Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  193 “Mama to FDR”: ER to Hick, 7 Nov. 1933.

  193 ER’s checkbooks: Bess Furman, p. 196; ER bragged: 9 Nov. 1933; 12–13 Nov.; 22 Nov. 1933.

  194 “How lucky you are not a man”: ER to Hick, 23 Nov. 1933.

  194 “only I wished it was you”: ER to Hick, 25 Nov. 1933; “so you think they gossip”: ER to Hick, 27 Nov. 1933; ER confided: 29 Nov. 1933; “I’ll be back in obscurity again,” ER to Hick, 1 Dec. 1933.

  195 “I’m selfish enough”: ER to Hick, 3 Dec. 1933.

  195 Hick to ER from Minnesota, 6 Dec. 1933.

  196–97 ER’s ardent letters: “I’m going to think of nothing else,” 6 Dec. 1933; “Funny everything I do my thoughts fly to you, never are you out of them dear….” 7 Dec. 1933; “I can remember just how you look I shall want to look long and very lovingly at you.”

  197 Drinking and “felt as a child”: ER to Hick, 9 Dec. 1933.

  198 The ardor of their winter correspondence: “Gee what wouldnt I give … to hear your voice now.” “It is all the little things … the feel of your hair, your gestures …”

  199 ER to Hick, 27 Jan. 1934; cf. 24, 25, 28 Jan. “I would like to be with you all the time. I love you deeply, tenderly.” 29 Jan. 1934.

  199 “We must be careful”: ER to Hick, 16 Apr. 1934.

  199 dream to marry Earl: Hick to ER, 20 Apr. 1934.

  199 “Love is a queer thing”: ER to Hick, 4–5 Feb. 1934.

  200 “you can tell her how to snap out of it”: ER to Hick, 6 June 1934.

  200 “even disagreeable things come to an end!”: ER to Anna, 19 June 1934, in Asbell, p. 59.

  200 Cousin Susie “made a scene”: ER to Hick, 16 June 1934; “I could spank you”: ER to Hick, 25 June 1934.

  200 “Yes, dear,… happy with a man”: ER to Hick, 28 June 1934; cf. 29 June.

  201 “Things happen often enough,” “pick up where we left off,” “neither of us is going to be upset”: ER to Hick, 8, 9, 10 July 1934.

  201 Broadcasts picked up: ER to Hick, 19 Apr. 1934.

  201 ER criticized: Time, 4 June 1934, p. 33.

  202 After Chicago: ER to John Boettiger, in Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 197.

  202 Hick recorded the entire drama: Reluctant First Lady, pp. 157–61.

  204 At the Danas’: Hick, pp. 162–64; ER, TIR, p. 142; and Women’s Democratic News, Aug. 1934.

  204 ER did not respond to Clarence Pickett until 7 Aug. 1934. She thanked him for the Arthurdale information, suggested that Ickes visit in Sept., and noted: “I have had a grand time, a good rest, and have enjoyed the summer immensely.”

  205 Mono Lake: ER’s implication that nothing lived in Mono Lake, an inland sea twice the size of San Francisco, and her blithe comment about the lake’s future development, reveals a remarkable lack of information. Mono Lake was then and remains one of the greatest environmental controversies since the drowning and damming of the magnificent Hetch Hetchy Valley. The struggle to use not ruin nature’s great bounty in the high Sierra continues—as ER in other writings predicted it would. See esp. John Hart, Storm Over Mono: The Mono Lake Battle and the California Water Future (University of California Press, 1996); Mono Lake Committee P.O. Box 29, Lee Vining, CA 93541.

  205 Yosemite camp details: TIR; Reluctant First Lady; Shirley Sargent, Yosemite’s Famous Guests (Flying Spur Press, 1970), pp. 33–35; and interviews with Carl Sharsmith and Elizabeth Stone O’Neill.

  206 “Climbing mountains”: Reluctant First Lady, p. 166.

  206 According to Shirley Sargent, Chief Ranger Forrest Townsley died of a heart attack in the high country on 11 Aug. 1943.

