Shortly after his reelection, the President went to Warm Springs, Georgia, for a long rest, returning to Washington just before Christmas. When the new Congress opened, he called for work-or-fight legislation to draw all the manpower possible into the war effort, and asked for post-war universal military training.
His fourth term inauguration, a solemn affair, was held on the South Portico of the White House. Some 8,000 carefully-selected guests were allowed to witness the ceremony from the lawn.
And only a matter of hours later, the President asked Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones to step aside so that Henry A. Wallace, the Vice President Mr. Roosevelt dumped overboard at the Democratic convention in favor of Missouri’s Sen. Harry S. Truman, could have a Cabinet post.
As Congress was thrown into a broiling argument over the Wallace nomination, the President left town under cover of heavy secrecy and sped across the world for another meeting with Mr. Churchill and Marshal Stalin.
This conference was held at Yalta in the Crimea. It proposed a post-war boundary and government for Poland, devised a system for voting to keep future peace and made plans for a world security conference in San Francisco, opening April 25. Both the Polish government and boundary question and the number of votes given the larger nations provoked much controversy.
Domestic plan outlined
Mr. Roosevelt himself was the author of one of the best summations of his domestic objectives. It was his reply to the question of a visiting Canadian editor at a press conference in 1935. Voiced spontaneously, it represented the President’s attitude while in office.
Mr. Roosevelt said:
The social objective, I should say, remains just what it was, which is to do what any honest government or any country would do; to try to increase the security and the happiness of a larger number of people in all occupations of life and in all parts of the country; to give them more of the good things of life; to give them a greater distribution not only of wealth in the narrow terms, but of wealth in the wider terms; to give them places to go in the summertime – recreation; to give them assurance that they are not going to starve in their old age; to give honest business a chance to go ahead and make a reasonable profit, and to give everyone a chance to earn a living.
The three R’s of his administration were recovery, relief and reform.
When he rode up Pennsylvania Avenue March 4, 1933, to take office, the emphasis was on recovery from a depression that had closed virtually every bank and thrown millions out of work.
Food riots recalled
Aid for the unemployed was a paramount demand. Food riots had occurred. Mob law threatened even judges in some rural communities.
Then, when the depression ills had been cured or alleviated, reform became the major consideration.
Banks, public utilities, stock and commodity exchanges – all were put under government regulation. Corporations were forced to pay higher taxes along with wealthy individuals.
Business firms and workers jointly contributed to set up a program of social security through old-age pensions, unemployment insurance and aid to mothers, children and cripples.
Action was a keynote of all the years Mr. Roosevelt served as President. Yet strange as it seemed afterward, his opponents in his campaign for his first term said he was a weak man.
One writer said Candidate Roosevelt was “an amiable man with many philanthropic impulses, but he is not the dangerous enemy of anything. He is too eager to please.”
But he had no sooner taken the oath of office, when he called Congress into special session for what were to be the famous “100 days.” He took the United States off the gold standard and eventually devaluated the dollar to approximately 60 cents of its former worth.
Blue Eagles flown
With Secretary of the Treasury William Woodin, a businessman drafted into the Cabinet, he charted the reopening of national banks.
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration with power to curtail crops was authorized by Congress in a sweeping grant of power. The National Recovery Administration was established and soon Blue Eagles were in the windows of almost every business concern in America.
The Public Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration came into being to care for the needy.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, fathered by Sen. George Norris (D-Nebraska), became a yardstick for measuring power production costs.
Emergency legislation gave Mr. Roosevelt vast powers, but he liked to consider himself a partner of the people in pulling the nation up by its bootstraps.
In the forefront of all this activity was a smiling, gay President. His personal charm was magnetic and his warm, friendly voice was known to millions through his radio personality, considered the best in the country. He frequently reported to the people in “fireside chats” from the White House.
Jobs found by millions
Business improved and some of the millions of unemployed found jobs. Thus, the need for national unity gradually lessened and criticism of the New Deal began to be heard.
Both the AAA and the NRA were attacked as representing regimentation.
Relief costs were too high, it was said. There were court tests of the constitutionality of the NRA and AAA. Gen. Hugh Johnson, administrator of the NRA, was assailed.
On May 27, 1935, the Supreme Court held NRA unconstitutional because it carried what it considered unwarranted grant of power to the Chief Executive. Mr. Roosevelt was forced by the decision to retire from his efforts to shorten working hours, increase wages and create new jobs for the time being.
But he finally achieved his goal with the Wage-Hour Act which went into effect in October 1938 and stood up under a Supreme Court test.
The President had no intention of retreating in the face of attacks through the courts. He made that known in his famous “horse and buggy” comment shortly after the NRA decision. He said new judicial concepts were needed to meet modern economic and social conditions.
Coal NRA set up
After a bitter contest with big business on one side and the administration on the other, Congress enacted the Utility Holding Company Act with its so-called “death sentence” provisions to prevent pyramiding control by minority stockholders.
In supporting the Guffey Coal Bill to reestablish a little NRA for the coalmining industry, Mr. Roosevelt again served notice that he would not retreat, either under the attacks of big business or of the Supreme Court.
