by Adam Cohen
Tomlin Coggeshall, Frances Perkins’s grandson, was generous with his recollections of his grandmother and smoothed the way for my access to restricted portions of the Perkins papers.
An author can have no greater good fortune than to fall under the guidance of the remarkable Ann Godoff. The title publisher does not do her justice. Ann has an extraordinary sense of how to put together a book, from bringing out the important themes, to honing the characters and story arc, to producing a breathtaking cover. The best refutation of the notion that publishing’s golden age is over is that Ann is still hard at work.
My editor, Laura Stickney, was a joy to work with. She offered valuable insights about the manuscript and did a superb job of shepherding me through critical stages of the process.
Barbara Campo, the production editor, did an excellent job of smoothing out the text’s rough edges and ensuring that the citations were in order.
Kris Dahl has, for the third time now, been not only an extraordinary agent, but a tireless advocate and a wise counselor.
For the book’s photos, I am indebted to Phyllis Collazo of The New York Times, who helped turn a folder of time-worn prints into shining pieces of history; Jeffrey Roth, who ably guided me through the Times’s photo archives; and the ever-helpful Carolyn McGoldrick, of the Associated Press.
Much thanks to my colleagues on The New York Times editorial board: Eleanor Randolph; Dorothy Samuels; Brent Staples; David Unger; Francis X. Clines; Eduardo Porter; Lawrence Downes; Teresa Tritch; Robert Semple; Phil Boffey; Carol Giacomo; Maureen Muenster; Verlyn Klinkenborg; Carolyn Curiel; Elizabeth Harris; Linda Cohn; Juston Jones; Sue Kirby; Gail Collins; Frank Rich; Nick Kristof; Serge Schmemann; Carla Robbins; David Shipley; and the ringmaster of it all, Andrew Rosenthal. Profound appreciation, of course, to Arthur Sulzberger, who makes our work possible.
Family provided encouragement: Beverly Cohen; Stuart Cohen; Harlan Cohen; Noam Cohen; Alan Cohen; Lori Cohen; Ethan Cohen; Gabe Cohen; Seymour Shapiro; and Carl Shapiro.
Friends helped with the book—and provided much-needed distraction from it. Thanks to Elaine Rivera; Elisabeth Benjamin and Daniel Coughlin; Laura Franco and David Kostin; Caroline Arnold and Shan Sullivan; Charles M. Young; Diane Faber; P. J. Posner; Mickey Dubno; Aisha Labi; Gail Ablow; Lavea Brachman; Michael Heller; the fishing crew—Paul Engelmayer, Peter Mandelstam, Jim Rosenthal, Antony Blinken, and Eric Washburn; Kathy Bishop; Loren Eng and Dinakar Singh; Elaine Mandelbaum; Olivia Turner; Bobby Segall; Amy Gut-man; Gerald Frug; Lizzie Glazer; and Eileen Hershenov. Tina McGerald Smith offered brilliant insights on leadership, morality, and many other subjects. After two decades, Elizabeth Taylor remains an unending source of advice, support, and friendship.
Nearly seventy years ago, Frances Perkins wrote to Harry Hopkins about their work in the Hundred Days: “A lot happened out of the determination of a few people, didn’t it?” The power of a few determined people to do good is as true today as it ever was. My greatest appreciation is to the Perkinses, Wallaces, and Hopkinses of today—who exist in every part of the country and in every walk of life.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1 Edmund Wilson, American Earthquake: A Documentary of the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, and the New Deal (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), pp. 454-55, 458, 462-63.
2 Harry Hopkins, Spending to Save (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1936), pp. 18-19; 50-51, 66; Dixon Wecter, The Age of the Great Depression, 1929-41 (New York: MacMillan Company, 1948), pp. 17, 39; Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1966), p. 16; Irving Bernstein, A Caring Society: The New Deal, the Worker, and the Great Depression (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985); Frances Perkins, “The Return of the Sweatshops,” article for Scripps-Howard Syndicate, undated, ca. June 1933, Box 46, Frances Perkins Papers, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library (hereafter, “Perkins Papers”); Time, 2/1/82.
