15: Mobilizing for New Action

283 ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 26 Aug. 1935; “In Defense of Curiousity,” The Saturday Evening Post, 24 Aug., 1935, reprinted in Allida Black, 17–25. Upon her return from Campobello, ER and Hick settled Louis Howe into the naval hospital and then drove north to Chautauqua. ER presented a rousing speech on community responsibility for America’s neediest and still neglected people.”

284–85 Initial U.S. response to Mussolini: in Breckenridge Long, The War Diary of Breckenridge Long, ed. by Fred L. Israel (University of Nebraska Press, 1966), pp. xviii, xix; Long to FDR 1, 27 June 1933; “at war within two years”: Long to FDR, 21 Feb. 1935; By September: Long to FDR, 6 Sept. 1935; Long to Joseph Davies, 16 Sept. 1933; FDR at cabinet, 27 August 1935: Ickes, pp. 422–23.

286 George Padmore, “Abyssinia Betrayed by the League of Nations,” The Crisis, June 1937, 166ff.

286 Winston Churchill: quoted in Manchester, 160–61.

287 Haile Selassie: quoted in Padmore, p. 188.

287 “May I draw your attention”: E. Benson to ER, 23 Nov. 1936, from 1 Swiss Cottage Rd., London SE/100.

288 “When the League failed Ethiopia”: David Bradford, “The Failure of Geneva,” The Crisis, Sept. 1936, p. 270; Dorothy Detzer, “Ethiopia at Geneva,” The Crisis, Dec. 1935, 361 ff.

288 Walter White to ER, 12 Sept. 1935; ER to White, 16 Sept. 1935.

288–89 On Anna and Harold’s courtship and marriage, see Jeanne Nienaber Clarke, Roosevelt’s Warrior: Harold Ickes and the New Deal (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 13–14, 30–32, 50–52; T. H. Watkins, p. 307. On the demise of their marriage, T. H. Watkins, pp. 148–51; Clarke, pp. 90–91.

289 Anna Ickes’s death: NYT, 1 Sept. 1935; on funeral, 4 September 1935: T. H. Watkins, pp. 408–10.

289 “It’s funny what sex can do to a man”: Jeanne Clarke, pp. 52–54.

289 When Genno Herrick returned to Washington, ER, Tommy, and their friends (Martha Strayer, Emma Bugbee, Ruby Black, and Bess Furman) surprised her with a “swell party right around her bed,” where she remained for several months. Beasley, ER and the Media, pp. 61, 105.

290 “I’m glad you like Jane Ickes”: ER to Anna, 12 Aug. 1938; 30 Aug.; Anna Halsted, Box 57.

290 “Will I ever have any leisure”: ER to Hick, 5 Sept. 1935; “Mama is furious”: 6 Sept. 1935.

290 ER’s daily column; Hick edited: ER to Hick, 8 Sept; “structure”: 10 Sept. 1935; “tough as you like,… don’t mind at all”: 14 Sept. 1935.

290–91 Huey Long was shot: William Ivy Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey Long (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press), pp. 320–26; see also Jeansonne and T. Harry Williams.

291 ER in Detroit: Detroit Evening Times, 10 Sept. 1935, “Better Homes Visioned by First Lady,” Vera Brown; 10 Sept. 35, Detroit Free Press, “A fluttering handkerchief fells a house,” Helen Bower; in Hall Roosevelt’s scrapbook, thanks to Diana Jaicks and ER II.

292 Felix Frankfurter to ER, 30 Apr. 1936, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 520.

293 White to ER, with W.E.B. Du Bois’s book, 3 Sept; ER to White, 10 Sept. 1935.

293 black woman journalist: Lash, p. 519; Early to ER, 11 Sept. 1935.

293 “Just nothing”: Hall to ER, 7 Apr. 1937; ER to Ickes, 9 Apr.; Burlew to ER 14 Apr., with enclosure/ 70.

293 Dec. 1935 housing meeting: After that meeting, ER worked closely with individual members of the NYC Housing Authority, Langdon Post, chair, Mary Simkovitch, Rev. E. Roberts Moore, Louis Pink, and B. Charney Vladek; NYT, 4 Dec. 1935.

294–95 “Ma is really getting a kick”: Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 231.

295 “I could shake you”: ER to Hick, 21 Sept. 1935; “I don’t quite deserve”: Hick to ER, 23 Sept.

295 “Missy tried it”: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, Nov. 1934, Elinor Morgenthau Papers, FDRL.

295 Esther Lape on Elinor Morgenthau: interview with Lash, 17 Feb. 1970, Lash MSS.

295–96 Hick from Cleveland, 25 Sept. 1935; ER from California, 19 Sept. 1935. Ickes on shipmates, p. 449–50; on Pa Watson and Harry Hopkins, p. 461.

297 Hick certainly would have enjoyed the country’s enchanting beauty, at least. 28, 29 Sept; 1, 2 Oct. 1935.

298 ER spent her birthday at Val-Kill with Tommy, Henry Osthagen, Earl Miller, and others including Molly Dewsoh, with whom she played good tennis. ER received a gold chain, among other presents from Hick.

298 “If FDR could get out this year!”: ER to Hick, 23 Oct. 1935.

298–99 Hick’s report from West Virginia: Hick to ER, 16 Oct. 1935. Red House, in Putnam County, West Virginia, was renamed “Eleanor.” It was populated by unemployed chemical and munitions workers, stranded after World War I.

299–300 Hick’s 19 Oct. 1935 nine-page single-spaced report from Red House; “Yow confirmed”: ER to Hick, 24 Nov. 1935; see also ER to Hick 14 Oct.

301–2 ER to Urban League, 12 Dec. 1935, published as “The Negro and Social Change,” Opportunity Magazine, Jan. 1936, pp. 14–15.

301–2 “damn this women’s work”: Hick to ER, 10 Dec. 1935.

302 “ER outraged about the maids”: 13 Dec.

302 “don’t let anyone hold memorials”: ER to Hick, 19 Dec. 1935.

302–3 Lillian Smith in Cliff, ed., p. 206; cf. Rose Gladney, How Am I to Be Heard? Letters of Lillian Smith (University of North Carolina, 1993).

303 FDR on Dodd: in Ickes, p. 494; only Dodd refused to attend the Nazi Nuremberg rally. Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know (Little, Brown, 1993), pp. 33–34.

16: A Silence Beyond Repair

304–5 Maria Meyer Wachman to ER, 5 Jan. 1934/100/1324. When I first referred to Wachman’s letter in Marjorie Lightman, Joan Hoff, eds., several historians wrote to me to express doubt about its early date. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a monument has been erected to one of Hitler’s most abusive centers of detention and torture. It opened in April 1933, and is commemorated nowwhere it originally stood in history’s triangle between the Bauhaus Museum and the Reichstag, just beyond the Wall’s rubble.

306 On Hoover’s willingness for Japan to serve as an anticommunist barrier, see William A. Williams, American-Russian Relations (Rinehart, 1952), p. 226.

306 Ivy Low Litvinoff an “ER type”: George Fischer to author.

306 One segment of the business community, led by Raymond Robins and Senator Borah, had called for recognition and trade from the beginning. Russia agreed to pay: Bullitt, pp. 29, 49. Debts after 1934, Feis, 1933, p. 266.

307 “Well, now Max”: in Ted Morgan pp. 397–98; ER, TIR, pp. 134–35; Ickes, p. 124; Perkins, p. 143; Dallek, p. 81.

307 Perkins on Nazi propaganda: Ickes, p. 111–12.

308 ER to Hick, 13 Nov. 1933.

308 See Lape papers; Lamont quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 590.

308 telephone conversation, and “My husband told me”: TIR, p. 134.

308 Dickerman and Mary Simkhovitch promoted the idea of John Dewey for the U.S.’s first ambassador, MD to ER, n.d., Nov. 1933.

308–9 Bullitt’s mission to Russia released to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sept. 1919; Bullitt in Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens, pp. 246–49; to Bernard Baruch, p. 250; “at least eleven wars”: pp. 253–4; “lie on the sand”: Steffens, p. 303.

309 to Moscow, 11 Dec. 1933: Orville Bullitt, p. 18.

309 Bullitt denied Jewish roots, but his detractors referred to his mother, Louisa Gross Horwitz, a descendant of Berlin scholars and physicians, including eminent surgeon Samuel Gross. Although she was Episcopalian, her heritage raised questions of Jewish ancestry.

309–10 Spring 1934, “to explore”: Clarence Pickett, For More Than Bread, p. 93; “confidential report to our friends,” Pickett to ER, May 1934, 70, Box 628.

310 During his first weeks in Vienna, Franz von Papen boasted: “Southeastern Europe to the borders of Turkey was Germany’s natural hinterland.” Papen’s mission was to achieve “German economic and political control over the whole of this region.” Austria was to be the “first step.” Quoted in Winston Churchill, pp. 103–4. cf. For More Than Bread, pp. 98–100.

312 State Department memo to ER, opposing international radio broadcast: Gertrude Bussey, Margaret Tims, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1965 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1965), p. 151.

312 “a new tulip” mistake: 13 May 1935, Steve Early to Malvina Scheider/ 70/660; Scheider to William Phillips, 15 May 1935; Phillips to Scheider, 16 May 1935, etc.

313–14 TR also protested, in 1902 and 1905, against violent pogroms. Correspondence over Tydings resolution in Greenway Papers, Tucson.

313–14 Herman Lewkowitz to Isabella Greenway, 25 Jan. 1934; Greenway to Lewkowitz, 7 Apr. 934; Greenway Mss 31, Box 55, “Jews,” Tucson; on the Tydings Resolution see also Arnold Offner, American Appeasement, pp. 81–83.

313–14 “Four of us”: ER, My Day, Jan. 1936; pp. 15–16.

314 Mock trial: cf. Offner, pp. 82–83.

314 Hitler and Dodd: Offner, p. 68; Dodd Diary, 16 June 1933, pp. 4–6.

315 Sarah Gertrude Millin, The Night Is Long (London: Faber & Faber, 1941), pp. 249–55. I am grateful to Merle and Martin Rubin for this reference.

317 Henry Morgenthau III: In 1978, Oral History, FDRL, p. 74.

317 Brains Trust on Baruch: Margaret Coit, Mr. Baruch, pp. 429–30.

317 “Jew party”: ER to SDR, 14 Jan. 1918; 16 Jan. 1918; see BWC, I.

317 On Frankfurter: ER to SDR, 12 May 1918.

318 ER and Baruch, during the Smith campaign: Coit, p. 374.

318 “One of the wisest”: TIR, p. 256; “There are few”: ER to Baruch, 16 May 1936; cf. Coit, p. 451.

318 Baruch, and Churchill the gambler: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill/ Alone, 1932–1940 (Little, Brown, 1988, pp. 13–15; see also Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 379; Coit, pp. 190–93, 272–273.

318 Baruch esoteric womanizer: Helen Lawrenson, Stranger at the Party: A Memoir, pp. 107; 136–37; Hobcaw and biographical details: Coit pp. 13, 27, 317–18; Laurenson, p. 148; and Patricia Spain Ward, Simon Baruch: Rebel in the Ranks of Medicine, 1840–1921 (University of Alabama, 1994), pp. 83, 92, 316n43.

320 For Ford’s “paper pogrom”: See Lewis Carlson and George Colburn, In Their Place: White America Defines Her Minorities (Wiley, 1972) pp. 259–61; Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 81–84 and passim. Ford’s apology to Samuel Livingston, 7 Jan. 1942, ADL papers, with thanks to Ernest Nives.

320 Baruch reviled: Coit, 35–37; 359; 361; 469.

320 Felix Frankfurter once remarked to Baruch’s great friend Herbert Bayard Swope that he thought Baruch was “kidding himself” to think he was in a different category from other Jews. Frankfurter and Walter Lippmann both worked in Newton Baker’s Office of War Information, then criticized for employing too many Jews. Lippmann asked Frankfurter: “‘What is a Jew anyhow?’” Frankfurter offered, “as a working definition”: Anybody “‘whom non-Jews regard as a Jew.’” Jordan Schwarz, The Speculator: Bernard Baruch in Washington (University of North Carolina Press, 1981), p. 560.

320–21 Henry Morgenthau, Sr., on Palestine: Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (Knopf, 1983), p. 72.

321 Henry Morgenthau, Jr., “drive for total Americanization”: Mostly Morgenthaus, pp. 80–81; 274; Elinor Morgenthau blackballed by the Colony Club: ER to NYT, 1937. Bill Preston’s friend John Marquand said his mother (Christina Sedgwick) also resigned in protest when ER did: He was certain, since she spoke about it subsequently, and often. Henry HI described his own sense of brooding adolescent loneliness at school the year his parents moved to Washington, and Hitler came to power. His grandfather visited him at Deerfield in the spring of 1933, and gave him Edgar Ansel Mowrer’s Germany Puts the Clock Back: “It was as though my concept of Jewish alienation had permeated my sensibilities….” Mowrer’s book “chilled me to the marrow of my bones.”

Mowrer, The Chicago Daily News’s Berlin correspondent, was accused of exaggeration when he wrote in March 1933 that Germany had become an “insane asylum.” When the State Department’s Allen Dulles visited Berlin, he told Mowrer he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” As president of the Foreign Press Association, he retained significant support among journalists, and the State Department did nothing when Hitler demanded his resignation. But on 20 Aug. 1933, his publisher Frank Knox transferred him to Tokyo. Mowrer left behind his prescient words: The goal of Hitler’s “barbarous campaign was the extermination, permanent subjection or voluntary departure of the Jews from Germany.”

See Mostly Morgenthaus, pp. 269–70; on Mowrer, Lipstadt, Beyond Belief, p. 25ff; Offner, p. 69.

321 Louise Wise to ER, 27 Oct. 1933/100, Box 1282.

321–22 ER to Mrs. Stephen S. Wise, American Jewish Congress, 14 Nov. 1933/100/1282; Louise Wise to ER, 22 Nov. 1933. On 23 Nov. 1933 ER presented the American Hebrew Medal to Carrie Chapman Catt at City College. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., presided; Rabbi Isaac Landman and Einstein celebrated Cott’s work.

322 ER at the Hotel Commodore: NYT, 29 Feb. 1934; “Mrs. Catt to Receive the Hebrew Medal,” NYT, 17 Nov. 1933; “Mrs. Catt Honored,” Praised by ER, NYT, 24 Nov. 1933; “Catt, Women Ask Haven for Nazi Victims,” NYT, 19 Mar. 1934.

322 NYT, 1 Mar. 1934; Florence Rothschild, “The Mistress of the White House,” The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 9 Mar. 1934; FDR/PPF, Box 1.

323 ER received hate mail, and letters of polite protest: As a “ninth generation” American, “of the same stock as you and your husband,” and also an officer of “The Netherlands Society of Philadelphia,” one correspondent wanted ER to know that she would only hurt her husband’s future if she persisted complimenting Jews. H.S.J. Sickel to ER, 5 May 1934; ER to Sickel, 16 May 1934/100,1320.

323 On Ruth Liberman: ER to Dr. J. Edgar Park, President, Wheaton College, 4 June 1936/ 100 1397; cf. ER to Armand May, Hebrew Orphanage of Atlanta, 13 Jan. 1934/100/1309; ER to Rabbi Louis L. Mann, to speak at his Temple, Chicago Sinai Congregation, 16 Sept. 1936; ER to Ruth Oppenheimer, 30 Sept. 1934/100/1313.

323–24 Felix Frankfurter to FDR, and James McDonald’s letter to Frankfurter, 20 Nov. 1933, in Freeman, ed., p. 173ff; 20 February 1934 telegram, pp. 194–95; FF to FDR, 22 Mar. 1934, p. 209.

324 answered paragraph by paragraph: FDR to FF, 24 Mar. 34.

325 “It glittered and it glared”: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 101–2ff.

326 Madison Square Garden rally, NYT, 7 Oct. 1934; Jewish Examiner, 12 Oct. 1934; in Mrs. S. Miller to ER, 18 Oct. 1934; ER to Mrs. Miller, 12 Nov. 1934; 100, Box 1310.

