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ABSTRACT

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT AND THE PRESS
THE 1936 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

BY
Michael Edward Phelps

In 1936, during the Great Depression, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt succeeded himself as the thirty-first
president of the United States, gaining re-election
despite the newspaper editorial endorsement of his Opponent
Alfred M. Landon, Republican governor of Kansas, by an
estimated 80 per cent of the nation's daily newspapers.
In the campaign preceding the election, Colonel Robert R.
McCormick, publisher-editor of the Chicago Daily Tribune,
and William Randolph Hearst, one of the most powerful
newspaper publishers in American history, led the conser-
vative press in attacking Roosevelt as a national leader
with leftist tendencies who was aiming for a dictatorship.
The American electorate rejected the leadership of the
conservative press and gave Roosevelt a winning margin of
ten million votes, allowing Landon but eight of the
nation's electoral votes.

The study examines the discrepancy between the
massiveness of the Roosevelt victory and the magnitude of
the newspaper Opposition. Included is an historical
analysis of the relationship between President Roosevelt
and the working newsmen, and between Roosevelt and the

publishers--particularly Hearst and McCormick. Examples

Michael Edward Phelps

of the mendacity of the attacks on Roosevelt in the edi—
torial and news columns of the Chicago Dailnyribune of
Colonel Robert R. McCormick and the San Francisco Examiner,
anchor newspaper of the Hearst chain, are critically
examined. Roosevelt's response to the attacks in the
daily press is examined both relative to the working
newsmen and to the publishers as a group.

The 1936 presidential election would be neither
won nor lost on the pages of the daily newspapers of the
United States. Roosevelt sensed this early and plotted
his campaign accordingly; the publishers did not, and the
future credibility of their newspapers was placed in
jeopardy.

Roosevelt could be reasonably confident of victory
based on information that he was receiving from the Demo—
cratic party communication network engineered by James
Farley, and from encouragement he was receiving from
members of his opposition such as Hearst executive, Arthur
Brisbane.

The record of the president was clear to the
American voter both through the reading of the dynamic and
exciting news that New Dealers were generating daily dur-
ing the early years of 1933-1934 and through the actual
changes that many Americans were observing in their daily
lives. Some of those who had been hungry were no longer;
some who had been without work were now employed; some of

those who had lost self-respect had regained it.

Michael Edward Phelps

Roosevelt recognized his position and consequently
gave little recognition to the existence of an Opposition.
He continued to carry his message of a New Deal to the
American people via public address and centered his cam-
paign on the theme Of continuing the progress that the
first term had begun. The voters did not forget. The
credibility of the American newspaper had, perhaps, suf—
fered a major blow. Roosevelt won despite the publishers
and, to paraphrase the title of the volume of his public

papers for 1936, because the people approved.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT AND THE PRESS

THE 1936 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

BY
Michael Edward Phelps

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

School of JOurnalism

1971

COpyright by
Michael Edward Phelps

1971

Accepted by the faculty of the School of
Journalism, College of Communication Arts, Michigan
State University, in partial fulfillment of the re—

quirements for the Master of Arts degree.

Director of géesis 1

 

ACKNOWLE DGMEN TS

A thesis presents a unique challenge to the candi-
date for advanced degree. As a capstone of research and,
hopefully, a contribution to the literature of his disci-
pline, it is the culmination of the candidate's study and
is to give evidence of his scholarship. And yet it is at
the end of graduate study that the would—be scholar begins
to discover the unanswerable research problems and seem-
ingly insurmountable writing assignments that make the
completion of the task seem at times impossible.

Confronting this challenge, I turned to those most
readily able and, fortunately, willing to provide me with
the spiritual and academic sustenance required to complete
the task. Heading the list of these individuals is my
patient wife Liz, followed closely in listing as in life
by my daughter Aimeée. To Dr. w. Cameron Meyers, a gentle
man of the academy and a dedicated scholar, I owe a last-
ing debt, not only for the constant guidance and encourage-
ment rendered me in the preparation of this study, but also
for the professional direction I now take as I leave the

university.

Special thanks also go to newspapermen Erwin Canham,

Willard Edwards, J. David Stern, and Elliott Thurston, and

to former Postmaster General James A. Farley for personal

ii

Observations that both provided new material and verified
Old suspicions. The staffs Of the Manuscript Division,
Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., and of the Franklin
D. Roosevelt Memorial Library, Hyde Park, N. Y., are pro-
fessionals who help make historical research a pleasure.

-I would also like to give special thanks to my typist,

Mrs. Janet James, who, in a very gratifying way, takes a

personal as well as a mechanical interest in her work.

iii

CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV

BIBLIOGRAPHY

TABLE

OF CONTENTS

iv

22
50
66
93

CHAPTER I

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt succeeded himself
as the thirty-first president of the United States in 1936,
he gained re-election despite the newspaper editorial en-
dorsement of his Opponent, Alfred M. Landon, Republican '
governor of Kansas, by an estimated 80 per cent Of the na-
tion's daily newspapers. President Roosevelt, in achieving
re-election, had defeated Governor Landon by ten million
votes, winning the electoral votes of all the states except
traditionally conservative Maine and Vermont, a total of
523 to 8.

The election followed a bitterly contested cam-
paign. Colonel Robert R. McCormick and William Randolph
Hearst, two of the most powerful newspaper publishers in
American history, had led the conservative press in attack-
ing Roosevelt as a subversive, traitorous politician who
sought leftist support and pursued socialistic programs.

The marked disparity between the massiveness of
the Roosevelt victory and the quality and quantity Of the
attacks in the anti-Roosevelt press evoked much discus-
sion in journalistic, academic, and governmental circles
regarding the social responsibility of a free press and
the ability of newspapers to influence public Opinion.

The editors of New Republic, a weekly journal of Opinion

1

and analysis, noted in the conclusion of a study of the
performance of the American press in the 1936 election,
that "the preponderance of newspaper circulation on the side
of Mr. Landon did little or nothing to turn the tide of pub-
lic favor from the leftward direction represented by Mr.

Roosevelt."1

Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the interior

under Roosevelt, also expressed his concern about what he

viewed to be a dangerous trend in American journalism:
Never have the newspapers . . . conducted a more men-
dacious and venemous campaign against a candidate for
Presidens, and never have they been of so little in-
fluence.

Although McCormick, Hearst, and other publishers
were vehemently Opposed to President Roosevelt and the eco-
nomic reform programs of the New Deal, reporters generally
appear to have been pleased with the president's candor
and informality in press relations during his first term.

A survey of eighty-four Washington correspondents taken in
the spring of 1936, for example, indicated that fifty-four
of them favored President Roosevelt's re-election.3

Roosevelt's pOpularity with members of the working

press had been achieved neither accidentally nor automati-

cally. Full intelligence about the New Deal in economic

 

1"The press and the Public," New Republic, March 17,
1937, p. 187.

2Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Dia of Harold Ickes,
Vol. I: The First Thousand Daysthew Yor£= Simon and
Schuster, 19537, p. 75!.
3

Leo C. Rosten, The Washington Correspondents (New
York: Harcourt, Brace, an ompany, , p. .

 

and governmental reforms for the United States was imparted
to the American people through the facilities of a presi-
dent who was an able communicator, and through the skill

of his administrative staff, which had members who had a
thorough understanding of the American newspaper.

A story in Business Week in the spring of 1935 said .
that Roosevelt had been "more effective in getting his ver—
sion of any given story before the public than any Presi-
dent or any other official . . . ever seen."4 Theodore G.
Joslin, press assistant to President Herbert Hoover, said
shortly after Roosevelt took office that the president had
bettered his predecessors in "meeting the expectations of
the four hundred men and women who, in these times of stress,
write half a million words a day to bring . . . news of
developments at the seat of Government."5

President Roosevelt met the expectations of the
working press in several ways. Perhaps the single most
effective technique he used in develOping an effective work-
ing relationship with the press was the presidential press
conference.

A president of the United States creates news when
he speaks. Recognizing this, Roosevelt was determined to
use the press conferences to keep the Washington press

corps infOrmed and writing substantive news about the New

4”The New Deal Lobby," Business Week, May 18, 1935,

p. 15.

5Daniel Boorstin, "Selling the President to the
PeOple," Commentary, November, 1935, p. 424.

Deal. He was further determined to remove the stigma of
formality and stuffiness that had characterized the press
conferences of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. If the
nation was to benefit from a New Deal, so also was the
Washington press corps.

Prior to President Roosevelt's first press con-
ference, there began a continuing policy of providing
newsmen with information not directly attributable to a
White House source. In a letter dated March 1, 1933,
Raymond Clapper, a reporter for the United Press, a na—
tional newsgathering agency, and a veteran member of the
Washington press corps, detailed procedures for the presi-
dential press conferences of the incoming Roosevelt admin-
istration that would not be publicly announced until the
first press conference a week later. Clapper had gained
the advance information in an interview with Stephen T.
Early, Roosevelt's press secretary. Early, a former news-
man of long experience, had given Clapper permission to
use part of the information gained in the interview as a
"speculative story” to be released prior to Roosevelt's
inauguration.

Early had explained to Clapper that Roosevelt
planned to abolish the previous requirement Of submitting
written questions in advance, a procedure that Herbert
HOOver had followed during his administration. Early

further indicated that he had recommended to Roosevelt

that he meet with the press twice a week on Wednesday morn-
ing and on Friday afternoon. Not mentioned in Clapper's
letter, but implied in Early's recommendation, was the ob-
vious desire to provide an even Opportunity for breaking
news to the morning and afternoon newspapers. Further,
Early told Clapper that the intention was to limit atten-
dance to the "press gallery," excluding editors and other
visitors from the craft for whom other arrangements would
be made. Early also made reference to procedures for at-
tribution, a subject that the President dealt with in de-
tail in his first press conference.6
In an unsigned memorandum on White House letter-

head dated March 8, 1933, the presidential policy regard-
ing news attribution was outlined:

All statements to be directly quoted will be given

out in writing only by Mr. Early. Background infor-

mation -— means material which can be used by the

newspaper men on their own authority and responsi-

bility and must not be attributed to the White House.
Off—the-record information -- means confidential

 

6Clapper to n.n., 10 March 1933, Personal File,

Raymond Clapper Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of
Congress, Washington, D. C. (Raymond Clapper Papers here-
inafter cited as RCP; Manuscript Division, Library of Con-
gress hereinafter cited as MDLC.) Roosevelt worked to ac-
commodate everyone. Louis Ruppel, managing editor Of the
Chicago Daily Times, in the summer of 1935 sent Early a

e egram n w c e noted that the morning press confer-
ences were running too long for him to get "one honest
headline for his readers.” Early responded two days later,
noting that FDR had "waived" normal news conference pro-
cedures and that the "afternoon men" could now leave after
the initial statement. Ruppel to Early, 4 June 1935; Early
to Ruppel, 6 June 1935, Official File 36, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt Memorial Library, Hyde Park, New York. (Official
File hereinafter cited as OF; Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Memorial Library hereinafter cited as FDRL.)

information given to those attending the conference
only and not to be repeated by them to absentees, even
their own editors.7
In addition to outlining the mechanics Of attribu-
tion, Roosevelt quickly assumed the style that was to
characterize the remaining 336 press conferences he was to
hold during his first term in office. At his request, the
estimated one hundred reporters and photographers in atten-
dance filed past the President and were individually intro—
duced to him by J. Russell Young, former president of the
White House Correspondents' Association.8 From that time
forward, following the relaxed and informal precedent he
had established as governor of New York, Roosevelt attempted
to call as many reporters as possible by their first names.
As a reporter for the American Mercury recalled: "There is
something about being called 'Bill' by the President of the
United States that leaves a glow that lingers even as the
news is being written."9
Jumping easily from a discussion of the banking

crisis then afflicting the nation to an analysis of the

problems inherent in the current gold standard for the

 

78 March 1933, OF 36, FDRL. Elmer Cornwell, a po-
litical scientist, notes that of 736 double-spaced typewrit-
ten pages Of press conference transcripts between November 1,
1934, and October 31, 1935, approximately 131 pages were off
the record: "The Presidential Press Conference: A Study in
Institutionalization," Midwest Journal of Political Science
IV (November, 1960), 375.

8"Mr. Roosevelt 'Ungags' the Press," Literary
Digest, March 25, 1933, p. 10.

9James K. Martel, "Washington Press Conference,"
American Mercury, February, 1938, p. 204.

monetary system, Roosevelt demonstrated the relaxed yet
knowledgeable and articulate style that would evolve as one
Of his strongest assets in the years to follow. Daniel
Boorstin, author, and student of the presidency, public
Opinion, and political imagery, would later conclude that
Roosevelt's "genius consisted very much in his ability to
give calculated, pre-fabricated phrases an air of casual-
ness."10 James McGregor Burns, author of a political biog'~
raphy of Roosevelt, describes him as continually "joshing"
with reporters in the press conferences while, at the same
time, displaying a "swift repartee" and a "sense of the

dramatic."11

Yet, Burns notes, "Roosevelt was so careful
in the information that he gave out to the press that the
transcripts rarely contain strikingly important ideas or
statements."12
Although not subjected to the intensive staff brief-
ings prior to press conferences reported of later presidents
such as John F. Kennedy, and Richard M. Nixon, Roosevelt did
recognize the necessity of preparedness and, consequently,

met with Early for a brief period before and after each

conference for preparation and evaluation.13 He apparently

 

10Boorstin, Commentary, November, 1955, p. 425.

