The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  Not only the needs of the day, not only Roosevelt’s intellectual make-up, but the American political tradition itself resisted systematic doctrines and unified philosophies. There was a real philosophy neither of the left nor of the right to compel the New Dealers of 1932 to examine first principles and shape an integrated and consistent program. The Socialists had made heavy compromises with ideas of reform and melioration, and even so were not a threat politically. A coherent body of conservative thought hardly existed, except to the extent business philosophers had shaped absolutist ideas of laissez faire to advance the interests of private enterprise. As for the progressive and liberal traditions, both T.R. and Woodrow Wilson had altered their programs in the face of stubborn economic and political facts. Everything conspired in 1932 to make Roosevelt a pragmatist, an opportunist, an experimenter.

  All in all, it was hardly surprising that observers in 1932 differed so much on Roosevelt’s capacities. To some he seemed, quite rightly, lacking in persistence, conviction, and intellectual depth and maturity. Others had seen a different side of the man. To them he had a grasp on Jefferson’s deeply humane ends and on Hamilton’s creative means; he had Bryan’s moral fervor without the Great Commoner’s mental flabbiness; he had Wilson’s idealism without his inflexibility; he had some of Bob La Follette’s and Al Smith’s hardheadedness without their hardness and bitterness; he had much of T.R.’s vigor and verve.

  Perhaps no one sized up Roosevelt at this time as trenchantly and truly as a picturesque old man was to do. Early the following year, shortly after entering the presidency, Roosevelt paid a visit in Washington to retired Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes, now ninety-two, remembered Roosevelt from the war years as a good fellow but with rather a soft edge. After the President had left his study the great jurist sat musing. A friend looked at him inquiringly.

  “You know,” Holmes said, “his Uncle Ted appointed me to the court.”

  “Yes, Mr. Justice?”

  The old man looked at the door through which Roosevelt had just left.

  “A second-class intellect.” The words flashed. “But a first-class temperament!”

  PART 3

  Rendezvous with Destiny

  NINE

  A Leader in the White House

  THE EVENING OF FEBRUARY 27, 1933, at Hyde Park was cloudy and cold. A stiff northwest wind swept across the dark waters of the Hudson and tossed the branches of the gaunt old trees around the Roosevelt home. Inside the warm living room a big, thick-shouldered man sat writing by the fire. From the ends of the room two of his ancestors looked down from their portraits: Isaac, who had revolted with his people against foreign rule during an earlier time of troubles, and James, merchant, squire, and gentleman of the old school.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pencil glided across the pages of yellow legal cap paper. “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 fire hissed and crackled; the large hand with its thick fingers moved rapidly across the paper. “The people of the United States want direct, vigorous action. They have made me the instrument, the temporary humble instrument”—he scratched out “humble”; it was no time for humility—“of their wishes.”

  Phrase after phrase followed in the President-elect’s bold, pointed, slanting hand. Slowly the yellow sheets piled up. By 1:30 in the morning the inauguration speech was done.

  But not quite done. During the next two days frightening reports continued to reach Hyde Park. Piece by piece, the nation’s credit structure was becoming paralyzed. Crisis was in the air—but it was a strange, numbing crisis, striking suddenly in a Western city and then in the South a thousand miles away. It was worse than an invading army; it was everywhere and nowhere, for it was in the minds of men. It was fear. But at Hyde Park the next President was serene, even cheerful. Between conferences with worried advisers he worked over his inaugural, adding phrases, shortening sentences, stepping up the pace.

  On March 1 the President-elect left Hyde Park for New York City, where he spent the night. The news in the morning was worse. Twelve more states had closed or constricted their banks. The crisis now was nearing Wall Street, the last citadel. That day authorities announced that several thousand New York relief workers would be dropped because funds were running low. Newark defaulted on its payroll. Led by police cars with shrieking sirens, followed by a car filled with baggage, Roosevelt was driven to his train for the capital. While the train passed through Pennsylvania and Maryland where the banks were closed, he talked calmly with his advisers.

  Washington was somber under a cold March rain. A crowd quietly waited while the train, glistening with its jewellike lights, backed into Union Station. Policemen in black raincoats bustled around the rear car; secret service men, hands in their overcoat pockets, searched through the faces in the crowd. Wearing a gray hat and dark overcoat, hardly visible in the gloom, Roosevelt walked slowly out on the back platform, his wife at his side. His sons James and John helped move him swiftly to a car. He sat back confidently, with a smile. Photographers closed in and aimed their cameras; the flaming flash bulbs blanketed the big figure and his smile in a blaze of light; they faded, and the car pulled away.

