Roosevelt (89 page)

The Library is, of course, a collection of collections—of over 28,000 books and 40,000 other printed items; of Roosevelt’s collections of autographs, colonial manuscripts and naval history manuscripts; of his collections of naval prints, paintings and books; of sound recordings of his speeches and of films of major events during his Presidency; of over 62,000 still photographs and, most important, of 3,500 cubic feet of Roosevelt’s White House papers and approximately that quantity of other papers and records. It is also a place where scholars can work in this vast and diffused material with the assistance of the Library’s competent and devoted staff.
¹

The White House Papers
of Franklin D. Roosevelt are divided into four main series, and many smaller series; seven of the more important series that I have worked in are described below:

1
. President’s Personal File.
This file contains about 9,000 folders, of which approximately two fifths are devoted to correspondence with private individuals and three fifths to special subjects or correspondence with private organizations. The material for any one correspondent may vary from a few letters to several boxes; the first few file subjects are devoted to the President himself and members of his family and are fairly extensive. Other subjects range from close associates to private citizens whose letters Roosevelt wanted for some reason to keep in his personal file. Roosevelt’s answers to some of these letters are often of great value. The Library has a large subject index to these folders.

2. “
Alphabetical File
.” A vast collection of letters written to Roosevelt
from members of the general public, some with copies of brief acknowledgments written by presidential secretaries. There is no subject arrangement of these letters. They are arranged alphabetically by name of the writer of the letter. I have not gone through this collection systematically but have sampled it for certain periods.

3
. Official File.
Another huge series of material, this group was originally planned to relate mainly to official governmental functions and there is a file subject for each major department and agency. As an example, formal departmental reports as well as informal reports to the President from his subordinates will be found in this collection. While this file is more “official” than the file listed under No. 1 above, there is no sharp or systematic distinction in the character of the material to be found in the two series.

4
. President’s Secretary’s File.
Roosevelt had his personal secretary put in her own separate file some of the letters and documents to which he wanted quick access. Hence this is a smaller and much more selective collection, although still one that defies descriptive generalization. It is especially valuable for the study of foreign policy. Because Miss Tully filed so much of this material, it is sometimes called the “Tully file.”

5
. Press Conferences.
Transcripts of all Roosevelt’s press conferences, amounting to over 1,000 separate meetings, afford a major source of week-to-week information on Roosevelt’s ever-changing ideas and policies—at least to the extent to which he was willing to talk with reporters off the record. Intermixed in this collection are transcripts of occasional conferences that were held not with the press but with various groups such as businessmen, church leaders, youth leaders, and even members of Congress, and some of these are of exceptional value. In general, however, Roosevelt was so careful in the information that he gave out to the press that the transcripts rarely contain strikingly important ideas or statements.

6
. The Records of the Democratic National Committee.
The records of the Democratic National Committee in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library are a large and important group of material. Comprising some 200 cubic feet, most of this material falls within the period 1928-1940. It consists of correspondence, campaign literature, clippings and other material created or accumulated by the Democratic National Committee in the course of conducting the campaigns of 1932, 1936 and 1940. There is a very large group of correspondence for the period 1928-1933, which is especially valuable for the study of Roosevelt’s campaign for the nomination.

7
. The Papers of Harry L. Hopkins.
The great bulk of the available Hopkins papers at the Library fall in the period 1933-1940. These voluminous papers are particularly valuable for a study of Hopkins as administrator of the work relief program and the development of his ideas and his relationships with politicians and other prominent persons through the country in this period. These are the “personal” papers of Hopkins for this period. I have used them in conjunction with the official files of FERA and WPA, which are in the National Archives in Washington, D. C.

Many other groups at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in which I have worked are noted in the chapter bibliographies.

Aside from material at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, I have made particular use of the following:

1. Papers deposited in the Library o£ Congress, as follows: Newton D. Baker Papers, George Creel Papers, Josephus Daniels Papers, William E. Dodd, Jr., Papers, Charles Evans Hughes Papers, Harold L. Ickes Papers, Charles L. McNary Papers, George W. Norris Papers, Amos Pinchot Papers, Thomas J. Walsh Papers, William Allen White Papers. I wish to express appreciation for permission to use these papers, where such was needed, and also to thank the personnel of the Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, for assistance in their use.

2. Interviews by the author with the following: Louis Brownlow (August 5 1955); Benjamin Cohen (August 3, 1955); Thomas G. Corcoran (August 4, 1955); James A. Farley (April 1955); Felix Frankfurter (December 17, 1955); Ernest K. Lindley (August 4, 1955); Randolph Paul (March 1955); Eleanor Roosevelt (July 28, 1955); James H. Rowe (December 19, 1955). Interviews conducted in 1946 for earlier research which have been useful for this work are those with Paul H. Appleby, Hugo L. Black, Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Frances Perkins, and Donald R. Richberg.

3. Transcripts of interviews, Oral History Project, Columbia University, as follows: Henry Bruere, Edward J. Flynn, James W. Gerard, Arthur Krock, Langdon P. Marvin, Herbert C. Pell, William Phillips, J. David Stern, George S. Van Schaick. I am grateful for permission to use these most useful, well organized and indexed materials.

4. Minutes of the Executive Council, July 11, 1933–November 13, 1934, and of the National Emergency Council, December 19, 1933–April 28, 1936. These two councils served as somewhat enlarged cabinets, and unlike the case with the Cabinet, transcripts were made of the proceedings. Transcripts of those sessions presided over by Roosevelt provide an intimate and vivid picture of the President’s month-to-month attitudes on domestic problems and personalities. These transcripts are available at the National Archives, Washington, D. C.

