Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (152 page)

The White House press corps had missed him. And he had missed them. He regaled the reporters with stories of his top-level meetings. “We had an awfully good time—very successful—both in Cairo and Teheran,” he said. “We had one banquet where we had dinner in the Russian style. Very good dinner, too. Russian style means a number of toasts, and I counted up to three hundred and sixty-five toasts.” The reporters laughed appreciatively. “And we all went away sober. It’s a remarkable thing what you can do, if you try.” More laughter. “I made one glass of vodka that big”—indicating two fingers—“last for about twenty toasts.” Still more laughter.

Roosevelt so enjoyed himself with his regular audience that he broke one of his rules and talked on with a correspondent who lagged behind after the news conference ended and the other reporters had left. His remarks were off the record, but word of them got back to the others. The president had suggested that he no longer liked the label “New Deal” as a description of the administration’s approach to domestic affairs. “Would you care to express any opinion to the rest of us?” one of the other reporters inquired at the first opportunity.

“Oh, I supposed somebody would ask that,” Roosevelt replied. “I will have to be terribly careful in the future how I talk to people after these press conferences.” His voice expressed exasperation, but his subsequent remarks hinted that his stumble was staged. “How did the New Deal come into existence?” he inquired of himself.

There was an awfully sick patient called the United States of America, and it was suffering from a grave internal disorder—awfully sick—all kinds of things had happened to this patient, all internal things. And they sent for the doctor. And it was a long, long process—took several years before those ills, in that particular illness of ten years ago, were remedied. But after a while they were remedied. And on all those ills of 1933, things had to be done to cure the patient internally. And it was done; it took a number of years….

But since then, two years ago, the patient had a very bad accident—not an internal trouble. Two years ago, on the seventh of December, he was in a pretty bad smashup—broke his hip, broke his leg in two or three places, broke a wrist and an arm, and some ribs. And they didn’t think he would live, for a while. And then he began to come to. And he has been in charge of a partner of the old doctor. Old Dr. New Deal didn’t know “nothing” about legs and arms. He knew a great deal about internal medicine, but nothing about surgery. So he got his partner, who was an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Win-the-War, to take care of this fellow who had been in this bad accident. And the result is that the patient is back on his feet. He has given up his crutches. He isn’t wholly well yet, and he won’t be until he wins the war.

W
HILE REPORTERS
explained to their readers how Dr. Win the War had displaced Dr. New Deal, Roosevelt prepared for the latter’s return to responsibility for the patient after the war. Most of Roosevelt’s State of the Union address of January 1944 dealt with the military situation, recounting past successes and predicting future ones. But the address also included his most comprehensive statement of postwar aims at home, a statement that was the most radical he ever uttered—and indeed more radical than any president before or after ever uttered. Reminding Congress and the radio public of the causes of the war, Roosevelt declared, “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence…. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Asserting that this political and economic truth was “self-evident,” Roosevelt proclaimed “a second bill of rights, under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.” These rights included:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

Roosevelt reminded his listeners that he had often spoken of the home front and the battle front as being part of a single democratic front. So they would remain when the fighting ceased. “After this war is won we must be prepared to move forward in the implementation of these rights to new goals of human happiness and well-being…. Unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.” The president spoke with cold earnestness in warning of a domestic reaction like that which followed the First World War. “If history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called ‘normalcy’ of the 1920s, then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of fascism here at home.”

