Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  On the campaign train of 1936, ER recalled the emotional turmoil she felt during the 1920 campaign train when her friendship with Louis Howe really took root, and she realized that her life with Franklin would always be in part a public life, In 1920 FDR was nominated for the vice presidency, and ER wrote in 1936:

  I am sure I was glad for my husband, but it never occurred to me to be much excited. I had come to accept the fact that public service was my husband’s great interest and I always tried to make the necessary family adjustments easy. I carried on the children’s lives and my own as calmly as could be, and while I was always a part of the public aspect of our lives, still I felt detached and objective, as though I were looking at someone else’s life. This seems to have remained with me down to the present day…. It is as though you lived two lives, one of your own and the other which belonged to the circumstances that surround you.

  It was ER’s habit to tell her story, particularly the story of her childhood, to her closest friends and confidantes. But to share her life with the people of America was a brave and extraordinary expression of trust, and community. She wanted certain things known, and she believed her experiences and struggles would be helpful to other women. But it was also as if she now needed to reconnect with those moments in her life which had given her strength. Because she wrote her memoirs so shortly after Howe’s death, in an environment she shared particularly with him, her brief references to her great friend, particularly on the 1920 train, are evocative. It was on that trip that ER learned “a certain adaptability to circumstances,” and she credited Louis Howe for her education.

  He knew that I was somewhat bewildered by some of the things that were expected of me as a candidate’s wife. I never before had spent my days going on and off platforms, listening apparently with rapt attention to much the same speech….

  Louis Howe began to break down my antagonism by occasionally knocking at my stateroom door and asking if he might discuss a speech with me. I was flattered and before long I found myself discussing a wide range of subjects….

  While ER told many emotional truths in This Is My Story, she carefully avoided many others. She wrote nothing of her intimate life, gave no hint of marital tension, and intended to be discreet about the controversial issues which divided America. Starkly, however, her passage on servants and race illuminated the great chasm still to cross over in order to reach beyond disrespect and diminishing stereotypes.

  On Sunday, 11 October, as the train proceeded into Cheyenne, Wyoming, ER was unusually feted for her birthday. While she always made a great fuss over FDR’s birthday, she had tended to ignore her own and FDR had often been away at sea on that day.

  ER wrote her daughter:

  Many many thanks for my gloves and birthday letters…. I wish I could have been with you and not had quite such a public birthday. Father even mentioned it in his speech to the crowd and I told him afterwards I could cheerfully have wrung his neck!

  Tiny Chaney joined the train at Omaha and, with Earl Miller, added a special glow to her birthday. There were countless letters, and a very nice party; and Mark McCloskey added an Irish toast: “May the best day you ever had be the worst one you’ll ever see.”

  In October, ER felt compelled to break her political silence—for family reasons. Her cousin Alice Longworth, in her own vigorous campaign for Landon, attacked FDR as a “Mollycoddle,” with a “Mollycoddle Philosophy.”

  ER was outraged, and she leaped for her pen. There she was one cold and blustery morning, as she read that headline, sitting beside her husband “without a coat,” while the rest of us “had pulled our coats around ourselves closely.” FDR was ho mollycoddle, which implied “dependency and an easy life.” She compared his dedication despite all physical odds to her Uncle Theodore’s commitment to a “strenuous life.” Nobody, she insisted, “who really knew both men” could call her husband such a name. TR always insisted on the “security of the home” first. “Naturally, that means an easy and dependent life for the youth in that home.”

  FDR had “brought himself back from what might have been an entire life of invalidism, to physical, mental and spiritual strength and activity.” He could not be accused of either “preaching or exemplifying” a mollycoddle philosophy. He did not seek “greater security and ease of life” for mollycoddles, but for hardworking people. Mollycoddles were not the maids and workers, but those who have had “too much ease, too much dependency, too much luxury of every kind.”

  ER explained the difference:

  [I knew a woman who] complained sadly to her maid that she must close up one of her five estates and give up the support of a hospital she had subsidized, because of her increased taxes. The maid reflected … that out of her reduced wages she had to support five people during the depression instead of her customary two.

  I wonder which of the two, the maid of the mistress, was in danger of acquiring a mollycoddle philosophy? Which of the two needed a little help and concern to make life easier?

  By the end of October, ER discovered that even her silence made headlines. In Providence, for example, the Journal announced: “First Lady Does Unexpected Here.” Arriving on the night train from New York, ER, her secretary, and an unidentified newspaperwoman bypassed a waiting crowd and the Secret Service ready to take her to the Biltmore Hotel. Instead she “walked briskly” into the Union Station restaurant for a quiet, leisurely breakfast. “The First Lady checked her own five bags at the check room, tipped her own porters, and then proceeded to the telephone booths…. Attired in a pinstriped navy blue tailleur, a silver fox scarf and a wine-colored velour hat,” ER and her “two women escorts” were unbothered, “practically unnoticed,” in the station, although she consented to a reporter’s questions.

