No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Read online

  In private conversation, Willkie conceded that Lewis’ dislike of Roosevelt was so profound that it was almost pathological. “John never can forget that he came up the hard way,” Willkie observed. “The President is very genteel and he is patronizing to John without meaning to be and this drives John wild.” Nor could Lewis forget the time he had received an invitation to bring his wife to tea with the president and the first lady. Eleanor was out of town, so Missy served, as she often did, as the president’s hostess, but Lewis interpreted Eleanor’s absence as a deliberate slight.

  Hundreds of telegrams poured into the White House the day after the Lewis speech. In some mysterious way, Lewis’ attack had created a powerful counterforce. “We take the liberty of assuring you that John L. Lewis did not speak for us,” the New York local of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers wrote; “the attack made by Lewis is a betrayal of the interests and cause of labor.” “Paducah labor is for you 100 percent,” another telegram read. “Our shirtworkers starved on a dollar a day under Republican rule. Now we have 13 dollar forty hour week and a union. We are all talking and working and voting for you.” “Don’t let Lewis’ speech weaken you,” UMW Local #6082 wired. “We are behind you 100 percent.” Sensing for the first time that the president might be in trouble, Roosevelt’s supporters rallied to his side with passion and conviction. “John L. Lewis has kicked his mother after he had milked her dry,” Alex Tunis wrote from West 97th Street in New York. “You are the only President that ever done anything for the miners,” a miner’s wife wrote from Barnabus, West Virginia. “I don’t want to go back to the day before you took office. Them were terrible days for the miners. I hope you and Mrs. Roosevelt continue in the White House as long as you live and I hope you live a long time.” Writing in a similar vein, a Minnesota homemaker assured the president that she would never forget that because of him her aged mother’s last days were made comfortable, mentally as well as physically. “Old age pensions is only one thing for which you are to be eternally thanked.”

  Buoyed by stacks of similar telegrams, the president took to the road with a lift in his heart. “I am an old campaigner,” he repeated with increasing conviction before every crowd, “and I love a good fight.” On October 28, before a capacity crowd of twenty-two thousand at Madison Square Garden, Roosevelt set out to answer the Republican charge that he had been slow in preparing the U.S. for defense. Every seat in the Garden was filled; another thirty thousand people were gathered outside, trying to get in. For seven years, the president began, Republican leaders had blocked every effort to strengthen America’s defenses, shouting from the rooftops that our armed strength was sufficient for any enemy. “Great Britain would never have received an ounce of help from us if the decision had been left to [Congressman Joseph] Martin, [Congressman Bruce] Barton and [Congressman Hamilton] Fish.” At the first use of the rhythmic sequence “Martin, Barton and Fish,” the crowd roared with laughter. When he used it again, they were ready to join in, yelling “Barton” and “Fish” as soon as he said “Martin.” By the end of the speech, the crowd was on its feet, yelling, screaming, and laughing.

  “The way of the man with his crowds,” one reporter wrote, “very great and responsive, roused them as much as anything he said. In every toss of his head, in every lift of a jutting chin, in every crackling, twitting jibe at his opponents, in every gesture and fillip of his speaking, he was as cocky a candidate” as one could imagine. “I have just come from one of the most remarkable experiences of my life,” David Lilienthal recorded in his diary at midnight that night. “I sat on the platform not ten feet from the President and heard him deliver a really great speech.” When the president first arrived, Lilienthal observed, “his face was gray under the lights and showed the strain of that awful walking. Nothing I have ever seen was like the next few minutes. The President’s voice as he spoke was strong, there wasn’t a trace of weariness at any time. He seemed to be in fine fettle.”