11James McGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and

the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1956), p.

lzIbid., p. 491.

13William E. Berchtold, "Press Agents of the New
Deal," New Outlook, July, 1934, p. 26.

disregarded, however, the advice of his press aides in his
decisions to permit photographers into the press confer-
ences and to maintain the informal ”family" atmosphere to

which he had adhered while governor of New York.14

Early
may have reduced the family atmosphere of the first con-
ference, however, when, at its conclusion, he announced
that an example would be made of anyone who violated con-
fidence.15
Reaction to the initial press conference was almost
overwhelmingly favorable as evidenced by the spontaneous
burst of applause at its conclusion. Even highly contro-
versial issues, such as Off-the-record statements and back-
grounding, were received neutrally if not enthusiastically.
A story in the New York Times the day following the first
press conference noted that the Off-the-record technique
was ”very valuable as it furnished much information on the
administration's attitude and enabled reporters to separate
truth from chaff in reports that go the rounds."16 And,
although he later modified his position, Arthur Krock, chief

of the Washington bureau of the Times, would admit in a

 

14Diary of Raymond Clapper, 7 March 1933, RCP,
MDLC, Washington, D. C.; New York Times, March 9, 1933,
p. 3. Clapper cites March 7 on the fIrst page of the diary
entry. He reverts to March 8, however, on the second page
as he continues the entry for the day. The press confer-
ence was held March 8.

15Diary of Raymond Clapper, 8 March 1933, RCP,
MDLC.

16New York Times, March 9, 1933, p. 3.

column the following autumn that the backgrounder provides
the “atmosphere Of the news” and aids a reporter in avoid-
ing "false or ignorant conclusions in his writing."17

Appearing to have at least temporarily cemented his

position with the always wary Washington press corps,

Roosevelt undoubtedly read with much interest the New York

 

Times editorial summarizing what appropriate journalistic

response to the President ought to be.
The President has a right to expect of the press, in
response to his candor, the utmost good faith. The
correspondents' questions may be--or should be—-fear-
less and penetrating, but in the handling of the
answers Obtained under these circumstances they have
a responsibility Of which the press is well aware.

The format of the Roosevelt press conference would
become somewhat of a model for his successors. Boorstin
concludes that the frequency of the Roosevelt press con-
ference "bred intimacy, informality, and a set of insti—
tutionalized procedures."19

The reporters seemed to enjoy the new style in
White House press conferences. Clapper, in a letter to the
President's appointments secretary, Marvin McIntyre, said

the Washington press corps had been ”generally . . .

delighted with the new atmosphere around the White House"

 

17

Ibid., Oct. 18, 1933, p. 20.
181bid., March 11, 1933, p. 12.
19

Boorstin, Commentary, November, 1955, p. 425.

10

and that they had "nothing but praise" for the changes im-
plemented by Roosevelt's staff.20
The informality of President Roosevelt in dealing
with the press was a source of particular pleasure for the
reporters, who had been previously conditioned to the some-
what stuffy atmosphere under President Hoover. A story in
the Literary 9192339 a weekly news magazine, in the summer
Of 1933 recounts an occasion at the summer White House in
Hyde Park, New York, when Mrs. Roosevelt called the hotel
in which the members of the press were staying and invited
them to the house for a swim, iced tea, and cake. The in—
formal news conference that transpired in and around the
pool was perhaps a typical example of Roosevelt's ability
to reduce the barriers around his office so that he might
transmit his story to the American peOple. His comments
during such sessions Often began: "You'll be interested
in knowing that . . . ;" or, "If I were writing this, I'd
begin it. . ."21
An accomplished and professional public speaker with
an audience present, President Roosevelt also made adroitly
effective use Of radio in communicating to an invisible

audience. During his first ten months in office, he used

radio for speeches to the American peOple on twenty-four

 

20Clapper to McIntyre, 18 March 1933, OF 4434, FDRL.

21John Herrick, "With the Reporters at the Summer
White House,“ Liggrary Digest, Aug. 12, 1933, p. 5. Herrick

was a reporter for the staunchly conservative Chica o Dail
Tribune, whose publisher was Colonel Robert R. HECormIcE.

11

22 He

occasions for a total of 97.5 minutes of air time.
seemed to enjoy going directly to the electorate with his
programs for national recovery; and the peOple seemed to
respond favorably, perhaps perceiving an effort on his part
to include them in the decision-making process.

Marvin McIntyre summarized reaction to the President
as a broadcaster: "His radio voice is so intimate that
thousands of persons, listening in homes or offices, must
feel that he is talking only to them. And the President

is."23

One reporter noted that the informal conversations
with the American people, called "Fireside Chats" by
Roosevelt himself, were delivered in a manner that was the
"envy of the leading professional broadcasters." He thought
that Roosevelt's strengths on radio might best be attrib-
uted to the sense of intimacy perceived by the audience,
emphasis on key words, and a skill in reducing the most
complex of economic principles to a level that the common
man could comprehend.24
The Fireside Chats and special occasion speeches
notwithstanding, Roosevelt seemed to sense that continuing
communication with the American people was essential to

the success of the programs of social change that he pro-

posed. TO this end, he needed the newspapers; and, because

 

22A. J. Draper, "President Employees Air and Press
to Educate Nation," Literary Digest, Jan. 27, 1934, p. 9.

23Marvin H. McIntyre, "I Want to See the President,"
American Magazine, April, 1935, p. 23.

24New York Times, March 14, 1933, p. 2.

12

he needed the newspapers, he worked to develop pleasant
relationships with the working newsmen. If an editor or
a columnist occasionally became incensed by lack of indi-
vidual attention, a working newsman seldom left the White
House or the offices of the alphabetically labeled New
Deal agencies without a story to file.

In addition to needing the newsmen, Roosevelt also
genuinely seemed to enjoy being with them. In a radio in-
terview in 1934, Stephen Early noted that Roosevelt derived
much pleasure from the "semi-weekly battle of wits" and the

"25 The Presi-

"rapid cross-fire of questions and answers.
dent also had a keen sense of fairness that was recognized
and respected by newsmen. John Herrick, a reporter for the
strongly anti-Roosevelt Chicago Daily Tribune, Observed
that Roosevelt understood the "gap between personal friend-
ship and editorial policy" that sometimes exists. Herrick
wrote that press representatives Of ”papers that have been
hostile to some of the Administration's policies” were
given "the same treatment accorded men working for friendly
publications."26
To the end of fairness, President Roosevelt avoided

exclusive interviews, breaking this rule only occasionally

with individuals like columnist Arthur Krock or Eleanor

 

25Radio interview with George Holmes, International
News Service, National Broadcasting Company, July 6, 1934,
OF 228, FDRL.

26Herrick, Literary Digest, Aug. 12, 1933, p. 29.

13

”Cissy” Patterson, publisher of the Washington Times-
Herald and cousin to Colonel McCormick of the Chicago Tri-
2222. The rule of not giving exclusive interviews was out-
lined by Early in a letter to a high school journalist.
"All [newspapermen] are treated on a parity," he said, and
explained that "exclusive interviews are never given by

the President.”27

As noted, exceptions were occasionally
made.

In addition to his skillful use of radio and his
candor and expertise in meeting the press twice weekly,
Roosevelt also made effective use of the experience of his
staff to both develOp good relations with newsmen and to
provide him with substantive assistance to distinguish
between the force of real public Opinion and the myth of
public Opinion. Many Of his practices in dealing with the
press reflected not only his own sense of timing and under-
standing of news play but also that gained from the cumu-
lative experience of his secretary and long-time friend,
Louis Howe, and the two assistant secretaries, Stephen
Early and Marvin McIntyre, all former newsmen. The use
of planted questions in press conferences and the launch-
ing of ”trial balloons“ to test the reaction of various

publics on crucial issues are both examples of Roosevelt's

sophisticated comprehension of press relationships and the

 

27Early to Robert Spriggs, 20 February 1936, op 36,

FDRL.

14

product of able advice provided him by experienced staff
members.28
Skilled newsmen were also placed throughout the
executive branch of government and the numerous agencies
created under the New Deal. Relying upon the apprOpria-
tion Of emergency funds, the plethora of unemployed news-
men, and the intense national interest in any and all in-
formation regarding the legislation and programs of the
New Deal, Roosevelt was able to provide his senior subor-
dinates with experienced former members of the working
press to deal with the skilled members of the Washington
press corps. As one reporter noted: "The New Deal has
created so many news centers that even the most conscien-
tious member of the Fourth Estate finds it necessary to
rely upon the Administration's host of press agents."29
The public relations professional in the federal govern-
ment moved toward becoming an institutionalized phenomenon
under Roosevelt and, as one observer put it: "The view of
the government presented to the public is the product of
what goes on between the official publicity men . . . and

the professional correspondents stationed in the Capital."30

 

28George Creel, Rebel at Lar e (New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1947), p. 289; EImer Cornwell, Presidential
Leadershi of Public 0 inion (Bloomington: Indiana
UnIversIEy Press, 1965;, pp. 157-158.

29Berchtold, New Outlook, July, 1934, pp. 25, 30, 61.

30E. Pendleton Herring, "Official Publicity Under

the New Deal," Annals of the American Academ of Political
Sciences, CLXXIX (19357, 167.

15

President Roosevelt was also deeply concerned with
the problem of acquiring and evaluating the nature Of cur-
rent public Opinion. He was apparently successful not
only in the acquisition and evaluation of the public mood,
but also in the subsequent action and communication based
on such evaluation. His interest in the temper of the
American public was a continuing one. Boorstin notes:

"The President would scrutinize surveys of public opinion,"
and "employ . . . Specialists . . . to inform him of what
the people liked or disliked."31

Press secretary Early noted in a letter to an in-

quirer that Roosevelt scrutinized "at least ten and possibly
twelve newspapers every day," and that the papers were
received by him "intact." The president examined six dur-
ing the morning, which were "independent and Republican in
policy," and read afternoon newspapers during the day in
his Office and in his room. He was, as Early explained,
a "careful reader of . . . newspapers." No clipping ser-
vice was operated by the White House, the secretary wrote,
commenting that Roosevelt did "not receive either assorted
news clippings or selected articles.“32

Although the White House may not have had direct

control of the Division of Press Intelligence, there are

 

31Boorstin, Commentary, November, 1955, pp. 426—

427.

32Early to Allen L. Appleton, 4 March 1935, Presi-
dent's Personal File 82, FDRL. (President's Personal File
hereinafter cited as PPF.)

16

certainly strong indications that Roosevelt did see press
clippings and that the existence Of such an Operation was
not kept particularly secret. During the early years of
the New Deal, "Louis Howe's Daily Bugle," or, as it was
formally called, the "Press Intelligence Bulletin" was in-
augurated as an indexed digest Of newspaper stories from
750 cities with a pOpulation of more than 25,000 and in
state capitals having smaller populations. One account
noted that the Bugle sometimes ran 100 to 150 pages of
single-spaced typewriting.33
Other forms of gaining information regarding public
Opinion were more or less SOphisticated. A United Press
teleprinter installed in Early's Office in the White House
rapped out news from around the world twelve hours a day.34
The formal organization of the national Democratic party
led by Roosevelt's campaign manager and postmaster general,
James A. Farley, was employed as an informal but nonethe-
less effective mechanism for gathering specific information
about the public mood in specific areas of the United States.35

Roosevelt weighed carefully the information gathered,

and appeared to use this information carefully in the

 

33New York Times, Jan. 14, 1934, sec. VI, p. l;

Berchtold, New Outlook, July, 1934, p. 25.
34Early to Allen L. Appleton, 4 March 1935, PPF 82,
FDRL.
35New York Times, Jan. 14, 1934, sec. VI, p. 16.
A search of Ehe fIIes of the Democratic party for the pe-
riod located at FDRL reveals the truth of Paul Mallon's
conclusion in the New York Times story cited.

17

formulation of public utterances. He did not want to be
misunderstood. Shortly after he took office, for example,
he asked the press to use the term bank "holiday" rather
than ”moratorium” so that further panic might be averted
when he ordered the nation's banks temporarily closed.36
When Roosevelt was about to veto the Bonus bill that would
have given a long-awaited bonus to veterans of World War
I, stories circulated in the press that his veto was a
"political gesture" and that he would be "indifferent" to
a congressional override of such a veto. Roosevelt reit-
erated his stand on the bonus so that there would be no
misunderstanding either with the Congress or the electorate
regarding his thinking on the issue. He issued a statement
via Early that his veto was, indeed, a serious one to
which he was committed.37
Many observers of the president and press relation-
ship have attempted to analyze Roosevelt's great success
with the working press. Leo Rosten, columnist and author
of a book dealing with the Washington press corps, ob-
serves that President Roosevelt "used every means at his
disposal to strengthen his position, politically and psy-

38

chologically." Another writer asserts that Roosevelt's

 

36Raymond Clapper, "Telling the World," Review of
Reviews, March, 1935,p. 39.

37New York Times, May 17, 1935, p. 1.

38Rosten, The Washingron Correspondents, p. 251.

