Master of His Fate James Tobin (free e books to read online .txt) 📖

dozens of quick exchanges in an evening. He could also evade a windbag who wouldn’t shut up. None of this was possible for FDR, who was stuck in one place for the duration of the reception.

So Eleanor and Frances Perkins—who was now FDR’s top-ranking labor official—devised a system for accomplishing the same ends. They would recruit a few friends to act as scouts, then post the scouts in the crowd with special instructions about who the governor did and didn’t care to speak with. If a scout spotted an unwelcome guest homing in on FDR, she would intercede and start a conversation with that person. If another guest was taking too much of the governor’s time, Eleanor would send a scout to find someone FDR did want to speak with and ask: “Wouldn’t you like to have a little talk with the governor?” Over they would come, sending the too-talkative guest on their way.

There was a danger that the broad voting public would imagine him as a lonely man trapped in an office by his lifeless legs. He prevented any such problem by stepping right into voters’ kitchens and parlors through the still-novel medium of radio. FDR knew very well that one of his best tools was his voice, and he used it to splendid effect in an occasional series of informal radio talks about issues pending in Albany. In a warm, casual tone so unlike the speech of most politicians, he talked about complicated problems of government in a way that anybody could understand. The talks by radio would come to be called FDR’s “fireside chats.” No tactic did more to make FDR popular.

He devised another means of showing himself to the public as a man in motion.

In decades long past, the state of New York had built an intricate network of canals linking cities and towns from the Hudson River in the east to the St. Lawrence River in the north to the Great Lakes at the state’s western end. The grand old Erie Canal was only the most famous of these waterways. In all there were hundreds of miles of canals, most of them still navigable and still used to move freight and passengers, despite the coming of trains and automobiles.

On July 6, 1929, at the town of Waterford, where the Erie joins the Hudson River, FDR with Eleanor and a couple of sons and aides boarded a houseboat-barge and set off on a two-week passage by water to the Niagara country. People in tiny towns where no governor had set foot for a century now shook hands with Franklin Roosevelt down at the canal.

He used the tour to praise the canal system and inspect state facilities along the way—often sending Eleanor to see the innards of prisons, hospitals, and schools—but he was also offering himself for inspection. Just as in the 1928 campaign, people discovered not the “crippled” man they had heard about but a man on the move, passing through their town by the good old method of the canal boat. It was something to see, fun and unusual.

And it reinforced a point. Republicans upstate were already spreading a rumor that Roosevelt was too weak to run for a second term as governor in 1930. In fact, reported the New York Times soon after the canal tour, “Mr. Roosevelt, except for his lameness, never has been in better general health. He has had no physical difficulty in performing the duties of Governor. This, it was said, was shown by his recent inspection of the barge canal and state institutions, during which he … showed endurance which was not surpassed by any other member of his party.”

It had come off so well that he made a tour by canal the next summer, too.

There were times when it was simply impossible to divert the attention of strangers away from his disability.

Early in 1929, a teenager named Philip Hamburger happened to see the new governor give a talk at a small community hall in Manhattan. Eleanor was there with FDR, who sat at a desk as he spoke. There was only one way out of the hall—down a narrow aisle at the side. Many years later, Hamburger, who became a writer, described what he remembered of Roosevelt’s departure from the hall: “The distance from desk to street could not have been more than a hundred feet, but it took the Governor an agonizingly long time to traverse it. His legs were in heavy braces … The audience, as though hypnotized, did not leave. It stood and watched the Roosevelts depart … The Governor was intent upon the task before him: to reach the street and the sanctuary of his limousine … Occasionally she leaned over to whisper something in his ear, and he smiled and put the other foot forward. The slow procession became extremely impressive. Mrs. Roosevelt seemed to sense that we knew we should not stay but that we could not leave. Moving slowly along, she thanked many of us for coming … Finally the Roosevelts reached the street. The audience, still hypnotized, followed them outside. Mrs. Roosevelt and a chauffeur helped the Governor into his car. His put his head back against the cushions with the expression of a man who has accomplished his mission. Mrs. Roosevelt opened a window of the car and waved … An audience of strangers had become friends.”

His record after two years as chief executive of the nation’s biggest state was progressive—probably the most progressive of any among the main candidates for president in 1932. He pushed for shorter hours, higher wages, and better working conditions for laboring people. He championed the causes of pensions for the elderly and more money for education. He helped farmers. He made moves to reform the use of the state’s great water resources. He shook up old habits for choosing a governor’s assistants. He appointed a fair number of Democratic politicos to state jobs, but he also appointed progressive activists, labor leaders, college professors, and social workers.