FDR - Jean Edward Smith [209]
* FDR’s proclamation closing the banks reflected extraordinary input from leading members of the Hoover administration. Woodin was without staff support when he took office, and Secretary Mills, Undersecretary Arthur A. Ballantine (a Harvard classmate of FDR’s), Comptroller of the Currency Gloyd Awalt, and Walter Wyatt, general counsel of the Federal Reserve Board, helped put the proclamation into final form. “Mills, Woodin, Ballantine, Awalt, and I had forgotten to be Republicans or Democrats,” wrote Raymond Moley. “We were just a bunch of men trying to save the banking system.” After Seven Years 148 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939).
† FDR relished the “quarterback” metaphor. As he described his role calling plays to his press conference on April 13, 1933: “It is a little bit like a football team that has a general game plan against the other side. Now the captain and the quarterback of that team know pretty well what the next play is going to be and they know the general strategy of the team; but they cannot tell you what the play after the next play is going to be until the next play is run off. If the play makes ten yards, the succeeding play will be different from what it would have been if they had been thrown for a loss. I think that is the easiest way to explain it.” 2 The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 139, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Random House, 1938).
* FDR’s working majority in the Senate was far greater than 60–35, since Farmer-Labor Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota and four Republicans—Hiram Johnson of California, George Norris of Nebraska, Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, and Bronson Cutting of New Mexico—were solidly behind the president. In future years, when Shipstead, Johnson, Norris, La Follette, and Cutting faced reelection, FDR did his utmost to ensure that there was no serious Democratic opposition.
† Woodin’s decision to issue federal reserve notes backed by the assets of the nation’s banking system is the basis of American currency today. A quick look at a bill in one’s pocketbook will show the words “FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE” clearly printed on the front. The usage dates from the emergency banking legislation of March 1933.
* As one reporter noted, “Mr. Roosevelt’s features expressed amazement, curiosity, sympathy, decision, playfulness, dignity, and surpassing charm. Yet he said almost nothing. Questions were deflected, diverted, diluted. Answers—when they did come—were concise and clear. But I never met anyone who showed greater capacity for avoiding a direct answer while giving the questioner a feeling it had been answered.” Quoted in Bernard Asbell, The F.D.R. Memoirs 58 (New York: Doubleday, 1973).
† The day before the inauguration, a testy Herbert Hoover told FDR, “Mr. Roosevelt, when you are in Washington as long as I have been, you will learn that the President of the United States calls on nobody.” Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal 14 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959).
* Two years later to the day, on what would have been his ninety-fourth birthday, Holmes was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Roosevelt was among the mourners at the graveside. A soft spring rain was falling, but, as one of Holmes’s admirers said, “Soldiers don’t mind the rain.” Liva Baker, The Justice from Beacon Hill 643 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
* Eleanor Roosevelt observed the proceedings from the House gallery. When ER was recognized, she was given a standing ovation. “The House rose as one man,” said The New York Times. “The informality of the new occupants of the White House was never more forcefully evident. Not only did [ER] wear no hat, but she knitted almost constantly.” March 10, 1933.
* Congressional leaders attending included Speaker