The following week the Democrats descended upon Philadelphia, gleefully driving McCormick reapers up and down the streets to remind everyone of Hoover’s prediction that grass would grow there if Roosevelt moved into the White House. They were euphoric; except for the shadows cast by the Hughes Court, they had just about everything they had wanted four years earlier. Even the soldiers’ bonus had passed that spring; Roosevelt’s veto had been halfhearted and easily overridden. Being Democrats, they had to have at least one fight; Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith of South Carolina walked out when a Negro minister delivered a convention prayer. But even that fitted the coalition plan. In that year the black vote was still to be had for a prayer.
Roosevelt had passed the word; he was going to run against the Liberty League, not Landon. Accordingly, Alben Barkley’s keynote address brought the convention to its feet with his scorn for Wall Street’s anguish over the AAA: “My friends, their bitter tears are not shed for the little pigs. Their real grief comes from the fact of the slaughter of the fat hogs of Republican plunder which they had fed on the substance of the American people.” That was powerful political medicine, but the President himself was going to excoriate big business in his acceptance speech as the “enemy within the gates.”
His address was delivered at Franklin Field on June 27 before over a hundred thousand, who according to Marquis Childs “cheered wildly at each pause, as though the roar out of the warm, sticky night came from a single throat.” It was not a flawless performance. The President was awaiting his introduction, and Robert Trout was describing the scene to his CBS radio audience, when, to Trout’s horror, “the braces of his legs gave way and he fell. The pages of his manuscript were scattered. They were picked up by willing hands. He put the pages together as best he could in the few minutes before he was introduced. The manuscript was damp, crumpled, and spattered with mud.” Afterward Roosevelt said, “It was the most frightful five minutes of my life,” and, in a phrase which would have lost him the black vote in the 1970s, “I was the damnedest, maddest white man at that moment you ever saw.”
Once under way he was magnificent. That was the night he said, “Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference,” and the prophetic, “There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.” Afterward the vast crowd joined him in two choruses of “Auld Lang Syne” and then stood to give him a long, mighty ovation as he circled the stadium track in an open car, beaming up at them and waving his battered campaign fedora.
He planned to remain detached until five weeks before the election, when, his sense of timing told him, the electorate would be ready for him. In the meantime he would do his job and hope his rivals made mistakes. They obliged him. Before the end of the summer the Union Party was dissolving in its own excesses. Gerald L. K. Smith permitted himself to be quoted as saying of the electorate, “I’ll teach ’em to hate.” Father Coughlin declared, “I take the road of Fascism.” Coughlin was beginning to fear Smith, who said, “The blood memory of Huey Long is still hot in my eyes,” and, astonishingly, “Dr. Townsend and I stood under the historic arch at Valley Forge and vowed to take over the government.” Presently Dr. Townsend was in no position to take over anything; he was in a District of Columbia jail cell, sentenced for contempt after he had refused to testify at a congressional hearing. Roosevelt pardoned him, and then Smith was jailed for disturbing the peace and using obscene language in New Orleans.2
Had Governor Landon been a more forceful man, he might have salvaged something, if only his dignity. Unhappily he came across to the public as a colorless, bespectacled little man with a flat, raspy voice. He read his speeches badly, and they were bad speeches; opening his first campaign trip in Pennsylvania, he declared for the ages: “Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans.” Moreover, like all men who ran against FDR, he became increasingly maddened by the elusiveness of his opponent. He told amazed Baltimoreans that if the President remained in power, he would erect a guillotine and decapitate his critics. He tacitly accepted endorsement by Fritz Kuhn’s German-American Alliance (later Bund), let the Republican National Committee identify FDR as the candidate of the Jews, and insinuated that the President was a Communist.
It was in this campaign, the first to schedule nationwide broadcasts, that the concept of selling a presidential candidate was introduced. The GOP had set aside over a million dollars for radio, and Robert Choate of the Boston Herald wrote Landon that he felt “the handling of Republican publicity should be on the same basis as the handling of any other article that wants to be merchandised to the public.” On the networks, issues were shelved; the people were to be manipulated, not convinced. Frontpage Hearst editorials charged that the Democratic campaign was being masterminded by Moscow; the GOP national chairman, John D. M. Hamilton, cried that Roosevelt’s hands were stained with the blood of murdered Spanish priests; and such firms as Johnson & Johnson and Ingersoll Rand stuffed workmen’s pay envelopes with caveats that they would be fired if Landon didn’t win.
Beginning in October, other employers put in slips implying that social security contributions would come only from workers’ pay: “Effective January 1937 we are compelled by a Roosevelt ‘New Deal’ law to make a 1 percent deduction from your wages and turn it over to the government…. You might get your money back, but only if Congress decides to make the appropriation…. Decide before November 3—election day—whether or not you wish to take these chances.” This was part of the Republican game plan. Landon’s strategists actually expected a ground-swell of hostility against retirement pay for sixty-five-year-old workmen. On radio spots, actors hired by the Republican National Committee revealed in shocked tones that each man would be given a number—as though there were any other way to keep track of social security accounts—and perpetrated the hoax that people would be fingerprinted. On October 20 mammoth signs in factories put readers on notice: “You’re sentenced to a weekly tax reduction for all your working life. You’ll have to serve the sentence unless you help reverse it November 3.” Finally, Hamilton went on the air to disclose that every man and woman who worked for wages would be required to wear around his neck a steel dog tag (“like the one I’m now holding”) stamped with his social security number.
