NOTES

1: Becoming First Lady

10 For Elisabeth Marbury see Notable American Women. See also Kim Marra, “A Lesbian Marriage of Cultural Consequence: Elisabeth Marbury and Elsie de Wolfe, 1886–1933,” in Kim Mara and Robert Schanke, eds., Passing Performances: Queer Readings of Leading Players in American Theater History (University of Michigan, 1998). In the Women’s Democratic News, ER celebrated Marbury’s “ease of expression and witty and fertile mind. She was always interesting even though we did not always agree with her….”

11 For Malvina Thompson Scheider, first called Tommy by the children, I am grateful for information from her niece, Eleanor Lund Zartman.

12 “We may have … a new social and economic order”: ER’s broadcast quoted in NYT, 29 Nov. 1932.

12 Prohibition: The national ban on the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” called the Volstead Act, was the 18th amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1919. A year after ER’s broadcast, the 21st Amendment to repeal the 18th passed on 5 Dec. 1933, by over 70 percent. Norman Vincent Peale and the WCTU condemned ER’s broadcasts; NYT, 10 Dec. 1932; 15 Jan. 1933.

12 ER’s last broadcast, in the pre-White House series: Quoted in NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.

13 ER’s initial traveling intentions: NYT, 25 Feb. 1933; Raymond Moley, quoted in Frank Freidel, Launching the New Deal (Little, Brown 1973), p. 291. At Grief: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 91–92.

13–14 ER’s new wardrobe: NYT, 25 Feb. 1933; complimented, NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.

13–14 shopping spree and Morgenthau: ER to FDR, nd, Feb. 1933, Roosevelt Family Papers, Children, Box 16.

15 “ER was disappointed”: Morgenthau was at first appointed to the Farm Credit Administration. For Howe’s reaction, see Alfred B. Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe (Knopf, 1962), p. 392; see also Henry Morgenthau III, Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History (Ticknor &. Fields, 1991), p. 267.

15 Old school chums rallied: Helen Cutting Wilmerding to ER, 14 June 1933; ER to HCW, 23 June; Joseph Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (W. W. Norton, 1971), p. 365; ER in Junior League journal, 1933.

16 Alice Roosevelt Longworth on FDR: Quoted in Bess Furman, Washington By-Line (Knopf, 1949), p. 203; cf. Carol Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988).

16 FDR’s Fiftieth birthday: Ted Morgan, F.D.R.: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 336.

16–17 Ida Saxton McKinley: Betty Boyd Caroli, First Ladies (Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 57, 109–12; Carl S. Anthony, First Ladies, 1789–1961 (William Morrow, 1990), p. 284.

17 Ellen Axson Wilson: see esp. Ellen Axson Wilson: First Lady/Artist, by Frank J. Aucella, Patricia A. Piorkowski Hobbs, with Frances Wright Saunders (Woodrow Wilson House National Trust); the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut; and Frances Wright Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson: First Lady Between Two Worlds (University of North Carolina Press, 1985); and Joy Gordon and Jeffrey Andersen, En Plein Air: The Art Colonies at East Hampton and Old Lyme, 1880–1930 (Florence Griswold and Guild Hall Museums, 1989).

18 Ellen Wilson on “exactions of life”: Anthony, p. 349. Ellen Wilson’s death in NYT, quoted in Caroli, p. 142.

18 ER was moved by the second Mrs. Wilson, especially Edith Wilson’s gracious manner when they visited the American Hospital: “She left a few flowers at each boy’s bed, and I was lost in admiration because she found something to say to each one.”

ER, Autobiography, p. 99; Jonathan Daniels, The End of Innocence (Lippincott, 1954), p. 280; Anthony, p. 359.

18 Mary Peck: See Daniels, p. 190; Anthony, pp. 359, 370. Bernard Baruch allegedly contributed $75,000 to prevent publication of the letters, and in 1915 Mrs. Peck evidently acknowledged a much smaller “loan.”

18 Calvin Coolidge: See ER, Autobiography, p, 102; at the sink, Anthony, pp. 401, 400, 453.

18–19 Lou Henry Hoover and Oscar DePriest: I am grateful to Alan Teller for his work on the Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover installations at the Hoover Library and Museum in Iowa. See also Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Little, Brown, 1975); Anthony, pp. 440–446.

19 Edith Roosevelt and ER: See Anthony, pp. 305–6; adulterers shunned, pp. 299–300; tusks and grin, Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt (Coward McCann Geoghagan, 1980), p. 126; beloved shackles, Caroli, p. 124.

20 In 1924 ER campaigned for Al Smith, in a car with a giant teapot, which implicitly connected her cousin Ted to the Republicans’ Teapot Dome naval oil land scandal; see Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. I: 1884–1933 (Viking, 1992) (hereafter, BWC, vol: 1); and Morris, p. 479.

20 ER to Aunt Edith, ibid, p. 483; 17 Nov. 1933, ER Derby Papers, Houghton Library.

20 “My poor cousin”: Carol Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988), p. 171.

21 Nicholas Longworth died of pneumonia on 10 Apr. 1931 while visiting Laura Curtis, his “poker pal” and former lover in Aiken, South Carolina. Called when his condition became dire, Alice was present but refused to be by his side during his final hours. She relinquished that place to his current mistress, the beautiful Alice Dows. She hated her husband so thoroughly by the time of his death that she burned his papers and most precious possessions, including his Stradivarius violin. Felsenthal, pp. 166, 168.

21 Alice Roosevelt’s attacks: Teague, p. 161; Felsenthal, pp. 171–73.

21 ER on gossip: “Curiosity,” Saturday Evening Post, 24 Aug. 1935, p. 9.

22 breast-feeding: Babies, Apr. 1933.

22 ER’s most egregious advice regarding regularity and thumb-sucking is in the Apr. and May issues of Babies; 1950s quoted in Paul M. Dennis, “Between Watson and Spock: ER’s Advice on Child-Rearing from 1928 to 1952,” Journal of American Culture (Spring 1995), pp. 44–45.

22 In 1933, ER wrote: “I believe very strongly that it is better to allow children too much freedom than too little.” Mothers should not “nag their children about little things.” It’s Up to the Women, pp. 130–31. To protect the younger boys, ER to Isabella Greenway, nd, Greenway Papers, Tucson, Spring, 1932; ER to Greenway with gratitude, 6 Sept. 1932.

23 ER on TR and Elliott: Hunting Big Game in the ‘Eighties (Scribner’s Sons, 1933), p. 33.

24 “You can’t rent your grandfather”: ER, This I Remember (hereafter TIR), p. 81.

24 ER to Metropolitan Opera audience: NYT, 11 Dec. 1932. Simon Boccanegra, program 10 Dec. 1932, Saturday matinee, 2 pm, Maria Mueller as Maria Boccanegra; with thanks to John Pennino, assistant archivist, Metropolitan Opera Association, libretto translated by Lionel Salter, 1977, Deutsche Grammophon.

25 ER invited 72 relatives: NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.

25 Emma Bugbee: NY Herald-Tribune, 5 Mar. 1933.

26 Germany: NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.

27 O’Day, “The Inaugural Festivities,” Women’s Democratic News, Mar. 1933.

27 Cermak: Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady (Dodd, Mead, 1980 [1962]), p. 82; on Cermak’s death, NY Herald-Tribune, 27 Feb. 1933; NYT, 6 Mar. 1933; Tribune, 7 Mar. 1933; Freidel, pp. 169–74.

28 On Walsh: NY Herald-Tribune, 3 Mar. 1933; ER pp. 69,78–79.

28 Pleas for ball: See esp. NY Herald-Tribune, 4 Mar. 1933.

28 On balls: See esp. Washington Evening Star, 2 Mar. 1933; also Tribune and NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.

29 ER’s party: Washington Star, 5 Mar. 1933.

29 ER on FDR: Autobiography, p. 159.

29 his mind: TIR, p. 117.

29 ER to FDR, Swedish diplomat, Apr. 1936, nd, Roosevelt Family, Children, Box 16.

29–30 Felix Frankfurter, memo of visit, 8 Mar. 1933, in Max Freedman, ed., Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928–1945 (Little, Brown, 1967), p. 113. Frankfurter declined even though FDR said it would be easier to appoint him to the Supreme Court from a Federal post; there was not only the question of Frankfurter’s politics and his support of Sacco and Vanzetti, but his “race.”

2: Public and Private Domains

32 Democratic and simple: Inaugural articles, especially Associated Press’s Lorena Hickok, NY Herald-Tribune, 5 Mar. 1933; Apr. unsigned AP articles on ER by Hick, Hickok Papers.

32 Bess Furman wrote: Furman, p. 151; Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 106–7.

32 Reorganized the household: ER to Hick, 8, 9, 19, 20 Mar. 1933.

32 My first act: ER, TIR, pp. 80–81; Lincoln’s bedroom, ibid.

33 Details of rooms: See White House histories, esp. Frank Freidel and William Pencak, eds., The White House (Northeastern University Press, 1994); Wendell Garrett, ed., Our Changing White House (Northeastern University Press, 1995); White House Historical Association Publications, Washington, DC 20503.

35 Pool time: TIR, pp. 117–18.

35 George Fox: ER was particularly grateful to Lieutenant Commander George Fox, who was FDR’s physical therapist in residence, TIR, pp. 116, 118; on water polo, Hickok, p. 149; and Henry Goddard Leach, My Last 70 Years. (Bookman Associates, 1956), p. 213. I am grateful to Dorothy Warren for this reference.

35 Henrietta Nesbitt, White House Diary (Doubleddy, 1948), p. 131.

35 ER often impatient: TIR, pp. 80–81; Hickok, p. 113.

35–36 On Crim and J. B. West, in J. B. West, Upstairs at The White House (Warner, 1947), pp. 30–31, 51.

36 Emma Bugbee recalled: Bugbee in Reader’s Digest, Oct. 1963, p. 95; TIR, p. 4.

37 Once, only once: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, p. 148.

37 Missy LeHand: TIR, p. 114; excluded, p. 108.

38 Tommy seemed gruff: Lillian Rogers Parks and Frances Leighton, The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil (Prentice Hall, 1981), pp. 67–69. Tommy, long separated from her husband, lived with her new companion, Henry Osthagan, who worked for the Treasury Department.

38 Edith Helm: TIR, p. 83.

39 Louise Hackmeister: TIR, p. 115; NYT, 3 Mar. 1933; Nesbitt, p. 39; Parks, p. 46.

39 Mary Eben: TIR, p. 115; Rogers, pp. 253–54.

39–40 For FDR’s staff, see esp. Charles Hurd, When the New Deal Was Young and Gay (Harper, 1965), pp. 85, 88–89.

40 Gus and Earl Miller: TIR, pp. 28, 70; Hurd, pp. 85–86.

40–41 ER’s press conferences: Hickok, pp. 108–9; Maurine Beasley, ed., The White House Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt (Garland, 1983); cf. Furman.

41 On 8 Mar. Bess Furman interrupted ER’s contemplative walk home from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s birthday tea with the good news that Hick would attend. ER to Hick, 8 Mar. 1933.

42–43 Nobody else: ER to Hick, 11 Mar. 1933; hilarious details, 10 Mar. 1933.

43 On Monday, 13 Mar., ER’s first visit to New York as First Lady was filled with private business. According to Hick’s report, she went to her physician and dentist, hosted fifteen Todhunterites for tea on 65th Street, addressed a Todhunter assembly, attended a student’s wedding; shopped for clothes, and “had a private appointment for dinner.”

44 The WTUL temporary shelters committee included ER’s daughter Anna, Fannie Hurst, Nancy Cook, Pauline Emmet, Mary Dreier, and Rose Schneiderman. WTUL meeting, and ER’s activities, NYT, 15, 16 Mar. 1933.

44 The Roosevelts’ 28th anniversary: Nesbitt, pp. 43–44; FDR marked the occasion with a note and a check to his wife: “Dearest Babs: After a fruitless week of thinking and lying awake to find whether you need or want undies, dresses, hats, shoes, sheets, towels, rouge, soup plates, candy, flowers, lamps, laxative pills, whisky, beer, etchings or caviar / I GIVE IT UP!

“And yet I know you lack some necessity of life—so go to it with my love and many happy returns of the day! F.D.R.” FDR’s Letters, III, p. 339. There is no record of ER’s gift to her husband.

44–45 Bonus Marchers: Roger Daniels, The Bonus March: An Episode of The Great Depression (Greenwood, 1971), esp. pp. 167–81; Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover, pp. 161–62; ER was stunned. TIR, p. 112.

46 An hour with the veterans: TIR, pp. 111–13; NYT, 16, 17 May 1933; Furman, p. 171;Beasley, p. 9.

46–47 Women’s Press Club frolic: NYT, 21 Mar. 33; Fsurman, pp. 160–61. Hick’s unpublished fifteen-page article on this visit, Hick’s papers.

48 Blue sky & sun: ER to Hick, 13 Apr. 1933.

48 On 12 Apr. ER to Hick; on Ramsay MacDonald and U.S. peace leaders in World War I, see Blanche Wiesen Cook, “Democracy in Wartime: Antimilitarism in England and the U.S., 1914–1918,” in Charles Chatfield, ed., Peace Movements in America (Schocken Books, 1973). See also Charles Chatfield, “Alternative Anti-War Strategies of the Thirties,” ibid.

49 Lillian Wald to Mary Rozet Smith, with FDR-MacDonald correspondence references, 12 Apr. 1933, JA Papers Project, 24–1074.

50 20 Apr., Traveler’s Aid and Amelia Earhart: NYT, 20, 21 Apr. 1933; Emma Bugbee, NY Herald-Tribune, 21 Apr. 1933.

50 ER rejoiced in the modern adventure: NYT, 10 Dec. 1932.

51 “Do you shake and think”: TIR, pp. 91–92.

3: ER’s Revenge

52 ER was actually fussy: Parks, p. 19.

52 fresh-cut flowers: TIR, p. 78.

52 Flowers pleased ER: During her second week in Washington, ER attended an amaryllis show. She considered it “a good color show,” but the amaryllis was “not a flower I would enjoy.” ER to Hick, 21 Mar. 1933.

52–53 Harold Ickes was discreet: The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes: The First Thousand Days, 1933–1936 (Simon and Schuster, 1954), pp. 248–49.

