The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  Guerilla Warfare. The fullest, most authoritative source for the court fight is E. Kimbark MacColl, “The Supreme Court and Public Opinion” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1953), although Ickes’ diaries were not yet available in its writing. Another dissertation, James Johnston Anderson, “The President’s Supreme Court Proposal—A Study in Presidential Leadership and Public Opinion” (Cornell University, 1940), is useful especially for historical background on the struggle between President and court. Norris’s position in the fight is well covered in Lief [chap. 14]; see also Norris Papers, LC. Material on Roosevelt’s views and activities is dispersed throughout a variety of PPF files, FDRL; the probable first draft of the President’s court reform message is in PPF 1820, 1937, FDRL. On Republican restraint, see, aside from the biographical works cited above, McNary Papers, LC. The link that was established between the court fight and relief and labor policies is reflected in Ickes2, p. 102; Timmons (B), p. 219; and Garner to Roosevelt, June 20, 1937, PPF 1416, FDRL. The White quotation is from Lief, p. 501, and the Borah plea to Gannett from a letter of the Senator, Borah Papers, LC, which MacColl consulted. Michelson, Farley2 (B), Ickes, and Corcoran interview throw some light on the Administration’s lobbying in Congress. I base my estimate of the impact of Roosevelt’s speeches of early March on the popularity of the bill, on relative scores in the American Institute of Public Opinion polls of February through July 1937 (Cantril, pp. 149-151); that there was a causal relationship here is indicated, I think, by the high percentage of respondents who thought the President gained by these speeches (ibid., p. 150). The fullest source on the Senate Judiciary Committee is the Hearings (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937). For the activities of Hughes and other members of the court see Pusey [chap. 12]; Hughes Papers, LC; A. T. Mason, “Harlan Fiske Stone and FDR’s Court Plan,” Yale Law Journal, Vol. LXI, No. 6, June-July 1952, pp. 791 ff.; and Alsop and Catledge, passim. Baruch’s optimism on the passage of the court bill is indicated in PPF 95, FDRL, and Corcoran’s in Ickes2. Corcoran interview was most helpful in understanding some of the main legislative developments. I have taken Roosevelt’s comment to Black from Farley2, p. 79; using direct quotations such as these from another person’s memory involves some risk, and I have done so only when other data make the statement appear reliable in substance if not in letter; in this case Ickes2, pp. 104, 108, seems to validate the statement. Lehman’s letter to Roosevelt expressing his opposition to the court plan is in PPF 93, Feb. 26, 1937, FDRL.

  Breaches in the Grand Coalition. Roosevelt had not foreseen the court shift in late March and April as indicated in Michelson, Ickes, and Alsop and Catledge. On the matter of Hughes’s shift see Pusey, chap. 71; an answer to Pusey by Edward S. Corwin, The American Political Science Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 4, December 1952, pp. 1167-1173; and a judicious treatment in Samuel Hendel, Charles Evans Hughes and the Supreme Court (King’s Crown Press, 1951). On the tactical situation after the court decisions and Roosevelt’s reaction to it, see PC No. 160, April 13, 1937, FDRL; Alsop and Catledge, pp. 154-156; and MacColl, p. 326. Roosevelt’s bucolic letter to Bullitt is in PLFDR, p. 676; see also Roosevelt to E. P. Rogers, PPF 1281, April 6, 1937, FDRL. Roosevelt’s militance on his return to Washington in May is reflected in PC No. 366, May 13, 1937, and in Ickes2, pp. 140-141, 143. Rowe interview was helpful in understanding why Roosevelt stuck to his guns until almost the end. The tactical aspects of Van Devanter’s resignation are set forth in Jackson (B), pp. 193-193; Ickes2, p. 153, and Alsop and Catledge. That Corcoran and Jackson urged Roosevelt to accept defeat or delay rather than compromise on the bill is indicated in Ickes2, p. 176, and in Alsop and Catledge; the difficulty here is that Corcoran himself was the source of Ickes’ statement and probably of Alsop and Catledge’s, and Corcoran was over-optimistic during most of the struggle. On Roosevelt’s own tactical shift see Farley2, p. 86; Ickes2, passim; and Michelson, pp. 180-182. Roosevelt’s letter to Garner is in PLFDR, pp. 692-693; see Farley2, pp. 84-86, for a revealing letter at about this time from Garner to Farley. I have taken from Alsop and Catledge, p. 254, the picture of Robinson as a tormented bull. The exchange between Roosevelt and Garner is in Timmons, pp. 222-223.

