The Path to Power

by Robert A. Caro

  Bonham, his home town, had scheduled a celebration in honor of his becoming Speaker, and Rayburn had left for Texas on October 17. At the celebration (at which bands from the eleven high schools in his district paraded through the streets of his little town), he was presented with a gavel carved by a local carpenter out of bois d’arc wood, and with a gift from Colonel W. T. Knight of Wichita Falls, unofficial spokesman of that city’s oilmen, who, Rayburn’s friend C. Dwight Dorough writes, “that morning … had collected $2,000 from people in Wichita Falls for the National Democratic War Chest, and … had come to present the money in person.” The need for that gift—and for more like it—would shortly be driven home to Rayburn, for on October 23, he received two communications from Johnson. They were both enclosed in the same envelope. The first had been written, on the twenty-first, as a telegram, but not sent in that form; the secretive Johnson had marked the telegram “Personal & Confidential. Personal Delivery Only,” but who could be certain that those instructions would be obeyed? “I started to send you the attached wire yesterday but because I hesitated to send a wire, I am enclosing it in this letter,” Johnson wrote. The enclosed “wire” said that a “careful check” of congressional races around the country had disclosed that it was not 77 Democratic candidates who were in trouble, but 105. And, it said, there was no more money available to help them. “Barrel has been scraped.” It urged Rayburn to appeal for funds. “Our friends can be helpful now if they want to be by writing me airmail special delivery Munsey Building and directing me to apply as per attached list which I will make up. Hope when you talk to them today and Wednesday in Dallas you will impress importance doing this at once. Hope we can get total at least equivalent to amount I suggested to Paul …”

  In Dallas, where another celebration was held in honor of his new job, Rayburn rode through its streets at the head of a 200-car caravan. Then he conferred with the oilmen. Some of them had by this time exceeded the $5,000 limit on campaign contributions. Some of their new contributions were, therefore, in cash. William Kittrell, the veteran Texas lobbyist who had, years before, called Lyndon Johnson a “wonder kid,” was an intimate of Rayburn and Sid Richardson and other oilmen. Worried that his “Personal Delivery Only” letter to Rayburn would go astray, Johnson wired Kittrell that he had sent the Speaker a letter, adding, PLEASE SEE THAT HE GETS IT. THIS IS URGENT. I AM GATHERING OTHER MATERIAL. (“Material” was the euphemism most frequently used by Johnson to refer to campaign contributions.) Some of the oilmen’s response arrived in Washington in envelopes containing cash that were carried by trusted couriers (Kittrell himself was one of them, according to Corcoran and Harold Young), and were handed to Johnson. How much they contained is not known, because no record of these campaign contributions, or of their distribution to individual candidates, has been found. This money did not pass through the committee, or through the Munsey Building office; Johnson arranged for its distribution, in checks or cash, to candidates through outside means, including channels arranged by Marsh, one of which was Young. Only hints about the existence of these channels are contained in letters found in Johnson’s office files; one example is a note from Johnson to Congressman Claude V. Parsons of Illinois on October 25: “I am sure that by now you have received all the material I had sent you, both through the committee and otherwise”; Parsons wrote back thanking Johnson both for the checks from the committee and “from Harold Young.” There is also an unexplained reference in Johnson’s files to money given “on (the) Chicago line.” As for money that did pass through the committee, Johnson had said on Monday (in a statement borne out at least in general by his records) that he was out of money. On Thursday, he gave the committee $16,500.

  RAYBURN DID MORE in Texas than merely raise money.

