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"I’m tired, oh,
so tired of the whole New Deal “Do you know that the next move will be a law like this one [Burke-Wadsworth] drafting women and young girls? Do you know that under this new law women and girls are to be used to make the most dangerous munitions? That some of them are to be ‘on duty with armed forces?’ Do you think that the morals of your daughters can be safeguarded under such conditions? You have only this one election to save the lives of your sons and daughters.” (Mothers of Pennsylvania; 1940 Campaign Literature; as quoted in Hugh A. Bone, “Smear” Politics: An Analysis of 1940 Campaign Literature). “Roosevelt has made inflammatory statements, he has meddled in foreign affairs. His acts in foreign affairs have been acts of war. Do you realize what war would mean to your sons? The Roosevelt family has nothing to worry about. Son Elliot Roosevelt, with no experience, has been made Captain. (He will do the buying of airplane parts). Son James Roosevelt is also a Captain. Roosevelt’s sons will remain in this country in the event of war. Where will your sons be sent?” (East Utica Club for Willkie; 1940 Campaign Literature; as quoted in Bone). “He had collected money from the wages of all working men for social security and then spent the money for other purposes. He placed the National Youth Administration under the control and direction of Aubrey Williams, who has been called the most dangerous man in the government because of his well-known assistance to and sympathy for the Communists in the United States. For bad judgement, consider Russia. One of the first acts of the New Deal was to extend diplomatic recognition to Russia. Meanwhile, Roosevelt threatened and taunted Hitler only to have Russia and Germany form an alliance.” (“You Will Decide if it is Time to Change Horses”; 1940 Campaign Literature; Printed under the guise of various organizations including the Anti-Third Term Committee (Los Angeles) and Citizens Information Committee (Iowa and New York); as quoted in Bone). “He is not Dutch, as you have been led to believe. His father was rich. His mother was also rich in her own right. He was pampered and petted. He was sort of a Little Lord Fauntleroy. When he first entered Groton—another private school—he was a pampered pet, tied to his mother’s apron strings—a mother’s darling. He was principally interested in boats and ships. He wanted to join the Navy. He was urged by his father to go to Harvard instead. Most of Mr. Roosevelt’s advisors, since he has become President, are instructors or graduates of Harvard who believe in Socialism to an extreme degree, and Communism also. They propose most of the socialist schemes which Mr. Roosevelt puts into effect.” (“Free Men, Liberty or Slaves”; Anonymous campaign literature, 1940; as quoted in Bone). "War by January November 5th
you will vote on war. “. . . Meantime the President’s ubiquitous wife, Eleanor, has been busy effecting alliances for her children with the most ‘royal’ of American economic royalist families. Besides, the whole Roosevelt family capitalized their position, their official connections with their notoriety to rake in the shekels for our own ‘royal family.’” (Christian American (Beaumont, Texas newspaper), 140, as quoted in Bone]. “We’re
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, “We love to spend
your hard earned cash "If we spent five
billions dollars “Then they must have
ten billions "The
silver-bloc-heads tore their hair “The King was
spending o’er the land, "So then he tried
the AAA "‘Taxpayers,’
said the Brain Trust boys " Brutus,
Arnold and Franklin D. "It
is I, cried Brutus, I betrayed my friend. "Not
bad, said Arnold, but listen awhile. "Up
jumped Franklin, haughty and sure, "I told them just
to feel at ease. I promised a land of
milk and honey Beware of Wall Street,
I dinned in their ears. "They believed in
me both husbands and wives "I
fooled these Yokels, both old and young; "Brutus
stood there filled with awe, Quotes compiled by Sushila Nayak. Thanks to Andy Plenge for his transcription help. Institute for Policy Studies Home Page
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Franklin
Delano Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt was elected to the presidency four times beating four Republican candidates, Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey. There was so much anger among Republicans about this feat that they successfully championed the twenty second amendment to the Constitution which limited to two the number of terms a president could serve. At the beginning of Roosevelt's first term, the leading Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, commented that Roosevelt had a first class temperament and a second class intelligence. However one cares to class him he was one of the two or three extraordinary presidents in the history of the United States and surely the leading American president since the civil war. To understand this statement it is important to remember the historical context in which he lived. When Roosevelt became president in March 1933, the United States was experiencing a terrifying economic depression in which the people seemed to have lost all hope. It was taken for granted that capitalism was a dead letter and that there was no way to protect its existence from