The Squire of Hyde Park

Through the door of the Presidential suite in Washington's Hotel Willard one afternoon last week peeped a lady with the reputation of being the wisest of her clan --Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Beside her peeped pretty Mrs. Patrick Jay Hurley, wife of the Secretary of War.

"Isn't it killing?" giggled Mrs. Hurley.

"Very funny," admitted Mrs. Longworth.

Object of their merriment was Mrs. Longworth's halfbrother, Theodore Roosevelt. Back from a capable administration of Porto Rico, he had been appointed Governor General of the Philippines, was now posing for sound films with brown Sergio Osmena, president pro tem. of the Philippine Senate. With him to his new post was going his daughter Grace, 20, who takes after her mother and who has been studying typing and shorthand to fit herself to be one of her father's secretaries.

As brother and sister said good-bye to each other shortly thereafter, it may be supposed that Sister Alice, unique daughter of a unique President and notable widow of a notable Speaker of the House, poured into Brother Theodore's 'ear the sort of profound advice which would naturally come from one for whom national and international politics have been a life-long diversion, accomplishment and career.

With President Hoover's blessing so patently on Brother Theodore's head, it now behooved Theodore's Republican kin to get behind the Hoover candidacy for reelection. The family was scattered. Settled quietly at Oyster Bay was Mrs. Ethel Roosevelt Derby, the President's other daughter. Cousin Gracie Hall Roosevelt was serving as Detroit's comptroller. Brother Kermit was running a steamship line in Manhattan. Brother Theodore, adding fresh lustre to the name, was starting out for the other side of the world. Alice remained in Washington, perhaps to try to woo Hoover support from such a vehement anti-Hooverite as her good friend Senator Borah. There were two others. They were Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York, and his wife Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. He was T. R.'s fifth cousin, she, his favorite niece. Yet President Roosevelt's immediate brood looked upon these two kinsmen with political distrust and personal disfavor because they were Democrats. Once during the 1920 campaign young Theodore Roosevelt, to dispel the popular impression that Franklin Roosevelt was a real chip off the Big Stick, declared: "He's a maverick! He doesn't have the brand of our family."

"Simple Duty." Last week the rivalry between Republican Roosevelts and Democratic Roosevelts was materially heightened when the Governor of New York formally announced his long-brewing Presidential candidacy. North Dakota Democrats asked permission to put his name into their preferential primary March 15. From Albany Governor Roosevelt replied: "... I willingly give my consent. ... It is the simple duty of any American to serve in public position if called upon. . . . Our Legislature is now in session. ... I must devote myself to the obtaining of progressive laws. . . . Were I now to divert my efforts in furtherance of my own political future, I would stamp myself as one unworthy of my party's choice as leader."

Governor Roosevelt's announcement was welcomed by his pre-convention campaign organization, with steam up and ready to go. His chief campaigner was James A. Farley, chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and a member of the State's Boxing Commission. For months Chairman Farley had been rounding up Roosevelt delegates to the Chicago convention June 27. Last week the Governor's supporters were able to announce that their candidate was already pledged 678 out of 1,154 convention votes (to nominate: 770). Pleased with the prospect of success for their "Frank" were such Democratic notables as Bernard Mannes Baruch, Jesse Isidor Straus, Vincent Astor, Col. Edward House. They realized the Governor did not yet have the nomination for President in his pocket but he was so far out in front of other candidates that his friends were ready to toast him on his 50th birthday this week (Jan. 30) as the 32nd President of the U. S.

Life. "Frank" Roosevelt saw his first President in 1887 when he was five. Sitting in the White House was large, grim, depression-ridden Grover Cleveland. James Roosevelt escorted his sailor-suited little son to Washington. President Cleveland put a fat hand on the yellow Roosevelt head and said: "I'm making a strange wish for you, little man, a wish I suppose no one else would make. I wish for you that you may never be President of the United States."

Two decades later "Frank" again visited the White House, this time to dine with President Roosevelt and to glimpse the most romantic girl in the land, his very distant cousin, Princess Alice. During the meal T. R. jumped up from the table, paced the floor in deep thought. The youthful visitor was impressed, fancied he would like to be just such a man.

James Roosevelt was a man of means, a vice president of the Delaware & Hudson R. R., the owner of a large estate at Hyde Park overlooking the Hudson 60 mi. below Albany. There Franklin was born (Jan. 30, 1882), there spent his childhood. Private tutors started his education. Almost every year he was taken traveling in Europe. His father, years older than his mother, used to take the cure at Bad-Nauheim. As a well-born Episcopalian, "Frank" was sent to Groton School, whence he glided on naturally to Harvard.

