SOURCE: "Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Verge of the Presidency," in The Antioch Review, Vol. XVI, No. 1, March, 1956, pp. 46-79.

Early in the day on 4 March 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt with his new official family, asked the blessing of God on the administration which was about to begin. He might well ask for Divine assistance; no other seemed adequate to the national exigency. The degeneration of the economic system had not been stayed by the prospect of a change in Washington. If anything, conditions were worse; and they were certainly worse in the whole financial structure. In fact the sickness which, until February, had been kept fairly far away from the centers of finance by one means or another¹ was now reaching those welldefended citadels, the metropolitan banks. The trouble was like a flood which rose higher and higher, inundating one after another of the supposedly safe islands of the economy. Just during the few days preceding 4 March, the governors of additional states had proclaimed what were euphemistically called "bank holidays"—which meant, in ordinary language, that the banks were closed to prevent the drawing out of funds by depositors; they were no longer considered safe, and withdrawals had reached such proportions that further out-payments would be impossible.²

Many of the anticipatory Democrats who had invaded Washington to celebrate the taking-over were unable to pay their way and there was some embarrassment. The spectacle of silk-hatted and formal-coated politicians scrounging around for the cash they needed to meet their bills had its comic side. But it can hardly have seemed comic to Franklin³ and those with him who were now picking up responsibility as Hoover, Mills and others of the outgoing crowd laid it down. He may well have prayed more earnestly for assistance on that day than on any of the other occasions when he had assumed new public duties.

He had a choice to make; or, rather, he had had a choice to make, for about certain matters his mind was already made up. He was praying for help, not for guidance. He had concluded that it would be best to attempt the restoration of confidence, gradually reopen the solvent banks, and wait until later for reform. It is credible that he might have used the crisis in another way. He might have set up a substitute for the old system which had broken down under pressure. It was time for a genuine national banking structure: the semi-private one had failed disastrously. He chose not to do that for reasons known only to himself; they were not confided to anyone. I can only venture here the suggestion that the restoration of some order in the economy was, in his mind, so urgent a matter that he adopted the quickest and easiest means to this end. The American people needed a renewed confidence in their institutions. This was something he could give them. A new banking system might not be perfectly designed; it might not work well at first, and might have to be tinkered with. This was not a time for risking doubt of the new administration's competence or of his own wisdom. It may seem to a later generation absurd that there can have been such urgency. To suppose that in the United States known to them there can have been a genuine danger of civil violence, a breakdown of discipline, so that familiar institutions—police and justice, supply and distribution, transportation and communication—might so largely cease to function as to create an emergency, seems to them a fantastic exaggeration. But those who lived through that time and had some responsibility will always be conscious of the narrowness of their escape.

What do people do who have no money? There were those who had been wondering about that for several years. There were now upwards of twelve millions who were unemployed, and who had been out of work for a long time. They had no income as of a right. They might get something from the local authorities and they might participate in the sporadic and scattered efforts to start public works, but there was nothing to be counted on. Their provision for their families might break down altogether; perhaps, on occasion, it had already broken down. There were many, indeed, who had had to learn what to do without money. There were many interim makeshifts—selling household goods, borrowing from usurers, applying for private charity—but when these failed there was a last resort—the soup and bread lines for food and the Hoovervilles for shelter. The bread lines by now had lengthened until they stretched down streets and around corners; and often supplies ran out before the hungry had all been fed. And the Hoovervilles were sprawling obscenely on the garbage dumps and wastelands of every city periphery.

The terrible strain on people's bodies and minds from endless insecurity and hardship had tended to intensify and to spread. Unemployed men and women could not pay rent unless they were helped; nor could they buy food or clothes or provide shelter unless they were helped. The help, even when it came, was never enough. And when landlords and storekeepers were not paid, neither were the builders of houses nor the manufacturers of goods. When these could not collect, they could not repay loans at the bank or meet their other liabilities. This was why factories were closed or working part-time; it was why building had stopped; it was why, finally, the economic sickness had spread to the banks.

It was no longer only the unemployed workers who had to learn what to do when they had no money. People much further up the scale of living were within sight of having to find out too. There was still a vast difference between them and the unemployed. They had claims on income, at least; and the poor had none.

Both, on inauguration day, were in fact equally moneyless—the one group because they had none coming, the other because their claims were not honored.

Two resorts were used in various localities when currency was no longer available because banks were shut: these were barter and the issuance of script. Barter was useful when there could be direct exchanges; but it was only by the merest chance that in so highly specialized an economy as that of 1933 sellers and buyers could make direct contact. People who lived in cities hardly ever had any goods useful to the producers of food in the countryside. Industrial goods came from factories and individuals seldom had them to dispose of. But barter was used to a certain limited extent where the conditions permitted it to be organized. Script was found to be somewhat more useful. It could represent goods and could pass easily from hand to hand. When, however, too much was expected of it, exchange broke down. It had to be guaranteed. And when it got too far from the source of issue, recognition for it was only doubtfully granted.

Both these extra-legal devices gradually declined in use as the emergency passed and the banks reopened. There was a time, however, at the worst of the currency shortage, when in rather wide areas they proved indispensable.⁴

Conservatives were indeed worried almost as much by the various ingenious devices for meeting the emergency as by their actual troubles. It was an added reason for demanding that something be done at once. Their voices, as a matter of fact, were louder than those of the workers, who, on the whole, had undergone their ordeal with amazing patience. The President-elect knew about the unemployed. If, in his travels, he had not noted the smokeless factory chimneys, seen the idle on the streetcorners, and glimpsed the empty railroad trains, he had those by him who could tell him about the amazing state to which the proud democracy had fallen. His wife, Eleanor, for instance, suffered in sympathy with the involuntary poor; so did Frances Perkins; and Franklin's own state relief organization (whose assistant director was Harry L. Hopkins) had been swamped with the rising demands for assistance.

So he knew. He knew also about the farmers. They had tired of poverty, of debts they could not pay, of losing their land and their homes by foreclosure. They were strongly inclined to approve the status quo ante; they wanted nothing changed except their own present inability to make a profit from farming. They were also die-hard individualists, the thorniest of all citizens for bureaucrats to organize. And a majority of them were Republicans, as befitted citizens with such predilections, even if many of them had, in anger and resentment, voted against Hoover. Conservative as they might be, their resentments now had the upperhand, and it was they who were showing most generally the symptoms of a riotous indiscipline, their usual preference for order making the protest much more terrifying than it otherwise would have been. Many a foreclosure sale, undertaken with all due process, was stopped by threats of violence. Until a conspiracy among the newspapers to maintain optimism got under way, there were many available accounts of such happenings during the winter. At sales in Pennsylvania, the auctioneers were bid five cents for a cow, five cents for family furniture, and five cents for the farm buildings. Hardfaced neighbors circulated among the crowd to see that no one bid more. Out in Iowa milk-trucks were stopped on the highway and dumped. Not for starvation prices, the farmers said, would they furnish any more produce to the city markets.

Incidents of this sort had multiplied. They were now a daily occurrence in many neighborhoods.⁵ It was true that Hoover had proposed, and the generally hostile Congress had agreed to pass, a bill to ease bankruptcies. It would have some effect; but it had not yet taken hold. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was lending to states so that the furnishing of relief should not entirely stop. Furthermore, large loans were being made to businesses, to railroads, and to manufacturers, as well as banks, to keep them going. And all these measures might have had some effect except that the spreading paralysis all the time outran the measures taken to check it. Unemployment increased, loans were soon exhausted; and more and more were called for. There was no end in sight, not even any visible slowing of the decline. The enormous loan funds seemed to disappear without trace, leaving only an unpayable obligation.