18

success was partly attributable to technique, noting "in-
formation given out at the White House is almost always
timed and put together in such a fashion as to dominate
the front pages of the press."39

Raymond Clapper believed that the success of the
president in dealing with the press during the first tenm
might best be assessed by remembering "that if the report-
ers [were] 60 per cent for the New Deal they [were] close
to 90 per cent for Mr. Roosevelt personally."4O Clapper
was somewhat philOSOphical about Roosevelt's pOpularity
with him and his colleagues. He believed that reporters
liked Roosevelt because of the president's cordial demeanor,
his tendency to always have a story, his sincerity and
courage, and his willingness to experiment and innovate.
They much admired Roosevelt's political abilities.41

Roosevelt's broad understanding of the press cannot
be ignored in analyzing his success in the 1936 presiden-
tial election. He recognized news values, he communicated
well, and, perhaps most important, he recognized the value
of knowing when not to communicate. Showing an awareness
for the growing potential Of radio, he frequently bypassed

newsmen and used the air waves as a method of communication

 

39"President and the Press," Christian Century.

March 21, 1934, p. 382.

40Raymond Clapper, "Why Reporters Like Roosevelt,"

Review of Reviews, June, 1934, p. 15.

411bid., pp. 16-17.

19

and persuasion. He seemed to understand the physical,
mental, and spiritual anguish extant in the contemporary
consciousness of the American people. President Roosevelt
appeared to have been successful in communicating to the
citizenry that he valued their Opinions and views on his
legislative programs for national economic recovery and
political reform.

Roosevelt communicated to newsmen a sense of re-
spect for their craft by including them in off-the-record
discussions of policy formulation; and he included in his
personal staff former members Of the press corps and evi—
denced great respect for their political acumen.

It is difficult to separate a man from his times.
The early thirties was a period of deep despair, discon-
tent, and ferment in the American social, economic, and
cultural experience. Roosevelt came to Office in 1933 on
the waves of national discontent brought about by the then
three-year-Old Great Depression, a period that put Ameri-
can democracy on trial. His programs Of recovery were
experimental and innovative and were, because of the mag-
nitude Of the problems for which they were designed and
the revolutionary economic philoSOphy that linked them
together, of great news interest. A president living in
less critical times might have been newsworthy only be-

. cause of the Office he held. Roosevelt's tenure in a time
Of national crisis lent a natural excitement to the news

emanating from his Office.

20

But even the most SOphisticated relationship of the
president with the press has never permitted a permanent
relaxation of the continuing tension that appears to be a
significant characteristic of the interplay between govern-
ment and the press. As the 1936 presidential election ap-
proached, Roosevelt began to encounter problems with the
working press about alleged news management and prOpagan-
dizing, and the mechanics of attribution. Of greater sig—
nificance, however, was the deterioration of whatever re-
lationship the president might have once enjoyed with
Colonel Robert McCormick and William Randolph Hearst.
Clapper alluded to this growing problem in 1934 when he
noted that Roosevelt "has the reporters more with him than
the publishers are."42 James Reston, Arthur Krock's suc-
cessor as bureau chief of the New York Times, writing some
years later in The Artillery of the Press, and echoing
Clapper's perceptions, Observed that Roosevelt had ”concen-
trated on the reporters and the front pages and vilified
or scorned the commentators and the editorial pages.”43
Paul Mallon, a reporter for the New York Times during the
thirties, noted that while Roosevelt's predecessors showed
a friendliness "toward the top-notchers Of the press corps,"

Roosevelt preferred a "cultivation of the rank and file."44

 

421b1d., p. 15.

43James Reston, The Artillery Of the Press (New
York: Harper & Row, 196 , p. .

44

New York Times, Feb. 17, 1935, sec. VI, p. 6.

21

Roosevelt's cultivation Of the little man both on
the street and in the press corps, and his attacks on the
"economic royalists" of the "Tory" press continued. It
became apparent that the president's campaign for re-elec-
tion had begun with the working press at his first press
conference and that the publishers might have difficulty
undoing during the election year what Roosevelt had

achieved during the previous three.

CHAPTER II

As the first term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt un-
rolled, the early legislative successes of his "first
hundred days" were overshadowed by bitter defeats in the
highest court of the nation. One by one, major pieces of
New Deal legislation were declared unconstitutional. A
Supreme Court, whose members Roosevelt had called the
"nine old men," struck down, in order, the basic founda—
tions of the National Recovery Administration in May, 1935,
and the Agricultural Adjustment Act in January, 1936.
Roosevelt's defeats in substantive aspects Of the social
reform legislation of the New Deal were mirrored in minor
erosions in his relationship with certain elements in the
White House press corps. Finally, in what appeared to be
an inverse relationship, as business conditions improved
between 1933 and 1936, condemnation of the New Deal and of
Roosevelt by American newspaper publishers, such as William
Randolph Hearst and Colonel Robert R. McCormick, increased.
Resolution Of the battle with the judiciary would not come
until the conclusion of the bitter court packing fight of
.1937. The attacks of the publishers would provide much of
the melodrama of the 1936 election campaign and would
raise some serious questions regarding the appropriate
role of a responsible and free press.

22

23

The New Deal programs struck down by the Supreme
Court were not eliminated because Of a lack Of effort in
selling them to the American people. Believing that his
programs of reform were essential to a return to economic
stability for the nation, Roosevelt used his established
network of government publicists in a continuing effort to
gain and sustain public support for them.

The proliferation of press agents in the federal
government was anathema to some of the Washington corre-
spondents. The complaints of reporters regarding the gov-
ernmental spokesmen were perhaps typical of the response
of newsmen to the public relations representative working
in a bureaucratic role. One reporter said of the publicity
efforts:

The New Deal's phenomenal success in commanding atten-
tion through every medium of publicity known to the
modern art of ballyhoo has been no chance happening;
it has been carefully planned by the largest and most
efficient staff of publicity experts ever to grace
the government's payroll.l
Of the continuing stream of governmental press releases,
another reporter noted: "Sprinkled with saccharine juice
that drips from the press agent's pen, the handouts exude
a supreme confidence in the worthiness of the Administra-
tion and its leaders."2 Press conferences, the same news-

man said, were "nothing but concentrated sales talks" for

Roosevelt's programs.3

 

1William E. Berchtold, "Press Agents of the New
Deal," New Outlook, July, 1934, p. 23.

Eugene A. Kelly, "Distorting the News," American
Mercu , March, 1935, p. 307.

31bid., p. 313.

24

The elders of the White House press corps, however,
did not seem concerned about the publicists. Arthur Krock,
Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, for example,
indicated that the press agents had ”rarely succeeded in

4 J. Fred

any effort to withhold a legitimate public fact.”

Essary of the Baltimore Sun said that a reporter who "does

not know propaganda as distinguished from legitimate news

. . . should be withdrawn from the Washington field."5
Roosevelt's aides were, however, aware of the con—

cern regarding the plethora of press releases and govern-

mental publications being sent to the news media. Noting

that Paul McGahan of the Philadelphia Inguirer seemed to

be preparing an investigative news story on the subject

of governmental publicity and was requesting mailings from

a multitude of government agencies, William D. Hassett, a

White House press aide, recommended to press secretary Early

that all agencies be instructed to'tease the distribution

of inconsequential material” and "overhaul' mailing lists."6
Other cracks of a more serious nature also began

to appear in the formerly secure foundation Of the presi-

dent's relationship with the press. Raymond "Pete" Brandt,

veteran Washington correspondent for the St. Louis Post-

 

4Arthur Krock, "Press and Government," Annals of

the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences,
uIy, 1935), 165.

5J. Fred Essary, "The Presidency and the Press,"
Journalism Quarterly, XIII (June, 1936), 178.

6Hassett to Early, 3 April 1936, or 340, FDRL.

 

25

Dispatch, Observed that once Roosevelt had slipped by a
question or had taken a side track in a dialogue in a
press conference, it became awkward for a reporter to try
to return the president to the original topic being ques-
tioned.7 Brandt, recalling the early presidential confer-
ences, said that Roosevelt's avoidance Of the "follow-up"
or cross-examination question had started when a young
reporter had attempted to have an initial question clari-
fied. Roosevelt, according to Brandt, quickly dismissed
the questioner with an abrupt statement, saying that no
cross-examination would be permitted.8

The quip was another device of evasion sometimes
employed by Roosevelt. One reporter indicated that he
thought that Roosevelt used the humorous quip and thus
avoided using the more visible, Open evasion.9 Brandt,
aware of Roosevelt's skill in the use of the "presiden-
tial wisecrack," expressed concern about reporters who
asked questions that were easily evadable.10 Other re-
porters sometimes expressed negative thoughts regarding
essential matters Of New Deal policy. Heywood Broun, an

__a_1

7Robert S. Mann, "Capital Corps NO PrOpaganda

Victim, Writers Tell Journalism Teachers," Editor & Pub-
lisher, Jan. 4, 1936, p. 3.

8Raymond P. Brandt, "The President's Press Con-
ference," SurveyrGraphic, July, 1939, p. 446.

9"They Don't Laugh to Be Polite: President's
Press Conferences," Literary Digest, Aug. 17, 1935,
pp. 26-27.

10Raymond P. Brandt, "The Washington Correspondent,"
Journalism Quarterly, XIII (June, 1936), 174.

26

organizer of the American Newspaper Guild, was thought by
one historian to view Roosevelt as "a politician who pa-
raded generous promises and then retreated from battle."11
Roosevelt's sense of humor seemed to have begun to
diminish in private conversations as increasing amounts of
criticism of his programs began to emerge in news and
Opinion columns and editorials of newspapers. Raymond
Moley, an adviser to the president during the first term,
observed in Roosevelt in the early part of 1935 "a grow-
ing petulance about all criticism." Moley indicated that
about that time the president began to make negative ref-.
erences to newspapers that had printed "something untrue"
and others that were "consistently unfair" in editorial
policy toward the New Deal. Nearly always empathetic to-
ward reporters, however, Roosevelt continued to express
concern about the newspaper "run by a publisher who ex-

ploits his men.”12

 

11Franklin D. Roosevelt and Felix Frankfurter,

Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence 1928-1945,
annotatedIby Max Freedman (Boston: Little, Brown and*
Company, 1967), p. 249. Harold Ickes would later deride
Broun for what Ickes viewed as a form of liberal hypocrisy.
Ickes wrote to Broun in the spring of 1938: "I have been
convinced for a long time that whenever a liberal editor
wants to reassure himself as to his own liberalism, he
searches for a fly-speck upon the record of one of the few
liberals in public office and proceeds to magnify it until
it is as big as the side of a barn." Ickes to Broun, 14
April 1938, Matthew Heywood Campbell Papers, MDLC.
12Raymond Moley, "Heaven or Bust: Five Years of
Roosevelt and After," Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 19,
1939, p. 37.

27

Roosevelt's growing irritation with particular seg-
ments of the press also emerged in his personal correspon-
dence with friends. In reply to a Boston acquaintance whose
letter enclosed two anti-New Deal editorials, Roosevelt
said: "It is a pity that some papers mislead their read-
ers because so many readers do not have the facilities for
learning the . . . facts."13 The president later Observed
to the same acquaintance that Baltimore Sun political
columnist Frank R. Kent "not only has no regard for truth
but uses the kind of poison pen and poison tongue which
has alienated practically all of his friends."14

In a letter to Eugene Meyer, publisher-editor of
the Washington Post, Roosevelt clearly indicated that he
was not intimidated by publishers and that he felt no
trepidation about expressing his viewpoint to them. The
Washipgton Post had published a map that depicted by state
the current political status extant regarding the approach-
ing mid-term congressional elections of 1934. The map
carried the caption: "Unrest Spreads in United States as
New Deal Faces Election Test." Roosevelt expressed dis-
pleasure with the caption, writing Meyer: "I feel confi-
dent you want to do nothing which will aid in restoring

the old spirit of fear which I mentioned in my Inaugural

 

13Roosevelt to Ben P. P. MOseley, 16 May 1934, PPF

1547, FDRL.

14Ibid., 25 March 1935, ibid.

28

Address. . . . I must tell you honestly that the country
must fear those who instill the spirit of fear. . . . "15
Although Roosevelt and the Washington press corps
continued to enjoy a genuine rapport, some newspaper pub-
lishers expressed concern regarding the quality of news
emanating from the nation's capital. Elzey Roberts, pub-
lisher Of the St. Louis Star and Times, writing to Karl A.
Bickel, United Press executive, asserted that "newspapers
have practically broken down as far as being a vehicle of
conveying accurate Washington news," and, as a result of
that breakdown, "tipster sheets and gossip columns are
having . . . phenomenal growth."16
Despite Roosevelt's private comments regarding
editorials and Opinion columns, he generally maintained a
cool demeanor publicly and reporters seemed to avoid be—
coming either overt or covert targets of his wrath.
Willard Edwards, a reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribune
in the thirties, observed that despite the virulently
anti-Roosevelt editorial posture of his employer, "There
was certainly never any attempt to influence my COpy, only
some light-hearted jesting."17
DevelOping beneath the "light-hearted jesting,"

however, was a growing level of vitriolic bitterness toward

15Roosevelt to Meyer, 14 August 1934, PPF 5018,

FDRL.

16Roberts to Bickel, 7 October 1933, RCP, Reference
File: Censorship, MDLC.

17Edwards to author, 24 February 1971.

29

anti-New Deal newspapers and their publishers. The presi-
dent expressed his growing disgust with certain such news-
papers in a letter to Colonel Edward M. House, a personal
aid to former President Woodrow Wilson.
The newspapers, especially those in the East, are
amazingly superficial and, as you and I know, a large
number of newsgatherers are either cynics at heart or
are following the orders and fge policies of the
owners of their papers. . . .
Two owners who had developed particular dislike for Roose-
velt, a feeling that was undoubtedly reciprocated, were
William Randolph Hearst and Colonel Robert R. MCCormick.
It had not always been so.