There he was elected to the Hasty Pudding Club, edited The Crimson, a fact he still likes to harp on when talking to newshawks. His classmates remember him as an upstanding, gentlemanly fellow from a well-to-do family and a good school, differing very little from a hundred other upstanding, gentlemanly fellows from well-to-do families and good schools. He collected nautical Americana.

Toward the close of his college career he fell in love with his distant cousin, Anna Roosevelt, who lived in New York. His mother took him off on a cruise to get his mind off the girl. But young Roosevelt's emotions were not to be thus diverted. On St. Patrick's Day, the year after he left Harvard, he and Anna were married. They chose St. Patrick's Day because President Roosevelt was to be in town to make a speech and he wanted to see his favorite niece's wedding. The bands of the parading Hibernians outside almost drowned out the orchestral strains of Lohengrin.

Young Mr. Roosevelt failed his final examinations at Columbia Law School, but managed to pass his New York bar examination in 1907. Three years later he ran as a Democrat for the State Senate in the Hyde Park district. Because the 26th district had, with one exception, been doggedly Republican since the Civil War, he appeared to have a poor chance of winning. This chance seemed to be materially reduced when he set out to stump his rural constituency in a chicken-killing, dust-raising automobile. But the farmers liked his engaging smile, his direct easy way of talking. As much to his surprise as to anyone else's he was elected.

When he arrived at Albany, instead of maintaining a discreet and maidenly silence, Senator Roosevelt immediately began bucking Tammany Boss Charles Murphy's machine on the election to the U. S. Senate of William ("Blue-Eyed Billy") Sheehan, leader of Buffalo's Democracy. For weeks New York's legislative affairs were at a standstill but Mr. Sheehan was beaten and Mr. Roosevelt emerged from the fray as an insurgent anti-Tammany Democrat.

The idealism of Woodrow Wilson appealed to Senator Roosevelt. He traveled to Trenton, interviewed Governor Wilson, returned to start booming him for President. When Wilson won in 1912, he made the pleasant young man from Hyde Park his Assistant Secretary of the Navy. After 15 years the Navy was glad enough to have another Roosevelt in the job.

He teamed up well with Secretary Josephus Daniels. He thought fast, made himself agreeable, cut red tape where his superior would not, was a Big Navy man. They did not remake the Navy because President Wilson believed in peace at any price, but they eliminated collusion on bids for Navy contracts, expedited the supply system, modernized the Navy yards and required every sailor to learn to swim.

When War came, Assistant Secretary Roosevelt worked harder than ever to make a good name for himself. He bought up all the supplies he could lay his hands on, borrowed binoculars from the country (and had them returned), helped build the submarine chasing "mosquito fleet," sponsored the North Sea mine barrage over stiff official opposition.

In 1920 the Democratic party nominated him for the Vice-Presidency at its San Francisco convention after Alfred Emanuel Smith had seconded his name. With Presidential Nominee Cox, he campaigned strenuously about the country, took his inevitable defeat with good grace. Then he got out to look for a new job. The pickings were poor. He had to content himself with the vice-presidency of Fidelity & Deposit Co. of Maryland, an insurance company run by the late Publisher Van Lear Black. In August 1921 he and his family embarked on Van Lear Black's yacht for their summer home at Campobello Island, N. B. Shortly after they arrived, Mr. Roosevelt caught a chill stamping out a forest fire. A cross-country run and a cold plunge in the Bay of Fundy seemed to help things, but when he got home he sat in his wet bathing suit to read his mail. He took another chill. Next morning he was down with infantile paralysis. Months later he arose to find his legs quite dead.

This sudden calamity he met with supreme courage and cheer. To this day no one has ever heard him admit that he could not walk. He continued his law practice, developed a wide personal correspondence among eminent Democrats throughout the land.

The Cure. From a friend he heard about a decrepit little summer resort at Warm Springs, Ga. One young paralytic had braved its mosquito-plagued country hotel, bathed in its warm mineral waters and partially regained the use of his legs. Mr. Roosevelt went there first in 1924. After churning about in the pool, he found that his leg muscles felt a little stronger. Thereafter Warm Springs became his great hobby. He spent a large part of his personal fortune on developing the place into a sanatorium. Edsel Ford gave an enclosed pool, others contributed to make Warm Springs a permanent institution. Swimming at Warm Springs several months each year and special exercises at Albany have made it possible for the Governor to walk 100 ft. or so with braces and canes. When standing at crowded public functions, he still clings precautiously to a friend's arm. Constitutionally he is as sound as a nut and always has been. His affliction makes people come to him to transact business, saves him useless motion, enables him to get prodigious amounts of work done at a sitting. Governor Roosevelt is confident of ultimate total recovery.