  The independent oilman perhaps most influential among his fellow wildcatters was Charles F. Roeser of Fort Worth, president of the Independent Petroleum Association; in 1936, Jim Farley had been informed confidentially that Roeser “not only will get money himself, but will raise it from his friends.” The contributions Roeser arranged in 1936 had been made through traditional Democratic channels—sent to Democratic National Committee Chairman Farley at the Biltmore. Roeser had planned to contribute through traditional channels in 1940, also; with Farley no longer national chairman, the oilman had asked Elliott Roosevelt, leaving Fort Worth for a trip north, to find out whom he should send the money to. But although Elliott was to wire him to send the money to Steve Early at the White House, those instructions were not followed, for before Roeser heard from Elliott Roosevelt, he heard from Sam Rayburn. The new Speaker “called me from Dallas and advised that I send my contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in care of Lyndon Johnson,” Roeser was to recall. Roeser had never met Johnson, but he followed Rayburn’s instructions. “Dear Mr. Johnson,” he wrote, “After talking with Sam Rayburn, I have decided to send my contribution for this year’s campaign to you. … I am … leaving it up to the Steering Committee, headed by you, to decide in what districts these funds can be best used.” And not only Roeser’s own $5,000 campaign contribution but the contributions of the independent oilmen who followed his lead went not to the White House or to the Biltmore, as they would have done in the past, but to the Munsey Building. So, moreover, did the contributions of independents who did not follow Roeser’s lead—of men such as Richardson and Murchison who followed no man’s lead. For however independent they were, these men not only trusted Sam Rayburn, but were aware that now that this grim, unsmiling man was armed with the Speaker’s gavel, he was the protector they needed in Washington, and they were therefore willing to follow his instructions—which were to send their money to Lyndon Johnson.

  Roeser’s terse letter to the young Congressman he had never met was a significant document in the political fund-raising history of the United States (and, it was to prove in later years, in the larger history of the country as well). Sam Rayburn had, on his trip to Texas in October, 1940, cut off the Democratic National Committee, and other traditional party recipients of campaign contributions, from the money of the newly rich Texas independent oilmen. These men had been seeking a channel through which their money could flow to the seat of national power 2,000 miles away, to far-off Washington. After Sam Rayburn’s trip to Dallas in October, 1940, they had their channel, a brand-new channel which, ten days before, had not even existed. Sam Rayburn had cut them the channel. A new source of political money, potentially vast, had been tapped in America, and Lyndon Johnson had been put in charge of it. He was the conduit for their cash.

  MONEY WAS NOT ALL Johnson was providing for the Congressmen. He wrote to candidates in the same terms in which he wrote to constituents. The letters which carried the welcome news of checks on the way contained also the promise of help in non-financial areas. In the letter he sent to the recipients of the October 24 and 25 checks, Lyndon Johnson wrote: “I want to see you win. In order to help you and others of our party out in the frontline trenches, I am devoting my entire time in an attempt to coordinate and expedite assistance to you from this end.” Just call on me, he urged them—“call on me, at any hour of the day, by phone, wire or letter. My address is 339 Munsey Building and my telephone number is Republic 8284.” That was a form letter: individual notes expressed in even more emphatic terms his eagerness to help. “I wish you would please keep in close touch with me and let me know if there is any way at all I can possibly help you,” he wrote Nebraska’s McLaughlin. “My services are available to you day and night on anything.”

  It was not, in fact, necessary for him to be called on.

  He would have read in the newspapers that Senator George Norris, the great old champion of public hydroelectric power, was planning to speak in Portland, Oregon, and visit the Grand Coulee Dam to emphasize the administration’s role in its building. On Thursday of that first week—the week during which he was singlehandedly raising and distributing to Democratic congressional candidates virtually unprecedented amounts of
money—Lyndon Johnson compiled a list of nine Democratic candidates in the Far West who were supporters of public power, and who were engaged in tight races. Then he wrote a memorandum: “I do hope that when Senator Norris gives his address … he will say something in support of these people in recognition of the battle they have been carrying on. Just one sentence would be helpful. …”No one had asked him to do this; he had just done it—and done it with his usual thoroughness, not merely pleading for “just one sentence,” but drafting nine different sentences, each custom-tailored for one of the nine candidates. (That thoroughness, and his capacity for cultivating not only the mighty but their assistants, was also evident in the delivery of the memorandum. He spoke to Norris’ assistant, Jack Robinson, about it in advance, and when he sent it to Robinson, he sent with it another memorandum asking him to “Please see to it that this gets the Senator’s attention” and adding: “Call on me anytime for anything.”) Prodded by Robinson, Norris delivered the endorsements.

  Other nationally prominent New Dealers and Cabinet members were heading out of Washington on speaking tours for Roosevelt. Johnson asked them, too, to speak for the local Democratic congressional candidate as well. Labor was strong in the State of Washington, and Senator Claude Pepper was a symbol, because of his vigorous support of the wages and hours bill, of the New Deal’s support of labor. SENATOR PEPPER SPEAKING SATURDAY IN SEATTLE, Johnson wired his Naval Affairs Committee colleague Warren Magnuson. SUGGESTED TO HIM THAT HE PUT IN GOOD PLUG FOR YOU. CONTACT PEPPER WHEN HE ARRIVES. Magnuson had not asked for the “good plug.” He had gotten it without asking—as, all at once, Democratic candidates who had given up hope of obtaining assistance from Washington were receiving help for which they had not even asked.