II

In such circumstances those who knew best how fast the degeneration was spreading could hardly be blamed for grasping at immediate remedies and forgetting for the moment any hope of reform. That, at least, was the reaction Franklin had. It was he, more than anyone else, on whom responsibility was descending with the momentum of a juggernaut. He may well have prayed, in the old church across Lafayette Square from the White House, for time as well as for wisdom. But of time there was none. Such wisdom as could be managed must be used instantly. And wisdom to be of use must already have been available for several days.

One rather skeptical historian, Richard Hofstadter, has remarked that what seemed to the nation on that day the inspired and winged words of the inaugural address were actually trite and commonplace. Exhorting Americans to abjure excessive caution and once more to be bold and forthputting; telling them they had nothing to fear but fear itself—this was, as can be seen in the chilly light of later scholarly assessment, only another version of that "restoration of confidence" which had been Hoover's ruinous theme. It was the same idea businessmen were always harping on.⁶ It was what Baruch had counselled as a campaign device. It had been the burden of the Pittsburgh speech during the campaign. Restore confidence, it had run, and business will recover. When business recovers, unemployment will disappear and the banks will again be secure!⁷

How was it that when Franklin asked for confidence, courage began to reinfuse the whole nation? There can be no doubt that it happened. Even those who were no better off than they had been before stopped feeling sorry for themselves and looked around for opportunities to improve their lot. There was an unmistakable renewal of hope and optimism. The access of good feeling was, it must be admitted, largely just that—a feeling. But it was traceable to the relief people felt in knowing there was to be a change. No one, for a long time, had believed that Hoover knew what to do, or that, if he did, he would be able to do it. He was discredited. But Franklin would at least make new efforts without being controlled by stifling preconceptions. Also—and this was important—he had the power to act, because the Congress was Democratic too. Moreover, he had given an impression of vitality and initiative from the moment of his nomination when he had broken precedent, flown to Chicago to accept the party's designation, and spoken heartening words.

There was a most astonishing improvement from one week to the next. The week before inauguration was one of despair. The sinking spell seemed to be more and more beyond any human control and fright was almost palpably present in the air. The week after inauguration, the reversal was like the change of an ocean tide in high latitudes. Confidence did come flooding back and its return had the same irresistible volume as the outward flow. Did Franklin cause the change? Why, if this was to be so, did not the prospect of his accession have more effect? The historian dislikes having to answer such questions as these. He dislikes especially making the admission that the trite words of a man, flung out into the ears of a listening people, could so change the course of events, yet the facts of those March days have to be dealt with.

Such a change as happened at once is certainly not easy to start, since it requires a reversal of feeling throughout a whole nation; but it is even more difficult to sustain and to enlarge. The words of the inaugural may have been only another version of the "threadbare" confidence theme, but there was this difference between what Franklin had to say and what his predecessor had been saying: Hoover had addressed his exhortations to businessmen; Franklin addressed his words to others in the community. In fact businessmen could find little comfort in what he said; to them it sounded as though he was making promises to others which would require of them some novel humiliations. Others, however, very obviously found new hope in what he had to say even though it might be difficult for later analysts to detect just what it could have been. They, however, lacked the impression of the strong, warm voice speaking to the multitude before him and to all those who sat by their radios and waited with faint hope. A miracle was so much desired that perhaps they created it; but it must be said that Franklin's élan, his soaring vigor, his conveyance of a cheerful unafraidness—all these—played a great part.

Then, too, the accusations he made undoubtedly helped. The devils were whipped again as they had been during the campaign. Business, he said, had been the cause of all the trouble. And businessmen had abdicated their responsibilities. He would shoulder these. And no one henceforth would be allowed to carry on as the wicked ones had in the years just past. "We are," he said, "stricken by no plague of locusts . . . plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of supply." This was because "the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence. . . . "

He went even further. There was the much-quoted passage about the "money changers" who had "fled their high seats" in the temple of civilization. "We may now," he said, "restore that temple to the ancient truths." He then went on to speak of ethics and of those who had betrayed their sacred trust. To such conduct there must be an end. There could be no confidence while it was tolerated, for confidence "thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance."

This was one needed change, but it was only one of attitude; actual reconstruction required more drastic changes. Above all, "this nation asks for action," he said, "and action now." Then he got down to the hard policy. He summarized it in two paragraphs:

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

If it is said—as it has been said—that this was not much of a program to offer an almost fatally sick nation, that, I think, must be admitted to be true. Part of it was inoperable, part was trivial, and none of it went to the heart of the matter in a remedial way. It is, however, a fact, which everyone who lived through that time can attest, that the sick nation enlarged the words and the intentions far beyond their face value. Their therapeutic effect was just next to miraculous. The cure, whatever it was, then and there began to take effect. It must have been, when all is said, the magic of leadership which was responsible.

III

Franklin that morning had called at the White House. He and Hoover had ridden together in the big black limousine to the Capitol, Franklin chatting cheerily, Hoover tired almost to death from his long immolation, hardly responding at all. Later, Hoover had sat among those who listened while Franklin took the oath on the old Dutch family Bible, repeating after Chief Justice Hughes the solemn words of consecration (instead, as was customary, of only saying "I do"). Hoover's face was a study in distrust as Franklin launched into his speech. He almost visibly winced as the "money changers" were referred to. There was only dull resignation as the "program" was elaborated. Afterward, he made his way, forgotten and alone, back to the White House and presently out of Washington, while Franklin rode triumphantly down Pennsylvania Avenue through madly cheering crowds to take possession of the Presidency. There was a New Deal.

What the biographer has to acknowledge at this juncture—beginning on this day—is that he begins now to deal with entirely different phenomena than he has dealt with before. The man whose career he has been following has, up till now, been an entirely accountable person. He has got where he now is by scheming, by conforming and compromising, by hard work, by faithful performance of his political business—and all of this attended by good luck. Every step can be understood, even the recent election to the Presidency, which was much more a vote against Hoover than for Franklin. Now, however, the man who recited the uninspired inaugural was transformed into an almost unimaginable embodiment of American hopes. From now on he became a symbol. And the person was gradually lost in the President.

Naturally when, by election, the people had chosen a new leader, he had begun to move in a heightened glare of publicity. There had been endless curiosity about him and about his family for months before inauguration. The smallest detail had been news. The Governor of New York had had little privacy; but he had had a good deal more than the President-elect. And that well-enforced sense of ownership which people feel about their chief executive is a far more demanding sentiment than is centered in any governor. On the morning after election, the Secret Service of the United States had taken charge of his person. Thereafter the security controls would never be lifted until his death. The alert young men always near, trying to be inconspicuous, but watchful of his safety, were evidence that he was public property.⁸

What Americans saw was a man well-schooled in being a public figure and well-equipped to become the symbol of great office. They were prepared to approve the inaugural even before it was heard; and this receptivity accounts for easily half its effect. Since July there had been a show of energy, of fearlessness in the face of adversity, and even of gaiety, which contrasted with what they had seen in Hoover. The contrast was in fact about as complete as it was possible to conceive. Cold aloofness was being exchanged for an eloquently expressed sympathy; and they liked it. Even the normally hostile press was kind; the reporters were always mostly friendly; and even the publishers knew how much their readers longed for a change. They compromised with principle for the time being.

The reporters know, being shrewd analysts, that the air of confidence and cheerfulness was partly assumed, that actually Franklin could not possibly be so sure of himself as he seemed. But they could not be certain how far into the causes of distress he actually saw, or the extent to which a program of action had actually been shaped. He might be better prepared than they had thought; he seemed not to be uneasy. The truth was that some preparations were further along than they guessed by inauguration day. Others were far from being ready for action; only their outlines were beginning to be visible.