On January 6, 1936, the Supreme Court threw out the AAA’s compulsory crop control provisions as unconstitutional. These sections were the keystone of the New Deal’s program to rehabilitate agriculture. Later, the processing taxes which had supplied the financial lifeblood, were also declared invalid.
Mr. Roosevelt was renominated without opposition for his second term in 1936 and in his acceptance speech, he said: “I accept the commission you have tendered me. I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war.”
His opponent was Alfred M. Landon of Kansas and Mr. Roosevelt’s popular vote majority was approximately 11,000,000. Mr. Landon carried only Maine and Vermont, a total of eight electoral votes, the fewest for a major party candidate since William Howard Taft in 1912.
Went to Buenos Aires
The President left on November 18, 1936, for Buenos Aires and attended the opening of the Inter-American Peace Conference. He returned December 15 and became the first President to take office under the Norris constitutional amendment eliminating the lame duck session of Congress.
On February 5, 1937, he sent a message to Congress asking for an act which would permit him to add six justices to the Supreme Court if those members who were past 70 did not resign. Reforms in the lower courts were also asked.
“My purpose is to strengthen the administration of justice and to make it a more effective servant of public need,” the President told Congress.
The record of the historic battle which followed shows that Mr. Roosevelt lost the “battle,” but won the “war.”
Late in his second term, he made it clear that his proposal to add six justices had been only a means toward the ultimate objective of liberalizing the court which was achieved through the resignations of all the conservative justices who had ruled repeatedly against New Deal laws.
Conservatives supplanted
By the time his second term drew to an end, he had named more justices than any President since Mr. Taft, and the once-dominant conservative bloc had been supplanted by a majority which generally viewed the scene from a perspective coinciding with Mr. Roosevelt’s.
But Mr. Roosevelt’s defeat in 1937 was clear-cut and complete. He was attacked as never before. He fought back vigorously – sometimes almost bitterly.
Finally, after weeks of Senate debate, Joseph T. Robinson, then Senate Majority Leader, informed Mr. Roosevelt that his plan was heading for certain defeat.
Seeking to save the prestige of the administration, Mr. Robinson personally sponsored a modified bill authorizing only two new justices.
But Mr. Robinson died suddenly and with him died the chance of even a modified form of Mr. Roosevelt’s original proposals. The President capitulated.
On August 25, he signed a bill dictated by his opponents. This measure affected only lower courts, except that it provided machinery facilitating the retirement of Supreme Court and other federal jurists for age.
Signing a bill setting up an administrative officer for the judiciary on August 1, 1939, Mr. Roosevelt said the day was worth recording “because it marks the final objective of the comprehensive proposal for judicial reorganization which I made to the Congress on February 5, 1937.”
‘Objectives achieved’
He said:
The country is naturally concerned with the attainment of proper objectives rather than any one of many possible methods proposed for the accomplishment of the end.
I call attention to the unwarranted attitude of the Supreme Court with reference to its exercise of constitutional powers.
Measures of social and economic reform were being impeded or defeated by narrow interpretations of the Constitution, and by the assumption on the part of the Supreme Court of legislative powers which properly belong to the Congress.
It is true that the precise method was not adopted, but the objective, as every person in the United States knows today, was achieved.
The results are not even open to dispute. Attacks recently made on the Supreme Court itself by ultra-conservative members of the bar indicate how fully our liberal ideas have already prevailed.
Few Presidents were more keenly alert to world developments than was Mr. Roosevelt.
As Assistant Secretary of Navy during the World War, he epitomized his feeling in a speech at Chautauqua, New York, midway in his presidency when he said solemnly: “I hate war.”
Tried to maintain peace
When clouds of war rolled over Asia and Europe during 1937, 1938 and 1939, Mr. Roosevelt never hesitated to throw the full prestige of the United States in the balance for peace.
But when Japan steadily closed the “open door” in China and Europe went to war in 1939, he turned to efforts to keep America out of the wars and the wars out of the Americas.
During the recurring international crises which preceded the European war, Mr. Roosevelt had used every diplomatic device at his command to head off catastrophe. He appealed personally to Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler of Germany and Premier Benito Mussolini of Italy to guarantee the peace of Europe for 10 years or a quarter of a century.
In return for such a guarantee, he offered the good offices of this country in economic conversations designed to lay a basis for a lasting peace.
After recalling his ambassador to Berlin to emphasize American displeasure at the pogrom against the Jews and the use of force as an instrument of national policy, Mr. Roosevelt appealed repeatedly in personal messages to the rulers of Europe.
Neutrality revision
He addressed a personal appeal to President Michael Kalinin asking Russia to modify its demands on Finland and to respect its territorial and national integrity. He marshaled the 21 American republics behind his drive for peace, and sought in a round-robin appeal to unite all other peace-loving nations.
In April 1939, he startled the nation by leaving Warm Springs, Georgia, with the remark “I’ll be back in the fall if we don’t have a war.”
That brought a storm of criticism from Congressmen who asserted their information did not indicate war in Europe was either imminent or inevitable.
When Congress met, Mr. Roosevelt and Cordell Hull, then Secretary of State, proposed revision of neutrality laws to eliminate the embargo which barred this country from shipping arms to belligerents.
