TWELVE

ALBANY REDUX

Oh, Franklin, Franklin Roosevelt,

Is there something in a name?

When you tire of being Governor,

Will you look for bigger game?

Will you wish for something higher

When at Albany you’re through?

When you weary of the State House

Will the White House beckon you?

—GRIDIRON DINNER DITTY, 1929

WHEN ROOSEVELT TOOK the oath as governor of New York on January 1, 1929, the road to the White House lay open. “It is too early to select the new leader of the Democratic Party or to predict nominations for a date so remote as 1932,” declared The New York Times. “Yet by a most extraordinary combination of qualities, political fortunes and diversified associations, Governor-elect Roosevelt is within reach of the elements of party leadership.”¹ The Atlanta Constitution, smitten with the state’s adopted son, said, “It is difficult to convey in cold type the fervor of the devotion of Georgians to Governor-elect Roosevelt.”²

With its forty-five electoral votes (more than three times as many as California), New York was a major player in presidential politics. In the sixteen presidential elections since the Civil War, a New Yorker had led the Democratic ticket eight times.^* Add TR and Charles Evans Hughes for the Republicans, and a majority of the post–Civil War nominees had been from New York. Roosevelt and Howe understood the odds. But it would be a mistake to announce too early. When reporters asked FDR about the Roosevelt-in-’32 predictions, he replied emphatically, “I want to step on any talk of that kind with both feet.”³ For a man who was paralyzed it was a peculiar metaphor, but Franklin peppered his conversation with jokes about walking, running, and jumping. One of his favorite expressions was “Funny as a crutch.”

Roosevelt’s first priority was to secure his place as governor. Al Smith had not anticipated losing the presidential race and, after spending eight of the last ten years as governor of the Empire State, suddenly found himself with no place to go. He was reluctant to relinquish his hold on the state government to someone he considered as politically inexperienced as FDR and believed he could call the plays from the sidelines. The fact that Smith had leased a suite at Albany’s DeWitt Clinton Hotel in order to be nearby confirmed for Roosevelt the problem he faced.⁴

Outwardly, relations between the two men were cordial. “God bless you and keep you, Frank,” said Smith as FDR and Eleanor drove up to the ornate portico of the governor’s mansion on December 31. “We’ve got the home fires burning and you’ll find this a fine place to live.” Roosevelt returned the sentiment, telling Eleanor, “I only wish Al were going to be right here for the next two years. We are certainly going to miss him.”⁵

But there was considerable tension beneath the surface. In mid-December Smith had called on FDR at East Sixty-fifth Street to discuss the transition. To provide for continuity and to ensure that Roosevelt would not be out of his depth in Albany, the governor suggested that Franklin retain two of Smith’s closest collaborators: the hard-driving Robert Moses as secretary of state and the formidable Belle Moskowitz as his executive secretary, speechwriter, and strategist. The abrasive Moses was an exemplary public servant and an empire builder of great virtuosity. His loyalty to Smith was exceeded only by his loyalty to himself.^* Mrs. Moskowitz was even more loyal to Smith. She had handled public relations for him since 1918 and was the den mother of the governor’s Albany circle. “I think [Al] suggested this in completely good faith,” said FDR many years later, “but at the same time with the rather definite thought that he himself would continue to run the Governorship.”⁶

There was little love lost between Robert Moses and FDR. They had clashed frequently over funding for the Taconic State Parkway, of which Roosevelt was the unsalaried chairman from 1925 to 1928, and those disputes had turned ugly. According to Robert A. Caro, Moses’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer, Moses had hoped Smith would tap him for governor in 1928 and was bitterly disappointed when FDR was nominated.⁷ He spewed out his venom to one and all, telling Frances Perkins among others that Franklin was a “pretty poor excuse for a man” and “not quite bright.” His characterizations of ER were equally vicious.⁸ Franklin inevitably learned of the gossip and wanted no part of Moses. “No,” he told Smith. “He rubs me the wrong way.”⁹ To soften the rejection, Roosevelt agreed to retain Moses as chairman of the State Council for Parks and the Long Island Parks Commission—posts where his demonstrated ability could flourish without direct contact.

With Belle Moskowitz, Roosevelt was circumspect. No one in Albany was closer to Al Smith than Mrs. Moskowitz, and no one had been more influential in shaping the policies of the Smith administration. Smith told FDR that Belle was drafting his inaugural address as well as his initial message to the legislature laying out his program. Roosevelt graciously noted that he was writing the speeches himself but would be happy to show them to Mrs. Moskowitz when he finished. He acknowledged her skill and competence and said her understanding of the issues facing the state was unparalleled. FDR left Smith with the impression that Mrs. Moskowitz would be kept on. Yet he never showed her the speeches and never met with her. “My recollection is that I did not find an opportunity to do so, though I really meant to at the time.”¹⁰ In the end, Roosevelt retained sixteen of the eighteen department heads who had served under Smith, but he did not retain Mrs. Moskowitz. He never confronted her, but his decision soon became apparent. As he told Sam Rosenman, “I do not expect to call on these people whom Al has been using.”^11*

FDR did not feel beholden to Smith, except to recognize that he had been an extraordinarily effective governor and would be a tough act to follow. During his eight-year tenure Smith had reduced state government from a hodgepodge of 187 semi-independent agencies to 18 departments, all but 2 responsible to the governor. He had pushed through a constitutional amendment giving the governor authority over the state budget, laid the basis for significant social reform, and cut taxes while funding public works through the sale of state bonds. Roosevelt had run for governor reluctantly, pressured into doing so to aid the national ticket. He had run well ahead of Smith in New York and withstood the Republican tide. As a result, he did not feel he owed his election to anyone but himself. Smith did not see it that way, and relations between the two men, never close, cooled precipitously.

