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By Root 1752 0

Reverend Patrick Ludden, the Roman Catholic bishop of Syracuse, claimed that Franklin and his colleagues reflected a resurgence of “the old spirit of Knownothingism” that prevented Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, from getting ahead.92 Daniel O’Connell, political boss of Albany for several generations, put it more pungently. Franklin, he said, “was a bigot. He didn’t like Tammany. He didn’t like poor people. He was a patronizing son of a bitch.”93 FDR’s denials were more fervent than convincing. Both he and Eleanor shared the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudices of their time and class.* Franklin would learn tolerance, and over the years he and the nation’s Irish pols would use each other for their mutual benefit. But their affection never ran deep. James A. Farley, who served FDR for a dozen years as campaign manager and party chairman, had as one of his tasks to persuade his fellow Irish leaders that they could work with Roosevelt in spite of what they might have heard about his youthful anti-Catholicism. Farley did a superb job, but he was never personally convinced. Later he lamented that his relationship with FDR had been purely professional. “Strange as it may seem, the President never took me into the bosom of his family, although everyone agreed I was more responsible than any other single man for his being in the White House.”94

A lasting legacy of the Sheehan fight was the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the direct election of U.S. senators by the voters in each state, not the legislatures. In April 1911, the New York legislature took up a bill previously introduced by Roosevelt instructing the state’s congressional delegation to support such an amendment. The direct election of senators was popular with the progressive movement throughout the country and had been one of the planks in the Democratic platform. FDR led the debate in the State Senate, which on April 20 passed the measure 28–15. Four days later the Assembly adopted it 105–30. The Democrats in both houses voted solidly in favor, most Republicans against. The Sheehan battle, taken together with similar struggles in New Jersey and Illinois, launched a groundswell of popular sentiment behind the amendment. Congress adopted it by the required two-thirds vote on May 13, 1912, and upon ratification by three quarters of the states, it became part of the Constitution on May 31, 1913. (New York was the fourth state to ratify, acting January 15, 1913.)

Fighting “bossism” came naturally to FDR. He challenged Tammany over a bill to reorganize the State Highway Commission, pressed for adoption of a direct-primary bill, and struck a puritanical pose against such Tammany-endorsed measures as Sunday baseball, legalized prizefighting, and betting at the racetrack. “Murphy and his kind must, like the noxious weed, be plucked out root and branch,”95 he told an audience in Buffalo. These stands were popular with Roosevelt’s churchgoing constituency of upriver farmers and small-town businessmen. But they ignored the economic issues of the day, failed to address the growing problems of industrialization, and tagged Tammany with an out-of-date label more appropriate to the days of the Tweed Ring than the progressive leadership of Murphy, Wagner, and Smith.* As one legislative veteran put it, FDR’s ideas in 1911 were “the silly conceits of a political prig [devoid] of human sympathy, human interests, human ties,” a characterization with which most members would have agreed.96

* Written in pencil by Roosevelt on the flyleaf of his copy of Professor Henry S. Redfield’s Selected Cases on Code Pleading and Practice in New York. Redfield was one of two professors who failed FDR.

* Except for the wicker furniture, there was little rustic about the Kuhn-Roosevelt “cottage.” In addition to the extensive manicured lawns extending to the water’s edge, there were four full baths, two butler’s pantries, seven fireplaces, and a full-size laundry. It required a staff of eight to operate. After FDR contracted polio, the cottage was used sparingly. In 1952