Normally the Congress would not have met until the following January; and in the usual circumstances the new President would have had months in which to prepare a program of legislation. Until the last moment Franklin anticipated such an interval. For effect, it had been supposed, he would call a special session, but it would be limited to a few matters which were well along—relief, mostly, and public works. Even when the banking crisis made a special session imperative, there was not at first any intention of asking for the kind of performance which would be put on during the hundred days. That spectacle would be pretty much improvised as events developed. But although it thrilled the whole nation, it did not exactly come as a surprise. The economic situation had by then become so acute that it was more a fulfillment than an expectation.

The man who had been a successful governor, who sailed his own craft along the foggy New England shore with his big and handsome sons for a crew, who received important men and ordinary men with the same tolerance and good nature,⁹ who was at home in Warm Springs with his numerous family of convalescents, who went off with his friend Vincent Astor for a cruise in Caribbean waters, on the fabulous Nourmahal, apparently unconscious of any possible criticism, and who, on landing, was shot at by an assassin whose bullets missed miraculously, and who exhibited thereafter no nervousness whatever—such a man might well be expected to meet the exigencies of office intrepidly. No, his performance after 4 March would be no real surprise.

It would, however, be accepted with profound gratitude as a kind of fortunate blessing. Once more the nation had found a champion in time of need. There was even a little complacency mixed with the prevalent adulation. Good fortune was a blessing which did not have to be deserved; the nation was inclined to feel that a change of luck was justified by the years of very bad luck which had been undergone without abandoning balance and humor.

The psychology of accession, and specifically of accession to the Presidency, has two well-marked sides: what happens to the public is one phenomenon; what happens to the new President is the other. There nearly always tends to be a general euphoria, intensified when the new incumbent has been elected after an exciting campaign in which strong contenders have been engaged. There is something about a democratic majority which impresses even those who do not belong to it; the general impulse is to believe that the choice is right. Consequently inauguration is very often attended by a hope that for once representation will prove to be a salutary principle. Regardless—or very nearly regardless—of the start made by the incumbent, good wishes flow to him and he is borne along into his first term on a tide of approval.

Reciprocally he discovers, sometimes quite suddenly, that he is president not of his party, or of those who voted for him, but of all the people. In this discovery there is a kind of exhilaration which, if he is well-prepared and knowledgeable, will stir him to the formulation of an actionable program in a hurry. If he is not prepared, and not a quick learner, the period may pass without any real accomplishment, and disillusion will settle over the political scene which so short a time ago shone with optimism.

The initial months of new administrations have long been called "honeymoons" for lack of a better term to describe the bemused mutual regard of people and president. Political writers apply the term more narrowly to the temporary abatement of the perennial quarrel between the executive and the legislative branches. They are apt to ascribe it rather cynically to good behavior in hope of favors. And favors from the executive are certainly to be had, patronage being among the most important. But the real secret of Congressional tameness is the uneasy sense among the Representatives that they are outside the mystical union of president and people which they dare not invade. He has, after all, been elected by all citizens, they by only a comparatively few. In his single person there is concentrated the very principle of representation. Legislators, being politicians, are impressed, in spite of themselves, by the latent power implied in this oneness. They are afraid, initially, to challenge it, or to risk its invocation even to a small degree. They behave, for the moment, with almost comical circumspection.

They watch, however, with hard and experienced eyes for the inevitable weakening of this bond, ready to assert their own powers at the first signs of weakness. They will go as far in attrition on the executive, then, as they dare to go. Infrequently they trespass too daringly, rouse his ire, cause him to "go to the people." They retreat sullenly from their positions if he succeeds—and almost invariably he does succeed.

Presidents differ enormously in their initial understanding of their situation. Many in the past have come to office without appreciating its complexities. These have wasted the honeymoon period, have lowered the leadership level of the Presidency, and have passed into history as "weak" incumbents. The presidents who, on the contrary, loom large in history have been those who were identifiable as "strong." What this means is that they were leaders, that they understood their representative nature, understood, also, the inherently divisive nature of the legislative branch, and that they used the power flowing to them from popular regard to coerce all the converging but diverse interests into yielding consent to a program in the public interest.

There have been presidents who started off badly and then recovered; and the measure of their intelligence is usually said to be the rapidity and extent of recovery. Those who were initially worst are sometimes supposed to have been made that way by legislative experience. Being schooled in opposition to the executive, they are ambitious, as they take office, to "get along with the Senate," as several of them have said. Truman was one of these. But there have been presidents without this experience who have started out in the same way—Cleveland was one of these and Eisenhower was another. So the source is doubtful; but the fact is not. Presidents do differ in their conception of the office as they assume it. The best reputed presidents have been the ones who have had an initial understanding of the necessity for leadership; but there have been several who did make quick and complete recoveries—the kind made so conspicuously in recent times by Truman.

These general remarks are made to place Franklin at the time of his inaugural. Obviously he falls into the category of those who understood the realities of the situation before entering on it. He was prepared to exercise leadership at once and without more mealy-mouthed equivocation than was necessary to comply with the amenities. A good legislator to him would be one who would go along: a bad one, a reluctant cooperator. He did not expect that policies, or the laws to effect them, would originate in the legislature. They would originate with him, or in his neighborhood, and it would be his responsibility to see that they were accepted. More perfectly than any president of all the long line, except his predecessor Theodore, and, further back, Jefferson, he grasped the fact that presidents are first of all Chief Legislators. One who senses this can follow much more intelligibly his actions during the interval between election and inauguration as well as the occurrences of the hundred days.

IV

The interval did not result in the settlement of all difficulties and the arrival at policies governing all the attitudes to be assumed; but much more was done than is usually realized. Some of what was done was not wise and was not permanent, but that it was done at all goes further to show how well the new President understood his responsibility. It is true that everything was, so to speak, compressed or syncopated, and decisions were hurried because of a fiscal crisis so demanding that much else which might have progressed to decision was delayed or neglected. But there was never any doubt about the decision-making power or about the forthcoming of essential directives.

Garner, of Texas, feeling his oats a bit as Vice Presidentelect, was persuaded by his business friends to head a movement for a national sales tax, something they had hoped and worked for ever since the income tax had become burdensome; and now that even Hoover's budgets were unbalanced, and there were obvious new obligations coming up to be paid for, they tried again through Garner. Franklin, without such emphasis as would embarrass Garnertoo much, let it be known that he expected to balance the budget by reductions of expense and by enlargements of the income tax. Half of this was distressing to the conservatives; the other half they probably were too realistic to believe. But all the Progressives rejoiced aloud.

There was, however, an intimation, in this difference, of a schism among Franklin's followers. It was not created at this moment; it had been latent and inevitable all along; but it would enlarge and become more and more difficult to compromise. It would be impossible to estimate the proportion of his time for the next decade that Franklin would have to spend holding together the uneasy, mutually hostile, elements of his support; but it would be very high. It would be exhausting too. Both sides would be unreasonable and demanding. But Franklin would never quite reach a position where he could do what he must have longed to do innumerable times—make his choice and let the reactionaries go.¹⁰

He could see what was happening well enough, but it was part of his talent for finesse that he prevented an outright split even so early. It is arguable whether the resulting compromises paid; but they were inherent in the Roosevelt political method.