Roosevelt moved quickly to establish his own cadre in Albany. Ed Flynn, the astute leader of the Bronx, was called back from a European vacation to succeed Robert Moses as secretary of state. Flynn became the principal dispenser of state patronage and FDR’s link to Tammany Hall and other city organizations. Sam Rosenman was named counsel to the governor and moved into a spare room in the executive mansion. Missy LeHand lived there too, joined by Grace Tully, who became FDR’s second secretary, always on call, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Roosevelt passed Belle Moskowitz’s duties as social welfare adviser to Frances Perkins, whom he also named industrial commissioner and a member of the governor’s cabinet, the first woman to serve in that capacity. “It is my firm belief that had women had an equal share in making laws in years past,” said FDR, “the unspeakable conditions in crowded tenements, the neglect of the poor, the unwillingness to spend money for hospitals and sanitariums … would never have come about.”^12*

Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Roosevelt’s Dutchess County neighbor and editor of American Agriculturist, became chairman of the Agricultural Advisory Commission and later commissioner of conservation. Basil O’Connor, Franklin’s law partner, settled in as one of the governor’s political intimates while continuing to head the firm in New York City. Also remaining in New York were Jim Farley and Louis Howe. Farley, at Roosevelt’s insistence, assumed control of the state Democratic party and cleared the deck for the 1930 election. Howe continued as FDR’s political chief of staff, the only person who had access to him night and day on any problem he wished. Howe’s major responsibility was to chart Roosevelt’s course for the 1932 nomination, and this could be managed more discreetly in New York than in Albany. Howe continued to live in Roosevelt’s town house on East Sixty-fifth Street and handled whatever business the governor had in the city. He went to Albany at least once a week and, like Rosenman and Missy, had his own room in the executive mansion.¹³

For the Roosevelts, life in Albany set a pattern that would endure for the remainder of Franklin’s life. The executive mansion—still outfitted with furniture from Grover Cleveland’s time—took on the informality of an expansive country estate. “It looked more like a home than like the property of the State of New York,” Miss Perkins remembered.¹⁴ The nine guest rooms were continually occupied, books and papers littered every available space, while secretaries came and went with important papers for the governor to sign. Meals were uproarious affairs, with everyone talking at once. Family, secretaries, newsmen, friends, state troopers, and distinguished guests often sat elbow to elbow, with no one ever quite sure how many would be sitting down for the evening meal. “Really serious talk at the table was avoided if Roosevelt could manage it,” Rexford Tugwell recalled. “But Eleanor, so humorless and so weighted down with responsibility, made this difficult.”¹⁵

Meanwhile, the children were growing up. Anna, now twenty-two, had married and was living in Manhattan with her stockbroker husband but had deposited Chief, her German shepherd, with Eleanor and Franklin. The four Roosevelt boys were in and out of the house. James, in his last year at Harvard, was engaged to Betsey Cushing, one of three vivacious daughters of a prominent Boston surgeon.^16* In future years, both Anna and Betsey would serve as White House hostess during Eleanor’s absence. Elliott (18), Franklin, Jr. (14), and John (12) were in the care of the Reverend Endicott Peabody at Groton, experiencing the usual prep school traumas. “Elliott is about to have an operation, Franklin, Jr., has a doubly broken nose and John has just had a cartilage taken out of his knee,” FDR wrote a friend in March 1929. “Eleanor is teaching school two and a half days a week in New York, and I am in one continuous, glorious fight with the Republican legislative leaders.”¹⁷

Roosevelt’s work habits rarely varied. He had breakfast in bed about eight, during which he read the papers, conferred with Missy and Rosenman (and Howe when he was in town), handled his personal correspondence, and set the schedule for the day. At ten he left for the Capitol, where he worked through until five, taking lunch at his desk. Then home for a swim, followed by tea, frequently with friends and official visitors. During the White House years, with Prohibition repealed, teatime became the “children’s hour” and the president mixed martinis for his guests. Dinner was at seven-thirty and, unlike lunch, was seldom taken alone. After dinner, Franklin was wheeled into his study, where he continued to work until bedtime. Before turning out the light, he conferred again with Missy and Rosenman and read the evening papers.¹⁸

An exception to the daily routine was on movie nights. FDR was addicted to motion pictures, but going to the theater was difficult for him. And so at least once a week an informal theater would be set up in a third-floor hallway and a new release would be shown. Bill and Caroline Phillips, old friends from Washington (Phillips later served as FDR’s ambassador to Italy), visited the Roosevelts and reported watching John and Lionel Barrymore in Arsène Lupin. “All the servants, black and white, seventeen in all, sat behind the house party and enjoyed the show with us,” wrote Caroline.¹⁹

