Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century

by Alonzo L. Hamby

  The Roosevelts who moved to Albany at the beginning of 1929 were empty nesters. Anna had married three and a half years earlier and given her parents their first grandchild, a daughter born in 1927. James, a junior at Harvard, was prominent in class activities, an indifferent student, and secretly engaged to Betsy Cushing, the lovely daughter of a prominent surgeon; they would wed in June 1930. Elliott was in his final year at Groton, Franklin Jr. was in the third form there, and John was in the first.

  A quarter century later, Eleanor recalled the Governor’s Mansion as “a very nice old home” located in a once fashionable part of Albany that had become an Italian working-class district. During the hot summer the residents held “frequent, long, and noisy” festivals. Eleanor and Franklin spent holidays and as many weekends as possible at Hyde Park. Each Christmas season, they continued Al Smith’s custom of hosting a party for the children of a nearby orphanage. Each January, Louis Howe scripted an elaborate birthday celebration for Franklin, complete with costumed theatrical skits.8

  Roosevelt found the governorship fun, but the position also had a frightening side. That April, postal authorities intercepted a lethal explosive device addressed to him. One wonders if the thought crossed his mind that the Palmer bomb ten years earlier might have been intended as the Roosevelt bomb. Just days later, an arsonist, who was never apprehended, burned to the ground a luxurious new mansion built by his son-in-law, Curtis Dall, in Westchester County, New York. Prominence produced resentment as well as admiration; charisma bred hatred as well as devotion.9

  Eleanor transformed the position of First Lady, minimizing its purely ceremonial duties while maximizing its public policy possibilities. She held as few teas and receptions as possible and acted as a behind-the-scenes adviser to her husband. She also continued almost all of her previous activities: teaching at the Todhunter School three days each week, delivering speeches and radio talks, publishing magazine articles, maintaining her activities in reform organizations, and solidifying her status as the most important woman in the New York Democratic Party.

  Sometimes her causes spelled trouble for Franklin. Few New York Democrats were enthusiastic about Prohibition; yet Eleanor appeared publicly at meetings of “dry” prohibitionist organizations. Franklin countered with his own carefully crafted image as “moderately damp.”

  A far more combustible debate—one on which Eleanor, perhaps due to her own experience, gave little ground—surrounded birth control, an issue fundamental to feminists, important to many Protestant and Jewish social reformers, and sacrilegious to Roman Catholics. An early scare in Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign for the presidency would involve his receipt of a letter warning that influential “radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin was planning a broadcast that would denounce Eleanor for allegedly preparing a book advocating birth control. Coughlin, based in Detroit, preached coast to coast every Sunday on a nationwide network, mixed politics with his religious message, and had millions of followers. A gubernatorial missive to the good father assured him that the story was false and concluded, “I do hope if you come East you will stop off in Albany to see me. I want to talk with you about many things.” A personal meeting shortly afterward apparently mollified Coughlin.10

  Eleanor developed a fond relationship with her state trooper bodyguard, Earl Miller, a tall, handsome man with the lethal fists of a champion amateur boxer. A dozen years younger than his charge, Miller possessed a roughhewn charm and take-charge practicality epitomized on the silver screen by the young Clark Gable. A ladies’ man never quite able to settle down with one woman, he would marry and divorce three times.11

  Miller was a constant presence in Eleanor’s private life for a time, whether teaching her how to dive into a swimming pool or use a firearm. (In later years, Eleanor often carried a loaded revolver in her purse when she traveled alone.) Their relationship was affectionate; whether it was motherly, sisterly, or romantic remains speculative. It quickly became the subject of widespread gossip. When the Roosevelts moved to Washington in 1933, Miller stayed behind, but Eleanor still saw him frequently.

  However separate Eleanor’s career might be, it was irretrievably linked to Franklin’s. Their social outlooks and policy objectives were nearly identical, differing only in the priority he attached to his sense of the politically possible. Her husband valued her thoughts, especially as he put together a staff for his administration.