Hearst, by 1935, had developed enormous holdings
in newspapers, real estate, and the COpper industry. His
financial empire was estimated to be worth some $220,000,000
and his communications conglomerate had the potential of
reaching 30,000,000 newspaper and magazine readers, radio

listeners, and newsreel viewers.19

The publisher's inter-
est in politics was insatiable and had become concentrated
on aiding in the election of others rather than the per-
sonal seeking of public office. Hearst had once had per-
sonal political ambitions, however, and one Of the first
Offices that he had considered seeking was the governor-

ship Of New York. According to one account, Hearst's later-

tO-emerge hate for Roosevelt may have had its earliest

18Roosevelt to HOuse, 7 May 1934, pp? 22, FDRL.

19George Seldes, Lords Of the Press (New York:
Julian Messner, 1938), p. 2277

30

antecedents in the New York gubernatorial campaign of
1926.

Louis HOwe, political adviser and confidante to
Roosevelt, had advised the president to encourage the for-
mer governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith, long-time
political boss, to return to "public life and stOp Hearst."20
Little encouragement was needed for Smith had viewed
Hearst as a bitter enemy since his earliest contacts
with him prior to 1920. Smith and Hearst would, in the
1936 campaign, become strange allies, bonding themselves
together with DuPont and other wealthy conservative Re-
publicans in the virulently anti-Roosevelt Liberty League,
whose goal was to defeat Roosevelt.

By 1932, however, Hearst, active in the Democratic
party, had apparently put aside any previous enmity toward
Roosevelt. Hearst, like other businessmen had been af-
flicted by the economic hard times of the Great Depres-
sion. President Herbert Hoover and the Republican admin-
istration had been given a three-year opportunity to erase
the deep financial and social crisis rending the republic
and had failed. Hearst, forever the businessman, wanted
to make profits, and the profits Of 1932 were slim indeed

when compared to the profits of 1929.

 

20Lela Stiles, The Man Behind Roosevelt: The

Story Of Louis McHenry HSwe (CIeveIana: WorIa PuEIIshing
0-: 9 Po .

 

31

Thus, the Democratic convention in Chicago that
summer of 1932, found Hearst helping to engineer the com-
bined voting blocs of California and Texas, home Of Hearst's
preferred candidate, Congressman John Nance Garner of
Texas. After the convention deadlocked for three roll
calls, the Roosevelt bloc appeared to be weakening, and
Garner appeared to have little chance of capitalizing on
possible defectors in the Roosevelt bloc of delegates.
William Gibbs McAdoo, U.S. senator from California, and
head of the California delegation, on the fourth ballot
and apparently somewhat under the influence of Hearst,
Garner, and Congressman Sam Rayburn of Texas, cast Cali-
fornia's votes for Roosevelt. Hearst's ultimate support
of Roosevelt seems to have been motivated by a desire to
stop the possible nomination of former New York governor
Al Smith or former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker of
Ohio. The convention deadlock ended and Roosevelt easily
won nomination. Hearst had made a commitment whose irony
would only remain veiled for a brief period.21

After Roosevelt had defeated Hoover and the day of
his inauguration approached, Hearst became Openly magnani-
mous in his attitude toward the president-elect. In re-

sponse to an invitation to visit Roosevelt at Warm Springs,

21

 

New York Times, June 27-July 3, 1932, assim;
William Ef‘Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ehe New

 

Deal (New York: Harper & Row Torcfi Books, 1963), pp. 7-8;
Mara Oulahan, The Man Who . . . : The Stor of the
1932 Democratic National COnvention (New Tori: DIaI,

9 PP- ‘ -

 

32

Georgia, later to become the winter White House, Hearst
declined but took the opportunity to commit to writing his
views of the future, his esteem for Roosevelt, and the sup-
port Of his communications empire. Asserting that he had
a ”good general idea" of Roosevelt's plans, Hearst said
that he was in "hearty accord” with the proposed policies
as he understood them. HUmbly, Hearst insisted that if he
had been able to come to Warm Springs, he could have done
”little more than express . . . great gratification at the
result of the election and express [hisJ earnest desire to
be of service in support of [Roosevelt's] soundly Democratic
ideas." The publisher then explained that he had instructed
Edward Coblentz, editor of the New York American and a
chief Hearst lieutenant, to meet with Roosevelt and "dis-
cuss . . . the effective course for the papers to pursue."22
As Roosevelt and prOponents of the reform legisla—
tion of the New Deal began to chart a course designed to
bring financial and emotional recovery to the nation,
Hearst's support for Roosevelt and the New Deal began to
wane rapidly. In 1933, nearly thirteen million Americans
representing nearly 25 per cent of the national labor
force were without employment. By 1936, this percentage
had dropped by more than one-third. With 1929 as a base,
the nation's gross national product after peaking at 104.4
billion in 1929 had fallen to a low of 74.2 billion in

 

22Hearst to Roosevelt, 7 February 1933, PPF 62,
FDRL.

33

1933 and had climbed back to 100.9 by 1936. Total news—
paper advertising volume jumped eighty million dollars be—
tween 1935 and 1936, climbing from 762.1 million to 843.5
million. As Roosevelt's first term ended, the nation and
the newspapers seemed to be recovering.23

The recovery, while not complete, seemed to have
been partially a result of the legislative programs of the
New Deal. Massive public works projects, welfare systems,
and banking reforms had been instituted. Deficit spending,
originally Opposed by President Roosevelt, became govern-
ment financial policy during the first term. So also had
tax reform and such phrases as excess profits taxation.
Hearst and many of his colleagues began to balk.

August 7, 1935, Hearst initiated one of his famous
memoranda from the "Chief." The directive itself, from
the Office of Edward D. Coblentz, and addressed to Univer-
sal Service bureaus and to all Hearst editors, stated:

The Chief instructs that the phrase "Soak the Success-
ful” be used in all references to the administration's
tax program instead of the phrase ”Soak the Thrifty"
hitherto used also he wants the words "Raw Deal" used
instead Of "New Deal.”24

Roosevelt responded brusquely on Thursday morning,

August 15, saying that ”a minority of editors or owners . .

engage in what is known as the deliberate coloring of so-

‘1

23U. S.,Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Cen-

sus, The Statistical Histo of the United States from
(ColonIaI TIfies EB Efie Present (Stamfora, Conn.: PaIrfield
FEFIfsfiers, Inc., 1960), pp. 73, 139, 526.

24Coblentz to Universal Service Bureaus and Hearst
seditors, 7 August 1935, PPF 62, FDRL.

34

called news stories, in accordance with orders issued to
those responsible for the writing of news." The statement
continued: ”No one seeks to blame those salaried em-
ployees who are compelled to follow orders of the owner

or lose their jobs. The fault lies wholly with the owner."
The news release emphasized that the Hearst directive re-
ferred not to editorial expression but to news columns.25

Hearst's attacks became regular and continuous,
centering on consistent themes--that Roosevelt and the New
Deal were communistic and that Roosevelt was a leftist
dupe.

Roosevelt's press aides were cautious, however, and
dealt deftly with the Hearst barrage. Secretary of the
Interior Harold Ickes reported a case of apparent skillful
handling of a delicate situation in the first volume of
his secret diary. Ickes recounts that late in August, 1935,

James W. Fawcett, editorial writer for the Washington

 

'Evening Star, called him and reported that two stenographic
accounts of the proceedings of the Communist International

Convention had come into the country. Fawcett explained

 

25Unsigned press release, 15 August 1935, PPF 62,

FDRL. Mrs. Stephen Early later made reference to what may
have been this incident. She recounted that Roosevelt had
been under attack by a newspaper publisher and had wanted
to issue a reply. Her husband, the presidential press
secretary, had advised the president that such action
would give the "attack . . . country-wide publicity." Ac-
cording tO Mrs. Early, "Roosevelt seethed in silence . . .
and finally issued his reply anyway." Early's prediction
was accurate. Mrs. Stephen T. Early, "FDR-~As My Husband
Knew Him," American Weekly, April 24, 1955, p. 26.

35

that the State Department had obtained one and the Hearst
organization a second, but incomplete, copy. Fawcett said
he believed the Hearst news organizations might try to
develop a story line since the document contained the rec-
ommendation that the Communist party should support Roose-
velt's 1936 presidential campaign if a more radical candi—
date should not emerge. Hearst's potential for developing
an unfavorable story was obvious.

Ickes telephoned Early with the story and reminded
the press secretary that the administration's break with
the Hearst organization was a complete one and that there
was consequently little hope of bringing pressure on the
Hearst organization to withhold the story. Six days later,
Ickes noted there was in the news a breaking story specu-
lating on possible severing of U.S. ties with the Soviet
Union. The possibility had come about, the story continued,
because of U.S.S.R. encouragement Of Communist activities
in the United States. Ickes notes that his "suspicion [was]
that this [was] a shrewd counterattack to destroy the effect
of the anticipated Hearst blast against the President."26

As the 1936 election approached, however, the Ameri-
can readers of the Hearst newspapers seemed to be pressing
toward a rejection of the Hearst philosophy. A Fortune
magazine quarterly survey taken in the late summer of 1936,

for example, noted that nationally 27.6 per cent of the

 

26Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L.

Ickes, vol. I: The First ThOUsand'Days—TNew York: ASImon
and Schuster, 19547, pp. 428e429.

36

population responding thought that the Hearst papers had
a bad influence on national politics. In the areas where
a Hearst paper was available, the percentage Of those
thinking the Hearst papers had a negative influence jumped
to 43.3.27
Roosevelt's response to Hearst in the late summer
of 1935 was one of the few times that the president ever
Openly rebuked a publisher, except in jest. Roosevelt felt
little more than severe irritation with the Hearst attacks
prior to 1936. Officials in the Roosevelt administration
were concerned about Hearst's influence, nonetheless.
Ambassador William E. Dodd, for example, explained to
Assistant Secretary of State R. Walton Moore that Hearst
had allied himself with publisher and financier Lord
Beaverbrook Of England in "fighting the Administration."
Dodd also reminded Moore that Hearst and Senator McAdoo
had been instrumental in securing "great loans" for
Mussolini, the Italian dictator, a "few years" previous
to his writing of the letter. Dodd thought that all such
phenomena emphasized "the possibility of Fascism” develOp-
ing in the United States. 28
Like Hearst, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the pub-

lisher-editor of the powerful and conservative Chicago

 

27”Fortune Survey: Hearst Papers," Fortune,

Ju1y, 1936, p. 148.

28Dodd to Moore, 31 August 1936, Personal Secre-

tary's File (hereinafter cited as PSF), Diplomatic Cor-
respondence: Germany, FDRL.

37

‘ggélnyribune,tad been born to wealth. And McCormick es-
poused political, social, and economic values similar to
Hearst's. After a brief period in office, Roosevelt became
the regular target for McCormick's verbal barrage, an as-
sault that grew in intensity with the passage of each piece
of reform legislation. But as with Hearst, McCormick's
enmity toward Roosevelt had not always been present.

As a teen-aged youth, McCormick had been one form
behind Roosevelt at Groton, and as Willard Edwards para-
phrased President Roosevelt: "Bertie McCormick was behind
[me] in school and . . . could do nothing about it."29 The
relationship between the president and the publisher did
not seem to take form until Roosevelt's tenure as Secretary
Of the Navy in the early twenties. Alfred B. Rollins,
author of Roosevelt and Howe, writes that through the 1932
presidential campaign, Roosevelt "carefully cultivated the
widely divergent press barons Robert R. McCormick and
William Randolph Hearst."3o

Indeed, five months after Roosevelt's inauguration,
McCormick invited the president and Mrs. Roosevelt to be
his guests while Roosevelt visited the World's Fair in
Chicago. Couching his language in the period of Victorian

prose and addressing the president as "Dear Frank,"

MtCormick explained that his ”house was a present from

 

29Edwards to author, 24 February 1971.

30Alfred B. Rollins, Jr., Roosgvelt and Howe (New
YOrk: Knopf, 1962), pp. 119, 357.

38

[his] mother" and, being large in the tradition of the
"mansion ideas“ of people of her generation, would easily
have "room for you and at least a considerable part of
your staff." MCCormick concluded that it seemed to him
that Roosevelt was "making very good weather Of it in the

storm."31

Such was the language of the apparently last.
amicable correspondence from the publisher to the president.
As relative prosperity returned, so also did McCor-
mick's penchant for assailing legislation regulating busi—
ness and tending toward redistribution of national wealth.
Consequently, the publisher's ideas of reform and those
of the president began to diverge, never again to reunite.
As the decade progressed, the Tribune became vehemently
anti-Roosevelt, both in editorials and in balance and ac-
curacy in news about the government in Washington. Roose-
velt was moved to write Louis Ruppel, managing editor of
the Chicago Daily Times, in January, 1935, that "the only
Chicago newspaper I see is a so-called newspaper--the
Tribune--and I only look at that for the purpose of getting
myself sufficiently pepped up to give occasional call-downs
to those who need it."32
The Tribune did not limit its anti-New Deal attacks

to Roosevelt and legislation. In the autumn of 1934, for

 

31McCormick to Roosevelt, 6 May 1933, 999 426, FDRL.