  Not with a Bang but a Whimper. The title of this section is taken, of course, from T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Ickes says that Garner simply jettisoned the bill, but there is conflicting evidence on this. The Senate majority leader fight is described in Farley2, pp. 91-94; Ickes2, pp. 164, 166, 170; Timmons, pp. 223-224; and Barkley, pp. 155-156. Tully (B) and Ickes differ as to whether Corcoran or Hopkins worked on the Dieterich vote; perhaps both did. For the legislative history of the Fair Labor Standards Act see Burns (B); and for that of the Wagner housing bill, Timothy L. McDonnell, “The New Deal Makes a Public Housing Law” (Ph.D. dissertation, St. Louis University, 1953), a thorough and well-documented case study. Ickes, Farley2, and Alsop and Catledge provide data on the Black appointment. Roosevelt’s statement on the Ku Klux Klan development is from Molly Dewson’s autobiography, FDRL. Max Lerner wrote a moving report on the episode, republished in Ideas Are Weapons [chap. 8], pp. 254-261. For critical comments by Ickes and Hopkins on the management of the court bill, see Ickes2, passim, and Sherwood, p. 90. That the court bill never could have passed is the view of MacColl, p. v, and of Barkley, p. 153; I believe that the evidence fully supports this position. Moley (B), p. 350, quotes Roosevelt on “the one issue of the campaign.” The abortive role of the Good Neighbor League in the court fight is suggested in OF 2443, FDRL. An illuminating description of the failure of the Democratic leaders in New York state to rally behind Roosevelt in 1937 is to be found in PPF 3291, FDRL.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Roosevelt’s reaction to the court fight is noted in Eleanor Roosevelt1 (B), p. 166; Farley2 (B), p. 95; Ickes2 (B), p. 179; and Corcoran interview. The letter to Green is in PPF 1769, FDRL. The stormy session with the reporters was PC No. 389, August 9, 1937. The Johnson story is in Ickes2, pp. 168-169. PLFDR, p. 704, has the text of Roosevelt’s letter to Bowers. Roosevelt’s elation over the response of the crowds is indicated in Ickes and Farley. The Lindley-Roosevelt exchange occurred in PC No. 400, October 6, 1937. Roosevelt’s concern over the reaction to his Quarantine speech poses an interesting problem. A study of press comment and a sampling of letters received by the President from members of the general public indicate a highly mixed response, but with a good deal of support for the President. Roosevelt could hardly have been thinking of this reaction when he repeatedly expressed disappointment over the adverse response to the speech; he must have been thinking of the adverse reaction in his own Administration, especially on the part of Hull, and in Congress.

  Cloudburst. Roosevelt’s inner responses to the recession of 1937 provide another major problem of interpretation. He went through a bewildering series of shifts in attitude, whatever his consistency in policy may have been in the fall of 1937. His encouragement of both the budget balancers and the spenders in November is a case in point. Fortunately, the Farley, Ickes and Morgenthau reports of the Cabinet discussions show a gratifying correspondence; see Farley2, pp. 101-107; Ickes2, pp. 223-224, 229, 240-243; and Morgenthau (B). Morgenthau’s jittery statement to Roosevelt is in PSF, Box 26, FDRL. On the special session, see O. R. Altman, “Second and Third Sessions of the Seventy-Fifth Congress,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. XXXII, No. 6, December 1938, pp. 1099-1123. There is a good deal of illuminating but somewhat fragmentary material on the economic policies and record of the New Deal; I have made particular use of Mitchell [chap. 7], from whom I have taken the words “grandly opportunistic” to describe the New Deal; C. Griffith Johnson, Jr., The Treasury and Monetary Policy 1933-1938 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939); James D. Paris, Monetary Policies of the United States 1932-1938 (Columbia University Press, 1938); Allan S. Everest, Morgenthau, the New Deal, and Silver (King’s Crown Press, 1950); Arthur E. Burns and Donald S. Watson, Government Spending and Economic Expansion (Washingt
on, D. C: American Council on Public Affairs, 1940); Eccles (B); and Moley (B). See also works noted below. Ickes2, p. 144, quotes Roosevelt’s report of his statement to Garner on budget-balancing; PPAFDR, 1937, contains a half dozen comparable statements by the President on this eternal hope of his. See also Morgenthau.

