American Experiment (290 page)

The government was paralyzed as the nation’s financial structure seemed close to toppling. Ashen-faced bankers, sitting late in their offices totaling withdrawals, wondered whether their banks would pull through. On March 3 over $100 million in gold was withdrawn from the Treasury. Governor Herbert Lehman declared a banking holiday in New York. Illinois followed. As the Hoovers’ bags were being packed in the White House, the fear that had been sweeping through the nation turned into panic.

A poem by Robert Sherwood appeared in the
Saturday Review of Literature:

Plodding feet

Tramp—tramp

The Grand Old Army’s

Breaking Camp.

Blare of bugles

Din—din

The New Deal is moving in.…

But where’s the army of the unemployed?

One would think they’d be overjoyed

To join this pageant of renown—

These festive rites.…

Washington, D.C., March 4, 1933.
Perched on the icy branches of the gaunt trees overlooking the Capitol’s east front, they waited for the ceremony to which they had no tickets: an old man in ancient, patched-up green tweeds; a pretty young redhead in a skimpy coat; an older woman in rags, her face lined with worry and pain; a college boy whose father was jobless. They watched the crowd below as rumors drifted through that Roosevelt had been shot, that the whole area was covered by army machine guns. The older woman prayed on her tree limb: “No more trouble, please, God. No more trouble.”

They watched as dignitaries straggled down the Capitol steps: Herbert Hoover, morose and stony-faced; Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, his white beard fluttering a bit in the cold wind; Vice President Garner, shivering without an overcoat; finally Franklin D. Roosevelt, moving down the steps with agonizing slowness on the arm of his son James. They watched as the new President took the oath of office, his hand lying on the 300-year-old Roosevelt family Bible, open at Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians: “though I have faith …and have not charity, I am nothing.” And they watched as, still unsmiling, he gripped the rostrum firmly and looked out at the crowd.

“I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels.” The cold wind riffled the pages of his text.

“This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” The President’s words rang out across the plaza. “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

The great crowd stood in almost dead silence. Chin outthrust, face grave, Roosevelt went on: “In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

The crowd began to respond as it caught the cadence of the phrases: “The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.…

“This Nation asks for action, and action now. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” The throng stirred to these words. The President
gave the core of what would become the first New Deal programs. He touched on foreign policy only vaguely and briefly.

“In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.…”

He hoped that the Constitution, with its normal balance of presidential and congressional power, would be adequate to the crisis. But if Congress did not respond to his proposals or act on its own, and if the national emergency continued, “I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” The American people wanted direct, vigorous action.

“They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes.…”

As Roosevelt ended, he was still grim; but his face lighted up when the crowd seemed to come to life. The old man in the tree had broken into tears. “It was very, very solemn, and a little terrifying,” Eleanor Roosevelt said later to reporters in the White House. “The crowds were so tremendous, and you felt that they would do anything—if only someone would tell them what to do.”

Someone would. The new President had no sooner reviewed the inaugural parade and hosted a White House reception for a thousand guests than he swore in his cabinet en masse upstairs in the Oval Room. Washington had come alive with rumor and hope. Even while couples waltzed gaily at the inaugural balls, haggard men conferred hour after hour in the huge marble buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue. Republican holdovers and Democrats newly arrived in Washington sat side by side, telephoning anxious bankers, drawing up emergency orders, all the while feeling the financial pulse of the nation and world.

With the nation’s finances paralyzed the new President gathered his lieutenants together for rapid action, but at his first cabinet meeting the day after the inaugural the group hardly looked like a team. After long and careful clearances with congressional and other leaders, Roosevelt had pieced together a kind of ministry of all the talents—or at least of all tastes and tendencies. Around him sat four old Wilson Jeffersonians, most notably Cordell Hull; two midwestern progressives and nominal Republicans, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes; and three New Yorkers, Jim Farley, the party and campaign expert, Frances Perkins, the first woman cabinet member ever appointed, and a real Republican, the new Treasury Secretary, William Woodin. Conspicuous
by their absence was the party old guard; Roosevelt had not asked any of the three living Democratic presidential nominees to serve—not even his old running mate, James Cox—or any key member of the Wilson Administration save Carter Glass, who had declined the Treasury.

Later in the day Roosevelt conferred with a set of congressional leaders equally diverse in party and ideology. In a diary that he kept for two days and then gave up, Roosevelt gave the best account of the early meetings: “Conferences with Senator Glass, Hiram Johnson, Joe Robinson and Congressmen Steagall and Byrnes and Minority Leader Snell.” All approved the President’s calling a special session of Congress. “Secretary Woodin reported bankers’ representatives much at sea as to what to do. Concluded that forty-eight different methods of handling banking situation impossible. Attorney General Cummings reported favorably on power to act under 1917 law, giving the President power to license, regulate, etc., export, hoarding, earmarking of gold or currency. Based on this opinion and on emergency decided on Proclamation declaring banking holiday.” Then supper with Franklin Jr. and John before they returned to school, a talk with several reporters, a five-minute radio address for the American Legion, a late visit from Hull, and “Bed.”

The next morning this leader, so ready for action, had an unnerving experience. Wheeled over by his valet to his office in the West Wing, he was left there alone in a big empty room. “There was nothing to be seen and nothing to be heard,” as Tugwell was later to relate Roosevelt’s account. “And for a few dreadful moments he hadn’t a thought. He knew that the stimulus of human contact would break the spell; but where was everybody?” He felt physically helpless, paralyzed—but much worse, he wondered whether the national paralysis had struck to the center. “There must be buttons to push, but he couldn’t see them. He pulled out a drawer or two; they had been cleaned out.”

