FDR AND WOODIN | Warm Springs, Georgia

Treasury Secretary Will
Woodin (L) and FDR.

John Reagan (“Tex”) McCrary, who lived from  1910 to 2003), ran a radio show for NBC from the RCA Building.

On August 12, 1949 he wrote to General Motors financial executive John J. Raskob (1879-1950) at 350 Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building).

Tex McCrary enclosed a copy of Westbrook Pegler’s column for August 4, 1949 and a transcript of his own broadcast comments on Pegler's column. (The correspondence may be found at http://digital.hagley.org/raskob-1456.)

The correspondence is interesting from two perspectives.

Al Smith (L) and John J. Raskob (R). 

First, there is venom in Pegler's bite at Raskob for accepting a "bribe" from FDR. It was also a side-swipe at FDR himself. 

In the New York Journal American (syndicated by King Features), Pegler said:

[Al] Smith never told publicly the truth about the bribe of $250,000 which John Raskob underwrote as Roosevelt’s price for coming out of his convalescence to run for Governor in 1928. That was the year Smith ran for President.

McCrary reported on Pegler's column in a broadcast the next day:

Yesterday [Pegler] hit an all-time low in unsubstantiated slander. According to Pegler, John J. Raskob underwrote a bribe of $250,000 as the price of persuading the late Franklin D. Roosevelt to come out of his convalescence to run for Governor … According to Pegler, the $250,000 was milked from Raskob as a contribution to Warm Springs Foundation for Crippled Children. 

The other interesting aspect of the correspondence is the sweeping denial that Raskob wrote back to McCrary on August 16:

I know nothing whatever about the financing and operation of Warm Springs except that the late William Woodin, former Secretary of the Treasury, did head a drive for funds some years ago to which I contributed.

What is going on here? I have read elsewhere about Raskob's involvement with solving FDR's financial problems at Warm Springs. I consulted a new book by Kaye Lanning Minchew, A President in Our Midst: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Georgia (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2016), and on page 74, it is all spelled out:

In addition to health concerns and his fear that 1928 might not be the year for the Democrats, Roosevelt hesitated to run for governor because of his heavy financial commitments at Warm Springs. John J. Raskob, a wealthy businessman who had recently been named chair of the National Democratic Committee, talked to Roosevelt on the phone on October 2. Following their discussion of Roosevelt's obligations to Warm Springs, Raskob wrote a check for $250,000. When Roosevelt refused the check, Raskob formed a committee to raise funds while committing $50,000 to the cause. Following that conversation, Roosevelt agreed to run for governor.

What there seems to be agreement on is that Roskob recruited Will Woodin to head the committee to pay off the Warm Springs debt. Woodin also served on the board of the Warm Springs Foundation. If Minchew's story is accurate, then Raskob was being disingenuous in his letter of August 16 (in other words, he lied or had severe amnesia). His suggestion to McCrary that Woodin was the man who knew was a safe one, since Woodin was entombed in his Berwick mausoleum 14 years earlier.

Even if Pegler's facts are correct, it is hardly fair to label FDR's agreeing to run for governor in return for assistance to the Warm Springs Foundation as a "bribe". The Warm Springs debt was an obstacle to FDR's running for Governor of New York State. I have read that FDR's mother Sara Delano Roosevelt said she would not give FDR any money for his campaign unless and until he paid off the Warm Springs debt. The committee's contributions to the Foundation removed this obstacle to FDR's running for governor.

What is peculiar about all this is Raskob's denial of any knowledge about the Warm Springs finances. Doubtless he was not familiar with every detail, but he had to be aware of the large size of the Foundation deficits. In 1928 Al Smith wanted FDR to run for governor so that New York State would be safe for Democrats. It was when FDR ran for President himself four years later that Raskob decided FDR was a dangerous radical and from then on perhaps he preferred not to take any credit for having helped him become governor.

January 30 - FDR's Birthday (Personal Comment)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States, was born this day in Hyde Park, NY in 1882.  His mother, Sara, was in labor with him for more than 24 hours. The doctor gave Mrs. Roosevelt some chloroform to calm her, and 45 minutes later, young Franklin made his entrance, blue and motionless, weighing nearly 10 pounds. The doctor blew into the baby's lungs and revived him. The Roosevelts decided not to go through this again - Franklin would be their only child.

The family was comfortably well off, having made money in real estate and trade. Franklin grew up surrounded with family love and attention, but isolated by being schooled by private tutors. At 14 he was sent off to the Groton School in Massachusetts. Neither an athlete nor a rebel, FDR wasn't especially popular, but he made an effort to be appreciated by his teachers, who exhorted the children of wealthier parents to help the less fortunate.

At Harvard, FDR pursued an active social life rather than scholarship. He loved to meet new people and was eager to lead. After marrying his cousin Eleanor and graduating from law school, he entered politics in 1910 at the request of some fellow New York Democrats. He was enthusiastic and optimistic, which served him well later when he faced his own illness and then as President the challenges of the Depression and World War II.

He was diagnosed with polio in 1921. Eleanor Roosevelt said:

He had real fear when he was first taken ill, but he learned to surmount it. After that I never heard him say he was afraid of anything.

He never gave up hope of recovery, and concealed the extent of his paralysis from the public, with the cooperation of the media.

FDR liked watching cartoons (he loved Mickey Mouse), collecting stamps, playing cards and bird-watching. For his health he built a pool he swam in at the White House. He held a nightly cocktail hour for his close associates. Besides the formal state dinners, Franklin and Eleanor hosted teas, children's parties, dances, cocktail parties, and game nights. Sometimes, Roosevelt would lead a sing-along, and his birthday parties had friends and family performing comedy skits. Guest lists were often twice what had been planned for. Last-minute invitations to guests to stay overnight were extended when all the White House rooms were already full. The Roosevelts had 28,000 visitors in one year, 1936.

Once the war started, they hosted fewer events, but their scale remained large. Two thousand people attended FDR's 1945 inaugural luncheon, and consumed 200 chickens in the chicken salad, 170 dozen rolls, 100 gallons of coffee, and 165 cakes.

FDR's Scottish terrier, Fala ("Murray, the Outlaw of Falahill") accompanied the President on his travels and slept at night in his own chair at the foot of FDR's bed. He was given a bone every morning, and FDR fed him at night. He needed his own secretary to handle all the mail he received from American fans.When FDR died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945, the dog was inconsolable. Eleanor said that Fala spent the rest of his life waiting for his master to return. (The above is abbreviated from a biographical sketch by Garrison Keillor.)

Personal Comment

My father, Ervin Ross ("Spike") Marlin, won a place in FDR's administration through a competitive examination taken by thousands of people in 1932. He told me later - "I never felt so rich as when I had a government job in the Depression." In our house, growing up, FDR and Winston Churchill were godlike.

I have learned a lot about FDR through my research for a biography of FDR's first Treasury Secretary, William H. Woodin, whose contribution to calming the financial panic (and the cost of this effort to his health) has been under-appreciated. Woodin focused on addressing the liquidity issues by printing huge amounts of currency for the banks, while refusing to reopen the insolvent banks after the Bank Holiday. He supported the Glass-Steagall Act that put a ring around the banks in return for their deposits being insured. It was 75 years before this fine financial system collapsed, but it was undermined steadily for year before that. The Steagall portion of the Act, i.e., deposit insurance, has survived, but that was supposed to have been a favor for the banks in return for the Glass part of the bill.

Woodin worked with FDR on supporting his Warm Springs foundation to provide care for indigent people with polio. FDR's democratic instincts were revealed by his wish to have his face be on the lowly dime rather than on paper money.