by FDR
FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR continued to move in separate circles.* ER was considerably ahead of the president in racial matters and equal rights for women, and was not always an asset in FDR’s struggles with Congress. “She is not doing the President any good,” wrote Harold Ickes, who could scarcely be described as unsympathetic to the New Deal. “She is becoming altogether too active in public affairs and I think she is harmful rather than helpful.”51
Roosevelt was tolerant if not supportive. “I can always say, ‘Well, that’s my wife; I can’t do anything about her.’ ”52 For her part, Eleanor made the best of it: “He might have been happier with a wife who was completely uncritical. That I was never able to be.… Nevertheless, I think I sometimes acted as a spur, even though the spurring was not always wanted or welcomed. I was one of those who served his purposes.”53
FDR’s relations with his children were another cause for concern. “One of the worst things in the world is being the child of a President,” he once said.54 Anna, now married to the newsman John Boettiger, lived in Seattle and rarely came to Washington. Boettiger had resigned from the stridently anti-Roosevelt Chicago Tribune to avoid embarrassing the president, and he and Anna had been given a sweetheart deal by the media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Hearst and FDR disliked each other personally, yet they often needed each other and Hearst relished doing favors for the First Family. Boettiger was made publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at a salary of $30,000 a year plus a share of the profits, and Anna became editor of the women’s page at $10,000. The salaries were far in excess of prevailing pay scales but Hearst was buying White House goodwill. Various associates of FDR were disgusted at the arrangement, but neither Roosevelt nor Eleanor seemed concerned. “I shall miss them,” ER wrote Franklin, “but it does seem a grand opportunity.”55
James, the president’s eldest son, and his wife, Betsey, lived in Boston, where James was in the insurance business. In 1936, evidently feeling the need for companionship, FDR summoned the couple to Washington and made James his naval aide with the rank of a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. That was the rank FDR deemed appropriate, despite James’s lack of military experience. Eleanor disapproved. “Is James a 2nd Lieut. or Lieut. Colonel?” she asked.56 When Louis Howe died, James became the president’s executive assistant and moved into the adjoining office. James was utterly unequipped to fill Howe’s role. Roosevelt got loyalty, but his son lacked judgment and experience. He made commitments in the president’s name without FDR’s knowledge and brazenly used his position for personal gain. William O. Douglas, then head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, reported a visit by James on behalf of a client with business before the SEC.57 Douglas was so shocked that he went to the White House with his resignation. According to Douglas, FDR cradled his head on his arm and cried like a child for several minutes.58
Public criticism of James became so shrill that he was forced to release his income tax returns. They disclosed nothing illegal, but media pressure was sufficiently intense that in mid-1938 the president’s son checked into Rochester’s Mayo Clinic with a perforated ulcer. A large portion of his stomach was removed, and James chose not to return to the White House. His marriage to Betsey Cushing was also on the rocks. FDR, who was very fond of his daughter-in-law (Betsey often served as White House hostess during ER’s travels), sent Harry Hopkins to dissuade James from getting a divorce, but to no avail. “I was hurt that Father had sent him instead of taking it up with me himself,” wrote James. “In retrospect, however, I have come to realize that Father felt he could not broach it to me—all his life, he had told us that he would advise us, if asked, but that our personal decisions were our own to make.”59
After his recovery James married his nurse at the Mayo Clinic and moved to California, where he was hired by Samuel Goldwyn as a movie vice president, first at $25,000, then $40,000 a year. Hollywood buzz had it that James had been given a leaf-raking job by Goldwyn so he could boast to friends that the president’s son was on the payroll.60* The fact is that Goldwyn was being sued by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations related to film distribution and saw James as a sheet anchor. “How can you do this with a suit pending?” FDR asked his son in December 1938. James said it was only a civil suit. “What is the difference between a civil and a criminal suit?” Roosevelt replied. “All I know is that you are working for a man who is fighting the United States Government.”61
Number two son, Elliott, was even more of a problem. A natural rebel, he objected to attending Groton, resisted confirmation in the Episcopal Church, and turned in a blank college entrance examination to avoid going to Harvard. Instead of college Elliott found a job with a New York advertising agency and earned enough to support himself but just barely. In 1932, at the age of twenty-one, he married Elizabeth “Betty” Donner, the attractive heiress to a Pennsylvania steel fortune. Betty’s father, a pillar in the Republican establishment, bankrolled the couple, provided them with a Park Avenue apartment, and invited Elliott into the family business as a vice president. “I saw my life laid out ahead of me,” he said later.62 Like his maternal grandfather and namesake, Elliott was restless. He and Betty and their infant son attended FDR’s 1933 inaugural, and four days later Elliott abandoned them and drove west. “He simply dumped them at the White House,” said an upstairs employee. Elliott told ER he needed to think things through. He had a job offer from a start-up airline in California. If it worked out, he might send for his family later.63
Elliott ran out of money in Little Rock and placed a collect call to his father. FDR explained that he had closed the banks and suggested to Elliott that he find a prosperous-looking farm where he might earn enough to continue his trip.
“What road are you following?” FDR asked.
“Dallas, El Paso, Tucson,” said Elliott.