327 In honor of ER’s address and her 50th birthday, she received a “tree certificate” which announced that fifty trees would be planted in the Hadassah Forest at Kiryath Anavim, near Jerusalem. “Zionism held hope of Jew in Europe … Mrs. Roosevelt honored …,” NYT, 17 Oct. 1934.

328 Alice Youngbar to ER, with article on Dachau, 20 Nov. 1934/100/1326; ER to Miss Youngbar, Oswego, Oregon, 11 Dec. 1934.

329–30 For information relating to the Brodsky family, I am grateful to Dr. Michael Brody for his family’s correspondence and memorabilia. See, NYT 8 Feb. 1934; Florence Rothschild’s 9 Mar. 1934 article also referred to Bertha Brodsky, and to ER’s frequent gifts to the residents of Washington’s Jewish Old People’s Home, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 9 Mar. 1934. ER to Bertha Brodsky, 28 Feb. 1934/Henrietta Nesbitt to Bertha re cherries, 22 June 1934; monthly notes, Feb. 1934 to Apr. 1935, Brody collection.

330 See also ER to Bertha Brodsky, 2 Apr. 1935; Milgrim to ER 22 Apr. 1935/100, Box 1349; ER to Rex Tugwell, 8 May 1935/100 668; Frank Brodsky to ER, 10 June 1935/Brody coll; ER to Rex, 19 June 1935/ 70 Box 668; ER to Bertha 3 July 1936, Brody coll. ER left bonds to Brodsky grandchildren; and remained close to Frank, who had monthly breakfasts with ER until her death.

330 Dec. 1933 Woman’s Home Companion; and cf. NYT 19 Dec. 1933.

330–31 On 10 December, ER said to the National Student Federation: “Peacetime can be as exhilarating to the daredevil as wartime. There is nothing more exciting than building a new social order.”

331 “We can’t go on that way”: ER in NYT, “Students March to White House,” 22 Dec. 1933.

331 Hick’s report from Ajo, May 1934; Dodd to R. Walton Moore, PSF Dodd, 5 Nov. 1934.

331 Hick to ER 4 May 1934; 8 May to Hopkins, in Beasley, p. 250.

331 On Ethiopia’s resistance, see esp. NYT “Ethiopia woman to lead 15,000 men,” 10 Oct. 1935 and The Crisis on Ethiopia.

332 George Biddle, “Artists’ Boycott of Berlin Olympics Art Exhibition,” in Matthew Baigell & Julia Williams, eds., Artists Against War and Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists’ Congress (Rutgers University Press, 1986), pp. 90–91.

332 “Stay Out of the Olympics,” The Crisis, Sept. 1935, p. 273.

332 “Fair Play in Sports”: NYT, 15 July 1936; “Mahoney Declares Boycott is Reason for Olympic Deficit,” NYT, 7 July 1936.

333 Not everyone fooled: NYT, 12 Jan. 1936; feast of Nazi pageantry: NYT, 6 July 1936.

333 Also, N.Y.’s Emmanuel Celler and Rhode Island’s Senator Peter Gerry raised the issue of a boycott to oppose persecutions of Jews and Catholics; NYT, 14 Aug. 1935; “Buffalo Jews in Protest,” against “the savagery and barbarism of the Hitler regime,” and call for a boycott of the 1936 games: NYT, 14 Aug. 1935.

333 The Crisis editorialized: “America’s track ace, Jesse Owens,” put Hitler “on the spot. He has been telling the Germans … that they are the chosen people … and all others, especially Jews and Black people, are the low scum of the earth…. Yet here before the amazed German nation were black and brown boys winning honors. Hitler could have greeted all winners impartially…. But Hitler is a small man.”

333 The Crisis, Sept. 1936, p. 273.

17: Red Scare and Campaign Strategies, 1936

335–36 Ethiopia, the Living Newspaper: Hallie Flanagan to ER, with Baker to Flanagan, 18 Jan. 1936/70; ER to Flanagan, 21 Jan.; Baker to Flanagan, 23 Jan.; Flanagan, Arena, pp. 64–66; Jane DeHart Matthews, The Federal Theatre, pp. 65–73.

336–37 ER censored Chicago revue: Flanagan to ER; ER to F, 13 Feb. 1936; Flanagan to ER, telegram with script, 9 Dec. 1936.

338 “When in New York”: ER to Jacob Baker, 19 Feb. 1936; Report and History of Federal Art Project, n.d., to ER, as of 15 Feb. 1936, ibid. /70, Box 675.

339 women and work: “First Lady Outstanding Forum Leader,” School Life (Mar. 1936), p. 177ff; Studebaker to ER 19 Mar. 1936; ER to Studebaker, 21 Mar. Protest mail: see esp. Jesse Gordon, with address, to ER, 22 Aug. 1935; ER to JG, “I am afraid your attitude,” 29 Aug. 1935, 100, Box 1339.

339 General Federation of Women’s Clubs: ER to Clara Kelley, 29 Feb. 1936/100; tea and dinner for Federation, 15, 17 Jan., Democratic Digest, Mar. 1936.

339 ER on Mary Breckenridge: Democratic Digest, Mar. 1936; ER’s press conference, 4 Feb. 1936.

339 ER and Charl Williams, “Microphone Duet”: Independent Woman (May 1936), pp 145–46; cf. ER’s Dec. 1937 article for Good Housekeeping: “Should Wives Work?”

340 but they did create a jolly atmosphere: ER to Hick, 4 Jan. 1936.

340 “you were low”: ER to Hick, 14 Jan. 1936; “we’ll forget I’m in N.Y.”: ER to Hick, 17 Jan. 1936.

340 “being leisurely with Newky,” “You have in the savings $255.43”: ER to Hick, 19 Jan. 1936;

340–41 ER’s answers to Hick’s lost letters sounded hurt and angry. After some earnest negotiation, she gave up: “I’m not making any plans ahead but I will keep your dates in mind and be here as much as possible! There, is that indefinite enough?” One of Hick’s letters seemed to ER incredible: “What a fool letter that was! I could hardly believe it.” ER to Hick, cf. esp. 26, 28 Jan. 1936.

341 Al Smith and Liberty League: NYT, pp. 25, 26, Jan; Cousin Corinne: ER to Hick, 24–26 Jan. 1936.

341–42 ER to press conference: “Preserving Civilization,” in NYT, 29 Sept. 1935; ER to Jeannette Rankin, 25 Jan. 1936, NCPW, Box 74, SCPC; NYT 22 Jan., Catt, Mary Woolley, ER, Britain’s Kathleen Courtney, at Cause and Cure of War; also, Dem. Digest, March To Youth Congress: NYT, 2 Feb. 1936; Pickett arranged ER’s peace tour, and subsequent broadcasts scheduled for Apr.: 4/15 broadcast after dinner; ER’s Mar. lecture tour “for charity,” was billed as “Ways to Peace,” NYT 4 Mar. 1936.

342 a scintillating evening: ER to Hick, 5 Feb. 1936.

342–43 Anna Louise Strong: Wald to ER, 17 Jan. 35; ER to Wald, 21 Jan. 100; on Buro Bidgin, see Robert Weinberg, with Bradley Berman photographs, Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland, 1928–1996 (University of California Press, 1998). Unfortunately, this book fails to deal with refugees and the settlement’s role as a temporary sanctuary.

343 Anna Louise Strong: see Cedric Belfrage and James Aronson, Something to Guard: The Stormy Life of the National Guardian, 1948–1967 (Columbia, 1978), p. 87; Ella Winter, And Not to Yield: An Autobiography (Harcourt, 1963), p. 118. Tracy Strong and Helene Keyssar, Right in Her Soul: The Life of Anna Louise Strong (Random House, 1983); ER to Hick, [12] Feb. 1936; Strong to ER, 13 Feb. 1936.

343 “so very, Very sorry”: ER to Hick, 18 Feb. 1936.

344 ER’s friends argued for a more liberal immigration policy. During her visit in May 1935 Jane Addams pointed out to FDR that the low price of wheat would be adjusted by new immigration. According to Perkins she said: “I figured it out the other day, Mr. President. It is just about what a million new immigrants a year would have eaten up. I think it is active population that is needed.” Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, p. 348.

344 Individual cases: Jurkowitz to Scheider, 28 Aug. 1935; Commissioner MacCormack to Perkins, 6 May 1935. Charles Milgram to ER re. two rabbis; ER to FP, 13 Oct. 1936; FP to ER, 20 Oct. 1936; ER, 70.

344 ER and Hick spent some part of Hick’s birthday week together, and then ER began a new series of well-paid lectures arranged and managed by the Colston Leigh Agency. Her first stop was Grand Rapids, Michigan, where ER finally met Alicent (Alix) Holt, “a charming person with a lovely face and I was so glad to see her.”

345 3,500 Southern Democrats met in Macon: NYT, 30 Jan. 1936. In April, the Senate Lobby Committee, chaired by Senator Hugo Black, which investigated the Macon “grassroots” convention, announced that it was supported primarily by the Liberty League: John J. Raskob, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Pierre du Pont were the principal backers of the 29 Jan. meeting, and donated $5,000 each. NYT, 17 Apr. 1936; Crisis editorial, Mar. 1936, p. 81.

While the South rallied against ER, she was pleased to note: “I do like Ishbell Ross”: ER to Hick, 18 Apr. 1936;

345 Walter White on Talmadge to ER, n.d., 1934, 100, box 1325.

345–46 Democratic women irate: Dewson to ER, 5 Nov. 1935, 100. ER to James Farley, 18 Apr. 1936.

346 Campaign details, ER to Farley, 18 Apr. 1936; Dewson to Farley, 15 Apr., with Leah Pollock’s offending letter; cf. ER to Tugwell, 18 Apr. 1936, 70, Box 700.

346 on Omlie and Vidal: ER to Farley; and cf. Amelia Earhart to ER, 15 Sept. 1936; and Vidal to Dewson, in Sue Butler, pp. 348–52.

346 Farley assured ER: ER to Farley, n.d., May 1936; Farley to ER, 9 May 1936, 70, Box 680.

347 WTUL: Rose Schneiderman to ER, 16 Apr. 1936, 100; RS reported that Max Zaritsky was to join David Dubinsky in his “courageous” resignation from the Socialist Party to be free to work for FDR; see also Pauline Newman to ER, 27 May 1936, Box 5, Schlesinger; Pauline Newman quoted in Orlick, pp. 158–59; cf. ER, Democratic Digest, July 1936.

347 ER and country women: NYT, 2, 3 June 1936.

370 Ishbel Ross, on ER and Hick, Ladies of the Press (Harper Brothers, 1936), pp. 311–22.

348–49 The April 1936 conference “On Better Housing Among Negroes” afternoon sessions featured noted black architect Hilyard Robinson; Nannie Burroughs, chair of the National Committee on Negro Housing; white activists John Ihlder and Anson Phelps Stokes; and Ethel Roberson Stephens, Department of Home Economics, Howard University. There were also panels on housing and health, the family, recreation, and education. Conference Schedule, 18 Apr. 1936, at Miner Teachers’ College, box 701; Florence Stewart to Scheider, 20 Apr. 1936, Box 698; Scheider to Stewart, 22 Apr.; Campbell Johnson, chair Conference Committee, to ER, 23 Apr. 1936, box 701: statistics on attendance and “the cttee on reports and records” will send your statement / to make revisions / since proceedings to be printed. But ER’s remarks seem to have disappeared, and were nowhere quoted. Minutes/ 29 May 1936.

349 As if in direct retaliation: Minutes of Emergency Meeting, 8 May 1936/Box 701.

349 Langston Project saved for African-Americans: Minutes, 29 May 1936.

349 FDR to Mac, 12 May 1936; Ihlder to ER, 9 May; 70, Box 687; the Wagner-Ellenbogen Housing Bill was delayed until after the election.

350 ER stunned by Howe’s death: ER to Hick, 19 Apr. 1936. 350 Howe’s funeral and burial: NYT, 20, 21, 22, 23 Apr. 1936.

350 On the train to Howe’s burial at Fall River, Massachusetts, ER wrote: “Death should be calm and serene when work is done and well done. There is nothing to regret, either for those who go, or for those who stay behind….” My Day, pp. 32–35.

350 ate at table, and Louis Howe Rasputin: Leila Styles, p. 224; Fannie Hurst’s colored glasses: Styles, pp. 169–71.

350–51 ER on Howe: TIR, 144–45; Autobiography, pp. 195–96; “Rabbit is the one”: ER to Hick, 20 Apr. 1936.

351 “He always wanted to ‘make’ me President when FDR was through, and insisted he could do it”: ER to Hick, 15 Nov. 1940. Louis Howe’s essay in Dewson, FDRL, Box 2.

18: The Roosevelt Hearth, After Howe

353 ER “loved him”: Frances Perkins, Columbia Oral History, vol. 2, p. 553.

354 Betsey Cushing Roosevelt awakened at 3:30 A.M.: Ted Morgan, p. 209. For Betsey Cushing as “rough,” “imperious,” “rivalrous with anybody,” see Sally Bedell Smith, In All His Glory: The Life of William S. Paley (Simon & Schuster, 1990) p. 248. ER liked “to lead:” Betsey to Ted Morgan, p. 448.

354 James Roosevelt, My Parents, pp. 106, 223–24, passim; “Staffing My Father’s Presidency: A Personal Reminiscence,” reprinted in “In Memoriam: James Roosevelt: 23 Dec. 1907–13 Aug. 1991,” Presidential Studies Quarterly (Fall 1991), pp. 845–46.

355 Tugwell and Barbara Hopkins: ER to Hick, 20 Apr. 1936.

356 Jeannette Bryce and “these men are naive!”: ER to Hick, 2, 5 May 1936.

356 Vineyard Shore School: See Hilda Smith to ER, 6 Feb. 1936; ER to Smith, 12 Feb. 1936.

357 “Reds Rule FERA Schools”: Washington Herald, 24 Feb. 1935; other clips, including a NY Post, 11 May 1935, criticizing the NYC School for Workers at the Henry Street Settlement; ER defended Smith.

357–58 “landscaping”: ER to Lieut. Francis A. Maloney, 2 Mar. 1936; Maloney to ER, 26 Feb. 1936, 100; “we have you …to thank”: Smith to ER, 21 Apr. 1936; see esp. Smith, Box 18, Schlesinger. Despite the 1934–35 Red Scare Hilda Smith had ER’s endorsement, and Hopkins agreed. See Scheider to Smith, 5 June 1935; Smith to ER, 2 Aug. 1935: “You will be glad to know … that the plan for educational camps for women has been approved,” and will be under the NYA. Aubrey Williams authorized 100 camps. ER to Smith, 25 Sept. 1935/ 70. Smith to ER, 23 May 1936; cf. correspondence re camp for delinquent girls, Knoxville, Tenn., Apr.-May 1936. Advisory Committee Meeting, 13 Apr. 1936, including Louise Stanley, Elizabeth Wickenden, Josephine Brown, others, Smith, chair. Smith to ER, plans for summer camps, 4 May 1936; summer 1936 statistics: Smith to ER, 23 Sept. 1936.

358 “Camp Jane Addams assailed as Red”: NYT, 3 July 1936; NYA camp not Red: ER, 9 July 1936; cf. ER’s correspondence with Mark McCloskey, and via Scheider, n.d., July 1936; re Sarah Rosenberg’s 25 June 1936 letter on Workers’ Alliance letterhead.

McCloskey to ER re new camp director, Mills removed, replaced by Bernice Miller, 4 Feb. 1936; cf. in March there was a meeting of the advisory committee to register “Negro girls,” and it was agreed that Cecilia Saunders of Harlem’s YWCA would be brought in to advise regarding “the right kind of Negro girl.” As for stipends: “It was decided that they should be given 50 cents a week.” McCloskey to ER, with minutes, 11 Mar. 1936.

358–59 garden party for National Training School for Girls: NYT, 16 May 1936, My Day, 8 May 1936.

