by FDR
41. Hoover, 3 Memoirs 195.
42. The New York Times, November 1, 1932. For complete text, see 2 State Papers of Herbert Hoover 408–428. The quotation is at page 418.
43. The New York Times, November 6, 1932; New York Herald Tribune, November 6, 1932. For the complete text of Hoover’s speech, see 2 State Papers 449–466.
44. E. W. Starling, Starling of the White House 300 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946).
45. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt 87.
46. Socialist candidate Norman Thomas received 883,990 votes and the Communist William Z. Foster 102,221. A sprinkling of ten other candidates, including Prohibitionist William David Upshaw and the Liberty Party’s William Hope Harvey, received a total of 128,758. Roosevelt’s overall percentage was 57.42 to Hoover’s 39.64. Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections 289, 304–305 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975).
47. The New York Times, November 9, 1932.
48. Lela Stiles, The Man Behind Roosevelt: The Story of Louis McHenry Howe 216 (Cleveland: World, 1954); Farley, Behind the Ballots 186.
49. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember 74–75 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949).
50. Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years 506–507 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960).
51. Rexford Tugwell, “Notes from a New Deal Diary,” December 24, 1932, FDRL.
52. Edmund Wilson, “Hull House in 1933: III,” The New Republic 320 (February 1, 1933).
53. 113 Literary Digest 6 (November 12, 1932).
54. Avis Carlson, “Deflating the Schools,” 167 Harper’s 705–715 (1933).
55. 113 Literary Digest 10 (May 7, 1932).
56. The New York Times, January 22, 1933; The Denver Post, February 12, 1933; A. William Hoglund, “Wisconsin Dairy Farmers on Strike,” 35 Agricultural History 24–34 (1961). Also see Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West: 1900–1939 435–448 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951).
57. Hoover to FDR, February 17, 1933, in W. S. Myers and W. H. Newton, The Hoover Administration: A Documented Narrative 338–341 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936).
58. Hoover to D. A. Reed, February 20, 1933, ibid. 351.
59. FDR to Hoover, March 1, 1933, ibid. 344–345.
60. Nathan Miller, FDR: An Intimate History 292 (New York: Doubleday, 1983).
61. Stimson, MS diary, January 9, 1933. Also see Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service 292–293.
62. Tugwell, MS diary, January 17 [?], 1933, FDRL.
63. Raymond Moley, After Seven Years 95 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939).
64. Quoted in Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography 371 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985). Hull was initially reluctant to take the post because he could not afford the expected social expenses. FDR relieved him of the social burden by appointing an old (and wealthy) friend, William Phillips, as undersecretary. Phillips later served as Roosevelt’s ambassador to Italy.
65. Moley, After Seven Years 121.
66. In addition to successfully running American Car and Foundry, the world’s largest producer of railroad rolling stock, Woodin was a skilled musician and composer whose published works included The Covered Wagon Suite, The Oriental Suite, and “The Franklin Delano Roosevelt March,” written for the inauguration.
67. Morgan, FDR 372, citing Alfred B. Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe 374 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962).
68. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember 76. Also see Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 357–358 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971). “My zest for life is rather gone for the time being,” ER wrote to Lorena Hickok. “I get like this sometimes. It makes me feel like a dead weight and my mind goes round and round like a squirrel in a cage. I want to run and I can’t, and I despise myself.” ER to Lorena Hickok, in Joseph P. Lash, Love, Eleanor 159 (New York: Doubleday, 1982).
69. Nourmahal, the flagship of the New York Yacht Club, was built in Germany for Astor in 1928. It was described by The New York Times as “an ocean liner in miniature … the biggest and fastest ocean-going motor yacht ever built.” It had a cruising range of 19,000 miles and a top speed of sixteen knots. In 1934, FDR would return to Nourmahal to watch the America’s Cup race from her decks. James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 275–278 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).
70. Vincent Astor, a nominal Republican, contributed $25,000 to FDR’s campaign in 1932, making him one of the ten largest contributors. The verse is quoted in James Roosevelt, Affectionately, F.D.R. 278.