Approved in drastically modified form in the House, the issue became the crux of a major Senate battle although it never reached the floor. In the end, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pigeonholed the bill for the rest of the session.
After the 76th Congress adjourned in August, Mr. Roosevelt accused his opponents in the Senate of gambling with the fate of America and of humanity.
Reconvened Congress
Mr. Roosevelt, vacationing aboard a cruiser off the coast of Newfoundland, put in to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to receive mail, and learned of the non-aggression pact just concluded between Germany and Russia. He rushed back to Washington and was as the White House in command of national policies, when Germany marched into Poland and Britain and France declared war. He reconvened Congress on September 21, 1939.
He told Congress:
I should like to be able to offer the hope that the shadow over the world might swiftly pass.
I cannot. The facts compel my stating with candor, that darker periods lie ahead. The disaster is not of our making; no act of ours engendered the forces which assault the foundations of civilization.
Yet we find ourselves affected to the core; our currents of commerce are changing, our minds are filled with new problems, our position in world affairs has already been altered.
After some six weeks of furious debate, Congress approved Mr. Roosevelt’s program. He lifted the arms embargo and Britain and France placed large orders for airplanes and other armaments. He designated combat areas and proscribed them to American shipping.
Neutrality patrol started
Mr. Roosevelt had proclaimed a limited state of national emergency. He instituted a Navy-Coast Guard neutrality patrol of coastal waters, added to the manpower of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, recommissioned World War destroyers, and added personnel to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for counterespionage and anti-sabotage drives.
Late in 1939, he sent Congress a $273-million deficiency estimate to pay for these extraordinary precautions.
The Navy was in the midst of the greatest building program of its peacetime history. Mr. Roosevelt at the outset of the New Deal had launched the Navy on a tremendous program.
The regular Army-Navy budget for the 1940 fiscal year, approved by Congress before the European war was even envisaged, called for expenditures of $1,760,000,000 of which one billion was for the Navy’s “first line of defense.”
In November 1939, he said at Warm Springs that even this program would not be sufficient to guard America.
In contrast to the “political honeymoon” of the “100 days” at the outset of his administration, Mr. Roosevelt’s second term was marked by great political battles between Mr. Roosevelt and his entourage of “liberals” and the old-time conservative Democrats who largely controlled Congress.
1938 ‘purge’ failed
This division exploded in 1938 in Mr. Roosevelt’s “purge” directed against his conservative opponents at the polls. It failed and the failure was reflected in steadily increasing hostility in Congress to his key measures.
Mr. Roosevelt personally intervened in Democratic primaries to prevent the renomination of Sen. Walter F. George of Georgia, Ellison D. Smith of South Carolina and Millard F. Tydings of Maryland; and against Rep. John J. O’Connor of New York, chairman of the House Rules Committee. He unseated O’Connor, but Messrs. George, Smith and Tydings were renominated and reelected.
During this period, Mr. Roosevelt worked steadily reorganizing the federal government. Defeated by the House in a previous effort to get authorization to reorganize, he had calmly renewed pressure for authorization in the 76th Congress and got it in an act approved April 3, 1939.
Because of his physical handicap, Mr. Roosevelt had all sorts of advisers. He used their eyes and legs and experience. In the White House, he surrounded himself with experts. At the head of the list in the early days was Louis McHenry Howe, a friend for 25 years. Mr. Roosevelt named him presidential secretary when he took office. Ill for more than a year, Mr. Howe died April 18, 1936.
‘Brain trust’ formed
College professors formed the famous “brain trust,” so named by a newspaperman. Some of these men were spectacular themselves. As the years passed by, their ranks were decimated by resignations, some returning to their classrooms while other took positions with business organizations.
Late in 1939, Presidential Secretary Stephen T. Early, in disclosing the details of Mr. Roosevelt’s “streamlining” of the Executive Department, commented that the reorganization order appeared to mean that the “brain trust” no longer existed. The President’s ranking wartime advisers were Harry Hopkins, James F. Byrnes and Adm. William D. Leahy, his personal chief of staff.
Mr. Roosevelt weighed 10 pounds when he was born, the son of James and Sara Delano Roosevelt. His mother was a famous beauty of New York society and was a kinswoman of the socially prominent and wealthy Astor family. His father was prominent in the railroad world.
Graduates with honors
His early education was obtained from tutors and his parents. At 14, he was sent from his fireside classroom to Groton School for Boys, a fashionable preparatory school in Groton, Mass. He graduated with honors.
Then he went to Harvard and completed the four-year course in three years. Yet he found time for athletics and edited the Harvard Crimson. From Harvard he went to Columbia Law School, afterward taking the examination for admission to the bar and passing with high marks.
For his bride, he chose another Roosevelt – a distant cousin – Anna Eleanor, daughter of Elliott Roosevelt, youngest brother of President Theodore Roosevelt.
They were married in New York City in 1905 on St. Patrick’s Day. “Uncle Ted” came up from the White House in Washington to give the bride away – and to witness a parade of the Irish.
They had six children – Anna, James, Elliott, John and Franklin Jr. Their first born, a boy, died in infancy.