  Both soon realized that the most critical issue he faced was the assumed continuance of Smith lieutenants—and, indirectly, of Smith himself—in positions of power. Smith actually reserved a hotel suite in Albany with the clear intention of remaining a not-so-behind-the-scenes presence at the highest levels of state government. He did not fathom the hard inner core that lay at the center of Roosevelt’s superficially lightweight persona.

  Two of Smith’s appointment suggestions were especially telling. He recommended Robert Moses, an overbearing aggregator of power, as secretary of state. As chair of the Long Island State Park Commission and the State Council of Parks, Moses had already established himself as a maestro of public works, constructing magnificent parks interlaced with broad expressways. Partly because he had dismissed Roosevelt’s proposal for a Taconic state park/parkway system between Dutchess County and New York City, the new governor heartily disliked him. Eleanor concurred. Franklin instead appointed Edward Flynn, the Bronx Democratic leader who had played a key role in his campaign. The selection had much merit; it also signified both Roosevelts’ preference for an Irish politician with, as Eleanor remarked many years later, “a very intellectual side.” Flynn would continue his leadership of the Bronx Democratic Party and serve as Roosevelt’s primary political representative in New York City, thereby establishing a degree of separation between the governor and Manhattan’s Tammany machine.12

  The other nominee, even dearer to Smith, was Belle Moskowitz, a remarkable social worker and political activist who had become Smith’s political manager, speechwriter, and major adviser. Influential social worker and Democratic activist Frances Perkins recalled her as “vigorous and domineering”; Eleanor thought her “ruthless.” Tough and manipulative, Belle was to the outgoing governor what Louis Howe had long been to Roosevelt. Working with Smith, she had been the state’s most powerful female Democrat. Smith recommended her appointment as secretary (chief aide) to the governor and handed him a Moskowitz-composed draft of an inaugural address.13

  Eleanor was wary from the start. “Don’t let Mrs. M. get draped around you,” she wrote to Franklin. “It will always be one for you and two for Al.” Louis Howe gave his chief the same message. Roosevelt, displaying what would become an administrative characteristic, delayed as long as possible. Finally, the day before his inauguration, he told Smith he was going to appoint as his secretary a political nonentity named Guernsey Cross. “You know I need a great, big strong man as secretary. I need someone whom I can lean on physically, if necessary, and I think it will be better, Al.”14

  Smith, stunned by the confident independence of an associate he had considered little more than a playboy with a gift for public speaking, suddenly found himself an outsider of scant influence dealing with an improbable man of power. Thus began a personal alienation that would become political and ideological.

  Louis Howe continued as Roosevelt’s number one. He would spend most of the next four years in New York City at the Roosevelt town house, promoting the governor’s presidential ambitions. He came up to Albany once a week for a day or two of conferences with his boss and stayed in a Governor’s Mansion guest room set aside for his use.15

  Missy LeHand remained as close to Roosevelt as ever. To assist her, he chose Grace Tully, an attractive young convent-educated woman who had been secretary to the Catholic cardinal of New York before being released to work with Eleanor on Smith’s presidential campaign. Efficient and discreet, she moved seamlessly into the office. Lieutenant Governor Herbert Lehman, son of a founder of the Leh
man Brothers investment firm, was a Jewish patrician with a strong sense of public duty, deeply held progressive principles, and considerable executive talent. Capable and not hesitant to assume responsibility, he was happy to serve as, in Roosevelt’s words, a “good right arm”; he was certainly perceptive enough to know he was establishing himself as the probable successor in Albany.

