FDR - Jean Edward Smith [442]
7. Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York 291 (New York: Knopf, 1974).
8. Frances Perkins interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University. Caro cites a confidential source for Moses’s characterization of ER and reports that Adolf A. Berle, professor of law at Columbia at the time, said Moses “always talked badly about Eleanor Roosevelt.” The Power Broker 1194.
9. Emily Smith Warner and Hawthorne Daniel, The Happy Warrior: A Biography of My Father, Alfred E. Smith 240 (New York: Doubleday, 1956).
10. FDR to Adolphus Ragan, 3 Personal Letters 772–773.
11. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt 30. Mrs. Moskowitz complained bitterly to Frances Perkins about being replaced. “Franklin Roosevelt can never run that show. It’s going to be terrible. He’s got that dreadful Louis Howe up there. Louis Howe will poison his mind about everything. Howe hates Smith. He’s that kind of sour person. It’s going to be very bad.” Elisabeth Israels Perry, Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith 207 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
12. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Women’s Field in Politics,” Women’s City Club Quarterly (1928).
13. Alfred B. Rollins, Jr., Roosevelt and Howe 259 (New York: Knopf, 1962).
14. Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew 62.
15. As Tugwell remembers dinners in Albany, Sam Rosenman and Basil O’Connor “were so disillusioned with the cuisine and so prone to be annoyed with Eleanor’s well-meant probing that they often turned up after dinner rather than before. [Sam] could stand it as long as Missy LeHand was there. Her presence was like a quiet blessing on any company she graced,” Rexford G. Tugwell, The Brains Trust 53–54 (New York: Viking Press, 1968).
16. Betsey was the eldest daughter of the famous brain surgeon Dr. Harvey Cushing. Dr. Cushing had recently won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1925 biography of Sir William Osler, physician in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1889–1905) and regius professor of medicine at Oxford University (1905–19).
When ER learned of the engagement, she wrote Franklin that Betsey was “a nice child, family excellent, nothing to be said against it.… Perhaps it will be a good influence and in any case we can do nothing about it.” ER to FDR, November 22, 1928, FDRL.
17. FDR, 3 Personal Letters 43.
18. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt 38.
19. Quoted in Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 326 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971).
20. Hugh Gregory Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception 76–77 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985).
21. For background, see Will Swift, The Roosevelts and the Royals, especially 108–151 (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2004).
22. New York Evening Post, November 8, 1928.
23. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember 46 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949).
24. Blanche Wiesen Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 381 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992).
25. The New York Times, December 2, 1928.
26. Ibid.
27. Nathan Miller, FDR: An Intimate History 229–230 (New York: Doubleday, 1983).
28. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt 36. Rosenman quotes FDR: “Once you’ve made a decision, there’s no use worrying about whether you were right or wrong. Events will prove whether you were right or wrong, and if there is still time you can change your decision. You and I know people who wear out the carpets walking up and down worrying whether they have decided something correctly. Do the very best you can in making up your mind, but once your mind is made up go ahead.”
29. Frances Perkins interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.
30. Senator George Norris of Nebraska, the national champion of public power, called Roosevelt’s speech to the legislature “a very brave step in the right direction.” He also pointed out that across the Saint Lawrence both Ontario and Quebec were providing electric power to the consumer at cost. The New York Times, March 15, 1929. Also see S. I. Rosenman, “Governor Roosevelt’s Power