TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/32elect/32elect.001

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                                  4<                                          ╚February 1, 1932

CAMPAIGN

The Squire of Hyde Park



      Through the door of the Presidential suite in Washington's
Hotel Willard one afternoon last week peeped a lady with the
reputation of being the wisest of her clan -- Alice Roosevelt
Longworth. Beside her peeped pretty Mrs. Patrick Jay Hurley, wife
of the Secretary of War.

     "Isn't it killing?" giggled Mrs. Hurley.

     "Very funny," admitted Mrs. Longworth.

     Object of their merriment was Mrs. Longworth's half-brother,
Theodore Roosevelt. Back from a capable administration of Porto
Rico, he had been appointed Governor General of the Philippines,
was now posing for sound films with brown Sergio Osmena,
president pro tem. of the Philippine Senate. With him to his new
post was going his daughter Grace, 20, who takes after her mother
and who has been studying typing and shorthand to fit herself to
be one of her father's secretaries.

     As brother and sister said good-bye to each other shortly
thereafter, it may be supposed that Sister Alice, unique daughter
of a unique President and notable widow of a notable Speaker of
the House, poured into Brother Theodore's ear the sort of
profound advice which would naturally come from one for whom
national and international politics have been a life-long
diversion, accomplishment and career.

     With President Hoover's blessing so patently on Brother
Theodore's head, it now behooved Theodore's Republican kin to get
behind the Hoover candidacy for re-election. The family was
scattered. Settled quietly at Oyster Bay was Mrs. Ethel Roosevelt
Derby, the President's other daughter. Cousin Gracie Hall
Roosevelt was serving as Detroit's comptroller. Brother Kermit
was running a steamship line in Manhattan. Brother Theodore,
adding fresh lustre to the name, was starting out for the other
side of the world. Alice remained in Washington, perhaps to try
to woo Hoover support from such a vehement anti-Hooverite as her
good friend Senator Borah. There were two others. They were
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York, and his wife
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. He was T. R.'s fifth cousin,
she, his favorite niece. Yet President Roosevelt's immediate
brood looked upon these two kinsmen with political distrust and
personal disfavor because they were Democrats. Once during the
1920 campaign young Theodore Roosevelt, to dispel the popular
impression that Franklin Roosevelt was a real chip off the Big
Stick, declared: "He's a maverick! He doesn't have the brand of
our family."

     "Simple Duty." Last week the rivalry between Republican
Roosevelts and Democratic Roosevelts was materially heightened
when the Governor of New York formally announced his long-brewing
Presidential candidacy. North Dakota Democrats asked permission
to put his name into their preferential primary March 15. From
Albany Governor Roosevelt replied: " . . . I willingly give my
consent . . . . It is the simple duty of any American to serve in
public position if called upon. . . . Our Legislature is now in
session. . . . I must devote myself to the obtaining of
progressive laws . . . Were I now to divert my efforts in
furtherance of my own political future, I would stamp myself as
one unworthy of my party's choice as leader."

     Governor Roosevelt's announcement was welcomed by his pre-
convention campaign organization, with steam up and ready to go.
His chief campaigner was James A. Farley, chairman of the new
York State Democratic Committee and a member of the State's
Bosing Commission. For months Chairman Farley had been rounding
up Roosevelt delegates to the Chicago convention June 27. Last
week the Governor's supporters were able to announce that their
candidate was already pledged 678 out of 1,154 convention votes
(to nominate: 770). Pleased with the prospect of success for
their "Frank" were such Democratic notables as Bernard Mannes
Baruch, Jesse Isidor Straus, Vincent Astor, Col. Edward House.
They realized the Governor did not yet have the nomination for
President in his pocket but he was so far out in front of other
candidates that his friends were ready to toast him on his 50th
birthday this week (Jan. 30) as the 32nd President of the U. S.

     Life. "Frank" Roosevelt saw his first President is 1887 when
he was five. Sitting in the White House was large, grim,
depression-ridden Grover Cleveland. James Roosevelt escorted his
sailor-suited little son to Washington. President Cleveland put a
fat hand on the yellow Roosevelt head and said: "I'm making a
strange wish for you, little man, a wish I suppose no one else
would make. I wish for you that you may never be President of the
United States."

