Ninety years ago when Warren G. Harding was President, I began to take a dim interest in national politics. I heard the grownups talking about graft and corruption--words which meant nothing to a seven year old but I gathered that my elders were displeased about something important. A year or so later there were giant headlines in the papers about a place called Teapot Dome and I heard people talking about someone named Fall and another person named Daugherty. In July of 1923 President Harding came to California, en route to Alaska.
He was not in good health and his doctors were worried about him. On his return from the north, he stopped in San Francisco where he died suddenly on August 2, 1923. I was nine years old at the time and I remember clearly hearing rumors and conjectures about this. There were a few whispered hints that his wife might have hastened his death because she feared disgrace as a consequence of the administration's problems. This seems highly unlikely although she refused to allow an autopsy.
In the election of 1924 newly enfranchised women cast their first votes. I knew that my mother and aunts, outraged by the scandals of the Harding administration and, as proper Victorians, shocked by rumors of the president's affair with Nan Britton and the serving of bootlegged whiskey at White House parties, all voted for John W. Davis, the Democratic candidate. President Coolidge was untainted but the misdeeds of the GOP in the past few years were too much for them.
It was in 1928 that I became truly, if briefly, interested in politics. Franklin Roosevelt nominated Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, "the Happy Warrior" he called him, for president and after a hectic convention, Smith was chosen as the Democratic candidate.
Herbert Hoover was the GOP's choice.
Smith called himself a man of the people which he really was. He was proud of his Irish immigrant heritage. An ardent advocate for improved conditions in factories and other work places, he was also a popular and successful governor. He was for the repeal of Prohibition on the grounds that it had spawned a new set of criminals, for bootlegging had become a big business. Smith was a Catholic at a time when there was much anti-Catholic feeling. The stock market was way up and the country was in a happy state of euphoria. The "three P's" that caused him to be defeated by Hoover in a landslide election were said to be "Prohibition, Prosperity, and Prejudice ."
Radios were luxuries in 1928. We didn't have one but my thirteen year old brother rigged up a "crystal set" and we could hear bits and pieces of the campaign speeches. As Democrats and as Catholics, voters in my family were for Al Smith but none of them really expected him to win.
Hoover had been in office less than two years when the bottom fell out of everything. The disastrous stock market crash at the end of October, 1929 shocked and bewildered the entire nation. The worldwide Great Depression had begun and in the U.S.A. troubles were intensified by the catastrophic windstorms that created the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma and Arkansas. All of this didn't affect me, then a senior in high school. Unlike the students of the late sixties and the seventies who marched for things they believed in and protested what they thought was wrong, my friends and I simply accepted the situation. There may have been idealists among us but I didn't know any. We, children of the Prohibition era, were on the whole, I think, a self-centered lot. Dates and parties were our main concerns and there was the delicious wickedness of going on to speakeasies after college dances.
Hoover struggled but the problem was too big for him. In the campaign of 1932 he faced Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then governor of New York. A junior in college at the time, I was pro-FDR. The Depression seemed not to have reached the west coast yet. The big cities in the eastern half of the country were hit first and hit hard. One of my uncles, a New York stockbroker, lost almost everything he had. The death of a wealthy,
eighty year old spinster cousin had however, left my immediate family in better shape than it had been for years. I could stay in college where I engaged in heated arguments with friends who thought Hoover could handle the situation. A majority of voters disagreed and FDR swept triumphantly into office.
For me, most of the excitement subsided somewhat after FDR was sworn in as president
but I was interested enough to read about his cabinet selection and was struck with the effect of his choice of Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor. The criticism of the GOP was immediate. Was the man mad? Women simply weren't equipped to handle such a job. Perkins was, however and stayed in it through the Truman administration. She had ties to labor unions, advocated decent conditions in factories and worked for a minimum wage.
In 1936 Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas was FDR's opponent. He proved to be a surprisingly inept campaigner, making so few public appearances that even Westbrook Pegler who hated FDR, lampooned him as "the missing man". When I cast my first vote, it was of course, for Roosevelt who won in a landslide victory. "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont", someone joked--those were the only states that went for Landon.
FDR's theme song in his first campaign had been "Happy Days Are Here Again". They weren't and life for almost everyone was even more miserable than it had been. There was a difference though. The President had managed to give people a sense of hope and it seemed to pervade the country. Someone was working hard and seriously on its enormous problems.
At this point I must express my unbounded admiration for that remarkable man, FDR and his equally remarkable wife, Eleanor.
Both born to rich and privileged families, they had imagination, vision, and hearts to feel for their less fortunate fellow citizens. Loathed and reviled by other wealthy people, and by big business, FDR was famously called a traitor to his class. Pegler and other commentators attacked him and Eleanor ferociously and without mercy. They took it all and proceeded to do what they thought was right and good for the country. Eleanor, of course, took no part in politics, but she was an able and sturdy ally. Roosevelt himself, severely crippled by polio and unable to walk without assistance didn't let his physical disabilities hold him back.
The Roosevelt administration was indeed seriously at work. It would be slow progress against terrifying odds but these people were determined to set things straight and they had plenty of innovative ideas.