T
HIS WAS POWERFUL,
provocative language of a kind Americans hadn’t heard from Roosevelt for years. It reflected, among other things, the confidence he felt after Teheran. “Within the past few weeks, history has been made,” he told the American people in his State of the Union address. “And it is far better history for the whole human race than any that we have known, or even dared to hope for, in these tragic times through which we pass.” At Cairo and Teheran, he explained, he had discussed the central issues of the war with the leaders of the other major Allied powers. Prime Minister Churchill, of course, was an old friend. “We know and understand each other very well. Indeed, Mr. Churchill has become known and beloved by many millions of Americans.” Marshal Stalin and Generalissimo Chiang were new acquaintances. “We had planned to talk to each other across the table at Cairo and Teheran; but we soon found that we were all on the same side of the table.” Roosevelt characterized Chiang as “a man of great vision, great courage, and a remarkably keen understanding of the problems of today and tomorrow.” As for Stalin:

To use an American and somewhat ungrammatical colloquialism, I may say that I “got along fine” with Marshal Stalin. He is a man who combines a tremendous, relentless determination with a stalwart good humor. I believe he is truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia; and I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people—very well indeed.

Roosevelt revealed that General Eisenhower would command the assault on Europe. “His performances in Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy have been brilliant. He knows by practical and successful experience the way to coordinate air, sea, and land power.” Few in the president’s radio audience were aware of the debate that had preceded Eisenhower’s appointment, and therefore few fully appreciated the concession Roosevelt made in adding: “General Eisenhower gives up his command in the Mediterranean to a British officer whose name is being announced by Mr. Churchill. We now pledge that new commander that our powerful ground, sea, and air forces in the vital Mediterranean area will stand by his side until every objective in that bitter theater is attained.”

Roosevelt for the first time publicly tipped his hand regarding the structure he envisioned for postwar peace.

Britain, Russia, China, and the United States and their allies represent more than three-quarters of the total population of the earth. As long as these four nations with great military power stick together in determination to keep the peace there will be no possibility of an aggressor nation arising to start another world war.

Roosevelt realized that a permanent policing role for the United States would arouse the isolationism that had gone dormant since Pearl Harbor but hadn’t disappeared. “There have always been cheerful idiots in this country who believed that there would be no more war for us if everybody in America would only return into their homes and lock their front doors behind them,” he said. Events had proven them tragically wrong, and the president hoped the lesson would last. “If we are willing to fight for peace now, is it not good logic that we should use force if necessary, in the future, to keep the peace?”

R
OOSEVELT SPOKE
so boldly about an economic bill of rights in part because he was engaged in a struggle for the allegiance of workers, who would benefit the most from his audacious agenda. The wartime wage and price controls functioned better in theory than in practice, and better for management than for labor. Wages were relatively easy to monitor, being far fewer in number than prices, which covered millions of items and whose controls could be evaded by resizing and relabeling. The cost of living advanced steadily during the war, outpacing wage rates. Workers’ real incomes increased, but only because of the extra hours of overtime. Union leaders realized that overtime wouldn’t last forever and reasonably argued that their members were actually losing ground.

Yet the unions’ predicament wasn’t entirely bleak. In 1942 the National War Labor Board ruled that in any workplace covered by a union contract new employees must be automatically enrolled in the union unless they specifically opted out during their first weeks on the job. This concession to the unions reflected the labor board’s appreciation of the difficulty union organizers were having with the massive influx of workers who knew nothing of the history of organized labor and its struggles; it also reflected the fact that corporate profits were soaring and management as a whole wasn’t in a position to complain.

Yet certain managers did complain. Montgomery Ward Company refused to honor the maintenance-of-membership rule, as the NWLB order was called. Attorney General Francis Biddle thereupon led a contingent of armed soldiers into the Chicago headquarters of Montgomery Ward and arrested Sewall Avery, the company president. Biddle’s action ignited a storm of protest among conservatives, but it warmed the hearts of union members and most of their leaders.

Not John L. Lewis, though. The mine workers’ chief and CIO founder had never forgiven Roosevelt for the president’s lack of support in the steel strike, and he was unimpressed by the maintenance-of-membership rule, which didn’t provide the UMW anything it didn’t already enjoy under the closed-shop—mandatory membership—contract it had negotiated by its own efforts with the mine operators. Lewis refused to be bound by the NWLB directives on wages, and when the miners’ contract expired in the spring of 1943, he ordered his men to strike. Half a million miners dropped their tools and headed out of the mines.