Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  A national textile strike called by the United Textile Workers was under way, and virtually every factory along the East Coast from Rhode Island to Florida was engulfed by or threatened with violence. A Democrat, Governor Green told the Rhode Island legislature that the textile workers of Providence represented a “communist uprising.” But unionists protested industry’s failure to live up to their codes, including the abolition of child workers and minimum wage provisions.

  FDR appointed John Winant, New Hampshire’s liberal Republican governor, to chair a special board of inquiry when ten strikers were killed and scores wounded in the South. In Georgia, National Guardsmen rounded up 116 women and men, white union workers, and put them in what the press called a “concentration camp.” Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge loathed FDR and despised the New Deal, which encouraged unionism. He and other conservatives were determined to crush this strike. It was their declaration of war against communism, and against the New Deal.

  Desperate for a settlement, Winant’s committee and the union settled for a tragic compromise that left the union unrecognized, the strikers unprotected, and the deal a disgrace. FDR signed it, but no peace was thereby restored.

  The textile strike highlighted America’s new battlefields. After Winant’s settlement, employers ridiculed the idea of national arbitration, and Southern industrialists vowed to rid the region of unionists. The vicious episode dramatized the urgency behind Senator Robert Wagner’s independent labor bill, intended to protect against just such events, siderailed by the 1934 Congress. For ER, so long a WTUL activist, industrial violence against unionism was a dreadful development.

  To fortify herself before her Newport dinner, ER had lunched with Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read at their Connecticut estate, Saltmeadow. They too deplored antiunion violence, and ER wrote Hick, “You would like them…. Darling I must dress. I love you and how I dread the next few hours. I hope someone is praying for me.”

  Ultimately the dinner was a courteous affair. FDR had once said that “Myron was a moron,” but ER was surprised to find Myron Taylor interesting, and found she actually liked him. “The strikes are bad and I hate seeing soldiers and guns used, it makes me sick,” but the violent situation kept the governor away from dinner.

  Happy to leave Newport, ER drove with Louis Howe from his home in Horse Neck Beach near Fall River to Cape Cod, where she particularly enjoyed Provincetown. Optimistically, ER wrote Hick: “I think you’d like it—I’ve not been bothered at all on this trip by reporters so we might get away with it.”

  At Cousin Maude’s in Portland, Maine, ER was joined by her daughter and John Boettiger. “They sat on my bed last night and talked and though you know that kind of happiness can’t last, it is nice to have it for a time!” On her way home ER stopped in Cambridge to visit her sons.

  ER and Hick arranged for their reunion to coincide with ER’s fiftieth birthday in New York: “I’ll be driving Anna down on Sunday as she takes the midnight to Washington—so don’t be worried if she appears…. Tommy has a key and sleeps on the 4th floor but she won’t bother us!” There was a hint of anxiety in her letters as she assured Hick that “we will have a peaceful time.”

  But they were interrupted by her daughter’s medical emergency, and ER apologized: “I wish I had not had to leave you last night, tho of course I wanted to [visit Anna in the hospital]. You are a grand person dear, & don’t ever think I don’t appreciate what you are going thro for me.”

  Hick was again disappointed and ER felt in part a failure. Her solution was to persuade Hick to live in the White House whenever she was in Washington. But even as a live-in member of the household, she had very little time with ER.

  That autumn for the first time a First Lady actively participated in a political campaign. ER campaigned vigorously for Caroline O’Day, who ran for member of Congress at large for New York State. A position that no longer exists, it was tantamount to senator—the “congressman-at-large” represented the entire state.

  Supported in her decision to campaign by Louis Howe and FDR, and occasionally accompanied on the stump by her mother-in-law, ER dismissed newspaper attacks as “funny.” Besides, she enjoyed every minute of it—the speeches, the “very big crowds,” the partisan hoopla.

