Roosevelt (93 page)

Successive drafts of Roosevelt’s 1933 Inaugural speech are in FDRL and include a historical note by Roosevelt; Rosenman (B), pp. 81-99, describes
briefly the manner in which Roosevelt composed it. There is more than one version of the source of the “We have nothing to fear but fear” quotation; I have used Rosenman’s (B). He also explains (p. 91) the discrepancy between Roosevelt’s speech as delivered and the text in PPA. Description of Roosevelt’s move to Washington and his first days there before Inauguration, and description of Inauguration Day, are from the New York
Times
and the Washington, D. C, newspapers.

“A Day of Consecration.”
The Hoover remark is noted in slightly different language in both Tully (B) and Edward J. Flynn (B); both authors heard an angry Roosevelt report the incident shortly after he returned from the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt’s comment on the Inaugural crowd on page 165 is from the New York
Times,
March 5, 1933.

“Action and Action Now.”
Roosevelt’s two diary excerpts are in PLFDR, pp. 333-335. He made his remarks to the press about their bank holiday stories in PC No. 2, March 10, 1933. Woodin’s remark about “swift and staccato action” is quoted in Moley, p. 151. I have made wide use of Herring in describing the congressional handling of Roosevelt’s “Hundred Day” bills.
Time
magazine is useful for some of the atmosphere of the period. Roosevelt’s comment on the lack of constructiveness in his early measures is from PC No. 3, March 15, 1933. His comment on his farm bill is part of his editorial note in PPAFDR, p. 79 (he proposed his general farm bill on March 16, 1933, and his farm mortgage relief bill in specific detail on April 3; see also PPAFDR, p. 100).

“A Leadership of Frankness and Vigor.”
The Minutes of the Executive Council, July 11, 1933–November 13, 1934, The National Archives, provide a vivid, month-to-month picture of the early political and administrative problems of the New Deal. Roosevelt’s sheer opportunism and willingness to experiment are reflected in his actions, and in his press conferences, letters, and speeches; see PC No. 6, March 24, 1933, for his exchange with reporters on the subject of deflation. That Roosevelt was eager to reconcile spending with economy until a late date is indicated in his PPAFDR notes, especially pp. 51-52; see also PC No. 13, April 19, 1933, and PC No. 15, April 26, 1933; Roosevelt to Col. Edward M. House, May 12, 1933, PPF 222, FDRL. Roosevelt made a great point of his faithfulness to campaign and party pledges in PPAFDR,
Notes
following his messages. His views on teachers’ salaries are in his letter to Daniels, March 27, 1933, PLFDR, pp. 339-340. A valuable source of information on cabinet meetings, especially Ickes’ own participation (including his cat naps), is Ickes
¹
(B). The Herring quotation is from his article cited above. The Roosevelt press conference quotations are from PC No. 2, March 10, 1933, and PC No. 15, April 26, 1933, respectively. The quotation from the adulatory congressman is in OF 372, FDRL, letter dated April 8, 1933.

America First.
That the possibility of war with Japan came up at the second cabinet meeting is indicated in some detail in Farley
²
(B), p. 39; Ickes
¹
, p. 5, mentions only that relations with Japan were discussed. For the views of Roosevelt’s associates on the priority of domestic over international recovery, see Hull, Ickes, Sherwood, and Moley. Baruch’s letter is in PPF 88, FDRL, July 5, 1933, and Roosevelt’s comment on financiers was made in PC No. 27, June 7, 1933. See also Harold G. Moulton to Frederic
A. Delano, PPF 72, FDRL, June 21, 1933, a letter Delano sent on to Roosevelt. For full but diverse accounts of the London economic conference, see Moley, Hull, and Michelson, and the Baker papers, LC; a balanced treatment appears in Allan Nevins,
The New Deal and World Affairs
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). Charles A. Beard (B) presents a striking, if overdrawn, picture of Roosevelt’s isolationism in 1932-33, and makes some important bibliographical observations. Roosevelt’s remark on war debts is from PC No. 19, May 10, 1933. The exchange between the President and Norris is taken verbatim from an interview with Norris by Eric Goldman in his vivid and far-ranging history of recent American reformist thought and action,
Rendezvous with Destiny
(B), p. 339. My major source on the shaping of the NRA legislation is J. M. Burns, “Congress and the Formation of Economic Policies” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1947), which includes a study of the NRA measure based on material at FDRL and elsewhere and on interviews with some of the main participants. On Roosevelt’s timing see Frederic A. Delano to Howe, PPF 72, FDRL, April 7, 1933. The White letter to Ickes is in William Allen White file, PPF 1196, FDRL; Ickes showed this letter to Roosevelt.