  As industrial commissioner, a cabinet-level office concerned with labor relations and working conditions, the new governor picked Frances Perkins, whom he had known slightly in 1911 and 1912 as a member of the legislature. An effective and loyal member of Smith’s state industrial commission, she had been a noted advocate of protective legislation for workers. Eleanor backed her strongly, although the two women were never personally close. Perkins herself considered Roosevelt a transformed personality who had cast off the arrogance and superficiality of his years in the legislature. Polio, she believed, had brought depth to his character and given him sympathy for the trials of ordinary people. She would be a mainstay of his administration.16

  To address the problems of New York farmers, Roosevelt tapped his friend Henry Morgenthau Jr. The son of an eminent New York businessman, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the proprietor of a large farm in Dutchess County. His wife, Elinor, was one of Eleanor’s closest friends. A “gentleman farmer” and publisher of a regional weekly magazine, The American Agriculturist, Morgenthau possessed a deep and genuine interest in agricultural science and the problems of farming as a vocation. Ten years younger than Roosevelt, he admired the governor enormously. Roosevelt, perhaps inspired by the memory of Uncle Ted’s presidential Country Life Commission, made him chair of an Agricultural Advisory Commission charged with developing a program to assist New York farmers.

  As counsel to the governor, Roosevelt picked Samuel I. Rosenman. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Rosenman was an American success story. A star student in the New York City schools and at Columbia University, he had served in the army during World War I, graduated from Columbia Law School, established a practice, and won election to five one-year terms in the state assembly. Assigned to the Roosevelt campaign in 1928, he displayed quiet competence, sound judgment, capacity for hard work, and proficiency as a speechwriter. He would spend much of the next decade and a half in the service of his new boss.

  Roosevelt inherited as a political manager James A. Farley, secretary to the state Democratic committee and its chairman after 1930. A popular presence and a superb political tactician unencumbered by ideology, Farley had built his life largely around Democratic politics. He would remark to an associate some years later, “After my country, my family, and my church, my party comes next.”17

  Roosevelt’s inauguration on January 1, 1929, took place in an atmosphere of amiable celebration. Sketching in general terms the progressive program he had espoused in the campaign, he disavowed mindless partisanship and called for a new “era of good feelings” in state politics. That sentiment quickly collided with reality. The new governor faced a Republican legislature inclined toward the traditional mission of the opposition—to oppose. He knew from the start that he faced a brawl and went at it determined to establish himself as a tough and effective chief executive.18

  Smith had bequeathed to his successor new “executive budget” procedures that gave the governor responsibility for presenting and enforcing a unified state spending plan. The process was very much in keeping with the early-twentieth-century progressive bias toward orderly, “scientific” public management and in line with Roosevelt’s advocacy, as assistant secretary of the navy, of similar procedures for the national government. Arcane and remote to most citizens, the budget issue spoke to perhaps the most perennial conflict in popular government: the struggle between the legislature and the executive for control of expenditures and the accompanying political power.

  The legislature inserted provisions in its appropriation bills that effectively gave its majority leaders a veto over gubernatorial discretion. Roosevelt, bypassing his Republican attorney general, appointed a special counsel to mount a legal challenge. In October 1929, the state’s highest judicial body, the Court of Appeals, issued a decision that largely upheld the governor’s position. Declaring that the court had vindicated a “sacred time-honored American principle,” he had demonstrated that he was not a chief executive to trifle with.19

  No large public issue was more important to Roosevelt than public control of the state’s hydroelectric sources. Tactically, the issue united Democratic and Republican progressives, enhancing the political coalition he wanted to build. He also thought that breaking the private corporate stranglehold on electricity distribution was a moral imperative.20

  By 1929, electricity was available in all cities and many smaller towns throughout the nation. It still had not penetrated far into the countryside, where widely separated farmhouses and low rural incomes presented private utility companies with daunting economic prospects and consumers with high rates. A source of energy for lights, refrigerators, washing machines, radios, phonographs, and other conveniences, electricity had changed the quality of life for a majority of Americans.

  Those without it felt dispossessed. Those who enjoyed its benefits received them from a franchised monopoly and found it easy to believe they were being overcharged. In an age of widespread corporate mergers, the large electric utilities presented progressive politicians with a big, visible target. Roosevelt was surely aware of the political implications of a power policy that, in addition to burnishing his progressive credentials, would connect him with both urban consumers and farmers. All the same a sincere faith in public power seems to have motivated him at least as much as political opportunism.

