Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/moyfiles/1934moy.001

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                                                                                January 7, 1935

Man of the Year:Franklin Delano Roosevelt




     In Chapter 1934 of the great visitors book which men call
History many a potent human being scrawled his name the
twelvemonth past. But no man, however long his arm, could write
his name so big as the name written by the longer arm of mankind.
Neither micrometer nor yardstick was necessary to determine that
the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was written bigger,
blacker, bolder than all the rest.

     While other men in other lands were making 1934 history, the
voters of the U.S. took pencil & paper on Nov. 6 and wrote their
own ticket for Man of the Year. It was not a new ticket because
they had picked Franklin Roosevelt as their Man of 1932 by
electing him to the Presidency, but it was a different one. Two
years ago a hundred million people looked to this cheerful,
charming gentleman to do something in the greatest industrial
crisis on record. This year they used their ballots again, not as
a desperate hope but as a grateful reward for services rendered.
President Roosevelt might not have done all the things he
promised to do and all the things he did do might not be for the
country's good in the long run -- but what he did do seemed so
much better than the deeds of any other single citizen in the
land that only the narrowest partisan could cavil at his popular
selection as The Man of 1934.

     In last November's election there was but one national issue
-- the New Deal. The voters' verdict was not a mere stamp of
approval. It was a paean of acclamation. With unqualified popular
enthusiasm, New Dealers were swept head over heels into office.
For the first time since the Civil War a President in office had
his mandate from the people not only renewed but enormously
enlarged in an off-year election. The landslide of 1932 was
almost submerged and forgotten in the landslide of 1934. What
made the name of Franklin Roosevelt so big, so black, so bold,
was the fact that the wealthiest single nation of the modern
world had committed itself as never before to one man in a do-or-
die attempt to pull itself out of a deep, dark economic hole.

     Lesser Lights. In the blinding light cast by a Man of the
Year chosen by acclamation, other lights may seem faint by
comparison, but calculated by their own candlepower, they are not
to be ignored.

     Dictator of the Year was Adolf Hitler who, by force,
intrenched himself in Germany as surely as Franklin Roosevelt did
in the U.S.

     Athlete of the Year was Jerome Herman ("Dizzy") Dean of the
St. Louis Cardinals, whose pitching was responsible more than any
other single factor for bringing his team the National League
pennant and a World's championship.

     Doctor of the Year was Allan Roy Dafoe, whose skill and
commonsense as a family physician the Dionne quintuplets could
last week thank for the fact that they were seven months old and
weighed an aggregate of 60 lbs.

     Also-Ran of the Year was California's Upton Sinclair who for
a time threatened to steal the spotlight of U.S. politics from
Franklin Roosevelt and ended by being a thorn in the great
Roosevelt's political side.

     Musician of the Year was Arturo Toscanini. In three of the
world's great musical capitals -- Manhattan, Paris and Salzburg --
Conductor Toscanini was the sensation of the season, establishing
beyond all dispute his title as music's greatest box-office
attraction.

     Preacher of the Year was Father Charles Edward Coughlin who
swayed more human opinions than any clergyman, became one of the
few U.S. priests in modern times to be a power in politics and
economics.

     Actress of the Year was Katharine Cornell who, while the
memories of Julia Marlowe and Jane Cowl were still green, won the
palm of praise for her Juliet.

     But Dictator, Athlete, Doctor, Also-Ran, Musician, Preacher,
Actress, either singly or together, could not outweigh in the
scales of history the influence and importance of Man of the Year
Roosevelt.

     The Record. In the eyes of oldtime politicians Franklin
Roosevelt has bewitched the U.S. people with his smile, the toss
of his head, the hearty frankness of his manner. These personal
attributes apparently counted for more with the average citizen
than did the concrete record of the President's achievements
during 1934. By last week that record was still an unfinished
story, with the outcome of many of his executive undertakings
still dangling between success and failure. He had kept busy; he
had put on a good show; he had exuded cheer and optimism; but he
had decisively won few major battles in the past twelve months.

     Into the lap of the U.S. the Man of the Year dumped a budget
calling for a two-year expenditure of nearly $17,000,000,000, a
two-year deficit of $9,000,000,000. By the end of the year the
Public Debt had been increased from $23,800,000,000 to
$28,300,000,000. And the Treasury actually found it easier to
float new loans than it had a year earlier. But after making
emergency expenditures of $4,500,000,000 the pump of industrial
recovery was not yet primed and the prospect of a balanced budget
was still very remote.

     Money. The Man of the Year lopped 41 cents off the gold
value of the dollar, called in all gold, nationalized all silver
bullion in the U.S. and set the Treasury to buying 1,300,000,000
oz. of silver. But little if any general price-rise followed, and
the President admitted to newshawks that his gold policy was a
disappointment.

     Farmers. With the help of AAA, farm prices were boosted back
45% of the way from their Depression bottom to 1929 highs. Farm
income was upped to $6,000,000,000, a round billion above 1933,
exclusive of $500,000,000 paid by AAA for restricting production.
But the biggest scarcity factor in boosting farm prices was the
Drought, an act of God.

     Employment. The Man of the Year spent $1,400,000,000 to
relieve the unemployed, not counting $814,000,000 for CWA (For
the four and one-half months that CWA was in operation. Part of
it was spend in the closing weeks of 1933.) -- his first work
relief project, wound up because it was too expensive. But the
American Federation of Labor last week reported that the
unemployed for December totaled 11,459,000 which was 400,000 more
than a year earlier.