32Roosevelt to Ruppel, 16 January 1935, PPF 2133,
FDRL. Ruppel responded warmly to complimentary remarks di-
rected to him from FDR in the letter cited and placed the
president on the subscription list Of the Times. Ruppel
to Roosevelt, 22 January 1935, PPF 2133, FDRL.

39

example, Secretary of the Interior Ickes was approached by
John Boettiger, a Tribune reporter who was later to become
Roosevelt's sonéin-law. Boettiger apologized to Ickes for
a story broken by the Tribune that made aspersions regard—
ing a stock brokerage account held by Ickes. Ickes, de-
nouncing the account as ”ninety-nine per cent lie," dis-
cussed the matter with Roosevelt the next day. According
to Ickes, Roosevelt agreed that the Tribune "was the rot-
tenest paper in the whole United States.”33
McCormick's attacks followed a consistent pattern.
Roosevelt wanted to be a dictator. Roosevelt was leading
the country toward communism through the guise of the hand-
out programs Of the New Deal. Roosevelt was surrounded by
leftist philosophers such as Judge Felix Frankfurter and
Professor Rexford Tugwell. McCormick perhaps best summa-
rized not only the content but also the style of his at-
tacks on the New Deal in a speech to the National Republi-
can Builders at New York's Town Hall Club on Wednesday,
January 8, 1936. The Tribune publisher compared Roosevelt

to Louis of Bourbon and George of Hanover, noting that all

three subscribed to the monarchial theory of government

 

33Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L.

Ickes, Vol. I: The First Thousandfiays (New York: SImon
ana Schuster, 1951), pp._203-204. Roosevelt would later
describe those on McCormick's "black list" as the "Society
Of Immortals." Archibald MacLeish, librarian of congress,
wrote Roosevelt a note to let the president know that he
had finally achieved the "ultimate in sanctity," denuncia-
tion by the Tribune. Roosevelt responded, welcOming
MacLeish to the "Society of Immortals." MacLeish to
Roosevelt, n.d. 1942, PPF 6295, FDRL; Roosevelt to MacLeish,
13 July 1942, PPF 6295, FDRL.

40

which says, "Governments should rule and support the
peOple.”34
As the election year speculations began, McCormick,
according to Turner Catledge, a Washington correspondent
for the New York Times, was considered to be a possible
candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
Catledge nonetheless considered McCormick as "too 'dark'"
a dark horse ”to attract much attention."35
Much of the animosity generated by Hearst, McCor-
mick, and their fellow publishers toward the New Deal ap-
peared to have its beginnings in the efforts of National
Recovery Administrator General Hugh Johnson to apply a code
of business conduct to the newspaper industry. The National
Industrial Recovery Act set procedures through which indus-
try leaders were to meet and voluntarily set up codes of
fair industry practices for prices, wages, and labor stan-
dards. Once the code endorsed by the industry was approved
by the president, a $500 fine could be imposed against
those violating the code. If evidence of wage and price
cutting practices was brought forth, the president could,
hypothetically, under the "teeth" provisions of the act,
apply licensing to the newspaper in question. The adminis-
tration contended that wage and hour laws as well as rights
of collective bargaining should apply to newspapers as they
did to other industries.

 

34New York Times, Jan. 9, 1936, p. 15.

35New_York Times, Feb.16, 1936, sec. IV, p. 3.

41

The newspaper publishers, invoking the First and
Fourteenth Amendments, balked, and in August, 1933, sub-
mitted a code that exempted editorial workers from maxi-
mum hour stipulations defining their work as professional.
The proposed code exempted newsboys from child labor laws
and included an Open-shop clause giving the employer or
employee the right to bargain individually. Further, the
publishers requested that the final code should include a
clause restating the rights of a free press.

In February, 1934, the final code was approved.
Provisions regarding regulation of child labor were in-
cluded as was the affirmation of the right of collective
bargaining. Reporters earning over thirty-five dollars a
week were to be considered professional and thus not in-
cluded under section 7(a), the article dealing with rights
Of organized labor. Minimum wage and specific hours regu-
lation were included for all non-professional workers in
the newspaper industry.36

In signing the code, President Roosevelt indicated
that the section reaffirming freedom Of the press was un-
necessary since the Constitution did not guarantee the
"freedom to work children, or do business in a firetrap or

violate the laws against obscenity, libel and lewdness."37

 

36James F. Ragland, "Merchandisers of the First

Amendment: Freedom and Responsibility of the Press in the
Age of Roosevelt, 1933-1940," Geo ia_Review, XVI (Winter,
1962), 367-371; Edwin Emery, Tfie Press and America: An

Interpretative History of Journalism, 2nd ed. (Englewood
s, . .: ren ce— a , , pp. 689-692.
37"President's 'Rebuke' Stirs Publishers' Ire,"

Literary Digest, March 3, 1934, p. 7.

42

J. David Stern, publisher of the New York Post, appearing
before a U.S. Senate hearing on the subject of the news-
paper code, said in reference to the defensiveness of the
publishers:
If the board Of health ordered me to clean up my
toilets and I claimed that it was interfering with
freedom of the press, I would be as great a hypocrite
and villain as the man who falsely cries "fire" in
a crowded theater.3

An editorial in Christian Century a month following

 

the signing of the code expressed alarm regarding the fu-
ture of newspaper credibility:
A condition is arising that cannot be modified or con-
trolled by the relations which the administration may
maintain with journalists at Washington, since it re-
sults from a growing Oppgsition to the President on
the part Of publishers.
The Christian Century editors noted that some newspapers
were beginning to "manipulate news stories and headlines"
in order to "undermine the presidential prestige." The
editorial decried the role of the publishers in the news-
paper code battle, observing "that no industry fought
harder against the imposition of a code, and no industry
succeeded in inserting more lOOpholes in the code finally
adopted" than the newspapers. The editorial concluded

that as "suspicion and resentment spreads among publishers,

the thoughtful citizen will take with increasing reserve

 

the newspaper treatmgnt of the President."40

38J. David Stern, Memoirs of a Maverick Publisher
(New York: Simon and Schus er, , pp. - .

39

"President and the Press," Christian Century,
March 21, 1934, p. 382. ““

43

Newsmen seemed amazed at the consternation of the
publishers regarding the diluted code. Veteran Washington

correspondent Raymond Clapper noted, writing in Review of

 

Reviews, ”Scarcely any working newspaperman thought that
the administration was bent on limiting the freedom of the

press."41

The editors of Nation thought the code a vic-
tory for the publishers except for the licensing clause
and the presidential rebuke on the freedom Of the press

clause.42

Erwin Canham, then Washington bureau chief for
the Christian Science Monitor, says simply that he thought
"publisher's concern about the N.R.A. code was greatly
overstated."43 The code battle would appear to have been
somewhat of a shadow issue, perhaps disguising or cloaking
the publishers' distaste for Roosevelt with an issue
closely associated with personal freedoms.

But while the reporters seemed to support Roosevelt
in regard to the code battle, there appears to have been
some consternation with the president's handling of the
National Labor Relations Board's assertion of jurisdiction
over newspapers. In the autumn of 1935, Roosevelt re-
strained the board in its action based on a faulty premise.

The president instructed press secretary Early to check

with Frances Perkins, the labor secretary, to find out if

 

41Raymond Clapper, "Why Reporters Like Roosevelt,"

Review of Reviews, June, 1934, p. 17.
42

p. 2663.
43

"President and the Press," Nation, March 7, 1934,

Canham to author, 19 February 1971.

44

any members of the American Newspaper Guild were also mem-
bers Of the White House press corps. He made the decision
to restrain the board based on the information that none
Of the White House newsmen were in the Guild. Paul Ward,
writing in Nation, asserted that such action was "a major
error in press strategy" and caused ”universal doubt of
the President's courage and sincerity."44

Despite occasional variances to the contrary, then.
the position between Roosevelt and the press remained
basically constant. The reporters respected him; the pub-
lishers reviled him; and the columnists occasionally
sniped at him. Roosevelt's attitude was also constant:
he was aware of the abusive content of the editorial pages;
he noted the nature of the play given New Deal programs in
the news columns; he avoided public comment on the subject,
reserving his complaints for his staff and intimate as-
sociates.

As is customarily the pattern in the selection of
a president Of the United States, speculation regarding
plans for a second term begins on the day following an ini-
tial inauguration. Speculation regarding the Opposition
candidate of the party out of power also begins early and
the presidential campaign of 1936 provided no exception
to either rule.

In mid-December, 1935, Hearst, the king-maker, mov-
ing quickly but following a year long build-up in the

44Paul Ward, "Roosevelt Keeps His Vow,” Nation,
Sept. 25, 1935, p. 349.

 

45

Hearst press, picked Alfred Landon, the progressive Repub-
lican governor of Kansas, as the man to whom he would

throw his not inconsiderable editorial and financial sup-
port. Traveling in private railroad cars, Hearst, his
close friend and editor Arthur Brisbane, Eleanor "Cissy"
Patterson, and publisher Paul Block, made the trek to the
prairie state to visit and talk with the governor of Kansas.

After discussions, the trio of publishers were in-
terviewed and their comments heralded the beginning Of the
campaign of the first of the four Republicans who would
face Roosevelt on the presidential battleground. Hearst
said of Landon: "I think he's marvelous. . . . Landon
can be nominated by the Republicans and elected. . . .

Mrs. Landon? I could write columns about her." Paul Block
noted that Landon was "an even bigger man" than he had
"previously thought." And Cissy Patterson, cousin to

Colonel McCormick, remarked that Landon was "simply grand."45
Landon would learn that the Hearst endorsement carried
liability as well as asset.

Governor Landon, close friend of progressive pub-
lisher William Allen White, would find that one of his
more serious campaign problems was an inability to shake
the sometimes stifling influence Of the conservative wing

of his party. The year 1936, while not to bring any

 

45"With Hearst's Help, Alf Landon Takes Third Step
Toward White House: Ready to Take Fourth," News-week,
Dec. 1, 1935, p. 8.

 

46

election surprises, was to be a year of bitter politics,
and Landon was not by nature a bitter campaigner. Perhaps
publisher Roy Howard's description of Landon, based on a
personal interview early in the campaign, best describes
Landon's credits and liabilities, and also depicts the
reason that the Kansas governor's alliance with Hearst
appeared inconsistent with his personality.

Howard conceded that while he had "not in ten
years” met "anyone with so pleasing a personality . . .
any profound ideas of government" held by the Kansas gov-
ernor "were not revealed" in the discussion. Howard in-
dicated that Landon had no program ”differing fundamentally"
from Roosevelt's. Howard concluded that Landon "couldn't
give any better administration, probably not as good a one"
as could be expected by President Roosevelt in a second
term.46

The connection between Landon and Hearst over-
shadowed the Kansas governor's progressivism and made his
campaigning somewhat more difficult. Heywood Broun, writ-
ing in Nation, noted that Hearst was Landon's "chief ad-
viser,” his ”discoverer,” and his "leading propagandist."
When the Republican convention met in Cleveland, Ohio, in
the middle Of June, 1936, and chose Landon as the party
presidential nominee, Broun concluded that the Republicans

had "practically announced that the newspapers of America

46

Diary of Raymond Clapper, 27 August 1936, RCP,
MDLC.

47

not only represent big business but are actually big busi—
ness themselves. They have been the shock troops for the
financial interests for many years."47

Roosevelt, as is the privilege of the president,
avoided Obviously partisan campaigning and eschewed public
reaction to issues raised by the Republicans well into the
spring. He was aware of the magnitude and the quality of
the negative comment being hurled at him daily in the press
and realized that the central theme of his campaign, con-
tinuing the return to prosperity and reform of institu—
tions Of power, must somehow eventually get through to the
electorate. In a letter to the American ambassador to
Italy, Breckinridge Long, Roosevelt asserted: ”Ours must
be a truth-telling campaign that will get into every home."48
Implicit in this statement may have been Roosevelt's rea-
lization that getting his version of the truth into every
home might require bypassing the press through an increased
use Of radio.

Reporters foresaw a wide variety of problems aris-
ing between the candidates and the newspapers in the 1936
campaign. As a group, they seemed to sense a great number
of problems arising from the bulk of political propaganda,
and increased numbers of conflicting interest groups such

ps the Liberty Leagge.

47Heywood Broun, ”Mr. Hearst's Convention,” Nation,
June 24, 1936, p. 800.

48Franklin Delano Roosevelt, F.D.R.: His Personal
Letters 1928-1945, Vol. III, ed. by EIIIOE RooseveIt (New
YorE: fiaeII, SIoan and Pearce, 1950), p. 566.

