The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (28 page)

Washington lives by a rigid schedule. Some of it I think unnecessarily complicated but by and large I know it is necessary. The foreigners living in Washington would understand no other procedure. Also, the importance that most Americans attach to the posts they hold, whether elective or appointive, is probably justified; for in prestige most public servants find their only return. Certainly the financial returns are slight in comparison to what the majority of them could earn in business or in a profession.

Mrs. Helm had the help of the State Department on all questions of protocol. This relieved me of all responsibility. I never had to seat a formal dinner table.

I added a few parties to the social calendar of the White House—a so-called Gridiron Widows’ party, and teas and a garden party for the women who held executive or administrative positions in the government. Every year the newspapermen invite the President to the Gridiron dinner. Women are never allowed to attend, not even the women of the press. I decided it would be fun to have an evening party for the women on the same night, not only newspaperwomen but wives of newspapermen, and the Cabinet wives.

As for the teas and the garden party for the women executives, I discovered that a great many women who held rather important positions in the government had never been in the White House or met the wives of the secretaries heading their departments. I had one large garden party in the spring and a series of teas during the winter season for these women, and I invited the wives of the Cabinet members to receive with me.

I include here a sample of my social calendar for one week. I think you will see that a president’s wife is not exactly idle.

I am also giving some figures on the number of people who visited the White House in normal years as well as the number who had tea, lunch or dinner, or evening refreshments in the White House.

During the year of 1939:

       4,729 people came to a meal

          323 people were house guests

       9,211 people came to tea

     14,056 people were received at teas, receptions, etc.; all of them had some light refreshments

1,320,300 people visited the public rooms of which 264,060 had special passes from their Congressmen to see the state dining room, the Red Room, the Blue Room and the Green Room.

The average attendance at the Easter Egg Rolling was 53,108. The record shows that 180 children were lost and found; two people were sent to the emergency hospital; six people fainted and twenty-two had to be treated for small abrasions.

After I finished the morning routine of seeing the three people I have already mentioned—Mrs. Nesbitt, Mrs. Helm and the usher—Miss Thompson came into my sitting room to begin work on the mail. We had to work out a completely new system for handling the correspondence. We found that most of the mail in former administrations had been answered by form letters; Ralph Magee, head of the correspondence bureau, had copies of forms used in President Cleveland’s administration!

After I had fulfilled my obligations to my guests, whether at formal or informal parties, I signed the mail and read such letters as I had not seen before, wrote on other letters an outline of what I wanted said in reply and laid aside those that I had to dictate answers to. This often kept me busy far into the night. Before I went to bed I returned these baskets to Miss Thompson’s desk so she could work on them in the morning. As soon as she came to my desk in the morning we attended to the letters that had to be dictated.

Personal work, such as my column, articles, books, radio scripts and the like, was always done on overtime for which I personally compensated Miss Thompson so that there could be no question of her using time that belonged to the government for work that was purely personal. This work was done in the evenings and on Saturdays and Sundays. In all the years we were in Washington I could never drive Miss Thompson away for a holiday, so she had much accumulated leave which she never used and which, under civil service rules, she could not claim when we left Washington.

From March, 1933, to the end of the year I received 301,000 pieces of mail. The year before the 1940 election I received about 100,000 letters. The campaign for a third term, the draft, and various other administration measures caused it to increase. During the war it assumed large proportions but was, of course, of an entirely different character than it had been during the depression years.

The variety of the requests and the apparent confidence that I would be able to make almost anything possible always worried me. Many of the requests, of course, were not honest. I tried from the beginning to find people in various communities to whom I could refer letters that sounded desperate. Miss Thompson was always accusing me of being too soft-hearted, but I caught her once about to send money for a dress and shoes and underclothes to a young girl who wrote that she was going to be graduated from high school, was to be the valedictorian of her class, and had only her brother’s overalls and shoes to wear. She, too thoughtfully, I felt, included a page from a mail-order catalogue with sizes, colors, prices, and so on, all carefully written in. I was suspicious and asked someone to investigate and we found the whole story was untrue. The child’s parents were fairly comfortably off, and she was not the valedictorian of her class—she wasn’t even graduating. She simply wanted some new clothes.

In addition to the regular duties I have already mentioned, there were my press conferences. I soon discovered that the women reporters in Washington were living precariously. People were losing their jobs on every hand, and unless the women reporters could find something new to write about, the chances were that some of them would hold their jobs a very short time.

Miss Lorena Hickok, who had been assigned by the AP to “cover” me, pointed out many of these things, because she felt a sense of responsibility for the other women writers. My press conferences were her suggestion. I consulted Louis Howe and he agreed that I should hold them regularly for women reporters.

I realized that I must not trespass on my husband’s prerogatives, that national and international news must be handled by him, but it seemed to me there were many things in my own activities that might be useful. It was new and untried ground and I was feeling my way with some trepidation.

