FDR - Jean Edward Smith [152]
FDR shared the prevailing consensus that the market’s correction would be brief. “The little flurry downtown,” as he called it, seemed just retribution for speculators who had artificially inflated stock prices.43 “Black Tuesday” did not figure in New York’s legislative elections the following week, and Democratic gains were slight. The party picked up three seats in the Assembly, but the GOP retained control of both houses. Roosevelt claimed victory, although the best that could be said is that the voters did not punish the governor for the crash.
By December the extent of the economic downturn was beginning to dawn. The 1932 election might be winnable after all. On December 10 FDR as much as threw his hat in the ring with a spectacular appearance in Chicago where he delivered three speeches in one day—a performance that could not be misunderstood. Speaking seriatim to the state Democratic committee, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the Chicago Commercial Club, Roosevelt rose above New York politics and wrapped himself in the mantle of western agrarianism: “If the farmer starves today, we will all starve tomorrow.”44 He predicted that the Democrats would recapture the House of Representatives in 1930, and his remarks generated headlines from coast to coast.
FDR was among the first state governors to recognize the seriousness of the Depression. When Hoover announced in late January that employment was rebounding, Frances Perkins took the president to task, citing Labor Department statistics to prove the situation was getting worse. “Bully for you,” said FDR. “That was a fine statement and I’m glad you made it.”45 By March 1930, although the reality of the Depression still was not acknowledged in Washington, Roosevelt established a commission to stabilize employment in New York—the first state commission of its kind in the United States. “The situation is serious,” said FDR, “and the time has come for us to face this unpleasant fact dispassionately.”46 Shortly thereafter Roosevelt became the first state chief executive to endorse the idea of unemployment insurance—a radical concept that had been kicking around university economics departments for years but had yet to make its debut in the public arena. First at an ad hoc meeting of New England governors that he convened, then at the National Governors Association Annual Meeting at Salt Lake City, FDR came flat out for a contributory scheme in which employees, employers, and the government would share the risks of future unemployment.
FDR was choosing the ground on which to oppose Hoover two years hence. When the president advised the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on May 1, 1930, that the worst was over and recovery at hand, Roosevelt told Democrats that Hoover had apparently repealed the laws of supply and demand.47 Speaking to the annual Jefferson Day dinner of the National Democratic Club at New York’s Commodore Hotel, FDR castigated financial circles in the East, who he suggested were unresponsive to the nation’s distress. “If Thomas Jefferson were alive he would be the first to question this concentration of economic power.”48
Roosevelt was followed on the dais by Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who would give the keynote address. Six years earlier Wheeler had run for vice president on the Progressive ticket with Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette. He was back in the Democratic fold, a powerful spokesman for the grassroots populism of the high plains. There was no advance text of Wheeler’s speech, and he had given no warning of what he intended to say. But his remarks were carried live on a nationwide hookup by NBC, and the assembled Democrats soon heard a clarion call for new leadership. “As I look about for a general to lead the Democratic party, I ask to whom we can go. I say that, if the Democratic party of New York will re-elect Franklin Roosevelt governor, the West will demand his nomination