ER was fond of the optimistic, unfailingly cheerful AYC leaders; and the AYC’s Declaration of Rights for American Youth resonated precisely with her own views:
In song and legend America is exalted as a land of the free, a haven for the oppressed. Yet on every hand we see this freedom limited or destroyed. Progressive forces are persecuted. Minority nationalities are exposed to arbitrary deportation. The Negro people are subjected to constant abuse, discrimination and lynch law. Workers who strike for a living are met with increasing violence….
We are determined to realize the ideas of full democracy. We consider complete freedom for religious belief and practise an essential to this democracy. We demand not only the maintenance but the extension of our elementary rights of free speech, press and assemblage. We consider full academic freedom essential to progress and enlightenment.
The United States was one of the richest countries in the world; it was bountiful and resourceful. It could “more than provide a life of security and comfort for all.” But today that was not the case: “We want work… but millions of us are forced to be idle…. we refuse to be the lost generation…. We oppose the use of labor spies, vigilantes, and private arsenals by industrialists….” The AYC supported national planning for agriculture, government aid to farm workers, “equal wages for equal work,” worker education, aid to education, and an end to discrimination for reasons of race or poverty.
In 1938, the AYC was led by young people ER found courageous, uncomplaining, and charming. Her own circle stalled and disordered, ER moved on—into this youthful community of determined activists. She considered them the best of America’s united front agitators who supported a bold New Deal and worked for liberal unity against fascism everywhere. She knew that some were communists, but they did not rule, and they did not run away from urgent controversies.
No other group seemed to ER just then so vigorous. The women’s movement of the 1920s, which had first raised many of the same issues the AYC now emphasized, seemed no longer a unified movement for social change. When she addressed the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Children’s Bureau in 1937, she called for more determination and renewed organization.
When on 4 April 1938 she hosted Mary McLeod Bethune’s White House conference on more equitable distribution of federal benefits to black women and the Negro community, she was dismayed by the slow progress reported throughout the nation. In a meeting coordinated by the National Council of Negro Women, representatives of over fifty organizations met with the women directors of government agencies to overcome discriminatory practices in the administration of public health services, social security benefits, and federal welfare programs.
ER was disturbed by how little had actually been done; she recommended that biracial women’s committees be established in every community and black staff be added to each federal agency. But a new movement was needed to prevent Congress from destroying all New Deal efforts and to advance equitable goals. There was still discrimination in WPA and other major programs, and too many groups remained excluded from social security, including domestic and farm workers. In all federal agencies, state by state, countless injustices were tolerated.
Throughout 1938, ER worked to get women appointed to policy-making positions, insisted on equal opportunity, called for equal pay and equal treatment for women workers, and encouraged women to run for office. But she was increasingly critical of “the general apathy of women” and wondered why they were not more politically engaged. She noted the decline in the number of women legislators and scolded: “The trouble is women as a whole do not back [women] candidates.” There were 149 women legislators in thirty-eight states in 1928, and only 130 women in twenty-eight states ten years later. Also there were nine women in Congress in 1928 and only five in 1938. ER wanted to see women make a difference, and believed that they would—when they reorganized. “It probably will take some major development to jolt women out of their apathy.”
In 1938, ER felt that only the SCHW organizers and the leaders of AYC promised really multiracial movements for change. The leaders of the future, they were building grassroots democratic movements that challenged the moribund conservative anti-New Deal congressional opposition her husband had to work with. On domestic issues, ER and FDR seemed in the spring of 1938 entirely united. She worked to build a new movement, and he worked to purge his opposition. Every liberal step taken was greeted by shouts of communism, as the new Red Scare intensified. Every decent act toward racial justice, every union organized, every speech for equal rights, was again condemned as communist.
In March the AYC elected ER to its advisory board. Although she had accepted the nominal role in 1934, this time she declined the honor. Advised they were a suspect group, she could not accept: “I will consider it after I leave the White House, if the Council still wishes me….”
The Roman Catholic lobby led the opposition against the AYC, and ER. Catholic groups opposed her support for Spain and condemned her as America’s leading “Jezebel,” because she referred in one column to lipstick and in another to divorce. In April, the League of Catholic Women assailed her for promoting a film called Birth of a Baby. She replied that divorce was a “recognized” aspect of life, and so was birthing a baby. The film “could not be harmful because it is honest.”
The Boston Congress of Catholic Women joined the fray: It was “most unfortunate, unfair and dangerous for the wife of the President… to make pronouncements that give offense to a large part of our citizens.” Radicals wondered how the Catholic Church could condemn birthing and not the bombing of Spain—including Catholic citadels.
Various church groups throughout the South held meetings to condemn ER as a Red leader. She received dozens of letters of inquiry from Democrats who attended Baptist and Catholic meetings, dismayed by reports of her alleged views. One woman wrote for information to refute the rumors presented in a talk on “what they are teaching our children in school.” ER was “the neck” and FDR “the head” of “a gang of thousands of people called the reds.” Aghast to hear “these lies,” her correspondent wanted a useful answer to read at the next meeting of her church’s study group.