The mansion was altered to assist Roosevelt’s movements. In place of the greenhouse, a swimming pool was built for his use. An elevator was installed, and ramps were placed over unavoidable steps. FDR retained the services of Sergeant Gus Gennerich, a New York City policeman who had been detailed to protect him during the campaign. Gennerich had little formal education and was proud to be a New York cop. His affable manner made him a friend and companion for Roosevelt. So too Sergeant Earl Miller of the New York State Police, a strikingly handsome officer who was assigned to protect the governor. Gennerich and Miller were big, muscular men and provided solid support for FDR when he walked. They knew how to lift him out of cars and devised a technique for carrying him up long flights of stairs. The two men would each grasp an elbow and lift Roosevelt up the steps in a standing position. Those watching from a distance could well believe Franklin was climbing the stairs himself.²⁰

Roosevelt relished informality. He treated employees as friends, enjoyed shirtsleeve poker sessions with journalists, and insisted on calling people by their first names as soon as he met them.^* As president he made a point of addressing royalty by their given names: the king and queen of England were “George” and “Elizabeth”; the crown princess of the Netherlands was “Juliana.” Yet they always called him “Mr. President,” and it was clear that Roosevelt was never one of the boys.²¹ There was an unspoken dignity, an impenetrable reserve that protected him against undue familiarity. Aside from relatives, old friends from college, and senior statesmen whom he had known—men like Josephus Daniels and Al Smith—Louis Howe was the only person to call him Franklin.

For Eleanor, FDR’s election was a mixed blessing. When asked by reporters shortly afterward how she felt about her husband’s victory, she said she was not excited. “I don’t care. What difference can it make to me? If the rest of the ticket doesn’t get in, what does it matter?”²² ER’s petulant response reflected her unhappiness at Al Smith’s defeat. She had worked night and day for the past nine months on Smith’s campaign, and she hated to lose. It was not merely a personal loss but the defeat at the national level of the social programs she supported.

Then too, she had not participated in FDR’s campaign. In retrospect, she wondered if she had really wanted Franklin to run. “I imagine I accepted his nomination and later his election as I had accepted most of the things that had happened in life thus far: one did whatever seemed necessary and adjusted one’s personal life to the developments in other people’s lives.”²³

Even more important was ER’s reluctance to forsake the public life she had staked out for herself. Eleanor had no desire to become a ceremonial first lady, relegated to serving in her husband’s shadow. She had grown accustomed to a different role: teacher, writer, and political activist in her own right. She was associated with an ongoing effort to build reproduction furniture at Val-Kill and was teaching full-time at Todhunter.^*

Eleanor and Franklin reached an implicit understanding: she would be the governor’s wife, preside over the executive mansion, and pursue her own agenda at the same time.²⁴ “Mrs. Roosevelt Takes on Another Task,” bannered The New York Times Magazine in its lead article on December 2, 1928.

A woman who teaches school, runs a factory, edits a journal, and is a member of a half dozen civic organizations would appear to have her hands full. Yet to these activities Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt will add one more when she takes up the task of the First Lady of Albany on Jan. 1.²⁵

Eleanor organized her teaching schedule at Todhunter for Monday, Tuesday, and a half day on Wednesday. She left Albany Sunday evening and returned late Wednesday afternoon. “I like to read on trains,” she told the Times. “Most of my reading is done on trains. It’s one place where reading is sure to be uninterrupted.” Eleanor said the work at Val-Kill would occupy her part-time and she would continue to serve on a few committees and boards of directors. Would housekeeping at the executive mansion be a formidable task? asked the Times. “I rarely devote more than fifteen minutes a day to it,” said Eleanor.²⁶

For Franklin and Eleanor this was the beginning of a remarkable partnership. FDR did not insist his wife drop anything she cared about to become first lady, and Eleanor undertook to support her husband’s public career in every way possible. They would have different priorities and different interests. They would often disagree. Their personal lives would be separate. But they shared a mutual respect that eventually resolved most differences.

From his first day in office FDR operated as though he had been governor for many years. He said there had been so few changes in Albany since he had left the State Senate in 1913 that it was like renewing an acquaintance with an old friend.²⁷ Roosevelt knew instinctively how to handle the controls of government, an intuitive “feel” that could not be explained rationally. Like all true artists he made what he did look easy. Sam Rosenman was amazed that FDR never seemed to worry. “He would think a problem through very carefully. Having come to a decision, he would dismiss it from his mind as finished business. He never went back to it to worry about whether his decision was right.”²⁸ Frances Perkins said, “Roosevelt was a walking American history book.” There were no isolated events for FDR. Everything that happened in politics, every crisis, every decision taken, was part of a larger American tapestry, part of an experiment in government still being worked out.²⁹

The state machinery Roosevelt inherited from Al Smith was in good working order. Rather than fix what was not broken, Franklin moved forward in new directions of his own, first in public power, agriculture, and conservation, and then, after the Depression started, in relief and social security.

FDR’s concern for electric power dated from his service in the state senate and had continued without interruption. He often spoke of harnessing the high tides of Passamaquoddy Bay, near Campobello, for hydroelectric purposes, and he was an early advocate of dual-purpose flood control dams on the tributaries of major rivers: dams that could be used both to store water and to generate electricity. As Roosevelt saw it, cheaper electric power required greater generating capacity as well as more effective regulation of public utility companies. In March 1929 he asked the legislature for authority to construct a series of hydroelectric plants on the Saint Lawrence and to sell the power to private companies at cost. Roosevelt also sought tighter regulation of existing utilities and suggested that publicly generated power serve “as a yardstick with which to measure the cost of producing and transmitting electricity.”³⁰ The “yardstick” metaphor would later become a staple of New Deal rhetoric.

