Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (84 page)

He also desired to lend a personal touch to his foreign policy toward Latin America. For the century since the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States had treated Latin America as its peculiar sphere of influence. This had never sat well with most Latin Americans, who interpreted America’s seizure of half of Mexico in the 1840s, its invasion of Cuba in 1898, its annexation of Puerto Rico in 1899, and its occupation of several Central American and Caribbean countries during the first quarter of the twentieth century as evidence of Yankee arrogance and hostility toward self-determination south of the Rio Grande. By the late 1920s the American policy had begun to appear counterproductive even to Washington, and Herbert Hoover quietly charted a new course.

But it was left to Franklin Roosevelt to proclaim the new approach publicly. “In the field of world policy,” he declared in his inaugural address, “I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.” There was more to this statement than improving relations with Latin America; Roosevelt intended it as a condemnation of Japan’s treatment of China and a warning to Germany not to defy its treaty commitments to the rest of Europe. Yet the very demands of broader American interests made improving relations with Latin America the more imperative. Roosevelt sent Cordell Hull to Montevideo, where the secretary of state added America’s signature to a statement denying the right of any country in the hemisphere to intervene in the affairs of any other country. As such intervention was a prerogative Theodore Roosevelt had claimed for the United States vis-à-vis Latin America, Franklin Roosevelt’s declaration, in December 1933, that “the definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention” assumed special significance.

Six months later Roosevelt complemented his friendly words with a presidential visit to Latin America. In Haiti, where American marines had been stationed since Woodrow Wilson’s first term, he pledged to withdraw the troops and turn control of the country over to the Haitian government. In Colombia he proclaimed a new era in hemispheric relations, one characterized by fair play and justice. In Panama he congratulated the people of that country for their role in constructing the great canal through which the
Houston
passed, and he expressed hope that the partnership would continue.

From Panama the
Houston
steamed west to Hawaii. The governor of the territory threw a giant luau; sixty thousand people turned out to honor the president. Roosevelt ate poi and pineapple and applauded the hula dancers; he took particular note of construction on the naval facility at Pearl Harbor. The president’s motorcade rolled past the machine shops and warehouses that fitted and repaired the Pacific fleet and past the tank farm where the navy stored the oil that fueled the ships’ mighty engines. He saw the giant drydock that had collapsed mysteriously while under construction but that had been completed and now serviced the navy’s largest vessels. He gazed upward at the eight-hundred-foot radio masts that allowed Pearl to communicate with vessels far at sea and was told that even more powerful facilities were being built across the island. He drove by the hospital and other medical facilities and toured the submarine base, where he reviewed the seamen and the civilian personnel. A flyover by eighty warplanes—fighters and bombers—concluded the review.

Roosevelt applauded the pilots, the seamen, and everyone else at Pearl. “They constitute an integral part of our national defense,” he declared.

B
Y THE TIME
Roosevelt returned to the West Coast, the dock strikes had ended. The timing wasn’t accidental. He could have come home earlier to deal with the strikes, and some in the administration thought he should. But Roosevelt saw little to be gained. As Louis Howe explained to Frances Perkins, who was wondering whether Roosevelt should sail to San Francisco upon the outbreak of the general strike in that city: “It will put the president right in the middle of an obligation to settle whatever is wrong out there. He’s in no position to do that…. He shouldn’t do it anyway.” Roosevelt agreed, and kept away.

His eventual return coincided with the start of the 1934 congressional races. Incumbent presidents’ parties typically suffer at the midterm, especially following such overwhelming victories as Roosevelt and the Democrats won in 1932. Rarely do such candidates and parties live up to the hopes that bore them into office, and voters make them pay for the disappointment. The remarkable popular reaction to the promises and programs of Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Francis Townsend, and Upton Sinclair, and the radical agitation among industrial workers, revealed the deep desire of millions of Americans for more than Roosevelt and the Democrats were currently delivering. On the single issue that mattered more to Americans than any other—the state of the economy—Roosevelt didn’t have much to offer. The promising signs of the spring and summer of 1933 had given way to a brief drop, which had been followed by another stretch of recovery. From October 1933 to March 1934 the
New York Times
index of economic activity rose by nearly 20 percent. But the growth stalled, and for the rest of the year the economy stagnated. As a whole, 1934 proved better than 1933, but production remained far below what it had been in 1929. The New Deal had alleviated America’s despair, but it hadn’t ended the depression.

Roosevelt nonetheless determined to make the elections a referendum on the New Deal. As he traveled east from Portland, he stopped in the Columbia Gorge at the construction site of the Bonneville Dam. He praised the engineers and workers for their magnificent efforts, and, while not mentioning Upton Sinclair’s land-redistribution program directly, he pointed out that the electricity and the irrigation provided by the Bonneville Dam and other dams on the Columbia would yield much the same result as Sinclair’s scheme. At Glacier National Park he lauded the accomplishments of the young men of the CCC in improving the park and improving themselves. At Green Bay he praised Wisconsin’s senators, Republican Robert La Follette Jr. and Democrat Francis Ryan Duffy—“both old friends of mine”—for their bipartisan support of the New Deal.