53 Ickes, 19 Dec. 1934, pp. 248–49.

53 subject of derision: Catherine Mackenzie, NYT, 9 Dec. 1934, “Simple Fare for the White House” sect. 6; NYT, 13 Apr. 1935; Ickes Diary, 19 Dec. 1934, pp. 248–49; FDR joked, Ickes Diary, pp. 250–51.

54 The home economics movement: See esp. Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose to ER, beginning Nov. 1930, Home Economic Records, Cornell University, # 23/2/749; Flora Rose Interview, New York State College of Home Economics Records, c 1953.

54 balanced meals: Bugbee, NY Herald-Tribune, 21 Mar. 1933. See also “MRS R for Home Science,” NYT, 27 Mar. 1933; Time, 27 Nov. 1933.

55 even ER was mystified: Henrietta Nesbitt, White House Diary (Doubleday, 1948), pp. 14–15; peas, p. 192; Schrafft’s, p. 64; watery, p. 186; headlines, pp. 185–87. ER’s poem to FDR, 29 Jan. 1938/PSF, box 177.

55 ER had persuaded herself that FDR had no serious gourmet interests: Even Nesbitt knew better than that, and tried to consider some “fancy” dishes on occasion. See Nesbitt, pp. 66, 68–70, for ER’s list of FDR’s favorite foods.

55 ER on bacon and eggs: S. J. Woolf, “Mrs. R of the Strenuous Life,” NYT Magazine, 11 Oct. 1932.

56 Major bit: TIR, p. 118. Rosamond Pinchot, Gifford Pinchot’s niece who had worked at ER’s campaign headquarters and was a young reporter and actress, visited ER on 28 Apr. 1933, and observed Major’s attack on Richard Bennett, Canada’s prime minister: As ER walked down the stairs to say goodbye, Major “flew at him making angry sounds. Then he bit the Premier in the thigh. Bennett was rather taken aback but said, ‘It’s all right, he didn’t draw blood.’ I made the tactless remark, ‘An ideal dog for the White House.’” Pinchot’s diaries, 28 Apr. 1933, Nancy Pinchot Pitman collection; see also Bess Furman’s account, pp. 165, 188.

57 Upset by those who burned cigarette holes in the tablecloths: Nesbitt, p. 276.

57 ER’s guests made demands: Nesbitt, p. 195.

57 Katherine Buckley to Farley, 30 Jan. 1933; Farley to Katherine Buckley, 15 Feb. 1933; ER to Miss Buckley, 17 Feb. 1933, box 1256/100.

58 Worker’s rights to the White House: Nesbitt, p. 211.

58 SDR: Nesbitt, pp. 212–13.

58 Lillian Rogers Parks on Mrs. Nesbitt: 30–31; p. 266 (n); pp. 69–70.

59 Bess Truman, J. B. West (with Mary Lynn Kotz), Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies (Warner, 1974), p. 78.

4: Mobilizing the Women’s Network

60 FDR’s first hundred days of legislation and executive orders resulted in the Banking Act; the Economy Act which cut veterans benefits and government salaries; the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA); the Glass-Steagall Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC); the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)—the centerpiece of the first New Deal, which launched both the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA), and also contained a provision (Article 7A) to promote independent unionism; the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA); the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

60 Frederic Howe’s memoir, Confessions of a Reformer, detailed his work with antiwar activists and radicals.

62 During the 1920s, ER’s feminist articles: See esp., “Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do,” Redbook, 1928; see BWC, vol. I, pp. 365–71; reprinted in Allida Black, What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt (Carlson, 1995).

62 Florence Kelley was an independent socialist who translated Friedrich Engels and was active in many causes. One of the original 1909 organizers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), like ER, her radicalism emerged out of the conditions of her own childhood. Kathryn Kish Sklar, ed., Notes on 60 Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley (Charles Kerr, 1986), pp. 30–31; see also Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900 (Yale University Press, 1995).

62 the mother of us all: Frances Perkins decided on a career in social reform after Kelley addressed her graduating class at Mount Holyoke in 1902. Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 35–37.

62 ER on Sheppard-Towner: Congressional Record, 6 Jan. 1927, p. 1154; see also Sklar’s introduction to Florence Kelley Autobiography, pp. 30–31, 112. A revision of the Sheppard Towner law, defunded in 1927, was included in the Social Security Act of 1935. But WIC was so limited most African-Americans were denied care. Subsequently extended, it became an accepted part of American life until it was again attacked and defunded during the 1990s. Cf. Mimi Abramovitz, Linda Gordon, and Alice Kessler-Harris.

63 ER was attacked: Woman Patriot, 1, 15 Feb., 1928. I am grateful to Christie Balka for this reference.

63–64 ER-Robert Bingham exchange on child labor: ER to Bingham, 8 Jan. 1934, 100/ Box 1286; ER to Frances Perkins, 3 Feb. 1934, Perkins Papers, Columbia; Bingham to ER, 14 Jan. 1934; ER to Bingham, 27 Jan. 1934, FDRL.

64 child labor amendment an entering wedge: ER in NYT, 20 May 1934; May 1934 column in Woman’s Home Companion.

64–65 Kelley and white labels: See Kathryn Kish Sklar, in Linda Kerber, et al., eds., US History as Women’s History (University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

65 ER and Nancy Astor at 30th anniversary NCL: Lady Astor championed working women and social reform, including minimum wages and fair labor practices. A longtime friend of the NCL, she was later associated with anti-communism and fascist “appeasement.” Kelley and ER quoted in NYT, 14 Dec. 1932; Accredited “newsgirls”: Margaret Chase Smith to BWC, in Skowhegan, Maine, June 1992.

65 ER’s press conferences: See esp. Maurine Beasley, pp. 42–46, 103–4 passim. Emma Bugbee, Oral History, Columbia.

66 No gossip, no leaks: Emma Bugbee, NY Herald-Tribune, 4 Mar. 1933; also Oral History.

66 thrown into the mud: NYT, 14 Apr. 33.

66 ER intended to manage the news, and refused to speak publicly about certain subjects, notably birth control—although she “always belonged” to the birth control league: ER to Agnes Brown Leach, 21 June 1935, 100, Box 1346. In 1931 spoke at an event to honor Margaret Sanger. See Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger (Simon & Schuster 1992), p. 339.

66 rejected ghostwriters: White House press office announcement, 15 Aug. 1933, ppf Box 1.

67 Anna Ickes’s book, Mesa Land: The History and Romance of the American Southwest, was published by Houghton Mifflin in November 1933, the same month as ER’s book It’s Up to the Women—and their reviews appeared side by side in major newspapers; their difficult marriage: See T. H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874–1952 (Henry Holt, 1990), pp. 147–51, 168–71, 219–20, passim. See also Jeanne Clarke.

67 ER on Farley: TIR, p. 66.

68 like Kipling’s cat: Dewson quoted in Furman, p. 228.

68 patronage letters: ER to Jim Farley, 20 Sept. 1933, 100, Box 1261; on McAdoo, see Douglas Craig, After Wilson, (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993), p. 32.

68 Amy Beach: See Adrienne Fried Block, “Amy Beach: From Song to Opera,” Alice Tully Hall, 13 May 1995, program; and Block’s Amy Beach (Oxford University Press, 1998). ER particularly enjoyed her “Silver Birches.” Musical Leader, 9 May 1936.

68 Amy Beach was also a family friend, particularly close to ER’s Aunt Corinne. Amy Beach to ER, 27 Apr. 1934; I am grateful to Adrienne Fried Block.

68 Ruth Bryan Owen hoped for Interior: Owen to Fannie Hurst, 3 July 1932; Hurst Papers, Austin, Texas.

69 RBO named ambassador: When FDR offered a State Department appointment, she wrote Fannie Hurst: “Please burn all the candles you have in front of your shrines and icons.” RBO to FH, 21 Mar. 1933. See Harold Ickes’s snide version of his meeting with RBO, 13 Mar. 1933; for FDR’s curious role, see Ickes diary, p. 6: “She believes [FDR said] she sold herself to me.”

69 ER honored RBO: Toasts in NYT, 10 May 1933; see Notable American Women.

69 ER named several pioneers as the great harbingers of a new day: Katharine Lenroot, chief of the Children’s Bureau; her Children’s Bureau associate, Dr. Martha Eliot; Dr. Louise Stanley, chief of the Bureau of Home Economics in the Department of Agriculture; Mary Anderson, since 1920 head of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor; and Mary McLeod Bethune, president of the National Association of Colored Women, founder of the Bethune-Cookman College in Ocala, Florida, subsequently appointed to the National Youth Administration (NYA), and chair of the Negro Division. See esp. It’s Up to the Women, pp. 200; 193–204; TIR, p. 174; NYT, 17 Feb. 1935.

69 seventeen-page letter: Dewson to ER, 27 Apr. 1933; also Dewson to ER, 29 June, 2 July, 1933; see Ware, Beyond Suffrage, p. 49; ER to Dewson, 3 Aug. 1933, 100, Box 1259.

5: ER’s New Deal for Women

70 Initial spirit of cooperation: TIR, p. 107.

70 “a states’ rights, limited government”: Freidel, Launching, p. 238.

71 Bishop Manning on schools: NYT, 25 Mar. 1933; ER on schools, It’s Up to the Women, pp. 15–17, 21.

71 ER and FDR disagreed on the Economy Act: See especially Women’s Democratic News, Feb. 1933; and It’s Up to the Women, pp. 110, 120–21.

72 Healthy family life: pp. 85, 86–89.

72 FDR thought the teachers of America were making too much money. If they all took a 15 percent cut, he opined, “they would still be getting relatively more than in 1914!” FDR to Josephus Daniels, 27 Mar. 1933; cf. Freidel, p. 254.

72 Schools closed or closing: Bernard Asbell, The FDR Memoirs (Doubleday, 1973), p. 67; James Macgregor Burns, The Lion and the Fox (Harcourt, Brace, 1956), p. 172; Joyce Kornbluh, A New Deal for Workers’ Education, 1933–1942 (University of Illinois Press, 1987), p. 25.

72 An amazing document: New Dealers, pp. 124–28.

72–73 Lew Douglas: Quoted in Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 382.

73 Isabella Greenway: See Hope Chamberlin, A Minority of Members: Women in the U.S. Congress (New American Library, 1973), pp. 108 ff., and Greenway mss., congressional files, Tucson.

73 “air our minds” luncheons: Jack Greenway to BWC; ER to Isabella, 12 Apr. 1936; ER on Lady Lindsay, TIR, p. 185.

73 Greenway on the plane within 30 minutes: ER in Women’s Democratic News.

73 Their first collaboration: Greenway, in Chamberlin; Huey Long, in Freidel, p. 244; department cuts, pp. 250–52. The hated 213 clause to fire married women, first introduced by Herbert Hoover, enraged feminists across the political spectrum. See esp. Alice Kessler-Harris and Sara Evans, Born for Liberty (Free Press, 1989), pp. 201–3.

74 ER rejected FDR’s idea, government workers earning more: NYT, 11 Apr. 1933.

74 FDR’s returned 15: Freidel, p. 254.

74 A bitter rule: See esp. My Day, 24 July 1937; and Genevieve Parkhurst, “Is Feminism Dead?” Harper’s Magazine, May 1935, pp. 742 ff.

74 ER specifically rejected: It’s Up to the Women, esp. pp. 143–45, and 142–52 passim.

74 Women and workplace: Ibid., pp. 166–67.

75 Mary Ritter Beard on ER: NY Herald-Tribune, 5 Nov. 1933.

76 7 Apr. 1933, for ER’s sentiments on “the evils of Prohibition,” “the power of the brewery,” and “the bootlegger,” ER to Isabella Greenway, 23 Jan. 1932, Tucson.

77 FDR asked for $3.3 billion: Rex Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt, (Double-day, 1957), p. 286.

77–78 “Joker” clause and wage discrimination: see Harper’s, p. 743; Ware, pp. 91–92.

78 “square deal for women,” and “some special reason”: NYT, 12 Aug.; ER to Hick, 11, 12 Aug. 1933.

78 Rose Schneiderman’s efforts: Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the US, 1900–1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 151–54.

79 ER on women’s vigilance and boycotts: NYT, 20 June 1933; 10 Oct. 1933; and It’s Up to the Women, pp. 46–47.

79 After her husband, artist Charles Cary Rumsey, died in a car accident in Sept. 1922, Mary Harriman Rumsey turned more fully to politics. In 1929 she initiated a “block aid” campaign in New York City to mobilize communities, block by block, door to door, to assist people in need. An ardent New Dealer, she encouraged her younger brother Averell to join her in Washington. Jack Greenway to BWC; see esp. S. J. Woolf, “Champion of the Consumer Speaks Out,” 6 Aug. 1933; NYT magazine profile, Notable American Women; and Marjory Potts, “Averell Harriman Remembers Mary,” Junior League Review, 1983; Caroline Ware, Radcliffe Oral History, pp. 46 ff., and Frances Perkins, Columbia Oral History Project.

79 ER supported NRA Blue Eagle: NYT, Oct. 1933; 8 Feb. 1934; her own shop, and professionalization of housework, NYT, 20 Sept. 1933; Woman’s Home Companion (Sept. 1933).

80 NRA fatally flawed: TIR, p. 136. While the Supreme Court doomed NRA because it gave the president too much power, Bernard Bellush explains that industry was given most of the power: Bellush, The Failure of the NRA (W. W. Norton, 1975).

80–81 TVA was the first: During World War I, the federal government had built a great dam and hydroelectric power plant at Muscle Shoals, in northern Alabama. The electricity generated was to run nitrate plants to make gunpowder. But at war’s end all work stopped. Neither Coolidge nor Hoover wanted the government to maintain a public power facility, however useful or valuable.

Senator George Norris, progressive Republican of Nebraska, fought to prevent the dam and its future hydroelectric benefits from becoming privatized. FDR considered George Norris “one of the major prophets of America.” See esp. T. H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold Ickes, 1874–1952 (Henry Holt, 1990), pp. 379–81. For TVA, see Freidel, pp. 304, 351 ff; TIR, pp. 136–37; New Dealers, pp. 190–93; and Leuchtenberg, “Roosevelt, Norris, and the Seven Little TVAs,” in The FDR Years (Columbia University Press, 1995).

81 “neither fish nor fowl”: Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, p. 179.

81 ER visited TVA: TIR, p. 137.

81 The TVA’s most enduring and challenging innovation was the sale of electricity developed by public facilities. Within ten years the Tennessee Valley experienced a “renaissance.” New Dealers, pp. 193–96.