“Just go as far as you can,” Roosevelt replied.64 Evidently FDR informed Jesse Jones, the Texas banker who headed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and Jones in turn alerted the Dallas business establishment. When Elliott arrived in the city, he was feted by the legendary C. R. Smith, the head of American Airlines, introduced to the moneybags of the Texas oil industry, Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, and made grand marshal of the Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth. “I was vaguely aware that I was being sized up,” said Elliott.65 He also met and immediately fell in love with Ruth Googins, the daughter of a wealthy meatpacking family.
Elliott continued to California. The fledgling airline for which he hoped to work went out of business shortly after his arrival, and he too was rescued by William Randolph Hearst, who engaged Elliott as aviation editor of the Los Angeles Examiner at the princely salary of $30,000. Two years later Hearst put him in charge of the company’s radio operations at $50,000.* With Hearst’s offer on the horizon, Elliott decided to divorce Betty and marry Ruth. The easy way out was to break the news by telephone from the West Coast. The Donners were distraught; Franklin and Eleanor were appalled; and Anna was dispatched to counsel Elliott against the move. “See if you can’t keep him from rushing into it,” FDR instructed his daughter.66 When Anna failed, Eleanor flew out to Los Angeles but had no better luck. Elliott divorced Betty in Reno in July 1933, and married Ruth Googins five days later.
Like James—perhaps even more than James—Elliott was always on the lookout for easy money, invariably trading on the family name. In 1934, while working as Hearst’s aviation columnist, he engineered a deal with the Dutch airplane designer Anthony Fokker to sell fifty Lockheed transports to the Soviet Union. Fokker was to convert the planes to bombers, and Elliott was to receive a $500,000 commission. The deal ultimately fell through (Elliott received $5,000), and the Nye Committee investigating the arms industry had a field day, particularly since Elliott had failed to report the $5,000 on his tax return.67
By 1937 Elliott had assembled five radio stations for Hearst in the Southwest. When Hearst decided to sell the stations, Elliott was eager to buy them. To raise money, he reached out
to old friends, business associates, and casual acquaintances, one of whom was John A. Hartford, president of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P). Elliott telephoned his father from Hartford’s office and then handed the phone to Hartford.
“Hello, John,” said FDR with his customary bonhomie. “While any business you have with my son must stand on its own merits, I will appreciate anything you do for him. And the next time you’re in Washington come and see me.”68 Hartford was facing an antitrust suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission, and the president’s invitation was too good to pass up. He invested $200,000 and took Elliott’s personal note as collateral. Several years later, when Elliott’s radio empire ran into hard times, FDR asked then commerce secretary Jesse Jones for help. Jones interceded with Hartford, who agreed to settle the note for $4,000. Hartford told Jones he would do whatever the president asked. “Candidly, I would rather not have Elliott Roosevelt’s note in my estate after I am dead.”69
FDR, Jr., son number three, was nineteen when his father became president. He graduated from Harvard in 1937 and promptly married Ethel du Pont, the stunning daughter of Eugene du Pont of Greenville, Delaware, a founding member of the Liberty League and a bitter opponent of the New Deal. Franklin, Jr.—known to the family as “Brud”—bore the strongest resemblance to his father and possessed the same charm and assurance. “He’s a good egg,” allowed Ethel’s father, “but it would be better if he had a different last name.”70 FDR, Jr.’s, marriage to Ethel, the union of Roosevelts and du Ponts, was portrayed by the press as the wedding of the decade. The Army Corps of Engineers set up a field kitchen on the du Pont property, three companies of soldiers were deployed to provide security, and the receiving line required five hours to pass through. Among the guests of the du Ponts were the relief impresario Harry Hopkins, the feminist secretary of labor Frances Perkins, and the Jewish secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau. FDR enjoyed every minute and, according to James, kissed all the bridesmaids. “It doesn’t really matter what you do,” cautioned Eleanor, “so long as you don’t steal the show.”71
In the autumn of 1937 Franklin, Jr., entered law school at the University of Virginia. Late in his first year, some fraternity jokers decided it would be a good idea to place a transatlantic telephone call to Premier Édouard Daladier of France, person to person from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. M. Daladier was not amused. After the French Foreign Ministry and the State Department finished exchanging notes, Roosevelt wrote his son:
As you know, there was a somewhat serious international flurry over the call that was put in from the Fraternity House on May 21st to Prime Minister Daladier.… It was, of course, purely a prank but I think it would do no harm for you to let them know at the Fraternity House that that kind of prank can have serious results!72
John Aspinwall Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor’s youngest son, proved to be the tallest (at six feet, five inches), the most stable, and the most conservative. Unlike his brothers, he never ran for elective office and did not rely on his father’s influence for personal advancement. His marriage to the North Shore socialite Anne Lindsay Clark—they were married during John’s senior year at Harvard—lasted twenty-seven years, a record for the Roosevelt siblings, and he married only twice, another record. After finishing Harvard in 1938 he went to work as a clerk at Filene’s department store in Boston, earning $18 a week. John flourished in the retail trade and later owned and operated his own department store in Los Angeles. In 1953 he entered the investment banking business, where he prospered as well. Because FDR came down with polio when John was a toddler and was absent from the family much of the time, John had less emotional attachment to his parents and their political views than the other children. A closet Republican, he waited until after FDR’s death to announce his affiliation. He contributed generously to GOP candidates, publicly endorsed both Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, and when his brother FDR, Jr., ran for New York attorney general in 1954, John backed his Republican opponent, Jacob Javits.