its excesses if a democratic framework was to be retained. Fascism was riding high in Italy, the Nazis had come to power in Germany, and in the Soviet Union Stalin's version of communism was thought by many to be the wave of the future. Through a whirlwind of activity, some successful, others less so, Roosevelt's New Deal became the definition of how to save and run a modern democratic capitalist state. It would set the framework for last resort employment, agricultural subsidies, regulations over the stock market, and guarantees to bank deposits. It would build highways and public buildings, as well as aid everyone from artists to farmers. People were to be given a measure of dignity for their work. A few years later, in 1941, the United States was engaged in a world war. The second world war was thought by many to be one which Roosevelt maneuvered the nation into by favoring the British. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Germans declared war on the United States, the battle lines were clearly drawn and the shadow war and shadow boxing which did exist between the US, Japan, and Germany came to an end. By dint of the economic, military and political power the United States exercised, but also because of Roosevelt's visionary views and charisma, Roosevelt was recognized as the leader of the alliance which crushed the axis powers, even though Russians carried the brunt of the war. Like other presidents, for example Andrew Jackson and Jack Kennedy, Roosevelt had serious physical ailments. In his case, he had contracted infantile paralysis as a 39 year old adult which left him crippled from the waist down. The press did him the favor of almost never photographing him in a wheelchair. Except in one case, when he returned from a grueling trip from Yalta where he met with Stalin and Churchill, he always addressed Congress standing up. But in March of 1945 his spirit and amazing will power began to surrender to his body and he asked permission of Congress to sit as he presented his report on the character of the postwar settlements which had been reached with the allies. More than any other, Roosevelt had pressed for a United Nations Organization which he hoped would take the place of a world that had faced two devastating wars in less than a generation. The UN was to be an organization in which the most powerful nations in the world would work in concert for peaceful solutions for the good of humanity. The first three words of the UN Charter, "We the Peoples" of the world were of course patterned the first three words of the American constitution. So who was this aristocratic man that some called a squire and others called a communist and traitor to his class? He came from that part of the landed gentry which already had claimed a president in its family, Theodore Roosevelt, and formed a protective world for its children through tutors and private schools. In the case of FDR, an only child, the schools to attend were Groton and then Harvard, where a Christian uprightness and upper class noblesse oblige were engrained in the students. Roosevelt finished his law degree at Columbia University and practiced law for a short time in New York city but soon surrendered to the calling of politics. He was elected as a Democrat to the state senate of New York. During the first world war, he was chosen by Woodrow Wilson to be assistant secretary of the Navy. His views at the time were unexceptionable, favoring a large navy. He had an engaging disposition and flirted with social causes through his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin who had committed her life to the needs of the downtrodden. In 1920, Roosevelt ran as the Democratic vice presidential candidate with James Cox of Ohio. Roosevelt campaigned to generate popular commitment for the League of Nations. But the Cox campaign failed to light any fires. The national electorate was into normalcy and withdrawal from European affairs after the first world war and it was not about to support such ventures, even though the League had been an American initiative. Roosevelt was known as a moderate reformer within the Democratic party, and while he had first fought the bosses of New York politics in the New York legislature and then as governor, he also was respectful of their power and their organizational ability. In 1928, he supported Governor Al Smith as the Democratic party's candidate for the presidency. This was the first time that a Catholic candidate was nominated for the presidency from a major party. With Smith's defeat, Franklin Roosevelt ran for governor of New York and won a substantial victory. It was in this role that he tried various ideas regarding labor and social welfare which became the basis of the New Deal. Roosevelt had gathered around him an exceptional group of advisors who then served him when he was in the White House. These men were of a new breed. They were professors, lawyers, journalists and political experts who were concerned with the creation of a modern and strong national state. Yet they did not all sing from the same political hymnbook. Some favored a large central government, while others clung to the idea of a government which would resuscitate local communities. Some favored antitrust, others thought trust busting a waste of time. Some favored public planning, others thought it would never