  She had “no idea” about her future plans: “My dear, I don’t know. I go where the President goes.” Told the president’s special train had arrived and awaited her “in the siding beyond the station,” she ran off to meet him—assuring a local police official she knew the way. As she dashed down several streets, the large crowd began to recognize her, and “the clapping increased to a loud crescendo.”

  In October, according to newspaper polls, the election was very close—with Alf Landon running slightly ahead. But huge and enthusiastic crowds throughout the country convinced FDR that there was no contest. In September, when he began his formal campaign with a speech in Syracuse, he dismissed the Popular Front support. As if to answer charges of communism daily hurled at him by Hearst, the Liberty Leaguers, and Father Coughlin, he announced: “I have not sought, I do not seek, I repudiate the support of any advocate of Communism or of any other alien ‘ism’ which would by fair means or foul change our American democracy.” New Deal liberalism was American conservatism: “Reform if you would preserve.”

  Then, on 31 October, FDR’s campaign tour culminated with a rousing radical speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which thrilled the Popular Front and most liberals, while it caused others to sputter with horror. He rejected the Republican doctrine that that government “is best which is most indifferent.” The enemies of fiscal hope and social peace were now well known:

  [B]usiness and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. And we know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

  Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate of me—and I welcome their hatred.

  I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

  For some, that speech ended an era. FDR’s former friend Raymond Moley despaired: “Thoughtful citizens were stunned by th
e violence, the bombast, the naked demagoguery of these sentences.” For others that speech represented a new time, a truly New Deal.

  Not as certain as her husband that the polls were wrong, and eager to ensure his victory, ER sprinted to the finish line. She spoke to dozens of organizations and personally went door to door. Two days before the election, ER spoke at four major events, including a Women’s Democratic Club luncheon for six hundred at the Hotel Commodore, where she praised the impact women had on politics: “As a rule women join political parties and organizations because they have certain things which they want to see accomplished.” Now more than ever the “spirit” of women and their tremendous influence could be seen throughout the government. She also spoke at teas and luncheons, where she continued to claim she did not “talk politics,” only FDR did that. She received tumultuous applause everywhere, especially at the Essex House luncheon of the National Pro-Roosevelt Association of Women Lawyers, where she addressed eight hundred women attorneys and judges.

  On 3 November, the family voted at Hyde Park at eleven in the morning. FDR and his mother arrived in the first car; ER, who drove her own car with Nancy Cook, was the third to vote, and she drove off with her son Franklin, Jr. SDR was “enveloped in a royal purple cape resembling an Inverness” and wore “her usual” black velvet hat. ER wore a blue tweed suit with a white scarf, and “a sport hat.” Anna and John then voted. As she left the polls, ER promised reporters a buffet supper when they arrived to monitor the returns with the family.

  On 3 November 1936, FDR won an unprecedented landslide victory. Over 44 million Americans, representing 83 percent of eligible voters, voted. FDR received 27,476,673 votes, Landon received 16,679,583. His victory was the largest in presidential history. He lost only Maine and Vermont, to achieve an electoral college victory of 523 to 8. There were great victories in each house of Congress as well. The 75th Congress would be over 75 percent Democratic.

  FDR now had a mandate to fulfill the promise of the New Deal, the promise of economic and political democracy for all.

  The week after the election, ER’s imposed silence officially ended. While FDR embarked on a cruise to South America, ER proceeded on a lecture tour. She told reporters who asked why she was not with her husband that she chose the lectures “instead of the cruise because her husband never had approved of women on battleships….” They would be reunited after Thanksgiving.

  ER was joyous and eager to plunge into the most controversial issues before the nation. Her month-long tour took her west from Pennsylvania to Michigan. On 8 November in Philadelphia, she addressed an audience of two thousand at Temple University, where she made a rousing speech on the need for democratic action and community activism.

  The most dramatic moment of the evening occurred during the question period, when she called for changes in the Social Security Act to include domestic and agricultural workers. “The act is not static…. In England where they have had social security legislation for nearly 25 years, there have been revisions nearly every year.” The fight for the future had just begun: “We must not think that our leaders can do what we wish done unless we do our share.” Elated to be unmuzzled, ER hit the lecture circuit with vigor and publicly criticized her husband’s compromises. She called upon every citizen to demand more from their government—to demand real social security.

  *Still, the 1936 convention was the beginning of the long march toward the Democratic Party’s fifty-fifty rule, which Bella Abzug achieved in ER’s honor in 1978.

  20: Postelection Missions

  ER was profoundly moved by the “glorious day” of triumph FDR’s vote of confidence represented. The people had voted with thunderous clarity, “in the privacy of a voting booth. In the end the will of the majority is carried out peacefully.” For all the name-calling and crude misinformation, American democracy worked. But only individual involvement, grassroots activism, would result in the actual changes needed to fulfill her husband’s promises.

  In column after column, in every public lecture, she urged citizens to realize “that true democracy is the effort of the people individually to carry their share of the burden of government.” People, acting on behalf of their own needs and wants, must hold government accountable.