71. FDR to SDR, February 6, 1933, 3 The Roosevelt Letters 100–101, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1952).
72. FDR was quick to express his gratitude to Mrs. Cross. From his train returning to New York he wired, “How much greater and sadder a tragedy was averted by your unselfish courage and quick thinking of course no one can estimate. It now appears that by Divine Providence the lives of all the victims of the assassin’s disturbed aim will be spared.” The New York Times, February 20, 1933. Roosevelt spoke too soon. Both Mayor Cermak and Mrs. Joseph H. Gill, the wife of the president of Florida Light and Power Company, the woman shot in the abdomen, perished from infection.
73. Roosevelt gave the statement to the press immediately afterward. The New York Times, February 17, 1933. Jackson Memorial Hospital is 2.6 miles from Bay Front Park.
74. Some have speculated that Zangara had intended to kill Cermak all along. That is not supported by the evidence. Zangara had never been in Chicago and had no ties with the Mob. Asked at his trial if he knew Mayor Cermak, Zangara replied, “No, not at all. I just went there to kill the president. The capitalists killed my life. I suffer, always suffer. I make it 50-50—someone else must suffer.”
Q: Do you want to live?
A: No. Put me in the electric chair.
Q: Are you sorry only because you tried to kill Mr. Roosevelt?
A: No. I am sorry because I failed.
The courtroom examination was reported in The New York Times, March 10, 11, 21, 1933. Zangara’s life is treated in some detail by Kenneth S. Davis in FDR: The New York Years 432–434.
75. Moley, After Seven Years 139.
76. Thomas W. Lamont to FDR, February 27, 1933, FDRL. Lamont had rented Roosevelt’s East Sixty-fifth Street town house for the seven years FDR was assistant secretary of the Navy and remained on intimate terms with the president-elect.
77. Raymond Moley, The First New Deal 96–124 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966).
78. James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story 36 (New York: Whittlesey House, 1948).
79. The original Trading with the Enemy Act was enacted October 6, 1917, chap. 106, 40 Stat. 411, and has been recodified more than a dozen times, most recently on March 10, 1939, chap. 75, 46 Stat. 84.
80. Hoover was concerned about the fate of Walter H. Newton, a longtime Republican congressman from Minnesota who had resigned his House seat in 1929 to become the president’s administrative assistant. Newton had no outside source of income, and in his final days Hoover had nominated him to a federal judgeship but the Senate had blocked his confirmation. FDR happily agreed to take care of Newton and two weeks later appointed him to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal 200–201 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973). Also see ER, This I Remember 77, and Grace Tully, FDR: My Boss 68.
81. Ed Hill transcript, FDRL.
82. See the correspondence between Charles E. Cropley, clerk of the court, and FDR, February 20, 25, 1933, and Chief Justice Hughes’s reply of February 28, 1933. “I am glad to have the suggestion that you repeat the oath in full instead of saying simply ‘I do,’ ” wrote Hughes. “I think the repetition is the more dignified and appropriate course.” 3 Roosevelt Letters 102–105.
83. The text of the presidential oath, reproduced above, is found in Article II, section 1, of the Constitution.
84. Roosevelt, 2 Public Papers and Addresses 11–16.
85. Frances Perkins int
erview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.
86. Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady 104–105 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980).
87. In the confusion following the inauguration FDR’s family Bible was misplaced, and there was some difficulty finding one for Justice Cardozo. Eventually Chief Usher Ike Hoover located one in the locker of Charles S. Baum, a White House policeman, and it was used to administer the cabinet oaths. The New York Times, March 5, 7, 1933. It required less than thirty minutes for the Senate to unanimously confirm all of Roosevelt’s appointees. No hearings were held.
88. Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth 171, 161 (New York: Doubleday, 1981).
FIFTEEN | One Hundred Days
The epigraph is a remark FDR made at dinner in the White House, March 12, 1933, prior to sending his message to Congress requesting that the Volstead Act (48 Stat. 305) be amended to permit the sale of beer and light wine. Ernest K. Lindley, The Roosevelt Revolution 91 (New York: Viking, 1933).
