Roosevelt (55 page)

At the end of June Roosevelt tried another tack—and one that again illustrated his preference for direct personal handling of affairs. A grand political picnic was arranged at Jefferson Island in
Chesapeake Bay, to which Democratic congressmen were invited. The plan was to submerge intraparty bickering in three days of good fellowship. The President was at his best. Seated in an armchair under a big locust tree, he chatted congenially and drank beer with groups of shirt-sleeved legislators. He even allowed Martin Dies of Texas to induct him into the Demagogue’s Club, involving a pledge to favor all spending bills and no tax bills, to do nothing to harm his chances for a third term, never to be consistent— and not to send controversial proposals to Congress.

In sharp contrast to this bucolic scene was the grim atmosphere of the Senate. There, day after day, Robinson was making the rounds of the Democrats, pleading with them to support his compromise plan. The new measure was mild enough, allowing the President to appoint only one coadjutor justice a year for any justice who had passed seventy-five and failed to retire. Even so, Robinson found it hard going, and often he had to resort to a personal plea to embarrassed senators for help in realizing his life ambition. When Robinson opened debate on the bill in the Senate he seemed to reporters, as he sawed the air with violent gestures and beat off his interrogators, like an aging bull tormented by the fast-moving picadors around him and stung by their
banderillas.
Day after day Robinson roared his arguments and threats at the opposition, meanwhile desperately counting and recounting the small majority he had lined up. But he had come to the end of his road. On the morning of July 14 he rose from his hotel bed, took one step, and fell dead, a copy of the
Congressional Record
in his hand.

The stroke that ruptured Robinson’s heart ruptured as well the bonds of personal loyalty on which the majority leader had been depending for his compromise plan. There was a sudden rush away from the bill. Even as Robinson was buried in Little Rock the congressmen who had escorted the body out on the funeral train were busy sparring over the bill. On the train back to Washington, Garner, who had joined the delegation in Little Rock, went down the aisles systematically counting noses. On the morning of July 20 he reported to the President.

“How did you find the court situation, Jack?” Roosevelt asked.

“Do you want it with the bark on or off, Cap’n?”

“The rough way,” Roosevelt said with a laugh.

“All right. You are beat. You haven’t got the votes.”

The end of the court fight was anticlimactic. Roosevelt asked Garner to arrange the best compromise that he could. Whether the
Vice-President tried to salvage something out of the bill or simply surrendered is shrouded in the obscure maneuvering of the last days. By now Congress was outside anyone’s control; “everything on the Hill seems to be at sixes and sevens,” Ickes complained. Appropriately enough, the Judiciary Committee served as executioner by offering a motion to recommit the court bill. Only twenty senators voted against recommittal. A week later the Senate rushed through an emasculated bill, making minor reforms and improvements, which the President halfheartedly signed into law.

The last episodes of the court fight were entangled with a struggle over the Democratic leadership in the Senate. Pat Harrison of Mississippi and Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky were vying for Robinson’s mantle in one of those contests that become all the more bitter because they cleave the membership of an intimate club. The court fight sharpened tempers of the opposing factions. Roosevelt was on good terms with both senators, but he had several reasons to prefer Barkley. The Kentuckian was a more reliable New Dealer and was personally more loyal to Roosevelt; he had, for example, given active support to the court bill while Harrison was passive. And if Harrison won the position, he would probably have to vacate the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee and this vital post would fall into the hands of a conservative Democrat.

Clearly Roosevelt had his preferences—but could he act upon them? Not if he was to follow the custom that forbids presidential interference in the Senate’s internal affairs. Roosevelt’s method of resolving this problem was characteristic. Openly he took a neutral position; to be sure, he addressed a letter to “My Dear Alben” urging a continued fight for the principles of the court bill, but Barkley’s position as acting majority leader permitted this public show of friendship.

Privately the President was not neutral at all. A check showed that Senate Democrats were split almost evenly between the two candidates. Every vote would count. An obvious weak link in Harrison’s ranks was Senator William H. Dieterich, who owed his Senate seat largely to Boss Ed Kelly of Chicago. Roosevelt asked Farley to telephone Kelly to use his influence with Dieterich. Farley refused on the grounds that he had promised the principals that he would keep hands off. The President thereupon turned to Hopkins and Corcoran, who threw White House pressure on Dieterich and others. The Harrison forces mobilized pressure too. Senator Harry Truman, who had pledged his vote to Barkley, had to ask the Kentuckian to be released of his promise. Among the shifters was Dieterich—from Harrison to Barkley. Barkley’s victory by one vote was an important victory for the President, but one that sharpened the ill temper of the Senate.

THE ILLEGAL ACT; June 3, 1935, Ernest H. Shepard,
Punch

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT: “I’M SORRY, BUT THE SUPREME COURT SAYS I MUST CHUCK YOU BACK AGAIN.”

The court fight over, Roosevelt sought to regain direction of his general legislative program. Congress, he told his cabinet, must take responsibility for what was done and what was left undone. The President was especially concerned about the farm situation. If farm prices fell next year, he said, a good many Democrats would be defeated in the next election. While Roosevelt talked, Ickes scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it to Farley: “The President seems to be indulging in a curtain lecture for the benefit of the Vice President.”