In college during the 1930s, John attracted his share of attention. Visiting Cannes with classmates in the summer after his junior year, he and his friends joined the annual “Battle of Flowers,” when decorated floats competed for prizes. By the time their flower-bedecked carriage reached the reviewing stand in front of the Hotel Carlton, they had been drinking vintage Moët & Chandon for three hours and were snockered. When the mayor of Cannes, Pierre Nouveau, advanced to present the coach with a bouquet of flowers, John took a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket on the carriage floor and squirted him in the face with the contents. The incident generated wide press coverage, riled Franco-American relations, and required high-level diplomatic intervention to repair the damage.73 John provided a ritual denial, and Ambassador William C. Bullitt offered what support he could. Franklin and Eleanor accepted John’s version, and ER met him at the dock in New York when he returned. As she put it:
If it had been one of my other boys I would have felt the incident was more than probable, for they have great exuberance of spirit. It just happens that John is extremely quiet, and, even if he had been under the influence of champagne, I doubt if he would have reacted in this manner.74
The Roosevelt sons sought no special favors in World War II. James fought with Carlson’s Raiders (the Marines’ famous 2nd Raider Battalion) at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and the Solomon Islands, later commanded the Fourth Raiders, and earned the Navy Cross and a Silver Star. Elliott enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1940, flew three hundred photoreconnaissance missions, was wounded twice, and rose to command the 325th Photographic Reconnaissance Wing during the D-Day invasion. FDR, Jr., after graduating from the University of Virginia Law School, served in the Navy, commanded the destroyer Ulvert M. Moore, and won the Navy Cross, the Legion of Merit, and a Purple Heart. John, who was the last to enlist, saw combat as a lieutenant (later lieutenant commander) on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the Pacific, and earned a Bronze Star.
THE SECOND SESSION of the Seventy-fifth Congress was little more productive than the first. When members departed Washington sine die on June 16, 1938, only one significant piece of legislation had been enacted: the Fair Labor Standards Act, better known as the wages and hours bill. And it had been an uphill struggle. Introduced by liberal Alabama senator Hugo Black, the bill passed the Senate in July 1937. But a combination of conservative Republicans and southern Democrats (who feared the racial equality implications) kept the measure bottled up in the House Rules Committee until a discharge petition brought it to the floor in May 1938. After twelve hours of stormy debate and numerous amendments the bill passed with a lopsided majority of 314–7, only to run into the obstacle course of a House-Senate conference committee that sought to reconcile the newer House version with the bill the Senate had passed the year before. The final bill, reflecting the Hughes Court’s latitudinarian interpretation of the commerce clause, banned the employment of child labor and established a minimum wage of forty cents an hour, a forty-hour workweek, and time and a half for overtime.75 It was passed by both houses on June 14—two days before adjournment—and the president signed it on June 24. “That’s that,” said FDR, with more finality than he intended. The Fair Labor Standards Act, one of the most important measures ever passed by Congress, would be the last significant New Deal initiative to become law.
Roosevelt’s frustration with the Seventy-fifth Congress led him to his third serious mistake. The Court-packing fiasco was the first; the premature cutback in federal spending the second; and his 1938 attempt to purge the Democratic party of dissident members of Congress was the third. Hard-core Republican opposition on Capitol Hill was taken for granted. What FDR could not forgive was the defection of conservative Democrats. The remedy he embarked upon was to oppose the renomination of key members of the House and Senate in upcoming Democratic primaries. It was a breathtaking departure from American tradition. No president since Andrew Johnson had intervened directly in individual congressional contests, and none since Wils
on had made an off-year election a referendum on the presidency. Given the unhappy results in both instances, Roosevelt should have been forewarned.
FDR’s interest was piqued by the landslide victory in January of New Deal congressman Lister Hill, running for the Alabama Senate seat vacated by Hugo Black.* Hill ran as an out-and-out supporter of the president, much as Black had been. His primary opponent was former senator Tom Heflin, an unrepentant racist from the red clay hills of eastern Alabama who had once shot a black man on a Washington streetcar.76 Heflin had deserted the party over Al Smith’s Catholicism in 1928 and despite his populist, rabble-rousing past was backed by a significant portion of the state’s financial establishment. Hill beat Heflin 90,000 to 50,000—almost 2 to 1.77
Initially FDR pursued the purge by proxy. As primary season approached, the White House asked Farley to draft a statement defining the administration’s position. Farley prepared the customary disclaimer proclaiming the Democratic National Committee’s neutrality: “As individuals, the members of the National Committee may have their favorites, but as a body the organization’s hands are off. These nominations are entirely the affair of the States or the Congressional districts, and however these early battles may result, the National Committee will be behind the candidate that the people themselves choose. This goes for every state and every Congressional district.”78
