by Amity Shlaes
Father Divine’s motives were subtler. He told his followers after the sale that he wanted to use the old mansion to create a “divine, modern, mystic standard of living.” There, men of all creeds and color might work and “be free and never become public charges.” What, a reporter would ask him, did he think of the spat between Roosevelt and Howland? Divine said that he was “not interested in these things.” But Father Divine was interested in moving into Roosevelt’s field of vision. He was working all the time to remind Congress that its tardiness on lynching was the shame of the land. Now, from his property, Roosevelt would have that reminder—he would see Father Divine at work. The newspaper cartoonists jumped on the story, one publishing a map with the “Great White Father,” Roosevelt, on one side of a river, and Father Divine on the other. They relished the contest between FDR and FD.
Shortly after the purchase, in early August, some 2,500 of Father Divine’s followers noisily converged on the Spencer estate, creating, as the Times put it, “two days of jubilation such as this Rip van Winkle country never before saw.” The Roosevelts showed themselves unperturbed: Mrs. Roosevelt wrote in her column that it must “be pleasant to feel that in future this place will be ‘heaven’ to some people, even if it cannot be to its former owner.” Roosevelt said he was confident that the people at Heaven in Ulster County “will be good neighbors.”
The same day that Roosevelt gave his press conference, however, he was likely preoccupied with other news. Not only Mellon, but also Sam Insull was gone—Insull had died suddenly in the Paris métro in July. Roosevelt, though, was still fuming over the failure of Congress to back him on the court-packing plan. In the spring he had sent Ickes, Hopkins, Corcoran, and Cohen to help left-leaning or progressive candidates in several races in the hope that they might unseat conservative Democrats. One of his targets was “Cotton Ed” Smith of South Carolina; Senator Patrick McCarran in Nevada and Senator Millard Tydings in Maryland were two others. Among the group were opponents of anti-lynching legislation. “Roosevelt Followers Who Rate Less than 100% Under Fire,” wrote the Times, quoting senators as describing a “purge.” But the lawmakers were getting renominated.
Germany was sending threatening communiqués about Czechoslovakia, and now Britain was warning that attacking the Czechs would mean another world war. In September, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain concluded an agreement with Hitler at Munich. But most people, including Roosevelt, were aware that Munich might not stop war. In October, German troops occupied the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. A single Czech unit, a lieutenant and his ten men, barricaded themselves in to fight the Germans and die. In London, the pro-German ambassador Joseph Kennedy urged at the annual Trafalgar Day dinner that democracies and dictatorships get along. “I wonder if Joe Kennedy understands the implications,” wrote Frankfurter to Roosevelt.
That autumn also came the midterm elections, followed not only in the United States but through the rest of the world. The Republicans had lost seats in both houses in all four preceding elections—1930, 1932, 1934, and 1936. This time, however, they gained mightily. “Eighty in House, Eight in Senate, Eleven Governors,” announced the Times—not the final count, but still one that told all. The count still favored the Democrats decisively, but made a comeback seem possible to the Grand Old Party. Henry Wallace told the press that “the outstanding conclusion is that people do not like the business depression.” The big story crowded a single-column foreign one: “Berlin Raids Reply to Death of Envoy.” In the days of the U.S. election, Hitler had raided the synagogues and shops of Germany and beaten and killed Jews, in what would later be called “Kristallnacht.”
The extent of the political patronage of 1936 had finally sunk in. So had Roosevelt’s method of operation. Roosevelt might quote Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson had deplored the creation of unnecessary government offices. With their new strength, lawmakers prepared a law that would pass in 1939. The Hatch Act would limit political activities by government employees of the sort that had been so effective in the presidential election. The nation was beginning to know Roosevelt’s pattern. Writer Turner Catledge laid that pattern out in detail: “First there is the early ‘idea’ period, when either the President or some group of his associates hatches the rather rough form of what is to be attempted. Then there is the selling stage, in which the person or the group who thinks up the idea has to ‘sell’ it to the other. There follows in third place the ‘method’ stage when the modus operandi is evolved. Then there comes the final ‘publicity’ stage when the program is announced and the argument is submitted both to Congress and the public in behalf of its adoption.”
