FDR - Jean Edward Smith [226]
Roosevelt still declined to take a stand. The act would be divisive, and FDR wanted to remain above the fray. Even the possibility of a veto could not be ruled out. “It seems almost inevitable that the Administration would have much to lose in public support” if the bill became law, Commerce secretary Daniel Roper told FDR on May 22.104 But the following week the Supreme Court struck down the NIRA and in the process gutted the nascent collective bargaining provisions contained in the act.105 The public outcry convinced FDR that the time for Wagner’s bill had come. He placed himself at the head of the parade, and the measure whipped through the House of Representatives without a roll call. It was signed into law on July 5, 1935.106
In November, FDR resumed his practice of spending Thanksgiving at Warm Springs. On the twenty-ninth he journeyed to Atlanta, where he was received at a massive homecoming rally at the Georgia Tech football stadium. Roosevelt was at his rhetorical best:
You cannot borrow your way out of debt, but you can invest your way into a sounder future.… Over three years ago, realizing that we were not doing a perfect thing but that we were doing a necessary thing, we appropriated money for direct relief. But just as quickly as possible we turned to the job of providing actual work for those in need.
I realize that gentlemen in well-warmed and well-stocked clubs will discourse on the expenses of Government and the suffering that they are going through because their Government is spending money on work relief. Some of these same gentlemen tell me that a dole would be more economical than work relief. That is true. But the men who tell me that have, unfortunately, too little contact with the true America to realize that … most Americans want to give something for what they get. That something, which in this case is honest work, is the saving barrier between them and moral degradation. I propose to build that barrier high and keep it high.107
* “The cold fact is that on important matters we are seldom called upon for advice,” said Ickes. “We never discuss exhaustively any policy of government or question of political strategy. The President makes all of his own decisions and so far as the Cabinet is concerned, without taking counsel with a group of advisors.” 1 The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes 308 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953).
* Roosevelt was not a heavy drinker. Except on formal occasions he never drank wine with dinner and rarely had anything afterward. He enjoyed the social aspects of the “children’s hour” and spent most of his time mixing drinks for others. Usually he had only one, two at the most, drinks himself. John Gunther, a frequent guest at the “children’s hour,” complained that FDR used inferior Argentine vermouth and a substandard gin in his martinis, though it was rumored he stocked a better quality for favored guests. John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect 95 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950).
* Mrs. Nesbitt was equally capricious in her role as chief housekeeper. One day preparing for the arrival of a Latin American head of state, presumably President Getúlio Vargas of Brazil, she told the staff, “Don’t bother to put the good linen sheets on the beds for these people.” Lillian Rogers Parks and Frances S. Leighton, The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil 31–32 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981).
* Reporters accompanying FDR invariably datelined their dispatches “At Sea with President Roosevelt.” Charles Hurd, When the New Deal Was Young and Gay 154 (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1965).
* The cryptic words of Article II that the president shall send and receive ambassadors provide the textual basis for the president’s recognition authority. “In every case the question of recognition was determined solely by the Executive,” wrote John Bassett Moore, the dean of international law scholars, after reciting an exhaustive survey of precedent. 3 International