  Palace Struggle for a Program. Estimates of unemployment in 1937-38 are drawn from the President’s special unemployment census, which found between 7.8 and 10.9 million jobless at the end of 1937, including about two million on relief. Roosevelt’s exchange with Snell was reported in Time, January 10, 1938; his exchange with the New York banker (Fred I. Kent) is in PLFDR, pp. 758-759. A contemporary report on Roosevelt’s official and kitchen cabinets, Alsop and Kintner [chap. 14], presents a revealing picture of the New Deal’s programmatic divisions and unities. For economic developments in the crucial 1936-1937 period, see Kenneth D. Roose, The Economics of Recession and Revival (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954); and for a somewhat different view, Sumner H. Sclichter, “The Downturn of 1937,” Review of Economic Statistics, Vol. XX, No. 3, August 1938. Roosevelt’s press conferences during late 1937 and early 1938, FDRL, are an indispensable source of information on his economic thinking during the recession. Wallace’s letter to Roosevelt urging leadership is in PPF 1820, March 24, 1938, FDRL.

  Roosevelt as an Economist. The anecdote about Eccles’ visit to the President is from pp. 327-330 of his autobiography, Beckoning Frontiers (B), ably edited by Sidney Hyman. There is of course a voluminous literature on Keynes; see, for example, L. R. Klein, The Keynesian Revolution (Macmillan, 1947); Alvin H. Hansen, A Guide to Keynes (McGraw-Hill, 1953); Seymour E. Harris, John Maynard Keynes (Scribner, 1955). R. F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes (Harcourt, Brace, 1951) is a rich and moving biography by a noted British economist. Miss Perkins (B) mentions Stone’s sub rosa comment, p. 286. The Corwin book is Edward S. Corwin, The Twilight of the Supreme Court (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934). Keynes’s letter to Roosevelt, Feb. 1, 1938, and the Morgenthau-drafted reply are in PPF 5235, FDRL. The relation between Keynes and Roosevelt is described in Harrod, in Harris, and in Perkins. PPF 1820 contains a letter from a number of Oxford economists, Dec. 20, 1933 (not including Keynes, a Cantabrigian, but presenting essentially Keynesian arguments). There are so many examples of Roosevelt’s quick, dexterous mind in action that I cannot begin to indicate sources here. The letter from his old Hyde Park friend is Roger A. Derby to Roosevelt, July 17, 1937, PPF 758, FDRL. A clue to the thinking of lower-echelon government economists can be found in the little book by seven Harvard and Tufts economists, An Economic Program for American Democracy (Vanguard Press, 1938), which was the work in part of such economists and which came to the President’s attention. Roosevelt’s recognition of near-starvation in the latter part of his second term can be seen in PC No. 604, Dec. 8, 1939.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Most of my data on popular attitudes in 1937-1938 are taken from Cantril (B), especially pp. 587, 589-590, 754-760, and from surveys published in Fortune. To obtain certain breakdowns, however, I have made use of the original polling data of the Fortune polls located in the Elmo Roper collection, Williams College, and have obtained other data from the Elmo Roper office, New York City. Information on attitudes toward Roosevelt comes mainly from periodicals during the period and from the author’s observations at the time. Wesley C. Clark, Economic Aspects of a President’s Popularity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1943), covering chiefly the second term, argues effectively for the author’s hypothesis that a high degree of correspondence exists between presidential popularity and national income.

  Squalls on Capitol Hill. The congressman making the plea was Representative Martin Dies speaking for a group of congressmen; see PPF 3458, FDRL. On Congress generally during this period, see OF 419, FDRL. There are many excellent treatments of Congress as an institution; among those based on firsthand observation of Congress are Roland Young, This is Congress (Knopf, 1943), especially chap. 5; T. V. Smith, The Legislative Way of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940); Ernest S. Griffith, Congress: Its Contemporary Role (New York University Press, 1951). H. H. Wilson, Congress: Corruption and Compromise (Rinehart, 1951), and James M. Burns, Congress on Trial (Harper, 1949), analyze Congress in a more critical vein. Data on the 1938 Congress are from the Congressional Directory, 75th Congress, 3rd Session (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937). The account of the passing of wages and hours legislation is based on Burns, Congress on Trial, chap. 5, and on Jerry Voorhis, Confessions of a Congressman (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1947); aside from sources cited in the former, see PPF 5456, FDRL, Roosevelt to Senator Hattie Caraway, Dec. go, 1937. The President’s message to Dies is contained in OF 2730, FDRL. A detailed account of the ill-fated reorganization bill is needed; I have used Altman, “Second and Third Sessions of the Seventy-Fifth Congress, 1937-38” [chap. 16]; Lindsay Rogers, “Reorganization: Post Mortem Notes,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. LIII, No. 2, June 1938, pp. 161-172; Farley2 (B), pp. 127-130; and Ickes2 (B), passim.