The next year, 1939, was a turning point for many old Roosevelt hands. On January 4, Roosevelt phoned Frankfurter to tell him he was nominating him to the Supreme Court—despite an earlier visit by leading Jews who had warned him that Frankfurter on the Court would provoke anti-Semitism. Touched by Roosevelt’s move—and by his disregard for the cowardly Jewish group—Frankfurter was speechless. Later, Frankfurter would pen Roosevelt a letter on Supreme Court stationery: that the gift of the nomination was one he “would rather have had at your hands than at those of any other President barring Lincoln.”
The same month, the Associated Press carried a lengthy story on Casa Grande. Robert Faul, the manager for whom the government had such hopes, had left in a rage. “Quits FSA, Likening Project to Soviet’s,” read the headline. Faul hadn’t gotten along with his government managers, but there were other problems. The collective setup was not overriding other disadvantages, including some it had created. In the first year, Casa Grande had lost $3,069. A water shortage had plagued the settlement; the project planners had anticipated the problem and dug a deep well, but now a nearby Indian reservation was claiming that the water was theirs, and Casa Grande had not been able to use it.
What’s more, the farmers found themselves railing at being treated like shift workers and had fought back against Faul. The farmstead feel of farming, the farmer and his own land, was missing. Factions formed: Okies challenged farmers who had arrived earlier. In nearby towns like Florence and Coolidge, public opinion began turning against Casa Grande. The more the farmers in Pinal County thought about the Casa Grande concept, the more it did not make sense to them. As in the case of the Schechters, poultry was a source of tension. Poultry, along with dairy, had lost money the first year. A visiting economist asked a struggling farmer near Casa Grande what he thought of the cooperative poultry coops. “It’s all right, I guess,” he would say. “But the thing I can’t figure out is how a man tells his own chickens apart, runnin’ them all together like they do there.”
The people of Coolidge and Florence “kidded the settlers about being ‘reds’ when they met them in the gasoline stations, over the counters and in the barber shops,” wrote a social scientist who documented the period later. The settlers, many of whom were not politically oriented, felt demeaned. “You know how it feels when first one person then another asks you if you’re sick and tells you you look pretty bad? After a while you begin to think you’re sick as hell and maybe going to die. Well, that’s what happened to Casa Grande.”
Even as Casa Grande was faltering, however, Bill Wilson’s community was finding its feet. Now there were meetings, both in Akron and New York; even when Bill was not present, the principles—alcoholism was a disease, alcoholics could form a voluntary community to help one another—seemed to be working. In January Wilson sent four hundred copies of The Big Book out to interested parties, truly wanting the movement book to be a collaborative effort. He was getting the feeling the book was powerful; at least two people had found a way to recovery after reading the unpublished draft. On June 25, the New York Times published a review of his book, now officially titled Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a rave: “Lest the title should arouse the risibles in any reader,” wrote the reviewer, “let me state that the general thesis of Alcoholics Anonymous is more soundly based psychologically than any other treatment of the subject I
have ever come upon.”
But Europe again was intruding. Hitler threatened the Jewish population in a speech at the Reichstag, signaling that there would be no letup after Kristallnacht. The pollster George Gallup noticed that public opinion was shifting: “A majority of Americans are now in favor of doing exactly what the Neutrality Act forbids”—supplying Europe with arms or food. In a March 1939 poll, 76 percent of those polled responded yes to the question: “In case war breaks out, should we sell Britain and France food supplies?” In April that share became 82 percent. Gallup was also doing work on relief payments for the poor, and here, the attitude was shifting as well. Two in three Americans favored returning relief administration to the states, and taking it away from Washington. Eighty-four percent believed that politics colored the administration of relief payments.
Meanwhile, Father Divine pressed closer to Roosevelt. As the 700-acre Vanderbilt estate just to the north of the Roosevelts was among the many large properties in the United States for sale, Father Divine would propose to buy the mansion, Corinthian columns and all, and its grounds. The real estate agent, a firm called Previews, publicly put Father Divine off, saying, “On the face this rumor is absurd. Properties marketed through Previews are always offered with full consideration for neighborhood standard and welfare.” A singing group like Father Divine’s—nearly all black—was not welcome in Dutchess County. “The mere submission of an offer by Father Divine is no indication that it will be considered,” the firm said. But it was the White House, not the realtor, whom Father Divine was addressing—and in correspondence as formal as Andrew Mellon’s missive. A letter would go to Mrs. Roosevelt, a telegram to the president:
Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Hyde Park,
New York
With respect and appreciation of your many humanitarian efforts and your very democratic administration in Washington, I wire you as a matter of courtesy to ascertain your views on a matter which intimately concerns your Hyde Park home. I wrote Mrs. Roosevelt at Washington yesterday, but waited to communicate with you until I had record of your whereabouts.
My followers wish to purchase the Vanderbilt estate at Hyde Park as a private residence for me and my staff and a place where I can receive distinguished guests. As this is very near your estate, I have withheld my approval of the plan until I could consult you. I would not for a moment wish to embarrass you or your friends in the least. Would you be so kind as to let me know whether or not it would be pleasing to you for this property to be used for such a purpose. I should appreciate a frank statement immediately if convenient.
Peace.
Rev. M.J. DIVINE
(Father Divine)
It was Mrs. Roosevelt who was the first to respond, on August 12. “My dear Father Divine,” she wrote. “I have talked with the President in regard to your letter and your telegram to him, and he is writing you, telling you that there can be no reason against any citizen of our country buying such property as he wishes to acquire.” But the president, she said, was also writing, in part to let Father Divine know that the Vanderbilt estate had a special feature, its arboretum, remarkable in the rarity of its trees. “For some time,” therefore, she noted, the president had been “trying to interest some public or quasi public body in the acquisition” of the estate. Steve Early, the president’s press spokesman, sent a similar, but more detailed, letter.
By this time, however, the Roosevelts were deeply distracted. Just as blacks feared, war again was postponing civil rights action. And within days of the Divine letter came the biggest news of the year, that Stalin had signed a nonaggression agreement with Hitler. Germany had immediately attacked Poland. The old English and American Left felt shock yet again; yet again, there was a reevaluation of the 1930s. W. H. Auden would capture the disillusionment in verse:
The clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade
Roger Baldwin was on the beach at Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard when he learned of the news. “I think it was the biggest shock of my life. I never was shaken up by anything as I was by that pact—by the fact those two powers had got together at the expense of the democracies.” He reflected—perhaps recalling what Emma Goldman had written him upon reading Liberty under the Soviets in the late 1920s—“I frankly admit that people as naïve as you are hopeless. They see the world and the struggle through romantic rosy eyes as the young innocent girl sees the first man she loves.” Baldwin would now determine to change the ACLU and clear its board of people who supported undemocratic regimes—or were affiliated with an entity that was not democratic, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Communist Party. In an intense search of his soul, Baldwin was realizing that his institution must alter its premises to function.
Willkie was also changing. Just a week before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, he and David Lilienthal had finally signed off on the transfer of the Tennessee Electric Power Company to the TVA. “Tennessee, sixth floor,” the elevator boys called out to the crowd arriving for the transaction at the First National Bank of the City of New York. Lilienthal, in a pin-striped suit and checked red tie, was all seriousness. Willkie, always the good sport, put a good face on the handover check of $44,728,300 at the ceremony. In his remarks he made it clear that Americans should be wary about this deal. Stockholders might do all right—that was what Lilienthal was emphasizing—but what did the trend mean for the utilities customer? That was less obvious. The Dow’s utilities index stood in the lower 20s, lower than during Ashwander. “We sell these properties with regret,” he told the papers. And he issued a statement—in turn provoking Lilienthal—reminding the public that the New Dealers and the TVA had forced the sale on Commonwealth and Southern. Later, he would debate Felix Frankfurter, at the Harvard Club. He headed up to Irita’s in West Cornwall afterward to show off the check.
But Willkie also felt relieved about the sale, because it gave him a chance to move on to broader projects. He thought about the articles he was now writing, which ranged far beyond the power issue. Over the weekend he and Edith headed to Saugatuck Harbor to visit Russell Davenport, an editor at Fortune, and his wife. Smoking furiously, Willkie talked about everything under the sun with Davenport. Davenport was also concerned with the future of liberalism—in fact, at Yale he had organized a Liberal Club. Though they had come together over the utilities question, now much of the talk was about Europe. Maybe it was time to start moving the Republican Party away from the isolationists. The pair also discussed the possibility of Willkie, a Democratic businessman, running for the presidency. It seemed unlikely—unless, conceivably, the convention delegates were divided.
Whatever was coming next, Willkie was confident about it. Like Bill W., he was groping for a new format, a way to rally countrymen so that they could find courage. In June, he had published an article in the Atlantic Monthly. “Brace Up, America,” Willkie exhorted. Maybe he could build a campaign around that. If Americans could revive their old sense of economic liberty, not much could stop them. Joblessness was drifting downward, back toward the levels of the election of 1936. American business was waiting for an excuse to recover; even the bitter peace that Willkie and Lilienthal had concluded seemed to provide such a one. That autumn, Willkie finally registered as a Republican, telling Edith, “Well, I’ve done it.”
Father Divine also would not be put off. His followers would proceed, he wrote to Roosevelt, in the purchase of the Vanderbilt estate. And he would advise them “to use the property as described by you,” allowing the ground floor as a public museum. Nonetheless, Mrs. James Laurens van Alen, the seller, blocked the transaction, announcing she had no intention of selling to Father Divine. The next news in the papers of the story would come in February 1940, when the president disclosed that the federal government had plans to acquire the Vanderbilt property, allowing the public to enjoy both the trees and the architecture of the mansion. Mrs. van Alen would give the property to the government.
Father Divine would not stop his real
estate dreaming—he bought a fifty-room mansion in New York, and inquired about a property in Newport. And Bill Wilson persisted. Still, Father Divine’s peace movement looked increasingly out of place; his followers would in coming years be arrested for failing to report to the draft board. Bill Wilson too found his attention altered by the war. He had served as a soldier at the end of World War I. Within two years, he would be trying to reenlist—though he was too old for combat, he would go to the trouble of collecting a recommendation from a colonel to serve at the army’s quartermaster depot in Philadelphia.
Though these events were in the future, the change was already clear. In March 1940 the columnist Arthur Krock would pen an essay about the eighth anniversary of the New Deal. But the article was not about the alphabet agencies, or the rages of Jimmy Warburg, or the Supreme Court: “Foreign Problem Uppermost,” it read.
15
willkie’s wager
January 1940
Unemployment (year): 14.6 percent
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 151
ONE WINTER NIGHT IN EARLY 1940 a twenty-eight-year-old named Oren Root went to hear Herbert Hoover speak to the Young Republican Club of New York. Root was the grand-nephew of Elihu Root, who had served as William McKinley’s secretary of war and Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of war and state. He lived with his parents and worked on Wall Street as a junior lawyer. Like his ancestor, Root was preoccupied with international events. Germany had invaded Poland a few months before, and now reports of civilian murder, torture, and flogging in the former republic were coming almost routinely. The issue of the hour was what the United States could do to stop a European war.