  206 Peter Browning credits park naturalist Douglass Hubbard for naming Lake Roosevelt to commemorate ER’s July 1934 visit. Others had suggested “My Day Lake;” cf. Peter Browning’s Yosemite Place Names (Lafayette, Calif.: Great West Books, 1988), p. 121. Curiously, one scours the well kept Yosemite archives in vain for one single picture of Hick, although there is a reference to the presence of ER’s “secretary” in John Bingaman, Guardians of the Yosemite: A Story of the First Rangers (Desert Printers, 1961), p. 40.

  206 ER’s interest in the sites TR visited with John Muir: The boy so eager to kill birds and buffalo came to understand fully how endangered wildlife and wilderness had become, and sought as president to protect them. The battle between Muir’s concept of wilderness conservation and TR’s divided legacy of conservation and national lands for use (grazing rights, water power, forestry) intensified during FDR’s administration.

  207 Hick’s horse in the river: Reluctant First Lady, pp. 166–67; ER to Anna, “The Yosemite was grand. I loved it and the rangers are a grand bunch. Hick ended by having her horse….,” “She’s going to try to get herself in better condition for she suffered from the altitude.”

  207 Years later: 29 July 1935, box 56. TIR, p. 142.

  207–208 Ickes at dinner; and chipmunks: Reluctant First Lady, pp. 169–70. Ickes Diary, 31 July 1934, p. 177.

  209 FDR had written regularly: FDR to “Dearest Babs,” 5 July-12 July 1934, Letters, pp. 404–9.

  209–11 San Francisco and Oregon: Reluctant First Lady; corpse to mourn: TIR, p. 143.

  211 ER joined FDR: NYT, 5 Aug. 1934; itenerary, NTT 3 Aug. 1934, included several other dam-sites along the upper Mississippi; Ickes, pp. 183–84.

  212 Ickes considered the evening: Ickes, p. 184; cf. Kenneth Davis, p. 383; But ER worried: TIR, p. 144.

  212 ER’s correspondence resumed: ER to Hick, 3 Aug. 1934; Hick felt forlorn; Hick to ER, 10 Aug. 1934.

  212 Blackfoot tribe: NYT, 6 Aug. 1934; ER to Hick, 6 Aug. 1934; “What fools these mortals be”: TIR 144.

  212 On 18 June 1934, the Wheeler-Howard bill, to incorporate Indian communities, and achieve “Indian self-government,” the Indian Reorganization Act passed. Much amended, with endless compromises and trimmings, it was a flawed and limited first step. See esp. T. H. Watkins, pp. 361–62; 530–48; and Alison Bernstein, “A Mixed Record: The Political Enfranchisement of American Indian Women During the Indian New Deal,” Journal of the West (July 1984).

  12: Negotiating the Political Rapids

  214 “For heaven sake”: ER to Hick, 27 Aug. 1934.

  215 Gertrude Ely: Feminist, pacifist, social worker, musician, brilliant raconteur, a “personality with charisma,” Gertrude Sumner Ely was known for her hospitality on the Bryn Mawr campus—first in her family home, Wyndham Manor inherited from her father a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then in Wyndham Barn refurbished in 1940. Devoted to music and the arts, a member of the AFSC, Ely headed Pennsylvania’s women’s committee of the WPA after 1935, and joined ER on many projects. There is no biography of Gertrude Ely. A memorabilia collection is in the Bryn Mawr College Archives.

  215 I am grateful to Lorett Treese, Bryn Mawr archivist, for Ely articles; to anonymous of Fowler’s beach; and especially Rodney Hart Clurman, for information about Ely and her friendship with ER. Also, Margaret Edwards, “Gertrude Ely Owned This House,” from Bryn Mawr archives; “Maverick from the Main Line,” 3 Oct. 1965, obits, esp. Phila. Bulletin, 27 Oct. 1970.

  216 Their turbulent vacation: ER to Hick, 9, 11 Aug. 1934; Tiny “as good as Earl”: ER to Hick, 19 Aug.; ER to Bess Furman on bull’s-eye: Furman, Washington By-Line. ER’s pistol permit was renewed annually throughout her life; “your sweater”: ER to Hick, 17 Aug. 1934; ER sat unrecognized: ibid. “Yes, I am happy here”: ER to Hick, 13 Aug. 1934.

  217 ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 19 Aug. 1934; Morgenthau to ER, Elinor Morgenthau collection, FDRL.

  217 “Yes, dear,… can’t unlock”: ER to Hick, 21 Aug. 1934; cf. ER to Hick on Elinor Morgenthau’s upset, 19 Aug. 1934.

  218 “Made headlines, aground in a motorboat”: NYT, 16 Aug. 1934; F was amused: ER to Hick, 30 Aug. 1934; “you and Earl need me”: 31 Aug. 1934.

  218 At the 1934 Nuremberg rally, Hitler also addressed 2,000 women members of the Nazi Party to condemn women’s rights as a “‘product of Jewish intellectualisai.’” “‘The Nazi pro
gram for women has but one point: the child.’” See editorial, “Adolf Hitler,” 26 Sept. 1934, New Republic; see also William Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941.

  218 Europe’s social insurance: See esp. June Hopkins, The First and Final Task: Harry Hopkins and the Development of the American Welfare System, Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1997, pp. 273–75.

  219 ER was delighted to tell Hick that Hopkins “said today that your reports would be the best history of the depression in future years.” ER to Hick, 30–31 Aug. 1934.

  219 FDR in a “militant” mood: ER to Hick, 1, 2 Sept. 1934; At the party: Ken Davis, pp. 407–8; Tone of tenderness, “lie down beside you”: ER to Hick, 1 Sept. 1934; “papers don’t worry me”: ER to Hick, 2, 3 Sept.; Hick busy: Hick to ER, 5 Sept.; “I would die”: ER to Hick, 8 Sept. 1934.

  219 All the boats: ER to Hick, Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 203.

  220 FDR appointed Winant: see Bernard Bellush, He Walked Alone: A Biography of John Gilbert Winant (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), pp. 104–6; cf. Davis, pp. 409–13.

  221 Provincetown: ER to Hick, 14 Sept. 1934; at Cousin Maude’s: ER to Hick, 16 Sept.

  221 ER and Hick arranged reunion: ER to Hick, 21 Sept. 1934; but interrupted: ER to Hick, 2 Oct. 1934.

  222 “I like being in a campaign”: ER quoted in NYT, 12 Oct. 1934.

  222–23 ER’s long friendship, and speech: NYT, 16 Oct. 1934; Buffalo: NYT, 26 Oct. 1934; “I am acting as an individual”: NYT, 26 Oct.; To charges, “As a citizen”: John Henry Lambert to ER, 30 Oct. 1934; ER to JHL, 12 Nov. 1934/100.

  223 “We have short memories”: NYT, 27 Oct. 1934; Dorothy Frooks: NYT, 29 Oct. 1934; refused to debate: NYT, 1 Nov. 1934.

  223 “I am sorry you were hurt”: ER to Hick, 31 Oct. 1934.

  224 Frooks crashed: NYT, 2 Nov. 1934.

  224 “Damn the newspapers”: Hick to ER, 2 Nov.; velvet dresses: ER to Hick, 7 Nov. 1934.

  225 Eager to help O’Day staff a creative, politically alert congressional office, Hick suggested young FERA investigator Martha Gellhorn, whose journalistic and punchy style had impressed her, to serve as secretary to the new member of Congress.

  225 O’Day protested: NYT, 7 Nov. 1934.

  225 “Franklin wants to know”: ER to Greenway, nd, with 15 Nov., ibid; Green-way replied, 27 Nov. 1934, Tucson.

  226 In September White became optimistic when the Miami Daily News endorsed the antilynch legislation: “Isnt this great coming from Florida? If you deem wise, I wish you would show it to the President and warn him that he is going to hear a great deal more about the Costigan-Wagner bill between now and next spring.” White to ER 5 Oct. 34; ER to Pickett 5 Oct., 15 Oct., 11 Dec. 34; Pickett to ER, 25 Oct. 34, with housing enclosure by John Murchison to Pickett to ER, 70/628.

  226 ER on Villard to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, see Fisher to ER, 9 Apr. 1934; ER to Fisher, 13 Apr., 1934/ 100. Fisher agreed: “yes, of course you’re quite right about Mr. Villard!” DCF to ER, 23 Apr. 34/100, Box 1297; ER to DCF, 25 Ap 34; DCF to ER, 26 May 43; ER to DCF 13 June/100; Scheduled to speak at the Adult Education Association Convention, DCF stayed at the White House on 23 May.

  227–228 Dewson and fears of radicalism: Radical youth materials enclosed with Dewson to ER, 30 Nov. 1934 100, Box 1293.

  229–230 “Dearest, I don’t wish you were here”: ER to Hick, 10 Nov. 1934; “I behaved very badly…”: ER to Hick, 19 Nov. 1934; also 20 Nov.; ER to Anna, 19 Nov.; She credited Hick: 21 Nov. 1934. Hick received three letters from Warm Springs in one day, and she concluded: “God knows I’d love it if you came home, but—it’s only nine more days…. And sometime later, maybe, you and I might be able to go down there alone and have fun, as we did before. I’ll never go down there with the mob.” Hick to ER, 21, 22 Nov. 1934.

  231 “wouldn’t you, like every one else, spoil me”: ER to Hick, 23 Nov. 1934. Rexford G. Tugwell joined the party at Warm Springs on his return from a tour of Europe and at lunch ER was dismayed to hear that Tugwell and the others seemed “to accept the possibility that what may be needed to get us there is more wars, whereas I rebel at the thought!”

  231 At Mary Harriman Rumsey’s bedside were her daughter, Mary Averell Harriman Rumsey (21), her sons, Bronson Harriman Rumsey (17), student at St Paul’s, and Charles Cary Rumsey, Jr. (22 and recently married).

  232 A great personal loss in ER’s network: Isabella Greenway to Molly Dewson, 26 Dec. 1934, Tucson.

  232 As chair of NRA’s Consumer Advisory Board, Mary Harriman Rumsey vigorously opposed increased prices, which only passed the cost of industrial recovery on to the consumer. She organized consumer councils, fought for retail codes, and hired many of the New Deal’s most advanced and “aggressive” liberals, including: Robert Lynd, Frederic Howe, Paul H. Douglas, journalist Dexter Keezer, Gardner Jackson, and historian Caroline Ware. In 1933, with Vincent Astor and her brother Averell, she bought Today, which Ray Moley edited, and which became Newsweek in 1937. According to Raymod Moley: “The idea of a new magazine originated in the fertile mind of Mary Harriman Rumsey.” Moley, After Seven Years, pp. 278–81. For the drama of her bid to buy the Washington Post, see Ralph Martin, Cissy, pp. 328–30.

  232 See esp. Mary Harriman Rumsey, “Champion of the Consumer Speaks Out,” S. J. Woolf, New York Times Magazine, 6 Aug. 1933; NY Times “Mrs. Roosevelt at Rumsey Rites,” 20 Dec. 1934; NY Herald Tribune, 19 Dec. 1934; cf. Rudy Abramson, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, 1891–1986 (William Morrow, 1992), 253–259; BW Cook, ER, v. I; Persia Campbell [who N.Y. Governor Averell Harriman appointed first state consumer affairs adviser in 1959] MHR, Notable American Women, III, pp. 208–9; I am grateful to Marjory Potts of Vineyard Video Productions, for her correspondence, her interview with Averell Harriman, and her work on France Perkins and MHR.

  13: 1935

  233 FDR’s plans to achieve a proper security: NYT 22 May 1935.

  234 Lillian Wald to Jane Addams, 19 Dec. 1934; Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Jane Addams Papers Project.

  234 FDR wanted social security to be universal, simple, nondiscriminatory. FDR quoted by Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, pp. 282–83. For the complexities of Social Security’s labyrinthian history see esp. Davis, pp. 437–62; Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled (Free Press, 1994); Alice Kessler-Harris, Out To Work (Oxford University Press, 1982); and Alice Kessler-Harris, forthcoming book on Social Security; also AKH, “Designing Women and Old Fools: The Construction of the 1939 Social Security Amendments,” in Linda Kerber, et al, eds., U.S. History As Women’s History (University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Mimi Abramowitz, Regulating the Lives of Women (South End Press, 1996).

