FDR - Jean Edward Smith [53]
One of the principal pieces of social legislation to come forward at the 1911 session was a bill to limit the workweek of women and children to fifty-four hours. The measure was being held up in committee, and Democrats were divided. Every vote was important. Miss Perkins approached Roosevelt to ask his support and was dismissed abruptly: “No, no. More important things. More important things. Can’t do it now. Can’t do it now. Much more important things.”5
Thanks to help from Tammany stalwarts like Big Tim Sullivan and The MacManus (“the Devil’s Deputy from Hell’s Kitchen”), Miss Perkins got the measure to the Senate floor a year later on the final day of the session. Under the rules, an absolute majority—twenty-six votes—was required for passage, and the supporters were two votes shy. At the last moment, Tim Sullivan and his cousin Christy, whom Miss Perkins managed to call back from the night boat that was about to take them down the Hudson to New York, crashed through the chamber door to cast the two decisive votes. “It’s all right, me gal,” Big Tim thundered. “The bosses thought they were going to kill your bill, but they forgot about Tim Sullivan.”6 Pandemonium erupted on the floor. The Senate was swept by a tidal wave of emotion. Callous old politicians found themselves weeping. And at the back of the chamber, Frances Perkins was weeping too.7
Franklin was absent when the bill passed. “I remember being considerably disappointed because Roosevelt wouldn’t do anything about the 54-hour bill,” said Perkins. “I took it hard that a young man who had so much spirit did not do so well in this, which I thought a test, as did Tim Sullivan and The MacManus, undoubtedly corrupt politicians.”8*
Whether he could not remember, or whether he simply wanted to cover his tracks, FDR’s version of that night varies substantially—another example of excluding unpleasant facts from the record. Campaigning for governor in 1928, Roosevelt told a labor rally in Manhattan, “One of the first measures that we started in 1911 was the fifty-four-hour law for women and children in industry. In those days a fifty-four-hour law was considered the most radical thing that had ever been talked about.”9 Several years later, Roosevelt ratcheted up his involvement, telling reporters how he and Robert Wagner had been called Communists because they had worked for a fifty-four-hour-a-week law. “It is an old story,” said FDR, “but like an elephant, I have a long memory.”10
The most blatant reinterpretation was provided by Roosevelt’s principal aide and general factotum, Louis Howe, writing for The Saturday Evening Post in 1933. In Howe’s version, FDR not only supported the bill but played the central role in its passage. It was “young Senator Roosevelt,” wrote Howe, who held the Senate floor with a filibuster while Sullivan was summoned from the night boat. When told by runners that Big Tim refused to return, Roosevelt is supposed to have said, “Tell him he has to and I said so.”11*
FDR’s early record on women’s suffrage was little better. Although his district included Vassar College, a hotbed of feminism, Roosevelt initially hewed to the negative attitude