Leadership

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Roosevelt was busy in conferences on Wednesday night until past midnight. While the details of the bill had been agreed upon, one further task remained—a presidential message to be sent to Congress prior to the bill’s introduction. Rising at 7 a.m. Roosevelt began composing that message in longhand. As each page was completed, the New York Times reported, “it was copied on the typewriter and sent immediately to the executive office for stenciling.”

  “I cannot too strongly urge upon the Congress the clear necessity for immediate action,” Roosevelt began. “Our first task is to reopen all sound banks. This is an essential preliminary to subsequent legislation directed against speculation with the funds of depositors and other violations of positions of trust.” First things must be first. “In the short space of five days it is impossible for us to formulate completed measures to prevent the recurrence of the evils of the past.” But together they had set out, and soon, he pledged, he would propose action on a “rounded program of national restoration” that would “mark the beginning of a new relationship between the banks and the people.” For recovery without reform would only temporarily disguise, not remove, the original causes of the financial collapse.

  With thirty minutes to spare, the new administration met the first deadline. They delivered the prospective bill (or at least a single copy of it) before Congress gathered at noon on Thursday, March 9. “Here’s the bill,” Congressman Henry Steagall, chairman of the House Banking Committee, said, waving the single copy over his head. “Let’s pass it.” House leaders ruled that no amendments could be offered and that debate would be restricted to forty minutes. Republican minority leader Bertrand Snell urged his colleagues to give the president carte blanche: “The House is burning down and the President of the United States says this is the way to put out the fire.” With shouts of “Vote, Vote” rising from the floor, a voice vote was taken. Not one voice of dissent broke the silence.

  By the time the Senate commenced its own debate, the newly printed copies of the bill were fully circulated. The few amendments offered by progressives to strengthen national regulation of the banks were swiftly shouted down. The final tally was seventy-three ayes, seven nays, the latter mainly from agrarian progressives. Twenty-two minutes later, the bill was shuttled to the White House for Roosevelt’s signature. The signing ceremony took place in the Oval Room on the second floor that would become the president’s study, but was presently a disheveled space with half-unpacked boxes and paintings waiting to be hung. Prior to the signing, Eleanor prompted her husband to comb his hair for the camera. Their Scottish terrier barked, and a clerk handed Roosevelt a pen to sign the first bill of his presidency. Less than nine hours had passed since the special session of what would become the famous Hundred Day Congress had opened. Such congressional dispatch had no equal.

  The president expressed his gratitude to Congress for the passage of the bill, particularly citing “the unity that prevailed.” While the Democrats now had huge majorities in both houses, the Republicans had backed every step of the rapidly evolving process. Still, Roosevelt understood that nothing yet had been accomplished. The true test would come on Monday morning when the banks reopened. Then the American public would determine the fate of the financial system. Would they feel confident enough in the banks to redeposit their savings? If not, if they continued to further withdraw and hoard, the situation might well stampede into chaos. Roosevelt had three days left to present and solidify his case before the public. The time had come for the impresario who had coordinated a multilayered team to prepare the bill and plan for its implementation to step from behind the curtain and assume the leading role in persuading the American people.

  Set forth and maintain clear-cut ground rules with the press.

  As a first step in educating the public during those critical days, Roosevelt held two free-flowing press conferences that little resembled those held by earlier administrations. “I am told that what I am about to do will become impossible,” he told the 125 members of the press crammed in his office, “but I am going to try it.”

  The stakes of this experiment were high. Roosevelt’s secretary noted that he was “unusually nervous” before starting. “His hand was trembling and he was wet with perspiration.” Once the buzzer sounded and the members of the press filed into his office, however, there was no sign of the enormous pressure he was under. Amazingly, he looked “fresh and fit,” the New York Times reported.

  Former presidents had conducted irregular, often awkward meetings, relying upon previously submitted questions. Roosevelt proposed to discard written questions, hopeful for a semblance of give-and-take to establish an arena where actual interchange might occur, a stage for genuine improvisation and even whimsy—yet all within carefully prescribed ground rules. Direct quotations must be cleared with Press Secretary Steve Early. Background information could be used on the reporters’ own authority but not attributed to the White House. Off-the-record information must remain confidential, not even to be revealed to an editor or colleague, “because there is always the danger that, while you people may not violate the rule, somebody may forget.”

  Roosevelt envisioned regular biweekly press conferences as settings for mutual education, not confrontation. A former editor of the Harvard Crimson himself, he respected journalists and understood that they had jobs to do, just as he had his. They wanted access to ascertain what was happening. He wanted to disseminate his own narrative in his own way. The style of his press conferences reflected the style of the man. This was no forum for heated debate, confrontation, or any manner of aggression. There prevailed only the simple demand for a cordial, good-humored, and civil exchange.