82 On pigs: Ken Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years (Random House, 1986), pp. 271, 274, 270–81; see also Edward and Frederick Schapssmeier, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa, vol. I: 1910–1940 (The Iowa State University Press, 1968).

82 ER not credited: Ruby Black, p. 199, Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 384.

83 Tugwell’s “Chamber of Horrors”: Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. II: The Coming of the New Deal (Houghton Mifflin, 1959), p. 356; see esp. Bernard Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal (Rutgers University Press, 1964). Press assaults against Tugwell, George Seldes, in Sternsher, p. 231; Davis, pp. 472–73, 486.

83 Publishers refused to print ER’s support: Sternsher, p. 234.

83–84 pure food and drug efforts: See esp. Rexford Guy Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt (Doubleday, 1957), p. 464; Ruth deForst Lamb, American Chamber of Horrors (Farrar Straus, 1936); Sternsher, p. 247–50; See excerpts from Consumers Advisory Board Hearings, NRA, 8–9 Feb. 1934, before deputy administrator Walter White; Emily Newell Blair, 22 Feb. 34 to Malvina for ER, 70, Box 712.

84 Harry Lloyd Hopkins: See esp. George McJimsey, Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (Harvard University Press, 1987); Alden Whitman, ed., American Reformers (H. W. Wilson, 1985), pp. 443–45. See June Hopkins, The First & Final Task: Harry Hopkins and the Development of the American Welfare System, Ph.D: dissertation Georgetown University, 1997).

86 Meridel Le Sueur: See Harvey Swados, ed. The American Writer and The Great Depression, pp. 181–90; Meridel LeSueur, Ripening: Selected Works (Feminist Press, 1982); Women on the Breadlines (West End Books, 1977), Introduction.

86 Ellen Woodward: See esp. Martha Swain, Ellen Woodward: New Deal Advocate for Women (University, of Mississippi Press, 1995), Preface, pp. 1–5 passim, 39–42; for Woodward and ER, see Ware, pp. 109–10.

87 Light work: Swain, pp. 45–47; and Ware, pp. 109–10.

88 FERA librarians: Swain, pp. 50–51.

88 For CCC, I am grateful to Barbara Kraft, “The CCC: A job stimulus that worked,” Progressive Review, July 1993, pp. 4–7; and Kraft’s additional CCC interview notes. During a hike down the Grand Canyon, a park ranger told of the many people who believed the site a CCC project, to BWC and CMC.

88 “She She She” camps: Kornbluh, esp. p. 83.

89 ER was angry: NYT, 19 June 1933.

89 curriculum for adult education program: Kornbluh, pp. 29–31.

89 During the 1920s Bryn Mawr’s program inspired other residential summer schools, including the Southern School for Women Workers, a similar program at Barnard College, and the Wisconsin School for Workers. See Dagmar Schultz’s dissertation on Hilda Smith. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas (Knopf, 1994); and Kornbluh, pp. 34–35; 16–17.

90 By 1936: Ware, pp. 112–14.

90 The educational camps: Kornbluh, p. 87; also NYT, 20 June 1933; 16 June 1934.

90 Pauli Murray’s “idyllic existence” ended because she’d gotten too friendly with a counselor. Pauli Murray, Song in a Weary Throat (Harper, 1987), pp. 95–96.

91 “Peace time can be as exhilarating”: ER in NYT, 29 Dec. 1933.

6: Family Discord and the London Economic Conference

92 Great Excitement: Women’s Democratic News, Apr. 1933. Lew Douglas quoted in Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 382.

93 Chazy Lake plans: ER to Hick, 3–9 May 1933.

93 Al Kresse story: Ruby Black, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Biography (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), pp. 208–9.

94 “Dull dinner”: ER to Hick, 23 May 1933.

94 “feel soiled”: ER to Hick, 27 May 1933.

94 “No misunderstandings between us”: ER to Hick, 4 Apr. 1933.

94 “ate into my soul”: ER to Hick, 8 Apr. 1933.

94 Right about Elliott: ER to Hick, 26 Apr. 1933; wise about emotional issues, ER to Hick, 9, 11, 23 May 1933.

95 “I’m planning our trip”: ER to Hick, 20 Apr.; 4 May 1933.

95 “Heart ached for Betty”: ER to Hick, 14–15 Apr. 1933.

95 Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Peace and Counterpeace: From Wilson to Hitler (Harper & Row, 1971), p. 517.

95 SDR’s taunts: ER to Hick, 31 May 1933.

96 ER’s meeting with Elliott arranged by Isabella Greenway: ER to Greenway, 1 June 1933; various telegrams that week, Greenway collection, Tucson.

96 During trip: ER to Hick; Anna to ER, quoted in Ted Morgan, p. 461; upon return, ER to Hick, 14 June 1933. ER to FDR, 18 July 1933, Roosevelt Family Papers, Children, Box 16.

97 World Court. See BWC, vol. I, the Bok peace prize, charges of propaganda and “un-Americanism,” the Congressional Hearing of 1924, and the creation of ER’s first FBI file. Also, ER’s articles, “The American Peace Award,” The Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1923, p. 54; “The Bok Peace Prize,” NY League of Women Voters Weekly News, 12 Oct. 1923.

97 Elizabeth Read’s text went into a second 1927 edition, and emphasized the pioneering work of the World Court; its treaties and multilateral conventions concerning trade in arms and ammunition, opium and other drugs; mandate problems involving colonial administration and control; and “minorities conventions,” which sought to protect “racial, religious and linguistic minorities, living in nations where other races, creeds and tongues prevail.”

97 Lape to Helen Rogers Reid, 22 Apr. 1927; for work of the World Court, see esp Foreign Relations Bulletin, 10 Aug. 1927; Reid Papers, LC.

97 ER first met Helen Rogers through her beloved Aunt Bye, Anna Roosevelt Cowles. Anna Roosevelt Cowles to HRR, 29 Apr. 1931, Reid Papers, LC.

98 Hearst, the American Foundation’s enemy: Lape to Helen Reid, 18 Mar. 1924; HRR to Lape, 22 Mar. 1924, Reid Collection, LC.

99 Hearst to former wife, Millicent Hearst, 5 July 1932. I am grateful to David Nasaw for this letter, Box 12, W. R. Hearst Mss.

99 bipartisan world court delay: See esp. Lape to HRR, Oct. 1930; 11 Nov. 1930; Reid Collection, LC.

In 1932 the Republican platform urged adherence. But at the Democratic convention, the World Court plank was “in and out again.” The most unexpected opposition came from Wilson’s own son-in-law, William Gibbs McAdoo, who, wrote Lape, tried “to pull Hearst’s chestnuts out of the fire.” Lape, confidential report to members, HRR, 1–30 June 1932, D197/LC.

99 Actually, Hoover preferred Japan’s actions to increased Soviet influence in Asia. But he wanted to make it clear that the United States did not approve of this first breach of the Treaty of Versailles and the famous 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which fifty-four nations signed, including the United States—because it demanded nothing binding while it rhetorically outlawed belligerence, aggression, war.

100–1 Stanley Hornbeck, in Freidel, Rendezvous, p. 110. According to State Department advisers, Japan at this time did not want war but rather wanted the west to recognize its sphere of influence in Asia; see Waldo Heinrichs, American Ambassador: Joseph Grew and the Development of the US Diplomatic Tradition (Little, Brown, 1966), pp. 191–201.

101 In response to FDR’s 16 May speech: Davis, pp. 121–27.

101 within days FDR renounced: Ibid., pp. 128–29.

101 filled with pious nothings: Burns, p. 177.

102–3 ER’s editorials: Women’s Democratic News, Apr. 1933, Feb. 1935, p. 6.

103 FDR to Tumulty, 19 May 1933, FDR’s Collected Letters, III, p. 346.

103 FDR telephoned Dodd: William Dodd Diaries, Preface, p. 3.

103 Hull embarked for London: FDR’s May correspondence in Moley, p. 217.

103 Ramsay MacDonald, “We Must Not Fail,” in Oswald Garrison Villard, “The Damage to America in London” (2 Aug. 1933), in Villard: The Dilemma of the Absolute Pacifist in Two World Wars, ed. by Anthony Gronowicz (Garland, 1983), p. 424.

103 ER urged all women: 15 June press conference in Maurine Beasley, ed., p. 11.

104 FDR’s London delegation represented a wide range of political wrangling: James Cox, former governor of Ohio and FDR’s 1920 running mate, was a Wilsonian allied with Hull. Their chief opponent was Nevada’s Senator Key Pittman, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. Dedicated to cheap money and high tariffs, Pittman’s personal interest was the expanded use of silver. A wild man when drunk, he was best remembered for shooting out streetlights as he sauntered about London by night, and chasing Herbert Feis through Claridge’s corridors with a bowie knife.

See esp. Davis, pp. 129–31; see also Jeanette Nichols, “Roosevelt’s Monetary Diplomacy in 1933,” American Historical Review (Jan. 1951); and Herbert Feis, 1933: Characters in Crisis (Little Brown, 1966).

104 Hull was devastated: Arthur Schlesinger, p. 210. Others were even more horrified by FDR’s Executive Order No. 6174, issued on 16 June 1933, which distributed Public Works Administration and FERA funds, and allocated $238 million for the construction of naval vessels, including 31 aircraft carriers “sixteen to be built in private yards and fifteen in navy yards.” This was the beginning of a sustained rearmament that continued throughout the first administration, and contributed to the renewed arms race. FDR’s timing for this EO is curious, if he had any serious international goals in London. EO in Samuel I. Rosenman, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with notes by President Roosevelt (Random House, 1938), vol. II, pp. 29–251; for its impact see William Neumann, America Encounters Japan (Johns Hopkins Press, 1963), pp. 203 ff.

104 Bullitt on Hull: Bullitt to FDR, 13 June 1933, Bullitt, pp. 34–35; see also Davis, p. 131. On 15 June 1933, Warren Delano Robbins wrote to his cousins, “Dear Franklin and Dear Eleanor,” Cordell Hull was “very temperamental and was on the verge of resigning.” Edgar Nixon, ed., FDR and Foreign Affairs (Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 237.

104 Groton graduation: NYT, 17 June 1933.

105 The schooner was accompanied: Davis, pp. 158–60; Charles Hurd, When the New Deal Was Young and Gay (Harper, 1965) pp. 157, 150, 153.

105 FDR to Herbert Bayard Swope, telegram, 16 June 1933, in Letters, III, p. 353.

105–6 James Warburg considered it urgent for FDR to accept dollar-pound stabilization. Unless he did, the U.S. could not “assume a leading role” in the effort to achieve “lasting economic peace.” But FDR rejected his advice. Schlesinger, pp. 215–16; Davis, pp. 155–57.

106 ER distracted and agitated: ER to Hick, 17 June, 20 June 1933.

106 In sour mood: ER to Hick, 23 June 1933.

106 “FDR and the whole fleet”: Davis, FDR, pp. 164–65; Davis, Invincible Summer, pp. 115–16.

106–7 “I hope we have good weather”: ER to Hick, 24–25 June 1933.

107 ER went sailing: ER to Hick, 27 June 1933.

108 “I was amazed”: Moley, pp. 245–49.

109 Moley’s cable: 29 June 1933, Moley, pp. 252–55.

109 FDR lifted anchor: Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 116; Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years, p. 185.

109 Hurd, When the New Deal Was Young and Gay, pp. 165–71.

110 “Mama would cancel all the debts”: FDR to Waldorf Astor, Apr. 1933, FDR’s Letters, III, p. 341.

110 “kings cannot err”: Moley, pp. 255–57. Hull ordered minutes burned, Herbert Feis, “Some Notes on Historical Record Keeping,” Frances Lowenstein, ed., The Historian and the Diplomat (Harper, 1967), p. 97.

111 blamed his wife: For example, Davis, FDR, pp. 187–88; Freidel, Rendezvous, p. 117; but see also Freidel, Launching, pp. 478–79.

111 learned one very important lesson: See ER, “The Importance of Background Knowledge in Building for the Future” (July 1946), in Allida Black, ed., p. 545.

111 “recaptured a little serenity”: ER to Hick, 27–29 June 1933.

112 FDR’s bombshell: Moley, pp. 259–61.

112 MacDonald, “I don’t understand”: Moley, p. 263.

112 “Roosevelt Praised in German Press,” NYT, 4 July 1933.

112–13 FDR was supported by an odd assortment of boosters, including Felix Frankfurter, who dismissed the London “formula, with all its mischievous ambiguities,” as a “literary shell-game.” FF to FDR, 6 July 1933, Freedman, ed., pp. 147–48; and Moley was satisfied, p. 267.

113 Supported in the new Germany: For Schact, Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse (Collier, 1961), p. 153; John Garratty, The Great Depression (Doubleday, Anchor, 1987), p. 201. See also, John Weitz, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schact (Little, Brown, 1997); felt hopeless: 2 Aug. 1933, Villard in Gronowicz, ed., p. 424.

113 Litvinov worked the room: Villard, p. 427.

114 Esther Lape’s “Committee of Inquiry”: Lape to HR Reid, 14 June 1933; on Monday, 3 July 1933. Reid collection, LC.

7: Private Times and Reports from Germany

115 Woman’s Home Companion. ER’s two-year contract, NYT, 18 Feb., 8 July, 20 July 1933; TIR, p. 99; The last issue of Babies—Just Babies was published in June. See Robert Ernst, Weakness Is a Crime: The Life of Bernarr Macfadden (Syracuse University Press, 1991), pp. 86, 127. There is no evidence, however, that ER resigned because the venture was “widely ridiculed.”

116 Hick’s pay slashed: Lowitt and Beasley, p. xxix.

116 Easier for both of them: ER to Hick, 6 Apr., 20 Apr. 1933.

116 ER failed to appreciate: ER to Hick, 20 Apr.; 4 May 1933.

116 “you won’t be spoiled”: ER to Hick, 15 June 1933.

116 “Some day”: ER to Hick, 24 June 1933.

117 “Where would they hide us”: Hickok, p. 120.

117 “You take the first bath”: Hickok, p. 122.

118 “All Republicans here”: Ibid., p. 123.

118 The trip around the Gaspé: ER in Women’s Democratic News, July 1933, p. 6.

118 After Quebec: Ibid., p. 133.

118 From Campobello: ER to FDR, 8 July 1933 Family, Box 16.

119 Catt worried that Austria: Carrie Chapman Catt to Rosa Manus, in Mineke Bosch, with Annemarie Kloosterman, eds., Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902–1942 (Ohio State University Press, 1990), pp. 227–28.