  This one was for the women. ER’s original political team, who had been “trooping for democracy” since 1920, now campaigned for one of their own. Caroline O’Day, Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman, and ER were the Four Musketeers of New York State. Caroline O’Day ran for Congress with the men of the party behind her. FDR wanted her in Washington, and everything she and ER most cared about was on the agenda—women’s rights and opportunities, labor rights, Negro rights, the World Court, international peace, social security—and she had a chance to win.

  O’Day ran against a reactionary Republican attorney, Natalie Couch. Blunt in the political fray, ER considered Couch dreary: “I’m sorry to say that I thought Miss Couch made a rather terrible speech and I shall be really sorry if she is elected.”

  ER was glad to be back “at my old work.” “I like being in a campaign and with people I know again.” She ignored all opposition, and served as Caroline O’Day’s finance chair. She was delighted to support a remarkable friend who had given so many years of her life to the women’s movement and to social service, she said almost every day, in her speeches to large audiences throughout the state:

  I think that Mrs. O’Day represents in herself the real reason why most women enter politics, which is in order to achieve changes in our social organization which they become convinced can be reached only through government.

  That was a theme ER had consistently repeated since her 1928 article “Women Bosses,” when she wrote that men go into politics to win elections and women go into politics to change the world: “The vast majority of women, I believe, turn to politics as the only means through which to accomplish the ends they seek.”

  ER’s long friendship with O’Day served to contradict that false “theory that women cannot work together or for each other…. I never knew Mrs. O’Day to be jealous of anyone…. It has been a pleasure and privilege to work with her and under her.”

  In Buffalo on 25 October, over a thousand women attended ER’s first debate against Couch, sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The audience was volatile. Although all speakers were warmly received at first, ER became crimson with outrage when Natalie Couch was booed. She was applauded when she attacked the Roosevelt administration for extravagance, but booed when she announced: “The people of the United States realize they no longer have a republic.”

  ER was the last speaker of the evening, and as reported in The New York Times began by scolding the booers. She admired “the League of Women Voters because we always listen to all points of view … because we know that all … opinions expressed … are truthful and are wholly worthy of our respect whether we agree with them or not.”

  Natalie Couch stood and bowed to ER, and the audience reunited in a round of applause. Then ER described the difference between Couch and O’Day, between traditional Democrats and Republicans: Couch wanted a balanced budget, and business incentives to the business community to lower the unemployment rate, which would reduce the relief rolls. But nobody sincerely believed that kind of trickle-down economics ever happened. How, ER asked, could a balanced budget be justified while so many remained unemployed, and suffered? “Are you going to stop feeding the hungry …?”

  Against all criticism, ER insisted: “I am acting as an individual…. I believe in certain things, and I think a person who does believe in certain things has the right to support them.”

  To charges that as First Lady she used her position unfairly, she replied: “As a citizen I too must live up to what I think is right.”

  It was ER’s kind of political season, and she did not miss an opportunity. She attacked all those who attacked the New Deal, and she attacked especially her husband’s enemies. “Hammering a fist into the palm of her hand and rais
ing her voice,” ER told twelve hundred women in Syracuse that the critics of her husband’s administration were howling in the hollow. New Deal programs were “wasteful” only if the people helped were to be wasted:

  We have short memories. In the Spring of 1933 people came to Washington and said, “Take our business. Do anything with it to make it run.”

  Now the sick man is better and doesn’t like “regulation.” He wants to get back and make as much profit as possible. He doesn’t think about his neighbors. But the only good we care about is the good of the people.

  ER emphasized that the NRA codes, under vicious attack, were “made by the industries themselves.” “Now the industrialists try to pretend that they were imposed.” As for government borrowing, ER considered it “a choice between two evils,” debt or widespread misery.

  Caroline O’Day was a lifelong pacifist, and her international views were absolute. In 1934, ER shared them: “The time is coming when we will discover that there are wars that are not worth having.” In war there are no final victories, and “no question is permanently settled.” ER believed in defense but wanted to take “every step toward peaceful solutions.”