1. Inaugural address, March 4, 1933. 2 Public Papers and Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt 12, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Random House, 1938).
2. Prior to adoption of the Twentieth (Lame Duck) Amendment in 1933, the new Congress did not convene until late in the year following its election (variably set by statute). The Twentieth Amendment set January 4 as the date for Congress to meet, but it was not yet in effect. The Senate, of course, is a continuing body and is always in session, which explains the confirmation of FDR’s cabinet appointees on March 4.
3. Frances Perkins interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.
4. For the texts of Roosevelt’s proclamations declaring a bank holiday (No. 2039) and the recall of Congress (No. 2038), see 2 Public Papers and Addresses 24–26, 17.
5. Hiram Johnson to his sons, March 12, 1933, Johnson Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
6. John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect 278 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950).
7. Address before the Governors’ Conference at the White House, March 6, 1933. 2 Public Papers and Addresses 18–21.
8. Pledge of Support to the President by the Governors’ Conference, March 6, 1933. Ibid. 21–24.
9. The caucus resolution gave Majority Leader Joseph Robinson authority to convene the caucus “for the purpose of considering any measure recommended by the President and that all Democratic senators shall be bound by vote of the majority of the conference.” The New York Times, March 7, 1933. The prior caucus rule had required a two-thirds vote. In the House of Representatives, it continued to require a two-thirds vote to bind the Democratic caucus.
10. In addition to Huey Long, Senators George McGill of Kansas and Edward Costigan of Colorado voted against. Ibid.
11. Raymond Moley, After Seven Years 151 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939).
12. Ibid. 152. The bills were copies of the national banknote series of 1929 and printed from the same plates. They carried the phrase “National Currency— secured by United States bonds deposited with the Treasurer of the United States of America or by like deposit of other securities.” The New York Times, March 14, 1933.
13. The drafting was largely the work of Walter Wyatt, general counsel of the Federal Reserve Board. Moley, After Seven Years 152.
14. FDR held 337 press conferences during his first term. He scheduled his conferences for 10:00 A.M. Wednesday, and—to give the morning papers a break—4:00 P.M. on Friday. Attendance was limited to the White House press corps. Editors and visiting journalists saw the president separately. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal 224n (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).
15. First Press Conference, March 8, 1933, 2 Public Papers and Addresses 30–38.
16. The New York Times, March 9, 1933.
17. Graham J. White, FDR and the Press 7; Richard Lee Strout, in Katie Louchheim, ed., The Making of the New Deal: The Insiders Speak 13 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). In addition to writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Strout wrote the weekly “TRB” column in The New Republic. Also see Theodore G. Joslin, “President Meets the Press,” Sunday Star (Washington, D.C.), March 4, 1934, reprinted in 2 Public Papers and Addresses 40–45.
18. Liva Baker, The Justice from Beacon Hill 641 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Catherine Drinker Bowen, Yankee from Olympus 414 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1945). Holmes served as a captain of the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, fought at Balls Bluff, Fair Oaks, Malvern Hill, and Antietam, and was wounded three times, twice so seriously that he was given up for dead.
19. Time, March 20, 1933.
20. Holmes to FDR, March 16, 1933, FDRL.
21. Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of the Constitution 517–518 (New York: Henry Holt, 1996). Also see Charles Warren, 1 The Supreme Court in United States History 758–760 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1926).
22. Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Peters (31 U.S.) 515 (1832). Horace Greeley’s gratuitous attribution first appears in volume 1 of his The American Conflict 106 (Hartford, Conn.: O. D. Case, 1864).
23. “Recommendation to the Congress for Legislation to Control Resumption of Banking,” March 9, 1933, 2 Public Papers and Addresses 45–47.
24. The New York Times, March 10, 1933.
25. Ibid.
26. The seven senators to vote against the Emergency Banking Act were William E. Borah (Idaho); Robert Carey (Wyoming); Porter Dale (Vermont); Robert La Follette (Wisconsin); Gerald Nye (North Dakota); Edward Costigan (Colorado); and Henrik Shipstead (Minnesota).