ER replied that the charges were probably from Elizabeth Dilling’s book “The Red Network, in which I am accused of being a Red, as is everyone in this country who is working for better living conditions.” Dilling included Jane Addams, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Lillian Wald.
Both my husband and I are frankly interested in seeing what can be done to help the masses of people in this country and we feel that those who have had special privileges are better equipped to take care of themselves for a while than are those who [are] underprivileged.
As war clouds gathered and the U.S. recession deepened, ER had less patience for diversions, and less interest in the relationships that had been for so long central to her life. Yet her understanding of the human condition remained generous and wise.
In May, rumors spread about Harry Hopkins’s impending marriage to “some woman named Mrs. Hale, an actress.” Hick was astonished: “It depresses me, profoundly,” she wrote.
It’s not that I would wish him to deny himself any happiness, but how could he forget so quickly? It’s only about six months! A year ago, in July, [Barbara] was still alive—a lovely, warm personality…. It says that Jimmy introduced them. Had you heard anything about it at all? Poor little Diana….
ER replied:
Hick darling. You don’t know much about men do you? Harry was happy with Barbara and so he is lonelier than if he hadn’t been. Women are sorry for him, they like to be seen with men whose names are in the paper and it helps him to forget.
ER did not think the rumors were serious. Harry “was disturbed [by them]; but I told him if he didn’t let himself get bluffed into marrying someone he really didn’t care for no permanent harm was done. I’m afraid Diana is more apt to be left alone than to have a step-mother tho’ of course that may happen!”
ER and Hick did no
t see each other during April. When ER was free for lunch, Hick had a staff meeting; when Hick was free ER had a prior lunch date with Bernard Baruch. One evening ER called at 7 and again at 11, “but I realize you were out all evening.” ER wanted to arrange at least a tea date. But there was no time.
At the end of April ER made a half-hearted gesture toward Hick. She invited her to the theater with her brother Hall and to lunch with Anna Louise Strong and Marie Morgan. There was no special time for Hick, who refused to join ER’s cluttered calendar. She went instead to a concert of Beethoven and Wagner. But the performance was rather dull: “Barbirolli is too pedantic for me. I like lots of thunder in my Beethoven—and fire in my Wagner!”
In June, Congress passed the the Fair Labor Standards Act. Known as the wages and hours law, it was the kind of legislation ER, Florence Kelley, and the social reformers of the National Consumers League had advocated since 1912. Child labor was formally banned; the minimum wage was set at 25 cents an hour, scheduled to increase over time, and was finally pegged to inflation; and a forty-hour work week was affirmed. A signficant victory, it was the last liberal legislation to be gotten from Congress—and was limited by many loopholes. A much debated North-South wage differential was defeated, then furtively tucked into the legislation, and there were many exemptions.
Initially introduced by Alabama’s Senator Hugo Black, later on the Supreme Court, the legislation passed with the vigorous support of New Jersey Congresswoman Mary Norton, Robert Wagner, and Florida’s Claude Pepper.
The Labor Department’s statistician Isadore Lubin considered it “the most vital social legislation” in U.S. history. And ER’s circle toasted the memory of Florence Kelley and Jane Addams.
Also in June, Joseph Kennedy visited Hyde Park. ER was “amused” to hear Kennedy’s impressions: “He says Rose is very close to the Queen, it is quite the talk of London and he finds the queen very nice.” He evidently did not speak about his peace-at-any-price convictions, or his efforts to improve U.S. relations with Germany.
June’s family highlight was John’s marriage to Anne Lindsay Clark. Unlike FJr’s wedding in Delaware, confined to the du Pont family compound, this turned into a crowded media event. The New York Times headlined, “Thousands Cheer at Nahant Church,” as tourists blocked this small town to witness the “marriage of FDR’s last bachelor son.”
They arrived on buses and waited on camp chairs, an extraordinary testimony to a popular president so often now hobbled by a divided Congress. A crowd of thirty thousand lined the streets to cheer FDR’s party from Salem’s dock all along the ten-mile route to the reception at the Nahant Tennis Club. Not only was the town congested by sight-seers, police sirens competed with the church organ, drowning out a program of Bach and Brahms.
ER looked “cool and exceptionally tall in her gown of net and navy, combined with Eleanor blue.” Under her large picture hat of “transparent navy straw,” however, she “retained an unusual solemnity of face and manner until the bridal procession reached the head of the right aisle,” then as Mendelssohn’s “Bridal March” played, she smiled, “just as the bride, glancing at James Roosevelt, the head usher, winked broadly and also for the first time smiled.”
After the wedding, FDR returned by yacht; the children scattered to different nearby country homes; ER returned by car to Hyde Park with grandchildren Sistie and Buzzie; and SDR, who stayed overnight to return by train, called the party “a fine shindig.”
For several weeks at Val-Kill, ER relaxed: “I’m doing nothing but be lazy and it is fun!” She also wrote several articles, besides her column, and prepared the first two years of “My Day” for publication: “I think it may make a fairly interesting book….”