  During the campaign, Hick lived most of the time in the White House, and ER’s whirlwind schedule was unrelenting. There were also missed moments, and mixed signals:

  I am sorry you were hurt dear. But weren’t you a bit hasty? I was back at 6:45 & lay on the sofa and read from 7:15–7:45 which was the time I had planned for you. I do plan times dear one to be with you but you have been here a good deal and the steady routine gets on your nerves….

  I am sorry & cross with myself for not thinking ahead … but I wouldn’t give up our times together and our happiness for these little troubles. You have been a brick and don’t think that I don’t know how hard it is.

  Surely that note, and stingy half hour, added to their troubles.

  On 1 November, ER delivered her last major speech for Caroline O’Day at a dinner attended by eight hundred notable Democrats and party leaders at the Hotel Biltmore. Independent third party candidate, who mostly ran against ER’s presence in the campaign, attorney and Great War veteran Dorothy Frooks “crashed” the dinner, to confront ER. Daisy (Mrs. Caspar) Whitney, who chaired the meeting, refused to allow her to debate, although ER agreed to answer any questions she might have from the floor. But she failed to ask any questions. According to The New York Times, “Miss Frooks’s presence was unknown to the large audience. Although Mrs. Roosevelt passed within arm’s length of her as she left the dining room, Miss Frooks made no effort to interrogate her.”

  Hick worried about ER’s image:

  Damn the newspapers! Here am I, keen to know what you said last night and how it went. And what do the papers carry? Complete and lurid accounts of Miss Frooks’ presence….

  And I hated the stories. They didn’t say YOU ran out on it, but they certainly sounded as though Mrs. Whitney had placed you in the position of running out.

  Hick was even more upset to read that ER wore “a blue velvet dinner gown,” while Miss Frooks crashed the gate “in street clothes.” Then, on leaving, ER was reported to have been “surrounded by a party of friends.” “Damn it—I hated it. It made you sound like a rotten sport. Of course the stories may be inaccurate….”

  It all made Hick feel very radical, actually “red.” Her “red” feelings that night were compounded by the fact that she had just spent two full days “with relief clients.”

  God damn it—none of us ought to be wearing velvet dinner gowns these days! Not when, as the chief attendance officer in the Baltimore public schools said today, 4,000 Baltimore children couldn’t go to school in September because they didn’t have clothes. As she was saying that, the thought of that new dress of mine and of you in a blue velvet dinner gown—even though you are my friend, and I love you—irritated me profoundly.

  Despite her ire, Hick signed off with a gentle note: “Darling—in a blue velvet dinner gown or out of it … I love you….”

  ER was at Hyde Park, in the process of writing Hick a long letter, when her protest arrived: “Miss Frooks borrowed a UP press pass to get into the dinner. Mrs. Whitney when she first saw her was unduly excited and insisted she must not speak.” ER invited her to ask questions, however, and she “never asked one. She could have several times during my speech for I paused and spoke slowly.” ER felt unjustly accused:

  I stood in the hall, right outside the door for 15 minutes waiting to find my coat and many people came to talk and she could have done so—She is crazy and I did not want to go on the radio with her … so I’m writing her to reach her after [the] election and not answering her wires….

  ER offered no apologies for her costume:

  Darling, if we all stopped wearing velvet dresses there would be worse times than there are. If you have money you must spend it—now, so I don’t feel as guilty as you do. Of course if you could give it all where it would do the most good that would be grand but we can’t always do that! Don’t think me heartless but your vehemence always makes me calm!

  Also, ER warned Hick not to let the wicked conditions she had witnessed in Baltimore swamp her emotionally. “If one feels too absolutely the misery around one, life becomes unbearable and one’s ability to be useful is really impaired….”

  The elections of 1934 represented a great Democratic victory, and a mandate for the New Deal. Caroline O’Day won easily, and ER was credited with her success. New York’s new congresswoman-at-large protested the mean-spirited press coverage: “The up-State papers said Mrs. Roosevelt spoke for me because I was too dumb to speak for myself. I resent very much the intimation that Mrs. Roosevelt would speak for a dumb-bell.” Though clearly, O’Day said, “most people feel that ‘what is good for Mrs. Roosevelt is good enough for me.’”