     Two decades later "Frank" again visited the White house,
this time to dine with President Roosevelt and to glimpse the
most romantic girl in the land, his very distant cousin, Princess
Alice. During the meal T. R. jumped up from the table, paced the
floor in deep thought. The youthful visitor was impressed,
fancied he would like to be just such a man.

     James Roosevelt was a man of means, a vice president of the
Delaware & Hudson R. R., the owner of a large estate at Hyde Park
overlooking the Hudson 60 mi. below Albany. There Franklin was
born (Jan. 30, 1882), there spent his childhood. Private tutors
started his education. Almost every year he was taken traveling
in Europe. His father, years older than his mother, used to take
the cure at Bad-Nauheim. As a well-born Episcopalian, "Frank" was
sent to Groton School, whence he glided on naturally to Harvard.

     There he was elected to the Hasty Pudding Club, edited The
Crimson, a fact he still likes to harp on when talking to
newshawks. His classmates remember him as an upstanding,
gentlemanly fellow from a well-to-do family and a good school,
differing very little from a hundred other upstanding,
gentlemanly fellows from well-to-do families and good schools. He
collected nautical Americana.

     Toward the close of his college career he fell in love with
his distant cousin, Anna Roosevelt, who lived in New York. His
mother took him off on a cruise to get his mind off the girl. But
young Roosevelt's emotions were not to be thus diverted. On St.
Patrick's Day, the year after he left Harvard, he and Anna were
married. They chose St. Patrick's Day because President Roosevelt
was to be in town to make a speech and he wanted to see his
favorite niece's wedding. The bands of the parading Hibernians
outside almost drowned out the orchestral strains of Lohengrin.

     Young Mr. Roosevelt failed his final examinations at
Columbia Law School, but managed to pass his New York bar
examination in 1907. Three years later he ran as a Democrat for
the State Senate in the Hyde Park district. Because the 26th
district had, with one exception, been doggedly Republican since
the Civil War, he appeared to have a poor chance of winning. This
chance seemed to be materially reduced when he set out to stump
his rural constituency in a chicken-killing, dust-raising
automobile. But the farmers liked his engaging smile, his direct
easy way of talking. As much to his surprise as to anyone else's
he was elected.

     When he arrived at Albany, instead of maintaining a discreet
and maidenly silence, Senator Roosevelt immediately began bucking
Tammany Boss Charles Murphy's machine on the election to the
U.S. Senate of William ("Blue-Eyed Billy") Sheehan, leader of
Buffalo's Democracy. For weeks New York's legislative affairs
were at a standstill but Mr. Sheehan was beaten and Mr. Roosevelt
emerged from the fray as an insurgent anti-Tammany Democrat.

     The idealism of Woodrow Wilson appealed to Senator
Roosevelt. He traveled to Trenton, interviewed Governor Wilson,
returned to start booming him for President. When Wilson won in
1912, he made the pleasant young man from Hyde Park his Assistant
Secretary of the Navy. After 15 years the Navy was glad enough to
have another Roosevelt in the job.

     He teamed up well with Secretary Josephus Daniels. He
thought fast, made himself agreeable, cut red tape where his
superior would not, was a Big Navy man. They did not remake the
Navy because President Wilson believed in peace at any price, but
they eliminated collusion on bids for Navy contracts, expedited
the supply system, modernized the Navy yards and required every
sailor to learn to swim.

     When War came, Assistant Secretary Roosevelt worked harder
than ever to make a good name for himself. He bought up all the
supplies he could lay his hands on, borrowed binoculars form the
country (and had them returned), helped build the submarine
chasing "mosquito fleet," sponsored the North Sea mine barrage
over stiff official opposition.

     In 1920 the Democratic party nominated him for the Vice-
Presidency at its San Francisco convention after Alfred Emanuel
Smith had seconded his name. With Presidential Nominee Cox, he
campaigned strenuously about the country, took his inevitable
defeat with good grace. Then he got out to look for a new job.
The pickings were poor. He had to content himself with the vice-
presidency of Fidelity & Deposit Co. of Maryland, an insurance
company run by the late Publisher Van Lear Black. In August 1921
he and his family embarked on Van Lear Black's yacht for their
summer home at Campobello Island, N. B. Shortly after they
arrived, Mr. Roosevelt caught a chill stamping out a forest fire.
A cross-country run and a cold plunge in the Bay of Fundy seemed
to help things, but when he got home he sat in his wet bathing
suit to read his mail. He took another chill. Next morning he was
down with infantile paralysis. Months later he arose to find his
legs quite dead.

     This sudden calamity he met with supreme courage and cheer.
To this day no one has ever heard him admit that he could not
walk. He continued his law practice, developed a wide personal
correspondence among eminent Democrats throughout the land.

     The Cure. From a friend he heard about a decrepit little
summer resort at Warm Springs, Ga. One young paralytic had braved
its mosquito-plagued country hotel, bathed in its warm mineral
waters and partially regained the use of his legs. Mr. Roosevelt
went there first in 1924. After churning about in the pool, he
found that his leg muscles felt a little stronger. Thereafter
Warm springs became his great hobby. He spent a large part of his
personal fortune on developing the place into a sanatorium. Edsel
Ford gave an enclosed pool, other contributed to make Warm
Springs a permanent institution. Swimming at Warm Springs several
months each year and special exercises at Albany have made it
possible for the Governor to walk 100 ft. or so with braces and
canes. When standing at crowded public functions, he still clings
precautiously to a friend's arm. Constitutionally he is as sound
as a nut and always has been. His affliction makes people come to
him to transact business, saves him useless motion, enables him
to get prodigious amounts of work done at a sitting. Governor
Roosevelt is confident of ultimate total recovery.

     In 1924 Mr. Roosevelt came out of political retirement to
advance the Presidential candidacy of Al Smith. On his crutches
he clumped up to the rostrum of the Democratic convention in
Madison Square Garden, delivered an impassionate nominating
speech that turned the rowdy galleries into pandemonium. Davis,
not Smith, got the nomination but Mr. Roosevelt's efforts did not
pass unnoticed. Four years later, this time at Houston, he was
again chosen to nominate his "Happy Warrior." But in 1928 "Al"
wanted more assistance from his loyal friend "Frank" than a
nominating speech. He needed a good strong name at the head of
the New York Democratic ticket to help pull the state for his
national ticket. Mr. Roosevelt was swimming at Warm Springs when
Nominee Smith telephoned from New York that he must run for
Governor. Now he had definite plans for re-entering public life,
to be sure, but it took the cajoling of his wife and all his
friends to induce him to make this "sacrifice." He had no
assurance that the ardors of campaigning would not completely
erase the partial recovery he had effected through seven long
bitter years. If ever a man was "drafted" for an office that man
was "Frank" Roosevelt in 1928.

     Squeak & Whack. In the election that followed New York
deserted the Brown Derby and went for Hoover, but, as a sort of
political compensation, Mr. Roosevelt squeaked through to victory
with a 25,000-vote majority. After two years as Governor, he was
renominated and all on his own strength in 1930 won a whacking
big victory with 725,001 votes to spare. His success in this
second election was widely interpreted as his qualification for
the Presidency, a proof of his vote-getting ability. Not until
last week, however, would he publicly admit a national candidacy.

     During his three years at Albany, Governor Roosevelt divided
his time between the old-fashioned, musty executive mansion, his
estate at Hyde Park, his town house on East 65th Street n
Manhattan and Warm springs. He has traveled much about the state,
visiting every county, making countless speeches. He has cruised
its waterways on extensive inspection trips. Never have his
crippled legs deterred him from going where he would.