48

Leading Washington reporters spoke of their con-
cerns in interviews with Editor & Publisher, a newspaper
trade magazine. Raymond Clapper expressed the Opinion
that if ”readers lose confidence in the ability of a news-
paper to present a reasonably accurate account of . . .
political events, they will turn to the radio for their
political news and thus gain first-hand impression.”
Erwin Canham, in a scantily cloaked reference to the pres-
ident, predicted that there would be some difficulty
"seeing through the word pictures of the skillful micro-
phone masters." William K. Hutchinson, chief of the In-
ternational News Service senate staff, disclosed his pO-
litical leanings when he noted: ”The voters have to de-
cide whether the government shall be centralized or not."
Richard Wilson of the Des Moines Rpgister and Tribune,
said: "There will be a tendency toward class distinction
which will accentuate . . . bitterness.” Ralph Collins,
of the New York Sun, predicted somewhat perceptively that
the Republican campaign would be a negative one. Collins
also predicted that "some violently partisan 'sheets' will
order material written that might be termed Of a dirty
nature." Raymond Brandt of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
made a shadowed reference to the responsibility Of the
press in the campaign, observing that "those papers which
tend to color or report the news in line with their edi—
torial attitude will have an easy time, but those who hOpe

to give a fair, accurate picture will be put to a great

49

deal more work." Arthur Hachten of Hearst's Universal
Service sounded a defensive note: "An element in the
country is attempting to discredit veracity of the press,
but newspaper owners have exercised 'eternal vigilance'
and their detractors might as well try to brush back the
oceans as attempt to challenge the fairness of the press.
. . . Other issues are eclipsed by large . . . prOposals
to change our form of government."49
As evidence would later indicate, it would be dif-
ficult to imagine a reader not questioning the "veracity"

of some elements of the press as the 1936 presidential

campaign began.

 

49”Strenuous, Bitter Presidential Campaign Forseen
by Press Leaders," Editor & Publisher, Feb. 8, 1936, pp.
5-6 a

CHAPTER III

The newspaper reader in the thirties found himself
in a quandary. Edward Filene, Boston department store owner,
addressed himself to this dilemma when he asked a national
radio network audience:

If you read in the news columns that business is reviv-
ing, and you read in the editorial columns that it is
being strangled by the Roosevelt administration, which
statement will you be likely to believe?1

The answer to Filene's rhetorical question was not
readily clear but the potential confusion that he cited
apparently was not a factor in the enormous electoral land-
slide that Roosevelt achieved in the 1936 presidential elec-
tion. Filene noted later in the radio address that while
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were both viciously
attacked by the nation's press, that the "nation . . .
remembers Washington and Lincoln and has utterly forgotten
who their critics were."2 The critics of the New Deal, how-
ever, did achieve new heights in the quantity and quality
of their mendacity, and it is unlikely that the editorial

venom of Colonel Robert R. McCormick and William Randolph

 

1Edward Filene, "Our President and Our Newspapers,"
a CBS Yankee Network radio address, Dec. 21, 1935, MS COpy,
PPF 2116, FDRL.

2Ibid.

50

51

Hearst will be forgotten easily. For newspaper readers,
the effects of their attacks on the president seeking re-
election to his second term had an impact on the future
credibility of not only the editorial pages of the daily
newspapers they read but also of the integrity of news
columns.

The editors of New Republic noted in the conclu-
sion to a study of the American press in the 1936 election
that "the preponderance of newspaper circulation on the
side of Mr. Landon did little or nothing to turn the tide
of public favor from the leftward direction represented
by Mr. Roosevelt."3

Although McCormick, Hearst, and other publishers
were vehemently opposed to President Roosevelt's re-elec-
tion, reporters in 1936 continued to be generally pleased
with the president's candor and informality in press rela-
tionships and in private either supported him or maintained
neutrality. They were also skeptical of the predictions of
a Landon victory which appeared in many of the newspapers
for which they wrote. Raymond Clapper observed in his
diary while traveling with the campaign: "All newspaper-
men On train except Bill Hutchinson of [International News

Service] think Roosevelt will be elected."4 Frederick

 

3"The Press and the Public," New Republic,
March 17, 1937, p. 187.

 

4Diary Of Raymond Clapper, 27 October 1936, RCP,
MDLC. International News Service was the Hearst-owned
daily wire service for afternoon newspapers.

52

Lewis Allen, editor of Harper's and a social historian,
wrote: "Most of the press was for Landon because its
owners so decreed."5 The vitriolic anti-New Deal attacks
of the Hearst press so alienated some reporters that a
loss of loyalty within the publisher's ranks resulted.
Some Hearst reporters even surreptitiously aided the
Roosevelt campaign workers.6

Personal feelings of reporters notwithstanding, the
bitter and plentiful assaults of the McCormick and Hearst
papers on Roosevelt and the New Deal were not confined to
the editorials found throughout the two papers examined,
but also crept into the form and content of supposedly
straight news coverage. The nature and content of campaign

news coverage and editorial comment of the Chicago Daily

 

Tribune, published by McCormick, and the San Francisco

 

Examiner, anchor newspaper of the Hearst chain, here will
be examined critically for October and early November, 1936.
Both the Tribune and the Examiner were newspapers of general

circulation published weekday and Sunday mornings. The New

 

sFrederick Lewis Allen Papers, Literary File, un-

dated, handwritten draft of Since Yesterday, MDLC.

6Ernest Sutherland Bates and Alan Williams, American
Hurl -Burl (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1936), p. 233.

e comp e e passage contains this amplification: "The
Hearst attacks were weakened by treachery in his own ranks,
every move of the Hearst Press being known at Democratic
headquarters days or hours in advance. In fact, wherever
a straw vote was taken on the Republican papers, an enor-

mous majority of the reporters and editorial workers favored
Roosevelt."

53

York Times, a morning newspaper of general circulation and
generally regarded by historians and social scientists as
a newspaper of record, is examined as an instrument of
control.

The conservative newspaper owners of many daily
newspapers had begun to desert the Roosevelt political camp
early in 1933-1934, and, by 1936, their newspapers had
built a head Of editorial steam. Led by Hearst and McCormick,
they prepared an Offensive assault to unseat Roosevelt. The
newspapers examined for this study appear to have been more
against Roosevelt than for Landon. The president's talk of
"economic royalists“ had cemented the fears that the con-
servative publishers had developed and represented the
philosophy that was to become a target for their editorial
barrage.

In the autumn of 1936, the Americans were reading
in their newspapers about a divorcee, Mrs. Wallace Warfield
Simpson, and her friendship with Edward VIII, king Of Great
Britain; Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, papal secretary of state
and the future Pope Pius XII, who was then visiting the
United States; the progress of the Spanish Civil War; and
a strike of 37,000 dock workers that threatened to cripple
the shipping industry on the West Coast. News coverage and
editorial comment in the newspapers examined, however,
centered on the presidential campaigns of the incumbent
Roosevelt, who was seeking an affirmative mandate to con-

tinue the New Deal, and Alf Landon, the Republican governor

54

of Kansas, who by Hearst's standards Often sounded too much
like his Opponent.
Harold Ickes, appraising the Chicago Daily Tribune

several years after the 1936 campaign, would note:

Probably few who read it regardfully will deny that the

Tribune is an extension of the personality of its pub-

TIFF??? Colonel McCormick's personal hates are the

Tribune's hates. The Tribune is the Colonel's voice,

'EHE-EEBOsitory of his EIfiafiIgr individual convictions.7
If Ickes' contention is accepted, Colonel McCormick's
singular conviction during the month of October, 1936, was
that President Roosevelt's re-election constituted the most
serious threat that the American republic had yet faced.
Nonetheless, as the campaign began to take form following
the national party conventions of the summer, McCormick
communicated to his editorial staff through a letter his
desire to afford fair and accurate news coverage to the
candidates. The language of the communication might have
elicited some suspicion in the skeptical reporter. McCormick's
letter, posted conspicuously in the city room, stated:
"There will be so much Roosevelt news created by his com-
misars that it will be necessary to see that Landon gets a
fair share of that total." The letter made clear, however,
that "Roosevelt stories must be adequate and must be written

without any animus against him."8

 

7Harold L. Ickes, America's House of Lords: An

Inggiry into Freedom of the‘Press (New York: Harcourt Brace,
7 Po .

8George Seldes, Lords of the Press (New York:
Julian Messner, 1938), p. 59.

55

The Tribune telephone operators quickly provided an
early clue to the nature of the editorial policy that
Colonel McCormick would actually follow. A caller tele-
phoning the Tribune was greeted: "Good morning. Chicago
Tribune. There're only forty-three [or less] days left in
which to save the American way of life."9 The language
used in answering the telephone was also used on the front
page of the Tribune throughout the campaign. A box set two-
column measure on the front page carried the telephone
greeting paraphrased, and with a call to action: "Only 34
days remain to save your country. What are you doing to
save it?"

The front pages of the Tribune seemed to be the
favored location of anti-Roosevelt cartoons, unlabeled edi-
torials attacking the president, and regular features such
as boxes containing "The Objectives of the New Deal." One
Objective, for example, was stated: "The third objective
of the New Deal is the enslavement of the peOple under a
brutal dictatorship."10

The news summary, a regular feature of the front
page, as a matter of practice, would list campaign news in
the order of Landon, Earl Browder (the Communist party

presidential candidate), Landon again, and, finally, on

occasion, Roosevelt. This seemed to be the pattern for

 

9Ibid. As the election neared, the number of days
remaining aIminished.

10Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 1, 1936, pp. 1-2.

56

news about the president, which, if used at all, appeared
under a negatively worded headline, and either buried ini-
tially on inside pages or continued deep in the newspaper.11
An example Of news imbalance and bias in the Tribune
occurred on October 1. A story about Governor Landon's
campaign was headlined: "See Kansas for Landon Despite New
Deal Cash." The story carried a sub-head that read: "Farley
Orders Lid Off Pork Barrel." News of President Roosevelt's
most recent campaign speech appeared below the fold on page
two, conspicuously subordinate to a story about a speech
given by former New York Governor Alfred Smith, who had come
out against his former ally, President Roosevelt, after af-
filiating with the rabidly conservative Liberty League.12
Campaign stories in the Tribune that concerned both
candidates consistently played the name of Governor Landon
before that of President Roosevelt. Roosevelt's speeches
were printed in part, buried, or presented next to a bla-
tantly negative news story about the New Deal or a New
Dealer. When Al Smith endorsed Landon, the story commanded
an eight-column headline. That same day Roosevelt campaign
news was allocated one column atypically placed on page one
with the perhaps contemptuous headline: "Roosevelt Says

We'll Balance Budget Later."13

11See Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 1-31, 1936, p. 1,
and passim.
12Ihid.

13Ibid., Oct. 2, 1936, p. 1.

57

News imbalance in the campaign coverage of the
Tribune became even more apparent in an examination Of news
pictorial presentation. On the last page of the daily
Tribune, the editors customarily carried a full page of
news photographs with outlines beneath each picture leading
the reader inside to corresponding stories. On October 5,
ten Of the seventeen pictures carried on the last page de-
picted the Landon campaign; none of the remaining seven per-
tained to Roosevelt or to his campaign efforts.14

One of the most striking examples of news bias in
the Tribune occurred on the morning of October 14, the day
that President Roosevelt was to visit Chicago to make a
major campaign address to be broadcast via radio to the
nation. A prominently placed story on page one that day
noted that one union leader was threatening to fine members
of his union for non—attendance at the Roosevelt rally

scheduled for that night in Chicago Stadium.15

A picture
on the last page showed an apparent vagrant picking up dis-
carded FDR campaign buttons. The afternoon tabloid Chicago
Daily Times, edited by Richard J. Finnegan, published a
story in the first edition later in the day, asserting that
the buttons were deliberately scattered by a Tribune photog-
rapher who had bribed the vagrant identified as one Charles
Pelik, to pose for the picture. Although Pelik admitted

accepting a bribe to appear in the "news" picture, and the

 

141bid., Oct. 5, 1936, p. 36.

lsIbid., Oct. 15, 1936, p. 1.

58

story was corroborated by a witness, Colonel McCormick,
when questioned about the incident, said that Tribune
photographs were always genuine.16
Although the crowd greeting Roosevelt along the
parade route that day was estimated at approximately
400,000 people, the Tribune account reported the crowd
consisted primarily of "Democratic workers by wards and
Of various trade union bodies." Finally, despite Roose-
velt's presence in Chicago for a major campaign speech,
the next day the Tribune played up Governor Landon's speech,
made the same night to an audience Of between 6,000 and
10,000 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on page four and rele-
gated coverage of the president's speech before a crowd
of 26,000 in Chicago Stadium on West Madison Street to
page six.17
On October 16, the Tribune carried a story that
stated in its headline: "Roosevelt Area in Wisconsin is
Hot Bed of Vice." After roughly translating the story,
then perhaps reading it again, the reader would discover
that criminals of various kinds were being investigated

and pursued in Wisconsin. The section in which the inves-

tigation was being conducted was, coincidentally, an area

 

16"Chicago Times Claims Political Photo Posed,"
Editor & Publisher, Oct. 24, 1936, p. 16.

17Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 15, 1936, passim.
Crowd estima es are rom e ew York Times, Oct. ,

1936, p. l.

 

 

59

in which Roosevelt was alleged to have significant voter
strength.18
On Sunday, November 1, the Tribune began its final
anti-Roosevelt onslaught with a graphical presentation Of
fifteen previous elections, showing state and national vot-
ing patterns in a geographical and statistical format.
Those states that previously had voted Republican were
solidly black and those that had given their votes to the
Democratic candidate were shaded light. The results of
the 1932 election, when voters had turned to the Democratic
candidate, were omitted. Beginning the same day, nearly
every page of the newspaper featured a sample ballot list-
ing only the word "Republican" with an "X" already marked.
Reporting Roosevelt's final major campaign speech
in Madison Square Garden in New York City, the Tribune
noted in a one-column, page-one story that after New York
Governor Herbert H. Lehman introduced the president "in
almost hysterical tones," Roosevelt made his "supreme foren-
sic effort" Of the campaign, but failed to answer Governor
Landon's challenges. On page three, a photograph by an un-
identified photographer Of a building in New York City,
covered with campaign posters for Roosevelt and for Earl
Browder, carried the caption: "Communists and New Dealers
Are Neighbors."19
1

8113161., Oct. 16, 1936, p. 15.