The conservatives may have been made suspicious by the small evidence of intransigency furnished by the sales tax rejection; but there were other issues about which they had no real complaint. One of these was the solution of the banking crisis. The measures determined on would not solve the problem. There would be a long struggle about inflation—or, rather, about the means taken to inflate, during which the shades of Silver Dick Bland and Cross-of-Gold Bryan would seem to haunt Washington. And throughout the monetary crisis Franklin's temporizing would rate as a miracle of compromise. But the conservatives would in the end be more unhappy than the inflationists. The debts owed to them would be repaid in cheapened dollars. This grievance would rankle and erupt repeatedly for years to come.

This inflationary policy was not yet settled on. But it was obvious to financially sensitive watchers that a decision of sorts was moiling about in Franklin's head. They could not pin it down; he was evasive; he sometimes seemed, even, to be on the other side—had he not made that speech at Pittsburgh during the campaign which castigated Hoover for having an unbalanced budget and for not having reduced governmental expenses? This seemed to lead straight to acceptance of the "restoration of confidence" principle for which Baruch, Young, and others stood.

On the other hand, the Progressives in the Senate and the House were waiting with obvious impatience to renew the push for federal relief, for enormous public works undertakings, and, what was perhaps worse, for economic planning councils. These would not only require higher taxes, and, even with that, very likely an unbalanced budget, but would also set up a system for bringing business into some sort of discipline to be administered by the government.

Old Carter Glass, "father" of the Federal Reserve Act, had a revision of the act almost at the passage point in the lame-duck session. His bill had been explored earnestly by Franklin who had promised support for its passage. But somehow Glass did not trust him. He had heard disquieting rumors; and ever since the election he had taken a sour view of Franklin's passages through Washington during which he had "sent for" Democratic leaders. Cordell Hull might comply with such requests; but Glass regarded Franklin as an upstart, and said so. He was probably amazed when Franklin, in February, offered him the secretaryship of the Treasury. So, when they heard of it, was everyone close to Franklin. It was even more inexplicable than the offer to Hull of the secretaryship of State. Glass grumpily refused. Whether Franklin was relieved or not, no one knows. But Hull accepted. And whether Franklin was gratified or not, no one knows. One thing is certain. With both Glass and Hull in his cabinet, it is impossible to think of him doing what was subsequently done, and what, even then, he must have been considering.

Why then did he ask Glass to be a member of his cabinet? This and other selections can only be understood—and then not altogether—by exploring somewhat more at length the theory on which he must have been acting in putting together his official family. I say "must have been," because I do not know; I can only infer. But that is all anyone will ever be able to do. In this, as in so many similar important issues, Franklin allowed no one to discover the governing principle. He might have to change principles and it would be embarrassing to admit such inconsistency. It was much better to make no commitment, to act without saying why. He was sometimes annoyed by the resultant guessing and generalization, especially among the newspapermen—he told one once to put on a dunce cap and stand in the corner—but his freedom was maintained even if with some difficulty and embarrassment.

His first group, however, was pretty obviously intended to consolidate his coalition and to make it likely that even the most reluctant members would accept his directions. It was weighted heavily with the Southerners whose support he had to have—they would have control of the Congressional committees—and who were likely to have the most difficulty in swallowing the medicine he expected to prescribe. It must be said, however, that Franklin had less anticipation of difficulty with the Southerners than he ought to have had. His confidence in his own ability to get along with people, which was almost illimitable, led him to underestimate the differences in opinion between North and West and South. Actually antagonisms would prove to be so irreconcilable that he could only occasionally find a modus vivendi. But trouble of this sort would not begin until after the honeymoon period was over. During the crisis and the good feeling of the first few months, only such Southerners as Cotton Ed Smith, Chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the Senate, showed their true colors. It was Cotton Ed who had prevented the bill for farmrelief from passing in the lame-duck session before inauguration, although it had passed the House and had been endorsed by Franklin.

Most of the Southerners were amenable to party discipline. They were first of all party men; they were experienced in Washington because they had been there even in Republican times. And if they could never hope to rise to the Presidency, they could control the legislative branch through seniority. Moreover, they had a strong hold on the party machinery for the same reason. They influenced nominating conventions, in a kind of negative way, through the two-thirds rule. That is, they could usually prevent the nomination of any candidate of whom they disapproved and could trade strongly for second place on the ticket—which might, sometime, yield the Presidency through death.¹¹

No Northern Democrat in the White House could afford to ignore such strength; he had to compromise with it. That compromising had begun in the trading at Chicago which had yielded the Vice-Presidency to Garner of Texas. It was no more than an extension of it which yielded the Southerners three cabinet posts, and would have yielded four if Glass had not happily refused. These three were Hull, Swanson, and Roper. Of these Hull and Swanson were out of the Senate (and Glass would have been; so, also, Walsh, if he had not died on the eve of becoming Attorney General) and could be supposed to be influential in that body. This was especially true of Hull, who had been so long a faithful party man.¹² It is probable, however, that Franklin at this time—although he confided in no one—did not think of this as compromising but rather as a gathering in of resources to fortify his own position. His other selections emphasize that probability. Ickes was, as is known, the choice of the Congressional Progressives. He was suggested to Franklin by Senators Johnson, Cutting, Wheeler, Norris, and Costigan, after at least two of these—Johnson and Cutting—had refused. The secretaryship of the Interior was especially valued by Westerners because of its implications for land and water development; and to the Western Progressives because of their fear of the power interests, and their hostility to financiers and other traditional Eastern enemies. Dern, from Utah, was not so well known as a Progressive, nor was Henry Wallace. But neither could be thought of as conservative; and Henry Wallace embodied, because of his father's martyrdom to Hoover in the Harding cabinet, the whole agricultural movement of the Mid-West. Cummings, who was substituted for Walsh at the last moment, was a stop-gap; he had been intended as Governor General of the Philippines—but he was a Connecticut politician with solid party ties.

The most difficult of the cabinet posts to fill, because of the current fiscal troubles, was the secretaryship of the Treasury. William H. Woodin, who was finally chosen, was a kind of compromise among many possible choices. He was a businessman and a financier but he was not a banker and he was untouched by the contemporary scandals. Moreover, he was one of the small group who had made early contributions to the Howe-Farley activities which had given Franklin's presidential bid its momentum. He added nothing to Franklin's strength; but also he was not vulnerable and not so averse to unorthodox procedures that he could be expected to make trouble if some of the measures fermenting in Franklin's mind should actually be decided on.

This was the list, except for Farley and Perkins. The Postmaster Generalship does not have the importance which should belong to a Cabinet post; but by tradition it had gone almost invariably to the political manager who had acted for the President. He sat with the others less as the head of the postal service than as the vicehead of the party. Farley's reputation was, at the moment, high; and his widespread organization was ideologically neutral. He was as favorable to Southerners, for instance, as to Democrats from New York, when it came to party matters. The one difficulty was in the West, where Progressivism was at least half Republican even when it was wholly Rooseveltian. Farley found it impossible to understand that the La Follettes, the Wallaces and others like Norris in Nebraska and Olson in Minnesota, were more important to Franklin than the Democrats in their respective states. The coalition of West and South in his mind was all within the Democratic party. He could not comprehend mavericks. This, in the end, would prove to be one of the reasons why he and Franklin would have to part company. For the moment it was only a lesser problem among many which, Franklin could see, would require some attention; but he had no real apprehension about this or any other political difficulty. He could depend, at any rate, on himself.

In the matter of the secretaryship of Labor there were several considerations. The first of these was that Franklin was not really sympathetic to organized labor. He did not trust labor leaders and had none of the rapport with them which he felt at once when farm leaders sat down across the desk from him. He said to the farm leaders at the very first: "Make up your minds what you can agree on and that we will do." That was the line he followed throughout. But he felt no such trust in labor men. Moreover, he had to deal with the schisms represented by several claimants to labor's prerogatives. In other recent administrations the secretaryship of Labor had gone to a union official, as the secretaryship of Commerce had gone to a businessman, and that of Agriculture to a representative of farmers.

