The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (22 page)

Often, when some matter was being fought out with his advisers, he would bring up the question at dinner and bait me into giving an opinion by stating as his own a point of view with which he knew I would disagree. He would give me all the arguments that had been advanced to him and I would try vociferously and with heat to refute him.

I remember one occasion when I became extremely vehement and irritated. My husband smiled indulgently and repeated all the things that everyone else had said to him. The next day he asked my secretary, Miss Thompson, if I could have tea in the West Hall in the White House for him and Robert Bingham, who was then our ambassador to London and about to return to his post. I dutifully served them with tea, fully expecting to sit and listen in silence to a discussion of questions with which I would not be in agreement. Instead, to my complete surprise, I heard Franklin telling Ambassador Bingham to act not according to the arguments that he had given me but according to the arguments that I had given him! Without giving me a glance or the satisfaction of batting an eyelash in my direction, he calmly stated as his own the policies and beliefs he had argued against the night before! To this day I have no idea whether he had simply used me as a sounding board, as he so often did, with the idea of getting the reaction of the person on the outside or whether my arguments had been needed to fortify his decision and to clarify his own mind.

After Franklin became president, many people told me they disagreed with him and that they were going in prepared to tell him so in no uncertain terms. They went in for their interview, but if I saw them as they came out, they usually behaved as though they had never disagreed at all. Only now and then was someone honest enough to say he had not been able to put forward his own point of view—a difficulty due partly to the effect of Franklin’s personality and partly to the person’s awe of the office itself.

Franklin had the gift of being able to draw out the people whom he wished to draw out and to silence those with whom he was bored, and in both cases the people were greatly charmed. When he did not want to hear what somebody had to say he had a way of telling stories and talking about something quite different. Everyone who worked with him had to learn how to handle this technique of his if they were not to find that the questions they wanted to ask or the opinions they wanted to state never got into words because Franklin talked so steadily and so interestingly that they forgot what they had come to say.

Of all his intimates only a few, I think, ever really understood how it was that people sometimes thought he was in agreement with them when he was not or had given his consent when really he had never contemplated giving it. Louis Howe always understood this trait in Franklin, and Frank Walker, Edward J. Flynn, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Bernard Baruch came to know it well. With none of these men was his own interest ever paramount. The interest of each was in my husband and in the work to be done and they could be objective even when their own work was involved.

I was often supposed to be a great influence on my husband politically. Over and over again people wrote, crediting me with being responsible for his action and even for some of his appointments. Frances Perkins’ appointment to the Cabinet is a case in point. As a matter of fact, I never even suggested her. She had worked with Franklin in New York State and was his own choice, though I was delighted when he named her and glad that he felt a woman should be recognized.

There were times when a list of names suggested for appointment, to serve as individuals or groups, would come out and there would be no woman’s name on the list. Then I might go to my husband to say that I was weary of reminding him to remind the members of his Cabinet and his advisers that women were in existence, that they were a factor in the life of the nation and increasingly important politically. He always smiled and said: “Of course. I thought a woman’s name had been put on the list. Have someone call up and say I feel a woman should be recognized.” As a result, I was sometimes asked for suggestions and would mention two or three names. Sometimes they were considered and sometimes they were not.

The political influence that was attributed to me was nil, where my husband was concerned. If I felt strongly about anything I told him, since he had the power to do things and I did not, but he did not always feel as I did.

I have since discovered that a great many government people to whom I referred letters regarded them as a mandate requiring prompt attention. Evidently they thought that if what I suggested was not done I would complain to my husband. Actually, all I ever expected was that they would be interested in accomplishing the things that should be accomplished, since government is supposed to serve the good of the people. I thought that every government official investigated complaints and gladly tried to correct injustices. I realize now that this was a rather naïve idea, for it is apparent from what people told me that it was often only fear of White House displeasure that set the wheels in motion. This was not true of many departments, but I suppose it is only natural that some of the older departments, where a number of civil service people feel entrenched, should not want to bother with new activities. Both Mr. Woodin and Mr. Morgenthau must have made great changes in the old Treasury Department management. The standards set, particularly after Mr. Morgenthau became secretary of the treasury, must have seemed alarming to some of the old type of civil service officials.

I felt critical of civil service officials at times. When they have been in a department for a long while they can make any change very difficult. Nevertheless, there are an astonishing number of people who want to serve their country and are willing to accept the modest security and low pay of a civil service employee simply because they feel that they are performing a patriotic service.

Consciously, I never tried to exert any political influence on my husband or on anyone else in the government. However, one cannot live in a political atmosphere and study the actions of a good politician, which my husband was, without absorbing some rudimentary facts about politics. From him I learned that a good politician is marked to a great extent by his sense of timing. He says the right thing at the right moment. Though the immediate reaction may be unfavorable, in the long run it turns out that what he said needed to be said at the time he said it.

I do not mean that Franklin never made mistakes; most of the time, however, his judgment was good. He could watch with enormous patience as a situation developed and wait for exactly the right moment to act or speak. The quarantine speech, for instance, was delivered at a time when it was necessary that people be made to think. The meeting with Winston Churchill at Argentia and the announcement of the Atlantic Charter came at a crucial point in the country’s life; in the same way, the D-day prayer lifted the morale of the people at a moment when that kind of inspiration was needed.