Roosevelt’s interest in agriculture was also of long standing, a natural product of his avocation of gentleman farmer at Hyde Park and Warm Springs. Whereas Al Smith had written off New York’s farmers as inherently Republican (“I never made any impression on any considerable number of them”³¹), FDR made farm relief the centerpiece of his legislative program. “If the farming population does not have sufficient purchasing power to buy new shoes, new clothes, new automobiles, the manufacturing centers must suffer.”³² Not only did Roosevelt’s interest revitalize the Democratic party upstate, it also helped him balance between the urban and rural wings of the party at the national level.³³

FDR’s agriculture program was scarcely radical. But because the plight of the farmer was so dismal in the late twenties, anything that offered succor attracted national attention. Roosevelt proposed to shift much of the rural tax burden to the state by raising gasoline taxes. The increased revenue would pay for an expanded network of farm-to-market roads and underwrite local school construction. For dairy farmers he proposed the creation of the New York Milk Shed, a marketing cooperative that would fix the price of milk in the Empire State. He also advocated tax relief for small farmers, accelerated rural electrification, significant subsidies for agricultural research, and the conversion of marginal cropland to timber production—a means of reducing agricultural surpluses and easing the problems of flood control.³⁴

In the spring of 1929 FDR held the first in a long series of fireside chats, bypassing the Republican legislature and speaking directly to New Yorkers over the radio. Roosevelt was a master at simplifying complicated issues and bringing people into his confidence. His cultivated delivery and easy manner made the audience feel they were participating directly at the highest level of government. Usually Roosevelt spoke on Sunday night, when the radio audience was largest. His remarks were painstakingly crafted to achieve the desired informality. Sometimes Rosenman prepared the first draft; more often it was FDR himself. A flood of letters would deluge the legislature after each talk, and Roosevelt would usually get close to what he asked for from the Assembly.^*

In April 1929, after the legislature adjourned, FDR stopped off in Washington on his way to Warm Springs. He had been invited by the capital’s newsmen to address their annual Gridiron Dinner, where he, not Al Smith, would represent the Democratic party. The other two speakers were President Hoover and Chief Justice Taft. Roosevelt’s remarks were off the record, but from his reception it was clear the Washington press corps considered him a prime contender for the Democratic nomination.^*

That summer FDR undertook a round of speaking engagements that kept his name before the public. He was awarded honorary degrees by Hobart College, Dartmouth, Fordham, and Harvard. His commencement remarks stressed the importance of social consciousness and gently decried “the unlikely alliance between big business and big government.” At Harvard, where he attended his twenty-fifth reunion—the high point for Ivy League alumni—he was made chief marshal of the graduation exercises and an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa. “It certainly is grand,” FDR wrote his old friend Livingston Davis. “I assure you that being governor is nothing in comparison.”³⁵

On July 4 Roosevelt presided at the dedication of Tammany Hall’s new headquarters off Union Square. Charles Murphy was gone, succeeded by lesser men, but the wigwam remained the focus of Democratic politics in the city. The fifteen hundred Tammany braves in attendance cheered Roosevelt as “the next president of the United States.” FDR rose to the occasion. Unencumbered by academic propriety, he lashed out at the oligarchs of economic feudalism. If the American people wished to preserve their freedom, they should don liberty caps like their Revolutionary forebears and resist the concentration of economic power, said FDR. This time the struggle would be fought with ballots rather than muskets. And unless they were successful, “all property would be concentrated in the hands of a few, and the overwhelming majority would become serfs.”³⁶

This was fire-and-brimstone populist oratory, and Roosevelt struck a responsive chord. His remarks made banner headlines across the country. Will Rogers, the cowboy humorist, then at the height of his popularity, wrote in his syndicated New York Timescolumn that the speech “just about” ensured that Roosevelt would be “the next Democratic candidate.”^37†

Having made their point, Roosevelt and Howe decided it was time to retrench. They had lit a spark, but it would be unwise to trigger a premature conflagration. FDR drafted a statement for the press: “It is probably because of the warm weather and the lack of real news that my young gentlemen friends of the Press are inventing Arabian night tales about presidential possibilities and candidacies for the far distant date of 1932.… I am in no sense a candidate for President of the United States.”³⁸

By the summer of 1929, America’s unprecedented prosperity began to look blotchy. Agriculture, which had been in the doldrums for years (per capita farm income was one quarter that of non-farmworkers), was joined by consumer durables and residential housing, both of which turned down sharply. Business inventories, always an economic barometer, had almost quadrupled in less than twelve months. Concurrently, the rate of consumer spending, which had risen at a rate of 7.4 percent in 1927–28, slowed to a snaillike pace of 1.4 percent.³⁹ These developments were reflected in production and price indices. Industrial production hit a high in June and dropped off in July. Employment fell as well, along with wholesale commodity prices. The Federal Reserve Board compounded the deflationary pressure by raising interest rates a full percentage point in August, hiking the discount rate to 6 percent.

Wall Street appeared oblivious to the downturn. Stock prices, which had doubled in 1928, continued their upward spiral, fueled by margin (credit) purchases sometimes as great as 95 percent. As prices rose, investors clamored for more, pushing the market to a record high on September 3. Technology stocks led the climb. Shares of General Electric zoomed from $129 to $396; those of its competitor Westinghouse from $92 to $313; those of RCA from $93 to a breathtaking $505. Giddy commentators proclaimed the old laws of economics had been repealed: what went up did not necessarily have to come down.