  Suddenly, Democratic candidates all across the country realized that there was someone in Washington they could turn to, someone they could ask for not only money but other types of aid.

  And they asked. By his second week in the new job, requests were pouring into the Munsey Building—for voting records of Republican incumbents from the Democratic hopefuls opposing them; for information on the broad scale (“I am debating the congressman in McKeesport Saturday … and would like to receive all information about his voting record”) or the small, for the little piece of information—difficult for someone unfamiliar with the federal bureaucracy to obtain—that could improve a speech (PLEASE WIRE ME BY WESTERN UNION … THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IN SOCIAL SECURITY FUND. I MUST KNOW BEFORE SEVEN O’CLOCK TONIGHT); for a vital, desperately needed, denial (wired Congressman J. Buell Snyder of Pennsylvania: FOLLOWING APPEARED IN PITTSBURGH TELEGRAPH QUOTE A BILL INTRODUCED BY SENATOR WAGNER WOULD COMPEL 81,000 TEACHERS OF PENNSYLVANIA TO TURN OVER INTO THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND $147,000,000 WHICH THE TEACHERS CONSIDER [THEIR] ACTUAL SAVINGS FUND STOP GIVE ME WIRE ANSWER YES OR NO NO EXPLANATION WILL DO STOP THIS WILL COST 50,000 VOTES IN PENNSYLVANIA STOP GIVE ME WIRE SO IT CAN BE PUBLISHED AS IT COMES STOP BETTER FOR WIRE TO COME FROM WAGNER TODAY); for endorsements (Congressman Franck R. Havenner of California wired: SENATOR CLAUDE PEPPER WILL SPEAK IN SAN FRANCISCO TOMORROW STOP WILL BE GRATEFUL IF YOU CAN WIRE HIM ASKING THAT HE ENDORSE MY RECORD); for speakers (“We are requesting … Gifford Pin-chot, former Governor and the man who took the county ‘out of the mud’ with his Tinchot Roads’ to come into Lancaster County, I feel that his visit would supply the spark needed here. Please join with us in urging him to come”).

  The requests were answered—with a thoroughness that would have been familiar to Gene Latimer and L. E. Jones, whose high-school debate coach had taught them that if you took care of all the minor details, if “you did everything you could do—absolutely everything—you would win.”

  Buell Snyder had asked that the denial he needed come “today,” and it did; his wire was received at the Munsey Building at 1:12 p.m., and a return wire was on its way to Snyder’s Uniontown, Pennsylvania, headquarters that same afternoon, for Johnson had immediately contacted Senator Wagner’s secretary. The denial should come direct from Wagner, Snyder had said, and it did; the return wire was signed with the Senator’s name. And it should “answer yes or no,” and the first sentence of Wagner’s wire was precisely what Snyder needed: MY ANSWER TO REPORTED STATEMENT IS EMPHATICALLY NO. And there followed a wire that could, as Snyder had requested, be published as it came: a long telegram detailing Wagner’s version of the bill in question. That was fast enough service for even a desperate campaigner, but Johnson did not put his trust in Western Union; the next morning he sent his own wire telling Snyder that he should have received one from Wagner: IF NOT RECEIVED, LET ME KNOW, THIS JUST FOLLOW-UP. Answering every request, he did absolutely everything he could. The wire that Havenner had requested be sent to Pepper was sent and the endorsement by Pepper was made, and it was not just a pro forma endorsement, for Johnson had seen to it—telegraphing and telephoning, and then telephoning again, not only to the Senator’s aides but to the Senator himself, tracking him down on his cross-country tour—that Pepper was given enough details to make it seem that he really was familiar with the Congressman’s record.

  Among the items of assistance for which Congressmen had been asking in vain were out-of-district speakers with particular appeal to their constituents, for oratory cost money—money for the orator’s transportation, hotel room and meals (and, in the case of some, honoraria for the rental of their vocal cords)—and the National Committee, which was frantically attempting to scrape up funds to send Harold Ickes and other Cabinet members on cross-country tours for the national ticket, had none to spare for the requests of individual Congressmen.