3 Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 287; Hopkins, Spending to Save, pp. 62-63; David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York: Atheneum, 1984), pp. 250, 266, 316; Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 147; Edgar Eugene Robinson and Vaughn Davis Bornet, Herbert Hoover: President of the United States (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1975), p. 180; Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 277.
4 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), pp. 13, 20-21; Time, 1/2/33; New York Times, 6/17/33.
5 Ernest K. Lindley, The Roosevelt Revolution: First Phase (New York: Viking Press, 1933), p. 166.
6 Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, pp. 13, 20-21; Lindley, Roosevelt Revolution, pp. 272-73; New York Times, 6/17/33.
7 Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York: Viking Press, 1946), pp. 166-67; Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. II (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 646; Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939), pp. 369-70; Lindley, Roosevelt Revolution, p. 15; Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, Pt. 3, p. 575, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter, CUOHRO), http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/perkinsf/index.html. Also available as printed transcript. Navigating the Rapids 1918-1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle, ed. Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973), p. 72; Raymond Moley, The First New Deal (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), p. 224; Smith, FDR, pp. 310-11.
8 Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 427; Samuel Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), p. 55; Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, pp. 328, 330; Howard Zinn, Introduction, in New Deal Thought, ed. Howard Zinn (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1966), pp. xxviii-xxix; Reinhold Niebuhr, “After Capitalism—What?” in Zinn, New Deal Thought, p. 16; New York Times, 7/28/35; Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, p. 469.
9 Rexford Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt: A Biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1957), p. 150, Moley, First New Deal, p. 224.
10 Berle and Jacobs, Navigating the Rapids, p. 72; Frank Freidel, Introduction, Realities and Illusions 1886- 1931: The Autobiography of Raymond Moley (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1980), p. vii; “Behind the New Deal,” New Outlook, March 1933; Moley, First New Deal, p. 224.
11 John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect: A Profile in History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), p. 127; Moley, First New Deal, p. 236; John Franklin Carter, The New Dealers (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), p. 3.
12 Moley, First New Deal, p. 237; Time, 3/8/33.
13 Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, ed. Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), p. 342.
14 Saturday Evening Post, 7/27/40 ; George Martin, Madam Secretary: Frances Perkins (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976); Lillian Mohr, Frances Perkins: That Woman in FDR’s Cabinet (Croton on the Hudson, N.Y.: North River Press, 1979); Bill Severn, Frances Perkins: A Member of the Cabinet (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1976).
15 John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), p. 83 and n.
16 Carter, New Dealers, p. 179; Washington Post, 5/23/33.
17 Lindley, Roosevelt Revolution, pp. 3-4; Rexford Tugwell, Roosevelt’s Revolution: The First Year, a Personal Perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1977).
18 Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, p. 238.
19 Smith, FDR, pp. 370-74, George Wolfskill and John A. Hudson, All but the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Critics (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1969), p. 152; Rexford Tugwell, “America Takes Hold of Its Destiny,” Today, 4/28/34, p. 256, quoted in Bernard Sternsher,
Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1964), p. 151.
CHAPTER 1: “ACTION, AND ACTION NOW”
1 Works Progress Administration, Washington: City and Capital (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937), pp. 56, 157-58; 637; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 278-79.
2 Charles Hurd, When the New Deal Was Young and Gay (New York: Hawthorne Books Inc., 1965), p. 101; Wilson, American Earthquake, p. 560 ; George Creel, “The Mystery of the Secret Cabinet,” The Elks Magazine, Murphy File, Box 1, Henry A. Wallace Papers, University of Iowa, Special Collections Department (hereafter, “Wallace Papers”); Benjamin Stolberg, “Madam Secretary: A Study in Bewilderment,” Saturday Evening Post, 7/27/40.
3 Works Progress Administration, Washington, pp. 203-6; Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, pp. 9, 26; Lester V. Chandler, America’s Greatest Depression, 1929-1941 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970), p. 5; Time, 3/13/33; The New Republic, 3/15/33; Newsweek, 3/4/33; Martin, Madam Secretary, pp. 63, 74, 84-90.
