FDR - Jean Edward Smith [66]
“Dearest Mama,” Franklin wrote after he settled in. “I am baptized, confirmed, sworn in, vaccinated—and somewhat at sea! For over an hour I have been signing papers which had to be accepted on faith—but I hope luck will keep me out of jail.” Absentmindedly, he signed the handwritten note to his mother with his full official signature, “Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Sara noted the gaffe and did not miss a beat: “Try not to write your signature too small,” she joked. “So many public men have such awful signatures.”10
The Navy that Daniels and Roosevelt took charge of in 1913 had mastered the transition to modern weaponry but was hobbled by an administrative structure substantially unchanged since 1842. The fleet consisted of 259 ships, including 39 battleships and heavy cruisers, manned by 63,000 officers, sailors, and marines, with an annual budget of $144 million—roughly 20 percent of all federal expenditures.11 The British Admiralty ranked it third in the world (behind Great Britain and Germany), but the numbers concealed the antiquated design of most of the American vessels.12 The fleet was also divided into three independent formations (Atlantic, Pacific, and Asiatic), each with a separate command structure. Promotion was strictly by seniority, advancement was slow, and there was no overall commander analogous to Britain’s First Sea Lord.
The barnacled logistical apparatus, originally patterned after the administrative boards of the Admiralty in the age of sail, had proved impervious to change. The department was organized into eight quasi-independent bureaus (Navigation, Ordnance, Equipment, Steam Engineering, Construction and Repair, Yards and Docks, Supplies and Accounts, Medicine and Surgery), each headed by a powerful chief who was legally responsible to Congress, not the secretary of the Navy or, for that matter, the president. The bureau chiefs, most of whom were admirals who had held their posts for years, conducted their business in splendid isolation from one another and with little regard for the department as a whole.13 They often duplicated one another’s work, competed furiously for appropriations, and steadfastly resisted any organizational change that would diminish their authority.
In 1903 Secretary of War Elihu Root brought the Army, which had a similar structure, reluctantly into the twentieth century. The power of independent branch chiefs such as the adjutant general and the chief of engineers was broken, a general staff system established, and the entire uniformed service brought under the command of a single military head, designated chief of staff to the secretary of war. As president, TR had attempted to reorganize the Navy along similar lines but had been defeated by congressional opposition precipitated by the bureau chiefs.14
Because of the autonomy of the bureaus, the Navy was considered the most difficult cabinet department to administer.15 FDR was a vocal critic of the freestanding bureaus—they worked at cross-purposes to the department, he told the House Budget Committee in 1919—but it was not until after the attack on Pearl Harbor that he succeeded in bringing them under executive control.16
Roosevelt’s duties as assistant secretary were not defined by statute.17 Traditionally, the secretary of the Navy worked with the president on policy matters, dealt with Congress, and watched over the fleet. The assistant secretary handled the Navy’s business affairs, rode herd on the bureaus, supervised civilian personnel, and negotiated contracts. But, as FDR said, “I get my fingers into just about everything and there’s no law against it.”18 When TR had occupied the post, he had taken advantage of Secretary John D. Long’s one-day absence from the department to flash the historic signal to Commodore Dewey to move against the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, and Franklin, whenever Daniels