  ER wondered what her husband really meant to do now, actually do. She wrote her daughter as she toured the Middle West:

  I’ve just written Pa to say goodbye…. Darling, if he wanted to be King or dictator they [would] fight for him! It is terrifying & yet it must thrill him to know how many people he has put on their feet. A rather grand, gaunt looking detective who was with us last night [in Kansas City] said to me “I was lost in ’33, didn’t believe in the country or in anything. I’m 53, I’ve worked for the public all my life & never been late to work once & I’ve been a [Republican] didn’t vote for Mr. R in ’32 but in two years he had me. He gave me back my courage & I’ve got back all I thought I’d lost & this year I worked for him!”

  ER devoted her lecture tour to the need for ardent citizen action. Everywhere she spoke, from River Forest, Minnesota, to Far Rockaway, New York, large audiences responded with enthusiasm. She even managed to keep her unruly voice low, aided, she wrote Hick, by “this catarrh which is a pest.”

  Eventually, even she was satisfied with her own performance. To FDR she wrote that all went “well but very hectically. It would be easy to be a lecturer or the wife of the President but both. Oh! My.”

  ER was relieved to be back in public life on her own terms, and her depression lifted entirely. She was also cheered that her protracted separation from Hick was over. She had not returned even when ER took to her bed in September. Rather, she considered removing herself completely from ER. After Spain was torn by civil war, Hick decided to become a foreign correspondent. ER discouraged her, and wrote in September: “I’d hate to go to Europe & see a war” but “if you really want it I’ll speak to Roy Howard,” owner of the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate. With more enthusiasm, she noted that Tommy thought Grover Whelan “would give you the NY Fair publicity job.” Unable to break away, Hick again abandoned her reporter’s dream, and agreed to the World’s Fair job. ER was relieved.

  Before ER left for her tour, she and Hick had a pleasant reunion. The only tension of the evening involved Hick’s Minneapolis friends, whom ER looked forward to meeting. But Hick worried they might be treated casually, or coldly. ER was stunned by Hick’s lack of trust. Hick was stunned that ER did not appreciate how torn she felt, both hesitant and eager for her old best friends to meet her new best friend. Tommy had compounded Hick’s agony when she tried to protect ER’s time, and said ER was booked many hours each day. Evidently Hick exploded; then she apologized profusely, for weeks.

  Ultimately she sent ER a long letter filled with information about each friend, practically dossiers. She ranked them in importance to her and explained who might want to meet ER, with personal time, who might merely attend her lecture and shake her hand: “Well, if any of these people should show up, will you please be extra nice to them? For my sake?”

  The prospect of ER’s meeting her great friends sent Hick into a frenzy. Perhaps she feared that ER would not like or appreciate her down-home, unpretentious, hard-drinking, mostly journalist buddies, women and men. Perhaps she feared that they would tell her too much, repeat hilarious stories, reveal old secrets. Perhaps she merely felt guilty, since she hated to be with ER’s friends. Whatever the reason, for days her letters were filled with apologies and insecurity.

  ER knitted Hick a sweater while she traveled; it “is growing rapidly and looks lovely.” Hick sent the monthly calendars she hand-created, which ER used for her appointments. She also sent ER clippings and assorted correspondence to entertain her on the road. Hick was glad to see that three thousand people filled the hall in Philadelphia—“pretty darned good wasn’t it?” She particularly liked “what you said about the people with greatest opportunities sometimes being in greatest need for education in civic matters.�
��

  In New York, Hick concluded her WPA job with a festive social whirl. She dined out often and well, went to special places for special cocktails, took out-of-towners sight-seeing; she thanked ER for arranging her interview with Grover Whelan.

  Hick wanted ER especially to enjoy Milwaukee:

  How I used to love Milwaukee—years ago when I was a cub reporter there…! a little German coffee shop, made famous by Edna Ferber—that’s where I started to put on weight—and that beautiful, beautiful [Lake Michigan]! And I was young then and full of hope and bright dreams. No money. I lived at the YWCA. Sometimes mostly on beans. But those were brave days!

  ER replied that she did have a magnificent view of the lake, and in fact had made a pilgrimage to Edna Ferber’s coffee shop for Hick’s sake, but it was gone!

  In Milwaukee ER was told she would have no audience “because the old lady running the show has a communist introducing me who tried last year on Armistice Day to tear down the flag and so all patriots [would] stay away.” And her talk was scheduled for the big auditorium “which at best only FDR would fill! I dread it! Why will they take these huge places which no woman can fill—I think I’ll go out for $200 per and have a smaller audience, what think you?”

  Hick rejected it as a terrible idea: ER would always be able to pack the largest possible auditorium. Just wait and see. Actually, thousands showed up to hear ER, as Hick anticipated. “I’m keen to know what the papers say about your speeches. Have you tried out the anti-lynch stuff? Of course you wouldn’t get much reaction on that in the North.” Hick also thought that the introducer in Milwaukee might not be a “Communist after all, dear. So many people are labelled Communist these days!”