118–19 The Christian Women’s protest was not sent directly to Germany for fear of reprisals against their remaining allies. It was intended to pressure Germany by an aroused public opinion. Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt (Feminist Press, 1987), p. 214. Rosa Manus was moved by Catt’s efforts “more than I can tell you … and the Jews of the world can never be grateful enough to you for having done this masterly piece of work.” Manus to Catt, 31 Aug. 1933, p. 229.

119 ER spoke dramatically: NYT, 26 July 1933; ER to Anna Pennybacker, 11 May 1933, Pennybacker collection, Austin, Texas.

119–20 Pennybacker to ER, “please remember me to Miss Hickok who impressed me deeply,” 9 Aug. 1933; cf. 9 Sept. 1933, Texas; cf. Stacey Rozek, “Anna Pennybacker and ER: Feminism Between the Wars,” unpublished paper, c. 1986, University of Texas at Austin, to author.

119 In Washington, the Hulls visited and Mrs. Hull confided to ER that the London conference was “a great strain.” On the Hulls’ visit, ER to Hick, 4–5 Aug. 1933; see Irwin Gellman Secret Affairs: FDR, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 40.

120 Hick loved her new car, Bluette: Hick to ER, 7 Aug. 1933.

120–21 ER described her trip to Abingdon in the Women’s Democratic News, Aug. 1933, p. 6; See David Wishnaut, All That Is Native and Fine, pp. 186–93. I am grateful to Chris Brown for this reference. ER told her story, Furman, pp. 178–79.

121 “Newport depresses me”: ER to Hick, 1 Sept. 1933.

121 Mayris Chaney performed at White House: ER in Women’s Democratic News, Apr. 1933, June 1933, p. 6.

121 Nan through test of friendship: ER to Hick, 20 Sept. 1933.

121 Earl under par: ER to Hick, 15 Sept. 1933.

121 ER’s summer idyll was disrupted by the sudden death of head White House usher, Ike Hoover, who had devoted “42 years of faithful and loving service.” She left immediately that evening to attend Ike Hoover’s funeral, and returned to Chazy Lake the next day. ER to Hick, 15 Sept.; ER in Women’s Democratic News, Sept. 1933, p. 6.

122 Alice Hamilton reported to Jane Addams on shipboard, returning to New York, 1 July 1933; Barbara Sicherman, ed., Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters (Harvard University Press 1984); also Alice Hamilton, “Woman’s Place in Germany,” Survey Graphic, Jan. 1934, pp. 26–47. I am grateful to Barbara Sicherman for Hamilton’s articles.

123 “How could anyone refuse?”: Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Catt, 9 Aug. 1933, Catt Papers, Box 1, NYPL. Others doubted, Evelyn Riley Nicholson to CCC, 1 July 1933, ibid. Catt shocked by FDR’s battleships, to Nicholson, 2 Aug. 1933, ibid. Catt believed 30 new naval vessels were “snuck” into the public works bills in April and May, and only radical peace veterans such as Oswald Garrison Villard in The Nation had bothered to protest. In “The President and a Big Navy,” Villard pointed out that FDR would “yield to the demand” to waste another $230 million on “munitions manufacturers and shipbuilders,” because he had always been a “big navy” partisan. Hearst supported a big navy, and there was little public discussion about this development, which so bewildered Catt and Villard, who wondered how the United States could criticize Hitler’s demands for rearmament, “if we go piling up our own armaments? Certainly, if we engage in a naval race with … England and Japan, there will be only one outcome—another terrible conflict.” OGV, 19 Apr. 1933, Gronowicz, ed., p. 423.

124 Catt refused to lunch with ER and FDR at Hyde Park, “unless I am overcome with a desire to make a plea for something.” Catt to ER, 15 Aug. 1933, ER, Box 1257/sh100.

124–25 Details of Alice Hamilton’s visit from Barbara Sicherman’s collection, Hamilton’s date books.

125–27 Alice Hamilton, “His Book Reveals the Man,” Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1933.

127 Alice Hamilton to Jane Addams, 1 July 1933, in Sicherman, p. 345.

Initially, Catt resisted calls for a German boycott. Catt to Samuel Untermeyer, 12 Sept. 1933, Catt papers NYPL.

128 Germany walked out: Schlesinger, p. 232; Arnold Offner, p. 40. NYT, 15 July 1933, quoted Hitler’s Volkischer Beobachter, and ACLU effort, Arthur Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy (Random House, 1968), p. 122.

129 ER’s first letter to appeal for racial justice: ER to W. H. Matthews, 18 Aug. 1933; Matthews to ER, nd; ER to Matthews, 31 Aug. 1933; Box 1270, 100.

129 ER did not publicly write of the crises Jews faced in Germany. In her monthly article for the Women’s Democratic News, she bypassed her meetings with Wald, Addams, and Hamilton; ignored her conversations and correspondence with Catt; and wrote only of her 18 Aug. visit to West Virginia.

8: Creating a New Community

130 Arthurdale: See Stephen Edward Haid, “Arthurdale: An Experiment in Community Planning, 1933–1947,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of West Virginia, 1975, pp. 11–12; 19–21; and Clarence Pickett, For More Than Bread (Little, Brown, 1953), pp. 19–40.

130–31 Hick’s report: Beasley and Lowitt 16–26 Aug. 1933, pp. 114–24; Pickett, p. 20; Ronald Lewis, “Scott’s Run: America’s Symbol of the Great Depression in the Coal Fields,” in Bryan Ward, ed., A New Deal for America (Arthurdale Heritage, 1995), pp. 1–23.

131 Hick’s reports inspired ER: ER to Hick, 25 Aug. 1933.

131 ER wrote a searing column: Women’s Democratic News, Sept. 1933, p. 6; Cf. report of Arthurdale visit by AFSC worker, ibid.

132 white rabbit: TIR, p. 127. Bullitt, named America’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union, was attending a White House dinner to honor Maxim Litvinov. Co-incidentally, FDR recognized the USSR the same day the first twenty-five families moved from Scott’s Run to begin work on their new homes, 7 Nov. 1933. See chapt,/ Silence; “Experiment & Error,” Time, 4 Feb. 1935.

132–33 Scott’s Run and Alice Davis: TIR, pp. 128–30. Subsequently, Alice Davis was named to the County Welfare Board to administer all federal relief funds allotted by the state for the area.

134 ER first discussed Arthurdale at press conference: NYT, 4 Nov. 1933.

134 The other mining communities were Norvelt, just over the mountains from Arthurdale in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and named for ER; the Tygart Valley Homesteads, also in West Virginia; and the Cumberland Homesteads near Crossville, Tennessee. For back-to-the-land visions, and the legislative history of Section 208, see Haid, pp. 34–58; see also Paul Keith Conkin, “Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program,” Cornell University Press, 1959 (University Microfilms, 1970).

134 Ickes subsequently criticized Wilson as a poor administrator. Pickett also thought him slow and ponderous, but considered M. L. Wilson a philosophic visionary. See Pickett, pp. 44–53; and “Promised Land,” Time, 18 June 1934.

135 “Louis don’t be absurd”: Meeting and ER quoted in Haid, pp. 70–74.

135 Cost overruns: Haid, pp. 87–88. According to Time (4 Feb. 1935), of the $25 million funded for Subsistence Homesteads, the Interior Department spent “$437,645, not including c. $140,000 worth of work by CWA, CCC and FERA employees” on Arthurdale. In January 1935, Interior added another $900,000 to the project.

136 Arthurdale expenses indefensible: Ickes diary, 10 Mar. 1934, p. 152. But Ickes also resented ER’s “poking her nose” around his bailiwick. FDR, “My missus,” Ickes, 4 Nov. 1934, pp. 218–19; and “I am very fond …” Ickes, 19 Nov. 1934, pp. 227–28.

137 Houses furnished with: Haid, pp. 90–91; and Mountaineer Craft Cooperative, see Haid, pp. 23–26.

137 Arthurdale identified with ER: See esp. ER, “Reedsville” mss. for three articles, 70, Box 662.

138 First families to be restricted: ER’s report, sent to Hick, 26 Mar. 1934, Box 1.

138 Interviewers were to ask: Haid, pp. 75–79; Questions quoted from “Record of Interview to determine eligibility …, Monongalia Rehabilitation Association, prepared and conducted by representatives of West Virginia University,” in Arthurdale Archives. For Jew Hill, see Sandra Barney, “You Get About What You Pay For,” in Bryan Ward, ed., A New Deal for America (Arthurdale Heritage, 1995), p. 32. I am grateful to Arthurdale’s Bryan Ward for these materials.

140 The community in Monmouth County, New Jersey, also benefited from Eleanor Roosevelt’s enthusiasm. The thriving community is best known as Ben Shahn’s home. Claude Hitchcock to ER, 16 Feb., 1934,70, Box 628; Pickett to ER, 1 Mar. 1934.

140 “I want you to succeed”: Haid, pp. 93–94; “My husband adores onions,” Time, 18 June 1934. See esp. ER’s article, “Subsistence Farmsteads,” Forum, 1 Apr. 1934, pp. 199–201.

140–42 ER depended on her friends to support Arthurdale. Among those who gave generously Were Elinor Morgenthau, the Allie Freeds, Henry Hooker, Gertrude Ely, Doris Duke, Agnes Brown Leach, and Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight Elmhirst. Their correspondence, and Baruch’s in ER’s Arthurdale files, 70. ER wrote Hick about Baruch, 27 June 1934.

141 On 15 Feb. 1935, ER began a ten-week series of broadcasts sponsored by the Selby Shoe Company, earmarked exclusively for her work at Arthurdale; see Time, 4 Feb. 1935.

141 ER spent: ER to Pickett, 27 May 1935; Pickett to ER, 24 May 1935, with Bernard Baruch balance sheet; ER Transit Funds of AFSC, 14 May 1934–31 Dec. 1934, George Schectman, CPA, to Pickett, 31 Jan. 1935, 70, Box 661.

141 Doris Duke in Betty Hovatter Carpenter, “Homesteader’s Corner,” (Arthurdale newsletter), Summer 1993.

142 ER to Oscar Chapman, 17 Nov. 1934,70, Box 605.

143 Ickes was relieved: Ickes, 19 Nov. 1934, pp. 227–28.

143 ER never doubted: Forum article, 1934.

144 Arthurdale was mostly attacked as Red, but it was also attacked by Communists. See esp. Harold Ware and Webster Powell, “Planning for Permanent Poverty: What Subsistence Farming Really Stands For,” Harper’s, Apr. 1935; and T. R. Carskadon, “Hull House in the Hills,” The New Republic, 1 Aug. 1934.

144 Arthurdale’s abiding value: “Is Reedsville Communistic? Mrs. Roosevelt Says ‘No,’” The Literary Digest, 21 Apr. 1934, p. 45; press conference, 11 Apr. 1933; Beasley, pp. 20, 23; ER’s press conference 23 Apr. 1934.

In the House, Isabella Greenway made an impassioned speech implying that the death of the factory would be the death of Arthurdale. Arthurdale’s representative, Jennings Randolph, argued that the Keyless Lock Company was one of America’s “worst antiunion plants,” and paid the lowest wages. The company’s president opposed the child labor bill, the women’s nine-hour bill, and workers’ compensation: “Should Mrs. Roosevelt’s plan to let a little sunlight into the lives of coal miners be wrecked in order that this kind of a concern may be preserved?’” Haid, pp. 125–28.

144 Upton Sinclair to ER, 31 Jan. 1934, 70, Box 632.

144 “Man is vile…”: ER to Hick, 2 July 1934. As she drove, 4 July 1934.

144–45 Upton Sinclair: See esp. Greg Mitchell, The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics (Random House, 1992), pp. 6–7, 208. See also Leon Harris, Upton Sinclair. American Rebel (Crowell, 1975), pp. 298–99. ER to Sinclair, “I have read your books,” quoted in Harris, p. 302. Wallace and Hopkins supported Sinclair, Mitchell, pp. 7, 11, 27. If EPIC communism, Mitchell, pp. 21–23.

146 Hick’s report: Beasley and Lowitt, pp. 305–8. A $10 million campaign of minsinformation, Leon Harris; see also Hick to ER, 3 July; ER to Hick 7, 8 July 1934. ER defended Arthurdale’s cooperative fiercely.

ER’s answer to Dr. Wirt, and Senator Schall, + clip, nd, Schall’s charge, 23 Apr. 1934, 100/ copy with Baruch’s correspondence, 24 Oct. 1935, 70, Box 662; cf. Beasley.

147 All handicrafts continually ridiculed: See esp. Thomas Coode and Dennis Fabbri, “The New Deal’s Arthurdale Project in West Virginia,” West Virginia History, July 1975, pp. 291–308; and Haid, chapters 5 and 6.

148 M. L. Wilson prepared a study, in “compliance with your request,” on industrial research, see: Wilson to ER 24 Sept. 1934/70, Box 628; see Scheider to Wilson, 5 Sept. 1934, 100 re Wilson’s visit to Hyde Park to report in further detail.

148 ER and Baruch agreed with the homesteaders: Baruch to ER, 24 Oct. 1935, with enclosures, esp. p. 4; 70, Box 662. Consider also, Homesteaders Club to ER, 7 June 1934/ 70, Box 629. Baruch quoted by ER in Educational Committee Meeting, WH, 31 Oct. 1935; attached Elsie Clapp to ER, ibid.

149 Sherman Mittell: Mittell to Peterson, 25 Oct. 1935, 70, box 662. The “scraps” distressed Elsie Clapp, see Clapp to ER, 18 Oct. 1935; Peterson to Dr. E. E. Agger, director of the Management Division, 28 Oct. 1935.

149 “They expect them to fail”: Clapp to ER, 2 Nov. 1935,70/662; Clapp to ER, 8 Nov. 1935; also Clapp to ER, 31 Oct., with attachments, including Meeting of Educational Committee, WH, 31 Oct.: present Clapp, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Dr. Agger, Pickett, Dr. Rainey, ER, etc.; and Pickett to Clapp, 5 Nov. 35: FDR planned to journey from Warm Springs to Arthurdale on 10 Dec., with ER. NYT, 27 Jan. 1934; Haid, pp. 124–30; See also, Wesley Stout, “The New Homesteaders,” a particularly nasty article, The Saturday Evening Post (4 Aug. 1934), pp. 6–7, 61.