4 David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 166; The Great Depression: Opposing Viewpoints, ed. William Dudley (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1994), p. 15; William Brock, Welfare, Democracy, and the New Deal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 164, 166; Anthony J. Badger, FDR: The First Hundred Days (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), p. 3; Wecter, Age of the Great Depression p. 13; Time, 3/13/33.
5 Bernstein, A Caring Society, p. 19; Wecter, Age of the Great Depression, p. 13; Harold Mayer and Richard C. Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 358; New York Times, 6/5/32; New York Times, 10 /29/32; Arthur Ballantine, “When All the Banks Closed,” Harvard Business Review, March 1948, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, p. 131; Harold L. Ickes, The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943), p. 282; Dudley, The Great Depression, pp. 25, 34-35; James R. McGovern, And a Time for Hope: Americans in the Great Depression (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000), pp. 6-11.
6 Atlantic Monthly, May 1932; Ballantine, “When All the Bank Closed,” p. 131; Time, 3/13/33; Matthew Josephson, Infidel in the Temple: A Memoir of the Nineteen-Thirties (New York: Knopf, 1967), pp. 75-76, 98; Roger K. Newman, Hugo Black: A Biography (New York, Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 144; Dudley, The Great Depression, pp. 25, 34-35; McGovern, And a Time for Hope, pp. 6-11; New York Times, 6/5/32; New York Times, 10/29/32.
7 Hopkins, Spending to Save, pp. 18-19; Edward L. and Frederick Schapsmeier, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The Agrarian Years, 1910-1940, (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1968), p. 146; John L. Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion: The Farmers’ Holiday Association (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1965), pp. 78; McGovern, And a Time for Hope, p. 8.
8 John Dos Passos, “Detroit: City of Leisure,” in The New Republic Anthology, 1915-1935, ed. Groff Conklin (New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1936), pp. 424-28; Niebuhr, “After Capitalism—What?” p. 16; New York Times, 3/8/33; Alfred B. Rollins, Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), p. 15; Wecter, Age of the Great Depression, p. 37; Bird, Invisible Scar, pp. 140-41; Franklin Folsom, America Before Welfare (New York: New York University Press, 1991), p. 268; Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion, p. 83.
9 Arthur Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1957), pp. 474-81.
10 Tugwell, Roosevelt’s Revolution, p. 24; Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal, p. 144.
11 Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, p. 149; Ruth Backes, Interview with Carol Lubin, Box 12, Folder 11, Ruth Backes Papers, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections; Saturday Evening Post 7/27/40.
12 The Nation, 3/8/33; Saturday Evening Post, 7/27/40; Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, pp. 56-9; Adam Cohen, Interview with Tomlin Coggeshall, 8/10/2007.
13 Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, pp. 10-12; Smith, FDR, p. 300.
14 Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, pp. 13-14; Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 139.
15 Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, p. 15.
16 Works Progress Administration, Washington, pp. 465, 491-92; Moley, First New Deal, p. 10.
17 James Roosevelt, Affectionately, F.D.R.: A Son’s Story of a Lonely Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1959), p. 144; Smith, FDR, pp. 10, 17, 37-38; Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect, p. 152; Carter, New Dealers, p. 11; Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973), pp. 6-7; Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, pp. 414-16; Samuel and Dorothy Rosenman, Presidential Style: Some Giants and a Pygmy in the White House (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1976), p. 267; Tugwell, Democratic Roosevelt, pp. 42-43, 57; James E. Sargent, Roosevelt and the Hundred Days: Struggle for the Early New Deal (New York: Garland, 1981), pp. 13-14.
18 Tugwell, Democratic Roosevelt, pp. 68, 71; Smith, FDR, pp. 70-78.
19 Smith, FDR, pp. 85-89, 123-25; Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p.11.
20 Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 5; Raymond Moley, “Contemporary National Politics,” Lecture to Columbia class, April 29, 1936, Box 189, Moley Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University (hereafter, “Moley Papers”); Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, p. 417; Smith, FDR, pp. 123-25, 150-161; Resa Willis, FDR and Lucy: Lovers and Friends (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 34-37; Tugwell, Democratic Roosevelt, p. 107.