  FDR’s 4 Jan, 17 Jan. 1935 speeches quoted from John Gabriel Hunt, ed., The Essential FDR (Gramercy Books, 1995), pp. 82–93.

  235 ER to John Boettiger, and “Lovely Lady,” 4 Jan. 1935, in Asbell, pp. 68–69.

  236 In 1902, TR and World Court: Jane Addams, “The World Court,” in Allen F. Davis, ed., Jane Addams on Peace, War, and International Understanding (1976), pp. 188–94; Garland, cf. Howard N. Meyer, “A Global Look at Law and Order: The ‘World Court’ at the UN’s 50th,” Social Education (Nov/Dec. 1994), pp. 417–19; David Patterson, “The U.S. and the Origins of the World Court,” Political Science Quarterly (Summer 1976).

  236 December 1933, FDR to Lape, “politically speaking … it would be unwise to do anything about the World Court.” See Robert Dallek, FDR and American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 71.

  237 “On this hope we rest”: Lape to Helen Rogers Reid, 13, 16 Jan. 1934, Reid Papers, LC. Senator Roscoe Patterson told Lape: “no legislation will be considered during this session which does not meet with the approval of the President.” Patterson to Lape, 22 Feb. 1934, in ER box 1306.

  238 ER, “Because the War Idea Is Obsolete,” in Carrie Chapman Catt et al., Rose Young, ed., Why Wars Must Cease (Macmillan, 1935), pp. 21–29.

  239 “Private profit”: Identified wit
h the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, whose executive secretary Dorothy Detzer was most responsible for persuading Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota to investigate the Munitions Industry, ER agreed with the conclusions of the Nye Committee that industrial profits needed to be removed from the business of national defense. See Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (University of Minnesota Press, 1962), pp. 66–76.

  239 Throughout the two-week debate: See: “Up Senate, Down Court,” Time, 11 Feb. 1935, pp. 13–15; cf. esp. Gilbert Kahn, “Presidential Passivity on a Non-salient Issue: FDR and the 1935 World Court Fight,” Diplomatic History (Spring 1980), p. 137 ff. Privately, FDR to Joe Robinson, FDR Letters, pp. 449–50; Kenneth Davis, pp. 495–96.

  241 Lape was bitter: transcript, Lape interview with Joseph Lash, 17 Feb. 1970; 24 Feb. 1970; Lash Papers, FDRL. nevertheless defended her husband: ER to Mrs. Kendall Emerson, 12 Feb. 1935, 100, Box 1336.

  242 Unknown to ER: William Dodd to to A. Walton Moore for FDR, 24 Feb. 1935, FDR PSF; Dodd Collection.

  242 Ickes censured ER’s involvement: Ickes, pp. 284–85.

  242 A shocking aftermath: On tax threat, Lape to Nellie Bok, 22 Jan. 1964, Lape Papers, Box 2, FDRL; FDR’s hardball against Huey Long, a precedent: FDR had Henry Morgenthau initiate a tax investigation of Huey Long as one of his “first acts as treasury secretary” in January 1934. Leuchtenberg, The FDR Years (Columbia, 1995), pp. 93–94; Davis, pp. 493–95; Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (Knopf, 1982); and William Ivy Hair The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey Long (Louisiana State University Press, 1991).

  242 Health seemed the most urgent issue: Lape to Nellie Lee Bok, 22 Jan. 1964, Lape Papers, FDRL; ER “worked up some things” for FDR’s birthday: ER to Hick, 30 Jan. 1935.

  243 Claude Neal lynching: FDR, “I have forgotten,” quoted in Nancy Weiss, pp. 108–9. White to ER 24 Jan. 1935: your letter of 22 Jan. “has done a great deal to revive my somewhat flagging spirit” re bill; “I shall look forward eagerly to the letter” FDR said he will write.” White to ER, 24 Jan. 1935/100/Box 1362.