FDR - Jean Edward Smith [156]
Later, ER told Franklin, “You have to decide … whether you are going to be Governor of this state or whether Mrs. Moskowitz is … If Mrs. Moskowitz is your secretary, she will run you. It won’t hurt you. It won’t give you any pain. She will run you in such a way that you don’t know that you are being run.… That’s the way she works. That is the kind of person she is. She doesn’t do it in any spirit of ill will. It’s simply that her competence is so much greater than anyone else’s.”
ER to FDR, November 13, 1928, FDRL; Frances Perkins Interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.
* Al Smith warned FDR against appointing Miss Perkins to a cabinet post. “Men will take advice from a woman,” said Smith, “but it is hard for them to take orders from a woman.” Miss Perkins remembered FDR’s chuckle as he related the conversation: “You see, Al’s a good progressive fellow but I’m willing to take more chances. I’ve got more nerve about women and their status in the world than Al has.” Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew 55 (New York: Viking Press, 1946).
* The Roosevelt children were unlucky in marriage. Anna was married three times, James four, Elliott five, Franklin, Jr., five, and John twice. Among them they had twenty-seven children. Samuel Rosenman, who lived in the executive mansion and had an opportunity to observe firsthand, attributed the children’s lack of marital success to an inadequate family life. FDR was pursuing his career, Eleanor had separate interests, and the children were left high and dry. Samuel I. Rosenman interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.
* Dean Acheson, a fellow Grotonian who served on and off as a sub–cabinet officer in the Roosevelt administration, was one of the few who took umbrage at FDR’s first-name familiarity. Considered more than a bit pompous himself, Acheson felt Roosevelt was condescending, calling the president’s style the Hudson Valley equivalent of the royal prerogative. “His was the royalty of the Tudors and Stuarts and Bourbons and Hapsburgs.… So when he called me ‘Dean’ on the first meeting, I did not like it.” Acheson to William D. Hassett, Hassett Papers, FDRL. Also see Acheson, Morning and Noon 165 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).
* Eleanor’s income tax returns for the period indicate a professional income averaging slightly more than $25,000 annually—roughly the same as FDR’s salary as governor. FDRL.
* Miss Perkins, who was sometimes present in the executive mansion when FDR spoke, said his voice and facial expression were that of an intimate friend. “As he talked his head would nod and his hands would move in simple, natural, comfortable gestures. His face would smile and light up as though he were actually sitting on the front porch or in the parlor with them.” Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew 72 (New York: Viking Press, 1946).
* The ditty sung by the newsmen to greet FDR is the chapter epigraph.
† Born in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in 1879, Rogers delighted the nation with his homespun wisdom. “I don’t belong to an organized political party,” he once quipped. “I’m a Democrat.” Quoted in David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear 31 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
* To allay concern about Roosevelt’s health, Louis Howe arranged for FDR to be examined by a battery of insurance company physicians at his Sixty-fifth Street home shortly after he received the Democratic nomination. Their report was made public on October 18, 1930, and Roosevelt was issued a life insurance policy for $560,000 (roughly $6 million today) with the Warm Springs Foundation as the beneficiary. On behalf of the examining physicians, Dr. Edgar W. Beckwith, medical director of the Equitable Life Assurance Company, told newsmen that to issue a policy of that magnitude was highly unusual. It required that the insured be in perfect health, which he said Roosevelt was. Except for his withered legs, said Dr.