  The Broken Spell. Johnson’s remark and the episode at the Press Club dinner are from Time, May 16, 1938, and February 14, 1938, respectively. On the question of whether any significant court or administrative reform bill could have passed, see Chapter 15 above and Roosevelt to Bowers, Jan. 15, 1937, PLFDR, pp. 651-652. Herring, The Politics of Democracy [chap. 10], especially p. 218, throws a good deal of light on Roosevelt’s relations with Congress. Stanley High’s remark is taken from his Roosevelt—And Then? (Harper, 1937). Analysis in this chapter of Roosevelt’s relations with Congress is based largely on material scattered through many FDRL files; see especially OF 202, OF 259, OF 419, OF 1038, PPF 4142, and President’s Personal Files relating by name to chairmen of congressional committees and to other legislative leaders. Data on attitudes of House Democratic Steering committee members are based on a memorandum dictated shortly afterwards by a participant (perhaps Hopkins himself) in Hopkins Papers, File 104, FDRL. It was notable that in this conference protests of rank and file House members were on the whole sharper than those of the leaders. Keller’s letter is in OF 119, FDRL. Standard labor histories stress the stimulating impact of New Deal policies and recovery on unionism. Books that treat the Lewis-Roosevelt break knowledgeably are Creel (B); Cyrus Lee Sulzberger, Sit Down with John L. Lewis (Random, 1938); James A. Wechsler, Labor Baron (Morrow, 1944); Saul Alinsky, John L. Lewis, an Unauthorized Biography (Putnam, 1949); and Matthew Josephson, Sidney Hillman (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1952). Wesley McCune, The Farm Bloc (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1943) is a wise and lucid picture of the politics and personalities of the major farm groups during the New Deal. The Farm Bureau Federation membership estimate is from Orville Merton Kile, The Farm Bureau through Three Decades (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1948), p. 368. Roosevelt’s statement to Max Lerner is quoted in Alinsky, p. 165, and is based on statement of Lerner to Alinsky in 1948.

  Too Little, Too Late. Roosevelt’s private views of world developments in 1937-1938 are reflected in PLFDR; see especially pp. 716, 725, 735-736, 757, 766, 781-782. His projects for an international conference are well described in Langer and Gleason, Hull, and Tansill (all B), and in Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision (Harper, 1944). Some of the exchanges between Roosevelt and Welles and others on the project are in PSF, Box 23, FDRL, and drafts of the President’s proposed statement are in the same file, Box 31. Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1947) and Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm [chap. 13], indicate reactions in important quarters abroad. The letter of the schoolmaster (Northrup of the Roxbury Latin School) is in PPF 2291, FDRL. Roosevelt’s privately expressed sympathy for the Spanish Loyalists is indicated in the following previously cited volumes: Eleanor Roosevelt1 (B), p. 161; Connally and Steinberg (B), p. 223; and Ickes, passim. The actual development of Roosevelt’s attitudes on policy toward Spain is not wholly clear; for example, Welles, pp. 60-61, and
Hull, pp. 491-492, disagree sharply on the President’s view in January 1937 toward the Arms Embargo Act concerning Spain. On Nye and the embargo, see OF 1561, FDRL; and on the role of Catholic pressure, see Norman Thomas interview, OHRP, and Claude Bowers to author, June 14, 1955. Unhappily, neither Tansill nor Langer and Gleason throw much light on this matter or on our policy toward Spain in general. Hull, Welles, Feiling, and Ickes, and Claude G. Bowers, My Mission to Spain (Simon and Schuster, 1954), provide ample data on the main developments. Max Lerner, “The Case of the Spanish Embargo,” in his Ideas for the Ice Age [chap. 10] captures the feeling of tension and anguish during the fight over lifting the embargo. Eleanor Roosevelt1, p. 162, seems to confirm what the other sources suggest—Roosevelt’s painful indecisiveness over policy toward Spain.