Until then Roosevelt had been campaigning in low key; his speeches, Marquis Childs wrote, were “more like the friendly sermons of a bishop come to make his quadrennial call.” But when the Republicans mounted their attack on social security, his proudest achievement, it lit a bonfire in him.
On the evening of October 31, 1936, before a capacity crowd in Madison Square Garden, the flame blazed high in one of his greatest fighting speeches. He identified his enemies: “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking… organized money.” The audience, on its feet throughout, waving cowbells and horns, howled its approval. In an edged voice he said, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.” The New York Times compared the applause to “roars which rose and fell like the sound of waves pounding in the surf.” The President said, “I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.” Now his voice rose: “I should like to have it said—” He had to pause, the ovation had begun; then, as the din abated slightly: “I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.” Like a mighty storm, the cheering rose and continued long after his departure.
***
A few blocks from the Garden, nine-year-old Daniel Patrick Moynihan chanted, “Roosevelt’s in the White House, waiting to be elected, Landon’s in the garbage, waiting to be collected.” The Republican candid
ate wouldn’t have agreed. He and Chairman Hamilton were confident. The Literary Digest, basing its straw vote on telephone listings and automobile registrations, predicted a large Republican victory—32 states with 370 electoral votes against 16 states with 161 votes for the President. A Harvard professor of statistics foresaw an electoral vote of 241 for Landon, 99 for Roosevelt, and 91 uncertain. Congressman Connery, cosponsor of the Wagner Act, had written Farley that “it looks like 60–40 in favor of Landon.” In September Arthur Krock had told readers of the New York Times that “the Republican party will poll a far larger popular and electoral vote than in 1932…. Roosevelt’s big majorities are over.” Later he called this a “conservative” estimate. The President himself thought in June that he would win in the electoral college 340 to 191; at the end of the campaign he revised this, giving himself 360 to 171. Farley told reporters that Roosevelt would carry every state but Maine and Vermont. Most political writers agreed with Frederick Lewis Allen: “Whoever believes a campaign manager’s prophecies?”
On the night of November 3 they discovered that a great many people who lacked telephones and automobiles knew the way to the nearest voting booth. Roosevelt had won the greatest victory in the history of American politics. His plurality was eleven million votes, which meant that since the 1932 election over five million Republicans had turned Democratic. Farley had been absolutely right; Landon had won only Maine and Vermont. The electoral vote was 523 to 8. Even Joseph Schechter of Brooklyn, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case which doomed the NRA, had voted for Roosevelt. So had the other fifteen members of his family. So, for that matter, had Huey Long’s father. Lemke had fewer than a million votes, and Father Coughlin announced that he was quitting radio. Later he changed his mind, but his influential days were over. The Literary Digest, similarly ill-starred, sold out to Time.
FDR, it seemed, could have almost any legislation he wanted, for more than 75 percent of both houses of Congress were now Democratic. The Republicans were reduced to tiny minorities—17 senators and 103 representatives. There was grave doubt that the GOP could survive. And Europe was more than ever aware of the new world statesman. Winston Churchill and the French Chamber of Deputies congratulated the President. “Henceforth,” wrote Paris-Soir, “democracy has its chief!” The chief himself was indulging in one of his favorite recreations, enjoying the cut and thrust of fencing with the White House press corps. “I knew I should have gone to Maine and Vermont,” he said quizzically, “but Jim wouldn’t let me.” He showed reporters his election eve electoral college guess. One of them asked why he had given himself only 360 votes. His eyes danced. He said, “Oh, just my well-known conservative tendencies.”
Portrait of an American
STOCKBROKER RICHARD WHITNEY
He was known as the patrician’s patrician, the White Knight, the hero of Wall Street. With his background he could afford to cut Franklin Roosevelt, which he did whenever possible.
He was descended from a family which landed at Salem in 1630; he had been captain of the Groton baseball team, had rowed varsity for Harvard, and made the Porcellian Club.
When he married, his father-in-law was an ex-president of the Union League Club. When he took a mistress, she was a rich, redheaded, foxhunting widow from Wilmington. When he opened his own brokerage firm in 1916, he became J. P. Morgan’s man on the floor—his brother George was a Morgan partner.
Richard Whitney was a big, strapping man, proud of his membership in the ruling class; he owned an elegant house at 115 East Seventy-third Street in Manhattan and a 495-acre New Jersey estate, where he stabled his eighteen thoroughbred horses, raised champion Ayrshire cattle, and reigned as Master of Fox Hounds for the Essex Hunt. His two daughters made magnificent debuts. His wife was an organizer of the Butlers’ Ball. The Whitneys contributed to all the proper charities. They were Society.
On Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, at 1:30 P.M., the first big day of the Crash, Richard Whitney kept his head while all about him were losing theirs. As the representative of a bankers’ pool, he waded through the chaos on the floor, reached Post No. 2 and offered to buy 10,000 of U.S. Steel at $205. Although his quieting of the panic was only temporary, it made him a national figure.
Post No. 2 was permanently retired and placed on display in the lobby of Richard Whitney & Company.
For five years he was president of the New York Stock Exchange.
In Philadelphia he delivered a widely quoted speech before the Chamber of Commerce on “Business Honesty.”
On Capitol Hill he was called “the most arrogant, supercilious witness in the history of congressional hearings.” Jovially he agreed.
But the White Knight had problems with, of all things, money. The presidency of the stock exchange was unaccompanied by salary—it was considered honor enough in itself—and M.F.H. Whitney had expensive tastes. Between giving balls, serving on boards, supporting Republican candidates, breeding horses and cattle, chasing foxes, and fornicating with the well-born Mrs. Margery Pyle Montgomery in Delaware, he couldn’t make both ends meet.
When Repeal came, he enviously watched Joseph P. Kennedy multiply his already considerable fortune by winning the right to import Haig & Haig and Gordon’s gin. Kennedy was an upstart and a New Dealer. Whitney was sure he could do better. The coming drink, he believed, was applejack, and during Prohibition distilleries near his country estate had turned out a highly profitable brand called Jersey Lightning. Whitney took over, organized the Distilled Liquors Corporation, and issued 148,750 shares of stock on the Curb Exchange. The price shot up to over $45 a share and Whitney was elated; Distilled Liquors was going to drive Joe Kennedy’s Somerset Importers up against the wall.
Suddenly—almost overnight—it was Richard Whitney who was at the wall. Nobody was buying Jersey Lightning. To recoup, he bought 106,000 gallons of Canadian rye, paying for it with Distilled Liquors stock and warrants. The rye didn’t move either. Distilled Liquors dropped to $13 a share, and the Canadians demanded more collateral.
He mortgaged his estate for $300,000 and desperately plunged into get-rich-quick schemes: a patented air-pressure bearing, a process for spraying metal to repair rust. They were even more unpopular than Jersey Lightning, and after borrowing from everyone in sight he began to steal.
As one of the most trusted men in New York, with Morgan power behind him and a gilt-edged office address of his own at 15 Broad Street, he was in a position to steal quite a lot. His first theft was $150,200 in bonds belonging to the New York Yacht Club, which had been put in his care for safekeeping. This was criminal embezzlement, but no one knew of it; indeed, New York University conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Commercial Science (“Your career in the world of finance has now become of nationwide significance”). And of course he intended to pay everything, once Distilled Liquors stock went up.
It went down. Trying to peg it at $9 a share, he borrowed from everyone he knew—and all his friends were millionaires. It wasn’t enough, so he filched bonds belonging to Harvard, St. Paul’s School, and his wife’s and then his sister-in-law’s trust funds. In a stroke of luck, he was named a trustee of the Stock Exchange Gratuity Fund, set up for the widows and families of deceased brokers. He rifled it for $667,000.
Then, at a routine meeting of the Gratuity Fund trustees—which Whitney was too busy to attend—a clerk blurted out that over a half-million dollars was missing, that Whitney had taken it and hadn’t put any back. At the same time William O. Douglas, representing federal regulation, threatened to audit the books of all brokers. The exchange decided to beat him to it. Accountants looked at the books of Richard Whitney & Company and recoiled.
By now Jersey Lightning was a national joke. Whitney had bought up every share of Distilled Liquors to come on the market, 139,400 of them, now down to $3.50 a share. Over the past four months he had borrowed $27,361,500, five million of it with no collateral, and a million taken in outright theft.
J. P. Morgan, Thomas W. Lamont, an
d George Whitney were told but kept quiet. They considered it the gentlemanly thing to do.
Confronted by Charles R. Gay, Whitney’s successor as president of the stock exchange, the tarnished White Knight asked that the charges be dropped. “After all, I’m Richard Whitney,” he said. “I mean the stock exchange to millions of people.”
It was a point. All the haters of Wall Street would gloat. The New Dealers would celebrate. That grinning traitor-to-his-class in the White House would be triumphant.
Gay thought it over. Then he rang the exchange gong, announced that Richard Whitney & Company had been suspended for insolvency, and pressed charges.
New York County District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey drew up the indictment.
At the St. Elizabeth Street police station, awed Bowery derelicts stood aside while he was booked for grand larceny. The lieutenant at the desk said, “Mr. Whitney, I’m sorry to see you in all this trouble, and I wish you luck.” The prisoner thanked him icily.
Whitney was released on bail, but at the trial he was sentenced to five to ten years in Sing Sing. His butler bowed double when he left his town house to serve time. A crowd of five thousand gathered at the train station to see him off, and all that day limousines drew up at his town house, delivering flowers to Mrs. Whitney. She remained true to him.
Harvard announced with regret his resignation from the Board of Overseers’ Visiting Committee to the Department of Economics.
At Sing Sing other convicts took off their caps when he approached them, and in prison yard baseball games they always let him get a hit. People respected an important man in those days.
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 22