  Tension in Washington was mounting. The Federal Reserve Board reported that a quarter billion dollars’ worth of gold had poured out of the system in a week. It seemed likely that the New York banks would have to be closed. Word came to Roosevelt’s suite in the Mayflower from an exhausted, heartsick President: Would the President-elect join him in an emergency proclamation? After anxious conferences Roosevelt’s answer went back: The President was still free to act on his own.

  In his hotel room, Roosevelt worked over his speech. Nearby was a copy of Thoreau, with the words “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.”

  Only one formality remained before the inauguration—the President-elect’s traditional call on the outgoing Chief Executive. When Roosevelt arrived at the White House on March 3 he found that Hoover planned to use the meeting for a final plea for joint action to stop the bank panic. Sitting stiffly in their carefully spaced chairs, the two politicians sparred with each other. Roosevelt still refused to act. As he rose to go, the President-elect murmured that since the President was so busy, he—Roosevelt—would understand if the President did not return the call. Hoover looked him hard in the face: “Mr. Roosevelt, when you have been in Washington as long as I have been, you will learn that the President of the United States calls on nobody.”

  “A DAY OF CONSECRATION”

  Saturday, March 4, dawned cloudy and cheerless. Almost all the nation’s banks were closed. “We are at the end of our string,” Hoover cried. Roosevelt went to church, where old Endicott Peabody of Groton assisted with the services. President and President-elect motored to the Capitol, Roosevelt trying to make conversation, Hoover dully acknowledging the cheers of the crowds. As he waited impatiently in the Capitol Roosevelt scribbled an opening sentence for his speech: “This is a day of consecration.” Out before the Capitol rotunda, a vast crowd waited silently. Slowly, slowly, Roosevelt, coatless and hatless, moved out on the high white platform, between Grecian columns strung with ivy and bedecked with flags.

  Chin outthrust, face grave, Roosevelt repeated the oath of office after Chief Justice Hughes in a high, ringing voice. The cold wind riffled the pages of his speech as he turned to face the crowd. The words came clearly to the black acres of people in front of him and the millions at their radios throughout the nation:

  “This is a day of national consecration. 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. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive
and will prosper.”

  The great crowd waited in almost dead silence.

  “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. 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. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.…”

  The trouble, he said, lay in material, not spiritual, things. “Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.” This was mainly because rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods had failed and abdicated. “The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.” The task now was to apply social values nobler than mere monetary profit. But restoration called not for changes in ethics alone. “This nation asks for action, and action now.”

  The undemonstrative crowd stirred somewhat, to the words: “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” This could be done by “direct recruiting by the Government itself.” Resources must be better used, purchasing power raised, homes and farms protected from foreclosure, costs of all government reduced, relief activities unified, transportation and communication planned on a national basis. There must be “an end to speculation with other people’s money,” and provision for an adequate but sound currency.

  In foreign relations he would dedicate the nation to the policy of the “good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.…” But international economic relations, though vastly important, “are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy.” First things must come first. He would work to restore world trade, but the emergency at home could not wait.

  Roosevelt’s face was stern and set. “If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline.… We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer.…”

  Roosevelt’s voice struck a lower, grimmer note. Leadership and discipline were possible under the Constitution, he said, and he hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative power would be adequate to meet the task. But a temporary departure from normal might be necessary. He would “recommend the measures that a stricken Nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.” He would try to get speedy action on his measures or such other measures as Congress proposed.

  “But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. 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 people had asked for direct, vigorous action, for discipline and direction under leadership. “In the spirit of the gift I take it.” He closed with a plea for divine guidance.

  At the end Roosevelt waved to the crowd and suddenly smiled his great electrifying smile. Herbert Hoover shook hands and left. Roosevelt rode alone before dense crowds back to an immediate round of conferences.

  “It was very, very solemn, and a little terrifying,” Eleanor Roosevelt said afterward as she talked with 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.”