In late September the market wobbled but recovered. For the next three weeks prices moved sideways on heavy volume. In retrospect it appears that knowledgeable investors were getting out. The break came Thursday, October 24. Panic selling pushed prices down 4 percent in two hours with a record 12.9 million shares changing hands. The market stabilized Friday and Saturday, but on Monday, October 28, the wave of selling resumed and the market dropped another 5 percent on volume of 10 million shares. That set the scene for what historians call Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. The New York Stock Exchange opened down, and three million shares traded in the first half hour. Brokers sold positions for whatever they could get, and for a few ghastly minutes the exchange saw stocks for sale for which there were no buyers at any price. When the carnage ended, the market had lost one fifth of its value on an unprecedented 16.4 million sales—a record that stood for thirty-nine years. The decline continued off and on for the next three years. By mid-1932, the total value of the American stock market stood at 17 percent of its peak in September 1929.

The severity of the depression caught everyone by surprise. In the beginning, most believed the crash was a useful stock market correction. John D. Rockefeller called it a buying opportunity. Charles Schwab of Bethlehem Steel said, “Never before has American business been as firmly entrenched for prosperity as it is today.” President Hoover maintained that “the fundamental business of the country—that is, the production and distribution of goods and services—is on a sound and prosperous basis.”⁴⁰

Rarely, if ever, have the nation’s economic spokesmen been more wrong. The crash may not have caused the Great Depression (economists agree that the causes were manifold), but it surely precipitated it. Farm prices, already depressed, fell by 53 percent from 1929 to 1932; net farm income by 70 percent. A cow that sold for $83 in 1929 now brought $28. Cotton sold for six cents a pound. Corn in Nebraska brought thirty-one cents a bushel, Kansas wheat thirty-eight cents. By early 1933, 45 percent of all farm mortgages were delinquent and facing foreclosure.⁴¹

In the same period, automobile production fell by 65 percent and steel by 59 percent. The nation’s gross domestic product declined from $104 billion to $74 billion. The money supply shrank by 25 percent, and four out of every ten home mortgages were in default. Unemployment soared above 30 percent, with 11.8 million unemployed.⁴²

FDR shared the prevailing consensus that the market’s correction would be brief. “The little flurry downtown,” as he called it, seemed just retribution for speculators who had artificially inflated stock prices.⁴³ “Black Tuesday” did not figure in New York’s legislative elections the following week, and Democratic gains were slight. The party picked up three seats in the Assembly, but the GOP retained control of both houses. Roosevelt claimed victory, although the best that could be said is that the voters did not punish the governor for the crash.

By December the extent of the economic downturn was beginning to dawn. The 1932 election might be winnable after all. On December 10 FDR as much as threw his hat in the ring with a spectacular appearance in Chicago where he delivered three speeches in one day—a performance that could not be misunderstood. Speaking seriatim to the state Democratic committee, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the Chicago Commercial Club, Roosevelt rose above New York politics and wrapped himself in the mantle of western agrarianism: “If the farmer starves today, we will all starve tomorrow.”⁴⁴ He predicted that the Democrats would recapture the House of Representatives in 1930, and his remarks generated headlines from coast to coast.

FDR was among the first state governors to recognize the seriousness of the Depression. When Hoover announced in late January that employment was rebounding, Frances Perkins took the president to task, citing Labor Department statistics to prove the situation was getting worse. “Bully for you,” said FDR. “That was a fine statement and I’m glad you made it.”⁴⁵ By March 1930, although the reality of the Depression still was not acknowledged in Washington, Roosevelt established a commission to stabilize employment in New York—the first state commission of its kind in the United States. “The situation is serious,” said FDR, “and the time has come for us to face this unpleasant fact dispassionately.”⁴⁶ Shortly thereafter Roosevelt became the first state chief executive to endorse the idea of unemployment insurance—a radical concept that had been kicking around university economics departments for years but had yet to make its debut in the public arena. First at an ad hoc meeting of New England governors that he convened, then at the National Governors Association Annual Meeting at Salt Lake City, FDR came flat out for a contributory scheme in which employees, employers, and the government would share the risks of future unemployment.

FDR was choosing the ground on which to oppose Hoover two years hence. When the president advised the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on May 1, 1930, that the worst was over and recovery at hand, Roosevelt told Democrats that Hoover had apparently repealed the laws of supply and demand.⁴⁷ Speaking to the annual Jefferson Day dinner of the National Democratic Club at New York’s Commodore Hotel, FDR castigated financial circles in the East, who he suggested were unresponsive to the nation’s distress. “If Thomas Jefferson were alive he would be the first to question this concentration of economic power.”⁴⁸

Roosevelt was followed on the dais by Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who would give the keynote address. Six years earlier Wheeler had run for vice president on the Progressive ticket with Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette. He was back in the Democratic fold, a powerful spokesman for the grassroots populism of the high plains. There was no advance text of Wheeler’s speech, and he had given no warning of what he intended to say. But his remarks were carried live on a nationwide hookup by NBC, and the assembled Democrats soon heard a clarion call for new leadership. “As I look about for a general to lead the Democratic party, I ask to whom we can go. I say that, if the Democratic party of New York will re-elect Franklin Roosevelt governor, the West will demand his nomination for president and the whole country will elect him.”⁴⁹

