Roosevelt (97 page)

Squalls on Capitol Hill.
The congressman making the plea was Representative Martin Dies speaking for a group of congressmen; see PPF 3458, FDRL. On Congress generally during this period, see OF 419, FDRL. There are many excellent treatments of Congress as an institution; among those based on firsthand observation of Congress are Roland Young,
This is Congress
(Knopf, 1943), especially chap. 5; T. V. Smith,
The Legislative Way of Life
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940); Ernest S. Griffith,
Congress: Its Contemporary Role
(New York University Press, 1951). H. H. Wilson,
Congress: Corruption and Compromise
(Rinehart, 1951), and
James M. Burns,
Congress on Trial
(Harper, 1949), analyze Congress in a more critical vein. Data on the 1938 Congress are from the
Congressional Directory
, 75
^th
Congress, 3
^rd
Session (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937). The account of the passing of wages and hours legislation is based on Burns,
Congress on Trial
, chap. 5, and on Jerry Voorhis,
Confessions of a Congressman
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1947); aside from sources cited in the former, see PPF 5456, FDRL, Roosevelt to Senator Hattie Caraway, Dec. go, 1937. The President’s message to Dies is contained in OF 2730, FDRL. A detailed account of the ill-fated reorganization bill is needed; I have used Altman, “Second and Third Sessions of the Seventy-Fifth Congress, 1937-38” [chap. 16]; Lindsay Rogers, “Reorganization: Post Mortem Notes,”
Political Science Quarterly
, Vol. LIII, No. 2, June 1938, pp. 161-172; Farley
²
(B), pp. 127-130; and Ickes
²
(B),
passim.

The Broken Spell.
Johnson’s remark and the episode at the Press Club dinner are from
Time
, May 16, 1938, and February 14, 1938, respectively. On the question of whether any significant court or administrative reform bill could have passed, see Chapter 15 above and Roosevelt to Bowers, Jan. 15, 1937, PLFDR, pp. 651-652. Herring,
The Politics of Democracy
[chap. 10], especially p. 218, throws a good deal of light on Roosevelt’s relations with Congress. Stanley High’s remark is taken from his
Roosevelt—And Then?
(Harper, 1937). Analysis in this chapter of Roosevelt’s relations with Congress is based largely on material scattered through many FDRL files; see especially OF 202, OF 259, OF 419, OF 1038, PPF 4142, and President’s Personal Files relating by name to chairmen of congressional committees and to other legislative leaders. Data on attitudes of House Democratic Steering committee members are based on a memorandum dictated shortly afterwards by a participant (perhaps Hopkins himself) in Hopkins Papers, File 104, FDRL. It was notable that in this conference protests of rank and file House members were on the whole sharper than those of the leaders. Keller’s letter is in OF 119, FDRL. Standard labor histories stress the stimulating impact of New Deal policies and recovery on unionism. Books that treat the Lewis-Roosevelt break knowledgeably are Creel (B); Cyrus Lee Sulzberger,
Sit Down with John L. Lewis
(Random, 1938); James A. Wechsler,
Labor Baron
(Morrow, 1944); Saul Alinsky,
John L. Lewis, an Unauthorized Biography
(Putnam, 1949); and Matthew Josephson,
Sidney Hillman
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1952). Wesley McCune,
The Farm Bloc
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1943) is a wise and lucid picture of the politics and personalities of the major farm groups during the New Deal. The Farm Bureau Federation membership estimate is from Orville Merton Kile,
The Farm Bureau through Three Decades
(Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1948), p. 368. Roosevelt’s statement to Max Lerner is quoted in Alinsky, p. 165, and is based on statement of Lerner to Alinsky in 1948.

Too Little, Too Late.
Roosevelt’s private views of world developments in 1937-1938 are reflected in PLFDR; see especially pp. 716, 725, 735-736, 757, 766, 781-782. His projects for an international conference are well described in Langer and Gleason, Hull, and Tansill (all B), and in Sumner Welles,
The Time for Decision
(Harper, 1944). Some of the exchanges
between Roosevelt and Welles and others on the project are in PSF, Box 23, FDRL, and drafts of the President’s proposed statement are in the same file, Box 31. Keith Feiling,
The Life of Neville Chamberlain
(London: Macmillan, 1947) and Winston S. Churchill,
The Gathering Storm
[chap. 13], indicate reactions in important quarters abroad. The letter of the schoolmaster (Northrup of the Roxbury Latin School) is in PPF 2291, FDRL. Roosevelt’s privately expressed sympathy for the Spanish Loyalists is indicated in the following previously cited volumes: Eleanor Roosevelt
¹
(B), p. 161; Connally and Steinberg (B), p. 223; and Ickes,
passim.
The actual development of Roosevelt’s attitudes on policy toward Spain is not wholly clear; for example, Welles, pp. 60-61, and Hull, pp. 491-492, disagree sharply on the President’s view in January 1937 toward the Arms Embargo Act concerning Spain. On Nye and the embargo, see OF 1561, FDRL; and on the role of Catholic pressure, see Norman Thomas interview, OHRP, and Claude Bowers to author, June 14, 1955. Unhappily, neither Tansill nor Langer and Gleason throw much light on this matter or on our policy toward Spain in general. Hull, Welles, Feiling, and Ickes, and Claude G. Bowers,
My Mission to Spain
(Simon and Schuster, 1954), provide ample data on the main developments. Max Lerner, “The Case of the Spanish Embargo,” in his
Ideas for the Ice Age
[chap. 10] captures the feeling of tension and anguish during the fight over lifting the embargo. Eleanor Roosevelt
¹
, p. 162, seems to confirm what the other sources suggest—Roosevelt’s painful indecisiveness over policy toward Spain.