Louis Howe was responsible for my confidence in newspaper reporters. He had a high regard for his own craft and insisted that newspaper people were the most honorable group in the world. I took it for granted that the women would be as honorable as the men, and my confidence was seldom betrayed.

Every press conference was a battle of wits, and at times it was not easy for me, nor, I imagine, for them. For instance, when they were trying to find out whether Franklin would run for a third term, they asked all sorts of trick questions, such as: “Will the social season next winter be the same as usual?” Or: “Where would you hang all these prints in Hyde Park?” Usually I was able to detect the implications of the questions and avoid any direct answer, for Louis Howe had trained me well. My press conferences did not bother me or my husband as much as they seemed to worry other people. I believe the reporters and I came through with mutual respect.

Seventeen
    

The First Year: 1933

DURING THE EARLY
White House days when I was busy with organizing my side of the household, my husband was meeting one problem after another. It had a most exhilarating effect on him. Decisions were being made, new ideas were being tried, people were going to work and businessmen who ordinarily would have scorned government assistance were begging the government to find solutions for their problems.

What was interesting to me about the administration of those days was the willingness of everyone to co-operate with everyone else. As conditions grew better, of course, people’s attitudes changed, but fundamentally it was that spirit of co-operation that pulled us out of the depression. Congress, which traditionally never has a long honeymoon with a new president, even when the political majority is of his party, went along during those first few months, delegating powers to the President and passing legislation that it would never have passed except during a crisis.

Soon after the inauguration of 1933 we began to have a succession of visitors whom after dinner Franklin would take upstairs to his study. There were two reasons why these particular people were invited to the White House those first years. One was that the economic and political situation in the world made it necessary for him to establish contacts with the leaders of other countries; the other was his desire to build new contacts for better understanding on this continent and abroad.

For the heads of nations, Franklin worked out a reception which he thought made them feel that the United States recognized the importance of their governments. If the guests arrived in the afternoon we had tea for the entire party; afterwards, all but the most important guests went to a hotel or to their own embassy. Later Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue, was acquired by the government and arranged for the use of important visitors. The head of a government spent one night in the White House, accompanied by his wife if she was with him. There usually was a state dinner with conversation or music afterwards. The following morning Franklin and his guest would often have another talk before the guest went over to Blair House or to his embassy.

One of our first guests in 1933 was Ramsay MacDonald, who came with his daughter, Ishbel. We enjoyed meeting him, but even then we sensed in him a certain weariness. The loss of his wife had been a great blow to him. In many ways his daughter was a more vivid and vital person than he.

I think Franklin believed even then that it was most important for the English-speaking nations of the world to understand one another, whether the crisis was economic or, as later, military. This did not mean that he always agreed with the policies of these other countries; but he recognized the importance to us and to them of good feeling and understanding and co-operation.

The prime minister of Canada also came to stay with us that first spring, so that he and my husband and the prime minister of Great Britain could more or less co-ordinate their common interests.

In the same period Edouard Herriot, the French statesman, also arrived in Washington. As I look over the lists of what seem to be an unbelievable number of guests that first year, I find that we received an Italian mission, a German mission, and a Chinese mission, and even a Japanese envoy who came to lunch. Other guests included the governor general of the Philippines, Frank Murphy, later on the Supreme Court, who brought with him Manuel Quezon; the prime minister of New Zealand, who came with his wife to lunch; and His Highness Prince Ras Desta Dember, special ambassador of the Emperor of Ethiopia.

The President of Panama also paid us a visit. He was not the only guest from our own hemisphere. There was a stag dinner for the Brazilian delegation; we received a special ambassador from the Argentine; the Mexican envoy came to lunch; and the Brazilian envoy returned, after a trip through the country, to report on his travels.

Franklin had a deep conviction that we must learn to understand and to get on with our neighbors in this hemisphere. He believed it was up to us, who had been to blame in many ways for a big brother attitude which was not acceptable to our neighbors, to make the first effort. So even at that early date he was beginning to lay down through personal contacts the policy of the Good Neighbor, which was to become of increasing importance.

From the time we moved to Washington in 1933, Louis Howe became more and more of an invalid. At first he was able to be in his office and to keep his finger on much that was going on, and the second bonus march on Washington by the veterans of World War I he handled personally.

The first march, which had taken place in Mr. Hoover’s administration, was still fresh in everybody’s mind. I shall never forget my feeling of horror when I learned that the Army had actually been ordered to evict the veterans from their encampment. In the chaos that followed, the veterans’ camp on the Anacostia flats was burned and many people were injured, some of them seriously. This one incident shows what fear can make people do, for Mr. Hoover was a Quaker, who abhorred violence, and General MacArthur, his chief of staff, must have known how many veterans would resent the order and never forget it. They must have known, too, the effect it would have on public opinion.