Franklin could not choose a union man without offense to his rivals; but also, what was more important, he obviously did not consent to the theory which would require the choice of any union leader. Cabinet members should not represent interests—except a political interest. They should represent the public as the President did. This difference between Franklin's attitude and that of some of his predecessors was fundamental.

This difference accounted, also, for his not choosing some of those for cabinet posts who seemed to commentators at the time the most likely selections. As a matter of fact, his cabinet list was not foreshadowed by any of the wiseacres. Those who were prominently suggested included those who had been his rivals for the nomination, starting with Al Smith and including Baker, Ritchie, and Byrd. Also prominently mentioned were Owen D. Young and Norman Davis, both of whom had been wellpublicized visitors since election. But, also, most often mentioned of all was Bernard Baruch, who had been so prominent in Wilson's administration and who was still known to control a bloc in the Congress.

When the cabinet came to be announced the two omissions most noticed were Smith and Baruch. For both these it had been expected that a place would be made. And Franklin at once began to betray some uneasiness about Baruch. Concerning Smith he had no qualms. Smith's backing he thought could be reached in other ways. Of Baruch, however, he was afraid. Baruch was a kind of myth. He was supposed to be a wise and disinterested statesman—a thought carefully cultivated by the clever propaganda of publicity agents. Actually, Franklin knew, he used his power over Congressional votes for at best whimsical purposes, and at worst ones not unrelated to his business interests. Franklin was determined not to have the disposer of such influence present in his intimate counsels. Cabinet members could be troublesome enough when they began to be thrust forward by the groups which gathered naturally behind their departments; it would be intolerable to have as Secretary of State, for instance, a person who could be suspected of manipulating the international exchanges and who had intimate Wall Street connections.

Franklin paid a certain tribute in favors to Baruch's power, but not probably such a price as he would have had to pay if he had been inside the cabinet. Baruch maintained an apartment at the Carlton Hotel which was something of a headquarters, already, for his intimates among the politicians and administrators. Congressmen foregathered there with business lobbyists; there also many government administrators went to be blessed and to forestall opposition. Franklin would know what he was doing when he made Hugh Johnson and George Peek heads of the two most important recovery agencies. He was reckoning to gain Baruch's support and still keep control of Baruch's henchmen. It may have been a mistake. Inside a year both had gone or were going amid a vast hullaballoo. And Baruch was doing a good deal of harm in setting up opposition to Franklin's program. The consequences of Baruch's influence will never be calculated. Progressive measures of all sorts suffered; many of them had to be abandoned; and favors went to those whose opposition in principle to all Franklin stood for was notorious. But Franklin pretended to be oblivious. Occasionally he had Baruch to lunch or asked him to do some special job. But never until the final stages of the war did he consider inviting him into the official family, and then he changed his mind before making the offer.

Baruch, or Young, or even Baker, as Secretary of State or of Commerce would have been regarded as fronting for an interest. If Franklin would not have a representative of labor or of agriculture, but rather chose "experts" in each field, how much less would he have a representative of business when business was so low in the public regard, and was, as a matter of fact, about to be brought under investigation and discipline. For the Commerce post he chose Daniel C. Roper, who was an old-time Democrat from South Carolina. Roper was a smooth and effective politician of conservative bent. He was not suggested for the post by anyone except possibly himself; but he had been one of the early and expectant visitors to the President-elect who had been marked by the reporters.

Franklin's holistic principle did not prevent an interesting deployment of the businessmen who had been Roosevelt supporters even though none were asked to join the cabinet. Straus, who wanted terribly to be Secretary of Commerce, and who could see no reason why he should not follow the tradition which had landed other businessmen in that post, had to be satisfied with the embassy in Paris. Similarly Morris went to Belgium, and Bingham to London. In quite another vein Franklin repaid an old debt by sending Josephus Daniels to Mexico. But on the whole, Franklin could be seen to have chosen an official family representative of Democratic and Progressive strength which yet did not personify any interest inimical to general or public interest centered in himself. His attempt would not prove to be wholly successful; but it served well enough during the earliest stage of his administration.

V

Franklin understood, even if he did not accept, the prevalent additive attitude. To an extent he shared it, as who would not, having had his education and experience. There was very little in all he had been taught to impress on him the principle of social unity, especially as concerned the obligations of individuals or corporate enterprises. Every one around him all his life had been of the view that general well-being was arrived at by the separate achievements of many contributors, his teachers no less than the politicians and businessmen with whom he had associated. His teachers expressed it by accepting and elaborating the theory of free competition in economics and rights without obligations in politics. The putative hidden hand, spoken of by the economists, which led individual enterprisers to establish the good of the whole, was basic. It was, in fact, a euphemism for nature; and the processes of competition were supposedly controlled by natural law.

The nineteenth-century economists had derived these conclusions from observing the operations of business enterprise. They formalized the practice of competition. They also justified that practice by pointing out that fairness to all was achieved when sellers and buyers, producers and consumers, workers and employers carried out free bargaining. The market, when it was not restricted in any way, would tend toward stability. Every bargainer would get not only all he was entitled to but all he could get in the long run; therefore the system deserved defense. It was an ethical as well as an economic concept. It was translated into political principle as laissez faire. The state would only upset the natural balance by any interference. Matters would come right only if left alone.

Throughout Franklin's life this had been the accepted doctrine of all those to whom he had owed regard. Yet some instinct from time to time seemed to make him doubtful. It will be recalled how little respect he had as governor for some businesses, particularly the utilities. He was clear, certainly, that much regulation was justified in revisionist competitive theory as keeping competition really free. But practical considerations—in the field he had studied most, electric power—had led him to think government ownership often necessary. It could not be said that he had become a socialist. No one ever heard him advocate public ownership of all business or even all the power business. But even outside the utility field, he had concluded that drastic regulation might be needed, so drastic as to run beyond merely the establishment of freedom. The stringent protections for workers in New York State were one example. But the depression had enforced the same lesson concerning banking and finance. Just now there were turning over in his mind various approaches to these problems which would not be found in the books of laissez-faire believers.

One of the phenomena of American life which would doubtless puzzle the historians of the future was the persistent clinging to a philosophy of individualism in the midst of progress toward collectivism. That philosophy was not, for instance, allowed to interfere with the development of businesses into empires of embracing extent. One of the necessary characteristics of this progress was the swallowing up or destruction of competitors, and those who were thus swallowed or destroyed could not have regarded themselves as possessing the freedom they heard about and believed in. The anti-trust laws had been intended to stop this kind of thing; but they had notoriously not succeeded. Not even the most convinced laissez-faire believers had been able to say how big an enterprise would be beyond toleration. Growing could, therefore, not be stopped, and incidents along the way, such as the elimination of competitors, could not be stopped either. Because they were small they could not survive. They were comparatively inefficient; and efficiency too was an American objective.

But, theoretically and officially, Americans clung to laissez faire. Socialism was a word with opprobrious connotations. Even collectivism was a dangerous idea. No politician could survive who did not praise free enterprise, proclaim his devotion to the small businessman, and denounce big businessmen and socialists alike. Their leaders had emphatically not told Americans that they were, in fact, members of a collectivity, that each lived in a close and necessary association with others, and that the good of one had become the good of all. This was the more remarkable because of the particular experiences of that generation, the most startling of all being the very depression they were now in the midst of. There can hardly ever have been lessons more thoroughly misunderstood. Because this was so the remedy most favored was more of what had caused the illness.