  Roosevelt was well-acquainted with the novel ways in which his cousin Theodore had engaged and entertained the press. Every day at one o’clock, reporters were invited to the former president’s midday shave, the “barber’s hour,” when they were permitted to question, or more accurately, listen, as Theodore expounded upon any number of subjects while the barber desperately tried to ply his trade. Later in the day, reporters were welcomed back when the president began his daily task of sorting correspondence. A quarter of a century later, Franklin Roosevelt proposed to formalize these encounters through the invention of a new manner of press conference, one that would reconceive the relationship between press and president.

  If the ground rules were not respected, he half-jokingly threatened to revive the Ananias Club, an institution established by Theodore Roosevelt to which journalists who printed untruthful or fabricated items were banished from the proceedings. The name was chosen to commemorate a disciple of Jesus who was struck dead after lying to Peter the Apostle. In the nearly one thousand press conferences Franklin Roosevelt held after these first two, violations of the basic ground rules rarely occurred. “We were antagonists,” one journalist remarked, “but we liked each other and we laughed and we had a perfect understanding of what each was trying to do.”

  After setting out the rules, Roosevelt generated the first round of laughter by announcing, “Now as to news. I don’t think there is any!” The genial tone was sustained throughout the entire conference as he responded to questions “simply and unhurriedly as if he were sitting at a table talking to an old friend.” If he didn’t “know enough” to provide an answer, he would simply say so; but “Oh,” he exclaimed, “I am learning a lot about banking.” The Baltimore Sun reporter designated it “the most amazing performance of its kind the White House has ever seen.” Roosevelt relished the rough-and-tumble of the initial experiment, and when it concluded, the press corps, transformed into an appreciative audience, applauded.

  To compound the innovative nature of the new administration, Eleanor Roosevelt held her own first press conference at the same time that day. She made a rule that only female reporters could attend, which meant that all over the country conservative publishers had to hire their first female reporters. Indeed, because of Eleanor Roosevelt’s weekly press conferences, an entire gene
ration of female journalists got their start.

  The New York Times characterized this first week as “so swift-moving and momentous that it contained as many major events as have occurred in the entire administrations of some Presidents,” little knowing that the momentum gained had just begun.

  Tell the story simply, directly to the people.

  On the Sunday eve of the decisive Monday morning of the bank reopenings on March 13, Roosevelt delivered the first of what became known as his “fireside chats.” At various times throughout the previous week, he had sketched out and rehearsed the story of the banking crisis. At the initial gathering of the cabinet, he had outlined the banking dilemma in what seemed to Frances Perkins remarkably lucid and straightforward terms. Subsequently, the narrative was further pruned, revised, and simplified for the members of Congress and the assembled press. Now he was finally ready to go before the American people.

  Roosevelt had earlier perused the draft provided by the Treasury Department and tried to demystify the language of the legal and banking community. He sought to translate their specialized language into words of one syllable that could be better understood by himself and the average citizen—by “a mason at work on a new building,” he said, “a girl behind a counter, a farmer in his field.” At last, seated at a desk before six microphones and a small assemblage of family and colleagues, he imagined the American people listening in their parlors or kitchens. “My friends,” he opened, striking an immediate intimacy. As he spoke, Perkins recalled, “his face would smile and light up.” He was not merely “talking directly to the people of the nation,” observed Rosenman, but rather, “to each person in the nation.”

  “I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be,” he began. Abraham Lincoln had provided a similar roadmap of orientation when he set out to tell the story of how the “house divided” had come about and how the people could come together to reunify that house: “If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it.” So Roosevelt, like Lincoln, sought to communicate with and guide his audience by telling a story.

  “When you deposit money in a bank,” Roosevelt explained, “the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault.” It invests your money in bonds, loans, and mortgages “to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around.” In normal times, the cash on hand is sufficient to cover the needs of depositors. “What then, happened?” A number of banks had “used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans.” When the market crashed and these banks collapsed, confidence in the entire banking system was undermined. A general rush to withdraw took place—“a rush so great that the soundest banks could not get enough currency to meet the demand.” Now, backed by the new federal pledge to provide loans and additional currency if necessary, approved banks could safely begin to open their doors again. “I can assure you,” he reasoned, “that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.”

  He identified the very questions the people asked themselves and urgently needed answering. “A question you will ask is this: why are all the banks not to be reopened at the same time? The answer is simple.” The process of determining which banks could open immediately and which needed help would take time. “A bank that opens on one of the subsequent days,” he assured them, “is in exactly the same status as the bank that opens tomorrow.” He would not promise that no individual would be subject to losses, but if the country had “continued to drift,” far greater losses would have been suffered. Again, as in the inaugural, he asked the people for courage and faith. “Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to make it work.”