359 unemployment “throbbing with human pain”: My Day, Apr. 1936, p. 37.

359–60 Hick’s report was immediately assailed by industrialists, and ER defended it. In June FDR sent a memo to ER that he had received statistics “to show that the figures which interested you and me so much were almost wholly incorrect.” ER replied that the facts came from “the Chamber of Commerce of Youngstown…. I wonder if any figures are accurate; everyone colors to please themselves….” ER to FDR, 16 June 1936, family, Box 594; the next year Hick’s report was entirely vindicated. Hick to ER, 17 Mar. 1937.

360 If you mind: ER to Hick, 6, 7 May 1936.

360 ER on SDR: My Day, May 1936, p. 41.

361 Dickerman lamented: Davis, Invincible Summer, p. 145.

361 FDR “upset”: ER to Hick, 28 May 1936; FDR to Robert Bingham, 4 May 1936, Letters, p. 587.

362 Val-Kill, and “I wonder where you are”: ER to Hick, 30–31 May 1936.

19: The Election of 1936

363 ER told press conference: NYT, 5 Feb. 1936.

364 Various deaths contributed to ER’s gloom in early June. ER to Hick, 1–6 June 1936. Her cousin Bobby Delano committed suicide, and then Joseph Byrns, the Speaker of the House died suddenly.

364 wearied “of cheering crowds”: ER to Hick, 10, 11 June 1936.

364 ER’s spirits, 10–16 June 1936.

364–65 Dionne quintuplets: ER to Hick, 13 June 1936.

365–66 ER at Val-Kill: ER to Hick, 19–21 June 1936.

366 Alice Hamilton and Alderson: ER to Hick, 24 June 1936.

366 listened on the radio, and future dates: ER to Hick, 25 June 1936.

366 Molly Dewson’s breakfasts: Furman, p. 241.

366–67 “I might get myself into trouble!”: ER to Dewson, 22 June; Dewson to ER, 20 May 1936.

367 “undignified and meaningless”: ER to Hick, 27 June 1936.

367 Perkins’s speech on ER: NYT, 25 June 1936; cf. Bess Furman. The next day Fannie Hurst also presented a praisesong for ER, who “is more than a pioneer.”.

367 women in Philadelphia “made history”: Furman, pp. 240, 227.

368 Daisy Harriman and Alice Longworth: Furman, p. 240.

368–69 KKK violence and Red Scare again on agenda: In 1935 Dewson, who sought to protect FDR, was not prepared to tackle the race issue directly. Dewson, Women’s Division, Box 118.

369 Emma Guffey Miller championed ER in her speech on 16 June. See NYT 17 June 1936; On their split, see Dewson to Alice Disbrow, 11 June, Box 118; Furman, pp. 242–45.

369–71 largest political rally: Furman, pp. 245–46; speech quoted in The Essential FDR, pp. 113–19.

369–70 Arthur Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, pp. 582–85.

371 ER on FDR’s speech: My Day, 28 June 1936; Ickes, pp. 626–27; ER wanted rhetoric transformed: Democratic Digest, Aug. 1936, p. 3; ER’s advice to women in political life: Democratic Digest, July 1936, p. 3.

372 “Hate myself”: ER to Hick, 27 June, 28 June 1936.

373 coordinated activities: ER and Dewson, 15 July 1936, list and plans, Women’s Committee, Box 117; meetings: see Ruby Black, p. 138.

373 Kathleen McLaughlin: “Mrs. R. Goes Her Way…,” NYT, 5 July 1936.

373–74 “I’m an idiot”: ER to Hick, 8 July 1936.

374 from Lake Superior: Hick to ER, 27,28 June 1936.

374 no plans to see each other: ER to Hick, 8, 9 July 1936.

374–75 in Chicago with Kruger: Hick to ER, 11 July 1936.

375 aboard the Potomac: Ickes, p. 629.

375 That weekend, ER and Esther rode together, but “Esther couldn’t hold Pal, so we had an exciting ride.” ER to Hick, 11–12 July 1936.

375–76 Ickes’s party: Ickes, pp. 634–35.

377 “While FDR smiles and fishes”: Ickes, pp. 639–40, 18 July 1936.

377 Ickes despaired: Ickes, pp. 643–46.

377 the women were organized: See Ickes, Agnes Leach to Virginia Rishel, 14 May, Women’s Division, 118; Molly Dewson to Ruth Bryan Owen, 31 Mar. 1936.

377 Owen to Dewson on Phoebe Omlie, 28 Apr. 1936, Dewson, Box 3.

378 Owen/Rohde wedding: Bess Furman: pp. 247–48.

378–79 ER’s memo, 16 July 1936: FDR Letters pp. 598–601. In addition, ER sent Farley a more specific letter about “zealous” fund-raising practices. Also, she wanted Farley to give Ed Flynn “some definite responsibility.”

Jim Farley replied with a ten page single-spaced point-by-point answer. Zealous solicitations would be watched by Forbes Morgan. Ed Flynn would be brought into headquarters. In addition to Will Alexander and Sidney Hillman, Sam Ray-burn would run the speakers’ bureau; Leon Henderson would be in charge of research. Sol Rosenblatt was named chair of the Motion Picture Division. He promised to send her all significant reports, throughout “the entire campaign,” as well as “all letters which in my judgment carry information that you should have….” ER to Farley, 16 July; Farley to ER, 25 July 1936, 70. Farley’s upset over FDR’s purge efforts, and Walter George, in James Farley, Jim Farley’s Story (McGraw-Hill, 1948), p. 128. See Mary White Ovington to ER, 28 May 1924, NAACP Papers, LC, Box C-70. I am grateful to Clare Coss for this reference.

380 “Cotton Ed” Smith: William Leuchtenberg, The FDR Years (Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 130.

380 “for the purpose of permissive ravishment”: Arthur Schlesinger, p. 522; for the ditty see Leonard Dinnerstien, p. 109.

381 Almost nonchalantly: ER to Hick re TIMS, 22 July 1936.

382 ” ‘Where’s his hat?’ “: Wald’s ice story was later used by FDR in a momentous speech, against Liberty Leaguers and businessmen who lost his top hat, with great effect. Lillian Wald, “Why I Am for Roosevelt,” Women’s Democratic News, Aug. 1936, pp. 2, 4, 13.

382 ER on Wald: My Day, 21 Aug. 1936. Wald told ER she was convinced that college students had achieved a new interest in world affairs because of her activities. It was, she wrote ER, “largely due to you” that the situation turned around. Constance Cummer for LDW to ER, 12 Mar. 1935; 100, Box 1361; Wald to ER, 7 Aug. 1936.

382 FDR rushed to her bedside: NYT, 19 Sept. 1936.

383 Frances Perkins to ER, n.d.; Scheider’s note of thanks, 19 Sept. 1936; 70.

383 Wald to ER, 21 Sept. 1936; ER to LDW, 23 Sept. 1936.

383 Aubrey Williams to ER, 22 Sept. 1936, with 23 Sept. 1936 speech; ER to Williams, 25 Sept., 70; Hilda Smith to ER, 18 Sept. 1936; ER to Smith, 23 Sept. 1936. See also My Day, 18 Sept., 21 Sept. 1936.

383 “Terrifying reading”: My Day, 25 Sept. 1936.

384 “We read daily”: My Day, 9 Dec. 1936.

384 “victory rode the rails”: Bess Furman, p. 249; also birthday, p. 251.

384 In 1920, “glad for my husband”: TIMS, p. 311.

385 ER on Howe: TIMS, pp. 314–19; see ER, vol. I.

385 ER’s stereotypic words on race: for example, TIMS, pp. 295–96.

385 “wrung his neck”: ER to Anna, 12 Oct. 1936, Box 56; Mark McCloskey to ER, 19 Oct. 1936.

385 “Mollycoddle”: My Day, 5 Oct. 1936.

386 ER in Providence: Providence Journal, 22 Oct. 1936.

387 Providence Journal: FDR shared headlines with “Russia Prepares to Help Madrid with Warplanes:” Stalin convinced Europe at war’s brink, plans to end neutrality pact so that Spain will not become “another Rightist dictatorship similar … to Italy and Germany.”

387 “I have not sought” FDR in Syracuse: Burns, pp. 279–80.

387 FDR’s Madison Square Garden speech: Burns, pp. 282–83; Davis, pp. 644–45.

387 Ended an era: Moley, p. 352.

388 ER quoted: NYT, 1 Nov. 36.

388 The family voted: NYT, 4 Nov. 1936.

388 Election results: Davis, p. 647.

388 ER told reporters: NYT, 8 Nov. 1936.

388 ER at Temple University: NYT, 9 Nov. 1936.

20: Postelection Missions

389 “Just written Pa”: ER to Anna, 14 Nov. 1936.

389 “catarrh … a pest”: ER to Hick, 10 Nov. 1936; cf. NYT, 10 Nov.

389 speech went “well but very hectically”: ER to FDR, 11 Nov. 1936; and ER to Hick, 12 Nov. 1936.

390 N.Y. Fair job: ER to Hick, 10 Sept. 36; Hick to ER 11 Nov. 1936.

390 “For my sake?”: Hick to ER, 8 Nov. 1936.

391 “love Milwaukee”: Hick to ER, 9 Nov.; ER to Hick, 12 Nov. 1936.

391 in Milwaukee, no audience because communist: ER to Hick, 11 Nov.; Hick to ER 12 Nov. 1936.

392 ER enjoyed meeting Hick’s friends: particularly Tom and Clarissa Dillon. ER to Hick, 21 Nov. 1936.

392–93 visits with friends: 11, 12 Nov.; Hick to ER, 10 Nov., re her interview; ER to Hick 10, 11, 13 Nov. 1936.

393 Bye and Leigh ecstatic: Hick to ER, 13 Nov.; ER to Hick, 14 Nov. 1936.

393 Hall and Buick: ER to Hick, 17 Nov. 1936.

393–94 Ernestine Schumann-Heink, “happy in Valhalla!”: Hick to ER, 18 Nov. 1936.

394 wear her ring: ER to Hick, 20 Nov. 1936. This exchange has been misinterpreted as a “careless blow” representing a cruel reflection of their diminished friendship, Faber, p. 227; also Rodger Streitmatter, p. 198.

394 “She grouses”: ER to Gellhorn, 30 Nov. 1936, 100, Box 1380.

394 correspondence over World’s Fair publicity job: ER to Hick, 14, 16, 18 Nov.; Hick to ER, 17 Nov. 1936.

394 “I don’t approve”: ER to Hick, 20 Nov. 1936.

394 Anna and John to Seattle: Curiously, in 1936, ER wrote that Phoebe Hearst, Hearst’s mother whom she admired (and who died in 1919) traveled across country from Kansas City by stagecoach, with her six children. ER had six children, but Phoebe Hearst had only one, William Randolph—then in the process of absorbing the lives of several of her children. TIMS, pp. 221–22.

395 “John and Anna are blissful”: ER to Hick, 19 Nov. 36; ER to FDR, 22 Nov.; 27 Nov. 1936.

395 Hearst “slobbered”: Ickes, pp. 704–5.

396 Budget cuts: Davis, p. 663; ER agonized, to Anna: 10 Dec. 1936, Halstead, Box 56.

396 Hick’s reaction mixed: to ER, 20 Nov. 1936.

396 ER “an ogre”: ER to Anna, 16 Nov. 1936.

397 “You sound very jolly”: ER to FDR from Massachusetts General Hospital, 27 Nov. 1936.

397 “Survive all that gossip”: ER to FDR, 22 Nov. 1936; ER to Hick, 26 Nov. 1936.

397 confided her divided heart: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 26 Nov. 1936, E. Morgenthau Papers, FDRL.

397 ER seen to “munch” and game: NYT, 29 Nov. 1936; to Elinor Morgenthau; ER to FDR, 27 Nov. 1936.

397 ER kept worst news: ER to FDR, 22 Nov. 1936.

397 FDR to “Dearest Mama”: 17 Nov. 1936, Letters, pp. 630–31.

398 FDR to “Dearest Babs,” a “happy ship”: 26 Nov. 1936, ibid., p. 632. For a description of this event, see William Poundstone, “Queens for a Day: An Inside Look at the Navy’s Most Perverse Ritual,” Spy (Mar. 1993), pp. 50–53, ff.

398 “felt like an impostor”: James Roosevelt, Affectionately FDR: A Son’s Story of a Lonely Man (Harcourt Brace, 1959), p. 284; James was ultimately sufficiently embarrassed to retire his rank; although he never forgave his mother’s disapproval.

398 ER and Hick drove to Arthurdale: ER to Anna, 4–6 Dec. 1936.

398-99 from Rio: FDR to ER, 30 Nov. 1936; also to SDR, Letters, p. 634.

399 in Brazil: see Ken Davis, pp. 656–57.

399 in Montevideo, “don’t blow”: James Roosevelt, Affectionately, p. 288.

399 1 December, first Inter-American Conference address: FDR’s Selected Addresses, pp. 73–79.

400 many achievements, no mutual accord: Ickes, p. 15; Robert Dallek pp. 126–36.

401–2 Gus Gennerich’s death, FDR devastated: See Ted Morgan, p. 547, for examples of Gennerich and liquid revelries. FDR to ER, 2 Dec. 1936; ER to FDR 3 Dec. 1936, children, Box 16. Although FDR believed that Gennerich died of a heart attack, James subsequently suggested that his death was an aftermath of the equator crossing party when Gus hit his head with great force. He complained of headaches thereafter and, James believed, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. James Roosevelt, My Parents, pp. 237–38; “Gus was an amazing person”: Hick to ER, 6 Dec. 1936; FDR to ER, pp. 635–36; TIR, p. 149; Ken Davis, p. 660.

403 King Edward abdicated, toast: FDR to ER, 10 Dec. 1936.

403 FDR “disgusted”: Ickes, pp. 16–17.

403 “Poor little King”: Hick to ER, 5 Dec. 1936.

403 “Poor fellow”: Hick to ER, 10 Dec. 1936; 11 Dec. 1936.

403 ER, “his love too!”: ER to Hick, 10 Dec; also, 7 Dec. 1936.

404 Marshall Haley’s funeral: ER to Hick, 9 Dec; ER to Anna 10 Dec. 1936.

405 Earl Miller’s nerves “about like yours”: ER to Hick, 5 Dec. 1936.

405 “frying pan into the fire”: Hick to ER, 8 Dec. 1936.

405 dined with Baruch: ER to Anna, 7 Dec 1936.

405 “my work cut out”: ER to Hick, 7, 8 Dec; ER to Anna, 10 Dec., Halsted, Box 56.

405 “stumbled into a lot of the early letters”: Hick to ER, 6 Dec. 1936.

406 “now and always”: Hick to ER, 6 Dec. 1936.

21: Second Chance for the New Deal

407 “It takes a hungry man”: Hilda Smith to ER, 7 Dec. 1936; ER to Smith 16 Dec. 1936: “The President was very much interested in the story….”

407 Crystal Bird Fauset: ER to Farley, 14 Jan. 1937, 70, Box 710; see also Aubrey Williams to ER, with memo by Alfred Edgar Smith, in charge of Negro Activities for WPA, 20 Oct. 1936; The Crisis, Oct. 1936; on black vote: The Crisis, Dec. 1936, p. 396.

407 ER believed Walter White: See The Crisis, editorials, Jan. and Feb. 1937.

408 18 December 1936 cabinet meeting, in Ickes, vol. II, p. 20.

408 “rather dread the future”: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 17 Nov. 1936.

409 FDR nominated Hull for a Nobel Peace Prize annually, presumably for his reciprocal trade agreements. Hull was awarded the prize in 1945. FDR, Letters, pp. 642–43; FDR to R. Walton Moore, 28 Dec. 1936.

409 Claude Bowers to FDR, 26 Aug. 1936, Davis, p. 665; Bowers quoted, p. 653. See Supreme Court, “this vast external realm,” Time, 4 Jan. 1936.