5. Correspondence with a number of persons participating in, or familiar with, New Deal programs or activities; these are noted in chapter bibliographies below.

6. Doctoral dissertations. I have exploited as thoroughly as I could the fund of information and ideas contained in these theses, which have been made available through that admirable institution, the Inter-Library Loan Service. Citation of such dissertations will be found in chapter bibliographies.

7. I will not try to list separately the secondary material that I have used; this too will be cited in chapter bibliographies. I do wish to pay tribute to the high caliber and enormous value of so many of the memoirs produced in the last decade or so; I have made extensive use of them. Two documentary collections that merit special mention are: Samuel I. Rosenman (ed.).
The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt
, a well edited and superbly produced set of thirteen volumes; and Elliott Roosevelt (ed.),
F. D. R.: His Personal Letters
(4 vols., New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947-50). The first two volumes are subtitled “Early Years” and “1905-1928,” and are referred to as Vols. I and II, respectively, in chapter bibliographies; the second two volumes, covering 1928-1945, are referred to below only by page number.

¹
For a highly useful description of the nature of the collections and some of the problems and opportunities in their use, see Herman Kahn, “World War II and Its Background: Research Materials at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Policies Concerning Their Use,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, December 29, 1953.

The following abbreviations are used in citations in the chapter bibliographies:

FDRL Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

LC Library of Congress

OF Official Files (FDRL)

OHP Oral History Project (Columbia University)

PC Press Conference

PLFDR Elliott Roosevelt (ed.),
F. D. R.: His Personal Letters
(4 vols., New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947-50)

PPAFDR Samuel I. Rosenman (ed.),
The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt
(13 vols., New York, 1938-50)

PPF President’s Personal Files (FDRL)

PSF President’s Secretary’s File (FDRL)

Books cited in the chapter bibliographies are published in New York City unless otherwise noted. A citation like “Rossiter [chap. 11]” means that a complete citation for the Rossiter work in question will be found in the bibliography for chapter 11. When the author’s name alone is used, it means that earlier in the bibliography of that same chapter will be found either a complete citation of the book in question, or a bracketed reference (as above) to the chapter bibliography containing the complete citation.

The following list is a basic list of books which are frequently cited in the chapter bibliographies; a (B) following an author’s name in the bibliographies indicates that the book referred to is cited in full in this list. An author’s name with a superior number (Farley
¹
) is used when the basic list contains more than one book by that author; the list provides the key to the particular book.

Barkley, Alben W.,
That Reminds Me
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954)

Beard, Charles A.,
American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946)

Burns, J. M., “Congress and the Formation of Economic Policies” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1947)

Cantril, Hadley (ed.),
Public Opinion 1935-1946
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951)

Connally, Tom, and Alfred Steinberg,
My Name Is Tom Connally
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1954)

Creel, George,
Rebel at Large
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947)

Eccles, Marriner S.,
Beckoning Frontiers
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951 )

Farley, James A.,
Behind the Ballots
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938). Farley
¹
.

———, Jim Farley’s Story, the Roosevelt Years
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1948). Farley
²
.

Flynn, Edward J.,
You’re the Boss
(New York: The Viking Press, 1947)

Flynn, John T.,
Country Squire in the White House
(New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1940)

Freidel, Frank,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
(2 vols., Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953-54)

Goldman, Eric,
Rendezvous with Destiny
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952)

Gosnell, Harold F.,
Boss Platt and His New York Machine
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924). Gosnell
¹
.

———, Champion Campaigner: Franklin D. Roosevelt
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952). Gosnell
²
.

Gouldner, Alvin W. (ed.),
Studies in Leadership
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950)

Gunther, John,
Inside U. S. A.
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947). Gunther
¹
.

———, Roosevelt in Retrospect
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950). Gundier
²
.

Hoover, Herbert,
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover.
Vol. III,
The Great Depression, 1929-1941
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952)

Hull, Cordell,
The Memoirs of Cordell Hull
(2 vols., New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948)

Ickes, Harold L.,
The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes
(3 vols., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953-54). Vol. I,
The First Thousand Days, 1933-1936
(1953): Ickes
¹
. Vol. II,
The Inside Struggle, 1936-1939
(1954): Ickes
²
. Vol. III,
The Lowering Clouds, 1939-1941
(1954): Ickes
³
.

Jackson, Robert H.,
The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941)

Langer, William L., and S. Everett Gleason,
The World Crisis and American Foreign Policy
(2 vols., New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952-53)

Lindley, Ernest K.,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
(Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1931). Lindley
¹
.

———, Half Way with Roosevelt
(New York: The Viking Press, 1936). Lindley
²
.

———, The Roosevelt Revolution: First Phase
(New York: The Viking Press,1933). Lindley
³
.

Michelson, Charles,
The Ghost Talks
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944)

Moley, Raymond,
After Seven Years
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939)

Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., “The Morgenthau Diaries,”
Collier’s,
Sept. 27–Nov. 1, 1947

Moscow, Warren,
Politics in the Empire State
(New Y01 k: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948)

Perkins, Frances,
The Roosevelt I Knew
(New York: The Viking Press,1946)

Richberg, Donald R.,
My Hero
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954). Richberg
¹
.