In 1924 Mr. Roosevelt came out of political retirement to advance the Presidential candidacy of Al Smith. On his crutches he clumped up to the rostrum of the Democratic convention in Madison Square Garden, delivered an impassionate nominating speech that turned the rowdy galleries into pandemonium. Davis, not Smith, got the nomination but Mr. Roosevelt's efforts did not pass unnoticed. Four years later, this time at Houston, he was again chosen to nominate his "Happy Warrior." But in 1928 "Al" wanted more assistance from his loyal friend "Frank" than a nominating speech. He needed a good strong name at the head of the New York Democratic ticket to help pull the state for his national ticket. Mr. Roosevelt was swimming at Warm Springs when Nominee Smith telephoned from New York that he must run for Governor. Now he had definite plans for re-entering public life, to be sure, but it took the cajoling of his wife and all his friends to induce him to make this "sacrifice." He had no assurance that the ardors of campaigning would not completely erase the partial recovery he had effected through seven long bitter years. If ever a man was "drafted" for an office that man was "Frank" Roosevelt in 1928.

Squeak & Whack. In the election that followed New York deserted the Brown Derby and went for Hoover, but, as a sort of political compensation, Mr. Roosevelt squeaked through to victory with a 25,000-vote majority. After two years as Governor, he was renominated and all on his own strength in 1930 won a whacking big victory with 725,001 votes to spare. His success in this second election was widely interpreted as his qualification for the Presidency, a proof of his vote-getting ability. Not until last week, however, would he publicly admit a national candidacy.

During his three years at Albany, Governor Roosevelt divided his time between the oldfashioned, musty executive mansion, his estate at Hyde Park, his town house on East 65th Street in Manhattan and Warm Springs. He has traveled much about the state, visiting every county, making countless speeches. He has cruised its waterways on extensive inspection trips. Never have his crippled legs deterred him from going where he would.

His happiest hours Mr. Roosevelt passes at Hyde Park in the house his father bought in 1866 and in which he was born. It is old and colonial. Its clapboard sides have been stuccoed and a stone wing added. French windows look down over a mile of virgin timber through which tumbles a cascade to the river. The estate covers 1,000 acres. Here live or visit his five children, of whom Son Elliott was married last month. Here Mrs. Roosevelt, able, active and animated, runs the Val-Kill shops, where workmen make reproductions of early American furniture by hand. Here lives Governor Roosevelt's elderly mother. Both women take very good care of the Governor when he comes down from Albany for weekends to live the life of a squire of Hyde Park. He looks after the cattle whose original strain was superintended by his father half a century ago. He sees that the roof of the Episcopalian Church does not leak. He makes sure that all goes well in the brick public school erected by his father. He has new trees planted out, carefully oversees his own tilled acres.

Of the squire of Hyde Park who wants to be President there are abroad in the land two strong and conflicting views. One view is that the U. S. is blessed among nations to have available for the White House a man whose life and works have been so admirable. The other view is that the sum total of his 50 years are not sufficiently significant, in thought, word or deed, to warrant his elevation to the highest position in the land.

Around these two points of view rotates a nation-wide political argument. It is far from academic because the Democrat nominated by his party has a better than even chance of becoming President on March 4, 1933.*

Pros & Cons, Governor Roosevelt's proximity to that nomination raises pregnant questions: What manner of man is he and of what stuff is he made? Is he bold and courageous and independent or is he just an honest politician whom Fate has tossed to the top? Has he the capacity to govern? Does his mind generate large ideas of political reformation or does he just utter lofty platitudes?

Voters will be told that he is the very soul of courage and honesty--and that he cowers before the Tammany tiger. His friends will extol him as one of the most competent and successful administrators New York has ever had--and his critics will insist he has been only a poor imitation of Al Smith, the loose ends of whose vast legislative program he simply wound up. His geniality, his personal charm, his good social background, will be advanced in his favor--and against them will be set the suspicion that he has all the cautious conservatism of the ruling rich. He will be called a strong man who fights battles for the plain people and a weak man who never took the unpopular side to his own cost. He will be damned for being too Wet and damned for being too Dry.

The anti-Roosevelt side of the discussion was best stated by famed Liberal Walter Lippmann, in the New York Herald Tribune last month:

"The art of carrying water on both shoulders is highly developed in American politics, and Mr. Roosevelt has learned it. ...

"Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who. without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President."