     Labor. The Man of the Year scrapped one Labor Board and
founded another to enforce industrial-labor peace through
collective bargaining. He labored diligently to prevent
automobile, steel and cotton textile strikes, to settle bloody
labor altercations in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toledo. But
strikes cost the loss of 20,888,000 man-days of work in the first
nine months of 1934 compared to 9,456,000 man-days loss in the
same period of 1933.

     International. Too busy at home to give much attention to
foreign policy the Man of the Year nonetheless concluded a new
treaty with Cuba which wiped out the Platt Amendment, put U.S.
relations with that country on a new basis, improved relations
with all Latin-America. From Congress he got power to make
reciprocal tariff agreements to promote foreign trade. But up to
last week only one such agreement (with Cuba) had been signed. In
November U.S. exports were worth $195,000,000 (devalued dollars),
up $11,000,000 from a year earlier, although, calculated in old
gold dollars, U.S. foreign trade was at ebb, touching its
Depression low in July.

     Industry. The Man of the Year launched a 1934 drive in
behalf of half-dead heavy industry by setting up the National
Housing Administration which by year-end had induced householders
to spend $100,000,000 on home renovation. But the Federal
Reserve's latest index of industrial production stood at 74%,
almost the exact level of a year earlier, while NRA, without last
year's Man of the Year Hugh S. Johnson, broke like a wave on the
beach; its price-fixing efforts abandoned; its collective
bargaining feature challenged in the courts; its funeral oration
read by Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors: "Today the magic
possibilities of industrial regimentation and the so-called
planned economy no longer cast the spell of yesterday -- that
spell is broken. That is the most important thing. . . . It is
real progress."

     Travels & Talks. The Man of the Year went yachting off
Florida; attended the Harvard-Yale crew races at New London;
cruised for a month aboard the U.S.S. Houston from Annapolis to
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, through the Panama Canal to
Hawaii and back to Portland, Ore.; traveled across the continent
with the cheers of multitudes in his ears and the news of
drought-slaking rains in his wake; relaxed as the country squire
at Hyde Park; toured the Tennessee Valley; sunned himself in the
pool at Warm Springs. And during 1934, he spoke 23 times over the
radio, more than any previous President in any previous year. But
in the same time his wife managed to make five more broadcasts
than her husband.

     Such were Franklin Roosevelt's most notable doings and
concerns of 1934. They brought him in touch with as many kinds of
men as there are in the old jingle:

     Richman Vincent Astor provided the yacht which carried the
Man of the Year to sea, fishing for bonefish and barracuda off
the Bahama Keys while Congress was overriding his veto of
veterans' pension increases.

     Poorman Fred C. Perkins, maker of automobile batteries in a
factory shed at York, Pa. was fined $1,500 because he could not
afford to pay 40 cents an hour wages commanded by the New Deal's
NRA.

     Beggarman Elmer Thomas, putting aside his Senatorial cutaway
for tattered overalls, asked again & again for alms, in the form
of a few billions of greenbacks.

     Thief John Dillinger, on whose grave near Indianapolis last
week appeared a spray of greens inscribed "Merry Christmas, Old
Pal," was the No. 1 catch of a New Deal's crime drive which in
one year landed every major public enemy save one in jail or
grave, solved seven out of eleven kidnappings, convicted three
kidnappers.

     Doctor Rexford Guy Tugwell proved that his capacity for
winning approval for the New Deal was in inverse ratio to his
capacity for getting public attention. He was promoted to Under
Secretary of Agriculture and then muzzled.

     Lawyer Donald Randall Richberg, like a new star in the
Washington heavens, reached his zenith directly over the White
House, only to start to fade.

     Merchant Irenee du Pont, seller of munitions, was beset by
the hornets of a Senate investigation which moved the Man of the
Year to take steps to take the profit out of war.

     Chief James Aloysius Farley, generalissimo of politics and
potent Elk, rushed once more into the fray and won for the Man of
the Year the battle of Nov. 6.

     The jingle might go on indefinitely, with Senator David Reed
whose scalp was the biggest snagged by Franklin Roosevelt in the
election, with Schoolman William A. Wirt who found a Red
conspiracy in the Brain Trust; with Banker Jackson Eli Reynolds
who made peace between financiers and the White House; with
Airman Charles Augustus Lindbergh who protested against airmail
cancellations; with others & others.

     Significance. But these persons and these events, of
themselves, could not nominate a Man of the Year. One prime
statistic takes rank above those listed. On Nov. 6, 17,300,000
Democratic votes were cast against 13,370,000 Republican votes.
That result, reckoned by the standards of off-year elections and
the huge Democratic majority returned in Congress, was every inch
a landslide. The disparity between cause and effect represents
Roosevelt Magic, the craftsmanship of a man who is master of the
art of politics.

     The persuasive quality of his smile is not reducible to
Magic, but the persuasive quality of his words is well
exemplified in his speeches. When he spoke last spring at
Gettysburg he struck his keynote of popularity: "We are all
brothers now in a new understanding." He struck it in a sterner
mood when reproving the old order at Green Bay: "My friends, the
people of the United States will not restore that ancient order!"
He struck it sentimentally in his radio speech last September:
"My friends, I still believe in ideals." He struck it in Tupelo
where he defended his power program: "This is not regimentation -
- it is community rugged individualism." And with more
inspiration at Harrodsburg: "We pioneers of 1934. . . . We, too,
are hewing out a commonwealth."

     Thus to mankind who always love a doer of great deeds,
Franklin Roosevelt showed himself in the figure of a Hercules
striving to perform immense but modern labors, of a hero who in
the U.S. tradition does all his labors on a neighborly basis. He
himself expressed as nearly as it is likely to be expressed, the
result of this attitude, the reason for the vote of Nov. 6 when
he declared:

     "The people of this nation understand what we are trying to
do. . . ."