The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (24 page)

The cottage was not an end in itself. It was the place in which Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman lived and from which Miss Cook directed a furniture factory. Nancy Cook was an attractive woman who could do almost anything with her hands. She had long wanted to make reproductions of Early American furniture. We obtained help and co-operation from the Metropolitan Museum, the Hartford Museum, and from many individuals. We produced drawings and went to look at famous pieces of old furniture. Miss Cook had no desire to reproduce worm-eaten antiques; she wanted to use methods employed by our ancestors, and see whether she could find a market for furniture which, though the first processes were done by machinery, would be largely handmade and therefore expensive. Because the finishing was all done by hand, the wood looked and felt as though it had been used and polished for years.

My husband was greatly interested in finding some industry that could be developed in country areas such as ours, and that could perhaps furnish occupation for some of the younger men who would otherwise leave the farms. By giving them work in an industry which would yield them a fairly good income during the slack period on the farms, he thought one could keep the progressive, more active group of young people working steadily and so raise the standard of farm development in our area.

He had a great love for the soil and wanted to see it developed; but he realized that many of the farmers around us had a difficult time holding their young sons on the land, because the return for hard and strenuous work was meager. His interest in our enterprise was therefore in the training and the employment of young men in the vicinity.

Nancy Cook ran the enterprise and I put in most of the capital from my earnings from radio and writing and even used some of the small capital that I had inherited from my mother and father. The others, especially Nancy Cook, contributed what they could afford.

We kept the factory going all through the early depression years, when the employment of people seemed vitally important. At last Miss Cook found that carrying two jobs—she was also executive secretary of the women’s division of the Democratic State Committee—was too much for her, so we closed the shop.

My husband’s object was not achieved, and I think the idea has been proved impractical on a much larger scale in some of the homesteads which were started during the depression. Some succeeded but few returned much on the original investment. Nevertheless, in the crisis they took people off relief and gave them back self-respect and a sense of security—a considerable achievement.

Although this experiment was a disappointment to Franklin, he accepted the failure philosophically both in our own case and later in the case of the country-wide experiment. I think he felt regret; but, with the same acceptance of the inevitable which he showed in so many other matters, having tried the experiment and become satisfied that it did not work, he gave it up and sought other solutions. He hoped that some day it might work out. He always accepted things as they were and set such experiences aside as something to remember and perhaps use in the future.

I never made any money out of this furniture-making venture. In fact, I was probably one of the best customers the shop had, because I bought various pieces of furniture as wedding presents and as gifts for other occasions.

During the depression I took over the factory building and was able, through my earnings, to turn it into a fairly comfortable if somewhat odd house. Though I did not have any architectural advice, I did have the help of a friend, Henry Osthagen, an engineer. We used local labor entirely. Employing people seemed the best way to spend some of the money I was able to earn during those years. Part of the shop we made into an apartment for my secretary, Malvina Thompson, and I frequently went there to work quietly with her; the rest of the building became a guest cottage, which we used when the big house was overcrowded—something that often happened during the years when my husband was president. Since turning the old Hyde Park house over to the government, I have made the converted shop building my year-round home.

During the early years of my acquaintance with Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman I became associated in the Todhunter School with Miss Dickerman, who was first the assistant principal and then the principal. It was a private school for girls from the primary grades through high school. Miss Todhunter, who was British, finally sold the school to Marion Dickerman, Nancy Cook and myself and went back to England. I began teaching there in 1927. I taught only the older girls because I considered that it took far less training to teach them than to teach the younger children. I gave courses in American history and in English and American literature and later we tried some courses in current events which I hope were more practical than are many of the courses given to sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls. We visited the New York City courts and I think many young people learned a great deal from sitting in one of the children’s courts for an hour. Those whom their parents allowed to go I took to see the various kinds of tenements that exist in a city like New York, as well as the big markets and various other places. All this made the government of the city something real and alive, rather than just words in a textbook.

In spite of my political activities and having to run the Executive Mansion in Albany, after my husband was elected governor, I continued to teach for two and a half days a week, leaving Albany on Sunday evenings and returning on Wednesday afternoons. It was rather strenuous when we were in Albany, but, of course, fairly easy when we were at Hyde Park, as we were there for longer periods, when the legislature was not in session. For a while, after we went to Washington, I conducted a class for graduates and their friends, first on a weekly and then on a monthly basis.

Fifteen
    

The Governorship Years: 1928-1932

IN THE SPRING
of 1928, when it looked as though Governor Smith would be the candidate for the Presidency on the Democratic ticket, Mrs. Belle Moskowitz asked me to organize the women’s end of the office for the national campaign.

That June my husband went with our son, Elliott, to the Democratic National Convention, which met in Houston, Texas. Elliott was thrilled at the chance to be with his father, but I had no desire to take part in the hurly-burly of a convention—the 1924 convention had given me all I wanted of that type of experience. My husband stood the Texas heat remarkably well and came back to Hyde Park feeling that he had had a great part in bringing about the nomination of Alfred E. Smith.

Franklin and I had long supported Governor Smith politically because of his social program; we believed that he sought the welfare of the average man and woman. Franklin remembered how after the Triangle Fire in 1911 in New York City Governor Smith had worked for better factory laws in our state. This fire had been a shocking disaster, in which a great many girls and women had been burned to death because of the lack of fire exits and fire protection in the factory.

Because Governor Smith had spent the greater part of his life in one state and practically in one city, he had certain shortcomings; nevertheless, we felt that he understood the needs of the people and that he had a genius for government; and we never doubted his integrity. His memory was prodigious and his method of talking to people during the campaigns, particularly in his own state, which he knew so well, was remarkably effective.