The depression had affected more than one or a few persons and enterprises; it had touched all of them; its miasmic influence had indeed reached far beyond the confines of one nation. The whole world was involved. This had not happened because of anything one or a few individuals had done. It was a sickness of the whole. And nothing could be clearer than that general remedies, not those directed to individual rescues, would be needed to effect a cure. They were being considered even now. And Franklin's consideration was not only of ways to relieve hardship—although he often spoke of that—but also of ways to reactivate the economy. If the economy "recovered," there would be employment, higher incomes, improved well-being, better business. Such was his reasoning.

The industrial system was just beginning to be regarded—largely as a result of the depression—as an organism subject to curable illnesses. Those who so regarded it might be a small circle, but they were influential. The Taylor Society, for instance, made up of efficiency engineers, had lifted their eyes from shop management to business policy. And academic economists were extremely knowledgeable about business cycle theories. There was current talk about stimulation, stabilization, and other similar means for recovering. And each had its own devices. Stimulation, it was argued, could be administered by direct additions to purchasing power, and it might be better to find the funds for this by inflating, since this raised the price level and enabled debtors to get more dollars with which to pay off their creditors. Getting rid of the current load of debt was an important preliminary to the resumption of loaning; and until loaning began, business would be restricted. Stabilization was to be reached, it was said, by getting prices into balance again so that each industrial group could make fair exchanges with other groups—so that each could work for the other and each would be the other's consumers.

Franklin probably had been exposed to more theory during the last year—proposals for recovery involving general principles—than he had heard before in all his life. And although the end sought was practical, still the ideas were inclusive and had to do with the general good rather than that of any individual or group. The national economic health was in question. If it improved, everyone and every group would improve along with it. This was the holistic view.

Franklin was not really very much at home in the realm of ideas. His was a mind which dealt much more pleasurably with arrangements of people and things. And he had a predilection for hanging on to concepts he had at some pains thought out in the past. This, however, was not so strong a leaning that he failed to see facts or to grasp the obsolescence which often overcomes concepts. He knew that some fairly precious notions had to give way to others which were more precious. On the whole, it has to be said that, by the time he became President, he had an equipment of traditions, preferences, attitudes, and values—as well as an array of talents and a fund of experience—peculiarly suited to the tasks before him. Perhaps as important as any item of his equipment was his vigorous instinctive reaction to challenge. This was a kind of driving force. It forbade inaction when there was something to be done. Then there was the noblesse his father had taught him and which was part of the Christianity he professed. It was wrong to tolerate injustices. Then too he had a politician's attitude toward inconsistency. He knew the public memory was short and that he could change his mind without penalty if he had not made—as he seldom did—embarrassing commitments on principle.

So he considered the nation as a whole but also had a genuine outgoing concern for disadvantaged men and women. He thought of agriculture; but he remembered that there were farmers. He saw that finance was a system; but it was one which financiers ran—well or badly as the case might be. His holistic or collective thinking ran concurrently with his older sympathies and understandings. It was pleasant to think that relief for the unemployed put a stop to hunger and cold at the same time that it stimulated the production of goods. He was inclined to revert to suspicion that men's and women's characters were undermined if they were not required to earn the income they received, and so he favored work relief rather than grants.¹³

This and other illustrations of a similar sort show how varied and mixed Franklin's ideas and preconceptions were. His make-up, although it had been given structure and substance by Groton, Harvard, and his other experiences, was such a generally open one that new facts, thoughts, and experiences flowed into it and were tested quite readily and quickly for their values. Sometimes they were rejected, sometimes accepted; the bias was not—as in so many minds—toward rejection. Yet there is no understanding him if it is not always recalled that what was accepted had been evaluated and that the evaluation had been in terms of the ends to be served.

Those ends were political and moral. There was the good of the nation to be considered. The nation should be fair, even generous in dealing with its citizens; but they too should be just to their nation; people should have duties as well as privileges; they owed something to each other and to their country. He saw his own immediate duty as a multiple one; to find ways which led to recovery, and, beyond that, to improvement. So he consented to a system of temporary relief, both for individuals and businesses—and this meant not only grants to the poor, but also loans to distressed businesses, moratoria on old debts, and assistance to home owners, all of which would be attended to in the first rush of legislation. But he went further. Presently he would urge the Civilian Conservation Corps to improve forest resources, as well as to take youths off the city streets; would set up the Tennessee Valley Authority as a sample attack on the various ills of a distressed region, and begin to outline a system of public works which would improve all the facilities of common life. And following on, much more general ends would be sought through the AAA and the NRA. The American people were not going merely to recover; they were going to be lifted toward new levels of living, toward stability and security. Nothing less would discharge the obligation the new President felt to be his.

This seemed to be a complicated enough task, although its elements, if not its details, had become fairly clear by inauguration; but there were others of which hardly anyone as yet seemed conscious. Americans, most of them, were struggling with disaster, and there were few of them who could spare consideration for anything beyond economic recovery—for themselves and for the country. But the President of the United States must consider the nation's security along with its well-being. Almost alone among his countrymen Franklin was beset in 1933 with uneasiness about events occurring abroad. Almost alone he understood that their implications for the nation's future were very serious indeed. It should be remembered that Hitler came into power in Germany just thirty-three days before Franklin was inaugurated in Washington.

VI

As he looked about the world with which he would have to deal as the constitutional shaper of foreign policy, there were strange phenomena to evaluate. There was Communism in Russia, Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, and totalitarianism in Japan—all aggressive and all activated by fanaticism. There was, in fact, very little governmental democracy left anywhere except in Britain, France, and other Western European nations, and this was complicated by imperial glories which were fast fading and, as they departed, were ingloriously muddied by disputes with colonial peoples. And even the nearest neighbors of the nation were dictatorships, many of them naked and cruel ones. South of the Rio Grande there were few practicing democracies.

The New Deal would also inherit many ongoing arrangements made in accordance with tradition or with Republican interpretations of it. These he must appraise; but he was usually clearer in his own mind about these than he was about domestic problems. A representative instance of this was the Disarmament Commission which had been at work in Geneva for several years. This had been a matter of real concern to Hoover, who was a Quaker, and who had hoped for some achievement which would mark his administration as having made a notable contribution to peace. But progress had been disappointing. It happened that one delegate of the United States was an experienced diplomat and was also a Democrat. This was Norman Davis; and soon after election Franklin began to explore with him the probability of further progress. The prospects did not seem favorable, especially since the League of Nations was evidently in process of disintegration. The aggressors—especially Japan, Italy, and Germany—were in no mood to submit to sanctions even if the other powers had had the courage to impose them. Armaments seemed more likely to increase than to diminish. It was true that a treaty limiting navies had been negotiated and signed in 1930; but land armaments, although the Treaty of Versailles had called for reduction, had been, for twelve years, the subject of temporizing committee meetings which had got nowhere.