409 “terrible catastrophe”: FDR to Bowers, 16 Sept. 1936, Letters, 614–15.

410 Dodd: Bullitt to FDR, 7 Dec. 1936; Bullitt, ed., p. 196.

410 “saying nothing”: ER to Anna, 6 Dec. 1936; “protested vehemently”: ER to Anna, 16 Dec. 1936.

411 happiest time of his life: James Roosevelt, Affectionately, pp. 290–94, 308.

411 Hick patient: Hick to ER, 7, 9, 10 Dec. 1936.

412 Bethune to study committee: Mack Roth to Pepper to McIntyre, to Wallace, 4 Dec. 1936; Will Alexander, RA, 9 Dec. 1936; PPF 9079.

412 Mary McLeod Bethune to ER re conference, 1 Dec. 1936; ER to Bethune 3 Dec.; re SDR’s tea, and Jan. conference, 8 Dec. 1936; 4 Jan. 1937, 100, Box 1366.

412 “new day has dawned”: Bethune to ER, 11 Jan. 1937, re Clara Bruce and “the wonderful conference”; quoted from 13 Jan. 1937, 100, Box 1415.

412 Gridiron Widows party: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 13 Nov. 1936, E. Morgenthau Papers.

412–3 Gridiron Widows parties: NYT, 10 Dec. 1933; 9 Dec. 1934; Bess Furman on 1934: Apple Mary, pp. 224–26; In TIR, ER credited Louis Howe for her makeover; Furman, pp. 224–26; 1936, Tobacco Road, Bess Furman, p. 237; Time, 4 Jan. 1937; NYT, 22 Dec. 1936, Romeo and Juliet; four hundred women cavorted at ER’s party, capped by a midnight supper in the State Dining Room.

440 Competitively: TIR, pp. 93–94.

414 lonely Christmas column: My Day, p. 98.

441 This problem is so vast: My Day, Dec. 1936, p. 99.

414 Ethel du Pont: ER to Anna, 1 Jan. 1937.

415 “Madame I salute you”: Hick to ER, 27 Dec. 1936.

415 “Don’t let ‘the eyes’ get you”: Hick to ER, 28 Dec. 1936.

415 With Tommy, ER moved into Peter Filene’s lovely home on 12 Otis Place: “What a sensible man to live like this, all you need for comfort, much charm and no fuss and feathers…. I think I could enjoy Boston. We should come here sometime!” ER to Hick, 29 Dec. 1936.

415 Carolyn Marsh: ER to Hick, 1 Jan. 1937; FDR rude to Alice: ER to Hick, 2 Jan. 1937.

416 “your poise more than human”: Hick to ER, 4 Jan. 1937.

442 Hick very social and not guilty about her book. Hick to ER, 18 Jan. 1937. 416 revealing column: My Day, Jan. 1937, p. 105.

416 plans for Charleston and New Orleans: Hick to ER, 16, 18 Jan. 1937; ER to Hick, 17 Jan. 1937.

416 “I hear less and less”: ER to Hick, 7 Jan. 1937.

443 In early January Hick was dazzled by ER’s bold words to the Junior League: “My dear, it was simply corking! Give it to ’em baby—straight from the shoulder! I like your speeches so much when you get very straight forward and say what you really think.” 8 Jan. 1937.

416–17 American Medicine, published in April 1937. The NY Times considered the American Foundation report incontrovertible. The AMA no long spoke for “organized medicine.” Lape’s team demanded “far-reaching, socially-conceived reforms in medical education and practice.” The Foundation’s report “refutes a Bourbonism which holds that all’s well.” The future required fundamental changes to serve community needs. Lape and Read embarked on a long crusade that FDR never did join. Patricia Spain Ward, “U.S. v. AMA et al.: The Medical Anti-Trust Case of 1938–1943,” American Studies (Fall 1989), and John Kingsbury, Health in Handcuffs, 1939.

417 FDR’s 6 Jan. speech did not reflect several areas that dominated ER’s correspondence, including federal aid to education, full employment, and renewed work on behalf of the Wagner-Costigan antilynch bill. Both the National Education Association and NAACP endorsed a Harrison-Fletcher bill for federal aid to education, which ER promised to support. White to ER, 5 Jan., 13 Jan. 1937; Virginius Dabney to White (to ER), 17 Jan., predicting the antilynch bill’s passage; ER to White, 25 Jan.; White to ER, 3 Feb., with DC Post article on poll, 30 Jan. 1937; ER’s penned reply atop page.

418 “Umbrellas and more umbrellas”: My Day, 21 Jan. 1937; announcers “said lovely things”: Hick to ER, 20 Jan. 1937; “gave Mrs. Helm a bad time”: ER to Hick, 22 Jan. 1937.

419 “Well, another four years”: ER to Anna, 20 Jan. 1937.

419 more introspective: ER to Hick, 21 Jan. 1937.

22: 1937

420 fourth annual National Public Housing Conference: NYT, 23 Jan. 1937; FDR to Mary Simkhovitch, 14 Jan. 37.

420 invited Harry Hopkins: ER to Harry Hopkins, 7 Jan. 1937, 70.

421 Fannie Hurst to ER, 13 Feb. 1937, Hurst Papers, Texas.

421 ER to FH, 16 Feb. 1937; “we are looking forward to your visit the 26th,” Texas.

421 “a liqueur for tender memory”: ER to FH, 5 Mar. 1937, Texas.

421 TIMS as tribute to Howe: TIR, p. 177.

421 Jane Hoey on social security restrictions: Ruby Black, pp. 170–71.

421–22 revisited National Training School for Girls: NYT, “Remodeled After Her Protests,” 4 Feb. 1937; “the mere sight”: My Day, Jan. 1937, p. 108.

422 to Junior Leaguers: NYT, 4 Feb., 55 WPA women from Atlantic City sewing project tour White House; ER urged Junior Leaguers to visit WPA projects themselves, and try “shoveling snow,” NYT, 8 Jan. 1937; Hopkins and ER campaigned for work not dole, 5 May 1936.

422 WPA art projects: My Day, 22 Jan. 1937.

422 Nikolai Sokoloff’s Federal Music Project report to ER: n.d., 1936, Box 681/70; cf. a letter of gratitude to ER “for saving” the Treasury Relief Art Project, PWA: We “are most happy to have received word that it is to be left intact.” Edward Bruce, also on behalf of Olin Dows, to ER, 12 May 1936, Box 676/70; re appropriations for 1935–1937 artists to decorate [2500] federal buildings, at going WPA rate, via EO 7046.

423 vacation plans at the Little House: Hick to ER, 22, 23 Jan. 1937. Hick loved everything about her new home, and planned to have stationery made up to read: The Little House/On the Dana Place/Moriches, Long Island. As for their vacation plans, ER was glad that Hick had been “blunt,” and would do whatever she enjoyed most; although ER still preferred the drive. ER to Hick, 25 Jan. 1937.

423 “Don’t be anybody’s Mrs. Moskowitz”: ER to Hick, 10 Feb. 1937.

423 “life can be diverting”: Hick to ER, 8 Feb. 1937.

423–24 Although U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies attended many of the trial sessions, there was little mention of the purges at this time. Indeed, Marjorie Merri-weather Post Davies wrote ER long letters from Moscow about the changes under way for women, and the ongoing suffering of the people due to years of famine and natural disasters, despite great material bounty and huge factories.

Marjorie Davies to ER, 3 Mar. 1937, PSF, Russia. See also Joseph Davies, Mission to Moscow (Simon & Schuster, 1941); Nancy Rubin, American Express: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post (Villard Books, 1995). Subsequently, ER wrote about the “horrors” of dictatorship which distorted “the real communist theory.” ER to Mrs. Maloney, 28 Nov. 1938, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, pp. 594–95.

423–24 Anna Louise Strong’s visit: ER to Hick, 2 Feb. 1937; Strongs goal in Tracy B. Strong and Helene Keyssar, Right in Her Soul: The Life of Anna Louise Strong (Random House, 1983), p. 171.

424 “the U.S. Army should be used! I ask you!”: ER to Hick, 10 Feb. 1937.

424 more young people in the CIO than in the AFL: ER in Ruby Black, p. 177.

424 Broun quoted in Ruby Black, p. 141; ER to press conf.: Beasley, p. 167; on Guild, p. 185; for Broun see Heywood Hale Broun’s Collected Edition of Heywood Broun (1941); and Alden Whitman, ed., pp. 124–25. ER condemned Sloan: Black, p. 172; moved to yearly wage: Black, pp. 182–83.

425 ER to YWCA: in NYT, 5 May 1934.

425 said nothing about sit-down strikes: Ruby Black, p. 178. However completely ER supported unionism, even the right of WPA workers to join the Workers’ Alliance, she opposed “the strike” as an inappropriate weapon for WPA and other federal workers “against the government,” in Ruby Black, p. 185.

426 ER with Evelyn Preston, to audience of over 1000, at League of Women Shoppers, N.Y., Ethical Culture Society, NYT, 9 Dec. 1937.

426–27 John L. Lewis and La Follette hearings: Saul Alinskey, John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography (Vintage, 1970 [1949]), pp. 89–94; Jerold S. Auerbach, Labor and Liberty: The La Follette Committee and the New Deal (Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), pp. 100–2 and passim; Alinskey on Lewis’s contribution to 7A, pp. 66–70; on La Follette; Alinskey, pp. 105–6.

427–28 Jack Barton (pseudonym for Bart Logan) and Gelders in Auerbach, pp. 94–5; 108; Robin Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 130–31, 184–85. I am grateful to Marge Frantz, Joe Gelders’s daughter, for background.

428 “Babies and Banners,” the film; Mary Heaton Vorse, “Women Stand By Their Men,” re Genora Johnson, mother of two and wife of strike leader Kermit Johnson, home and union fused, pp. 175–78; Vorse, “Soldiers Everywhere in Flint: Unionists Hold the Fort,” pp. 179–80; “The Emergency Brigade in Flint,” pp. 181–85, in Dee Garrison, ed., Rebel Pen: The Writings of Mary Heaton Vorse (New Feminist Library, Monthly Review, 1985); Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (University of Michigan Press, 1970), pp. 200–1, 279–80, passim; Philip Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement (Free Press, 1982), pp. 327–37.

428–29 strikers assumed; “Unarmed as we are”; Lewis to Detroit: Alinskey, pp. 127–30.

429 “deadly feud;” militia of 1300: Alinskey, pp. 144–47.

430 Majority favor unions: Feb. 1937, My Day, pp. 114–16.

430 “Nicholas Kelley, I am not afraid of your eyebrows”: Alinskey, p. 152.

432 ER defended her husband: My Day, 10 Feb. 1937; persuasive in Supreme Court columns: June Rhodes to ER, 15 Feb. 1937; Lape to Lash about Democratic opposition, and public confusion: Lape interview, Lash Papers; “might have saved himself a good deal of trouble”: TIR. For Supreme Court controversy, see especially Leuchtenberg.

432 Molly kissed Farley: ER in Democratic Digest, Apr. 1937.

432 Hick to ER, re Washington festivities, 12, 16 Feb. 1937.

433 Alice to tea: ER to Anna, 10 Jan. 1937, Box 57.

433 ER to Nan Honeyman, Jan. 1936: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 427.

433 Alice lost the competition: see Felsenthal, pp. 178–79; ER wrote Hick that she would divide the $75,000—spend half, and give the other half to causes, mostly Arthurdale.

433 On 16 February, drove off “in a young blizzard”: Tommy to “Dear Gorgeous,” n.d., Feb. 1937, ARH, Box 75; ER’s Apr. Democratic Digest column tells the story of 16 Feb.

433 On 24 Feb., ER and Frances Perkins attended Maud O’Farrell Swartz’s funeral. ER was close to the WTUL activist, Rose Schneiderman’s partner of 23 years, then secretary of N.Y. State’s Department of Labor. Maud Swartz had initiated a WTUL campaign to unionize laundry workers, and end the domestic workers’ “slave markets,” whereby housewives hired day workers at dreadful wages from street corners. ER supported the WTUL’s campaign for standardized salaries and minimum wages for domestic workers. N.Y. Governor Herbert Lehman appointed Schneiderman to succeed Swartz as New York’s secretary of labor. In 1938, Sidney Hillman’s CIO-affiliated Amalgamated Clothing Workers admitted laundry workers; within a year a union of 27,000 laundry workers won “contracts that guaranteed decent wages, reduced hours, sick leave with pay, and paid vacations.” That success was followed by the unionization of hotel workers and cleaning staff. See ER, Democratic Digest, Apr. 1937; Anilise Orlick, pp. 163–65.

433 “FDR is tired and edgy”: ER to Hick, 27 Feb. 1937.

433 Elizabeth Read had a stroke: ER to Hick, 2, 3, Mar. 1937.

433 Lape devastated by FDR’s rejection of their program: See Patricia Spain Ward, U.S. v. AMA, et al.: The Medical Anti-trust Case of 1938–1943,” American Studies (Fall 1989); Ward, “Medical Maverick, Hugh Cabot’s Crusade for Universal Health Care,” Humanities (NEH Journal, Mar., Apr. 1994). Lape’s two-volume American Foundation Report, American Medicine: Expert Testimony Out of Court, published in April 1937, created a sensation, and a movement, but little official response. ER to Lape, “better meeting next time”: Mar. 1937.

433–34 FDR’s 4 March speech: Ickes, pp. 88–89. ER was amused to be with the women of the Liberty League as she listened to her husband’s speech. With FJ’s fiancé Ethel du Pont and her mother to plan the June wedding festivities, ER noted: “I couldn’t help thinking over my company!” as FDR declared: “We have only just begun to fight….” ER to Hick, 4 Mar. 1937; “Cicero when I was a kid”: Hick to ER, 4 Mar. 1937.

434 From Louisiana, ER wrote Hick, “Huey did some good things for them!” 6, 7 Mar.

23: A First Lady’s Survival

435 a “grand talk”: ER to FDR, teslegram from Fort Worth, 9 Mar. 37; fam/chldn, Box 16; ER now supported: ER to Hick, 20 Mar. 1937.

435 from Oklahoma to Pennybacker in Texas: Tommy to Anna, 14 Mar. 1937; ARH 75.

436 “Yesterday was the worst”: ER to Hick, 19 Mar. 1937; Hick to ER: “you are with president Kate Zaners…. I hope it isnt too awful and that you are not too tired,” 17 Mar. 1937.

436 from Oklahoma to Shreveport: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, 16 Mar. 1937.

436 “My reception was horrible”: ER to Hick, 24 Mar.; “your mother in 1940”: Tommy to Anna, 17 Mar. 1937.

436–37 ER to FDR at Warm Springs: 12 Mar. 1937, fam/chldn, Box 16.

437 On 17 March, “cunning little”: ER in Democratic Digest, May 1937.

437 In Washington, ER to Hick: 28 Mar. 1937, Hick and the Danas visited for the Easter weekend.

437 Smoky Mountains: ER and Hick also drove through a Cherokee reservation, spent a night in Asheville, North Carolina, and visited a Friends (AFSC) crafts school “for young mountaineers”; then went on to Charleston, South Carolina. “There is a rather sweet melancholy about this city….” Democratic Digest, June 1937.

437 “wonderful for a week of climbing”: ER to Anna, 14 Apr. 1937.

437 “Your mother”: Tommy to Anna, 14 Apr. 1937, ARH Box 75.

438 “Dickie is having fits”: Tommy to “Dear Gorgeous,” n.d., Feb. 1937, ARH, Box 75. Nancy Cook also “gave your mother a bad time”: Tommy to Anna, 14 Apr. 1937.

438 “Betsey’s devotion to your father”: Tommy to Anna, 14 Apr. 1937.

438 “Pa is both nervous and tired; outburst on meals”: ER to Anna, 3 Mar. 1937.