  The masterly speech came at the climax of a fourteen-hour day of strenuous campaigning. It was nearly midnight when the president returned to Penn Station to board his special train to Washington. In the confusion of the large crowd that had gathered at the track, Roosevelt’s press secretary, Steve Early, was stopped by two policemen, one Irish, the other Negro. They were under orders to keep everyone away from the train. Early tried to push his way through but was shoved back. In the melee, he kicked the Negro policeman, James Sloan, in the groin. When Sloan, a decorated patrolman and father of five who had just returned to duty after an operation for a hernia, had to be taken to the hospital for treatment, the incident became a front-page story in the Negro press. Republicans quickly capitalized on it. Pictures of Sloan recuperating in his bed were handed out in black neighborhoods. “Negroes,” the caption read, “if you want your President to be surrounded by Southern influences of this kind, vote for Roosevelt. If you want to be treated with respect, vote for Wendell Willkie!”

  Early was reportedly inconsolable, fearing he might have lost the election for the president, but when reporters interviewed Patrolman Sloan at his bedside, the controversy came to an end. “I am a Democrat,” Sloan said. “If anybody thinks they can turn me against our great President who has done so much for our race because of this thing, they are mistaken.”

  • • •

  On the 29th of October, the president set in motion the first peacetime conscription in history with a drawing of draft numbers to determine the order of induction. Two weeks earlier, on registration day, all males between twenty-one and thirty-five had been required to present themselves at their local draft boards, where they were each assigned a serial number. Now, on lottery day, the chance selection of numbers stirred in the big fishbowl with a big wooden dipper would determine which of the young men who had registered would be called to leave civilian life for a year’s military training, and in what order they would be called.

  A number of Roosevelt’s advisers had strongly urged him to postpone the lottery until after the election, but he refused. The timing was so bad, Sam Rosenman observed, that “any old-time politician would have said [it] could never take place.” It was a brave decision on the president’s part to let it happen at this time, Stimson recorded in his diary, “when there is a very bitter campaign being made against it on account of his support of the Draft.” But after it was over, Stimson came to believe that the solemn nature of the historic ceremony “served to change the event . . . into a great asset in his favor.”

  The president’s expression was serious as he sat beside Secretary Stimson on the stage of Washington’s Departmental Auditorium. Both the large glass fishbowl and the long ladle used to stir the cobalt capsules had been used in World War I to select the men who would go into battle. The strip of yellow linen used to blindfold Secretary Stimson was cut from the covering of the chair used at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. After putting his blindfold in place, Stimson reached his left hand into the large jar, picked up the first capsule he touched, and handed it to the president. “The first number,” Roosevelt announced, reading into a battery of microphones carrying his voice across all three radio networks, “is one-fifty-eight.”

  No sooner had the president spoken then a woman’s scream was heard. Seated in the middle of the crowded auditorium, Mrs. Mildred Bell gasped. Her twenty-one-year-old son, Harry, who was supposed to be married the following week, held number 158. Now, suddenly, his future was linked to that of his country. Number 158 was held by some six thousand registrants in different precincts throughout the country, including Cleveland welder Michael Thomson, father of three children; Jack Clardy, a one-armed Negro banjo picker from Charlotte, North Carolina; and unemployed James Cody of Long Island City. In New York, the surnames of those bearing number 158 told a story in themselves: Farrugia, Chan, Re, Weisblum, Tsatsarones, Stoller, Clement. Some were pleased and proud to be the first number called, others said they’d make the best of it, still others were upset at their bad fortune. �
��This is the first lottery I ever won in my life,” several jokingly complained. It took seventeen hours to draw the remaining nine thousand capsules, but when the bowl was finally empty, the order of induction for more than sixteen million men had been established.

  Eleanor was in Maine delivering a speech at Colby College while the lottery was taking place. “As I listened to the radio,” she wrote Joe Lash, “and heard the draft numbers read, I found myself thinking of you and hoping that your number would not come up. I want you so much to get started along lines which you, can follow and develop into great influence and use to others of the younger generation and I would hate to see you packed off for a year of army training . . . . I don’t feel the same about my boys, except FDR Jr. whom I would like to see take his bar exam in March.”