The launching of the National Progressives of America is well described in Max Lerner, “Phil La Follette, an Interview,”
The Nation
, May 14, 1938, pp. 552-555; for strategic aspects of the new party see Jay Franklin,
1940
(Viking, 1940), a vivid contemporary account. Roosevelt’s reaction is indicated in PLFDR, p. 785,
and in Ickes
²
(B), pp. 379, 395. On La Follette for Secretary of State, see Ickes,
ibid.
, and Sherwood (B), p. 95. Like most of Roosevelt’s important political moves, the purge was not conceived overnight but was the subject of conversation a long time in advance; see Ickes
¹
_’
²
,
passim
. Roosevelt’s frame of mind in the winter and spring of 1938 is reflected in two extraordinarily long and frank press conferences, one with editors and publishers of trade newspapers, April 8, 1938, and one with members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 21, 1938. Both of these are included in PPAFDR.

The Donkey and the Stick.
Data in FDRL on the management of the purge is widely scattered in PPF and OF files for states and individuals, and at best it is still rather fragmentary. Barkley [chap. 15], and Connally and Steinberg (B), relate their own experiences briefly. Farley
²
presents a full picture of Farley’s dragging of heels during the purge. Intra-White House memoranda suggest the improvised nature of many of the purge attempts. The fullest information available in any single campaign is that on the Fay-O’Connor race; see especially PPF 2841 (Morris Ernst), PPF 245, PSF, Box 28. and Harry Hopkins to FDR, August 3, 1938, Hopkins Paper.
See also Ickes
²
, pp. 466, 475, and Edward J. Flynn (B), p. 150, although there is a major contradiction between these two sources on the importance of Corcoran’s role. Roosevelt’s election prediction is in PC 499, Nov. 11, 1938, as is the exchange with a reporter on the coalition situation.

The Struggle for Power.
Roosevelt’s talk at Chapel Hill is in PPAFDR, 1938 vol., pp. 613-621. He mentioned his “antediluvian” friends in a candid letter to Herbert C. Pell, FDRPL, p. 849. Floyd M. Riddick, “First Session of the Seventy-Sixth Congress,”
American Political Science Review
, Vol. XXXIII, No. 6, December 1939, is a useful summary of the 1939 session. The investigating power of Congress has been well and extensively treated; two excellent recent treatments are Alan Barth,
Government by Investigation
(Viking, 1955) and Telford Taylor,
Grand Inquest
(Simon and Schuster, 1955). A full and critical treatment of the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1938-1944, is Father August R. Ogden’s study,
The Dies Committee
(Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1945). The exchange between Garner and Roosevelt at Cabinet is recorded in Ickes
²
, p. 549, as is Roosevelt’s cautious approach toward Dies, p. 546. On the tilt between Roosevelt and Glass over the Virginia judgeship, the President’s statements are presented in PPAFDR, Vol. 1939, pp. 126-133, and the Senator’s side of the case in Rixey Smith and Norman Beasley,
Carter Glass
(Longmans, Green, 1939). The nature of the congressional attack on the bureaucracy is taken from Burns,
Congress on Trial
[chap. 17], pp. 115-116. On the general problem of congressional control of the executive branch see the thoughtful little book, Louis Brownlow,
The President and the Presidency
(Chicago: Public Administration Service, 1949). One of the many virtues of Ickes’ diaries is that the old curmudgeon made no attempt to hide his battles with other Cabinet members; his showdown with Wallace is described in Vol. II, pp. 38-45. Accounts of Roosevelt’s methods of delegating power and the ensuing confusion are too numerous to list here, but again Ickes is a good source. The usual criticism of Roosevelt as administrator and an excellent critique of this point of view are found in a brilliant review of Ickes’ first volume by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
The New Republic
, December 7, 1953, pp. 14-15. The comment on Roosevelt’s administrative direction by a subordinate is from Molly Dewson, unpublished autobiography, FDRL. On Stalin’s administrative methods see W. W. Rostow,
The Dynamics of Soviet Society
(W. W. Norton, 1952), p. 247, from which I have quoted on page 373; for Harold Smith’s evaluation of Roosevelt as an administrator see Sherwood (B), pp. 72-73; see also Richberg
²
(B), pp. 286-287. Such respected students of administration as Herbert A. Simon, Donald W. Smithburg, and Victor A. Thompson, in their
Public Administration
(Knopf, 1950), p. 168, state that his way of delegating power gave his own personality a greater impact on the shaping of policy. The Roosevelt-Ickes exchange is from Ickes
²
, p. 659. Rowe interview was helpful in evaluating Roosevelt as an administrator. The concept of the test of efficiency as survival is from Chester Barnard.