439–40 use of “darky”: Esther S. Carry to ER, 13 Apr. 1937, 100, Box 1417; ER to Esther Carey, 20 Apr. 1937. ER wrote more fully to a NY attorney, who “had the pleasure of being at the dedication of the Eleanor Roosevelt School for colored pupils in Warm Springs … dedicated by the President last month.” Although ER was responsible for the brick school, she did not attend its dedication in April because she was lecturing in Oklahoma. She had earlier written Hick that a speech she had made in 1935 had resulted in the building of a fully equipped modern brick school: “It salved my conscience a bit for I feel a skunk not to do more on the lynching thing openly.” ER to Hick, Mar. 1936; ER to R. B. DeFrantz, 22 Apr. 1937, 100, Box 1420.

440 ER at Barnard College: NYT, 23 Oct. 1935.

440 By 1938, eating, and amalgamation: Augusta Conrad to ER, 31 Aug. 1938, ER to Augusta Conrad, 7 Sept. 1938, 100, Box 1453.

440 Lynching, ER to FDR, “even one step”: 19 Mar. 1936; White to ER, 9 Apr. 37; Scheider to White, 12 Apr., 100, box 1446. ER’s East Coast travels took her through New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. She visited her cousins Corinne and Joseph Alsop at Avon, and spoke at Hartford and Scranton, Democratic Digest, June 1937.

440–43 Wagner-Gavagan debate: Congressional Record on HR 1507, beginning p. 3423; Fish, 13 Apr. 1937, pp. 3430–32; Caroline O’Day: CR, 13 Apr. 1937, v 81, pt 3, p. 3448; Emmanuel Celler, on Winona lynching: CR, p. 3434; John Marshall Robison: CR, pp. 3439–43.

443 President “not familiar enough”: ER to White, 22 May 1937, 100, Box 1446; see also, Zangrando, pp. 142–46.

443 FDR’s neutrality: See “The Cash and Carry Compromise of 1937,” in Robert Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality: FDR and the Struggle Over the Arms Embargo (Quadrangle Books; 1962), pp. 190–99.

443 Only legislative initiative, renewal of Neutrality Act of 1935: See FDR to Hull, to study possible copper and steel embargo, 21 Apr. 1937, pp. 674–75. The study never materialized.

443–44 Henry Stimson, Allen Dulles, and Hamilton Fish Armstrong: Allen Guttmann, The Wound in the Heart: America and the Spanish Civil War (Free Press, 1962), pp. 88–93; Wayne Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (University of Minnesota Press, 1962).

444 Guernica bombed, 26 April: headline, NYT, 7 May 1937.

444 U.S. “ranked first in value of exports”: Arnold Offner, “Appeasement Revisited: U.S., Britain, Germany, 1933–1940,” JAH (Sept. 1977), pp. 373ff; stats, p. 374; Watson, p. 376. Standard Oil, General Motors, and Du Pont maintained secret and illegal agreements with German firms, on restricted items of chemicals, rubber, aviation fuel; and enabled stockpiling of strategic materials. Despite the embargo against Spain, Franco’s forces received U.S. oil. On 18 July 1936 Texaco’s Thorkild Rieber diverted 5 oil tankers to Franco-controlled ports in Spain, in violation of Texaco’s long-term contract to supply the Spanish government’s oil monopoly, CAMPSA. “Texaco supplied Franco fuel on credit until the civil war’s end….” See Ed Doerr in The Nation, January 1997; Arthur Landis, Spain! The Unfinished Revolution, pp. 206–8; and Herbert Feis, The Spanish Story, pp. 269–71.

445 ER haunted by Guernica: My Day, May 1937, p. 141; on Basque children, June columns, 145–149.

445 “like a child”: Tommy to Anna, 14 Apr. 1937, ARH, 75.

445 “Germany Admits Guilt Over Guernica,” NYT, 28 Apr. 1997. See Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Harper Colophon, 1961), pp. 419–23.

445–46 ER and Anna broadcast transcript: Halsted, Box 62, 5 May 1937.

446–47 autobiographies should be done “anonymously”: Hick to ER, 5 May 1937.

447 “Infidelity need not ruin”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 432.

447 most traveled first lady in history: NYT, 16 May 1937.

447 Tommy to Anna, n.d., May 1937, ARH, 75; fees in Beasley, ER and the Media, p. 113.

447 ER liked Earl’s current companion, and encouraged Roberta Jonay to study with Irene Lewisohn at the Neighborhood Playhouse; and subsequentiy tried to get her a job with the WPA.

448 ER on John Golden: My Day, Mar. 1937, pp. 124–25.

448 ER to Golden, 2 Nov. 1937; original letter in author’s collection, a gift from Elizabeth Harlan, 20 Apr. 1991.

448 disagreed about WPA theater: Golden, quoted by Flanagan in Arena, p. 40.

448–49 Federal Theatre part of a great democratic movement: Flanagan to ER, 21 May 1937, ER’s office to Flanagan, 25 May; with attachment for ER, including Wilson Whitman, “Job for Jumbo,” reprinted from Stage, Mar. 1937, a celebration of WPA theatre projects, with NY audience and national facts. 70, Box 710; ER’s 1 June s1937 broadcast quoted in Arena, p. 206.

449 “zealous” communists: Frank Banks, NYT, 16 May 1937.

449 ER opposed to Dunnigan bill: My Day, May 1937, pp. 140–41.

449 criticized only one play: ER in Democratic Digest, July 1937; My Day, 13 May 1937.

449 Playwrights especially: in Edward Robb Ellis, A Nation in Torment: The Great Depression, 1929–1939 (Capricorn Books, 1971), pp. 518–19.

450 “rather ruthless” about The Women: ER to Esther Lape, 21 June 1937, Arizona collection.

450–51 “royal Bengal tiger”: Hick to ER, 24 May 1937. Hick also reported that Martha Gellhorn returned from Spain, parked herself at the Lewisohns’ apartment on Park Avenue to write about all the terrible things she witnessed.

451 On 27 May, ER invited Gellhorn to Washington for lunch with Elinor Morgenthau and others so they could hear about Spain. ER was impressed by her new maturity and arranged a day with Gellhorn and her companeros, Ernest Hemingway and filmmaker Joris Ivens at Hyde Park so FDR could see their documentary, The Spanish Earth, ER to Hick, 27 May 1937.

451 “Some bad days ahead”: Also a gratifying visit with Bernard Baruch, and they “settled many things,” ER to Hick, 25 May 1937.

451 Memorial Day massacre: Philip Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement (Free Press, 1979), pp. 330–31; Art Preis, Labor’s Giant Step: Twenty Years of the CIO (Pathfinder Press, 1972), pp. 67–70; see also Mary Heaton Vorse in Dee Garrison. To Grief, ER to Hick, 30 May 1937.

24: This Is My Story

452 “Dorothy Thompson’s ‘The Dilemma of a Pacifist’ “: My Day, June 1937, pp. 147–48.

452 “500 kids are waiting”: Martha Gellhorn to ER, n.d., June 1937.

453 ER supported: Malvina Scheider to Clarence Pickett, 24 June 1937, 70, box 718; see also Luis Galvan, 13 Aug. 1937, re ER’s support published in NYT; he opposed ER’s aid to communism; 70, box 711.

453–54 “Emotionally”: ER to Gellhorn, 14 June 1937; Martha Gellhorn to ER, “not divisible”: “I can never forget about the other people,… in Madrid or the unemployed or the dead strikers in Chicago or the woman who sells pencils in the subway….” June 1937; ER encouraged Gellhorn: 24 June 1937.

454 “annoyed me … hair shirt”: This I Remember, pp. 161–62.

454 Cordell Hull and James Clement Dunn quoted in Ted Morgan, p. 439.

455 FDR’s 24 Aug. 1936 agreement with J. Edgar Hoover to investigate subversives was between the two of them, and it was allegedly confirmed by a written memo placed in the White House safe. Ted Morgan, p. 439.

That memo authorizing Hoover’s domestic surveillance has yet to be found. The only source is J. Edgar Hoover’s 24 Aug. 1936 confidential memo of his White House meeting with FDR, concerning communist activities within the U.S. Hoover told the president that Harry Bridges’s Longshoremen’s Union, John L. Lewis’s United Mine Workers (CIO), and Heywood Broun’s Newspaper Guild were all communist-involved, and “the Communists had planned to get control of these three groups … so they would be able at any time to paralyze the country.” They could “stop all shipping in and out …; stop the operation of industry …; and stop publication of any newspapers….” Also, the Communist Internationale in Moscow “issued instructions for all Communists in the U.S. to vote for President Roosevelt …”

FDR replied that he was “considerably concerned about the movements of Communists and of Fascism … and the Secret Service of the Treasury Department had assured him that they had informants in every Communist group.” But FDR believed they were limited to plots on his life, and he was now “interested in obtaining a broad picture of the general movement.” An agreement to obtain “general intelligence information” was thereupon made, with State Department support. They met next day with Cordell Hull, so that all would be coordinated with Military and Naval Intelligence services. Confidential Memo, Hoover, 25 Aug. 1935, in Athan Theoharis, ed., From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover (Ivan Dee, 1993), pp. 180–82. See also Frank Donner, Age of Surveillance (Knopf, 1980), p. 53; Kenneth O’Reilly, “A New Deal for the FBI: The Roosevelt Administration, Crime Control and National Security,” Journal of American History (Dec. 1982); Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Free Press, 1987), pp. 228–31.

On 28 Aug., Hoover’s aide Ed Tamm submitted a tentative outline of procedure, which included surveillance of the “maritime, steel, coal, clothing, garment and fur industries; the newspaper field; government affairs; the armed forces; educational institutions; communist and affiliated organizations; Fascist and anti-Fascist movements.” Hoover considered it a “good beginning.” See also Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (Norton, 1991), pp. 207–8.

455 government of Juan Negrin: Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Harper Colophon, 1961), pp. 443–56.

455 “should have been a warning”: Armstrong, pp. 475–76.

455 “saw Anna Louise Strong at the Writers’ Congress”: Gellhorn to ER, n.d., June, 1937.

455–56 On 29 May 1937, ER wrote a My Day column on Gellhorn, who was convinced that “the Spanish people are a glorious people and something is happening in Spain which may mean much to the rest of the world.”

456 “You really did like,” The Spanish Earth: Martha Gellhorn to ER, 18 July 1937.

456 FDR never considered changing his policy: After 4 Mar. 1937, all U.S. passports were stamped “NOT VALID for Travel in Spain.” This resulted in treks across the Pyrenees for many of the 3,000 U.S. volunteers in the International Brigades. Over time, there were 35,000 volunteers from 50 nations. See Robin D. G. Kelley, “This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do: African-Americans and the Spanish Civil War,” in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (Free Press, 1996); and William Loren Katz and Marc Crawford, The Lincoln Brigade (Atheneum, 1989).

456 “How men hate a woman in a position of real power”: ER to Hick, 28 June 1937; for Perkins and the CIO, see esp. Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (University of Michigan Press, 1970).

456–57 “I am particularly happy today”: My Day, 24 July 1937; women and work: It’s Up to the Women, pp. 142–52; ER’s broadcast with Rose Schneiderman: NYT, 13 May 1937.

457 While all New Deal efforts remained suspended by the Court controversy, FDR compounded congressional bitterness by declaring war on tax dodgers. He promised to publish the names of cheaters, and pursue them. As surprised as anyone, ER wrote Hick, 1 June 1937: “What do you think of the new tax thing? I’m more troubled over Europe, tho the tax excitement does take people’s mind off the court.” Ironically, ER was plunged into the fray, accused of being a “tax dodger.” She told her press conference: “On every penny of income I have ever received, I’ve paid my full tax.” But the accusations caused her to pay her taxes first, and make her AFSC contributions with whatever remained. NYT, 15 June 1937.

457–58 du Pont wedding, “I’m immune”: ER to Hick, 24 June 1937.

457 “Well, it’s over”: ER to Hick, 1 July 1937; broadcast: NYT, 1 July 1937, p. 22; see also Democratic Digest, Aug. 1937.

457–58 “was there much drinking?”: Hick to ER, 6 July 1937; “all you surmised”: ER to Hick, 7 July; FDR particularly gay: James Roosevelt, with Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, FDR (Harcourt Brace, 1959), pp. 304–5.

458–59 Amelia Earhart: ER to Anna, 3 July 1937; day she left: My Day, 8 June 1937; cf. 9 June and 22 June 1937, when AE in Java, and told monsoons would ground her for three months in India.

459 Brisbane’s attack Bess Furman to ER Jan. 1935; ER to “Dear Bess”, 17 Jan. 1935, 100, Box 1338. According to Susan Butler, Eugene Vidal, Gore Vidal’s father, was AE’s lover. Butler suggests that because Gene Vidal was “no longer at the Bureau of Air Commerce” when Earhart disappeared there was no one to ask the right questions about radio frequencies, time, weather, location. See Earhart to ER, 15 Sept. 1936, 17 Sept. 1936; Butler, pp. 350–51; 397.

459 grateful, Howland: George Putnam to ER 19 Jan. 1937, 100, Box 1437; after disappearance: Putnam to ER, 5 Aug. 1937, in hand, 100, 1437; also Missy’s attachment of ER’s words about Amelia, sent to Putnam and returned to ER.

459 “Courage is the price”: My Day, 23 July 1937; see also My Day on Amelia Earhart, 7, 8, 14 July 1937.

459 A year later, Amelia’s mother wanted to reopen the search. Amy Earhart to ER, 16 Mar. 1938; ER from Warm Springs, Ga., 30 Mar. 1938, 100, Box 1457 to Amy Earhart. ER wrote Paul Mantz on 14 May 1938: “I have made inquiries about the search which was made for Amelia Earhart and both the President and I are satisfied from the information which we have received that everything possible was done. We are sure that a very thorough search was made.”

460 paid many tributes: Hurst and Cochran, at Floyd Bennett Field, where 200 gathered to praise Earhart’s dauntless courage. NYT, 22 Nov. 1937.

460 NAACP was horrified by the prospect of Robinson: White to ER, 10 June 1937; White had toured America with Gavagan, and was gratified by the public enthusiasm for the antilynching bill. ER was “glad your trip was successful,” and FDR would call, 16 June 1937. On 24 June 1937 the Judiciary Committee of the Senate reported the Gavagan-Wagner-Van Nuys bill (1507) out, 13–3 (Cormally, Borah, Pittman against). Connally at first said there would be no filibuster; than changed his mind. White to ER, 24 June 1937.

461 “grossest and meanest discrimination”: William Pickens to ER, 12 June 1937, with Pickens to Ickes, 6 June; 12 June 1937; Charles West to ER, 25 June 1937, 70, Box 718; for Ickes’s actions, see T. H. Watkins, p. 647.

461 Fleeson and O’Donnell: “Capitol Stuff,” NY Daily News, 15 June 1937.

461 Burton Wheeler: quoted in Davis, p. 93.

461 ER on Robinson and funeral: Democratic Digest, see also ER to Elinor Morgenthau, July 1937. On the Supreme Court fight, see especially William Leuchtenberg, “FDR’s Supreme Court Packing Plan,” in Melvyn Dubofcky, ed., The New Deal: Conflicting Interpretations and Shifting Perspectives (Garland, 1992), pp. 271–304.

462 ER disapproved, “wise and unwise economies”: My Day, 17 Aug., 1937.

462 The Wagner-Steagall Act resulted in a power struggle between John Ihlder and Nathan Straus, New York’s Housing Commissioner. ER was deeply involved in the controversy and, ultimately, supported Straus who had a more expansive vision of modern planned neighborhoods than Ihlder and wanted to see comfortable dwellings enforced by new building codes and zoning laws. See Kessner, La Guardia, pp. 333–35; Ihlder to ER 2 June 1937, with Anson Phelps Stokes to Robert Wagner, 17 May 1937.

462–63 See Alinskey, pp. 156–59; “right psychology”: FDR to Jack Garner, who left on a fishing trip peeved by FDR’s silence about the strikers, urging him to return to Washington, 7 July 1937, III, pp. 692–93.

463 ER at the Brouns’, hailed Flanagan’s Living Newspaper, at Val-Kill: June and July detailed in Democratic Digest, Sept. and Oct. 1937.

