Frenzy in New England

Frenzy in New England

In the long hot weeks of summer Franklin Roosevelt looked down his nose, disparaging the idea that he should campaign for reelection. When late in droughty August he began making "nonpolitical" campaign speeches newshawks plagued him with demands for the date of his first political speech. "About Jan. 4," he jibed. But last week when New England's birches were yellow, her maples orange, her oaks red, Franklin Roosevelt had lost his coyness about campaigning. He was out on the stump with other politicians, waving his hat at the electorate. His weekdays and nights were full of political speeches, bis Sundays with going to church, his face with smiles, his mouth with greetings to "my old friend. . . ."

At the last moment he considered making a trip back to Ohio and Indiana, later reconsidered, deciding it would be an admission of nervousness about the election outcome. For this week, the last of the campaign, he dated himself up for a series of speeches that would take him from the Statue of Liberty to his polling place at Hyde Park by way of Wilkes-Barre. Harrisburg, Camden, Wilmington, Washington, Brooklyn. Madison Square Garden and a microphone in Poughkeepsie. Only sense in this zig-zag itinerary was that it would take him through a maximum number of places where the New Deal needed votes.

Not so far fetched but equally fabulous was his campaigning last week when with the same urge that drove Alf Landon to invade New Deal California, the President took a swing through anti-New Deal New England. One fair autumn morning he woke up aboard his special train in Providence, and began greeting people: Mrs. Roosevelt who had arrived before him, Rhode Island's Governor Green and a fine figure of a man in a cutaway and topper.

"Jim, how are you?" said the President. "I'm glad to see you." Governor James Michael Curley of Massachusetts beamed. Although there is little love lost between them, Franklin Roosevelt cannot afford to have Boss Curley's machine knife him in Massachusetts and Boss Curley needs all of Franklin Roosevelt's popularity that he can borrow if he is to be elected to the U. S. Senate.

One more greeter appeared before the President left the railroad yards, an old Negro.

"Will you," he asked, "shake this black hand?"

"You bet I will!" said Franklin Roosevelt, and did.

To the 30,000 greeters who stood before the Rhode Island Capitol, men, women and plentiful numbers of children Franklin Roosevelt made the first of many speeches. Afterward, with Governor Green beside him, he drove the short dis tance to the place where Rhode Island ends and Massachusetts begins. There began one of the most frenzied .episodes of the campaign. From town to town the Democratic procession roared down broad highway No. 6, past great "Roosevelt & Curley" posters, sometimes racing three abreast. Questions of precedence were settled by stepping on the accelerator. Moving vans and beer trucks joined in the careening motorcade. Newshawks' hair stood on end but Governor Curley is used to fast driving and there were no accidents.

The route lay through Fall River where the President paid tribute to its native son, his late friend and No. 1 Secretary Louis McHenry Howe. At Fairhaven the President lunched with his mother who had opened the old Delano house for the occasion. From this strictly family party, Governor Curley and other politicians were excluded. There Secret Service men put their foot down, decreed that automobile racing must cease, wired ahead to Boston to call out the National Guard to keep the route clear. At every stop, there were big crowds, mill hands who had demanded and got holidays for the occasion. There were Landon buttons in the crowds too, because it was evident that regardless of politics all New England was turning out to see the show. It was an unenthusiastic crowd, yet rare was the town in which from two to a dozen women did not faint in the press.

As the procession drew into Boston the crowds grew denser and more conclusively enthusiastic. Some 150,000 people jammed Boston Common and vicinity and police reserves and guardsmen were almost powerless. Boss Curley introduced the President who made a speech from his car. A good part of the crowd did not hear him because the amplifiers were not strong enough.

Leaving Boston the procession was booed by Harvard students as it passed through Cambridge. It reached Worcester at 8:30 p. m. where the President had a rubdown and an hour's rest before delivering his major speech. The pack at Worcester knocked down a trolley pole and five people were injured, but the least enthusiastic hour of the tour was when Franklin Roosevelt drove down to board his train between lanes of silent curiosity-seekers.

To all these frugal, property-owning New Englanders, the President spoke as a New Englander ("How much have we spent? Enough to get results"); as one Capitalist to another ("You and I are used to venturing capital to gain profits"). Repeatedly he called attention to New England's recovery and urged that prosperity of the whole U. S. was necessary to make New England prosperous-thereby apologizing for the fact that in proportion to the taxes it has paid New England has received but a tiny share of Federal bounty. At his chief speech, in Worcester, he tackled taxes themselves, declared that income and estate taxes had been increased only for the rich-"less than 1% of the heads of American families"gave the impression that poor are paying less in indirect taxes than they did in 1932. The undistributed profits tax on corporations he described as an advantage to stockholders but promised that if "imperfections" were discovered in its application, they would be remedied.

Next day in Connecticut the frenzy of the Massachusetts visit was reproduced. Connecticut's popular and able Governor Wilbur ("Uncle Toby") Cross, instead of being kept at arm's length like Governor Curley, was applauded in every Roosevelt speech beginning before the State Capitol (where eleven women and a boy fainted) and ending at Stamford (where several people were injured in an automobile crash). In each town through which the President motored, the schools were dismissed and a general holiday proclaimed. At New Haven where Yale dormitories were decked with Landon banners but no boos were uttered, the President lunched with his eldest son's father-in-law, Dr. Harvey Gushing. Most enthusiastic crowd appeared in Socialist Bridgeport, but all through the shore towns of Fairfield County throngs packed the sidewalks and women and children were bumped by cars. At Stamford so many people jammed the station that it took police 15 minutes to get the President aboard his special, headed back to Washington.

Not knowing quite whether he had harvested a bumper crop of votes or had merely provided New England with a holiday, President Roosevelt dictated his grief at the death of his rich and radical Senator James Couzens (see p. 53): "The people of Michigan and the nation have lost a leader whose convictions were part of the best that America aspires for."

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