FDR - Jean Edward Smith [50]
* FDR received approximately $5,000 annually from the trust fund his father established. ER’s inheritance produced a little over $7,000, the principal invested primarily in New York Central Railroad stocks and bonds, administered by Cousin Henry Parish, vice president of the Chemical Bank.
† Anna Eleanor (May 3, 1906); James (December 23, 1907); Franklin Delano, Jr. (March 18, 1909–November 8, 1909); Elliott (September 23, 1910); Franklin Delano, Jr. (August 7, 1914); and John Aspinwall (March 13, 1916).
* Even within the family, FDR kept his feelings largely to himself. After the death of their infant son Franklin, Jr., in 1910, Roosevelt quietly joined the board of the New York Milk Committee, to help combat infant mortality. Franklin, Jr., had been bottle-fed, and the death rate for bottle-fed infants in the city was extremely high—over a thousand babies died in Manhattan alone the summer Franklin, Jr., fell ill. The trouble was traced to unpasteurized or adulterated milk drunk from unsterilized bottles. The Milk Committee ran a chain of storefront milk stations in the poorest sections of the city, which provided pure milk and free medical advice to mothers unable to afford either. See Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt 102–103 (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
* FDR proved adept at the law when he chose to apply himself. Legend at Carter, Ledyard and Milburn holds that when Franklin was managing clerk he was one day sent by John Milburn to municipal court to settle eight or nine minor suits against the American Express Company, one of the firm’s principal clients. Milburn instructed FDR to take $1,000 from the cashier and pay what was necessary. Later that afternoon the firm’s cashier reported to Milburn that Roosevelt had just come back and returned the $1,000. Milburn immediately called Franklin into his office and demanded an explanation. “Oh,” said Roosevelt. “When they called the cases, I tried them all and won.” Francis M. Ellis and Edward F. Clark, Jr., A Brief History of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn 115–116 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Peter E. Randall, 1988).
* At first blush, FDR’s statement appears somewhat grandiose. Until his election in 1932, only three New York governors had been elected president: Martin Van Buren (1836), Grover Cleveland (1884 and 1892), and TR (1904). But from the perspective of 1907, when FDR was speaking, his assertion warrants greater credence. New York cast almost 10 percent of the total electoral vote, and three of the last six presidential victors had indeed been New York governors.
* In the 1909 election, the Democrats won all countywide offices and twenty of the twenty-seven town supervisors. See Alfred B. Rollins, Jr., Roosevelt and Howe 18 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962).
* On election eve in November 1932, Roosevelt received a letter from Edwin De Turck Bechtel, a leading partner at Carter, Ledyard, who had been a fellow clerk with FDR at the firm and had been in the bullpen with him when Judge Mack discussed Dutchess County politics. “It thrills me,” Bechtel wrote, “to realize that your decision in 1910 as you sat at your old roll-top desk at 54 Wall Street and the political principles which you chose then and have always followed should have led to such a marvelous goal.” Enclosed with the letter were photostats of two pages from the ledger FDR kept as managing clerk “as a reminder of old times.” Legal Papers, Roosevelt Family Papers, FDRL.
* Sara, understandably, was never happy with the rough-edged politicians and less-than-couth newsmen FDR brought to Springwood, nor