     His happiest hours Mr. Roosevelt passes at Hyde Park in the
house his father bought in 1866 and in which he was born. I is
old and colonial. Its clapboard sides have been stuccoed and a
stone wing added. French windows look down over a mile of virgin
timber through which tumbles a cascade to the river. The estate
covers 1,000 acres. Here live or visit his five children, of whom
Son Elliott was married last month. Here Mrs. Roosevelt, able,
active and animated, runs the Val-Kill shops, where workmen make
reproductions of early American furniture by hand. Here lives
Governor Roosevelt's elderly mother. Both women take very good
care of the Governor when he comes down from Albany for week-ends
to live the life of a squire of Hyde Park. He looks after the
cattle whose original strain was superintended by his father half
a century ago. He sees that the roof of the Episcopalian Church
does not leak. he makes sure that all goes well in the brick
public school erected by his father. He has new trees planted
out, carefully oversees his own tilled acres.

     Of the squire of Hyde Park who wants to be President there
are abroad in the land two strong and conflicting views. One view
is that the U. S. is blessed among nations to have available for
the White House a man whose life and works have been so
admirable. The other view is that the sum total of his 50 years
are not sufficiently significant, in thought, word or deed, to
warrant his elevation to the highest position in the land.

     Around these two points of view rotates a nation-wide
political argument. It is far from academic because the Democrat
nominated by his party has a better than even chance of becoming
President on March 4, 1933. (So good are the Democratic prospects
that the friends of Al Smith are contending that, as a reward for
his large but losing popular vote in 1928, he is entitled to a
second crack at the Presidency now that victory seems closer.

     Pros & Cons. Governor Roosevelt's proximity to that
nomination raises pregnant questions: What manner of man is he
and of what stuff is he made? Is he bold and courageous and
independent or is he just an honest politician whom Fate has
tossed to the top? Has he the capacity to govern? Does his mind
generate large ideas of political reformation or does he just
utter lofty platitudes?

     Voters will be told that he is the very soul of courage and
honesty -- and that he cowers before the Tammany tiger. His
friends will extol him as one of the most competent and
successful administrators New York has ever had -- and his
critics will insist he has been only a poor imitation of Al Smith,
the loose ends of whose vast legislative program he simply wound
up. His geniality, his personal charm, his good social background,
will be advanced in his favor -- and against them will be set the
suspicion that he has all the cautious conservatism of the ruling
rich. He will be called a strong man who fights battles for the
plain people and a weak man who never took the popular side to his
own cost. He will be damned for being too Wet and damned for being
too Dry.

     The anti-Roosevelt side of the discussion was best stated by
famed Liberal Walter Lippmann, in the New York Herald Tribune
last month:

     "The art of carrying water on both shoulders is highly
developed in American politics, and Mr. Roosevelt has learned it
. . . .

     "Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of
the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a
pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the
office, would very much like to be President."

     Fuel for the argument is mostly found in four questions, as
follows:

     Tammany & Corruption. In 1929 after Governor Roosevelt had
settled down comfortably at Albany a mayoralty campaign was held
in New York City. Congressman Fiorell La guardia, the Republican
nominee, charged wholesale Tammany graft and corruption, named
one Magistrate Albert Vitale as the borrower of $20,000 from
Arnold Rothstein, murdered gambler. The Republican Legislature
ordered an investigation. Governor Roosevelt vetoed the measure.
Vitale was removed from office by a higher court. The stench of
scandal continued. A U. S. District Attorney in Manhattan,
preparing to run as a Republican against Governor Roosevelt,
disclosed all manner of jobbery among Tammany judges. Again the
Legislature wanted to probe but Governor Roosevelt ordered the
Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court to undertake the
investigation, picked Samuel Seabury as chief inquisitor. Five
magistrates went off the bench, twelve vice squad policemen
accused of frame-ups were suspended from the force. Governor
Roosevelt dismissed formal charges against Mayor Walker and
District Attorney Crain. He restrained his own Republican
Attorney General for extending a separate inquiry. Finally the
Legislature, impatient with these scattered efforts to clean up
Tammany Town, authorized its own investigation, put Mr. Seabury
in charge. As yet nobody has gone to jail for anything more
serious than contempt as a result of this legislative
investigation but the crime and corruption of Tammany official
has been exhibited daily through the Press.