work in the United States. All were committed to experiments as a means of testing what was useful and what would "work". With the advent of the depression and the deep despair of the American people, these men, with Roosevelt their willing captain, were given the chance to bring together ideas and policies which had been set forth in various states among populists, progressives and socialists for over a generation. His administrative style from the outside seemed sloppy, but in fact it was one which allowed ideas and members of his government to be continuously tested. As his first act, Roosevelt attempted to stop the run on the banks by declaring a bank holiday. He then called for an emergency session of Congress and undertook a furious pace for his administration. In the first years of his administration, he remade the banking, agricultural relief and public works laws of the United States. Private citizens could no longer hoard gold and were to turn in their gold for paper currency. Labor unions were encouraged through section 7a of the National Recovery Act. Farmers got to refinance their farms through new mortgages and foreclosures to a great degree were halted. It was a period in which a pliant Congress feared for the nation and was prepared to follow executive leadership- where ever it might lead. And that leadership demanded the WPA, which opponents called a boondoggle, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, the precursor to VISTA and the Peace Corps in conception. It called for a Securities and Exchange commission to regulate Wall Street. Roosevelt often held back in the support of certain ideas with which he fundamentally agreed. For example, on social security, it was not until 1935 that he accepted the principle that there was a need for it--and then only as a result of considerable political pressure from the Townsend movement, which sought 200 dollars a month for all those qualified to be on social security. Roosevelt believed that in domestic affairs, timing was everything and while he might have favored different policies than those of the status quo, he assessed very carefully whether he wanted to be pushed or whether he was prepared to lead on any particular policy change. In his run for his second re-election, Roosevelt won 61% of the electorate, and all but two states in the electoral college. The claims of Alf Landon, the Governor of Kansas and the Republican presidential nominee, that Roosevelt was taking the nation into socialism either didn't bother the voters or the Republican claims were not believed. After the 1936 election, Roosevelt decided to take on the Supreme Court because it had declared as unconstitutional major pieces of New Deal social legislation. He attempted to do this in a clumsy manner by claiming that the Court's numbers should expand if its members reached retirement age but didn't retire. Roosevelt touched a raw nerve and he lost the war for the changing of the Court. However, he won the battle, for the Court began moving in a direction which reinforced Roosevelt's economic and social policies. Further, he was able to name a number of liberal justices -- such as Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Frank Murphy -- and judges which changed the character of the judiciary. His run for a third term as president shocked many in the Democratic party, for this was the first time that any president intended to be president for more than two terms. Roosevelt's argument was that there was much unfinished business, and that the peaceful revolution the New Deal had wrought would be taken away by the Republican nominee Wendell Willkie, "the barefoot boy from Wall Street." For a time, the programs which Roosevelt initiated worked and there was a significant upturn in the situation of Americans both in real terms and in their psychological condition. This sense of "uplift" was not easy to accomplish, for the average unemployment rate over the depression was over 14%, and for four years it was over 20%. As Roosevelt put it in his second inaugural, "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, illclad, illnourished." Sound arguments can be made for the view that the economic depression was finally ended by the second world war and only then. There was as well another aspect which, ironically, has come in for attention with regard to Roosevelt's economic policies. He ran on the idea of a balanced budget but soon enough surrendered that view in light of depressed conditions. His policies were given intellectual respectability by the great English economist John Maynard Keynes who argued that democratic governments must intervene in the economy and be prepared to unbalance budgets in order to avoid the valleys of depression. It was Hitler's war and the war in Asia which broke the back of the American depression and gave impetus to the idea of government intervention in the economy as a social goal. Full employment emerged on the home front with women playing an important role in the industrial part of the war effort. Over fifteen million men served under arms. And what was thought impossible, for example the production of 60,000 planes a year, became just another task which was successfully fulfilled. By the end of 1944 it was clear that the war would be won. Roosevelt and his advisors believed that it was necessary to ensure