149 Bernard Baruch, “I do not think you ought,” to ER, 22 Mar. 1937; 70, Box 722. On the Phillips Jones Corporation, see J. O. Walker to ER, 3 Apr. 1937, ibid. ER re Margaret Innes, to Baruch, 22 Sept. 1937, 100, Box 1414.

150 On the schools and Elsie Clapp: See Charles Pynchon, “School as Social Centre: Life in a Subsistence Homestead Turns About an Experiment in Education,” NYT, 5 May 1935, 70/662; Sam Stack, “Elsie Ripley Clapp & Progressive Education,” pp. 115–34.

151 See also Frazier Hunt, “Listening to America,” NY World Telegram, 23 July 1935.

On 27 June Baruch telegrammed ER: “Hope you understand that despite Franklin’s expressed opinions will stand with you.” BB to ER, telegram, 27 June 1936; telegram, 3 July 1936: “Delighted to contribute ten as requested.” ER’s five-page letter to BB, 12 July 1936, 100. See also, ER to Tugwell, 3 Dec. 1936, 70/700. Significantly, Tugwell had resigned by Dec., and Will Alexander replied.

151 ER moved by a visit at Christmas: NYT, 29 Jan. 1935; TIR, pp. 132–33. Also, Ickes, pp. 207, 218; Hickok, pp. 135–42; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 393 ff. We are grateful to Bryan Ward for the sweatshirts.

152 “Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted”: TIR, pp. 131–32.

152 plea to end discrimination: Haid, pp. 81–82.

9: The Quest for Racial Justice

153 Clarence Pickett recalled: Pickett, For More Than Bread (Little, Brown, 1953), p. 49.

154 ER asked Hopkins: ER to Harry Hopkins, Nov. 1934, quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 514; for Aubrey Williams, Columbia Oral History Project, John Salmond, A Southern Rebel: The Life and Times of Aubrey Williams, 1890–1959 (University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 65, 59.

154 The week before: ER to Hick, 16 Jan. 1934; a lovely weekend, Hick to ER, 22 Jan. 1934.

155 Even sixty years later: Residents and descendants to author. For FDR’s Warm Springs, see esp. Geoffrey Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (Harper & Row, 1989), p. 766; Hugh Galagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception (Dodd, Mead, 1985).

155 Before white conquest: “The Spirit of Warm Springs,” FDR’s Thanksgiving weekend address, 29 Nov. 1934; I am grateful to Beverly Bulloch (Director of Development) for this and other Warm Springs brochures and materials; and for the detailed tour she and Diane Blanks conducted for us in Feb. 1994.

156 Roswell: Clarece Martin, The History of Bulloch Hall and Roswell Georgia (Lake Publications, 1987).

156 27 Jan. 1934, National Public Housing Conference, NYT, 28 Jan. 1934; Mary Simkhovitch, president of the conference, Harold Ickes, and Herbert Bayard Swope also spoke.

156 Washington alley slums: John Ihlder, “What Can You Do to Help Rid Washington of Its Inhabited Alleys,” to ER with attachments, 1 May 1934, 70.

156 For Ellen Axson Wilson’s alliance with Charlotte Everett Hopkins, see Edith Elmer Wood, “Four Washington Alleys,” The Survey, 6 Dec. 1913, pp. 250–52; Anthony, pp. 344–50; details of her last day, see “Mrs. Wilson’s Death and Washington’s Alleys,” The Survey, 6 Dec. 1914; Mrs. Ernest Bicknell, “The Home-Maker of the White House,” The Survey, 3 Oct. 1914.

157 “We drove”: New York Tribune, 21 Mar. 1933; see also Charlotte Hopkins’s NYT obituary, 8 Sept. 1935; Robert Cruise McManus, “District’s Grand Old Lady Wins Struggle to End Squalor.”

157 Martha Strayer, “Mrs. Archibald Hopkins … Lives to Witness Alley Clearance Victory,” Washington Daily News, June 1934; other clippings in Charlotte E. Hopkins Papers, Schlesinger.

158 Melvin Chisum to ER, 16 Jan. 1934; ER to Chisum, 24 Feb. 1934; Chisum to ER, 20 Mar.; ER to Frances Perkins, 4 Apr., 100, Box 1314.

158 During the first years: Hazel W. Harrison, “The Status of the American Negro in the New Deal,” The Crisis (Nov. 1933).

159 In 1933 Will Alexander, a former Methodist minister, and leader of the 1920s Atlanta-based Commission for Interracial Cooperation (CIC), and Edwin Embree, director of the Rosenwald Fund, lobbied the White House and several government agencies to accept a “Special Adviser on the Economic Status of Negroes,” subsidized by the Rosenwald Fund. Ickes accepted the challenge, and in July appointed Clark Foreman. Foreman, who had spent years studying southern schools with Black educator Horace Mann Bond, fully understood the “cult of the south,” which Dr. Bond had analyzed as a “psychological entity” where southerner meant white man, and the “Negro—well, a Negro.” He agreed with the protestors, and advised Ickes to appoint Robert Weaver his assistant. Weaver, a recent Harvard Ph.D., was appointed in Nov. 1933, and quickly took charge of housing for PWA.

By 1936 Weaver, with William Hastie, as assistant solicitor, created a housing program which became the “the most racially inclusive New Deal initiative, securing black participation in all phases of the slum-clearance and low-rent housing programs,” in twenty-nine cities, north and south, including Birmingham, Atlanta, and Memphis. See esp. Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (University of North Carolina, 1996) pp. 46–49, 52–56; see also Kirby; T. H. Watkins, pp. 646–47. See Sullivan, Days of Hope, for Embree’s telegram to Foreman (p. 40); Alexander’s caution on Foreman to Ickes, (pp. 24–25); Horace Mann Bond, (p. 12).

159 Mary McLeod Bethune: See “My Secret Talks with FDR,” Ebony (Apr. 1949), in Bernard Steusher, ed., The Negro in Depression and War, 1930–1945 (Quadrangle, 1969).

159 “That grand old lady took my arm”: Bethune, Ebony (Apr. 1949); Nancy Weiss, pp. 143, 167–68.

162–64 Hick’s reports from Savannah and Atlanta: Beasley and Lowitt; Harry Hopkins and CWA in Sherwood, pp. 52–62.

163 “It spoils them”: Hick to Harry Hopkins, 16 Jan. 1934.

164 Simon Legree: Hick to Hopkins, 23 Jan. 1934.

165 ER’s response: ER to Hick, 7–10 Jan. 1934; 24–29 Jan. 1934; see also Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 181.

165 Hick reached Florida: Beasley, pp. 164–65.

165 “I might like it with you”: ER to Hick, 27 Jan. 1934; Hick to ER, 26 Jan. 1934. See also ER to Hick, 28 Jan. 34: “I love you dear so much. Three weeks and two days more and you will be home….”; 29 Jan. 1934: “I would like to be with you all the time. I love you deeply, tenderly.”

166 ER’s days were full: ER to Hick, 5–10, 13 Feb. 1934; FDR’s birthday party, ER to Hick, 30 Jan. 1934.

166 “I have wanted you all day”: ER to Hick, 2, 3 Feb. 1934; “I often feel rebellious, it will all work out,” 4, 5 Feb.

167 By 14 February: Hick to Hopkins, Beasley, pp. 186–87. Hick now defended CWA: many local administrators did important work. One, Verde Peterson, assigned over four hundred CWA teachers to educate adults in the rural areas of South Carolina. They worked directly with the people and taught them to repair their homes, “delouse their chickens, build toilets, raise gardens.”

Hick to Hopkins, 5 Feb. 1934, Beasley, pp. 170–74; Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (Harper, 1948), p. 57; Hick to Hopkins, 14 Feb. 1934, pp. 186–87.

168 Hick to Kathryn Godwin, 18 Feb. 1934, in Beasley, pp. 191–92.

168 ER tried to console: 8 Feb. 1934; ER’s “heart was light,” 9 Feb.

168 ER was alarmed by Hick’s accidents: “I should have known Monday night when you sounded so queer but I hoped you were just sleepy.” ER encouraged her to cancel her planned trip to Arthurdale, she had seen enough to “write the stories” Hopkins wanted: “a rest just with me in Washington is absolutely essential.” 17 Feb. 1934.

169 On the train to Florida: NY Herald, 6 Mar. 1934; landed in Haiti, protected from unrest in Cuba, Furman, p. 197.

170 ER to FDR, 10 Mar. 1934, Family, Children, Box 16. On her return, ER reported to Secretary of the Interior Ickes that she “felt encouraged” by what Governor Pearson was trying to do. Ickes, pp. 156–57, 298.

170 In ER’s honor, Pearson had “cut across the color line” and poll tax. Furman, p. 199.

170 See esp. ER’s reports in the Women’s Democratic News (Apr. 1934), where she protested a policy “of exploitation with very little understanding,” a policy of “cruelty and greed.”

170 In Puerto Rico: NY Tribune, 9–12 Mar.; Furman, p. 200.

171 ER saw no reason, last day: NY Tribune, 14–15 Mar.

172 “Dearest Babs”: FDR to ER, 5–12 July 1935.

173 For new housing: Ruby Black, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Biography (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), pp. 296–98; Hick’s report to Hopkins in Beasley, pp. 196–203.

173 ER met with Oscar Chapman, to discuss the political situation in the Virgin Islands, to defend Governor Pearson, and to promote suffrage. She also endorsed tourism and reduced taxation

While “Governor Pearson was not a genius,” ER wrote Chapman, he “had the interest of the people at heart.” See, Black, pp. 296–97; ER to Oscar Chapman, 30 Mar. 1934; communication from Ella Gifft, Suffragist League of St. Thomas, to Chapman, Chapman to ER, 26 Apr. 1934,70, Box 605.

He initiated a summer institute for teacher training, scholarships for study abroad, the first senior high school, and adult education. See esp.: William Boyer, America’s Virgin Islands: A History of Human Rights and Wrongs (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), pp. 147–61.

Walter White “followed with very great interest” ER’s trip, and Governor Pearson wrote him of “the magnificent effect of your contacts with the people of the Virgin Islands.” White to ER, 2 Apr. 1934; Chapman to ER, 4 Apr. 1934, and 26 Apr. 1934; cf. Ickes, pp. 156–157, 298; ER’s report in WDN, Apr. 19, 1934, where she protested a policy of “exploitation … cruelty, and greed.”

174 It was all sparsely funded, neocolonial: Years later ER observed: The islands remained “a difficult problem and one which the US is far from having solved satisfactorily.” TIR, pp. 138–140.

174 Cuba’s new dictatorship disturbed ER’s friends. Within a year, Lillian Wald sent ER Helen Hall’s correspondence on Cuba, where she served on an investigative commission in June 1934. Hall, who had succeeded Wald as director of Henry Street was convinced the United States was “partly responsible for the present military control. While the President has been so farsighted in his treatment of Cuba … the American Ambassador played an interfering role….” Hall’s friends worried about Caffrey’s “growing intimacy with Batista.” The Cubans felt that again their government was being manipulated by outsiders.

By Mar. 1935 civil liberties disappeared. There were “mass arrests and repressions,” all identified with “the army and with Batista, leaning on support from the American Embassy.” There was an effort to get this information to FDR, but “these efforts failed.” If ER passed this correspondence on to Sumner Welles or FDR, she never referred to the Cuban troubles in her writings. See anon, correspondent to Hall, 15 Mar. 1935; Helen Hall to Wald, 26 Mar. 1935. 100, Box 1361; Helen Hall, + Paul Kellogg’s commentary in Survey, Christian Science Monitor, Mar. 1935.

Sandino’s assassination in the NYT, 12 Mar. 1934.

174 “I believe it gets harder”: ER to Hick, 26 Mar. 1934.

174 “These Roosevelts are born”: William Allen White in Emporia Gazette, 27 Mar. 1934; ER to Hick, 27, 28 Mar. 1934.

175 ER counseled Hick to discount: 4, 5 Apr. 1934. Hick from the Monteleone, 9 Apr. 1934.

175 “Someday we’ll lead”: ER to Hick, 9 Apr. 1934.

175 ER and Earl were together at Val-Kill after Nancy Cook’s father’s funeral. The next day, 10 Apr., ER’s cousin Teddy Robinson, the son of Aunt Corinne, died from pneumonia and alcoholism.

10: The Crusade to End Lynching

178 The Wagner-Costigan bill: Robert Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950 (Temple University Press, 1980), pp. 111, 114–15.

178 During the 1920s: See esp. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women’s Campaign Against Lynching (Columbia University Press, 1974), pp. 159–67. For Will Alexander, see his Columbia Oral History interview; and Wilma Dykeman and James Stokely, Seeds of Southern Change: The Life of Will Alexander (University of Chicago Press, 1962).

178 Jessie Daniel Ames: Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry, esp. pp. 159–67.; Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 270–75; cf. Jessie Daniel Ames, “Whither Leads the Mob?” (Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Atlanta, Jan. 1932), in Ames to ER, Apr. 1934, 100, Box 1284.

179 White puzzled by Ames: White to ER, 14 Apr. 1934, 70; the real urgency, White to ER, 20 Apr. 1934, 100, Box 1325.

179 ER to Jessie Daniel Ames, 20 Apr. 1934, 100/1284; also Ames to ER, 16 Apr. with pamphlets, esp. “Wither Leads the Mob?”; cf. Hall, pp. 24–241; Ames to ER, 29 Jan. 1935.

180 “wildest lynching orgy”: NYT, 19 Oct. 1934; cf. Ralph Ginzburg, 100 Years of Lynching (N.Y.: Lancer Books, 1969), pp. 200–201.

180 FDR’s first reference to “lynch law,” 6 December 1933, see Zangrando, p. 104; Nancy Weiss, p. 101.

181 White’s meeting at the White House: Walter White, A Man Called White, (Viking, 1948), pp. 168–69 (misdated as 1935).

181 White to ER, 14 May 1934, 100/1325.

181 “I did not choose”: FDR quoted in Nancy Weiss, pp. 105–106, and White, p. 169.

181 CWA discarded: FDR had created CWA by executive order on-9 Nov. 1933. Suddenly he ordered it liquidated; it simply ceased to exist on 1 Apr. 1934. Although many of its job programs were “folded back into the FERA,” in the four months of its existence CWA had been the largest employer of non-relief white-collar, single, and professional women engaged as teachers, recreation leaders, nutritionists, stenographers, writers, public health nurses, and librarians. Ellen Woodward sent ER a state-by-state report of thousands of women’s projects discontinued.

