FDR - Jean Edward Smith [159]
To head TERA, Roosevelt obtained the services of Jesse Straus, president of R. H. Macy department stores, a lifelong Democrat and one of the most respected businessmen in the state. (Straus would later serve as FDR’s ambassador to France.) Straus was given a free hand to organize the agency. He chose as his executive director a forty-two-year-old social worker originally from Iowa, Harry L. Hopkins, who at the time was unknown to Roosevelt or to any of Roosevelt’s advisers. Hopkins was an inspired choice. A gifted administrator who proved he could deliver aid swiftly with a minimum of overhead, Hopkins gave the relief effort an intensity that propelled him to Roosevelt’s attention. When Straus resigned in the spring of 1932, FDR named Hopkins to succeed him. In the next six years TERA assisted some 5 million people—40 percent of the population of New York State—at a cost of $1.155 billion. At the end of that period, 70 percent of those helped had returned to the workforce.10
Roosevelt’s first skirmish for the presidential nomination erupted unexpectedly with the ultraconservative, Al Smith–appointed leadership of the Democratic National Committee. Acting on Smith’s behalf, party chairman John Jakob Raskob and his deputy, former Treasury assistant secretary Jouett Shouse, sought to preempt the 1932 Democratic platform by having the National Committee commit the party to the repeal of Prohibition and support for the hyperprotectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.* Aside from staking out the ground to facilitate Smith’s renomination (Smith had already endorsed the tariff11), Raskob and Shouse hoped to embarrass Roosevelt and drive a wedge between him and the rural wing of the party. Neither the chairman nor his deputy believed that FDR, as governor of New York, would dare break with Smith.12 And to support the proposed platform, even to acquiesce and remain silent, would surely alienate those southern and western Democrats who were flirting with Franklin—men like Cordell Hull, Burton K. Wheeler, and Harry F. Byrd of Virginia—all of whom were militantly dry and even more vehemently antitariff.13
Raskob proved too clever by half. Instead of splitting Roosevelt from his potential southern and western supporters, the party chairman gave FDR the opportunity to consolidate his coalition. When news of Raskob’s preemptive plan leaked from Washington, Roosevelt placed himself at the head of the opposition. Hull feared that Raskob wanted to align the Democratic party with the economic policies of Herbert Hoover. Byrd was incensed at Smith’s power grab. Traditionally, party platforms are drafted at the national convention, and both Hull and Byrd asked Roosevelt to intervene. “I am appealing to you to prevent an action which I understand is contemplated by the National Democratic Committee,” wrote Byrd. “The Democratic Committee has no right to make a platform for the party,” he said. Byrd told Roosevelt the move would divide Democrats and pave the way for Hoover’s reelection. “I know you have the interests of the party at heart just as much as I have, and I feel you understand our Southern condition better than many other leaders. Prompt action on your part will be necessary.”14
Once again Roosevelt had been handed a golden opportunity. “You are absolutely right,” he wrote Byrd. “The Democratic National Committee has no authority, in any shape, manner or form, to pass on or recommend national issues or policies.”15
Before breaking with Smith, Roosevelt asked the party’s former nominee to rein Raskob in. “I do not know what the plans for next Thursday’s meeting of the National Committee are,” FDR wrote, “but the more I hear from different parts of the country, the more certain I am that it would be very contrary to the established powers and precedents of the National Committee, were they to pass resolutions of any kind affecting party policies at this time.”16 Smith did not reply but two days later held a press conference at which he declared he could see no objection to the National Committee