191bid., Nov. 1, 1936, passim.

60

On November 2 in a news story, the Tribune quoted
JOhn Hamilton, Republican campaign manager, as stating:
"I unhesitatingly predict the election of the Landon
ticket." But Hamilton's statement was apparently not
strong enough for McCormick's editors who paraphrased
Hamilton in an eight-column banner: "I Am Sure Landon
Will Win."20

Campaign coverage and editorial comment in Hearst's
San Francisco Examiner strongly favored Landon and vilified
President Roosevelt. Coverage of both candidates, however,
was generally spotty and inadequate. The Examiner focused
its news coverage on the growing threat of war in Europe,
the Spanish Civil War, the local dock strike, and various
other parochial happenings of the Bay area.

The Examiner included a daily box reminding regis-
tered Democrats that they could vote for Landon. Editorials
by W. R. Hearst [sic] were carried on page one and continued
on page two. The editorials were vehemently anti—Roosevelt
and the themes ranged from a standard "red" accusation
against the president to intimations of a possible Roose-
velt dictatorship. Throughout the newspaper, emphasis to
the heaviest verbal attacks on the New Deal was provided
by the setting of entire sentences in capital letters.

When John G. Winant, chairman of the Social Security
Board, resigned in October, 1936, the resignation was prof—

fered to permit Winant to enter the political arena in

 

201bid., Nov. 2, 1936, p. 1.

61

defense Of the Social Security Act. The act, a major piece
of New Deal legislation, was under attack as being a key-
stone tO the "cradle to grave" concept of government in-
volvement in private life. President Roosevelt's letter
accepting Winant's resignation was quoted out of context
and left the impression that Winant was resigning to pro-
test the New Deal.21
The "red" issue pervaded the news coverage and edi-

torial comment of the Examiner. Following Roosevelt's dis-
avowal of having sought leftist political support, Hearst
himself rebutted the president editorially:

The four years of Roosevelt's administration have been

marked by transparent encouragement of legg-wing agita-

tors and plotters against our government.
Hearst's comments appeared above the fold on page one and
were labeled as an editorial. Another feature regularly
published in the Examiner was a display in a two-column box
that resembled a political advertisement. It was not an
editorial in the truest sense, but rather an undisguised
effort to promote a candidate. No indication was given
that the advertising space was purchased nor was it labeled
as "paid advertisement." The series of "advertisements"
was entitled "What Landon Stands For." One such item, for
example, was "Low Taxes."

Editorials about Roosevelt carried in the Examiner

eschewed the reasoned discussion of issues and dealt

2ISan Francisco Examiner, Oct, 1, 1936, p. 1.

 

22

Ibid., Oct. 3, 1936, p. l.

 

62

irrational, bludgeon-like blows aimed at the president's
integrity, national loyalty, and character. One such edi-
torial noted that it was ”not important what Mr. Roosevelt
thinks about Communism. If his acts, his policies and the
Cbmmunist supporters he sponsors on public payrolls give
force to the threat of Communism, the responsibility is
his."23

The coverage of the Roosevelt campaign in the
Examiner seldom appeared on page one, was generally carried
beneath negative headlines, and was invariably continued
deep behind Landon coverage in the newspaper. Issues in
the campaign discussed editorially provided the reader with
little information, shallow analysis, and abundant amounts
Of unreasoned Opinion.

The New York Times, a daily newspaper of general
circulation published weekday. and Sunday mornings, per-
formed an exemplary job Of balanced news coverage during
the 1936 election campaign. Having editorially endorsed
the president's re-election on October 1, the 2323p still
fulfilled its promise made at that time to provide its
readership with full coverage of the news and with critical
analysis and reasoned comment about the strengths and weak-
nesses of both candidates for the duration of the campaign.
The endorsement of Roosevelt was reasoned and restrained,

yet definitive and honest.

 

23Ibid., Oct. 13, 1936, p. 13.

63

News coverage of the two principal candidates was
balanced and complete throughout the campaign. Stories
about Landon and Roosevelt ran side by side and story con-
tinuations alternated relative to depth into the newspaper.
Pictures of the candidates were similar in size, placement,
and number. The president's name was not always placed
first in stories and headlines in which both candidates
were mentioned.

A particularly impressive feature of editorial com-
ment in the 21223 was published on Sunday, October 11. In
a two-page spread in the editorial section, letters agree-
ing or disagreeing with the editorial endorsement of
Roosevelt by the.2$22§ were presented. Leading each group
of letters was a summary Of principal arguments pro and con
of readers submitting letters.24

Reported historically by Pulitzer Prize-winning
newsman, Thomas Stokes, the booing of McCormick, Hearst,
and the Tribune by the crowds that gathered to greet
Roosevelt in Chicago was reported cautiously by the Egg
and not at all by either the Tribune or the Examiner.
Neither Hearst nor McCormick was named in the Timgg dis-

patch, which read in part:

The crowd invented a new sport, booing newspaper cor-
respondents. Epithets and sometimes Obscenities were

 

24New York Times, Oct. 11, 1936, sec. IV, pp.

10'11 o

64

flung as the correspondents' cars as they
passed. 5

Hearst's involvement in the campaign was deli-
cately covered in the Timgg. In a dispatch by Harold
Denny and datelined Moscow, it was noted that Hearst's
charges Of Russian campaign involvement brought "indig-
nant denials" from the Russians. Further, Denny explained,
"any Soviet article on the campaign is incomplete without
an excorciation of Mr. Hearst . . . as the originator of
the yellow press and the advance agent of fascism." Edi-
tors Of Izvestia,, Soviet government organ, made specific
reference to what they called Hearst's "shameless, nonsen-
sical and sensational inventions, designed always for the
dumfounding of backward people who have a weakness for any

6 Izvestia would seem to have chosen words

stupidity. "2
from a special lexicon shared with the editors of the
Tribune and Examiner.

On November 5, the New York Times broke its tradi-
tional custom of following a conservative headline schedule
and ran an eight-column banner: "Roosevelt Sweeps The
Nation."27 Thquémgg had accepted its responsibility in a
manner commensurate with its privilege and had served its

readership with dignity.

 

251bid., Oct. 15, 1936, p. 22; Thomas L. Stokes,

Chip Off M2 §§Oulder (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univer-
s y ress, , pp. 449-450.

26New York Times, Oct. 18, 1936, sec. IV, p. 5.

271bid., Nov. 5, 1936, p. 1.

65

The era of the Great Depression was, in a very

real sense, a frightening and desperate time for most
Americans. As Clinton Rossiter, Cornell University his-
torian, wrote:

Franklin D. Roosevelt's times may well be judged to

have been the most exciting and demanding in the

history of the Republic, as uncertain as the first

fluid years under Washington, as hazardous as the

first dark years under Lincoln.
While newspapers were certainly not responsible for either
the root causes of the Depression or of the fright that it
generated, Hearst and McCormick, for what would seem to
have been synthetic reasons, attempted to introduce arti-
ficial fright in the campaign of 1936. They would appear
to have been, as some historians have noted, "primarily
responsible for dragging the Red scare into the campaign."29
Nonetheless, as emphasized by the size of the Roosevelt
victory, "the newspapers were shown to be impotent to sway
public Opinion."30

While Roosevelt was keenly aware of the editorial

drubbing he was receiving daily in the press, he adroitly
avoided dragging himself or his office into the dust of
the infighting. His was to be a campaign of reasoned

restraint.

28Clinton Rossiter, The American Presidenc (2nd
ed.; New York: New American LiBrary, 1960), p. 145.

29Bates and Williams, American HurlyrBurly, pp.
233-234.

3°Ibid., p. 230.

CHAPTER IV

The presidential election in 1936 was not won or
lost in the newspapers of the nation, and Roosevelt seemed
to sense this reality before the newspaper publishers. The
re-election of the president by a landslide vote was prob-
ably based in a large measure on his record in the first
term and, perhaps to a lesser degree, on the finely tuned
Democratic party machine engineered by the aggressive James
Aloysius Farley. Erwin Canham, editor of the Christian
Science Monitor, describes Roosevelt's success this way:

F.D.R. dominated the front pages by the dynamic news
and ideas he was constantly generating. I think he
won the 1936 election on the front pages as much as
he did anywhere else.

Frederick Lewis Allen, writing to his sister Hilde-
garde a few days before the election, perhaps unconsciously
expressed the consensus perspective unexpressed by the
American voters until the final tally:

I grant that the administration has done a lot Of
foolish things and that Roosevelt is a great trimmer,
but I realize that he realizes that all of us are es-
sentially in the same boat, that our fortunes are
bound up together, that the way to prosperity is to

spread the money round and not simply protsct it in
the hands of those who now have it. . . .

 

1Canham to author, 19 February 1971.

2Allen to his sister Hildegarde, 25 October 1936,

General Correspondence, Frederick Lewis Allen Papers, MDLC.

66

67

The consensus, however, was not clear before the
vote and the press had not yet been discredited in the sum-
mer before the political conventions. Roosevelt's consid-
eration for individual members of the press corps continued,
but it became readily apparent that the press as an insti-
tution might try to undo in the weeks of the campaign that
which it had helped to accomplish in the three and a half
years that had preceded. Reasoned political reaction to a
hostile force, such as the newspaper publishers, requires
a gathering of available information about the nature of
the hostility; a polling Of trusted associates regarding
variables not directly related to the hostile force; and a
realistic assessment Of alternative courses Of action or
inaction. The immediate goal for Roosevelt, of course, was
to achieve re-election. President Roosevelt progressed
through each of these steps and followed a course of action
that to an outsider might have most easily been character-
ized by its inscrutable and inconsistent format. A sampling
of the information available to the president regarding the
nature and content of some of the voter response to the at-
tacks upon him by the press, examples of advice he received
from confidantes, and an overview of the course of action
he selected will be here examined.

One overriding factor governed the campaign situa-
tion. Roosevelt was first a wily tactician who eschewed
binding himself to long-range planning. His relationship

with the press had been flexibly and loosely maintained

68

on a day-to-day basis and so it would continue in the cam-
paign. The presidential press conference then, while con-
tinuing to be deftly executed, would bear few of the trap-
pings of an orchestrated performance. Performances, of
short and long duration, would be confined to the presi-
dent's appearance on the platform either in person or on
radio.

The primary tactic that emerged with statistical
clarity only after the campaign was Roosevelt's minimal
public recognition of the opposition of the press of the
nation. An examination of the comprehensive index of the
transcripts of the 1936 presidential press conferences re-
veals but two references to William Randolph Hearst, the
last of which was in March, and no references to Colonel
Robert McCormick nor to the abortive Literary_Digest poll
predictions of a Landon victory.

One form of information available to the president
was the public Opinion poll. Polling was in its infancy,
although a need for the solicitation of public Opinion had
been discerned by such men as Raymond Clapper, the veteran
reporter who had speculated:

It is curious . . . that in our government, which rests
upon a foundation of public Opinion, we never have de-
velOped a technique for measuring accurately what that

Opinion was except by the broad generalized verdicts
at election time and such information as senators,

representatives, and other public officials could gather
haphazardly through correspondence and personal contacts.

 

3Robert Mann, "Capital Corps No Propaganda Victim,
Writers Tell JOurnalism Teachers," Editor & Publisherr
Jan. 4, 1936, p. 12. —*

69

And yet while George Gallup, a pioneer in public
opinion research, and the Literary Digest worked with care-
fully selected pOpulations, the selections were uns0phisti-
cated and the predictions were inaccurate. The Digest, for
example, gave thirty-two states to Landon in its 1936 pre-
diction.

Roosevelt, for what came to be apparently good
reason, gave little weight to the pollsters in his cam-
paign decision-making. "There are, as you know, polls and
polls," he wrote to a friend, "and some very interesting
stories are circulating as to [their] modus operandi."4
The "modus Operandi" for the Digest poll, for example, in-
cluded using a population of those citizens who still could
afford to subscribe to telephone service. Those who could
still afford the luxury of such service, as the poll indi-
cated, did tend to vote for Republicans.

Roosevelt was receiving a large quantity of varied
and conflicting reports about the nation's press and its
cumulative effect upon his candidacy. Evaluations of per—
sonal view, statistical analysis, and content description
poured into the executive offices. Betty Millard, analyz-
ing the "admitted or effective editorial attitude" of 150
of the nation's daily newspapers with a circulation of more
than 50,000 in a compilation for New Masses, found that 67
per cent of the total circulation reached by the 150 news-
papers analyzed was receivipg a paper whose editorial

4Roosevelt to Edward A. Counihan, Jr., 31 January
1936, PPF 2434, FDRL.

7O

endorsement was for Landon. Although the figure Of 85
per cent of the nation's press being anti-New Deal that
appeared several times in Roosevelt's correspondence may
have been inflated, the inflation was insignificant.
Further, it was never entirely clear whether Roosevelt was
speaking of circulation or a total number of newspapers.
Of particular significance in the Millard findings is the
evidence that in cities with major metrOpolitan dailies
(over 135,000 circulation), Roosevelt received the editorial
backing of but 25 per cent of the total daily circulation
of the city in consideration. In Chicago, for example, the
combination Of the Baily News of Colonel Frank Knox, the
two Hearst papers, and the Chicpgo Daily Tribune gave
Landon a combined circulation of more than two million to
the pro-Roosevelt circulation of the Chicago Daily Times
that numbered 200,000.5
Another Roosevelt information source was the public
relations pioneer Carl Byoir, who, during October, 1936,
performed an independent audit of editorial positions of
newspapers in cities of 50,000 population and over, sending
the completed narratives to Marvin McIntyre for use in
campaign planning. Byoir found, for example, that in cities
of 50,000 to 100,000 of 91 newspapers examined, 46 were
anti-Roosevelt, 25 were pro—Roosevelt, and 20 were indepen-
dent.6

SBetty Millard, "The Press Places Its Bets," New
MassesI Oct. 27, 1936, p. 14.