182 Hick wrote from North Carolina: 18 Feb. 1934; Beasley, p. 195.

182–83 For NRA abuses and rampant job discrimination, cf. Nancy Weiss, pp. 56–57; John Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era (University of Tennessee Press, 1980), pp. 134, 160n; and Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression (Greenwood, 1970), pp. 140–42.

183 “If we have to have a dictator”: Beasley, pp. 216–19; Hick had two suggestions: Hick to ER, 13 Apr. 1934; Beasley, pp. 219–22, 204–8; Hick from New Mexico: 25 Apr. 1934, Beasley, pp. 231–34.

183 ER to Hick, 15 Apr. 1934; “depressed”: 19 Apr. 1934.

184 “No, I am always glad”: ER to Hick, 16 Apr. 1934.

184 “deeply moved”: Crystal Bird Fauset to ER, 24 Apr. 1934, 100, Box 1314; cf. Fauset to ER 27 May 1934. Peabody sent ER’s letter to L. Hollingsworth Wood, a “great hearted” Quaker and wrote ER: “I have a great desire to talk with you respecting the relation of our Southland with its 25 of our population.”

185 ER to Peabody, 4 May 34; Peabody to ER, 26 May 1934; ER to Peabody, 2 June, “interested to hear what you have to tell me about the South”; thank you re Fauset, 100, Box 1314.

184 ER to Vincent Astor, 22 May 1934, 100, Box 1284; ER to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., 21 June 1934, 100, Box 1311.

185 L. Hollingsworth Wood, “greatly complimented” to be approached, was particularly grateful to ER for her “very generous support of our Quaker relief work in the coal-mining districts,” which earned her both “a great deal of criticism and a great deal of affection and appreciation.” L. Hollingsworth Wood, to Peabody, 5 June; Peabody to ER, 8 June; ER to Peabody, 18 June 1934/100, Box 1314; The Institute conference, with seminars led by Charles Johnson, Fisk; Robert Park, Chicago; Otto Klineberg, Columbia; Helen Bryan and Crystal Bird Fauset, AFSC, was held in Phila. 1–28 July 1934; Howard Odum considered it “one of the most perfect units of work I have ever seen.”

185 ER’s 11 May 1934 speech: Journal of Negro Education, Oct. 1934; reprinted in Allida Black, ed., pp. 141 ff. Harvard Sitkoff, p. 201. Sitkoff on ER, pp. 65, 69.

186 See ER’s correspondence with John Studebaker, 1935–1936, 70/ esp. boxes 666, 699; on the much-embattled efforts toward federal aid to education, see Studebaker’s 12-page report to the NEA, “New Federal Expenditures for Certain Phases of Education,” 1933–1935, (1 Jan. 1936), Studebaker to ER, 10 Jan. 1936; cf. ER to Studebaker, 3 Dec. 1936; Studebaker to ER via Scheider, 10 Dec; and Studebaker to Charles A. Lee, Washington University, 4 Dec. 1936, Box 699.

186 Initially education grants were made through FERA and CWA, and after 1935 through WPA and NYA, when the situation improved and college aid expanded to $14 million by 1936, and served 104,658 students. Studebaker’s report, pp. 4–5.

186 Williams assured ER: Aubrey Williams to State Relief Administrators and State Chief School Officers, 2 Nov. 34; Klinefelter to Scheider, 6 Nov. 1934; 70/616.

187 “my foolish temperament”: ER to Hick, 24 May 1934.

187 ER relieved: ER to Hick, 25–27 May 1934; “mind of a man”, ER to Hick, 30 May 1934.

187 Alderson Prison, FDR, what for: TIR, pp. 170–72.

188 White was desperate: Walter White to FDR, copy to ER, 13, 14, June 1934/100, 1325; Helen Boardman, Crisis, “Grand Jury Adjourns, Lauren County Fails to Indict Dendy Lynchers,” re 4 July 1933 lynching of Norris Dendy: despite witnesses, and five named suspects, the case ended typically: “Another insufferable crime has been committed and the perpetrators are being shielded by the silence and passivity of the ‘better element.’ “

188 ER told her press conference: NYT, 7 June, 23 June 1934; Strayer, newspaper clips, C. Hopkins Papers.

ER lobbied to secure Ihlder’s appointment; and FDR urged Charlotte Hopkins to arrange a meeting between Ickes, Harry Hopkins, and Ihlder to “work out a comprehensive program.” Hopkins to ER, 15 June; ER to Hopkins, 28 June 1934; FDR to Hopkins 15 Jan. 1935; Hopkins Papers, Schlesinger Library.

188 Ickes asked ER: Ickes to ER, 8 Mar. 1935; ER to Ickes, 12 Mar. 1935; committee membership as of 25 Feb. 1935, 70, Box 654.

Charlotte Everett Hopkins died on 6 Sept. 1935, just as the real work to dismantle the alleys began.

11: Private Friendship, Public Time

190 As her train ran alongside the Hudson: ER to Hick, 23 Apr. 1934; conference on aging: 20 Apr. 1934.

190 “I’ve been wondering”: ER to Hick, 30 May 1934.

191 ER felt protective of FDR, and SDR: ER to Hick, 1 June 1934.

191 ER II on SDR: to author in San Francisco, 1997.

192 Emma Bugbee asked: ER to Hick 14 Nov. 1933.

192 Russia was recognized: ER to Hick, 18 Nov. 1933. During the autumn of 1933, ER’s letters of longing were interspersed with letters of stern advice: Buy a coat; see a dentist; watch your diet. See esp. ER to Hick, 25–26 Sept. 1933. ER to Hick, 6 Nov. 1933.

193 “Mama to FDR”: ER to Hick, 7 Nov. 1933.

193 ER’s checkbooks: Bess Furman, p. 196; ER bragged: 9 Nov. 1933; 12–13 Nov.; 22 Nov. 1933.

194 “How lucky you are not a man”: ER to Hick, 23 Nov. 1933.

194 “only I wished it was you”: ER to Hick, 25 Nov. 1933; “so you think they gossip”: ER to Hick, 27 Nov. 1933; ER confided: 29 Nov. 1933; “I’ll be back in obscurity again,” ER to Hick, 1 Dec. 1933.

195 “I’m selfish enough”: ER to Hick, 3 Dec. 1933.

195 Hick to ER from Minnesota, 6 Dec. 1933.

196–97 ER’s ardent letters: “I’m going to think of nothing else,” 6 Dec. 1933; “Funny everything I do my thoughts fly to you, never are you out of them dear….” 7 Dec. 1933; “I can remember just how you look I shall want to look long and very lovingly at you.”

197 Drinking and “felt as a child”: ER to Hick, 9 Dec. 1933.

198 The ardor of their winter correspondence: “Gee what wouldnt I give … to hear your voice now.” “It is all the little things … the feel of your hair, your gestures …”

199 ER to Hick, 27 Jan. 1934; cf. 24, 25, 28 Jan. “I would like to be with you all the time. I love you deeply, tenderly.” 29 Jan. 1934.

199 “We must be careful”: ER to Hick, 16 Apr. 1934.

199 dream to marry Earl: Hick to ER, 20 Apr. 1934.

199 “Love is a queer thing”: ER to Hick, 4–5 Feb. 1934.

200 “you can tell her how to snap out of it”: ER to Hick, 6 June 1934.

200 “even disagreeable things come to an end!”: ER to Anna, 19 June 1934, in Asbell, p. 59.

200 Cousin Susie “made a scene”: ER to Hick, 16 June 1934; “I could spank you”: ER to Hick, 25 June 1934.

200 “Yes, dear,… happy with a man”: ER to Hick, 28 June 1934; cf. 29 June.

201 “Things happen often enough,” “pick up where we left off,” “neither of us is going to be upset”: ER to Hick, 8, 9, 10 July 1934.

201 Broadcasts picked up: ER to Hick, 19 Apr. 1934.

201 ER criticized: Time, 4 June 1934, p. 33.

202 After Chicago: ER to John Boettiger, in Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 197.

202 Hick recorded the entire drama: Reluctant First Lady, pp. 157–61.

204 At the Danas’: Hick, pp. 162–64; ER, TIR, p. 142; and Women’s Democratic News, Aug. 1934.

204 ER did not respond to Clarence Pickett until 7 Aug. 1934. She thanked him for the Arthurdale information, suggested that Ickes visit in Sept., and noted: “I have had a grand time, a good rest, and have enjoyed the summer immensely.”

205 Mono Lake: ER’s implication that nothing lived in Mono Lake, an inland sea twice the size of San Francisco, and her blithe comment about the lake’s future development, reveals a remarkable lack of information. Mono Lake was then and remains one of the greatest environmental controversies since the drowning and damming of the magnificent Hetch Hetchy Valley. The struggle to use not ruin nature’s great bounty in the high Sierra continues—as ER in other writings predicted it would. See esp. John Hart, Storm Over Mono: The Mono Lake Battle and the California Water Future (University of California Press, 1996); Mono Lake Committee P.O. Box 29, Lee Vining, CA 93541.

205 Yosemite camp details: TIR; Reluctant First Lady; Shirley Sargent, Yosemite’s Famous Guests (Flying Spur Press, 1970), pp. 33–35; and interviews with Carl Sharsmith and Elizabeth Stone O’Neill.

206 “Climbing mountains”: Reluctant First Lady, p. 166.

206 According to Shirley Sargent, Chief Ranger Forrest Townsley died of a heart attack in the high country on 11 Aug. 1943.

206 Peter Browning credits park naturalist Douglass Hubbard for naming Lake Roosevelt to commemorate ER’s July 1934 visit. Others had suggested “My Day Lake;” cf. Peter Browning’s Yosemite Place Names (Lafayette, Calif.: Great West Books, 1988), p. 121. Curiously, one scours the well kept Yosemite archives in vain for one single picture of Hick, although there is a reference to the presence of ER’s “secretary” in John Bingaman, Guardians of the Yosemite: A Story of the First Rangers (Desert Printers, 1961), p. 40.

206 ER’s interest in the sites TR visited with John Muir: The boy so eager to kill birds and buffalo came to understand fully how endangered wildlife and wilderness had become, and sought as president to protect them. The battle between Muir’s concept of wilderness conservation and TR’s divided legacy of conservation and national lands for use (grazing rights, water power, forestry) intensified during FDR’s administration.

207 Hick’s horse in the river: Reluctant First Lady, pp. 166–67; ER to Anna, “The Yosemite was grand. I loved it and the rangers are a grand bunch. Hick ended by having her horse….,” “She’s going to try to get herself in better condition for she suffered from the altitude.”

207 Years later: 29 July 1935, box 56. TIR, p. 142.

207–208 Ickes at dinner; and chipmunks: Reluctant First Lady, pp. 169–70. Ickes Diary, 31 July 1934, p. 177.

209 FDR had written regularly: FDR to “Dearest Babs,” 5 July-12 July 1934, Letters, pp. 404–9.

209–11 San Francisco and Oregon: Reluctant First Lady; corpse to mourn: TIR, p. 143.

211 ER joined FDR: NYT, 5 Aug. 1934; itenerary, NTT 3 Aug. 1934, included several other dam-sites along the upper Mississippi; Ickes, pp. 183–84.

212 Ickes considered the evening: Ickes, p. 184; cf. Kenneth Davis, p. 383; But ER worried: TIR, p. 144.

212 ER’s correspondence resumed: ER to Hick, 3 Aug. 1934; Hick felt forlorn; Hick to ER, 10 Aug. 1934.

212 Blackfoot tribe: NYT, 6 Aug. 1934; ER to Hick, 6 Aug. 1934; “What fools these mortals be”: TIR 144.

212 On 18 June 1934, the Wheeler-Howard bill, to incorporate Indian communities, and achieve “Indian self-government,” the Indian Reorganization Act passed. Much amended, with endless compromises and trimmings, it was a flawed and limited first step. See esp. T. H. Watkins, pp. 361–62; 530–48; and Alison Bernstein, “A Mixed Record: The Political Enfranchisement of American Indian Women During the Indian New Deal,” Journal of the West (July 1984).

12: Negotiating the Political Rapids

214 “For heaven sake”: ER to Hick, 27 Aug. 1934.

215 Gertrude Ely: Feminist, pacifist, social worker, musician, brilliant raconteur, a “personality with charisma,” Gertrude Sumner Ely was known for her hospitality on the Bryn Mawr campus—first in her family home, Wyndham Manor inherited from her father a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then in Wyndham Barn refurbished in 1940. Devoted to music and the arts, a member of the AFSC, Ely headed Pennsylvania’s women’s committee of the WPA after 1935, and joined ER on many projects. There is no biography of Gertrude Ely. A memorabilia collection is in the Bryn Mawr College Archives.

215 I am grateful to Lorett Treese, Bryn Mawr archivist, for Ely articles; to anonymous of Fowler’s beach; and especially Rodney Hart Clurman, for information about Ely and her friendship with ER. Also, Margaret Edwards, “Gertrude Ely Owned This House,” from Bryn Mawr archives; “Maverick from the Main Line,” 3 Oct. 1965, obits, esp. Phila. Bulletin, 27 Oct. 1970.

216 Their turbulent vacation: ER to Hick, 9, 11 Aug. 1934; Tiny “as good as Earl”: ER to Hick, 19 Aug.; ER to Bess Furman on bull’s-eye: Furman, Washington By-Line. ER’s pistol permit was renewed annually throughout her life; “your sweater”: ER to Hick, 17 Aug. 1934; ER sat unrecognized: ibid. “Yes, I am happy here”: ER to Hick, 13 Aug. 1934.

217 ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 19 Aug. 1934; Morgenthau to ER, Elinor Morgenthau collection, FDRL.

217 “Yes, dear,… can’t unlock”: ER to Hick, 21 Aug. 1934; cf. ER to Hick on Elinor Morgenthau’s upset, 19 Aug. 1934.

218 “Made headlines, aground in a motorboat”: NYT, 16 Aug. 1934; F was amused: ER to Hick, 30 Aug. 1934; “you and Earl need me”: 31 Aug. 1934.

218 At the 1934 Nuremberg rally, Hitler also addressed 2,000 women members of the Nazi Party to condemn women’s rights as a “‘product of Jewish intellectualisai.’” “‘The Nazi program for women has but one point: the child.’” See editorial, “Adolf Hitler,” 26 Sept. 1934, New Republic; see also William Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941.