the domestic peace. They did so by calling for an Economic Bill of Rights, including rights to housing, employment and education. Roosevelt also pressed for a GI Bill, which granted veterans funds for housing, medical care and education. The GI Bill changed the character of American life, increasing skills, education and training for millions of veterans. It also allowed for their orderly return to the employment market over a five year period, thereby avoiding the likely reinstitution of depression conditions. This was a stunning accomplishment, for, by the end of the war, Roosevelt had lost touch with an increasingly conservative and recalcitrant Congress. Besides directing the course of the war and preparing the outlines of postwar domestic policy, Roosevelt also attempted to shape the peace through the development of the concept of mediation and collective security through the UN. This attempt at peace making broke down after Roosevelt's death and the advent of the cold war. Roosevelt also sought a Good Neighbor policy with Latin America. This was more than a change in rhetoric towards Latin America; Roosevelt worked to separate American policy from economic interests of particular corporations. The most striking example of this policy was in Mexico when the Cardenas government expropriated American corporate oil interests. Roosevelt did not run to their rescue. Roosevelt's political skills were thought to be legendary. In 1944, campaigning for his fourth term against Thomas Dewey, the Governor of New York, he gave a political speech which is a classic in campaign oratory. Speaking in his well-practiced and carefully modulated voice, Roosevelt said that it was all right for the Republicans to slur him, his children and his wife. But they had taken to slandering his dog Fala which, his dog being a Scottie, he would just not put up with. Well before the formal entrance of the United States into the second world war, Roosevelt initiated the Manhattan project, which began the nuclear age. The making of the atomic bomb was an entirely secret affair which was enormously costly in resources. There is considerable question as to how the project was paid for, whether Roosevelt acted illegally, and whether it had any but the most lightly assented agreement from a few congressional members. Whether Roosevelt would have ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the German surrender remains a question for debate among historians, but his decisions to construct the bomb left an indelible mark on humanity for its future-or non future. At the beginning of world war two, Roosevelt accepted the advice of those such as Walter Lippmann who said that Japanese-Americans should be interned in camps. Some 110 thousand people were transported from their homes in the Northwest and California into camps in a shameful episode in American history. While his wife was sympathetic to the plight of Jews in the Nazi concentration camps, virtually nothing was done directly by the Roosevelt administration to save them from this piece of the Nazi madness. The situation of Black Americans improved during the New Deal period, although Roosevelt found that it was necessary to keep the support of Southern Democratic party racists for his own coalition. He tried to fight them in congressional elections but did not fare well. Roosevelt signed an executive order to establish a Fair Employment Practices commission to ensure that Black workers might be hired through federal contracts. Roosevelt did not confront the segregation system in the armed forces or in the federal government, although his wife urged him to adopt policies which would lead to fundamental changes in race relations. He did support by executive order a form of affirmative action so that African Americans would have a chance at working on government contracts. The position of women improved during Roosevelt's term of office, with women finding themselves in positions of influence in his administration. Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a cabinet position, was Roosevelt's distinguished Secretary of Labor. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12,1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had established a center for rehabilitation that was used by children with polio. Roosevelt's marriage was one filled with mutual respect, companioniship and five children. However, Eleanor and Franklin may have looked elsewhere for that quality of love which overcomes personal loneliness. Roosevelt married Eleanor when he was 22 and she was 20. Eleanor was not what Roosevelt's mother had in mind for Franklin. The 20-year-old presented herself as a shy ugly ducking. But she had already lived through a great deal. For all practical purposes she was orphaned by the time she was 10 years old. Her father was an alcoholic younger brother of Theodore Roosevelt and her mother died when she was eight. She grew up with an instinctive identification with the wretched and the underprivileged. Under Eleanor Roosevelt's shyness there was a woman of enormous determination and toughness. These attributes were tested constantly in her life through the loss of a child and raising four boys and one girl, through a complex, respectful but estranged relationship with Franklin from the time she discovered in 1918 that he was having an affair with Lucy