The extent to which Roosevelt took the role of bipartisan leader during 1933 and 1934 has not been fully appreciated by scholars; what has been treated in some studies as an early “conservative period” of Roosevelt that in part simply expanded on Hoover’s policies can be better understood, I think, as a “middle way” incorporating main lines of action of previous administrations both Democratic and Republican, reflecting ideology and interests all across the long spectrum of Roosevelt’s bipartisan support, and exploiting, of course, the atmosphere of crisis and fear. The words quoted from Roosevelt’s Wisconsin speech of August 1934 came originally from a description of the New Deal by Representative (later Senator) Edward R. Burke of Nebraska; when Roosevelt saw this statement, he said, according to Moley (B), p. 290: “That’s the best definition I have yet seen of the New Deal.” Burke, significantly enough, later turned against the President. Friendly letters to Roosevelt from Howard, O’Neal, Du Pont,
et al.
, can be found in PPF, FDRL; see, for example, William Randolph Hearst file, PPF 62, FDRL; for Roosevelt’s attitudes toward businessmen and others, see Roosevelt to Adolph J. Sabath, Nov. 7, 1933, PPF 955, FDRL; Roosevelt to Col. House, May 7, 1934, PLFDR, pp. 400-401; Minutes of the Executive Council,
passim.

An Artist in Government.
For an admirable history of presidential relations with Congress see Wilfred E. Binkley,
President and Congress
(Knopf, 1947). Roosevelt’s comments on “must legislation” were voiced in PC No. 120, May 11, 1934. Garner’s comment on the turmoil in the House of Representatives is reported in Ickes
¹
(B), p. 162. I have used as my main source of systematic data on Roosevelt’s vetoes Marvin L. Ingram, “Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Exercise of the Veto Power” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1947). Lists in Roosevelt’s writing of his friends and those “not with me” can be found in the “longhand file,” FDRL. The comment on the
delay in giving patronage to congressmen is from Herring [chap. 8]; I suspect that Herring made up this remark. Rexford G. Tugwell tells of Roosevelt’s patronage deal with Senator Smith in Tugwell, “The Compromising Roosevelt,”
The Western Political Quarterly
, Vol. VI, No. 2, June 1953, pp. 320-341, one of several reminiscent and discerning articles by Tugwell about his former boss; the incident is substantiated in Ickes
¹
, p. 164, and the Robinson incident is from the same source, pp. 19-20. The material on Herring is from his article in
The American Political Science Review
[chap. 8]; the series of which this article is one comprises a trenchant and perceptive study of congressional sessions during the New Deal years, by such authorities as Lindsay Rogers, Herring, O. R. Altman, and others. Roosevelt’s shaming of an official over the telephone is from Richberg
¹
(B), p. 292; on Roosevelt’s tactics in dealing with the press, see Minutes of the Executive Council, December 11, 1934, and for a reaction of the press to Roosevelt’s dealings with reporters, see Raymond Clapper to McIntyre, March 18, 1933, OF 4434, FDRL. Roosevelt asked the Emergency Council as well as his Cabinet to establish friendly relations with Congress.

The Broker State at Work.
Miss Perkins tells of her effort to calm General Johnson in
The Roosevelt I Knew
(B), pp. 202-204, and Ickes quotes Roosevelt on Johnson rushing in with codes to sign, in his diary (B), Vol. I, p. 72. Most students of the NRA conclude that it did not markedly help recovery, and may have retarded it; I have relied mainly on Leverett S. Lyon,
et al.
,
The National Recovery Administration
(Washington, D. C: The Brookings Institution, 1935), an authoritative and critical study; C. F. Roos,
NRA Economic Planning
(Bloomington, Ind.: The Principia Press, 1937); Mitchell [chap. 7]; 73d Congress, 1
^st
Sess., Senate Finance Committee,
National Industrial Recovery, Hearings
on NRA extension (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1933), which is a mine of information and varied viewpoints. For memoirs of two NRA chiefs, see Hugh S. Johnson’s lively
The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1935), and Richberg
²
(B). The Roosevelt-Connery exchange is in PPF 1034, FDRL. On farm politics I have made extensive use of a highly informed work, William D. Aeschbacker, “Political Activities of Agricultural Organizations, 1929-1939” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nebraska, July 1948). Aeschbacker lists one Farmers Union participant in agricultural policymaking; actually this participant was a congressman friendly to the Farmers Union but not actually a representative of it, according to correspondence in PPF 471, FDRL. That Roosevelt recognized the existence of farm unrest in fall 1933 is clear from Ickes
¹
, p. 110, and PLFDR, p. 366. The Olson letter and Roosevelt’s reply are in PPF 4, FDRL. The President’s close observation of economic conditions is evident especially in his press conferences, notably PC Nos. 32, 42, 51, and 88. His consideration of the use of army kitchens is noted in Minutes of the Executive Council, Sept. 5, 1933; see also Eccles (B), p. 126. The quotation about the “broadest attempt” on page 195 is from Mitchell. My main sources on early relief and public works administration are Sherwood (B), and Ickes; the Hopkins Papers, FDRL; and Records of the Works Projects Administration and of its predecessors, The National Archives.