So he sat back in his chair and simply shouted. That shout brought his aides running. And with that shout there began what would go down in history as the “Hundred Days.”

March 5
—The President declared that an “extraordinary occasion” required Congress to convene on March 9.

March 6
—The President proclaimed a bank holiday. This was an act of psychological leadership. The banks already
were
closed, by their own action or that of the states. Roosevelt played his role of crisis leader with such skill that his action in
keeping
the banks closed struck people with bracing effect. The far more daunting problem was reopening the banks in a way that would help them stay open, and here, in Frank Freidel’s judgment, he had no clear idea. He relied on his own brain trusters, but
even more on bankers and holdovers from the Hoover Administration— men who were cautious and conservative. The money-changers, chortled the left-wing press, were back in the temple.

March 10
—The President asked Congress for authority to make “drastic economies” in government. “Too often in recent history,” he said, “liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.” National recovery depended on frugality. The address was straight out of the Chamber of Commerce—and Roosevelt’s Pittsburgh campaign promises. Caught by surprise, lobbyists for veterans’ groups wired their state and local bodies that benefits were in danger. The Democratic leadership in the House put down a revolt among the rank and file.

March 13
—Beer! The President urged on Congress the legalization of the manufacture and sale of beer and light wines—the first step toward the repeal of the Volstead Act.

March 16
—The President asked for a “new means to rescue agriculture”—an Agricultural Adjustment Act to hike farmers’ buying power, slacken the pressure of farm mortgages, and raise the value of farm loans made by banks. It was none too soon. Angry farmers took matters into their own hands even as the bill was debated. Mobs of Iowans stopped eviction sales, manhandled bank agents and special deputies, fought with National Guard troops. In one town a “foreclosing judge” was dragged from his bench by masked men, mauled, half-strangled by a hangman’s noose, forced to his knees, told to pray. When he entreated, “Oh Lord, I pray thee, do justice to all men,” but still would not promise to drop the foreclosure proceeding, he was left half naked, smeared with dirt and grease.

March 21
—The President proposed a bill close to his own heart—a Civilian Conservation Corps that would put tens of thousands of jobless young men to work in the nation’s woodlands to protect the forests, fight floods and soil erosion—and in the process regenerate themselves and their skills. Like all big projects, he had told reporters earlier, “It is in a sense experimental, therefore we do not want to launch it on too big a scale until we know how practical it is.” Congress legislated the plan before the end of the month. In the same message the President asked for a big program of federal emergency relief to feed and clothe millions of destitute Americans; Congress gave him this bill within two months.

March 29
—The President urged on Congress the federal supervision of investment securities, because of the “obligation upon us to insist that every issue of new securities to be sold in interstate commerce shall be accompanied by full publicity and information.” To the old doctrine of caveat emptor, he said, must be added the further doctrine: “Let the seller
also beware.” Roosevelt had no completed bill to offer—only the services of advisers who were already battling among themselves over the bill and were soon negotiating a tangle of policy concepts and specifics with members of Congress and their staffs. There was strong support on the Hill, however, especially on the part of Sam Rayburn of Texas and other old Wilsonians, and Congress passed in May a bill levying heavy penalties for failing to file full and honest information with the government.

April 5
—By executive order the President prohibited “the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates” and directed all holders of gold to turn it over to a bank, in order to strengthen the nation’s financial structure and “to give the Government that element of freedom of action” necessary as the “very basis of its monetary goal and objective.”

April 10
—The President “suggested” to Congress a project as close to his heart as the CCC, and for the same reason—it would nurture both people and the environment. This was for a Tennessee Valley Authority charged with the duty of planning for the “proper use, conservation and development of the natural resources of the Tennessee River drainage basin and its adjoining territory.” In his broad vision the President saw the enterprise as transcending mere power development and encompassing flood control, soil conservation, reforestation, retirement of marginal lands, industrial distribution and diversification—“national planning for a complete river watershed.” No one more eagerly welcomed this bill on Capitol Hill than George Norris, who with liberal allies in both parties had for more than a decade fought efforts to sell the government-built Muscle Shoals dam and power plant, which would now become part of a vast program of public development, ownership, and control.

During the interregnum the President-elect had led Norris and other congressional leaders on a tour of the valley. Pulling up at the dam at Muscle Shoals, Roosevelt watched the surging waters pour through the spillway—and go to waste. He had publicly promised that now these waters would be harnessed. He called Norris up from the car behind him. “This ought to be a happy day for you, George.” It was, said Norris; “I can see my dreams coming true.” He added half aloud as he walked back to his car: “Thank God for a President who can dream dreams!” With Norris looking on exultantly, Roosevelt signed the TVA bill in mid-May.

April 13
—As foreclosures rose to a thousand a day, the President asked for legislation to protect home ownership as a guarantee of economic and social stability. The government would refinance mortgages of small owners, some of whom had lost their homes as far back as 1930. Congress passed this measure with enthusiasm.

May 4
—The President urged emergency railroad legislation that would
establish a coordinator of transportation to help or compel carriers to avoid duplication of service and waste and encourage financial reorganizations. Both houses passed bills within a month of Roosevelt’s request.