21 Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, p. 184; J. Roosevelt, Affectionately, F.D.R., p. 136.
22 Frank Freidel, Interview with James A. Farley, August 7, 1954, Small Collections Oral History Interviews, in Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library (hereafter, “Roosevelt Library”); Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), pp. 149-50; Rexford Tugwell, FDR: Architect of an Era (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1967), p. 57; Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, pp. 198-99; Tugwell, Democratic Roosevelt, p. 27; Time, 1/2/33; Hugh Gregory Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception: The Moving Story of Roosevelt’s Massive Disability—And the Intense Efforts to Conceal It from the Public (St. Petersburg, Fla.: Vandamere Press, 1999); Badger, FDR, pp. 14-15.
23 Tugwell, FDR: Architect of an Era, p. 60; Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, pp. 13, 16, 26; Smith, FDR, pp. 210-12, 245, 272-73; James A. Farley, Behind the Ballots: The Personal History of a Politician (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938), p. 79; Schlesinger, Crisis of the Old Order, p. 376; New York Times, 11/5⅕/30; Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Age of Action, ed. Alfred B. Rollins, Jr. (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1960), p. 14; Badger, FDR, p. 18; The Two Faces of Liberalism: How the Hoover-Roosevelt Debate Shapes the 21st Century, ed. Gordon Lloyd (Salem, Mass.:M&M Scrivener Press, 2007), p. 39; New York Herald Tribune, 7/1/24.
24 Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 144; Roosevelt, Affectionately, F.D.R., pp. 99, 103; Farley, Behind the Ballots, p. 208; Thomas Greer, What Roosevelt Thought (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1958), p. 4.
25 Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, p. 16; New York Times, 3/5/33, p. 3; Martin, Madam Secretary, pp. 7-9; Garry Wills, “What Makes a Good Leader?” Atlantic Monthly, April 1994.
26 Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), p. 269; Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, p. 17; New York Times, 3/5/33; New York Herald Tribune, 3/5/33.
27 Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, pp. 17-19; T. H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold Ickes 1874-1952 (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1990), p. 295.
28 Time, 3/6/33.
29 Martin, Madam Secretary, p. 12.
30 Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, p. 19.
31 Reminiscences of Henry A. Wallace,
1951, CUOHRO, pp. 203-6 ; Reminiscences of Frances Perkins, 1961, CUOHRO, Pt. 4, p. 19.
32 Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, p. 40 ; New York Herald Tribune, 3/5/33.
33 The New Deal: The National Level, ed. John Braeman et al. (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1975), p. 5; Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, pp. 370-71; David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 253.
34 Herbert Hoover, American Individualism (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922), p. 13; Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, p. 387; Burner, Herbert Hoover, pp. 193-96; Wecter, Age of the Great Depression, p. 42.
35 Burner, Herbert Hoover, pp. 295-96 ; Hopkins, Spending to Save, p. 42; Sargent, Roosevelt and the Hundred Days, p. 18; Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, December 8, 1931, in Lloyd, The Two Faces of Liberalism, pp. 54-65.
36 Burner, Herbert Hoover, p. 250; Josephson, Infidel, p. 69; Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, pp. 372, 398 n.; Joel Seligman, The Transformation of Wall Street (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982), pp. 53-54; The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. II (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 93; Freidel, Launching the New Deal, p. 6; Dudley, The Great Depression, p. 80.
37 Elliot A. Rosen, Hoover, Roosevelt and the Brains Trust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 287; Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, p. 400; Dudley, The Great Depression, pp. 27-30, 33; The Nation, 7/15/31; Josephson, Infidel, p. 52; Edward Ainsworth Williams, Federal Aid for Relief (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), p. 21; Elliot A. Rosen, Roosevelt, the Great Depression and the Economics of Recovery (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005), pp. 72-73.