Wheeler’s endorsement created a sensation. He was the first Democrat of national stature to announce for Roosevelt, and his speech had been totally unexpected. FDR, in fact, had departed the dinner before Wheeler spoke. Later, Franklin wrote his cousin Nicholas that he was not concerned about 1932. “Why can’t reporters, editorial writers and the politicians let a poor devil alone to do the best he can with a very current job?”⁵⁰ Franklin was doubtless sincere about wishing to get on with the job of governor—he was up for reelection in November—but when Governor L. G. Hardman of Georgia announced his support of Roosevelt for president several weeks later, FDR made no move to rein him in. “It was very good of Governor Hardman to say what he did,” Franklin wrote his old friend Hollins Randolph.⁵¹

The gubernatorial campaign occupied FDR completely in the summer and fall of 1930. The Republicans nominated Charles H. Tuttle, the racket-busting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and focused the campaign on Tammany corruption. Roosevelt chose to run against Washington, stressing the need for farm relief, full employment, and public power. “Never let your opponent pick the battleground on which to fight,” FDR told Sam Rosenman. “If he picks one, stay out of it and let him fight all by himself.”^52*

After Charles Murphy’s death, Tammany had returned to its old ways of doing business, and corruption was rampant in New York City. But Roosevelt relied on the votes of Tammany Democrats in the legislature to enact his program, and he was reluctant to call the organization to task. And so he avoided the issue during the campaign. The more Tuttle talked about Tammany corruption, the more FDR talked about unemployment insurance and old-age pensions.

In the closing weeks of the campaign Washington dispatched three high-ranking cabinet officers to New York on Tuttle’s behalf. The Hoover administration evidently decided that the best way to stop Roosevelt in 1932 would be to defeat him for governor in 1930. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, and Ogden Mills, the undersecretary (later secretary) of the Treasury spoke repeatedly to audiences throughout the Empire State, lambasting FDR for his failure to repudiate Tammany.

Roosevelt ignored the charges until his final rally at Carnegie Hall on November 1. His response was brief but complete. If there were corrupt officeholders, he said, they would be removed. “They shall be removed by constitutional means, not by inquisition; not by trial in the press, but by trial as provided by law.

“If there is corruption in our courts I will use every rightful power of the office of Governor to drive it out, and I will do this regardless of whether it affects any Democratic or Republican organization in any one of the five counties of New York City, or in any one of the fifty-seven other counties of the State. That is clear. That is unequivocal. That is honesty. That is justice. That is American. That is right.” And that was enough. Roosevelt waited until the last day of the race to rebut the charges of corruption, and he did so effectively. Tuttle had waged a one-issue campaign, and it had backfired.

Roosevelt also used his final appearance to ridicule the intervention of Stimson, Hurley, and Mills.^* What qualified “these three estimable gentlemen” to instruct the people of New York? FDR asked. Hurley, he pointed out, was a carpetbagger from Oklahoma and knew nothing about the state. The other two, Stimson and Mills, had both run for governor of New York and been defeated. “The people did not believe in them or their issues then, and they will not believe in them or their issues now.” Roosevelt said the three cabinet officers should return to Washington as soon as possible and address the problems confronting the nation. “Rest assured that we of the Empire State can take care of ourselves.”⁵³

Roosevelt left Carnegie Hall with the rafters ringing. Three days later the Tammany organization demonstrated its electoral effectiveness. In New York City a record 91.1 percent of the registered voters went to the polls. Overall, FDR swamped Tuttle by 725,000 votes, the largest plurality won by any gubernatorial candidate in New York history.⁵⁴ Upstate, Roosevelt carried forty-three counties to Tuttle’s fourteen. In every upstate county, FDR’s vote total exceeded the number of registered Democrats in that county. He carried precincts, wards, districts that had not gone Democratic in living memory. Times were hard, and voters wanted a change. But the magnitude of the victory reflected not only Roosevelt’s determination to revive the Democratic party upstate but Jim Farley’s ability to put an organization on the ground that could actually do so. The Democrats recaptured both houses of the legislature and all statewide offices. In Washington, the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and came within one seat of taking the Senate. For all practical purposes, the alliance between Democrats and progressive Republicans in the Senate gave them effective control of that body as well.

Eleanor, who set strategy for the Women’s Division of the State Democratic Committee, did everything possible to ensure Franklin’s reelection. Campaign aides jocularly referred to the 1930 gubernatorial contest as the “waffle iron election” because of the publicity ER generated comparing the cost of operating various kitchen appliances in New York as opposed to the cost in Ontario. Jim Farley credited Eleanor with adding 10 to 20 percent to the Democratic vote in those counties where her women’s organization was active. This time ER savored the victory as much as Franklin. “Much love and a world of congratulations,” she penciled in a note left on her husband’s pillow on election night. “It is a triumph in so many ways, dear, and so well earned. Bless you and good luck these next two years.—ER.”⁵⁵

The fact is, Eleanor relished her role in Albany. She often served as FDR’s proxy, speaking on his behalf, inspecting state institutions, reporting back with a thoroughness that increased with time and experience. Roosevelt encouraged state officials to believe that he and “the Missus” were a team. “I do not often go to the big places,” Eleanor told the progressive historian and journalist Ida Tarbell, “but often to the little places where they have difficulty securing speakers. I don’t do it as well as I wish I did, but after all what they want is to see the Governor’s wife.”⁵⁶

Throughout the Albany years, Eleanor was accompanied on her inspection tours by New York State Police sergeant Earl Miller. ER refused to be driven in an official limousine and insisted on driving herself. This made Franklin uneasy, and he assigned Miller as her bodyguard. Miller had been Al Smith’s personal bodyguard, and he and Franklin were acquainted from World War I, when Miller, the Navy’s middleweight boxing champion, had kept watch over FDR during his trip to France in 1918. Miller was a first-rate athlete and had been a member of the U.S. Olympic squad at the Antwerp games in 1920. He was an award-winning swimmer, expert marksman, and trick rider at state fairs, and had once worked as a circus acrobat. He was also a warm and affectionate man, and he and Eleanor hit it off from the beginning.