  Touching base only occasionally with the National Committee, Johnson had his staff compile lists of “Speaker Requests,” and the dates of the meetings for which the speakers were requested; he coordinated them, and soon Congressmen with substantial numbers of Polish constituents were notified that Representative Rudolph G. Tenerowicz, past president of the Polish National Alliance, the Polish Alliance of America, and the Polish Union of America, was on his way to deliver one of his renowned speeches—in Polish, of course. (Having won his own, predominantly Polish, district in Hamtramck, Michigan, in 1938 with a majority of 54,000 votes over all other candidates, Tenerowicz needed to devote only limited time to his own campaign.) Candidates with substantial numbers of Negro constituents were getting a Negro Congressman who was also a renowned orator, Arthur Mitchell of Chicago, and many districts of varied ethnic composition were hearing from little Fiorello La Guardia of New York, who, half Jewish and half Italian, himself an Episcopalian married first to a Catholic and then to a Lutheran of German descent, was practically a balanced ticket all by himself—and could, ranting and shaking his tiny fists, wave the bloody flag in seven different languages. Democratic nominee Alfred F. Beiter, whose Buffalo district included many Italians—who, as he wrote to Johnson, “are inclined to be ‘off-the-reservation’ this year”—had been pleading, in vain, with the National Committee for a visit by Representative D’Alesandro of Baltimore, who, Beiter had been told, “makes a very good rebuttal talk to offset the Republicans’ criticism of the President’s ‘stab-in-the-back’ reference to Mussolini.” Johnson could not get D’Alesandro for Beiter, but did provide Frank Serri, who, he assured Beiter, was a “distinguished Italian Brooklyn lawyer” and “fine orator.” Into melting-pot, multi-ethnic districts whose candidates had been pleading in vain, before October 14, for a single outside speaker, now filed a parade of speakers, many with expense money from Lyndon Johnson in their pockets. Buffalo Congressman Pius Schwert, for example, got Tenerowicz for his Poles, Serri for his Italians, and La Guardia for various ethnic blocs—as well as Arthur Mitchell for the district’s few Negroes. Thanks to Johnson, the breadbasket as well as the melting pot was getting speakers. Oklahoma’s Phil Ferguson wrote him that Marvin Jones “can do more good than anyone. … If he could make Guymon the Saturday afternoon before election [it] would do a lot of good, in fact, it might mean the difference in my election, and then go t
o Beaver that night would have battle cinched.” Jones was in Guymon the Saturday afternoon before election, and in Beaver that night—and during the last two weeks of the campaign, the Agriculture Committee chairman, identified by farmers throughout the United States with the AAA, was in more than forty rural districts to tell farmers how helpful their local Congressman had been in passing the programs that had saved their farms. Johnson not only dispatched the speakers, he amplified their voices; when, after he had arranged for a visiting speaker, a candidate said he hoped the speech could be broadcast on a local radio station, Johnson provided the funds for the broadcast.

  He was providing other types of help as well. His entrée to Ickes—and to other high officials of Interior—was put to the use of other Congressmen. “A lot of projects were approved that Fall,” Walter Jenkins recalls. “Mr. Ickes was very cooperative.” Roosevelt had told Johnson to work through Jim Rowe, and Rowe’s entrée to other departments—and the fact that he could speak in the name of the White House—was put to the use of still others. After more than a year of struggling with the War Department bureaucracy, Martin Smith had finally secured the requisite permit for construction of an airport in his district, only to see the project snarled in WPA red tape. By making him seem ineffectual in Washington, D.C., “this delay is not doing me any good politically,” Smith wrote Johnson on October 26. “If I could get final approval of this project by the WPA, and have it approved by President Roosevelt, before the end of the coming week, it would be a great help.” A week later, Smith received a telegram from the Munsey Building: YOUR WPA APPLICATION HAS BEEN APPROVED BY WPA AND IS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AWAITING THE PRESIDENT’S SIGNATURE. WILL DO MY BEST TO GET THIS SIGNED FOR YOU AND WIRE YOU BY MONDAY. Time was running out; Monday was the day before election, but on that day, another Western Union envelope was delivered to Smith: