Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  19: The Election of 1936

  ER dreaded the first campaign season since 1911 without the emotional support of Louis Howe. Fully aware that the people now around FDR wanted her to recede into the background, to say little or nothing on the campaign trail, she tried to abide by their idea of a winning strategy. As early as February she told her press conference, “I am not making any campaign speeches.” Firmly, she rejected political questions about the future, and announced that during the campaign all her public or paid lectures would be “made on a non-partisan basis.”

  But she could not do it. Every word, every column, carried political messages. Reaching out, acting on her sense of responsibility in hard times, was for her a basic instinct and an emotional need. She might forever deny that she was “political,” but she was determined to fight for her goals.

  No matter how embattled she became, ER always paused to notice and give thanks for the splendors of the natural world. Each sunrise was a miracle, each sunset a mystery. From the roll of the fog off the sea in Campobello to the curl of her favorite apricot-colored roses, the wonders of earth’s changes in each season were at the core of her political ethic. Her anguish at the ravages of poverty, the cruelties of dictators, was in direct proportion to her spiritual sense of gratitude while riding through the woods or walking along the shore.

  Often her columns reflected the unity of her vision. During the first days of summer, for example, she wrote of a visit to Elinor Morgenthau’s farm. They went into the field to see “four of the most enchanting colts.” ER recognized “something appealing in all young animals, but a colt with its long legs and confiding ways, is somehow particularly attractive.”

  When ER saw “a very large bull lying on the ground,” she asked Morgenthau if it was “well-behaved.”

  “No, it is extremely vicious,” she replied. But it had fought with another bull, and now could hardly move.

  That reference to vicious uncontrollable behavior led ER to discuss Dorothy Thompson’s powerful column exploring the hate-filled, mendacious political climate that defined the campaign season in 1936. Thompson had asked: “Who is to blame? You and I are to blame.” There are so many “things we tolerate and know are untrue.” ER wished Thompson’s “message could get across to thousands of citizens. She is right—we are to blame for much of the bigotry, ignorance and vice in this country because so few of us think it necessary to do more than keep quiet.”

  ER had long understood that activism helped her forestall depression, and now she was urged to keep quiet. In the summer of 1936, ER felt vulnerable, lonely, and alone. Howe was gone, Cook and Dickerman were no longer friends, and it was the first summer since 1932 that she spent entirely without Lorena Hickok. Although they corresponded, Hick remained in the Middle West with various friends, Jeannette Bryce, Adel Enright, and especially Alix Holt.

  ER wrote often, as she did on 1 June: “I miss you badly, and love you much.” But Hick refused to alter her plans, even when ER asked her to. She was mystified that in Chicago, with Hick so nearby at a Minnesota lake, they would not see each other.

  While Hick was with Jeanette touring the Minnesota lake country and then with Alix in Michigan, ER was on the campaign trail in the South. Despite the Talmadges and bigots, the South seemed vigorous for Roosevelt. FDR “purrs like a cat under the enthusiasm and friendly welcomes….” But ER wearied “of cheering crowds” and wrote that she would “like them less if they booed but I’d be more interested!”

  Her agreement to stand beside her husband, circumspect and speechless, combined with the unrelenting pace of the campaign train and a stunning heat wave, drained ER’s spirits. She spent hours on the train “fantasizing about the peace and quiet” she would have when the campaign ended. Initially, she boasted: “I can stand this pace but the others break down.” Tommy was “really exhausted.” Eventually, even ER’s “head [felt] odd with the heat!”

  ER dismissed the Republican platform as “the same old bunk.” She hoped theirs would not be “so long,” although she knew it was “foolish to hope it will be any less ‘bunk-ish.’ ” She sent Hick an article by Bruce Barton about ER and the Dionne quintuplets, which “will amuse you!” But she rejected its premise: “Won’t it be a surprise to them all when I sink info peace and obscurity!”

  According to Barton:

  The quintuplets should be kept together, carefully nurtured, and educated in writing for the newspapers, traveling around the country and talking on the radio. At the age of sixteen they should be brought to the United States [from Canada] and put in training to become the wife of a future President of the U.S. No one woman ever can stand the pace that has been set by Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Future Presidents will have to have five wives at least. It will be an advantage to have them all look alike; four can be recuperating while the fifth is out doing her stuff. Even for five, it will be a tough assignment.

  On ER’s return to New York on the 18th she found several letters from Hick, and a wire—all now lost. In reply, ER was aggravated by Hick’s “decision not to come home till September. Are you taking the absent treatment because it helps? If so I won’t say a word—Otherwise, I should say sometimes too much conscience is an unpleasant thing! Well, dear it is for you to decide for you are the one who suffers and I just enjoy what I can have and learned long ago to accept what had to be—.”

  Hick evidently dealt with her own disappointment about having no journalist’s role during a presidential campaign by becoming involved with two other women who were in competition for her affections. Although most of Hick’s correspondence is lost, Alix Holt’s 14 June letter to Hick sheds light on the situation:

  Carissima, what did I say that made you imagine I think you quite perfect and love you for that reason? Truly, you flatter yourself! Aren’t we a bit absurd, thinking about the why and wherefore and how of this friendship of ours? And I’m afraid I started it. Anyway, in spite of your being “hollow” and my being “stupid,” we still seem to be fond of each other, and probably shall continue to be. I suspect I shall love you as long as you do me, at least, and perhaps a little bit longer. When do you suppose we shall begin to take each other for granted, as we do our other friends? I think we had better try, don’t you? But, darling, I’m glad to know you really need me. And I do you.

  ER had no intention of losing this particular battle. And she did not lose it. After Hick’s June week with her, Alicent Holt virtually disappeared from the game of hearts. With stoic patience, ER waded through the moment—which lasted all summer.

  As always, she sent Hick daily letters, and detailed the doings at Val-Kill, which began to resemble a three-ring circus. Earl and Roberta and Tommy and Henry and many grandchildren were in ER’s new home. They played croquet, sat around the garden, swam in the pool, prepared hot dogs at the still-shared fireplace, all of which upset Nan and Marion. Val-Kill, once an idyllic retreat, was now under a growing cloud of tension, threatening and unpleasant. In the midst of all her company ER longed for Hick, her only trusted confidante when it came to Democratic politics and her personal feelings about FDR.

  On 22 June, ER went to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to honor Alice Hamilton for her pioneering work on industrial health and occupational diseases. The evening gave ER perspective about her own private anguish:

  [Dr. Hamilton] is such a dear. So gentle and unassuming and yet look what she’s done! A lesson to most of us who think we have to assert ourselves to be useful and particularly good for me as I was feeling rather annoyed with FDR. Nothing unusual just a little feeling on his part that he was abused because I didn’t cooperate with his plans about Hyde Park when I wasn’t asked at the time to sit in or express an idea! Then my pride was injured at his perfect forgetfulness of part of a political suggestion I had made on the train and I was annoyed until I realized tonight how small it all was sitting by the sweet-faced woman who has probably given the impetus to workman’s compensation and research into industrial diseas
e and saved countless lives and heartbreaks!

  On the way home, ER stopped at Alderson Prison for Women “and saw two faces which haunt me. Gosh! We might any one of us be there.” She noted, “Tommy is weary in body, and I’m weary in mind.”

  ER listened on the radio to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. The platform was being debated, and it seemed “to be going smoothly,” although at dinner FDR seemed worried and tired. In another room, Sam Rosenman, Stanley High, Ray Moley, and Tom Cochran all worked on FDR’s acceptance speech. ER concluded her letter with an ambiguous promise:

  Goodnight dear, and bless you. Do what you think is right this summer and I’ll meet you wherever you wish whenever I can but remember I am going to do a paid speaking tour beginning November 9th till I have to go for Thanksgiving to Warm Springs. Part of October I may be on a trip with FDR and part of September I’ll be helping Earl settle his house….

  During the June convention, while her closest political friends set off for Philadelphia, ER sat at home with nothing to do. Dewson invited ER to speak at one of the daily women’s breakfasts where all the steam for the campaign of 1936 was being generated. Each morning women from every region introduced their needs, and new strategies were forged. Molly Dewson planned these big breakfast rallies to guarantee an enthusiastic campaign—only the women could provide Democratic unity.

  ER was sorry to write Dewson that while she “would love to be at a breakfast,” it was her political obligation to stay away from the preliminaries and arrive with FDR for his acceptance speech. “Otherwise, I might get myself into trouble!” She wrote about the preliminary festivities from a great distance:

  The magnolias out of my window are in bloom and they look beautiful at night. I listened [to the convention] to the bitter end last night and wondered if in 1783 they whooped it up so much. It seems undignified and meaningless but perhaps we need it!

  The Democratic women considered ER their leader. Even Frances Perkins, who was closer to the president, considered ER the heart of the Democratic women’s movement. At one breakfast, “the loudest cheers” arose when Perkins departed from her prepared speech to pay tribute to the First Lady. According to The New York Times, Perkins celebrated ER with “deep feeling”:

  I want to speak of a prominent woman Democrat who is not here. She is kept away by convention—not political, but social convention, although she is not a woman to be bound by convention.

  Her genius is the capacity to love the human race and to hear and understand the misery and wants and aspirations of people….

  If ever there was a gallant and courageous and intelligent and wise woman, she is one.

  I know that many women … when they go to vote in November for Franklin Roosevelt will be thinking with a choke in their throats of Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Upon Perkins’s last words, a spontaneous demonstration of prolonged enthusiasm erupted throughout the ballroom.

  Although male politicians ignored the vigorous and important work done by the Women’s Committee, ER and Dewson had organized many aspects of the convention, and the women’s famous “rainbow flyers” explaining and celebrating New Deal achievements were on every seat.

  Bess Furman reported the convention was a “dull dish,” predictable and routine from the “masculine viewpoint.” But in terms of the women, “Philadelphia made history.” More women were in attendance than ever, and Molly Dewson’s committee demonstrated a “New Deal woman’s movement of impressive proportions.” However dramatic and inspiring the women’s movement, “it was so ignored by [male] politicians that it might as well have been underground.”

  Four years of patient organizing by Molly Dewson and the other stalwarts of ER’s inner circle had resulted in a convention represented by 219 women delegates and 302 women alternates. More than five hundred women “surged through Molly’s huge mezzanine-floor headquarters.”

  Women, led by ER, had long understood that space was symbolic. At Philadelphia, the Women’s Division headquarters were as large as Jim Farley’s “big reception room” combined with vice president Garner’s headquarters and Charley Michelson’s publicity room. It was, Dewson promised, only the beginning. M. W. (“More Women”) Dewson would not rest “until women permeate the party on a 50–50 basis.”

  Daisy Harriman was “enchanted.” There were three times more Democratic women in Philadelphia than there were Republican women in Ohio. “I must dash right over and tell Alice Longworth!” When Furman asked Harriman how she managed her lifelong friendship with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the future minister to Norway replied: “Oh, we’ve had the most interesting time. We never fight.”

  Harriman cited a recent dinner where she had been the lone Democrat among Republican leaders, all of whom attacked FDR and the New Deal the entire evening. As Daisy Harriman left, Alice Longworth said: “You can’t have had such a nice time.”

  “Quite the contrary” Harriman replied: “I thought I was right back in 1907. It was just the way Wall Street talked about your father.”

  For ER the campaign was in the details. As chair of the first women’s platform committee in 1924, ER had been insulted, excluded from final policy meetings. Her progressive platform, worked up with the advice of her social work mentors, had been discarded. In contrast to that bleak time when ER, Caroline O’Day, and Elinor Morgenthau patiently sat outside the closed platform committee door, shunned and snubbed by the party leaders, who never allowed them to present the platform they had been asked to prepare, Dew-son’s team of fourteen platform writers was given time and consideration. And it resembled, almost plank by plank, the platform ER and her associates had prepared in 1924: the eight-hour day, conservation of public lands, labor’s right to bargain collectively, a federal employment agency, equal pay for equal work, federal aid for maternal and child health, child welfare, education to eliminate venereal disease, an end to vigilante violence.

  In 1924, “vigilante violence” referred to the reemergence of Ku Klux Klan and Red Scare terror that followed World War I. In 1936 it was again a political factor, with lynchings and anti-union violence everywhere on the rise.

  Caroline O’Day presented the women’s platform, and proposals to change the convention rules to provide two representatives from each state (a man and a woman) on the platform committee. But real party equity remained elusive. Despite the unprecedented number of women delegates and Dewson’s many triumphs, their male allies treated women shabbily.*

  Dewson had expected to be appointed vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee. She assumed she had the support of Farley, Flynn, and FDR. But at the last moment she was betrayed and Farley supported her archrival, Emma Guffey Miller. Astounded, Dewson wrote Farley: “I go to your defense with loyalty and ardor practically every day…. The few times I have disagreed with you I have told you and no one else except Mrs. Roosevelt to whom I feel primarily responsible.”

  Sister of Pennsylvania’s Senator Joe Guffey, Emma Guffey Miller was an ardent Democrat with clout. Jim Farley replied: “Molly, I can’t help it. Senator Guffey is using such pressure on me.” Dewson gave Farley an alternative: Appoint as many women vice-chairs as there were men, and Guffey could be one of them. He agreed, but men clung to their dominance: Farley appointed eight women, then added two men.

  Although women were used to get out the vote, they continued to be excluded from policy meetings, and were generally ignored by FDR’s inner circle. In the past, Louis Howe was their bridge to power, and he made sure FDR complimented their work. That task was now left to ER, even while she herself was made to feel less and less part of the campaign. If some of the men listened to her views out of courtesy or consideration, many others merely gazed in her direction when she offered a suggestion and, without the dignity of a reply of any kind, continued their conversation as if she had not even spoken. It was an old and lingering trick; women got used to it. When they persevered, as ER did, they were called strident.

  On Saturday, 27 June, ER accompani
ed FDR to Philadelphia for his acceptance speech. The huge outdoor stadium was filled with anticipation and ebullience. Eager Democrats had waited five days for this moment. Over 100,000 people had assembled by seven o’clock, and it had rained all evening. Their feet muddy, their clothes wet, they cheered and sang through warm evening mists, and one significant downpour.

  It was the largest political rally in U.S. history. The waiting crowd had been roused by soprano Lily Pons, several bands, Eddie Peabody’s banjo, and Tchaikovsky played by the Philadelphia Symphony conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Most reporters, including Bess Furman, assembled at five o’clock, were soaked to the skin, and took bets on whether FDR’s fabled weather magic would be repeated on this unlikely night. Then, just as he appeared, the rains stopped; a half-full moon glowed brightly, and the wind grew still.

  FDR’s car arrived at ten o’clock, as vice president John Garner completed his lackluster acceptance speech. The orchestra played “Hail to the Chief” as FDR walked on his son James’s arm to the rostrum. But he was interrupted by the “most frightful five minutes of my life.” It was a moment which demonstrated the complexities and triumphs of FDR’s character.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger reported the scene: In “the blur of faces,” FDR recognized illustrious poet Edward Markham, and waved. As the eighty-four-year-old poet went to shake FDR’s hand, the crowd surged forward and the president was jostled. “Under the pressure,” his right steel brace “snapped out of position,” and FDR toppled over. “Mike Reilly of the Secret Service dived and caught him… just before he hit the ground.”

  But pages of his speech fell into the mud. While Jim Farley and “other tall men clustered around to hide the scene,” Gus Gennerich knelt and snapped the brace back. “Reilly, fearing that some Secret Service man might shoot down the white-bearded stranger in the confusion, shouted frantically to Markham, ‘Don’t move!’