  In his inaugural address and first message to the legislature, the new governor made clear his belief that New York waterpower resources “should belong to all the people.” In a Forum magazine article at the end of 1929, he asserted that public hydroelectric power could provide a “yardstick” for the regulation of private utility rates. He forced the resignation of the chairman of the state Public Service Commission under threat of impeachment for pro-corporation bias, denounced rate increases, and vainly attempted to block a J. P. Morgan–financed merger of the state’s three largest electric utilities. He and his utility advisers, all unabashed supporters of public electricity, frequently cited the low rates charged by the socialized electrical authority of the neighboring Canadian province of Ontario. Franklin also advocated shared Canadian-American St. Lawrence River hydroelectric development as a key element in the much larger proposal for a St. Lawrence Seaway.21

  Roosevelt’s position on the utilities was more ideological than economic. In the spirit of Uncle Ted, he denounced what he considered antisocial corporate behavior. In the spirit of Woodrow Wilson’s decentralizing progressivism, he decried corporate consolidation. He peremptorily dismissed other viewpoints, even when offered by supportive and nonpartisan observers such as his uncle Frederic Delano, a governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, and primary author of a US Chamber of Commerce report on the utilities.

  A contentious exchange between Franklin and his uncle in late 1929 underscored the gap between Fred’s cautious business-minded progressivism and his nephew’s ideological politics. “Nobody claims that government operation with all factors properly balanced is more businesslike than that of a private company,” Franklin declared in a letter to his uncle, “but the fact remains that where there is government operation the household consumer pays less in his monthly bills.” Delano’s response was conciliatory but firm: “If it is true that the Government pays no taxes, pays little or nothing for the cost of financing, and assumes no interest during construction, and therefore is able to [charge] lower rates for electric power,” he wrote, “the general public must pay the equivalent in taxes in some other way, and what is perhaps more serious, all private development in that field ceases.”22 For the next f
ifteen years, uncle and nephew would agree to disagree on the topic.

  Separate US-Canadian negotiations for a St. Lawrence development treaty progressed slowly, with Roosevelt largely frozen out of the discussions by President Hoover. (A pact signed near the end of the Hoover administration would not come before the Senate until 1934, at which time it was, to the disappointment of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, rejected. The St. Lawrence Seaway would not come to full fruition until the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.)

  Roosevelt pursued an ambitious legislative program that had much in common with the agendas of progressive governors all over the United States. By mid-1930, as he planned his reelection campaign, he had managed to extract from a Republican legislature a fairly extensive program of “farm relief” (farm-to-market road improvements funded by a two-cent gasoline tax, aid to rural schools, and increased agricultural research), an old-age pension program for the indigent elderly, approval of a bond issue to fund state prisons and hospitals, and continued extensive park construction. He had also made a significant dent in Republican dominance upstate by virtue of his program and a vigorous push for stronger Democratic organizing efforts there.23 The governor, wrote journalist Ernest K. Lindley in September 1930, had not simply continued in, but moved well to the left of, the progressive tradition of Al Smith. He was also a formidable tactician, “a staunch partisan, frankly diligent in strengthening the party organization, [who] enjoys immensely the game of ‘practical’ politics.”24

  Yet he likely spent more time out of the state than any of his predecessors, with a month to six weeks in Warm Springs after the end of the legislative session each April, followed by a similar break each fall. (Herbert Lehman filled in capably, even handling a major prison riot during one such absence.) The daily schedule prescribed by his doctor and reported by the New York Times seemed more tailored to a gentleman of leisure than the governor of a big state: “He should go to bed not later than 10 or 10:30 o’clock and should rise about 9:30 o’clock. He ought to have an hour’s rest lying down after lunch and he should have his regular exercises. And, above all, he ought to try to keep away from . . . handshaking and that sort of thing.” Yet his administration became known for its activism, and he personally developed a reputation for physical stamina.25