For Eleanor, Miller provided encouragement and support. He was unfailingly attentive and chivalrous. He protected and defended her and reintroduced her to sports and activities she had long forgotten. He taught her to shoot a pistol, coached her tennis game, and built her a deck tennis court at Val-Kill for daily practice. He gave her riding lessons and eventually bought a horse for her, a chestnut mare named Dot, which ER rode regularly at Hyde Park and later in Washington. He improved her swimming and taught her to dive, a goal that required years to accomplish but something Eleanor was keen to do.

For Miller, Eleanor provided stability and accomplishment and gave his life a purpose. She was forty-four when they met; he was thirty-two. He became her unofficial escort, companion, and manager. One biographer compared their relationship to that of the legendary Scotsman John Brown and Queen Victoria.⁵⁷ Earl Miller and Eleanor laughed together, journeyed for weekends through the countryside, and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company. In the evenings Miller sang and played piano, while Eleanor frequently read aloud and listened to his tales of a world she had never known. Their leisure time was filled with pranks and surprises, with home movies like “The Pirate and the Lady,” in which Miller, dressed as a pirate, kidnapped ER (by then the nation’s First Lady), bound her wrists, tied a blindfold around her eyes, and carried her off into the sunset.

Eleanor always kept a room for Earl at Val-Kill and later in her apartment in Greenwich Village. Whether they were more than good friends is open to conjecture. Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook were distressed at their public display of affection.⁵⁸ Joseph Lash records their love (“He interested her physically”) but doubts if it were more than an emotional attachment.⁵⁹ Blanche Wiesen Cook calls Miller ER’s “first romantic involvement” of her middle years but declines to speculate further. “Whatever rules they agreed upon, they were two mutually consenting adults who were engaged in a discreet relationship.… [T]hey did whatever they agreed to do.”⁶⁰ James Roosevelt, who may have had the best opportunity to judge, believed that Lash was overly protective of ER’s reputation. “I believe this is a disservice to her, a suggestion that because of her hang-ups she was never able to be a complete woman.” According to James:

Mother was self-conscious about Miller’s youth, but he did not seem bothered by the difference in years. He encouraged her to take pride in herself, to be herself, to be unafraid of facing the world. He did a lot of good for her. She seemed to draw strength from him when he was by her side, and she came to rely on him. When she had problems, she sought his help.… He became part of the family, too, and gave her a great deal of what her husband and we, her sons, failed to give her. Above all, he made her feel that she was a woman.… From my observations, I personally believe they were more than friends.⁶¹

This remarkable relationship, which commenced in 1929, continued until Eleanor’s death in 1962. Yet the trail is largely unmarked.⁶² There are photographs and a few home movies, but no diaries or letters despite the fact that she and Earl are believed to have corresponded almost daily.⁶³Rumors persist that shortly after Eleanor’s death the letters were anonymously purchased and destroyed, or purchased and locked away. To date, not a single letter from ER to Earl Miller has surfaced.^64*

Eleanor’s friendship with Miller paralleled Franklin’s relationship with Missy LeHand. Just as Missy provided FDR with the adoration and love his wife could not, so Miller made up for what Franklin could not give. Remarkably, both ER and Franklin recognized, accepted, and encouraged the arrangement. Missy and Earl became members of the family. Eleanor gave Missy the larger bedroom near FDR’s in Albany while she took a smaller one down the hall, and Franklin was equally attentive to Earl’s requirements. Eleanor and Franklin were strong-willed people who cared greatly for each other’s happiness but realized their own inability to provide for it.

^* The Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour in 1868; Horace Greeley in 1872; Samuel Tilden in 1876; Grover Cleveland in 1884, 1888, and 1892; Alton B. Parker in 1904; and Al Smith in 1928.

^* In 1934 Moses departed the party of his patron to run for governor as a Republican. He was trounced by Herbert Lehman, 2,201,727–1,393,744. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections 423 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975).

^* For her part, Eleanor Roosevelt distrusted both Belle Moskowitz and Robert Moses, whom she considered stalking horses for Smith. One week after the election she wrote FDR, “By all signs I think Belle and Bob Moses mean to cling to you and you will wake up and find R. M. Secretary of State and B.M. running Democratic Publicity at her old stand unless you take a firm stand. Gosh, the race has nerves of iron and tentacles of steel.”

Later, ER told Franklin, “You have to decide … whether you are going to be Governor of this state or whether Mrs. Moskowitz is … If Mrs. Moskowitz is your secretary, she will run you. It won’t hurt you. It won’t give you any pain. She will run you in such a way that you don’t know that you are being run.… That’s the way she works. That is the kind of person she is. She doesn’t do it in any spirit of ill will. It’s simply that her competence is so much greater than anyone else’s.”

ER to FDR, November 13, 1928, FDRL; Frances Perkins Interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.