218 Europe’s social insurance: See esp. June Hopkins, The First and Final Task: Harry Hopkins and the Development of the American Welfare System, Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1997, pp. 273–75.

219 ER was delighted to tell Hick that Hopkins “said today that your reports would be the best history of the depression in future years.” ER to Hick, 30–31 Aug. 1934.

219 FDR in a “militant” mood: ER to Hick, 1, 2 Sept. 1934; At the party: Ken Davis, pp. 407–8; Tone of tenderness, “lie down beside you”: ER to Hick, 1 Sept. 1934; “papers don’t worry me”: ER to Hick, 2, 3 Sept.; Hick busy: Hick to ER, 5 Sept.; “I would die”: ER to Hick, 8 Sept. 1934.

219 All the boats: ER to Hick, Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 203.

220 FDR appointed Winant: see Bernard Bellush, He Walked Alone: A Biography of John Gilbert Winant (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), pp. 104–6; cf. Davis, pp. 409–13.

221 Provincetown: ER to Hick, 14 Sept. 1934; at Cousin Maude’s: ER to Hick, 16 Sept.

221 ER and Hick arranged reunion: ER to Hick, 21 Sept. 1934; but interrupted: ER to Hick, 2 Oct. 1934.

222 “I like being in a campaign”: ER quoted in NYT, 12 Oct. 1934.

222–23 ER’s long friendship, and speech: NYT, 16 Oct. 1934; Buffalo: NYT, 26 Oct. 1934; “I am acting as an individual”: NYT, 26 Oct.; To charges, “As a citizen”: John Henry Lambert to ER, 30 Oct. 1934; ER to JHL, 12 Nov. 1934/100.

223 “We have short memories”: NYT, 27 Oct. 1934; Dorothy Frooks: NYT, 29 Oct. 1934; refused to debate: NYT, 1 Nov. 1934.

223 “I am sorry you were hurt”: ER to Hick, 31 Oct. 1934.

224 Frooks crashed: NYT, 2 Nov. 1934.

224 “Damn the newspapers”: Hick to ER, 2 Nov.; velvet dresses: ER to Hick, 7 Nov. 1934.

225 Eager to help O’Day staff a creative, politically alert congressional office, Hick suggested young FERA investigator Martha Gellhorn, whose journalistic and punchy style had impressed her, to serve as secretary to the new member of Congress.

225 O’Day protested: NYT, 7 Nov. 1934.

225 “Franklin wants to know”: ER to Greenway, nd, with 15 Nov., ibid; Green-way replied, 27 Nov. 1934, Tucson.

226 In September White became optimistic when the Miami Daily News endorsed the antilynch legislation: “Isnt this great coming from Florida? If you deem wise, I wish you would show it to the President and warn him that he is going to hear a great deal more about the Costigan-Wagner bill between now and next spring.” White to ER 5 Oct. 34; ER to Pickett 5 Oct., 15 Oct., 11 Dec. 34; Pickett to ER, 25 Oct. 34, with housing enclosure by John Murchison to Pickett to ER, 70/628.

226 ER on Villard to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, see Fisher to ER, 9 Apr. 1934; ER to Fisher, 13 Apr., 1934/ 100. Fisher agreed: “yes, of course you’re quite right about Mr. Villard!” DCF to ER, 23 Apr. 34/100, Box 1297; ER to DCF, 25 Ap 34; DCF to ER, 26 May 43; ER to DCF 13 June/100; Scheduled to speak at the Adult Education Association Convention, DCF stayed at the White House on 23 May.

227–228 Dewson and fears of radicalism: Radical youth materials enclosed with Dewson to ER, 30 Nov. 1934 100, Box 1293.

229–230 “Dearest, I don’t wish you were here”: ER to Hick, 10 Nov. 1934; “I behaved very badly…”: ER to Hick, 19 Nov. 1934; also 20 Nov.; ER to Anna, 19 Nov.; She credited Hick: 21 Nov. 1934. Hick received three letters from Warm Springs in one day, and she concluded: “God knows I’d love it if you came home, but—it’s only nine more days…. And sometime later, maybe, you and I might be able to go down there alone and have fun, as we did before. I’ll never go down there with the mob.” Hick to ER, 21, 22 Nov. 1934.

231 “wouldn’t you, like every one else, spoil me”: ER to Hick, 23 Nov. 1934. Rexford G. Tugwell joined the party at Warm Springs on his return from a tour of Europe and at lunch ER was dismayed to hear that Tugwell and the others seemed “to accept the possibility that what may be needed to get us there is more wars, whereas I rebel at the thought!”

231 At Mary Harriman Rumsey’s bedside were her daughter, Mary Averell Harriman Rumsey (21), her sons, Bronson Harriman Rumsey (17), student at St Paul’s, and Charles Cary Rumsey, Jr. (22 and recently married).

232 A great personal loss in ER’s network: Isabella Greenway to Molly Dewson, 26 Dec. 1934, Tucson.

232 As chair of NRA’s Consumer Advisory Board, Mary Harriman Rumsey vigorously opposed increased prices, which only passed the cost of industrial recovery on to the consumer. She organized consumer councils, fought for retail codes, and hired many of the New Deal’s most advanced and “aggressive” liberals, including: Robert Lynd, Frederic Howe, Paul H. Douglas, journalist Dexter Keezer, Gardner Jackson, and historian Caroline Ware. In 1933, with Vincent Astor and her brother Averell, she bought Today, which Ray Moley edited, and which became Newsweek in 1937. According to Raymod Moley: “The idea of a new magazine originated in the fertile mind of Mary Harriman Rumsey.” Moley, After Seven Years, pp. 278–81. For the drama of her bid to buy the Washington Post, see Ralph Martin, Cissy, pp. 328–30.

232 See esp. Mary Harriman Rumsey, “Champion of the Consumer Speaks Out,” S. J. Woolf, New York Times Magazine, 6 Aug. 1933; NY Times “Mrs. Roosevelt at Rumsey Rites,” 20 Dec. 1934; NY Herald Tribune, 19 Dec. 1934; cf. Rudy Abramson, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, 1891–1986 (William Morrow, 1992), 253–259; BW Cook, ER, v. I; Persia Campbell [who N.Y. Governor Averell Harriman appointed first state consumer affairs adviser in 1959] MHR, Notable American Women, III, pp. 208–9; I am grateful to Marjory Potts of Vineyard Video Productions, for her correspondence, her interview with Averell Harriman, and her work on France Perkins and MHR.

13: 1935

233 FDR’s plans to achieve a proper security: NYT 22 May 1935.

234 Lillian Wald to Jane Addams, 19 Dec. 1934; Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Jane Addams Papers Project.

234 FDR wanted social security to be universal, simple, nondiscriminatory. FDR quoted by Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, pp. 282–83. For the complexities of Social Security’s labyrinthian history see esp. Davis, pp. 437–62; Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled (Free Press, 1994); Alice Kessler-Harris, Out To Work (Oxford University Press, 1982); and Alice Kessler-Harris, forthcoming book on Social Security; also AKH, “Designing Women and Old Fools: The Construction of the 1939 Social Security Amendments,” in Linda Kerber, et al, eds., U.S. History As Women’s History (University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Mimi Abramowitz, Regulating the Lives of Women (South End Press, 1996).

FDR’s 4 Jan, 17 Jan. 1935 speeches quoted from John Gabriel Hunt, ed., The Essential FDR (Gramercy Books, 1995), pp. 82–93.

235 ER to John Boettiger, and “Lovely Lady,” 4 Jan. 1935, in Asbell, pp. 68–69.

236 In 1902, TR and World Court: Jane Addams, “The World Court,” in Allen F. Davis, ed., Jane Addams on Peace, War, and International Understanding (1976), pp. 188–94; Garland, cf. Howard N. Meyer, “A Global Look at Law and Order: The ‘World Court’ at the UN’s 50th,” Social Education (Nov/Dec. 1994), pp. 417–19; David Patterson, “The U.S. and the Origins of the World Court,” Political Science Quarterly (Summer 1976).

236 December 1933, FDR to Lape, “politically speaking … it would be unwise to do anything about the World Court.” See Robert Dallek, FDR and American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 71.

237 “On this hope we rest”: Lape to Helen Rogers Reid, 13, 16 Jan. 1934, Reid Papers, LC. Senator Roscoe Patterson told Lape: “no legislation will be considered during this session which does not meet with the approval of the President.” Patterson to Lape, 22 Feb. 1934, in ER box 1306.

238 ER, “Because the War Idea Is Obsolete,” in Carrie Chapman Catt et al., Rose Young, ed., Why Wars Must Cease (Macmillan, 1935), pp. 21–29.

239 “Private profit”: Identified with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, whose executive secretary Dorothy Detzer was most responsible for persuading Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota to investigate the Munitions Industry, ER agreed with the conclusions of the Nye Committee that industrial profits needed to be removed from the business of national defense. See Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (University of Minnesota Press, 1962), pp. 66–76.

239 Throughout the two-week debate: See: “Up Senate, Down Court,” Time, 11 Feb. 1935, pp. 13–15; cf. esp. Gilbert Kahn, “Presidential Passivity on a Non-salient Issue: FDR and the 1935 World Court Fight,” Diplomatic History (Spring 1980), p. 137 ff. Privately, FDR to Joe Robinson, FDR Letters, pp. 449–50; Kenneth Davis, pp. 495–96.

241 Lape was bitter: transcript, Lape interview with Joseph Lash, 17 Feb. 1970; 24 Feb. 1970; Lash Papers, FDRL. nevertheless defended her husband: ER to Mrs. Kendall Emerson, 12 Feb. 1935, 100, Box 1336.

242 Unknown to ER: William Dodd to to A. Walton Moore for FDR, 24 Feb. 1935, FDR PSF; Dodd Collection.

242 Ickes censured ER’s involvement: Ickes, pp. 284–85.

242 A shocking aftermath: On tax threat, Lape to Nellie Bok, 22 Jan. 1964, Lape Papers, Box 2, FDRL; FDR’s hardball against Huey Long, a precedent: FDR had Henry Morgenthau initiate a tax investigation of Huey Long as one of his “first acts as treasury secretary” in January 1934. Leuchtenberg, The FDR Years (Columbia, 1995), pp. 93–94; Davis, pp. 493–95; Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (Knopf, 1982); and William Ivy Hair The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey Long (Louisiana State University Press, 1991).

242 Health seemed the most urgent issue: Lape to Nellie Lee Bok, 22 Jan. 1964, Lape Papers, FDRL; ER “worked up some things” for FDR’s birthday: ER to Hick, 30 Jan. 1935.

243 Claude Neal lynching: FDR, “I have forgotten,” quoted in Nancy Weiss, pp. 108–9. White to ER 24 Jan. 1935: your letter of 22 Jan. “has done a great deal to revive my somewhat flagging spirit” re bill; “I shall look forward eagerly to the letter” FDR said he will write.” White to ER, 24 Jan. 1935/100/Box 1362.

243 Marianna lynching horrible: ER to White, 20 Nov. 1934; White to ER, 8 Nov. 1934; White to ER, enclosure to FDR, 27 Dec. 1934; ER to White, n.d., Dec. 1934/100, Box 1362; “I wonder if you could advise me”: White to ER, 10 Jan. 1935; “I talked to the Pres”: n.d., Jan. 1935; cf. White to FDR, 12 Jan. 35/ re the brazen shooting of Jerome Wilson, 28, by a mob yesterday in Louisiana. His father, John Wilson, was a prosperous farmer, and the cause was envy: In 1934, he purchased 80 acres to add to his already large farm: “Mr. Wilson’s prosperity … aroused the enmity and jealousy of some of the whites….”

244 looked forward to visiting a controversial art exhibit: White to ER, 17 Jan. 1935; ER to White, 21 Jan. 1935; NYT called it “macabre”: Sitkoff, p. 288.

244 safer if ER did not attend: ER to White on the exhibit, 13 Feb, n.d., Mar. 1935, 100/Box 1362. White to ER, 12 Feb. 1935; 18 Feb. 1935.

245 Triplet controversy: Wiley Hall, chair of the Theban Beneficial Club, Richmond, 14 Jan. 1935; ER to Hall 22 Jan. 1935/100; ER to Woodward, 20 Dec. 1934; Woodward to Scheider, 18 Dec. 1934; Ella Agnew to Woodward, 14 Dec. 1935; Woodward to Scheider, 23 Jan. 35 (“we all regret”); Agnew to Woodward, 22 Jan. 1935; Agnew to every member of the staff, “these files are confidential; any violater will be summarily dismissed,” 22 Jan. 1935/70/672.

245 Leonidas Dyer to White, 28 Jan. 35; White to ER 1 Feb. 35, “I, however, still cling to my belief that you and the president….” Also, WW to Dyer, 2 Feb. 1935, sent to ER.

245 ER had penciled on White’s letter: 14 Mar. 1935, Box 1362.

246 White resigned in protest: White to ER, with enclosures, 3 May 1935, including “last week’s Afro-American which pays you so well-merited a tribute”; White to FDR, 6 May 1935; 1362; cf. Nancy Weiss, pp. 113–14; “I am so sorry”: ER to White, 8 May 1935; White to ER, 9 May 1935 with copy of his resignation letter; and 23 May, with letter NAACP sent to senators, including the Des Moines (Iowa) Register editorial of 4 May/100, Box 1362.

246 Wilkins invitation: Roy Wilkins to ER, 20 May 1935; FDR memo to Scheider, 28 May 1935; ER acquiesced, letter of regret, ER to White, 15 June 1935. Ultimately Josephine Roche attended, and made a “great speech.” White to ER 3 July.

248 Morgenthau’s testimony: “Statement of the Secretary of the Treasury on the Economic Security Bill,” 5 Feb. 1935, in ER, Box 665; with “Summary of Social Security Bill as it is at present before the House (HR 7260), n.d., May 1935, Box 665; Europe’s social security precedents: in Mimi Abramovitz, p. 230. Frances Perkins, p. 293; 297–98.

249 ER contradicted Morgenthau’s proposak: ER, “Mobilization for Human Needs, Democratic Digest (Nov. 1933), pi; see esp. ER’s response to Dr. Townsend’s movement for old-age security in citizen letters, for example, ER to Janie Ballard, 5 Dec. 1934; ER to C. H. Bartels, 1 Nov. 1934; 70. On 5 Jan. 1934, to D.C. branch of American Association for Social Security.