463 “zest in life”: My Day, 10 Aug. 1937.

463–64 not purged, but: Lape to ER 4 July 1937; ER to Lape, 8 July, 100, Box 1430.

464–65 “need to be alone”: Hick to ER, 16 June; 7 July 1937; “unfit”: 16 July; “Pigs!”: 20 July 1937.

465 “so simple, so dull”: ER to Hick, 3 July; 8 July 1937.

465 ER also worried: 15, 19 July 1937; “enjoyed every minute, black goggles”: ER to Hick, 22,25 July; ER was so pleased with her caper in her open car, she also wrote Anna, 30 July 1937.

465 “unmitigated ass”: ER to Hick, 27 July 1937; “perhaps he’s right”: ER to Hick, 8 Aug. 1937.

466 “Labor’s cause is just”: Lewis in Alinskey, pp. 159–60.

466 close Camp Jane Addams: NYT, 16 Aug. 1937; ER’s contribution, $3,300, in 11 checks of $300 each. Hers was the only name on the column of private contributions, 14 July 1937; NYT, 17 Aug. 1937.

466 ER to Hick, quotations, 22 July, 30 July; Hall “free to flit”: ER to Anna, 5 Aug. 1937.

466–67 “swell” to write honestly about immigrants: ER to Anna, 5 Aug. 1937.

467 “so little work”: ER to Anna, 12 Aug.; re SDR, “amusing stories,” 17 Aug. 1937.

467 According to James: James R., Affectionately, FDR, p. 302; Tea with Duke and Duchess, ER to Hick, 27 July 1937; hated papers: ER to Hick, 25 Aug. 1937.

468 ER marveled at FDR’s spirits: My Day, Aug. 1937, pp. 171–73.

468 “all dried up”: Hick to ER, 27 Aug. 1937; letters of advice: ER to Hick, 27–30 Aug. 1937; feared “drifting apart”: Hick to ER, 8 Sept. 1937.

468–69 “can’t happen”: ER to Hick 9, Sept. 1937; “don’t much like your gypsy life”: 20 Mar. 1937; but had drifted apart, “you can scarcely realize”: floating letter, no date, Wednesday, on the train. Streitmatter, without evidence, dates this 20 Feb. 1935.

469 “I’m really not unhappy”: ER to Hick, 9 Sept. 1937.

469–70 “for the night and breakfast at least”: ER to Hick, 12 Sept. 1937; “send me the peace article … My love to you—always”: Hick to ER, 21 Sept. 1937.

470 Baruch returned: ER to Hick, 11 Sept. 1937; “Hall thinks”: ER to Hick 8 Sept. 1937.

470 For the devastation in China in 1937, see esp. Dorothy Borg, The U.S. and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933–1938 (Harvard University Press, 1964); Winston Churchill, “do you not tremble”; Gilbert, p. 545.

471 “It is a horrible thing”: Churchill, 21 Dec. 1937, in Gilbert, p. 585.

471 turned to Sumner Welles: See Irwin Gellman, Secret Affairs: FDR, Hull, and Sumner Welles (Johns Hopkins University, 1995), p. 59; Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR’s Global Strategist, A Biography by His Son (St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 196–200.

471 rearmament, arms trade: Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality, 205–9.

472 “say exactly what you think”: Hick to ER, 9 Sept. 1937.

472 FDR read it, and ER hoped Hick “wont find it worthless,” ER to Hick, 18 Sept; Hick found it tremendous, and sent a letter and a telegram: “the best article you’ve ever written on any subject. Gosh, it packs some good hefty wallops, and I wonder how the President liked it….” Hick to ER, 28 Sept. 1937.

472 ER dedicated what she always called her “little book on peace” to Carrie Chapmann Catt, “who has led so many of us in the struggle for peace.”

473 “a great speech”: Ickes, p. 222; see Dorothy Borg, “Notes on FDR’s Quarantine Speech,” Political Science Quarterly (Sept. 1957).

473 FDR “always looking for slams”: ER to Hick, 18 Sept. 1937.

473–74 For ER it was an arduous ten days, and she was “glad to get on plane alone”: ER to Hick, 29 Sept. 1937.

473 ER at Tribune forum: NYT, 6 Oct. 1937.

474 “iron in the soul”: ER to Hick, 5 Oct. 1937.

474–75 In her 7 Oct. 1937 column ER referred specifically to FDR’s press conference: “They want to know so many things I would like to know also….”; her calls for diplomatic action: My Day, Sept., p. 186; Oct., pp. 192–93.

475 Hick to ER, 25 Sept. 1937, about the Herald Tribune “dope story” re Farley; on Hugo Black see Durr, Outside the Magic Circle; Allie Freed to ER, 19 Sept. 1937; ER to Freed, 22 Sept., 100, Box 1423.

475 at Little House: ER to Anna, 8 Oct. 1937, next day to Barbara Hopkins’s funeral, Halsted, Box 57.

475 Hick refused to visit Hyde Park: 2 Nov.; Barbara Hopkins indispensable: Hick to ER, 7 Oct. 1937; NYT obit, 10 Oct. 1937.

476 “gay party”: ER to Hick, 11 Oct. 1937; FDR to ER, Letters, p. 716.

477 “feeling of being hollow”: ER to Hick, 30 Oct. 1937.

477 Fight for NYA and federal aid to education: ER to Hick, 18 Oct., 30 Oct. 1937.

477 nothing “to tire her”: Tommy to Anna, 26 Nov. 1937.

478 ER’s November activities: Democratic Digest, Jan. 1938; no exercise “makes me sleepy”: ER to Hick, 10 Nov. 1937.

478 In Indiana: ER to Hick, 13 Nov.; in Illinois: ER to Hick, 14–15 Nov. 1937.

478 “write it myself or not at all”: ER to Hick, 16 Nov.; “swore at drivers”: Hick to ER, 15 Nov. 1937.

479 “only interested in a First Lady!”: ER to Hick, 18 Nov. 1937.

479 on Tommy: Hick to ER, 14, 16, 17 Nov. 1937.

480 Reviews of TIMS: ER to Hick, 16 Nov. 1937; Katherine Woods, NYTBR, 21 Nov. 1937; Mary Ross, NY Herald Tribune, 21 Nov. 1937; Cousin Alice and Dorothy Canfield Fisher quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 433.

480 Isabella Greenway, 19 Dec. 1937, Tuscon; ER to Isabella, 30 Dec. 1937: “A world of thanks for your letter….” ER missed Isabella, who left Congress, many assumed, because of her differences with FDR. She had actually sent a copy of a notarized affidavit that testified Isabella Greenway was not in fact a member of the anti-Roosevelt group “Americans, Inc.” Isabella Greenway to ER, 7 June 1935: “Dearest E. I just thought this would amuse & interest you …”; affidavit, J. W. Haverty, 21 May 1935, 100, Box 1340. Nevertheless, their personal relationship endured.

480 ER to Morris, 13 May 1938; North American Review, “An Education for Life,” pp. 202–6, 100, Box 1470. Most newspaper reviews appeared Sunday, Thanksgiving weekend, spent at the White House in 1937. Hick was thrilled. They were “marvelous,… at last you are coming into your own …” Hick to ER, 21 Nov. 1937.

480–81 Thanksgiving a hard day: ER to Hick, 23–24 Nov. 1937.

481 Doris Duke to the homesteads: Tommy to John Boettiger, 26 Nov. 1937, Halsted, box 75; ER on Duke in Arthurdale and Penncraft: Democratic Digest, Jan. 1938.

481 Special Christmas Dinner, ER to Hick, 7 Dec. 1937; “Love means so much more”: ER to Hick, 11 Dec. 1937. On 11 Dec. ER hosted the Gridiron Widows party, which “far surpassed all previous parties.” Guests included Agnes Brown Leach, Fannie Hurst, Mary Dreier, Nancy Cook, Tiny Chaney, June Rhodes, and Dorothy Schiff Backer of the NY Post. Dem. Digest, Jan. 1938.

481–82 ER’s lunch with Vera Brittain and Cissy Patterson in Democratic Digest; “duchess-like dignity”: Vera Brittain, Testament of Experience (Macmillan, 1957), p. 183. For the Panay, and the Dec. 1937 events, see Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (Penguin, 1997); Waldo Heinrichs, American Ambassador: Joseph C. Grew and the Development of the U.S. Diplomatic Tradition (Little, Brown, 1966), pp. 255–59; and Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor (Atheneum, 1964), pp. 6–7. Before Pearl Harbor, Japan was regarded as an “effective opponent of Communism in Asia.”

482 on diplomatic dinner, and family tensions: ER to Hick, 14, 17 Dec. 1937; also, ER to Anna 19 Dec., Halsted, Box 57; diplomatic dinner: My Day, 18 Dec. 1937; abruptly changed her plans: My Day, for Dec., 209–12.

483 “—just you”: Hick to ER, 22 Dec. 1937. Hick was “darned glad” ER decided to go to Seattle. “I think you’ll be much happier out there. Oh, do have a happy, contented Christmas, without feeling low or discouraged or under a nervous strain”: 23 Dec. 1937; also 24–25 Dec. letters of relief that ER away, and happy.

483 Anna to Tommy, 31 Dec. 1937, ARH, 75; for details of ER’s stormy winter trip, Democratic Digest, Feb. 1938.

25: This Troubled World, 1938

484 “little book on peace has been very successful”: Tommy to Anna, 18 Jan. 1938, ARH, Box 56.

484–85 ER is celebrated: “Speaking of Mrs R,” Canton Repository and Denver Democrat, reprinted, Mar. 1938, clippings, ER Papers.

485 “really good on make up”; Hick ill: ER to Anna, n.d., Jan.-Feb. 1938; 13 Feb. 1938; in Asbell, pp. 97–98.

485 anguished correspondence: Hick to ER, 6, 8, 9 Jan. 1938.

486 “It seems so hard”: ER to Hick, 8 Jan 1938; Ickes on FDR’s speech, and on his own “It Is Happening Here,” a war between democracy and fascism—if the unbridled tycoons Ford, du Pont, Girdler, and Rand were allowed to continue, pp. 282–83, 287–88.

486 Annie Griffen Baruch’s death: ER to Hick, 16 Jan. 1938; see Coit, pp. 456–57 passim.

486 “I was hurt”: Hick to ER, 18 Jan. 1938.

487 Hick, 17, 18 Jan.; “I never meant to hurt you”: ER to Hick, 19 Jan. 1938. This exchange included praise for Erskine Caldwell’s Have You Seen Their Faces, illustrated by Margaret Bourke-White. Hick offered to send the “magnificent” book about tenant farmers and sharecroppers to ER. But Caroline O’Day had given it to her for Christmas. Then on 22 January Hick wrote: “The AP called me today wanting to know where you were. Where are you, by the way, I wonder. I told them I had no idea!”

487 Patience Strong column: My Day, Jan. 1937, p. 219.

487 Plans for FDR’s birthday, and peppy birthday balls: ER to Hick, 29, 30 Jan.; on arrangements, invitation ER to Colonel Edwin Watson, 13 Jan. 1938, 100, box 1481.

487 Lohengrin “a real joy,” One Third of Nation: ER and Hick, 20, 22, 26 Feb.; 3, 4 Mar. 1938.

488 Cause and Cure luncheon: ER to Hick, 19 Jan. 1938.

488 Romania gone Fascist: On 23 Dec. 1937 meeting, Ickes, p. 287; 8 Jan. entry, p. 291.

489 Chamberlain anti-American: Bullitt to FDR, 5 May 1937, p. 213.

489 Churchill “breathless with amazement”: The Gathering Storm, pp. 251–55.

489 long parade of death: Churchill, pp. 257–58.

489 For an eyewitness account of 11–14 Mar. events see William Shirer, Berlin Diary, pp. 96–108; Blumenkrieg: Davis, p. 184.

490 Churchill asked, Dawson: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone, 1932–1940 (Little, Brown, 1988), p. 283.

490–91 Hitler ushered his homeland into his Reich: See Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (Harper Torchbooks, 1962); and Peter G. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (John Wiley, 1964).

491 Churchill to House, 14 March: “The Rape of Austria,” Gathering Storm, pp. 272–75; Manchester, pp. 287–88; “think only of the Red danger”: Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, Feb.-Mar. 1938.

491 “Ten Commandments of Good Will”: My Day, Feb. 1938, p. 230.

491 all news terrible: Ickes, 12 Mar. 1938, p. 335.

491 Joe Davies, U.S. ambassador to Russia, Worried about a “Fascist peace.” He believed the purge trials proved a massive plot between anti-Soviet traitors within the government and Nazi and Japanese forces. Joe Davies, Mission to Moscow, letters and journal, pp. 261 ff.

492 ER letters to FDR, 15–17 Mar. 1938; “future wars will have no fronts”: This Troubled World (H. C. Kinsey, 1938), pp. 41ff.

492 “war as murder,” ER 1924: quoted in Jacqueline Van Voris, Carrie Chapman Catt (Feminist Press, 1987), p. 200; In 1934, she called for: Delegate’s Worksheet, Conference on the Cause and Cure of War, 16–19 Jan. 1934; ER’s address, p. 9; copy, Hick, Box 1.

492–93 In her speeches, ER defended new naval spending, and attacked Jeannette Rankin’s proposal without naming her, My Day, 29 June 1937. ER to Katherine Devereaux Blake, 31 July 1937, 100, Box 1415; Iola Kay Eastburn, Middlebury College, to ER, 18 July 1937, 100, Box 1422; ER to Eastburn, 31 July 1937.

493 “More Arms Needed Mrs R Says,” NYT, 15 Feb. 1938; press conference notes, 14 Feb. 1938, Beasley, p. 48.

493 From This Troubled World: need to define aggressor nation, trade embargoes, p. 15; Good Neighbor Policy, pp. 10–12; religious freedom, p. 19; mountain climbing, p. 23; “change in human nature,” p. 25–26, 28; “commit suicide—and we will!” 1934 speech, Cause and Cure of War conference.

494 glamour of war, Troubled, pp. 29–32.

494 influenced by Nye, profits out: Troubled, pp. 34–37.

494 “power of love”: Troubled, pp. 45–46; see also NYTBR, 2 Jan. 1938; and news item, 2 Jan. 1938.

495 Diana Hopkins: Hick to ER from White House, 12 Mar. 1938.

495 no word from FDR: ER to Hick, 16 March 1938. In the White House, Hick enjoyed several guests, including Betty Lindley, who was “fun but a great slob with ashes all over and nothing put away.” Hick to ER, 14 March; ER replied: “I smiled over Betty as a guest. You and I are old fuss cats!” ER to Hick, 16, 17 Mar.

495 first word: ER to Anna, 17 Mar. 1938; Betsey to Warm Springs: ER to Anna, 5 Mar. 1938; “This is a busy world”: ER to Hick, 17 Mar. 1938.

496 “your Wife is bringing you nearer to the People”: James Metcalf to FDR, 21 Mar. 1938, ppf, 2.

496 felt irrelevant at Warm Springs: ER to Hick, 30 Mar. 1938.

496 felt trapped and worried about Harry Hopkins: ER to Hick, 31 Mar. 1938.

496 Hick loved Pins and Needles, 27, 28 Mar.; ER also wrote a column to celebrate the ILGWU’s “theatrical venture,” which was a “delight.” Nobody “could be disappointed by this entertainment.” ER went to the musical with Esther Lape, and hoped “We’ve Just Begun” was “prophetic.” My Day, 15 Feb. 1938.

496 ER and Hick did not see each other: Hick to ER, 11, 13, 14 Apr. 1938.

Hick was, however, inspired by FDR’s 14 April address on economic conditions: It “aroused the first spark of interest” she felt in a long, long time…. Please tell the President, for me, ‘More power to you!’ Oh, he is alright, but, my God, some of the people around him!” Hick to ER, 15 Apr. 1938.

497 to defend WPA and NYA costs: ER to Hick, 1 Apr. 1938; by April, the economy had lost “two-thirds of the gains made since March 1933”: Davis, p. 205.