  “ACTION, AND ACTION NOW”

  It was like a war. While soldiers and sailors marched smartly in the long inaugural parade, while couples waltzed gaily in the inaugural balls, haggard men conferred hour after hour at their desks. In the huge marble buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue the lights burned late, dully illuminating the confetti and debris strewn along the street below. Democrats newly arrived in Washington and Republican holdovers sat side by side, telephoning anxious bankers, feeling the financial pulse of the nation, drawing up emergency orders. Early in the morning they would snatch a few hours’ sleep, then rush back to their posts. Outside, the reporters waited hour after hour, breathlessly interviewing comers and goers for tidbits of news. Washington was electric with rumor and hope.

  March 3, 1933, Jerry Doyle, Philadelphia Record

  In the White House—now a command post to handle economic crisis—sat the new President, unruffled and smiling. His own account of his busy first day and its crucial decisions he set down in his diary (which he kept two days and then abandoned). After attending church with his whole family and lunching with family and friends, he plunged into a round of meetings. “Two-thirty P.M. meeting in Oval Room with all members of Cabinet, Vice-President and Speaker Rainey, outlining banking situation. Unanimous approval for Special Session of Congress Thursday, March ninth. Proclamation for this prepared and sent. This was followed by conferences with Senator Glass, Hiram Johnson, Joe Robinson and Congressmen Steagall and Byrnes and Minority Leader Snell— all in accord. 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 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.… Hurried supper before Franklin, Jr., and John returned to school. Talked with Professor Warren in evening. Talked with representatives of four Press Associations explaining bank holiday Proclamation. Five minute radio address for American Legion at 11.30 p.m. Visit from Secretary of State. Bed.” Such was the breathless course of the President’s first day as he recorded it.

  The banking crisis dominated Roosevelt’s whole first week. The President and his advisers sensed that the key problem was one of public psychology. The people wanted action. The President had promised it. The curious fact was that the important actions had already been taken by the states and by the banks themselves: the banks had closed. Roosevelt played his role of crisis leader with such extraordinary skill that his action in keeping the banks closed in itself struck the country with the bracing effect of a March wind. His action was essentially defensive, negative, and conservative—but he made of it a call to action. He even deceived the reporters; the President himself complained to them in a press conference that in reporting his extension of the bank holiday they played up the extension rather than the exceptions he was going to make.

  Summoned by the new President, Congress convened in special session on Thursday, March 9. While freshman members were still looking for their seats, the two houses hastily organized and received a presidential message asking for legislation to control resumption of banking. The milling representatives could hardly wait to act. By unanimous consent Democratic leaders introduced an emergency banking act to confirm Roosevelt’s proclamation and to grant him new powers over banking and currency. Completed by the President and his advisers at two o’clock that morning, the bill was still in rough form. But even during the meager forty minutes allotted to the debate, shouts of “Vote! Vote!” echoed from the floor. “The house is burning down,” said Bertrand H. Snell, the Republican floor leader, “and the President of the United States says this is the way to put out the fire.” The House promptly passed the bill without a record vote; the Senate approved it a few hours later; the President signed it by nine o’clock.

  Swift and staccato action was needed, Woodin had said. The very next day—Ma
rch 10—the President sent Congress a surprise message on economy. It was couched in crisis tones. The federal government was on the road to bankruptcy, Roosevelt said. The deficit for the next fiscal year would exceed a billion dollars unless immediate action was taken. “Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.” He asked Congress for wide power to effect governmental economies, to trust him to use that power “in a spirit of justice to all.” The proposed bill bore the portentous title “To Maintain the Credit of the United States Government.”

  Caught by surprise, lobbyists of the American Legion and other veterans’ organizations wired their state and local bodies that veterans’ benefits were endangered. A deluge of telegrams hit Capitol Hill. Defying organized veterans was a stiff dose for Congress, which again and again during the past decade had passed veterans’ legislation over presidential vetoes. Revolt erupted among the House rank and file, and for a time the Democratic leaders lost control of the situation. A caucus of Democratic representatives almost agreed to an emasculating provision, and adjourned after heated wrangling. On the floor the leaders helped restore discipline through free use of the President’s name.

  “When the Congressional Record goes to President Roosevelt’s desk in the morning,” one leader warned, “he will look over the roll call we are about to take, and I warn you new Democrats to be careful where your names are found.” The barbed point touched off hisses and groans. Despite the parliamentary powers of the leaders, the bill passed the House only because sixty-nine Republicans crossed the aisle to back the President. Ninety Democrats, including seven party leaders, deserted their new chief in the White House on his second bill. More trouble was brewing in the Senate, as the telegrams from American Legion posts piled up.