Congress was still wallowing in confusion. Earlier in the session it had passed, under Roosevelt’s proddings, several important bills. One of these was the Guffey-Vinson bituminous coal bill providing for governmental and private co-operation in marketing, price control, and trade practices. Others were a revised Neutrality Act and renewal of the Trade Agreements Act. Congress had also enacted the Farm Tenancy bill, authorizing federal loans to farm tenants, sharecroppers, and laborers to help them buy their own farms. This was work done, but it seemed strikingly small in the light of the President’s broad challenge, in his inaugural, of “one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”

Could that challenge still be met? By the end of July five administration measures awaited action in Congress: wages and hours, low-cost housing, executive reorganization, comprehensive farm
program, and creation of seven regional agencies patterned somewhat after the TVA. When Congress adjourned late in August, only one of these measures had been made into law. This was the Wagner Housing bill. It was significant that this lone administration victory was due far more to Wagner and an indefatigable group of public-housing enthusiasts and lobbyists than to the President. Roosevelt, to be sure, did help persuade a key chairman in the House to report the bill out of committee, but only after weeks of backing and filling in the White House.

Equally significant was the reason that the rest of Roosevelt’s program failed. In part that failure stemmed from Roosevelt’s, original calculation that court reform would have a better chance if other major bills were postponed in its behalf. Later he appeared to swing to the opposite view that at least one of the measures—wage-hour regulation—would be so popular that it would unify Democratic ranks split over court reform. Both calculations proved wrong.

But there was a more important reason for Roosevelt’s legislative difficulties—a reason that reflected the strategic weakness of his political position. The trouble was that the ample coalition that he had summoned to his personal support in November—and which had responded to that summons—was already falling apart.

The blocking of the wage-hour bill showed how extensive were the fractures in the coalition. When Senator Black introduced his proposed Fair Labor Standards Act late in May, Roosevelt vigorously urged passage. “We have promised it,” he said. “We cannot stand still.” Quickly the bill ran into snags. Southerners from low-wage states, including Harrison, deserted the President on the issue. Sharp differences developed among labor groups, not only between AFL and CIO leaders but also within the two organizations. As if all this was not enough, a fight broke out between low-tariff and high-tariff Democrats over a protectionist clause in the bill. Pressure against the bill was put on Farley and Roosevelt through Democratic leaders in the South. After a struggle the bill passed the Senate, and by calling in President Green of the AFL and acceding to his major demands Roosevelt was able to ease the bill through the House Labor Committee. Then the bill stalled in the face of a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats on the Rules Committee. In vain Democratic leaders summoned a caucus to put force behind the bill; not enough Democrats showed up to make it an official caucus.

By mid-August the President was ready to give up the fight for the rest of his program. He decided to call Congress back in special session during the fall. Let the congressmen get back to their
districts, he said, and they would return with a strengthened feeling for the New Deal.

But one task remained for the President before adjournment—and a most pleasant task. Van Devanter’s seat on the Court was still open.

A pleasant task—but not an easy one. Roosevelt wanted a durable New Dealer, a relatively young man, either a Southerner or Westerner, and a competent lawyer, who at the same time would clear the Senate without difficulty. This last was the rub, for in the sweltering Washington heat the senators seemed to be more bitter and unpredictable than ever. For this reason the President leaned toward a New Deal Senator. He finally chose Black over other senatorial possibilities mainly because the Alabaman had gone down the line for Roosevelt’s policies; the President felt drawn to Black also because he faced a hard battle for re-election and perhaps because Black had an only child suffering from deafness. While Roosevelt did not rate Black’s legal talents very high, he was more concerned about seasoned liberalism than expertness. Despite some grumbling in the Senate, the usual clubby feeling prevailed, and after a brief debate Black was readily confirmed.

“So Hugo Black becomes a member of the Supreme Court of the United States while the economic royalists fume and squirm and the President rolls his tongue around in his cheek,” Ickes crowed in his diary. The President was not to roll his tongue long. A week or so later, after Black had left for a vacation in Europe, a Pittsburgh newspaper produced categorical proof that the new Justice had
been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The rumors that Black had neither confirmed nor denied during the confirmation debate were true. The press exploded with shrill attacks on both Black and the President.

“I did not know that Black belonged to the Ku Klux Klan,” Roosevelt said to a friend. “This is very serious.” The President was deeply disturbed. He told reporters that nothing could be said until Black returned from Europe. Privately he did what he could. He asked Ickes to go to Borah and see if he would help out. Wheeler and others had been demanding that the President investigate Black, and Roosevelt particularly wanted Borah’s backing for the proposition that the President had no right to make such an investigation. Borah fully agreed. By the time Black returned from Europe Roosevelt had left on a Western tour, and all eyes were on the justice.

Harried by reporters, Black turned to the radio and laid his case before perhaps fifty million people. He denounced intolerance, and pointed to his congressional record in defense of civil liberties. Then, in his soft, strained Southern voice he admitted that he had been a member of the Klan, but asserted that he had long ago disassociated himself from it. After referring again to his civil liberties record, he ended with a sad “good night.” And thus ended Roosevelt’s battle against the Court.

Roosevelt’s enemies could not help gloating. Surely the President had suffered a dizzy fall in the short span of six months. At the beginning of the year he had towered over the political scene, with his colossal vote of approval in November and with his huge majorities in Congress. Then he seemed invincible. Yet now he had been beaten.

Why had this political colossus stumbled and fallen? Roosevelt’s critics were quick with an explanation: Pride goeth before a fall. Intoxicated with success, Roosevelt had recklessly attacked a venerable American institution. Overly sure of himself, he had made mistake after careless mistake. His potency had gone to his head. Learned pundits quoted Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”