Hoover's move to reactivate negotiations had been made early in 1932, through Ambassador Gibson. These proposals called for "the reduction of armies in excess of the level required to preserve internal order by one-third, together with the abolition of certain 'aggressive' arms."¹⁴ Concerning this, years later, Hoover had to remark sadly that: "The conference adjourned to meet again late in the year, by which time I had been defeated in the election and was without power to carry on."¹⁵

Franklin rather hoped to pursue Hoover's beginnings to a conclusion. He would keep Davis on the job; and he himself, after studying carefully the possibilities, would make a new appeal, not through the somnolent League, but directly to the heads of states.¹⁶

But it was all too obvious that the totalitarian nations were intent on objectives which were utterly inconsistent with disarmament. They meant to have their way, by force if necessary. And it was this intention which Franklin felt he might well have to oppose. It was not clear in the winter of 1933 that aggression at any cost was an irrevocable determination of Hitlerians, although in August 1932, Germany had withdrawn from the disarmament compact. But the signs were ominous, and Franklin studied them with intent concern. About Japan there could be no doubt; and he did not hesitate to associate himself openly and without reservation with what was called "the Stimson Doctrine." This was the first glimpse Americans had of the approach to foreign policy of the incoming President. Some of them liked it, but more did not—those who paid any attention at all. It required no particular foresight to anticipate that ultimately much more serious differences would arise from the decisions just now in the making. These might even bring war. This too Franklin accepted without hesitation as probable. From the very first he felt that war might come; but he felt, also, that only appeasement would avoid it, and that perhaps only temporarily.¹⁷

These decisions were only shaping; and just possibly there might be a change in Germany or Japan. Franklin in any case was determined also that the nation should steadily oppose the totalitarian aggression he feared was developing. These were the beginnings of fateful policies. But, terrible as their implications were, Franklin entered on them at this time without hesitation. They must have been ones he had pondered over in the past and thoroughly settled on without anyone having been consulted. He came to them quickly and decisively; they could not possibly have been improvised.

Another ongoing matter needing immediate attention was the London Economic Conference. But to this he had been alerted since his first meeting with Hoover soon after election. Gradually his differences with the old policy had become clearer; and by now he knew that in these negotiations the war debts owing the United States could not be thrown into a general bargain with monetary stabilization, trade relations, and disarmament. Hoover had agreed with the Europeans that they made one package. Franklin was determined not to jeopardize the rest by bringing in the debts about which American opinion was bitter. And all of Hoover's efforts to commit him had failed. There were at the moment negotiators in Geneva working on the agenda for this London conference in the spring. He must take them over, revise their instructions and, before the meeting actually took place, devise a comprehensive economic foreign policy. It was no slight task for an economic amateur who had as many confusing advices as were coming to Franklin. Still it must be done. Here too, however, he was further along toward a conclusion than anyone realized—or would realize until he sent the "bombshell" message to the conference itself. Where the conclusions came from puzzled everyone. But there can be no doubt that he had them.

This was much more characteristic than was usually recognized. The propensity for arriving at settled attitudes without consultation was hidden by the extensive consulting he carried on all the time. What was missed about this was that when he opened subjects for discussion he was often already far along in making up his mind, and that, anyway, he had reached a stage at which he did not mind having it known that his interest was engaged. It is sometimes important to people to know what a president is considering. He has to be secretive to a degree for public reasons. Added to these, in Franklin's case, there were private ones. Exposure was repugnant to him if it led to the opinion that he was weak or uncertain; he must always appear to have confidence in his own judgment. It will be recalled that this was true when as governor he made the utilities the object of a long-run political persecution. When he talked with his advisers about the behavior of the power companies it was only to stock his armory. He had already come to his conclusion. It was so about Japan. When he talked with Stimson on 9 January at Hyde Park, he was not open to conviction; his conviction had already been arrived at. It might surprise the Secretary; but it would not surprise him more than others who had thought themselves in Franklin's confidence.¹⁸

Many times as President he would "spring" decisions on the public and even on those close to him. But he had been doing this for a long time. It had not been noticeable when he had been a lesser figure and the decisions of lesser consequence; but in a governor, and even more in a president, it was a notable, even a genuinely fateful, characteristic. It ran to the process of judging. It tended to remove decisions from rationality, to enlarge the role in them of instinct, of gathered values, of preconception. Franklin was certainly an exaggerated example of nonrational decision-making.

It was of moment, therefore, what were the values, the attitudes, and the stores of experience from which he arrived at policy. This is something difficult to reduce to generalization. It is, however, easily illustrated. Consider, for instance, his instant but persistent reaction to Hitler, as he too made his bid for world leadership. It is not only striking how concurrent their emergence into national leadership was; but also that their estimates of each other were made once for all as they were first ranged in opposition.¹⁹ Throughout the ensuing years, as each gathered power in his own way, each was also to fix his nation in a position of such implacable opposition to the other's that trial by force could not in the end be avoided.

How much an antagonism of traditions, tastes, and personalities this was can be seen now by looking back along the era which was just opening in 1933. A merely casual examination of the incidents involving both nations during that time reveals a steady deepening of repugnance, a gathering of resolution, and a growing unwillingness to seek accommodation. But this design, so apparent to the backward look, was not apparent then. Franklin was not well enough understood, for one thing, for many people to have judged the meaning of his apparently casual comments or his oblique references. Nor, in fact, was there enough attention being paid to any of the developments abroad so that a president's concern would be much noticed. When it was noticed, there was no premonition that ultimate war might be involved. Americans took leave, as they always did, to make fun of foreign peculiarities; and Hitler almost at once became a comic figure. He was never comic to Franklin, whose approach to him was, in fact a curious mixture of detestation and dread. He disliked Hitler so much that he could not see him as a serious collaborator in leadership; yet he understood the mighty force such a man of malice might ultimately have at his disposal.

The active antagonism, it must be said, was mostly on Franklin's side. Hitler was in process of making the same double mistake his predecessors had made before 1917, of first ignoring and then misunderstanding the American temper, and of underestimating the current American leader.

Wilson had gone to war for reasons quite other than had developed in Franklin's mind, and, as will be recalled, much more reluctantly than the younger man had approved. Franklin, when he first sized up Hitler, saw in him a personification of the same traits he had regarded as so revolting two decades earlier. And this time they appeared in exaggerated form: Hitler seemed to Franklin almost a caricature of the insensitive, overbearing, gross, unsportsmanlike, and aggressive German. This was the picture which would be so endlessly detailed in later years by cartoonists and correspondents; it was seen at once—long before American reactions had become stereotyped—by the new American President.

There was, however, one difference between Franklin's and most others' estimates. He had a healthy respect for the organizing genius of the Germans even under the control of so fantastic a character as Hitler; he had, after all, been a schoolboy in Germany for some time. He noticed, and spoke of, something not many others saw—that behind Hitler was the whole of German industrialism. The great capitalists gave him financial backing; his national socialism was oligarchical. They regarded him as a perhaps unsavory but still a useful front for their designs. And this connection meant a good deal to Franklin, who was already sensitized to the sinister machinations of the international financial system and the world-wide cartels which centered in Germany.

Another thing: Franklin understood from the first, also, that there were allies and collaborators in the United States who would find totalitarianism congenial. Many of them for years had been admiring Mussolini for seeing to it that "the trains ran on time," a kind of symbol in their minds for a discipline they thought the United States could do with more of. These admirers were of various sorts: for one instance, those who had some actual association, perhaps well hidden, with the Germans; and for another, those who had ideological sympathies with Nazism. The first were powerful but few; the second were, however weak at the moment, potentially many. There are always the ignorant, the malicious, the unstable, and the envious to whom appeals of the Hitlerite sort can be made with effect—appeals to racial prejudice, to jealousy, or simply to hate and to vengeance for fancied wrongs.

Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Milo Reno, and John Simpson were plying the trade of agitation; and they had many lesser collaborators. America was far from immune to the virus working in Europe. It may well be that Franklin dreaded, more than anything else, as he surveyed the presidential job, the inevitable encounters with this spreading disease. He knew how difficult it would be to counter it; but he would, he knew, have to try—not directly, at least at first; but indirectly. He studied the means at his disposal with the dispassionate eye of the expert.