  The man and the moment had converged. Roosevelt had grasped the revolutionary opportunity radio presented, that “marvelous twentieth century invention which has all but annihilated time, distance, and space.” An estimated sixty million people listened to the president’s radio chat. His soft, relaxed, and modulated speaking voice was naturally attuned to the conversational style of the new radio age. This fireside chat was precisely that, an interchange rather than an oration. Most importantly, his voice projected empathy, confidence, and warmth that made one believe and trust in his words.

  As the White House nervously apprehended, however, the true test would be the people’s reaction when banks reopened. Early reports suggested long lines at teller windows, but “it was a run to make new deposits, not to take money out.” Headlines in city after city told the self-same story. “City Recovers Confidence,” the Chicago Tribune proclaimed. “Rush to Put Money Back Shows Restored Faith as Holiday Ends,” declared the New York Times. Many depositors cited the renewed confidence the president’s radio chat had given them. A bank president in San Antonio noted that the customers seemed to be “an entirely different list of people” than those who had scrambled to remove their money weeks before. “Their names and signatures are the same, but their frame of mind is as different as day and night.”

  With simple, plain language devoid of metaphors or eloquence, Roosevelt had accomplished his purpose of explanation and persuasion. The banking crisis that had gripped the country with fear and panic subsided. When trading resumed on Wednesday, the stock market registered a 15 percent jump, its largest rise in years. By the standard of its impact on events, this first fireside chat, one historian noted, ranks “as one of the most important speeches in U.S. history.” The patient had survived the acute crisis. Only now, to prevent relapse, could the doctor propose a regimen to treat the sources of that disease.

  Address systemic problems. Launch lasting reforms.

  Roosevelt had initially planned for Congress to adjourn after the emergency banking legislation had passed. He soon realized, however, that the momentum generated from the first victory should not be squandered. Accordingly, he asked congressional leaders to remain in continuous session, a request that would beget the historic turnaround that would become known as “the hundred days.”

  “The process of recovery,” Roosevelt understood from the start, would require the removal of “the destructive influences of the past,” the uprooting of “old abuses” so “they could not readily grow again.” Over and over he spoke of the condition the country faced as an organic disease, an affliction with multiple sites. What were these “old abuses,” these “destructive influences of the past,” these “sore spots” that hindered prospects for a lasting cure?

  To Roosevelt’s thinking, the essential obstacle lay in an industrial capitalism that had remained largely unregulated save for brief spates of progressive legislation under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Systemic problems had festered “for a whole generation” before the Great Depression exposed their catastrophic effects. The pathology Franklin Roosevelt diagnosed entailed the entire economic and social structure; it went to “the roots of our agriculture, our commerce, our industry.” It was his conviction that recovery demanded nothing less than “a complete reorganization and a measured control of the economic structure.” This could only be attained by supplanting the old pyramidal order of “special privilege” with a “new order of things designed to benefit the great mass of our farmers, workers and business men.”

  As Roosevelt had anticipated, no sooner was the banking crisis resolved than “a vocal minority began to cry out that reform should be placed on a shelf and not taken down until after recovery progressed.” That minority offered growing resistance to the far-flung activist plans contemplated by the New Deal. Those at the pyramid’s apex still believed that by saving the banks and bailing out corporations, prosperity would “trickle down” to the benefit of the people at large. They refused, Roosevelt said, “to realize that recovery and reform must be permanent partners in permanent well-being.” If recovery of the banks had been a decisive initiating battle, reform would be a widespread, protracted wa
r.

  Roosevelt decided to unveil his vision for systematic economic and social reform in a second fireside chat on May 7, 1933. So sweeping were the changes he intended to espouse that his speechwriter Moley called his attention to the fact that he was taking a giant step away from the laissez-faire philosophy that kept private enterprise free from government intrusion and considered all regulation anathema. “Roosevelt looked graver than he had been at any moment since the night before his inauguration,” Moley remembered. “And then, when he had been silent a few minutes, he said, ‘If that philosophy hadn’t proved to be bankrupt, Herbert Hoover would be sitting here right now.’ ”

  Roosevelt began his second radio conversation building upon his first fireside chat on the banking crisis eight weeks before. “In the same spirit and by the same means,” he would discuss general plans to remedy deeply implanted problems and to sketch the purpose behind the specific policies. Never should the American people try to revert to the old order. The emergent order Roosevelt had in mind was not the coercive imposition of government control but the concept of a partnership between government, farming, industry, and transportation. At the center of this new collaboration stood a revolutionary bond between the president and the great rank and file of the people as his partners in the government.

  Comfort did not reside in bombast: “We cannot ballyhoo ourselves back to prosperity,” he cautioned. The country’s descent could be reversed only by coordinated action. He asked Congress for a staggering array of governmental programs, which, taken together, would redefine the role of the federal government to regulate the economy and secure the lives of the American people from the bottom to the top. His purpose—to rebuild the social system “on sounder foundations and on sounder lines”—sprang from what Frances Perkins called “his general attitude that the people mattered.”