Fuel for the argument is mostly found in four questions, as follows:

Tammany & Corruption. In 1929 after Governor Roosevelt had settled down comfortably at Albany a mayoralty campaign was held in New York City. Congressman Fiorello La Guardia. the Republican nominee, charged wholesale Tammany graft and corruption, named one Magistrate Albert Vitale as the borrower of $20,000 from Arnold Rothstein, murdered gambler. The Republican Legislature ordered an investigation. Governor Roosevelt vetoed the measure. Vitale was removed from office by a higher court. The stench of scandal continued. A U. S. District Attorney in Manhattan, preparing to run as a Republican against Governor Roosevelt, disclosed all manner of jobbery among Tammany judges. Again the Legislature wanted to probe but Governor Roosevelt ordered the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court to undertake the investigation, picked Samuel Seabury as chief inquisitor. Five magistrates went off the bench, twelve vice squad policemen accused of frame-ups were suspended from the force. Governor Roosevelt dismissed formal charges against Mayor Walker and District Attorney Grain. He restrained his own Republican Attorney General from extending a separate inquiry. Finally the Legislature, impatient with these scattered efforts to clean up Tammany Town, authorized its own investigation, put Mr. Seabury in charge. As yet nobody has gone to jail for anything more serious than contempt as a result of this legislative investigation but the crime and corruption of Tammany officials has been exhibited daily through the Press.

Considering that Tammany votes put him into office in 1928 and will help him on toward the Presidency in 1932. Governor Roosevelt has handled the Scandals of New York about as well as he politically could. He has kept his head, taken obvious steps toward a cleanup. What he lacked--or stifled--was an explosion of righteous indignation at all the dirt disclosed. He has denounced no one for crookedness, removed no one for patent criminality. Republicans will make the most of this sin of omission.

Water Power & Liberalism. Cheap electricity is the touchstone of liberal politics in New York as elsewhere. Democrats long favored a state-owned, state-built, state-operated hydro-electric plant on the St. Lawrence River. Republicans, harping on "private initiative" and echoing the words of power tycoons, loudly objected. Governor Smith battled fiercely to carry out this scheme until Republicans found that it was a losing issue for them. Governor Roosevelt finally induced the Legislature to survey the problem. The survey was favorable. A New York State Power Authority was created, on Governor Roosevelt's recommendation, to build a public dam at Massena Point, produce electricity, distribute it over private lines. This State plan has been temporarily snagged by the Federal Government on the claim that the problem is international, that a treaty must be negotiated with Canada.

Power was the great issue popularized by Governor Smith. Governor Roosevelt has followed in his footsteps. He succeeded in getting something done where Smith failed, but this was due more to the long, hard pounding his predecessor gave the Republicans and their change in attitude and personnel than to any new force or strategy or conviction on Governor Roosevelt's part. His claim to Liberalism on this issue is a direct Smith inheritance.

Prohibition. Governor Roosevelt is a Wet who has declared for the repeal of the 18th Amendment. Yet, with his eye on the White House, he would like to soft-pedal Prohibition as an issue and retreat into the mists of referenda. Widespread is the belief that, lacking profound Wet convictions, he is deliberately weaseling to woo Dry Democratic support from the South at the convention and in the election. He blocked attempts last year for a Wet declaration by the Democratic National Committee. The Roosevelt-Smith split grew out of opposing viewpoints on Prohibition--one for an honestly militant stand for repeal, the other for its subordination to economic questions.

Executive Competency. After three years at Albany Governor Roosevelt points with pride to a mass of useful legislation he has wangled out of a hostile Legislature with soft words and threats. He has put through an old age State pension law. He has won permission to raise $50,000,000 by bonds to house the State's sick, insane and criminal. He has reduced rural taxes. He has advanced a broad program for reforestation. He has put more occupational diseases under the Workman's Compensation Act, improved rent laws. President William Green of the American Federation of Labor has praised his record on labor legislation. The Governor is now engaged in a stiff upping of income taxes to supply funds for Unemployment relief.

The Governor's legislative record reveals a man who works tactfully with his opponents, who will take half a loaf rather than none. His heart is soft on all social welfare measures. A good part of his program was bequeathed him by Governor Smith. He has run the State Government without scandal or eruptions, in the calm orderly manner of a good executive. His appointments have been fair, his innovations few.

Et Al. The Roosevelt candidacy for President was so far advanced last week that its managers were already discussing swaps and trades to put their man over. There was a tentative casting about for a vice presidential running mate. Perhaps it would be Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia. Or then it might be Governor George White of Ohio who would get his State's 52 votes on the first ballot. Opponents of Governor Roosevelt's nomination were making no visible progress uniting on one of the other candidates in the field. And a full field it was, with a great assortment of men ranging from those who were earnestly pressing on to those who sat back passively in the hope Presidential lightning would strike them. The Democratic field: Maryland's Albert Cabell Ritchie, Oklahoma's William Henry Murray, Texas' John Nance Garner, Ohio's Newton Diehl Baker, New York's Owen D. Young, Arkansas' Joseph Taylor Robinson, Tennessee's Cordell Hull, Illinois' Melvin Alvah Traylor--and, of course, New York's Alfred Emanuel Smith.

*So good are the Democratic prospects that the friends of Al Smith are contending that, as a reward for his large but losing popular vote in 1928, he is entitled to a second crack at the Presidency now that victory seems closer.

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