27. Moley, After Seven Years 154. “I shall never forget the look of joy on the faces of [California senators] Hiram Johnson and William McAdoo when I stepped out of Woodin’s office to give them the news,” wrote Moley.
28. The comment was made by FDR to J.F.T. O’Connor, a California lawyer, when he appointed O’Connor comptroller of the currency in May 1933. O’Connor, diary, May 29, 1933.
29. Lindley, Roosevelt Revolution 87–89.
30. The text of FDR’s message is in 2 Public Papers and Addresses 49–51.
31. Enacted March 20, 1933, 48 Stat. 8.
32. Roosevelt acknowledged his debt to McDuffie by appointing him to the U.S. District Court in Alabama the following year.
33. The New York Times, March 11, 1933.
34. “The First Fireside Chat,” March 12, 1933, 2 Public Papers and Addresses 61–66. The initial draft was prepared by Charles Michelson of the Democratic National Committee and was vetted by Hoover’s undersecretary of the Treasury, Arthur Ballantine. FDR took the vetted draft and rewrote it Sunday afternoon, dictating to Grace Tully and putting it into language easily comprehensible to the average citizen. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal 12–13 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958).
35. Will Rogers, Sanity Is Where You Find It 167, Donald Day, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955).
36. Moley, After Seven Years 155. Moley gives credit to Treasury secretary Woodin, whose “imagination and sturdiness and common sense” carried the day.
37. The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 1933; Stimson to FDR, March 14, 1933; Hearst to FDR, n.d. FDRL. The Baker quote is in The New York Times, March 19, 1933.
38. Lindley, Roosevelt Revolution 91.
39. “I recommend to the Congress the passage of legislation for the immediate modification of the Volstead Act, in order to legalize the manufacture and sale of beer and other beverages of such alcoholic content as is permissible under the Constitution; and to provide under such manufacture and sale, by substantial taxes, a proper and much needed revenue for the government.
“I deem action at this time to be of the highest importance.” 2 Public Papers and Addresses 66–67.
40. Third Press Conference, March 15, 1933, ibid. 67–73.
41. The New York Times, March 12, 1933. McDuffie’s decision to demand a roll call was crucial to the passage of the economy act. In caucus (where the proceedings
were secret) a majority of Democrats deserted FDR, but when threatened with having to take a public stand against the president most returned to the fold. Ibid. The quotation is from McDuffie’s ally, Congressman Clifton Woodrum of Virginia. Congressional Record 214, 73d Cong., 1st Sess.
42. FDR, “New Measures to Rescue Agriculture,” March 16, 1933. 2 Public Papers and Addresses 74.
43. “I seek an end to the threatened loss of homes and productive capacity now faced by hundreds of thousands of American farm families.” “A Message Asking for Legislation to Save Farm Mortgages from Foreclosure,” April 3, 1933. Ibid. 100–101.
44. Russell Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa 330 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947).
45. 48 Stat. 31. The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act was Title II of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (48 Stat. 31, 41).
46. FDR’s message to Congress on the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Agency, and the Public Works Administration was March 21, 1933. The securities regulation message was March 29; TVA, April 10; home mortgages, April 13; emergency railroad legislation, May 4, 1933. 2 Public Papers and Addresses 80–83, 93, 122–128, 135, 153–154.
47. Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal 336.
48. Proceedings of the 1932 Democratic National Convention 372–383 (Washington, D.C.: Democratic National Committee, 1932).
49. Moley, After Seven Years 174.
50. Press Conference, March 15, 1933, 2 Public Papers and Addresses 70.
51. FDR, message to Congress, March 21, 1933, ibid. 81.
52. Senate Education and Labor Committee, House Labor Committee, Unemployment Relief: Joint Hearings 46, 69, 73rd Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933).
53. Press Conference, March 22, 1933, 1 Press Conference Transcripts 64–66, FDRL.
54. Green to FDR, September 18, 1933, FDRL.
55. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Education of a General 276–280 (New York: Viking Press, 1963).