Franklin did not feel he could do a great deal of work in the campaign, but he came into the office occasionally, and he headed the Businessmen’s Division, sat in on planning meetings and made some speeches. He assigned Louis Howe to represent him at the headquarters full time, working with Governor Smith, John Raskob, Edward J. Flynn and others.

It was not until I began to see the full alignment against us that I became doubtful of success. Governor Smith was a Roman Catholic, and the kind of propaganda that some of the religious groups, aided and abetted by the opposition, put forth in that campaign utterly disgusted me. If I needed anything to show me what prejudice can do to the intelligence of human beings, that campaign was the best lesson I could have had.

In 1928 I was still fairly young and could put in prodigious hours of work, but I sometimes wonder how any of us, particularly Miss Thompson and Miss Tully, lived through that campaign. It proved that work is easier to carry if your heart is involved. Miss Thompson was interested because I was interested; and Miss Tully, who had been Cardinal Hayes’s secretary, probably felt a religious interest in the campaign in addition to her admiration for Governor Smith.

Grace Tully was young and very pretty, and had been extremely well trained by Cardinal Hayes. Our work was somewhat different from that to which she had been accustomed, but it was good preparation for her future work with my husband and Miss LeHand.

In the fall, after school began, I did not go into the office until noon on the days I taught, but I stayed until the work was finished at night, often well after midnight. Then I went home to do my school papers and was at school the next morning at half past eight. On the other days I was in the office at nine o’clock in the morning and stayed until late in the evening.

Speaking was still something of an ordeal for me, so it was understood that my part of the work would involve simply organizing the office, handling the mail, greeting women visitors, consulting on requests for speakers; in fact, just being generally useful. Mrs. Mary Norton, congresswoman from New Jersey, as head of the women’s speakers’ bureau, made the arrangements for women speakers, and all requests were referred to her.

Elinor Morgenthau and Nancy Cook, who were working with the Democratic State Committee, moved with their staff to the General Motors Building for the campaign. Then, in the latter part of the summer of 1928, the vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross, moved into her office at the national headquarters, with Mrs. James O’Mahoney as her assistant. Mrs. Ross had served as governor of Wyoming after the death of her husband, who had been the previous governor.

Her arrival at headquarters meant that we started to make plans for an extensive speaking trip for her, and she was always in demand for activities at headquarters. We kept her pretty busy. I remember one day I had Miss Tully scurrying everywhere to find her while a tea party waited to greet her. She was found completely exhausted, lying on the floor of our diminutive restroom, trying to regain enough energy to face shaking hands with several hundred people.

Later, she continued in active government work and became director of the mint of the Treasury Department, remaining a popular speaker with women’s groups.

In September of that year I motored to Groton with our youngest son, John, to put him in boarding school. By then I had come to feel that once a child went to boarding school there never again could be the strong ties with and the dependence on the family that had existed up to that time. I had never been a convinced advocate for boarding school for the twelve-year-old but my husband, who had not gone to boarding school until he was fourteen, always felt that the loss of those two years was a hardship, because by the time he entered the school the other boys had already formed their friendships and he remained always a little the outsider.

The day I took each boy to school, unpacked his clothes and settled him was always a terrible day for me, and when it came to the last child, it was particularly hard.

Even though I was teaching school and working in the national campaign headquarters in New York City, I attended the New York State Democratic Convention in Rochester that fall. I mention this here to tell the story, as I remember it, of how my husband was finally induced to run for the governorship.

The afternoon before the nominations were made, John J. Raskob, then chairman of the National Democratic Committee, and Governor Smith asked me to come to talk with them. I had heard that Governor Smith wanted my husband to run. However, I knew Franklin felt he should continue his treatment at Warm Springs. They told me how much they wanted him to run, and asked me if I thought it would really injure his health. I said I did not know; that I had been told the doctors felt that if he continued with his exercises and swimming at Warm Springs he might improve. My husband once laughingly said that if he lived long enough he might be able to walk again, but progress was slow and I sometimes wondered how much more could be achieved.

Both Governor Smith and Mr. Raskob insisted that they did not want to urge anything that would injure Franklin’s health. If, however, it was not simply his health but other reasons which kept him from consenting, they would like to know it. I said I did not think any other reasons were paramount and that Franklin felt the possibility of making further improvement in his health was worth a try. Also, having undertaken a heavy financial responsibility in Warm Springs, he felt an obligation to try to make it a success.

Finally, after Governor Smith, Mr. Raskob and I talked over the situation, they asked me if I would be willing to get my husband on the telephone and ask him to run for governor. They had been trying all day to reach him and had not been able to do so. I answered that I would not ask him to do anything he felt he should not do, let alone run for office.

They put in a call to my husband for me early in the evening and found that he had gone to Manchester, Georgia, to make a speech and could not be reached until he returned to Warm Springs. I finally succeeded in getting Franklin on the telephone at the Foundation after his return. He told me with evident glee that he had been keeping out of reach all day and would not have answered the telephone if I had not been calling.

I had just time enough to tell him that I had called because Governor Smith and Mr. Raskob begged me to, and that I was leaving him to Governor Smith because I had to catch a train. Then I ran. I can still hear Governor Smith’s voice saying, “Hello, Frank,” as I hurried from the room to gather up my belongings and catch the train. I did not know until the following morning when I bought a newspaper that my husband had been persuaded to accept the nomination. I never heard him say later whether he regretted his decision or not. Having decided, he put any other possibility out of his mind.