The Politics of Broker Leadership.
While I know of no systematic treatment of the problem of “broker leadership,” certain works relate directly to the problem: Pendleton Herring,
The Politics of Democracy
(Rinehart, 1940), which favors the ambiguous, non-doctrinaire quality of American politics; E. E. Schattschneider,
Party Government
(Farrar and Rinehart, 1942), an argument for more responsible parties; David B. Truman,
The Governmental Process
(Knopf, 1951), which shows both the theoretical implications and the practical ramifications of the problem; Herbert Agar,
The Price of Union
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), a luminous treatment of the general theme in American political history. For a brilliantly suggestive piece, see Max Lerner, “The Broker State,” in his
Ideas for the Ice Age
(Viking, 1941), pp. 376-381. Professor Jack Peltason and I have a chapter summing up the arguments for and against “broker rule,” as we call it, in
Government by the People
(Prentice-Hall, 1952), chap. 18. Peek’s remark on group domination is quoted in Goldman (B), p. 351. My main sources for the Pennsylvania political situation are Ickes
¹
and an exchange-between Roosevelt and Pinchot, PPF 289, FDRL. On California, I have used PPF 235 and OF 300 and 1165, FDRL; Robert E. Burke,
Olson’s New Deal for California
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), which includes a succinct account of the 1934 election; Creel (B); George Creel Papers, LC; and Upton Sinclair,
I Candidate for Governor and How I Got Licked
(Pasadena: privately published, 1935), a detailed and, of course, vivid account by the Democratic candidate. My sources for Sinclair’s Hyde Park conference are Sinclair’s volume just cited, and Sinclair to author, Jan. 25, 1956. Sinclair’s suspicion of some kind of Administration deal with Merriam is borne out in OF 300 (Box 16), FDRL. On Wisconsin see OF 300 (Wisconsin), FDRL; Ickes
¹
; Edward N. Doan,
The La Follettes and the Wisconsin Idea
(Rinehart, 1947). On Minnesota see OF 300 (Minnesota), FDRL; Roosevelt to Farley, no date, Longhand File, FDRL; George H. Mayer,
The Political Career of Floyd B. Olson
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1951), a spirited and sympathetic account. On New Mexico see PPF 1201 and 3851, FDRL; Ickes
¹
, pp. 217, 358-359. All press conference quotations in this section are from PC No. 133, June 27, 1934.

Rupture on the Right.
My source for the 1934 election returns is George Gallup,
The Political Almanac
(B. C. Forbes & Sons, 1952), a comprehensive compilation of national and state returns over recent decades. Howe’s worshipful words about Roosevelt are quoted in Stiles (B), p. 290, and Ickes’ comments in his diary, Vol. I, pp. 79, 127. The Stern file is PPF 1039, FDRL. Comments on Roosevelt’s press conferences are based mainly on a study of the transcripts in FDRL; see also Leo C. Rosten,
The Washington Correspondents
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937). Miss Perkins’ picture of Roosevelt’s way of speaking over the radio is from
The Roosevelt I Knew
, p. 72. Roosevelt described how he tried to visualize his audience in a letter to Helen Reynolds, October 30, 1933, PPF 234, FDRL. His curious correspondence with his critical classmate in Boston is in PPF 183, FDRL; see also PPF 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 51, and 363, FDRL, and PC Nos. 23, 69, 78, and 141 for other material on Roosevelt’s disenchantment with the right. Frederick Rudolph, “The American Liberty League, 1934-1940,”
American Historical Review
, Vol. LVI, No. 1, October 1950, pp. 19-33, brief,
illuminating review of the genesis, personalities, ideas and death of this organization. On the reaction of the right to the early New Deal see Goldman. The McIntyre memo to Roosevelt in regard to Roy Howard is in PPF 68, Oct. 6, 1934, FDRL.