497 After the Anschluss; Irvington, New Jersey: Frieda Elias to ER, 8 Feb. 1938; ER to Elias, 10 Feb. 1938, 100, Box 1457; Ruth Bessell to ER, 30 Mar. 1938; ER to RB, 11 Apr. 1938; 100, Box 1449; Doris Bernstein to ER, 19 May 1938; ER to DB, 24 May 1938, 100, Box 1449.

498–99 Karl Ohm deportation case: Lillian Strauss to ER, 28 Jan. 1938; James Houghteling to Malvina Thompson, 10 Feb. 1938; Thompson to Lillian Strauss, 11 Feb. 1938; Strauss to Thompson, 14 Feb. 1938,70, Box 738.

499 Upton Sinclair to ER, Norman Thomas rudely arrested: see NYT, 3 May 1938.

499 campaigned for Hanns Eisler: ER to Sumner Welles, 11 Jan. 1939; 7 Feb. 1939,70, Box 766.

499 “every morning with apprehension”: My Day, Mar. 1938, p. 234; ER to EM, 17 Mar. 1938, Elinor Morgenthau Papers.

500 “every gallant soul”: Dorothy Thompson, quoted in Peter Kurth, American Cassandra: Biography of Dorothy Thompson (Little Brown, 1990), p. 241; Thompson detailed both Hitlers excesses and the “‘cowardice’ that sustained it”: Kurth, p. 280.

500 “behaved like worms”; Nancy Astor “a little mad”: Harold Nicolson to Vita Sackville-West, 25 Feb. 1938, in Nicolson, pp. 325–27; Coincidentally, ER and Nancy Astor: NYT, 26 Feb. 1938.

501 appointment of Joe Kennedy “a great joke”: Michael Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (Norton, 1980), p. 157.

501 Hugh Wilson—considered much more acceptable in German circles: See Joseph Lash on ER and Bullitt, A Friend’s Memoir, pp. 86, 154; also William Shirer on the Nuremberg rallies. See esp. The Diplomats, for the astonishing record of Anglo-American appeasement; cf. Britain’s pro-Nazi ambassador to Germany, Neville Henderson, who told his friend Goring that Hitler could have Austria, “so far as he is concerned,” 5 July 1937, p. 76; Vienna, Mar. 1938; pp. 110–11.

502–3 Deeply grateful for Nancy Astor’s assistance, Frankfurter nevertheless used the occasion to inquire about her and the alleged Cliveden crowd: Nancy Astor rejected the propaganda which began in Claude Cockburn’s “communist sheet,” The Week It was all a plot “to create suspicion and class war” and bring down the government. She was not a fascist, “and I am very much surprised that you, knowing me and having visited Cliveden, should have swallowed this propaganda against us!…”

Frankfurter replied, on 2 June 1938, that he did not refer to “the silly chatter regarding plots and conspiracies,” but rather to Cliveden’s “political philosophy. I had in mind the views expressed in the summer of 1935 by Montagu Norman [governor of the Bank of England] when he said that Hitler saved Europe from Bolshevism, a point of view that I often encountered during my year in England and again in the summer of 1936; the point of view of ‘appeasement’ by acquiescence in the series of violent measures taken by Hitler and the general undermining of international law and order and the decencies of civilization….”

To demonstrate his alternative views, Frankfurter enclosed two articles—by Norman Angell and Dorothy Thompson. “And since we are talking with the candor of friendship let me suggest to you that you must not be too surprised if you are widely misunderstood regarding the anti-Semitic aspect—an essential aspect—of Nazism…. I wish we could talk all this out.” But that was the last letter between them, Frankfurter/Astor exchange in Freedman, ed., pp. 473–75; see Christopher Sykes, Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor, pp. 382–89; re Lady Astor’s remarks, NYT, 30 June 1937. Although FDR appointed Frankfurter to the Supreme Court in 1939, he never told the president of his uncle’s difficulties, and they evidently never discussed the death of Austria. See Freedman.

502 “Our isolationists must see”: Nicolson Diary, 6 June 1938, pp. 345–46; “The suicides have been appalling….”: Nicolson to Vita Sackville-West, 17 June 1938, p. 347.

502–3 “Jews to be made to eat grass”: Nicolson Diary, 30 June 1938, p. 348.

503 Nicolson contemplated “the Decline and Fall of the British Empire,” while Lindbergh circulated his reports of German military superiority. On 18 May Nicolson heard “three young peers” declare they preferred “to see Hitler in London than a Socialist administration.” Nicolson Diary, 18 May 1938, p. 342; Lindbergh visit to Sissinghurst, 22 May 1938, p. 343.

503 ER at Val-Kill, birds fly: May 1938, My Day, pp. 249–50.

503–4 China and Barcelona: My Day, Apr. 1938, p. 238.

504 ER at Empire State Building, thought intruded: My Day, Apr. 1938, p. 241.

504 ER loved to hear the songs of the International Brigade: Joseph Lash, A Friend’s Memoir (Doubleday, 1964), pp. 198–99; see also Leslie Gould, American Youth Today (Random House, 1940), p. 71; ER wrote the foreword for this AYC celebration.

504 FDR and Spain: FDR had discussed Spain with congressional leaders, Speaker Bankhead and Majority Leader Sam Rayburn. Ickes Diary, 7 May 1938, 12 May, pp. 388–90.

505 ER joined Bowers’s plea: My Day, May 1938, p. 253.

505–6 Hall and Daniel in Paris: Bullitt to FDR, telegram #970, 21 June 1938. Bullitt, pp. 274–76. Freidel argues that FDR was part of this effort. Perhaps he was; but it is unlikely that he would have encouraged Hall or ER to communicate with Bullitt if he wanted it to succeed. Bullitt’s views were well known: On 24 November 1936, Bullitt wrote FDR: “The war in Spain, as you know, has become an incognito war between the Soviet Union and Italy…. My own impression is that Mussolini has decided to put through Franco whatever the cost may be. I think that the cost will be very high.” Bullitt, pp. 186–87. See Herbert L. Matthews, Half of Spain Died (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), p. 179.

507 Too late to help Spain, ER and Churchill: TIR, p. 275.

507–8 Danny in Spain for six weeks, confirmed ER’s convictions: Daniel Stewart Roosevelt, “Wings Over Spain,” in Hall Roosevelt with Samuel Duff McCoy, Odyssey of an American Family: An Account of the Roosevelts and Their Kin As Travelers, 1613–1938 (Harper & Brothers, 1939), pp. 328–35. With gratitude to Diana Roosevelt Jaicks.

508 ER received set number two of Goya’s Los Proverbios: Matthews, NYT, 8 Sept. 1954; see Armstrong, p. 477, cf. 470–78; ER, “I am not neutral”: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 569.

26: Race Radicals, Youth and Hope

509–10 ER’s address at Hampton Institute: 21 Apr. 1938; The Southern Workman, July 1938, pp. 164–77.

510–11 Lucy Randolph Mason: Lucy Randolph Mason to ER, 1 Feb. 1938; 11 Feb. 1938; re SCHW, 28 July 1938; Mason to Frances Perkins and ER, 24 Mar. 1930; ER to Mason, 7 Feb., 18 Apr. 1938. ER sent Mason’s reports to FDR via Missy LeHand: “FDR should read. She is a level-headed person and an old hand.” He returned her letters, with a memo: “The President has seen.” On FDR’s FBI proposal on lynching, and Evian, see editorials, The Crisis, Apr. 1938, esp. p. 119.

511 Oversight for women’s prisons: Mason to ER, 7 Apr.; Mason to ER, 9 May 1938; ER to Aubrey Williams, to protest WPA and PWA funding for armories and new women’s prisons in Georgia and South Carolina. Gay Shepperson protested; and Dr. lean Davis of Wells College and Bedford Reformatory; on West Virginia discrimination, ER to John Fahey, 25 May 1938; John Hager to ER, 28 May, 70.

511 Mason considered ER “the most useful woman in America”: Mason was particularly grateful to ER for her appointment to the National Emergency Council, which FDR convened to address the South’s regional problems. Southern leaders would meet in July, and Mason hoped to see ER there. But ER intended to be exclusively at Hyde Park. Masterful, Mason to ER, 1 July 1938; ER to Mason, 3 July 1938.

511 World Youth Congress: ER to Elizabeth Shields-Collins, secretary, World Youth Congress Movement, Geneva, 13 Jan. 1938, 100, Box 1477: “I will be glad to attend … 15 August.” Originally, ER tried to persuade FDR to accept the World Youth Congress as an official government-sponsored conference, and finance it. ER to FDR, 7 Jan. 1938; FDR memo to ER, 10 Jan. 1938, rejecting idea. There were altogether too many groups to support.

511–12 Aubrey Williams and AYC: Gould, p. 86; McCloskey to ER, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 545. ER was particularly fond of Joseph Cadden, then editor of the National Student Mirror and associated with the National Student Federation; William Porter of Kentucky, president of the AYC’s Southern branch; and especially William Hinckley, AYC chairman. Born in South Dakota, Hinckley was “big and bouncing.” An award-winning scholar and athlete, he graduated from Rollins College, and had a master’s in social science from Columbia. Unfailingly cheerful, he and his widowed mother worked hard for every educational opportunity he achieved. He had great respect for struggling people, a profound commitment to democratic activism, and unbounded admiration for ER. I am grateful to Vivian Cadden for information and AYC memorabilia.

512 AYC’s Declaration of Rights: Hinckley to ER, 23 Mar. 1938; Leslie Gould, American Youth Today (Random House, 1940).

513 ER moved on: ER became close to several AYC leaders, notably Hinckley, Joseph Cadden (executive secretary), Abbot Simon (legislative secretary), Josaph Lash (AYC vice president and president, American Student Union), Molly Yard (a vigorous organizer, and vice president of the American Student Union), and Jack McMichael (a student orator from Quitman, Georgia, who went to China for the YMCA; he succeeded Hinckley as AYC president, then attended Union Theological Seminary and became a progressive rural Methodist minister). In 1938 the AYC executive board included Louise Meyerovitz of Young Judea; unionist James Carey (UERMWA, United Electrical Workers, CIO), Hipolito Marcano (Puerto Rican Youth Congress), Lael Moon (American Country Life Association), Edward Strong (National Negro Congress), and Myrtle Powell (YWCA).

513 “to jolt women out of their apathy”: ER quoted in NYT, 28 Dec. 1938.

514 ER elected to AYC advisory board: Hinckley to ER, 23 Mar. 1938; ER to Hinckley, 16 April, with attachments on congressional investigation of the AYC, 100, Box 1462; on Hinckley, Gould; Abbott Simon and Vivian Cadden to BWC.

514 Catholic lobby, divorce and birthing: NYT, 27 April 1938; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 568.

514 ER a Red leader: ER to Mrs. Jack Trautman, 1 July 1936; Trautman to ER, 13 June 1936 (Columbus, Ohio), 100, Box 1408. See also Elizabeth Dilling’s The Red Network, and Jeansonne, Women of the Radical Right.

515 Rumors of Hopkins’s impending marriage: Hick to ER, 19 May; ER to Hick, 21 May 1938.

515 no special time, Barbirolli “too pedantic”: ER to Hick, 29 Apr. 1938.

515–16 Wages and hours law, and Lubin: in Davis, pp. 240–41.

516 ER amused by Kennedy’s impressions: ER to Hick, 22 June 1938.

516 Anne Lindsay Clark marries John Roosevelt: Sun. NYT, 19 June 1938.

516 At Val-Kill: ER to Hick, 6 July, 23 June 1938.

517 Evian Conference: Morse, pp. 170–76; Hitler quoted in Davis, p. 197; Evian resulted from a suggestion made by Sumner Welles on 25 Mar. 1938; Shirer, Berlin Diary, 7 July 1938, pp. 119–20.

517 Galápagos: FDR to ER aboard USS Houston, 24 July 1938, 31 July, 1 Aug., 2 Aug., pp. 799–800.

517–18 Winston Churchill’s boot FDR to Uncle Fred, 25 June 1938, “Ever so many thanks…. It will make great reading on the trip …,” p. 793. Upon his return, jolly and satisfied, ER noted: “F seems to have had a perfect holiday.” ER to Hick, 12 Aug 1938. Although she never wanted to join him on his fishing adventures, ER envied FDR’s trip to the Galapagos and vowed one day to go there herself, which she did during the war.

518 “life may be somewhat negative”: ER to Hick, 21 July 1938.

518 “If you like it one-tenth”: Hick to ER; curious tone: ER to Elizabeth and Esther, 2 Aug. 1938.

518 ER replied frankly: ER to Esther, 11 Aug. 1938.

518 In Hick’s space: Hick had once written ER about her hilarious moments with Bill Dana, the two of them together through the woods hunting, with music and brandy, in his Rolls-Royce town car. “That’s the sort of thing that would happen only out here!” It was not, however, something that might thrill ER. Hick to ER, 30 Oct. 1937, LH, Box 4; I am grateful for Doris Dana’s memories of her father and Hick on the place; politely: ER to Hick, 5 Aug. 1938.

519 Letters of complaint: ER to FDR, 4 Aug.; to Elinor Morgenthau, 6 Aug. 1938.

519 three letters to Anna: ER to Anna, 4 Aug. 1938; Halsted, Box 57; ER to Anna, 12 Aug. 1938; driven by work: ER to Anna, 22 Aug. 1938.

520 A dozen AYC leaders: William Hinckley to ER, 5 August 1938, 100, Box 1462; NYT, 10 Aug. 1938.

520 FDR to ER, 2 Aug.; n.d., Aug., from Balboa, pp. 800–801; “I don’t want to go anywhere”: ER to FDR, 4 Aug. 1938.

520–21 FDR speech, 18 August 1938: Selected speeches, pp. 158ff.; Dallek, p. 163. Germany dismissed his words as “moral preachment.”

521 World Youth Congress, from beginning: NYT, 10 Aug. 1938; Gould, passim.

521 On U.S. attendance at Nuremberg rally: See FDR to Sumner Welles, 3 June 1938, pp. 790–91; see also Offner.

522 ER differs with the bishops: “Radicals at Vassar,” in America, 6 Aug. 1938; sent to ER by Reverend J. Murphy; ER to Father Murphy, 16 Aug. 1938, 100, Box 1470.

522 ER greeted the delegates: NYT, 17 Aug. 1938.

522–23 Details of the Youth Congress in Gould, pp. 90–94.

523 “a lesson to their elders”: ER to Hick, 27 Aug. 1938; see also Lash, Friends, pp. 1–6.

523 Hallie Flanagan and first Dies committee hearing: See Eric Bentley, 30 Years of Treason (Viking, 1971), pp. 3–55.

523 endured tough questions: NYT, 21 Aug. 1938.

523 ER left Vassar: ER to Hick, 16 Aug. 1938; 27 Aug. 1938.

523 ER defended the Congress: NYT, 21 Aug. 1938. Matthews also explained the origin of the ASU in the autumn of 1935: The National Student League and the Student League for Industrial Democracy, associated with Norman Thomas, merged and the ASU became the united front’s student movement. ER initially ignored the Dies hearings that August, and defended the Youth Congress as “an outstanding event,” in her Democratic Digest column, Oct. 1938.

524 letter to disturbed citizens, “I do not believe in Communism”: ER to Ellinor Heiser, Md., 6 Sept. 1938, 100, Box 1461.

524 triumphant dive: ER to Hick, 21 Aug. 1938.

525 “fish in a back water”: ER to Hick, 27 Aug. 1938.

525 Hall appeared: ER to Hick, 28 Aug. 1938; additional details: 31 Aug. 1938.

526–27 Inauguration letters: Tommy to Anna, Jan. 1937; “George Bye told me … $25,000 job”: n.d., Jan. 1938, Halsted, Box 75.

527 “Our Daughters’ Heritage”: Marion Dickerman Papers, Box 4.