  According to some newspapers, Caroline O’Day would merely be a Roosevelt yes-woman in Congress. O’Day admitted that possibility, except if it came to America’s participation in war. In that event: “I think I would just kiss my children good-bye and start off for Leavenworth.”

  In Arizona, ER’s great friend Isabella Greenway was reelected, but her various conservative friendships gave rise to rumors that worried FDR. ER wrote:

  Franklin wants to know if by any chance you really are a financial backer of an organization called America First? It is doing much the same type of thing that the Liberty League is doing and apparently is causing a great deal of trouble. Some one is spreading the report that you are the financial angel. Having heard a number of such reports … I doubt if this is accurate, but I would be glad to have my doubts confirmed.

  Greenway replied:

  I never heard of “America First,” but have a vague memory that Mrs. [Phoebe] Hearst started something in behalf of Franklin in October ’32 called “America Incorporated” and we all contributed ten dollars. It’s wonderful what we hear about ourselves, isn’t it?…

  Although Isabella was basically loyal to FDR’s program in Congress, she departed publicly in 1933 and again in 1934 when she stood up for the veterans’ bonus. Despite political disagreements, her friendship with ER was not diminished.

  Initially, FDR sought to reassure and appease the corporate lobby that sought to destroy New Deal efforts and crush the burgeoning union movement. He tended to ignore growing discontent on the left, especially among workers and minorities.

  Throughout the autumn, ER’s correspondence with NAACP leaders revealed the profound dismay of organized black communities and voters. Efforts to renew the fight against lynching in the upcoming Congress intensified in the face of new and grisly violence. In September ER met with Walter White about “the very unsatisfactory way” Negroes were integrated into the Homestead Division’s “subsistence colonies.” She asked Clarence Pickett to give her the details of the Interior Department’s efforts. Within weeks, Ickes’s office compiled a report, “What Actually Is Being Done to Integrate Negroes into the Various Projects.” Five projects were �
��under consideration,” in Tuskegee, Alabama; Newport News, Virginia; Orangeburg, South Carolina; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Dayton, Ohio. Tuskegee would consist of seventy-five homesteads, and land was “being purchased”; Philadelphia was to be a “bi-racial unit of 200 homesteads.”

  In November 1934, the New Deal scored a zero in the NAACP’s Crisis magazine. In “The Plight of the Negro Voter,” Oswald Garrison Villard—one of the NAACP’s founders, long identified with reform causes, and The Nation’s publisher—wrote a particularly bitter assessment:

  Never before has the Negro voter in the North found himself in a worse quandary than today. Whatever the New Deal has done for the white workman it seems to have done less than nothing for the Negro…. Mr. Roosevelt is frankly not interested in the Negro problem; so far as I am aware a study of the Negro situation has not been one of Mrs. Roosevelt’s multitudinous activities.

  Villard more correctly observed that the power of the Democrats continued to reside in the hands of Southern congressional bullies, McAdoo, Pat Harrison, and Joseph Robinson of Arkansas particularly, all “typical anti-Negro southerners.” Still, Villard admitted, the New Deal’s effort to restore prosperity might trickle down and benefit “all Americans,” while the Republicans “have absolutely nothing to offer anyone.” This party of “big business, great capitalists, and tariff barons” exclusively represented, in Theodore Roosevelt’s words, “the malefactors of great wealth.”

  ER was not unmindful of Villard’s criticisms, and it engendered a correspondence with novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

  After Fisher sent her Villard’s Nation editorial on federal aid to education, ER wrote: “there is much truth in what he says and it is always well said, but there are also some inaccuracies…. I always wish that he would be a little more temperate, because I think he would carry greater weight and not arouse antagonism, and at the moment we need all the influence we can get….”