     Considering that Tammany votes put him into office in 1928
and will help him on toward the Presidency in 1932, Governor
Roosevelt has handled the Scandals of New York about as well as
he politically could. He has kept his head, taken obvious steps
toward a clean-up. What he lacked -- or stifled -- was an
explosion of righteous indignation at all the dirt disclosed. He
has denounced no one for crookedness, removed no one for patent
criminality. Republicans will make the most of this sin of
omission.

     Water Power & Liberalism. Cheap electricity is the
touchstone of liberal politics in New York as elsewhere.
Democrats long favored a state-owned, state-built, state-operated
hydro-electric plant on the St. Lawrence River. Republicans,
harping on "private initiative" and echoing the words of power
tycoons, loudly objected. Governor Smith battled fiercely to
carry out this scheme until Republicans found that it was a
losing issue for them. Governor Roosevelt finally induced the
Legislature to survey the problem. The survey was favorable. A
New York State Power Authority was created, on Governor
Roosevelt's recommendation, to build a public dam at Massea
Point, produce electricity, distribute it over private lines.
This State plan has been temporarily snagged by the Federal
Government on the claim that the problem is international, that a
treaty must be negotiated with Canada.

     Power was the great issue popularized by Governor Smith.
Governor Roosevelt has followed in his footsteps. He succeeded in
getting something done where Smith failed, but this was due more
to the long, hard pounding his predecessor gave the Republicans
and their change in attitude and personnel than to any new force
or strategy or conviction on Governor Roosevelt's part. His claim
to Liberalism on this issue is a direct Smith inheritance.

     Prohibition. Governor Roosevelt is a Wet who has declared
for the repeal of the 18th Amendment. Yet, with his eye on the
White House, he would like to soft-pedal Prohibition as an issue
and retreat into the mists of referenda. Wide-spread is the
belief that, lacking profound Wet convictions, he is deliberately
weaseling to woo Dry Democratic support from the south at the
convention and in the election. He blocked attempts last year for
a Wet declaration by the Democratic National Committee. The
Roosevelt-Smith split grew out of opposing viewpoints on
Prohibition -- one for an honestly militant stand for repeal, the
other for its subordination to economic questions.

     Executive Competency. After three years at Albany Governor
Roosevelt points with pride to a mass of useful legislation he
has wangled out of a hostile Legislature with soft words and
threats. He has put through an old age State pension law. He has
won permission to raise $50,000,000 by bonds to house the State's
sick, insane and criminal. He has reduced rural taxes. He has
advanced a broad program for reforestation. He has put more
occupational diseases under the Workman's Compensation Act,
improved rent laws. President William Green of the American
Federation of Labor has praised his record on labor legislation.
The Governor is now engaged in a stiff upping of income taxes to
supply funds for Unemployment relief.

     The Governor's legislative record reveals a man who works
tactfully with his opponents, who will take half a loaf rather
than none. His heart is soft on all social welfare measures. A
good part of his program was bequeathed him by Governor Smith. He
has run the State Government without scandal or eruptions, in the
calm orderly manner of a good executive. His appointments have
been fair, his innovations few.

     Et Al. The Roosevelt candidacy for President was so far
advanced last week that its managers were already discussing
swaps and trades to put their man over. There was a tentative
casting about for a vice presidential running mate. Perhaps it
would be Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia. Or then it might be
Governor George White of Ohio who would get his State's 52 votes
on the first ballot. Opponents of Governor Roosevelt's nomination
were making no visible progress uniting on one of the other
candidates in the field. And a full field it was, with a great
assortment of men ranging from those who were earnestly pressing
on to those who sat back passively in the hope Presidential
lightning would strike them. The Democratic field: Maryland's
Albert Cabell Ritchie, Oklahoma's William Henry Murray, Texas'
John Nance Garner. Ohio's Newton Diehl Baker, New York's Owen D.
Young, Arkansas' Joseph Taylor Robinson, Tennessee's Cordell
Hull, Illinois' Melvin Alvah Traylor -- and, of course New York's
Alfred Emanuel Smith.