249 “First Lady Pleads for Old Age Pensions,” herein she called for “universal old age insurance,” Social Security (Feb. 1934), pp. 3–4.

250 ER’s 27 Feb. 1935 press conference: Beasley, pp. 28–29; NYT, “Wife Acclaims Roosevelt’s Deeds…,” 3 Mar. 1935, p. 1.

250 “Here I hardly count anything”: ER to Hick, 22, 23 Jan. 1935; glad for their talk: ER to Hick, 25 Jan. 1935.

251 “Would you like to write it”: ER to Hick; “I know how you feel”: 26 Jan. 1935.

251 WPA a compromise for work security: June Hopkins to BWC, July 1997.

252 “a gray and gloomy day”: ER to Hick, 29 Jan. 1935. The height of the social season was under way, there were congressional receptions, endless events, FDR’s birthday balls: “Hick darling, I want you but you would be more unhappy, as you were, hanging around here while I went through this deadly round. At least in New York you’ve got people you like and a city you enjoy.” 31 Jan. 1935.

253 “Of course you should have had a husband”: ER to Hick, 1 Feb. 1935.

253 “I’d have to be chloroformed first!”: ER to Hick, 7 Feb. 1935.

253 February songs of duality: 14 Feb. from Elmira; 15 Feb. in Ithaca; with Earl 16 Feb. 1935.

254 snowbound Hyde Park weekend: ER to Hick, 24 Feb. 1935.

254 “Dearest Babs”: FDR to ER, 31 Mar. 1935; Letters, pp. 469–70.

254 “You have been constantly in my thoughts through Howe’s illness—the strain must be unbearable….” Greenway to ER, 4 Apr. 1935, 100/Box 1340; Hope Chamberlin on Greenway, p. 111.

254 particularly mindful of NAACP opposition: Haynes, “Lily-White Social Security,” The Crisis, Mar. 1935, pp. 85–86.

255 ER distributed articles from The Crisis: Roy Wilkins to ER, 27 Oct. 1934; Oct. 1934 issue of Crisis; ER to Richberg, 10 Oct., 1 Nov. Richberg to ER 9 Nov. 1934, with Gustav Peck’s answer in The Crisis, and Suzanne La Follette’s 5 Sept. 1934 Nation article, “A Message to Uncle Tom;” and Peck to Richberg, 6 Nov. 1934.

255 ER to Richberg, 20 Nov.; 22 Nov. 1934: “I sincerely hope …” 100, Box 1316; ER hated ceremony: ER to Hick, 25 Apr. 1935; “Every president and his family go through it”: ER to Hick, 26 Apr. 1935; exchange with SDR: 26 Apr. 1935.

256 Harlem exploded: Thomas Kessner, Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (Penguin, 1989), pp. 368–77.

257 Dewson to Agnes Brown Leach, 26 Feb. 1935; Dewson to Greenway, 20 Dec. 1934; Dewson to Leach, 11 Mar. 1935, Women’s Division Papers, Box 118; cf. BWC on Leach in Crystal Eastman; cf. vol. I. Leach on Perkins, quoted in Ware, p. 100; Dewson to ER, and Lucy R. Mason, quoted in Ware, p. 100; on social security, Dewson to ER, 10 Apr. 1935.

In 1964, Frances Perkins taught at Cornell and was surprised to be confronted by student questions about race. Bewildered by her disinterest, one student asked if the “Negro question were not the litmus test of liberalism?” Perkins answered: “Many people never gave it a thought,” and in FDR’s administration the Negro question “came very late.” It was “really not” an issue “until the war.” Perkins lectures, Cornell University Archives, 22 Sept. 1964, pp. 49–52. On lily white Social Security, Perkins said nothing.

257 ER in a rare state: ER to Hick, 27, 28 Apr. 1935.

258 28 Apr. 1935, FDR’s Fireside Chats, pp. 63–72.

258 ER supported Wagner: Richard Lieberman to BWC.

259 “My calm”: ER to Hick, 29 Apr.; 1 May 1935. Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 222; never blow off to F: ER to Hick, 2 May 1935.

259 Jane Addams considered it a “wild” idea: Hannah Clothier Hull to Jane Addams, 31 Jan. 1935, SCPC/JA Project; Jane Addams to Hull, declining a congressional resolution, though pleased ER and Edna St. Vincent Millay planned to speak, “it is lovely and thrilling,” 13 Mar. 1935; Mary Moss Wellborn to JA, 13 Mar. 1935; Hull to JA, 14 Mar. 1935.

259 Silenced by the State Department: Mary Moss Welborn to Edith Helm, 27 Apr. 1935, with State Department Memo; international broadcast and dinner lists of speakers, 2 May 1935.

260 “Touch the floor!”: ER to Hick, 8–9 May 1935; new pool lovely: 10 May 1935.

260 ER wished Hick “could be happy” at Val-Kill, “but you and I will have to build a cabin together somewhere else sometime!” 11 May 1935.

266 poem: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Woman’s Shortcomings;” see vol. I.; ER on love: 13 May 1935.

261 ER to Hick, 15 May 1935. But above all, 15, 16, 17, 19 May.

262 See ER’s FBI files on “Eleanor Clubs”; Sandy Vanocour to BWC on pushing” days in his childhood.

262 tours coal mines: NYT, 22 May 1935; ER’s press conference: Beasley, p. 32.

263 ER telegram to Jane Addams, 20 Jan. 1935, Jane Addams Project; Louise deKoven Bowen, Open Windows (Chicago: Fletcher Seymour, 1946), p. 271.

Elizabeth Dillings, The Red Network (1934), quoted in Allen F. Davis, American Heroine: The Life and-Legend of Jane Addams (Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 268–69; cf. Elizabeth Dilling, The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background (published by the author in Chicago, 1936).

263 Jane Addams’s obituary and Hitler’s Reichstag speech: NYT, 22 May 1935.

14: The Victories of Summer, 1935

264 In 1936, when the Veterans’ Bonus came up again, it finally passed over FDR’s veto; and in that election year veterans received their bonus.

264 Ken Davis, pp. 513–14; cf. Hope Chamberlin on Greenway, p. 111; Caroline O’Day voted to uphold his veto. FDR was pleased to have her “slant on things,” and “I am grateful to you for voting ‘No.’” O’Day to FDR, 23 May 1935; FDR to O’Day, 29 May 1935, PPF.

265 ER regretted: TIR, 136; Ken Davis, 516.

266 ER and WTUL: See esp. Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the U.S., 1900–1965 (University of North Carolina, 1995, pp. 159, 166.

266–67 women’s labor movement refortified: See especially Anne Firor Scott, “After Suffrage: Southern Women in the Twenties,” in Gott, ed., History of Women in the U.S., vol. 17, part 2, pp. 586–606; Lucy Randolph Mason, To Win These Rights: A Personal Story of the CIO in the South (1952); John Salmond, Miss Lucy of the CIO: The Life and Times of Lucy Randolph Mason (University of Georgia, 1988); “the men instinctively got to their feet”: Virginia Durr on Miss Lucy, quoted in Pat Sullivan, p. 96.

267 Harry Hopkins escorted Flanagan: Hallie Flanagan, Arena: The Story of the Federal Theatre (Limelight Editions, 1985 [1940]), pp. 3–4.

268 Soon the Federal Theatre: Flanagan to ER, Report, 23 Dec. 1935; Hallie Flanagan, Arena, pp. 9–12; 24–28; Flanagan to ER, 8 Jan. 1936/70 Box 681; cf. Jacob Baker to Vassar president H. H. MacCracken, 28 May 1935, cc Scheider, 70/ Hopkins, Box 653; Jane DeHart Matthews, The Federal Theatre, 1935–1939: Plays, Relief, Politics (Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 20–21, 28–29.

268 ER relished: Flanagan to ER, 8 Jan. 1936, with enclosure “Men at Work,” L.A.’s Federal Theatre Bulletin, with Flanagan quote.

269 “stranded generation,” and “wandering women”: Ruby Black, pp. 210–11; She agitated for a youth conference: ER to Studebaker, 8 Mar. 1935; with Studebaker’s speech, Box 666.

269–70 “I waited”: TIR, p. 163.

270 NYA was inclusive: In May, FDR also issued EO 7046, which prohibited discrimination on WPA projects. On 22 July, Hopkins assured ER: “The work program does not permit any discrimination against Negro workers.” White to ER, 13 June 1935, with attachments; ER to White, with Hopkins 22 July statement, 1 Aug. 1935/100. NYA “politically popular”: TIR, p. 163; see also Sitkoff, p. 73; Anthony Badger, pp. 207–9; Ruby Black, p. 215.

271 The 28–30 Mar. 1935 conference on “Women’s Work and Women’s Stake in Public Affairs” honored ER; Robert Wagner keynoted; sponsored by Connecticut College’s Institute of Women’s Professional Relations; copy of program attached, ER to Studebaker, 8 Mar. 1935, Box 666.

271–72 ER and NYA details, correspondence: Margaret Ordway to ER, 12 Apr. 1937; Aubrey Williams, Box 4; ER to Williams, 30 Nov. 1935; Williams to ER, 22 Nov. 1935; Williams to ER, 20 Aug. 1935, Box 671; 16 Jan. 1936, with summary of NYA program and results to date; Williams to ER, NYA Activities with Special Reference to Negro Youth, 12 Feb. 1936; re Flora Rose’s idea of a survey. ER to Williams, 3 June 1936; Williams to ER, 10 June 1936; Pickett to ER, 14 Nov. 1935.

272 Robert Sherwood quoted in Sitkoff, p. 61.

272 FDR’s “soak the rich” Revenue Act: See Anthony Badger, The New Deal (Hill & Wang, 1988), pp. 102–4; Mark Leff, “Taxing the ‘Forgotten Man’: The Politics of Social Security Finance in the New Deal,” Journal of American History (Sept. 1983), pp. 359–81; Eliot Janeway, The Economics of Crisis: War, Politics, & the Dollar (Weybright and Talley, 1968).

273 ER at Campobello: ER to Hick, 9, 10 July, 15 July 1935.

273–74 “quite a household”: ER to Hick, 26 July 1935; Characteristically: 28 July; “I realize”: 29 July; time to read: 31 July 1935; Rebel Saints: 6 Aug.; and tennis: 9 Aug. 1935. Hick replied, 31 July; “ER had to laugh”: 2 Aug. 1935.

274–75 Hick to ER on Herzog: 31 July 1935; Woodward to ER: 16 July 1935; telegram to Welchpool: n.d., July 1935.

275 Leslie County, Kentucky: Woodward to ER, 2 Feb. 1935, FERA Library Service Work Projects for Women, report; Goodwin to ER, 24 Jan. 1935; Scheider to Kathryn Goodwin, 5 Feb. 1935, with photographs of the riders, which ER appreciated, led by Elizabeth Fullerton, Dir. Women’s Work, Ky.; Woodward to ER, 26 Oct. 1935, “This shows that as fast as General McCarl releases funds, women are being put to work along with the men.”

275–76 practice houses; sewing rooms: Woodward to ER, 7 Mar. 1936; 31 Oct. 1935; Woodward to ER, 6 Feb. 1935; 7 Feb. 1935; Woodward to ER, 3 Sept. 1935, with enclosures, on sewing rooms, which employed over 200,000 women, and purchased 150 million yards of cotton textiles—a boon to the cotton industry; Box 672; “For the first time in history,” WPA: ER to Woodward, 16 Nov. 1935, recommending June Hamilton Rhodes and Mary Dillon for her national advisory committee; Woodward to ER, 21 Dec. 1935; 7 Mar. 1936.

275–76 Woodward to ER: 25 May 1936; ER to Woodward, re glowing defense of NY’s sewing project, “I think it is grand!” 3 June 1936.

276–77 ER’s article, “Can a Woman”: ER to Hick, 30 July 1935; negative publicity: cf. Times Dispatch, 17 June 1935, in Hick, Box 2.

278 displeased by the first meeting of the AYC: ER wrongly understood it to be influenced by AYC organizer Viola Ilma’s visits with German, and Italian youth groups.

278 For the AYC’s origins, and Detroit meeting, see Leslie Gould, American Youth Today (Random House, 1940), with foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt. I am grateful to Vivian Cadden for this book. 1935 meeting, pp. 63–66; for Viola Ilma’s 1934 beginnings at NYU, pp. 54–62.

278–79 NYA’s first conference on black youth: Aubrey Williams to ER, 13 July 1935; George Peabody to ER, “I am glad to think of the conference of Negro Leaders he is to call,” 23 July; 70. Williams to ER, 16 Aug., with report, 70, Box 671. ER to Williams, 28 Aug. 1935; Williams to ER, 22 Aug., with Pittsburgh Crusader article of the meeting, 16 Aug. 1935; 100.

279 Throughout the summer: Walter White to ER, 13 June 1935; White to Hopkins, 12 June; ER to White, 1 Aug. 35, with Hopkins’s 22 July wage schedules; 100.

279–80 Early was irate: Steve Early to Malvina Scheider, 5 Aug. 1935; 100; “I realize perfectly”: ER to Early, 8 Aug. 1935, PPF, 1336.

280 As ER prepared to leave: ER to Hick, 3 Aug. 1935; “After all dear”: 12 Aug. 1935; cf. 6, 8 Aug. 1935.

280–81 “Not one damned thing”: Hick to ER, 7 Aug. 1935; In Buffalo: 9 Aug. 1935. Ishbell Ross, another pioneering woman reporter, was working on the first major history of women in journalism, Ladies of the Press, and had written Hick. Relieved to know that she was not alone in her feelings, she sent Ross’s letter to ER:

“Yesterday I heard from Winifred Black who, at 72, says she still cannot bear to stay away from a newspaper office and has no patience with her only daughter because she chose marriage instead of a newspaper career. Beyond a doubt, it’s got something, Lorena. We cant all be crazy….”

281 14 August 1935: a generation of feminist scholars led by Alice Kessler-Harris, Linda Gordon, and Mimi Abramowitz have fully explained the connections between the 1935 Social Security law and America’s acceptance of permanent poverty.

282 Social Security Act a first step: See esp. ER, “Are We Overlooking the Pursuit of happiness?” Parent’s Magazine (Sept. 1936), 21ff.

282 Hilda Worthington Smith to ER, with book Frontiers, n.d., 1935, Box 655.