FDR - Jean Edward Smith [417]
6. The newly empowered Southern Democrats demanded that Washington’s streetcars be segregated, that Congress enact a miscegenation statute for the District of Columbia, and that all black appointees be dismissed, especially those in a position “to boss white girls.” As the newly appointed collector of internal revenue in Atlanta asserted, “There is no Government position for negroes in the South. A negro’s place is in the cornfield.” Atlanta Georgian and News, October 7, 1913.
7. FDR to ER, March 17, 1913, FDRL. Eleanor wired to congratulate Franklin. “I ordered your 17th of March present as we couldn’t do anything else together.” FDRL.
8. The State, War, and Navy Building, now refurbished as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, is the finest remaining example of what architectural historians call “General Grant style,” a reference to the monumental federal buildings constructed during Grant’s presidency, most of which were designed by Alfred B. Mullett. For an assessment, see Elsa M. Santoyo, ed., Creating an American Masterpiece: Architectural Drawings of the Old Executive Office Building, 1871–1888 (Washington, D.C.: Executive Office of the President, 1988); Donald H. Lehman, Executive Office Building (Washington, D.C.: General Services Administration, 1964). For an iconoclastic view, see Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation 9 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969). Mr. Acheson’s criticism stems from his service as assistant secretary of state under FDR in the 1940s.
9. FDR and Daniels posed for a picture on that balcony shortly after they took office (see illustrations). FDR was caught smiling broadly, and Daniels noted his expression. “We were both looking on the White House,” said the secretary, “and you are saying to yourself, being a New Yorker, ‘some day I will be living in that house’—while I, being from the South, know I must be satisfied with no such ambition.” Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of Peace, 1910–1917 129 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944).
10. FDR to SDR, March 17, 1913; SDR to FDR, March 18, 1913, 2 The Roosevelt Letters 170–171, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap. 1950).
11. Navy Department, Ships’ Data: U.S. Naval Vessels 6–14 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1914); Bureau of the Census, Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present 711, 736 (Stamford, Conn.: Fairfield Publishers, 1965). To convert 1913 dollars, multiply by 18. Thus, $144 million would equal $2.592 billion in 2006.
12. 19 Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed. 310–311 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1911). The United States’s first two modern battleships, the Nevada and Oklahoma, were laid down at the end of TR’s presidency but were not launched until 1914 and not commissioned until 1916. They and their sister ships Pennsylvania and Arizona, obsolescent but serviceable, continued on active service until Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Arizona and Oklahoma were sunk, the Nevada was run aground, and the Pennsylvania, in dry dock, was heavily damaged. Edward L. Beach, The United States Navy: 200 Years 429–430 (New York: Henry Holt, 1986).
13. Testifying before the Select Committee on the Budget of the House of Representatives in 1919, FDR said, “We feel that the present bureau system concentrates too much dog-in-the-manger policy on the part of each bureau as against every other bureau, that they are not all working sufficiently for the common end of the Navy Department, and that they are working too much for the particular good of their own particular bureau.” Transcript, October 1, 1919, FDRL.
14. Daniels steadfastly resisted all efforts to make the bureaus responsible to the chief of naval operations, believing that would “Prussianize