527 “I am terribly sorry”: ER to MD, quoted in Davis, Summer, pp. 148–49. Still, ER was not ready simply to abandon Todhunter. On 30 Mar. Tommy wrote “Dear Gorgeous” that “Todhunter hogs a lot of time.” Still it was an “affliction to be born with so much generosity and kindness as your mother has.” Then, in April, Tommy wrote with glee: “Your mother will probably tell you about Myron Taylor’s dinner. [He] told them in no uncertain terms that your mother was the one and only drawing card…. He frankly admitted that he would have no interest whatsoever unless it were for your mother….” Tommy to Anna, 15 Apr. 38.

527 “as a contact”: ER to Dickerman, with details of the meeting with Hooker, Bernard Baruch, and Judge Gerard, 26 Apr. 1938.

527 “endurance test”: Tommy to Anna, n.d., 30 Mar. 1937; “my house”: 10 Sept. 1937.

528 Dickerman appointed to commission: Tommy to Anna, 11 July 1938.

528 ER once before tried to get Dickerman a job: ER to Hopkins, 14 June 1935, 70, Box 653.

529 Dickerman’s sojourn a disaster: Frances Perkins, Columbia Oral History, vol. 5, pp. 415–40.

529 ER in Democratic Digest: Oct. 1938; Dickerman observed Kennedy, and Swope: Davis, Summer, pp. 149–50.

530 “it makes your mother very nervous”: Tommy to Anna, 6 Aug. 1938.

530 at dock: Davis, p. 150; “Eleanor hurt her”: Dickerman, Columbia Oral History Project, p. 352.

530 “Eleanor never forgot a hurt”: Dickerman, Oral, p. 352.

530 “your mother never takes any credit”: Tommy to Anna, May 1937, Halsted, Box 75.

531 “Pa’s ten days”: ER to Anna, 30 Aug. 1938, Halsted, Box 57.

532 For the significant Arthurdale sums in Nancy Cook’s account, see Pickett to ER, 1934–37.

532 Tommy’s call “incredibly dashing”: Lape, Memories of Saltmeadow, in Lape Papers, FDRL, pp. 25–26. ER confided her deepest feelings to Lape, “I am overcome now and then by the shameless way in which I tell you all the little things of life but then they do make up the major part of our existence, dont they?” ER to Lape, 5 Oct. 1938.

532–33 “I thought I had made it very clear”: ER to Nan and Marion, 29 Oct. 1938, MD, Box 4, p. 577; the final separation agreement: ER to MD, 9 Nov. 1938, ibid.

533 Dickerman-ER telegrams: Davis, p. 153.

533–34 Tommy to Lape and Read, Nov. 1938.

534 “Franklin dear”: Nancy Cook to FDR, 14 Nov. 1938, ppf, 1256.

535 “The only instance”: Dickerman to ER, 16 May, in Davis, p. 155.

535 “I know nothing,” Dickerman’s final letters: in Davis, pp. 155–57.

536 “an empty victory”: Tommy to Anna, 12 Nov. 1938.

536 Tommy had minor surgery: Lucy Randolph Mason to ER, 24 June 1938; ER to Mason, 5 July.

536 Dr. Steele, “complete disillusionment”: Tommy to Anna, 12 Nov. 1938, Halsted, box 75.

536 “I hate to see you disillusioned”: Hick to ER, 17 Nov. 1938.

Chapter 27: Storms on Every Front

538 FDR’s words thrilled ER’s allies: See Linda Reed, Simple Decency and Common Sense: The Southern Conference Movement, 1938–1963 (Indiana University Press, 1991), intro; Virginia Durr, Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Durr (University of Alabama Press, 1985), pp. 116–18.

538—39 “I like facing facts”: ER to Hick; “Father came to Rochester”: James Roosevelt, p. 309; ER described her lonely hospital vigil, and their flight: TIR, p. 166; Democratic Digest, Nov. 1938.

539 to avert war by “flattering him why it is worth doing”: ER to Hick, 15 Sept. 1938.

539 “tension in the house is great”: ER to Anna, 15 Sept. 1938.

540 Lake Geneva, 14–22 Sept.: Shirer, Diary, pp. 124–37.

540 Nicolson lunched with Litvinov: Nicolson, p. 356.

540 No gossip, only war talk: Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell, 28 Sept., 1 Oct., 3 Oct. 1938, Letters, VI, pp. 273–79.

541 Marguerite Few, Once Baxter, to ER: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 573. 541 FDR’s 26 Sept. 1938 message, and responses: Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision (Harper, 1940), pp. 69–71.

541 Munich Conference: Shirer, Diary, A.J.P. Taylor noted that Hitler wanted an Anglo-Saxon alliance, but U.S. isolation prevented that. For a recent and important discussion of appeasement and historians, see Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel, In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion (Monthly Review Press, 1998).

541 The most dramatic description of the weeks that led to Munich, and beyond, is Harold Nicolson, pp. 350–76.

541 “The poor Czechs!”: ER to FDR, 21, 27 Sept. 1938, fam/childn, box 16.

541–42 FDR to cabinet: Ickes, p. 468.

542 FDR quoted in Bullitt, p. 285; Keitel quoted in Churchill, p. 319; Bonnet in Bullitt, p. 284; Daladier in Bullitt, p. 287.

542 “All is over”: Churchill, pp. 327–28.

543 “He is not a Jew himself”: Gertrude Ely to ER, 13 Sept. 1938, 100, Box 1457; ER to Ely, 19 Sept. 1938, 100, Box 1457.

543–44 Joseph Kennedy: Beschloss, pp. 159ff.; 177, 172, 187; see also Ickes Diary, Nov. 1938.

544 Bullitt, Moffat, Cudahy: Ted Morgan, pp. 498–99, passim; see also Dallek.

545 “How do you manage”: Hick to ER, 19 Sept. 1938.

545 “an efficient maid”: ER to Hick, 20 Sept. 1938; “anxious for a glimpse”: ER to Hick, 19 Sept.

545 “Doesn’t one feel helpless when nature gets going?”: She also wrote, “Of course you are glad to have no one on your mind—You are too busy to be bothered!” ER to Hick, 22 Sept. 1938.

546 “Our cellars here are flooded”: ER to Hick, 23 Sept. 1938. I am grateful to David Rattray for “The Hurricane of “38,” written and produced by Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein for the American Experience.

546–47 “I shall not soon forget that night”: Hick to ER, 26 Sept. 1938; at the White House, “eclipsed by the world situation”: ER to Hick, 27 Sept. 1938; Esther Lape rushed to be with Elizabeth Read: see Lape, Saltmeadow, pp. 36–41.

547 “What a mad man!”: ER to Hick, 28 Sept. 1938.

547–48 “nature does cover up”: ER to Hick, 29 Sept. 1938; Pa’s speech and Thomas Mann: ER to Anna, 3 Oct. 1938; Mann and “Czechoslovakia set up in an arbitrary way”: My Day, 23 Sept. 1938.

548–49 ER to Helen Gifford, 14 Oct. 1938; Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 574.

549 “Mankind has never been in this position before”: Churchill in Gathering, pp. 38–41.

549 “I have never believed”: ER to Elizabeth Baker, National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War, 20 Jan. 1938, SCPC.

549 “everywhere people listened,” speeches on tour, and youngest grandson: Democratic Digest, Nov. 1938.

550 dined with Aubrey Williams, Josephine Roche, others, sympathy with Mexico’s oil lands: ER to Hick, 9 Oct. 1938; Dallek, pp. 175–76; Ickes, pp. 352, 521–22; see also Time, 8 Aug. 1938.

551 ER to HH, 13 Oct. 1938, with poem, 70, Box 731.

552 ER’s birthday a state occasion: NYT, 13 Oct. 1938; also, 10 Sept.; New York State women’s poll; and Women’s National Press Club honored “Good Queen Eleanor”: NYT, 16 Oct. 1938, sect. 4.

552 Granny “aging fast”: ER to Anna, 3 Oct. 1938; worried about everything: ER to Anna, 23 Oct. 1938; publicly, “younger in spirit”: Democratic Digest, Nov. 1938.

553–54 “Too bad Curt,” and James: ER to Anna, 23 Oct. 1938; on the road: ER to Hick, 12 Oct.; “If only you weren’t the President’s wife”: Hick to ER, 12 Oct. 1938; “I doubt dear”: ER to Hick, 15 Oct. 1938.

554 proposed a week in Washington: ER to Hick, 21 Oct.; “thought you had put the White House aside forever!”: ER to Hick, 25 Oct. 1938; Hick to ER, 27 Oct. 1938; KKK, labor strikes: ER to Hick, 28, 29 Oct. 1938.

554–55 birth of John Boettiger, Jr.: Anna to Tommy, 7 Nov. 1938, Halsted, box 75.

555 Returned in time to join FDR and SDR at the polls: Democratic Digest, Dec. 1938.

555 1938 elections disastrous: Davis, pp. 362–64.

555 “wholly reconciled”: FDR to Josephus Daniels, 14 Nov. 1938, Letters, IV, p. 827.

555 “libelous misinformation”: Flanagan to ER, 22 Sept. 1938; ER to Flanagan, 28 Sept. 1938, 70.

557 “This German-Jewish business makes me sick”: ER to Hick, 14 Nov. 1938.

557 canceled engagement because it excluded Jews: E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment (Vintage, 1966), p. 237.

557 drive for home for immigrant girls in Jerusalem”: NYT, 19 Oct. 1937; spoke for Léon Blum colony in Palestine: NYT, 7 Dec. 1938.

558 TR’s 1902 message to Romania: Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died, p. 107.

558 For aid to China: FDR to Hull, 11 Jan. 1938, Letters, IV, pp. 744–45; see esp. Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Penguin, 1997).

558 Jews on the run for 4,000 years: FDR to William Phillips, 15 Sept. 1938, Letters, IV, p. 811.

558 to drive wedge between Hitler and Mussolini: Ickes, 7 Jan. 1939, p. 548.

558 Red Cross: Morse, p. 262.

559 FDR appealed for emergency asylum: NYT, 19 Nov. 1938.

560–61 Bowman’s report: 21 Nov. 1938; 25 Nov. 1938; psf, 177, refugees.

561–62 Appropriate Baja, California: Sumner Welles to FDR, 28 Nov. 1938, with 12-page memo: The Dominican Republic agreed to accept 10,000; and at the subsequent London Conference raised that to 100,000. But of 2,000 refugees who applied for Dominican visas, only 20 had been granted in the preceding four months. Nicaragua admitted “a fair number of refugees.” El Salvador did not attend Evian, and refused to accept refugees. Colombia had admitted 10,000 refugees, and “believes that it is unwise to admit more.” Ecuador admitted “substantial numbers” as agriculturalists, but they all settled in cities. Ecuador then began deportation proceedings, which it rescinded “due to the efforts of the local Jewish community.”

Brazil and Paraguay were willing to admit additional refugees. Argentina had a population of 350,000 Jews, “more than in the rest of Latin America combined.” “New and more restrictive immigration regulations went into effect October 1st. It is nevertheless probable that the government will continue to admit a not inconsiderable number of refugees.” Chile and Uruguay adopted greater restrictions after Evian. Bolivia had limited settlement potential. Peru was cooperative and wanted agriculturalists and people “with capital to establish many non-existing industries which the country seriously needs.” Cuba “has been relatively hospitable to refugees,” but made no commitment as to the future. Within six months of Welles’s discouraging assessment, additional barriers were raised everywhere. Welles, 28 Nov., psf, 177.

562 for Canada, see esp. Abella and Troper, None Is Too Many (Random House, 1982).

562 ER defended the AYC at AAUW luncheon at Hotel Astor: NYT, 20 Nov. 1938; Marion Dickerman spoke as president of N.Y.’s AAUW, on her ILO mission; Virginia Gildersleeve spoke about the need to find havens for Europe’s university women, now deprived of all research opportunities.

563 ER’s shopping spree at Arnold Constable: On 21 Oct., NYT printed a photo of ER’s new hairstyle; NYT, 20 Nov. 1938.; Henry Grady quoted in Linda Reed, Simple Decency and Common Sense, p. 2.

564 SCHW meeting; See Reed, pp. 15–16, and passim; Virginia Durr, Outside the Magic Circle, and Durr to BWC.

565 “Sometimes actions speak louder than words”: Afro-American, quoted in Pauli Murray, Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (Harper & Row, 1987), p. 113.

565 ER’s 22 November 1938 speech at the SCHW: Allida Black, ed., Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt (Columbia University Press, 1999).

566 Aubrey Williams, in Virginia Durr; also, John Williams, A Southern Rebel: The Life and Times of Aubrey Williams (University of North Carolina, 1983), pp. 101–3.

566 resolutions, “one of the gravest sins”: Linda Reed, pp. 46–48.

566 Louise Charlton called on Mrs. Bethune:Virginia Durr, p. 121.

567 propaganda and a controlled press: Virginia Durr in NYT, 23 Nov. 1938.

567 “by dipping or sprinkling or total immersion….”: Durr, Outside, pp. 124–25.

568 “the New Deal come South,” and at the end: Durr, pp. 127–28.

568 “Have they torn you limb from limb yet?”: Hick to ER, 28 Nov. 1938.

568 “Tommy doesn’t feel well”: NYT, 23 Nov. 1938. ER also wrote that Birmingham “invoked an old ordinance and required segregation at all meetings even in churches and it caused most vigorous protest. I felt very uncomfortable and some of the questions I longed to answer as I really felt….” ER to Hick, 23 Nov. 1938.

568–69 Women’s Democratic Committee, to reunite Hick to politics: ER to Hick, 18 Nov. 1938; FDR “much interested,” doubts Farley: ER to Hick, 21 Nov.; “more liberal than the Republican party”: 22 Nov. 1938.

569 24 Nov. 1938, “the final and unalterably uncompromising solution”: Morse, p. 196; Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know (Holocaust Museum, Little, Brown, 1993), p. 35.

570 Citizens of conscience petitioned FDR: in Morse, p. 190.

570 rearmament, especially mass production of airplanes: FDR to “Dear Chief,” 14 Nov. 1938, Letters, IV, p. 827; FDR to Swanson, Edison, Leahy, 28 Dec. 1938, IV, p. 843; to General John J. Pershing, 3 Dec. 1938, IV, p. 838, re a study of military stores and requirements.

571 article on tolerance, “I gather that the President okayed it”: Hick to ER, 22 Nov. 1938; FDR read both, “just said …OK … to send”: ER to Hick, 25 Nov. 1938.

571 untitled manuscript on Jews: sent to Fulton Oursler, 25 Nov. 1938, in Hick, box 6; “Mrs. Roosevelt Answers Mr. Wells on ‘The Future of the Jews,’” Liberty, 31 Dec. 1938; reprinted in Allida Black.

571 important for Jews to remain unaggressive: Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 750.

573 “I like it very much”: Hick to ER, 30 Nov. 1938.

573 Keepers of Democracy, written in Nov. 1938, published in The Virginia Quarterly Review (Winter 1939); also in Allida Black.

574 freedom can never be “freedom for me and not for you”: ER at Brooklyn Academy, in NYT, 13 Dec. 1938; “democracy is going forward”: NYT, 22 Jan. 1939.

574–75 “grand time”: Hick to ER, 21 Dec. 1938; “dust and ashes,” serenity safer: ER to Hick, 23 Dec. 1938.

575 For press coverage of ER H’s debutante party, I am grateful to ER II and Diana Roosevelt Jaicks.

575 equal rights for minorities as well as majorities: ER in NYT, 23 Oct. 1937.

575 “There are still slaves of many kinds”: ER to National Negro Congress, NYT, 11 Feb. 1938.

576 “As I listened,” ER’s response to speeches for Léon Blum colony: My Day, 8 Dec. 1938. While ER spoke on behalf of the settlement for 1,000 Jewish refugee families in Palestine named to honor France’s first Jewish and socialist prime minister, France was on the verge of civil war. Even as Blum’s government fell in April 1938, left pacifist Simone Weil wrote deputy Gaston Bergery that she preferred German hegemony to war, although it would mean “laws of exclusion against Communists and Jew”; quoted in Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Basic Books, 1981), p. 39.