One thing can be said—and it was a matter of immense importance to the country after the winter they had just lived through—he was not awed or paralyzed by the complexity or the vastness of the task he faced. He was like a strong swimmer in a rushing stream. He liked the opposition. It was something to overcome with joy because he was so much alive and so competent to meet the challenge.

NOTES

¹ Mostly by allowing the banks in small communities to fail. Their assets were heavily weighted with foreign bonds and other doubtful obligations sold to them by the metropolitan banking houses.

² Not all the banks were insolvent; that is to say many of them had assets enough to cover their obligations. But these assets could not be realized immediately and the demand for cash had exhausted the available reserves of currency.

³ The subject here is spoken of by his first name somewhat as his pastor might do in speaking to Higher Authority of Thy Servant, Franklin.

⁴ Part of the same improvised machinery were the selfhelp workshops set up in various places. Some were naturally more successful than others, depending on the management. That in Ohio finally began to look something like a system within a system. The unemployed working to produce things which other unemployed could use; and these, in turn, producing to exchange—this was clearly an alternative to formal capitalism. It was viewed with the expected suspicion by conservatives and tended to wither as relief became more easily available and as works projects were developed. But it was one of the chief counts of the critics of Harry Hopkins' successive organizations to care for the unemployed that in various places these improvisations had been encouraged. Those who managed the local relief agencies, however, were usually undoctrinaire folk. Anything, they felt, which would assist those beaten down by the failure of industrialism was to be fostered. These were the heroes of the long depression. They were already hard at work before Franklin came to Washington or Harry Hopkins had been heard of outside New York.

⁵ The following paragraphs are quoted from Time (6 February 1933, p. 17):

Near Bowling Green, Ohio, 800 ugly-tempered farmers last week assembled at Wallace Kramp's place to watch a finance company foreclose its $800 mortgage. Bidding began at 15¢ for a spring harrow. When the company's representative raised it to $1.55, somebody shouted: "That's the guy what holds the mortgage." Promptly the bidder was marched well out of the bidding range where he was rescued by a sheriff. Wallace Kramp's neighbors bought in all his things for $14, handed them back to him.

At Nampa, Idaho, where a United Farmer's League was in process of organization, one William Ai Frost jumped up and shouted: "Just give me a sixshooter and four red-blooded men who will have the nerve to follow me and a will to make the legislature put through any law we want."

At Overton, Neb., any outsider who dared to bid at the foreclosure sale on Mike Thinnes' farm was threatened with a ducking in the horse trough at the hands of 200 farmer friends. Mrs. Thinnes bought in cows for 100, horses for 250, tractors for 500—at a total cost of $15.

At Perry, Iowa, approximately the same prices prevailed at the foreclosure on George Rosander's place when 1500 of his friends collected to restrict the bidding. The holder of a $2,500 mortgage collected precisely $42.05.

At Le Mars, Iowa, 25 farmers gathered to block foreclosure of a mortgage on the home of Dentist George Washington Cunningham. They explained that they all owed Dr. Cunningham for professional services.

Events such as the above were what John Andrew Simpson, president of the National Farmer's Union had in mind last week when he told the Senate Committee on Agriculture: "The biggest and finest crop of revolutions is sprouting all over the country right now."

⁶ It was what a whole parade of business leaders counselled before a lame-duck investigating committee of the Senate over which the retiring Reed Smoot of Utah presided, but which, after 4 March, would be chaired by Pat Harrison of Mississippi. It was as pitiful an exhibition of futility as can ever have been displayed by the responsible men of a leading nation. Cf. for an extended reporting The New York Times of various February dates.

⁷The American Political Tradition, Chapter XIII, p. 312, 1951:

When Hoover bumbled that it was necessary only to restore confidence, the nation laughed bitterly. When Roosevelt said: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," essentially the same thread-bare half-true idea, the nation was thrilled. . . .

⁸ Two chiefs of the White House detail during Franklin's Presidency have written accounts of their stewardship: Colonel Starling and Michael Reilly who succeeded him.

⁹ Including such varied contemporary giants as Owen D. Young, Cardinal Mundelein, Huey Long, and Thomas Lamont.

¹⁰ Not, at least until his third term was ending and Willkie had been rejected as a Republican candidate. He would then feel the time right and begin negotiations with Willkie. Willkie's death—and his own shortly afterward—would intervene and nothing would result. Cf. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, N.Y., 1952.

¹¹ The attack on the two-thirds rule in 1932 was withdrawn from with some embarrassment by Farley; but in 1936 it was abrogated without any great difficulty. So, often, are consequential changes made if the right time is waited for.

¹² He had, for instance, been chairman of the National Democratic Committee back in the '20's.

¹³ He clung to this notion even when it was less practical, certain that he was right when trusted friends differed with him. On this very point, as it would happen, Frank Walker, one of the most loved of them, would feel strongly enough to leave his official family later on—but still without changing Franklin's determination.

¹⁴Cf. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover; The Cabinet and the Presidency, p. 340ff.

¹⁵Op. cit., p. 356.

¹⁶ This would be done on 16 May 1933. Hoover always considered that Franklin had done something unethical in not acknowledging that he—Hoover—had invented the formula for abolishing offensive land arms. In a rather sour note in the Memoirs (op. cit., p. 357) Hoover said: "The nations apparently ignored the proposal, and I was informed that they considered the League should not be so sidetracked. In any event, all American pressure was discontinued, and all American interest was allowed to die."

¹⁷ An account of Secretary Stimson's concern that his Far Eastern policies should be perpetuated will be found in his memoir On Active Service in Peace and War, N.Y., 1948, pp. 282ff. Franklin was quite ready to check Japanese aggression directly. Perhaps I may note that I was one of those who objected seriously. I thought the liberal forces in Japan ought to be built up; and the Stimson doctrine played directly into the militarists' hands, making war much more likely than it might otherwise have been. I thought it was not our business to intervene between the Japanese and the Chinese. The Chinese in the long run would take care of these invaders as they had so many others.

¹⁸Cf. op. cit., p. 293: "The most important point to Stimson was Mr. Roosevelt's quick understanding and general approval of his Manchurian policy. Stimson warned him that the League was approaching a final statement; Mr. Roosevelt promptly agreed and promised that he would do nothing to weaken Stimson's stand. The following week the President-elect went even farther in a public statement in support of the administration's Far Eastern policy. 'It was a very good and timely statement and made me feel better than I had in a long time.' (Diary, January 17, 1933). In a second meeting in Washington on January 19 Mr. Roosevelt remarked 'that we are getting so that we do pretty good teamwork, don't we?' I laughed and said 'yes'."

¹⁹ Hitler was allowed to form a cabinet by the aged Von Hindenburg early in February, and, as Franklin was choosing his cabinet, Hitler was also choosing his. It may be worth while to recall Hitler's list, considering how much its names were to mean: Vice Chancellor, Von Papen; Foreign Minister, Von Neurath; Interior, Frick; Defense, Von Blomberg; Finance, Von Krosigh; Economics, Hugenberg; Labor, Seldte; without Portfolio, Goering.

There was a general election on 5 March the day after Franklin's inauguration. This election had been preceded by a campaign of outrageous violence, including the Reichstag fire, and was won by the Nazis—that is they gained 92 Reichstag seats, so that with collaborators, they had a clear majority. Hitler then assumed dictatorial powers, suspended by decree most of the Republican constitution and entered fully on that desperate career of international aggression and internal hoodlumism which was to alienate most of the world and finally bring a belated retribution. Hitler had been rising since the '20's on a tide of German resentment against the Treaty of Versailles. He now considered himself loosed from all restraints and the loosening approved by his people.