Roosevelt as Party Leader.
The quotation from Walter Millis is taken from
The Yale Review
, October 1938. Any evaluation of Roosevelt as party leader must take into consideration the question of both what the American
political party is, and what it should be. On this see E. E. Schattschneider’s pioneering study [chap. 10], which combines brilliant analysis with basic postulates on party reorganization; Herring,
The Politics of Democracy
[chap. 10], a shrewd evaluation and defense of the present party arrangements; Herbert Agar,
The Price of Union
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), a searching historical analysis; and the extensive investigations of the presidential nominating process recently being conducted under the leadership of Paul T. David at the Brookings Institution. Many examples could be cited of Roosevelt’s refusal to intervene openly in Democratic primaries during the early presidential years; see Roosevelt to McIntyre, Feb. 2, 1938, PPF 4658; Roosevelt wire to Eleanor Roosevelt, July 19, 1936, PPF 3, FDRL; and Roosevelt to Frank Murphy, June 30, 1934, PPF 1662, as instances. The Pittman case is Roosevelt to Pittman, Aug. 25, 1934, PPF 745, FDRL. A good example of Roosevelt’s emphasis on party after 1936 is PPAFDR, Vol. VI, pp. 113 ff., 326. The nature of Roosevelt’s reaction to the 1938 election results can be seen best in Roosevelt to Pell, Nov. 12, 1938, and Roosevelt to Daniels, Nov. 14, 1938, PLFDR, Vol. II, pp. 826, 827, resp. Among those who urged party rejuvenation on Roosevelt were Emil Hurja, Box 45, Howe Papers, FDRL, and David Stern, OHP; see also OF 1535, FDRL; and Norris and Ickes Papers, LC. On the condition of the New York state and city Democracy, see PPF 149, 206, 239, FDRL; Krock and Flynn interviews, OHP; Norris Papers, LC; A. A. Berle, in
The Reporter
, Dec. 1, 1955; and Moscow (B). The White remark is from White to Farley, Dec. 28, 1937, PPF 1196, FDRL.

Curiously, although newspapers and magazines of the period are filled with gossipy accounts about the Roosevelts and the White House, it is not easy to find a dependable description for a particular period. I have used PPF 1, FDRL, which includes a file of personal detail on the President, including letters written by his secretaries to journalists and others writing in for information; Roosevelt’s own description of his working day in letter to Rep. Frank W. Fries, PPF 4142, FDRL; and Sherwood (B), p. 115. His statement on short letters is in Roosevelt to James Roosevelt, PLFDR, p. 798. One of the best descriptions of the White House environment during the second term is Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner,
American White Paper
(Simon and Schuster, 1940), by two correspondents who had access to it. The letter to McIntyre is in PLFDR, p. 814. Langer and Gleason (B), chap. 1, have a balanced account of Roosevelt’s working relationships with Hull and other officials.

Munich: No Risks, No Commitments.
My main sources for the substantive account and interpretation in this chapter, aside from FDRL files and works cited in bibliographical notes for chapters 13 and 17, are: Alan Bullock,
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
(Harper, 1953), a comprehensive biography that makes exhaustive use of German sources; Galeazzo Ciano,
Hidden Diary
(Dutton, 1953), which covers the 1937-38 period; Frederick L. Schuman,
Night over Europe
(Knopf, 1941), a brilliant and absorbing contemporary account; and Alsop and Kintner,
American White Paper.
While
this last source may err in indicating a more consistent attempt at final decision making after Munich than actually occurred, in most respects it is a remarkably authentic account of White House activities and reactions during the period, based on extensive interviews and checked in the White House itself (see PPF 300, FDRL). The Ickes diary (B) is another important source. While Ickes’ own bias sometimes renders misleading his accounts of his own political and administrative activities, his relative open-mindedness on foreign policy lends, I think, somewhat more authenticity to his reports of presidential and cabinet discussions in that area. Roosevelt’s comment about wanting to assassinate Hitler is in Roosevelt to Frederick B. Adams, Oct. 1, 1938, PLFDR, pp. 813-814. On Roosevelt’s views in the weeks after Munich see Alsop and Kintner; Hull (B); PPF 3884 (Roosevelt to an English friend on the peanut vendor’s remarks, Nov. 15, 1938); and PSF, Phillips to Roosevelt, Sept. 29, 1938. The description of Roosevelt dictating his message to Congress is from Alsop and Kintner. Roosevelt’s instructions to Morgenthau to keep the French plane situation confidential are in PSF 33, FDRL, handwritten note by FDR on top of a memorandum from Morgenthau. The minutes of Roosevelt’s confidential session with members of the Senate Military Affairs Committee are in FDRL.