  • • •

  Roosevelt was anxious and testy on the day after the drawing. Riding to Boston in his special train for a speech to be delivered that night at the Boston Garden, he was bombarded by messages from frightened Democrats who feared he would lose the election unless he guaranteed to American mothers that their sons were being sent to army camps only to be trained, that they would never have to fight. Seeking to allay these concerns, he decided to include in his speech a pledge that would haunt him again and again in the years ahead. “Very simply and honestly,” he said, “I can give assurance to the mothers and to the fathers of America that each and every one of their boys in training will be well housed and well fed . . . . And while I am talking to you fathers and mothers I give one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again, and again, and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” In all his previous speeches, he had qualified the pledge that American boys would not fight in foreign wars by adding the phrase “except in cases of attack.” The speechwriters had inserted a similar qualification in the draft of the Boston speech, but the president insisted on removing the words. “It’s not necessary,” he argued. “It’s implied clearly. If we’re attacked, it’s no longer a foreign war.”

  The president’s impulsiveness, Rosenman observed, was to cause him “a lot of headaches later,” for his opponents took great pleasure in quoting the categorical pledge he had made in Boston. In her column two days later, Eleanor gently took issue with the disingenuousness of her husband’s promise. “Today,” she told her readers, “no one can honestly promise you peace at home or abroad. All any human being can do is to promise that he will do his utmost to prevent this country from being involved in war.”

  • • •

  The day was warm for the 5th of November; in the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park, the family was getting ready for the short journey into town to vote in the presidential election. As he always did on election day, Roosevelt stopped to chat with his Hyde Park neighbors before entering the little town hall. Reporters observed nothing in the president’s demeanor to indicate concern over the outcome of the election; on the contrary, he seemed “extraordinarily jovial,” joking with staff and journalists alike. Yet, underneath his cheery manner, Roosevelt was fully aware that in the latest Gallup poll Willkie’s support was almost even with his, making the election too close to call.

  Inside the town hall, photographers waited in the balcony overhead to snap a picture of the president as he emerged from behind the green curtains of the voting booth. Standing next to her son in line, Sara stepped up to the table. “What name please?” the election clerk inquired. “Sara Delano Roosevelt,” she answered firmly, “and it’s been my name for a good many years.” In the confusion created by the photographer, Eleanor started to leave the building before she had recorded her vote. Reminded by her husband, she hastily returned to the booth.

  During the afternoon, the president made a halfhearted attempt to work on his stamp collection in his study, while Eleanor and Joe Lash went on a long walk through the woods. Eleanor told Lash she hoped that, if the president were re-elected to an unprecedented third term, he “would do all the things he had wanted to do and knew had to be done but had not done because of political considerations.”

  At six o’clock, Eleanor welcomed about forty family members and friends, including Harry Hopkins, Frances Perkins, and Helen Gahagan, to a buffet supper at her cottage. With a wood fire on the hearth, she moved from one guest to another, putting everyone at ease. Toward nine o’clock, the guests wandered back to the Big House, where they chatted nervously, listened to the radio, and awaited the returns.

  Seated apart from all the guests, alone at the mahogany dining table with large tally sheets and a long row of freshly sharpened pencils before him, the president of the United States charted the election results. Occasionally, the door slid open to admit Missy LeHand, carrying the latest totals for the president to add to his tally. As the early returns filtered in, the president’s face darkened. In almost every state Willkie was doing far better than Alf Landon had done. Sweating profusely, Roosevelt called Mike Reilly, his Secret Service guard. “Mike, I don’t want to see anybody in here,” he said. “Including your family?” Reilly asked. “I said anybody,” Roosevelt repeated, as he closed the door. It appeared to Reilly that the president had lost his nerve.

