Throughout the campaign Farley relied on the regular state organizations, whether they had supported FDR before the convention or not.11 This brought muted protest from Roosevelt backers, but Farley remained adamant. A united party was central to FDR’s campaign, and that meant keeping the regulars on board. When Hull complained that Roosevelt’s early supporters in Texas were being sidetracked, Farley showed little sympathy: “To be very frank with you, Senator, I think we will make a terrible mistake if we fail to carry out the campaign through the regular organization in Texas. If we do otherwise we are going to be in trouble.”12
The fact is, Farley was centra
lizing the party structure to a degree unprecedented in American politics, and it was more effective to work with organizations already in place than to create something new. At Howe’s suggestion, the various state chairmen were called to campaign headquarters in small groups for several days of conferences with Farley and others and were forcefully impressed with the fact that they were solely responsible for the campaign in their territory. “The success of this radical experiment was instantaneous,” Howe recalled. “Every state chairman went back feeling he was a person of real importance, of real responsibility, and determined to work as he had never worked before for the success of the Democratic party.”13
At the same time, Farley accelerated his practice of corresponding individually with each of the 140,000 or so precinct captains throughout the country. Altogether, almost 3 million letters were mailed out from Roosevelt’s headquarters, a significant percentage signed personally by Farley. “The fellow out in Kokomo, Indiana, who is pulling doorbells night after night respectfully asking his neighbors to vote the straight Democratic ticket, gets a real thrill if he receives a letter on campaigning postmarked Washington or New York; and we made sure that this pleasure was not denied him.”14*
Farley and Howe, assisted by Ed Flynn, directed the campaign like field marshals deploying their troops in battle. Politics, organization, and turnout were their responsibility. Policy was handled by the brain trust. They were the staff officers of the campaign, preparing speeches and memoranda for the candidate. Roosevelt made twenty-seven major addresses between August and November, each devoted to a single subject. He spoke briefly on thirty-two additional occasions, usually at whistle-stops or impromptu gatherings to which he was invited. Hoover, by contrast, made only ten speeches, all of which were delivered during the closing weeks of the campaign.15