While ER spent the summer at Hyde Park, FDR left on 7 July for a campaign journey to promote New Deal candidates for the bi-election of 1938. He toured Maryland, Georgia, Florida, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, and other states in what became known as his famous “purge” effort to be rid of conservative Democrats. FDR was particularly eager to unseat Georgia’s senior senator, Walter George, and Maryland’s Millard Tydings.
At the same time, the conference he called in response to the tragedy of the rising tide of refugees began. On 7 July 1938, delegates from thirty-two nations convened at Evian-les-Bains along the French shore of Lake Geneva to consider the future of Europe’s desperate people. The Evian Conference established an Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, but was in all other respects a disaster.
In his invitation, FDR had announced that the United States would not enlarge its own restrictive quota, which limited admission to 27,370 immigrants from Germany and Austria annually. The United States had never filled this quota, and now wanted to explore the intentions of other nations.
According to William Shirer, the U.S. delegation, headed by Myron Taylor, looked extremely unpromising. There was no leadership and no mandate for change:
The British, French, and Americans seemed too anxious not to do anything to offend Hitler. It’s an absurd situation. They want to appease the man who is responsible for the problem. The Nazis… will welcome the democracies’ taking the Jews off their hands at their expense.
Hitler was pleased when the conference was called: “We are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries… even on luxury ships.”
After Evian, Hitler had evidence of the world’s prejudice and collusion. The conference actually resulted in more stringent restrictions adopted by Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama issued a joint statement that they would accept no “traders or intellectuals.” Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Colombia, Uruguay, and Venezuela wanted no immigrants at all.
While negotiations at Evian proceeded, FDR left the Southwest for Mexico, and an adventure in the Galapagos Islands accompanied by a Smithsonian scientist and crew led by Dr. Waldo Schmitt. FDR wrote ER they collected “many fine specimens of marine and plant life and birds.” He thoroughly enjoyed the Galapagos—which remained as fascinating as they were to Charles Darwin. It was
a very successful week in the Galapagos from every aspect… it is all interesting and colorful—especially remembering that the tortoises, iguanas, etc., are the oldest living form of the animals of 15,000,000 years ago!…
Aboard ship, FDR read Winston Churchill’s prescient book While England Slept, a survey of Hitler’s rise to power from 1932 to 1938, which his Uncle Fred Delano had sent him in June. Although he wrote nothing of it, it could only have firmed his resolve to do something to prevent the war that so clearly loomed when he returned on 5 August.
While FDR cruised, ER planned for her one week away that August, a visit with Hick at her Little House on Long Island’s south shore. But she seemed to Hick oddly distracted, and perhaps had information about the conference at Evian that added to her discontent. She seemed so disgruntled before their visit that Hick worried.
ER replied:
Hick dearest, Your sweet letter just came and I am not unhappy. Life may be somewhat negative with me, but that is nothing new. I think it was when I was a child and is now a habit!… Yes. I’ll be with you till [5 August] whatever day I arrive! Any time you arrange for anything is alright with me—Much, much love.
Filled with anticipation over ER’s first long holiday at her country place, Hick wrote: “If you like it one-tenth as much as I do, I’ll be satisfied.”
ER visited from 26 July to 5 August. Alone, without Tommy, she typed her daily column, and found it a tedious bore. She wrote several letters in longhand on Hick’s stationery, and they contained a curious tone. On 2 August:
Dearest Elizabeth and Esther:
I’m here for a few days having promised Hick last winter I’d spend a few days with her during her vacation. She is a different person here because she is happy I imagine and I am glad to see her this way….
Since Esther and Elizabeth understood ER’s nuances, they asked her to explain her letter. Upon her return to Val-Kill, she
replied frankly:
You are quite right—I had a sense of real obligation to go down to Long Island but I am glad to say that I found Hick who has been very miserable both mentally and physically at times, quite happy and while I had promised this visit during her vacation six months ago, I did not want very much to leave when the time came….
I know just what you mean about gaiety departing from you. I am afraid it departs from us all as we grow older and encounter more and more of the difficulties of life, but if we keep even a few snatches of it, it is a great help to our friends as well as to ourselves. I feel that you and Lizzie have always had a kind of quiet gaiety which is more satisfactory than the very hilarious kind I sometimes have about me….
In Hick’s space, the full range of their different needs was revealed and gave ER a shock of recognition. She understood several things about herself after those ten days: She had very real preferences, likes and dislikes. And she abandoned certain fantasies—including the idea that she could ever be content to put her own interests, her own work on a back burner to accommodate the romance of a leisurely holiday.
ER realized how much she hated to be apart from Tommy; how much she resented time away from her own work, without staff and her usual conveniences. Although she gave Hick no hint that she was unhappy, nothing that gave Hick pleasure pleased ER at Mastic.
To Hick she wrote politely: “I miss you dear. I loved being with you…. I had a grand week tho I wish the mosquitoes had let us walk in the woods…. The chief thing however was my great pleasure in seeing you in the place where you are happy….”
ER apologized for spending so much time on her articles and columns. She would have all her materials arranged, and perfect her typing, so the “next time we are together I won’t take so long!… Much, much love and many thanks for a happy time.”
Eleanor Roosevelt Page 74