  By 11 p.m., however, as the votes in the big states of New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania began to come in, showing heavy Democratic majorities, the tide turned toward the president. Nationwide, the votes of labor, Negroes, and the foreign-born were holding up. In the lowest-income districts, the president was winning nearly 75 percent of the votes. The tension in the house began to dissipate. At midnight, a smiling president emerged to greet a jubilant crowd of local Democrats parading across the lawn with torchlights. “It looks all right,” the president told his cheering neighbors. “We, of course, face difficult days in this country. But I think you will find me in the future just the same Franklin Roosevelt you have known a great many years. My heart has always been here. It always will be.”

  Behind the president, as he spoke from the balcony, stood his mother, his wife, and his sons FDR, Jr., and John. Farther back, standing by himself, Harry Hopkins did “a little jig and clapped his fist into the open palm of his left hand as if to say we did it.’” When the president finished speaking, the family turned toward the house. “We want Eleanor,” the crowd shouted. “We want Eleanor.” But Eleanor gestured them away. “What have I to do with it? It’s the President they want to hear—not me.”

  As the president fell asleep that night in his childhood home, he had reached the highest peak of his career. In numbers, it was not a great victory. He had won 54.7 percent to 44.8 percent for Willkie, the smallest plurality since the election of 1916. But he had won, despite the hatred of conservatives and isolationists, despite the attacks of John L. Lewis. He had won something that neither Washington nor Jefferson nor Jackson had ever achieved—a third term as president of the United States.

  CHAPTER 8

  “ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY”

  “Just how does the President think?” reporter John Gunther once asked Eleanor Roosevelt. “My dear Mr. Gunther,” Eleanor replied. “The President never thinks. He decides.”

  Mr. Gunther’s question was on the minds of several Cabinet members in mid-November 1940, when the president seemed unable and unwilling to concentrate his thoughts on a new and disturbing crisis: Great Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy.

  The cash reserves of the British treasury, the U.S. was told after the election, were no longer sufficient to pay for the munitions and supplies that Britain had ordered from the U.S.—supplies needed now more than ever. Though Britain’s success in repulsing the Luftwaffe had postponed the threatened invasion until spring, the German advantage in war materials was growing and would continue to grow as Germany increasingly moved to supplement its own vast production with that of the industrial countries it had conquered—Holland, Belgium, France, Czechoslovakia. Without American supplies to close the gap, Britain would be defeated in a matter of months.

  What to do? The idea of loa
ning the money to Britain was raised in the Cabinet, but no one believed that Congress would go along, given America’s experience with unpaid debts in World War I. During the discussion, the president, Frances Perkins recalled, threw out “a question here and a hint there.” Perkins had the feeling that “he was thinking about something, about some way in which the people of the U.S. could assist the British,” but he had nothing concrete to offer. The problem seemed insoluble.

  In the midst of the crisis, as administration officials were frantically scurrying from one meeting to another, the president suddenly announced that he was leaving Washington for a ten-day sail through the Caribbean on the navy cruiser the U.S.S. Tuscaloosa. He told his stunned Cabinet, “All of you use your imaginations” to come up with an answer. To be sure, the exhausted president needed to rest after the wearying campaign. “The more I sleep, the more I want to sleep,” he was heard to say. But the timing of the pleasure trip was profoundly disturbing to those who worried about Britain’s survival.

  “Hope you have a grand trip,” Eleanor wired Franklin from Abilene, Texas, as she set forth on a trip of her own—a rigorous lecture tour through the South and the Midwest. Everywhere she went, she kept her eye on the economic and social weaknesses of the nation preparing for war. Driving through the rural sections of Texas, she was saddened to see that, despite the New Deal’s housing program, people were still living in shacks, “made of scraps apparently, bits of corrugated iron, even heavy cardboard is used . . . . I cannot help feeling that there should be a better way of meeting this problem.” Hearing reports that, of the first million men selected for the draft, almost 40 percent were found physically unfit for military service, Eleanor hoped the sorry figures would “give impetus to the movement for a comprehensive and nationwide health program.” And as always, there remained the plight of the Negro, particularly visible in the slums of Chicago and Detroit.