Franklin was a practical politician. He could always be told why certain actions or appointments were politically advisable. Sometimes he acted on this advice; on the other hand, he did many things and made many appointments against the advice of the party politicians, simply because he believed they would have a good effect on the nation as a whole. And he was almost always right. However, as a practical politician, he knew and accepted the fact that he had to work with the people who were a part of the Democratic party organization. I often heard him discuss the necessity and role of local political organizations, but he recognized that certain of them were a detriment to the party as a whole. He never got over his feeling against Tammany Hall or any boss-ridden organization, though he acknowledged that some were well administered and valuable.

Though Franklin always said I was far too impatient ever to be a good politician, and though my sense of timing is nowhere near so trustworthy as his was, I have grown more patient with age and have learned from my husband that no leader can be too far ahead of his followers. Also I think my observations of conditions and of the feelings of the average people within our country are fairly trustworthy.

During the years of my husband’s governorship and presidency, but particularly after we were in the White House, I had many occasions to think seriously about the problem that faces the family of a man in American public life, especially a man who becomes the subject of great controversy—hated wholeheartedly by some and loved equally wholeheartedly by others. Of necessity, the attitude toward him must carry through to the members of his family and have some effect on them all.

For the young the situation is extremely difficult. Special privileges are offered them on every side. If they do not accept, they are considered ungracious and unappreciative. If they do accept, they are accused of being selfish, arrogant and greedy and of thinking themselves important and above other people—in fact, of having all the disagreeable traits that we most dislike in the young.

I remember, for instance, when Franklin Junior, then a young college student, was arrested for speeding between Albany and Boston. His father and I hoped that he would be treated as severely as possible, so that he would learn once and for all the inevitable results of breaking the law, even when the offense is not very serious. Above all, we wanted him to learn that punishment for breaking the law falls inexorably on all alike in a democracy. I can remember our utter dismay on discovering that he had got off without even a fine.

Our trouble, of course, came not only from the way the boys were treated outside the home—given too many privileges, on the one hand, and too much criticism, on the other—but from the fact that my husband’s mother adored her grandchildren and thought of them as her own. She often got angry with me because I seldom told them what was right or wrong. The reason I didn’t was that I never was sure. However, everything was always black or white to her; she had no doubts and never hesitated to tell the children what she thought. As a result, they often fooled her. The two youngest members of the family particularly always treated her with an affectionate camaraderie which won from her almost anything they desired.

Franklin Junior wrecked the small car we gave him when he graduated from school, and we decided it would be a good thing for him to go without one for a while. Almost before we knew it his grandmother, at his request, had replaced the car with a much more expensive one. When we objected, she looked at us blandly and said she had not realized we disapproved. She never heard anything she did not want to hear.

My husband had some very firm ideas about what children should do once they were educated. Up to that time they shared in the family life and possessions, but he thought that the day the boys graduated they should go to work and live on their earnings.

My mother-in-law differed in only one respect from my husband in these ideas. Although she believed the children should work, she wanted them all at home under her supervision and guidance, for she had a strong feeling about holding the family together in almost matriarchal style. Consequently, she disliked having any of the young members of the family financially independent of their elders; keeping them financially dependent, she thought, was one way of keeping them at home and controlling them.

She always regretted that my husband had money of his own from his father and that I had a small income of my own; and when I began to earn money it was a real grief to her. When Franklin was ill, however, she offered him any money he needed without question and longed to have him return to Hyde Park and never work again.

In spite of my mother-in-law’s dejection about my earning money, I think she eventually became reconciled to it, realizing that it enabled me to do many things for which my own income was insufficient and which would have been too great a financial drain on my husband. The money I had inherited from my parents’ estate shrank during the depression years, and I ended with a very small yearly income. However, long before leaving New York City in 1933, I had begun to earn money through teaching, writing and radio work. I can remember my pleasure when I first was able to give some substantial help to the Women’s Trade Union League in paying off the mortgage on their clubhouse, and to carry through some of our plans on the Val-Kill experiment.

With the first money I earned through commercial radio work, during the bad days of the depression, I established two places where girls who were unemployed and searching for work could have lunch and a place to rest. One was in the Women’s Trade Union League clubhouse and the other was in the Girls’ Service League headquarters on Madison Avenue. We gave the girls a hot lunch and snacks during the day, and provided facilities for sewing, mending, and the like.

The large sums I was able to earn through radio and writing during those bad times made it possible for me not only to make contributions to organized charities but also to give work or help to individuals who could not be helped through the usual channels. I do not question that I often gave to people who were not worthy; but in those years it seemed better to take that risk than to fail those who were worthy. After a few disillusionments, however, I finally made an arrangement with the American Friends Service Committee whereby they did much of the investigating and I gave them almost all the money I earned through radio. At first I had this money paid directly to them, not receiving any of it myself. Then Hamilton Fish made an attack on me in Congress, claiming that I was evading income taxes by regarding a series of radio talks as benefits. I had, of course, obtained a ruling from the Treasury Department in 1933 that it was legal to turn over the money to a recognized charity, but as long as there was any basis for questioning my right to do this I decided to have the money paid directly to me, deducted part of it toward my income tax, and sent the balance to the American Friends.

The money I earned from all my radio work and some of my writing during the years I was in the White House I felt should be used not simply for charity donations but primarily to help people help themselves. Because that is also the philosophy of the Friends, I chose them to handle the money for me. I never gave a present to any of my children out of that earned money. On some occasions I had to use part of my small principal because I had given away so much I could not meet my income tax otherwise. I did not save a single penny during those years because I thought it was not right to do so, and I left the White House with less cash in my own principal account than I had when I went to Washington.