Mercer -- who was with him at the time of his death, through her successful battle against Roosevelt's mother who wanted the bed ridden Roosevelt to be an invalid roped-off from the political world, to nursing him back to functional health, and, most importantly, to become the ambassador to and from the vast world of people not part of the ordinary political process who took the flak which was aimed at FDR. She changed the meaning of First Lady to a combination calling and vocation. There was a fearless quality to this woman. According to one account, in Roosevelt's first term there was a second Bonus March which could have ended as badly as the march of the Veterans during Hoover's term. The army was not used against the veterans. Instead, Mrs. Roosevelt went by herself to speak and sing with the Bonus marchers. They left peacefully. Throughout the depression and war she traveled within the United States and elsewhere to find out conditions and report back, often to hector Roosevelt who must have seen Eleanor as another advisor or interest group that wanted something from him even as he sought respite. She herself must have felt exposed and lonely. A popular conservative columnist of the day, Westbrook Pegler, called her la boca grande. And while liberals, radicals and minorities held her in great esteem, conservatives could not abide this upper class woman who spoke in a shrill and high pitched voice. There is evidence that Eleanor turned to a leading woman journalist during the White House years for sexual love and companionship. After Franklin Roosevelt's death, Eleanor continued her public activity as a columnist. Her most important work as a US delegate to the United Nations where she became the champion of human rights and the Declaration of Human Rights. She remained a leading liberal voice in the Democratic party and was a strong supporter of Adlai Stevenson in his bid for the presidency. She was one of the founders of the liberal organization, Americans for Democratic Action. Eleanor Roosevelt died November 7,1962, a few days after the Cuban Missile crisis ended. She was buried in Hyde Park New York next to her husband. The connection of the Roosevelts to New York and New York politics extended virtually throughout their lives. Roosevelt began his political career as a state senator, from 1911-13. Like Teddy Roosevelt he left the state to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. After the failed vice presidential bid Roosevelt returned to New York and he became governor, having replaced Alfred Smith when Smith ran for president. Roosevelt's first vice president was John Nance Garner who served two terms. He had been Speaker of the House and was chosen to allay the fears of southerners and those who thought that the government might fall into turmoil if Roosevelt would become incapacitated as president. Garner complained that being vice president wasn't worth a barrel of spit. He was replaced by Henry Wallace who had been the Roosevelt's Secretary of Agriculture. Wallace represented the left of the Democratic party. He was a man of great intelligence and fervor who frightened the moderate and southern Democrats. Roosevelt allowed him to be replaced at the 1944 Democratic convention and through politicking by his own staff by Harry S Truman, a border state Democrat, although Justice William O. Douglas may have been his first choice to replace Wallace who did not sufficiently campaign to stay on the ticket. Roosevelt campaigned hard against Thomas E. Dewey, who made his pitch that there was noone who was an indispensable man. That was a difficult argument to make during a war. On the other hand, the Happy Warrior's time was running out. He won by only 53% of the vote although he received 432 electoral votes to Dewey's 99. And he died April 12,1945. Except in the crazed world of Hitler, who took Roosevelt's death as a sign that now the Nazis could win because the allied alliance would break apart, there was a moment of extraordinary grief in much of the world. Many have thought that the cold war would not have occurred, or the atomic bomb would not have been used or that the return to peacetime would have been smoother. But as Franklin Roosevelt used to say those are all "iffy" propositions. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's children had wide ranging careers. Anna Roosevelt was a journalist who probably understood Roosevelt's extreme loneliness for she made arrangements for Mercer to see her father over the objections of Eleanor Roosevelt. James Roosevelt served in Congress from California,1955-66, where he became one of the leaders of the Democratic Study Group and Liberal Project. Elliott Roosevelt wrote several interesting books about the cold war and his father's views on politics. He became the mayor of Miami Beach. Franklin Roosevelt Jr. served as undersecretary of Commerce under John F. Kennedy. He made an unsuccessful bid to be governor of New York. The Carmine De Sapio Democratic machine defeated his chances and Eleanor Roosevelt became De Sapio's nemesis and joined the reform movement against him. John Roosevelt stayed out of politics and entered business. He was a Republican. All the Roosevelt sons were officers in the second world war. The five children of the Roosevelts are now deceased. |
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