^* Al Smith warned FDR against appointing Miss Perkins to a cabinet post. “Men will take advice from a woman,” said Smith, “but it is hard for them to take orders from a woman.” Miss Perkins remembered FDR’s chuckle as he related the conversation: “You see, Al’s a good progressive fellow but I’m willing to take more chances. I’ve got more nerve about women and their status in the world than Al has.” Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew 55 (New York: Viking Press, 1946).

^* The Roosevelt children were unlucky in marriage. Anna was married three times, James four, Elliott five, Franklin, Jr., five, and John twice. Among them they had twenty-seven children. Samuel Rosenman, who lived in the executive mansion and had an opportunity to observe firsthand, attributed the children’s lack of marital success to an inadequate family life. FDR was pursuing his career, Eleanor had separate interests, and the children were left high and dry. Samuel I. Rosenman interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.

^* Dean Acheson, a fellow Grotonian who served on and off as a sub–cabinet officer in the Roosevelt administration, was one of the few who took umbrage at FDR’s first-name familiarity. Considered more than a bit pompous himself, Acheson felt Roosevelt was condescending, calling the president’s style the Hudson Valley equivalent of the royal prerogative. “His was the royalty of the Tudors and Stuarts and Bourbons and Hapsburgs.… So when he called me ‘Dean’ on the first meeting, I did not like it.” Acheson to William D. Hassett, Hassett Papers, FDRL. Also see Acheson, Morning and Noon 165 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).

^* Eleanor’s income tax returns for the period indicate a professional income averaging slightly more than $25,000 annually—roughly the same as FDR’s salary as governor. FDRL.

^* Miss Perkins, who was sometimes present in the executive mansion when FDR spoke, said his voice and facial expression were that of an intimate friend. “As he talked his head would nod and his hands would move in simple, natural, comfortable gestures. His face would smile and light up as though he were actually sitting on the front porch or in the parlor with them.” Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew 72 (New York: Viking Press, 1946).

^* The ditty sung by the newsmen to greet FDR is the chapter epigraph.

^† Born in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in 1879, Rogers delighted the nation with his homespun wisdom. “I don’t belong to an organized political party,” he once quipped. “I’m a Democrat.” Quoted in David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 31 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

^* To allay concern about Roosevelt’s health, Louis Howe arranged for FDR to be examined by a battery of insurance company physicians at his Sixty-fifth Street home shortly after he received the Democratic nomination. Their report was made public on October 18, 1930, and Roosevelt was issued a life insurance policy for $560,000 (roughly $6 million today) with the Warm Springs Foundation as the beneficiary. On behalf of the examining physicians, Dr. Edgar W. Beckwith, medical director of the Equitable Life Assurance Company, told newsmen that to issue a policy of that magnitude was highly unusual. It required that the insured be in perfect health, which he said Roosevelt was. Except for his withered legs, said Dr. Beckwith, FDR’s physical condition was comparable to that of a man of thirty. His chest expansion was 5½ inches, weight 182 pounds, height six feet, one and a half inches, blood pressure 128/80—“a little better than gilt-edged for a man of forty-eight.” Privately, Dr. Beckwith wrote FDR: “Frankly, I have never before observed such a complete recovery in organic function and such a remarkable degree of recovery of muscles and limbs in an individual who had passed through an attack of infantile paralysis such as yours.” Dr. Beckwith to FDR, October 21, 1930, Howe Papers, FDRL.

^* FDR’s response to Stimson, Hurley, and Mills was much like his reply to Martin, Barton, and Fish in the 1940 presidential campaign, when he worked Democratic crowds into paroxysms of partisan enthusiasm by invoking the names of the isolationist congressmen Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, Bruce Barton of New York, and Hamilton Fish of New York. “Martin, Barton, and Fish” rolled off FDR’s tongue in rhythmic cadence and was zestfully picked up and chanted by Democratic audiences, to their mutual delight.

^* Miller was married three times, briefly and unsuccessfully. In 1932 and again in 1941 he is said to have married to quell rumors about himself and ER. After 1929 he and Eleanor had become constant companions in Albany, and gossip abounded. “That’s why I got married in 1932 with plenty of publicity. I got married with someone I wasn’t in love with. Same with the second marriage. But I was never successful in killing the gossip.”

In 1947, during divorce proceedings initiated by his third wife, Simone, it was alleged that Miller was conducting an adulterous affair with ER and a packet of her letters to him was introduced into the proceedings. The trial judge awarded Mrs. Miller a considerable but undisclosed settlement and custody of their two children and ordered the letters sealed. (Eleanor was godmother to both children.) There was minimum publicity, although New York Daily News columnist Ed Sullivan wrote, “Navy Commander’s wife will rock the country if she names the co-respondent in her divorce action!!!” Eleanor’s FBI file also contains a reference to the proceedings in Miller v. Miller. On October 4, 1947, the New York field office informed Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy, that Mrs. Miller “is planning to sue her husband for divorce and she will name Eleanor Roosevelt as correspondent.” (Microfilm, FDRL.) In 1984, Joseph Lash reported that Eleanor was devastated by the proceedings, “especially because of their possible impact on her children.” Joseph P. Lash, interview with Earl Miller, reprinted in Love, Eleanor 119 (New York: Doubleday, 1982); Lash, A World of Love 296–297 (New York: Doubleday, 1984); New York Daily News, January 13, 1947.