Arriving in Hyde Park at the end of August, Roosevelt rounded out the campaign with his most sweeping defense of the New Deal. He ticked off the achievements of the administration in rescuing the banks, cleaning up the stock market, boosting farm prices, rationalizing industry, protecting workers, employing the jobless, and generally restoring hope. He acknowledged that some of the new programs were expensive. But the alternative would have been more expensive. “No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources.” Certain critics said strong measures had been necessary but were no longer needed. “Now that these people are coming out of their storm cellars,” Roosevelt scoffed, “they forget that there ever was a storm.” Conservatives complained that the New Deal eroded individual liberty. Liberty was indeed the issue, the president said, but liberty meant more than letting the rich and powerful do whatever they would. “I am not for a return to that definition of liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few. I prefer and I am sure you prefer that broader definition of liberty under which we are moving forward to greater freedom, to greater security for the average man than he has ever known before in the history of America.”

Roosevelt’s strategy of converting the congressional elections into a personal referendum succeeded brilliantly. John Nance Garner, a veteran of many campaigns, had asserted that if the Republicans won no more than three dozen seats in the House, the administration would be justified in declaring the result a victory. The Republicans not only did not win three dozen seats but
lost
thirteen seats, leaving them outnumbered by the Democrats by more than three to one. In the Senate the GOP surrendered nine seats to the Democrats. The state races reflected the national trend; Republicans wound up in control of the governor’s mansions in a mere seven of the forty-eight states.

As the experts recovered from their shock, they unanimously agreed on a single explanation for the Democratic victories: Roosevelt. “He has been all but crowned by the people,” Republican William Allen White glumly acknowledged.

30.

S
OCIAL SECURITY HAD A DOZEN FATHERS IN
A
MERICA AND ONE MOTHER.
Frances Perkins became Roosevelt’s lieutenant for social security by virtue of being secretary of labor, a social worker, and a woman. As secretary of labor she oversaw America’s labor force, which, to her way of thinking and Roosevelt’s, required assistance when its members were temporarily without jobs, were disabled, or were retired. As a social worker she had long experience dealing with the less fortunate among the American people. As a woman (and a mother) she was presumed to have a sensibility withheld from some of her male colleagues.

American progressives had been talking up unemployment insurance and old-age pensions since before the World War. Roosevelt had signed on to this dual version of social security during the 1920s, endorsing it for New York during his time as governor. The Democratic party embraced the concept in its 1932 platform. But different people had different ideas as to how it should be effected. Some thought the burden should fall on business; others relied on government. Some believed the states should take the lead; others looked to Washington. Some advocated focusing on the most vulnerable groups of workers and their dependents; others adopted a more inclusive view.

Roosevelt thought bigger than most. “There is no reason why everybody in the United States should not be covered,” he told Perkins. “I see no reason why every child, from the day he is born, shouldn’t be a member of the social security system. When he begins to grow up, he should know he will have old-age benefits direct from the insurance system to which he will belong all his life. If he is out of work, he gets a benefit. If he is sick or crippled, he gets a benefit.”

Roosevelt wanted a system that was simple and ubiquitous—“so simple that everybody will understand it,” he said. “The system ought to be operated through the post offices. Just simple and natural—nothing elaborate or alarming about it…. And there is no reason why just the industrial workers should get the benefit of this. Everybody ought to be in on it—the farmer and his wife and his family.” Roosevelt thought postmen could double as social security agents, especially in the countryside. “The rural free delivery carrier ought to bring papers to the door and pick them up after they are filled out. The rural free delivery carrier ought to give each child his social insurance number and his policy or whatever takes the place of a policy. The rural free delivery carrier ought to be the one who picks up the claim of the man who is unemployed, or of the lady who wants old-age insurance benefits.”

Leaning back in his chair, imagining the smiles on the faces of those women, children, and old people, the president concluded: “I don’t see why not. I don’t see why not. Cradle to the grave—from the cradle to the grave they ought to be in a social insurance system.”

Perkins believed Roosevelt was dreaming. “I felt sure that the political climate was not right for such a universal approach,” she recalled. Not only would it contradict the individualism and self-sufficiency on which Americans had long prided themselves, it would break the budget. The most feasible plans linked contributions to payments: what individuals would receive, during periods of unemployment or in old age, would be tied to what they contributed, during periods of work. But building up the reserve fund to sustain the payments would take time. In the interim, somebody else would have to cover the costs.

Roosevelt rejected Perkins’s caution. He acknowledged that the program would be deflationary, at least at first, in that it would take money out of circulation through the taxes that supported it. “We can’t help that,” he said. “We have to get it started or it will never start.” Yet he told Perkins to trim where she could, starting with staffing the conceptual development of the program. “Be economical. Borrow people around the government from different bureaus. Don’t go outside any more than you are obliged to.”

The serious planning began in the summer of 1934. Under the authority of the National Industrial Recovery Act, Roosevelt created a Committee on Economic Security, broadly charged with studying problems relating to the security of individuals and with proposing solutions to those problems. Perkins headed the committee. “We borrowed from every department,” Perkins remembered: “economists, analysts, lawyers, clerical and stenographic workers, statistical experts, and equipment.” Harry Hopkins kicked in $125,000 from his relief budget to cover operating expenses. The committee considered several basic questions. Should the program concentrate on temporary troubles like unemployment and workplace injuries? Should it deal with longer-term challenges like permanent disabilities? Should it emphasize normal and foreseeable developments, in particular retirement? Should medical insurance be part of the package? Should social security be a federal program or a federal-state partnership? Should it be funded by workers, by business, or by general tax revenues? Should payments be based on need or on worker contributions?