6Byoir to McIntyre, 17 October 1936, OF 144, FDRL.

71

Roosevelt did gain the endorsement of a few major
dailies, including the prestigious New York Times, and those
owned by Democratic party loyalist, J. David Stern, pub-
lisher of the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post.

The endorsement of the ZEESE did not come as a complete sur-
prise to Roosevelt. Lawrence Steinhardt, a New York ac-
quaintance of'ggmgé publisher Arthur Sulzberger, had writ-
ten Marvin McIntyre in June and July of 1936 relating to

him the substance of conversations he was having with the
publisher. In a letter written in June, Steinhardt re-
quested that McIntyre "tell the President that I have had
another talk with Arthur Sulzberger which was even more
satisfactory than the one last week and that I believe the
'Times' will treat us fairly from now on--unless he changes
his state of mind. I expect, however to see Sulzberger
quite Often during the summer."7 And, although the Iimgg
did not formally endorse Roosevelt until October 1, Stein-
hardt passed to the president through McIntyre in late July
that he had what he believed to be "a satisfactory assur-
ance that the New York Times will shortly give convincing
evidence of its support . . . , and will thereafter go along
with us thru the campaign."8

Roosevelt was informed of the endorsement of the

Ngw YOrk Times on October 1 in a method that gives further

 

7Steinhardt to McIntyre, 15 June 1936, PPF 1735,

FDRL.

8Ibid., 20 July 1936.

72

evidence Of the workings of his press staff. While on the
campaign trail, Roosevelt received a lengthy telegram from
Early relating the substance of the salient points of the
editorial from which the endorsement came. Throughout the
campaign the press staff provided Roosevelt with summaries
and interpretations of campaign news and editorial comment
coming from major newspapers.9

Other individuals from various walks of life also
provided the president with differing perspectives on the
state Of the press and its effect on the electorate.

Manchester Boddy, editor and publisher of the Los Angeles

 

Daily and Evening News, wrote Farley a long analysis of
the political situation in California in response to a re-
quest by the Democratic national chairman. Telling Farley
that Roosevelt would "carry the State," Boddy explained
that "the 'Red' herring didn't go over." And, as he re-
minded Farley: "The gang on the extreme right can't stay
mad when confronted with beautiful curves that point upward.
And we are prosperous. The pain is out of their bellyache
and they are crying just to keep in practice."10
A. P. Giannini, chairman of the board of directors
of the Bank of America, also provided the president through
his secretary, Grace Tully, with a pOlitical analysis of
California "prepared by an important member of the Hearst

9

 

Early to Roosevelt, 1 October 1936, OF 144, FDRL.

10Boddy to Farley, 5 October 1936, Democratic Na-

tional Committee Papers 1936, California, FDRL.

73

organization." In the same letter that carried the anal-
ysis, the financial magnate predicted that "the president
should carry California by a half million votes."11
From other sectors of the nation, the information
about the newspapers was disheartening. Edward J. Kelly,
mayor of Chicago, wrote Farley that it was "apparent that
the Republican [National] committee--especially the Knox
newspaper . . . will endeavor to play up racial feelings
in the campaign."12
Perhaps the most encouraging series of letters that

came to Roosevelt's attention during the campaign, provid-
ing him with the most confidence-building information, came
from the primary Hearst lieutenant, Arthur Brisbane. In
April, Brisbane wrote to the president:

Concerning the coming election, about which, as you

know, I do not agree with some of my associates; 1

would say to you what I said before the election of

1932, that it is a waste of time and energy for you

to travel through the country making speeches. . . .

I am convinced that your victory this next election

will be absolutely overwhelming.13
In May, Brisbane wrote to the president's secretary,
Marguerite (Missy) LeHand:

. . . everything that I heard on my . . . trip across

the continent, in Chicago, and in California, made me

more than ever convinced that my diagnosis of the po-
litical situation as regards 1936 is absolutely sound.14

 

11Giannini to Tully, 19 August 1936, PSF, box 53,

FDRL 0

12Kelly to Farley, 24 July 1936, Democratic National

Committee Papers 1936, Illinois, FDRL.

13Brisbane to Roosevelt, 18 April 1936, PPF 1405,

FDRL.

14Brisbane to LeHand, 13 May 1936, ibid.

74

And in October, again writing to Missy LeHand, Brisbane
gave odds on the election favoring the president, noting:
"If there is any such thing as just and honest betting, it
ought to be 1,000 to l, and more." He concluded: "This
election was all over long ago; it is a pity that the
President should use up any energy needlessly."ls
Newsmen occasionally provided President Roosevelt
with a morale boost. James Kiernan of the New York Times
wrote the president: "The slogan in a newspaper Office is
'Elect Landon and we lose the five day week within a month
after the votes are counted.'"16
Providing perhaps the most salient information to
Roosevelt, however, was Farley and the finely honed mecha-
nism that he had created within the Democratic party. The
national party chairman solicited local evaluation Of the
political climate throughout the country on a regular basis.
The letters came in an unending onslaught. Twelve boxes of
long two-to-five-page letters fill the 1936 files of the
Democratic National Committee, most dealing with the 1936
presidential campaign. Written by postmasters, customs
collectors, Internal Revenue Service representatives, and
local political bosses, they provided the president with an

unending source of information about political conditions

at the grassroots. This was the information from which

 

15Ibid., 26 October 1936, ibid.

16Kiernan to Roosevelt, 7 July 1936, PPF 392, FDRL.

75

Farley would accurately predict Roosevelt's victory in
every state except Maine and Vermont.

Meanwhile, the newspapers were develOping an edi-
torial posture that was based on condemnation of a man
whose legislative victories and executive reforms they had
been reporting for three and a half years. Knowing this,
Roosevelt was also aware of the political climate of the
nation through the channels of the Democratic party and
through the communications of such sources as Brisbane, who
told him that the election was won before the campaign was
started. The question became one of deciding the degree
of response to the newspaper publishers, or, as an alter-
native, deciding not to respond at all.

Initially, Roosevelt seemed to take little cogni-
zance Of the election and certainly not of the campaign.

In July, Harold Ickes was beginning to worry about the elec-
tion because Of the president's apparent lack of concern.

In his diary, Ickes noted that there was reason to worry
about the defections of New Dealers that were then being
exploited in the newspapers and, despite Roosevelt's think-
ing that Landon was the weakest candidate Republicans could
have picked, Ickes thought that issues such as repudiation
of Hearst and others in the reactionary movement should
proceed. But, as the secretary of the interior noted,

"the President smiles and sails and fishes and the rest of

us worry and fume."17

17Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L.
Ickes, Vol. I: The First Thousand Days (New“York: Simon
ana Schuster, 1954), p. 639.

76

When Roosevelt finally did begin his one-month
campaign, a format based on the president's long years of
experience in state politics while governor of New York
and during the arduous early years Of the New Deal was
followed. He avoided open confrontation with Landon, and,
indeed, the speeches of the progressive Kansas governor
offered little to confront.) Without aiming at specific
personalities, Roosevelt centered his campaign upon the
theme Of continuing the New Deal despite the cries of the
"economic royalists" or "Tories" whose goal was to stop or
at least retard the progress that had been started in the
first hundred days.

Although a trip in August to the areas in the Central
states afflicted by drought was billed as "non-political,"
it nonetheless provided Roosevelt with an Opportunity to
reinforce his image of personal concern, the kind that had
characterized his "Fireside Chats" Of the first term. And,
after the swing through the drought-stricken areas, Roose-
velt resumed his presidential role in Washington and Hyde
Park.

The real campaign, however, was held Off until the
month of October, as he had told the press corps it would
be. The October campaign was, again, typical Of Roosevelt
campaigning, highly organized and conducted with a grueling
pace. Traveling by train, the campaign followed a route
that sinuated throughout the Northeast, the Midwest, and

the Rocky MOuntain states. Beginning the campaign with a

77

speech to the Democratic State Convention in Syracuse, New
York, on September 29, the president also made a short trip
to Pennsylvania and West Virginia on October 1; a western
trip that carried him as far west as Denver; a trip to New
England; more heavy campaigning in New York, New Jersey,
Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania; and a final major address
in Madison Square Garden the night of October 31. Whistle—
stopping between major addresses, Roosevelt hit at the core
of the American heartland, visiting such places as Cumber-
land, Maryland; Alton, Illinois; Pontiac, Michigan; Dayton,
Ohio; Plattsmouth, Nebraska; and Fall River, Massachusetts.
When he visited a city dominated by a Democratic party
machine, the crowds would be organized for a demonstration
and it almost seemed as if a mayor such as Kelly of Chicago
or Frank Hague of Jersey City, New Jersey, were competing
for Roosevelt's approval.

Beneath the surface and away from public scrutiny,
suggestions aimed at dealing with such issues as the "red
herring" came quickly. Farley, for example, suggested that
Roosevelt contact George Cardinal Mundelein in Chicago to
solicit his aid in making a statement regarding Roosevelt's
loyalty and non-Communist political stance.18 Henry Kannee,
an assistant to McIntyre, wrote to his superior that former
Governor Edward F. Dunne of Illinois had expressed concern

about the nature of information being received by voters in

 

18Farley to Roosevelt, 23 October 1936, PPF 321,

FDRL.

78

Illinois and especially in Chicago. Kannee said that Dunne
had indicated that the president should work at getting a
newspaper into Chicago that would counteract the reaction-
ary press. Dunne had related to Kannee that when he was
running for mayor Of Chicago, he had brought into the city
newspapers from New York in order that the voters might get
a less biased perspective.19 Secretary of Commerce Daniel
Roper would, the following summer, express such discontent
with the state of the American press that he would recom-
mend to Roosevelt "a newspaper in Washington, edited by
such men as Claude G. Bowers and Gerald W. Johnson, of the
Baltimore Evening Sun. It would be relatively easy," Roper
said, ". . . to get money for such publication provided
editors of such outstanding experience as those mentioned
are to be used in management"20
A basic proposition governing Roosevelt's formula-
tion of press strategy for the campaign was based on his
perception Of an inability of the press to communicate with
the American voter as well as he could through such devices
as the fireside chats. Raymond MOley, a member of the
original Brain Trust who was, in mid-1936, fast falling
from the favor of the president, indicated that Roosevelt
thought "nothing would help him more than to have it known

that the newspapers were all against him." Relating a

 

19Kannee to McIntyre, 12 February 1936, PPF 2787,

FDRL.

20Roper to Roosevelt, 21 June 1937, OF 3, FDRL.

79

conversation that he had with the president while cruising
on the Potomac in the spring of 1936, Moley quotes the
president as saying, as he pointed to a house on the shore:
"That man over there has got into the habit of saying,
'Well, that's only a newspaper story.'"21 Stephen Early's
wife also thought that the president believed that the
newspapers' hostility was to his ultimate benefit. In her
words: “The President liked newspaper or magazine jibes
that depicted him as a traitor to his own social stratum."22
Willard Edwards, of the Washington bureau Of the Chicago
Tribune, echoed Mrs. Early's thoughts, noting that Roose-
velt was not "bothered by the Opposition of most publishers
in 1936 and may even have welcomed it."23
The president, then, sought to ease into the cam-
paign, avoiding visible confrontation with individuals or
with the newspapers, and slowly built to a conclusion. He
thought the Republicans were falling into a self-destructive
pattern and expressed this thought to his vice president,
JOhn Nance Garner. Writing to Garner from aboard the
schooner Sewanee off the coast of Nova Scotia, Roosevelt
indicated that he thought "the Republican high command [was]
doing altogether too much talking at this stage of the game

and that the country [was] getting rather sick of John

 

21Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (New York: Harper
a Brothers, 1939), p. 33 .

22Mrs. Stephen T. Early, "FDR: As My Husband Knew
Him," American Weekly, April 24, 1955, p. 26.

23sdwards to author, 24 February 1971.

80

Hamilton [Republican national chairman] and the constant
torrent of abuse which contains really nothing new."24
Although the president did ease into public cam-
paigning slowly, the press and the publicity organization
of his campaign was established early in 1936. In a memo-
randum to Farley, Roosevelt outlined his desires in regard
to press and publicity. Speeches, statements to the press,
responses to Opponents, and forays against opponents were
to be cleared through the Democratic National Committee
press chief, Charles Michelson. Pamphleteering was to be
handled through presidential aide, Stanley High. Radio
policy, a key factor in the highly rhetorical Roosevelt
campaign, was to be directed by a committee of three in-
cluding Michelson, High, and the "head of the Speakers'
Bureau."25
The campaign would be conducted without the astute
direction and leadership of the loyal Louis Howe, who had
died after a long illness in the spring of 1936. His posi-
tion would not be filled either in spirit or in fact, but
the strength of Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor, would emerge as
a strong motivator in the campaign organization. At her
husband's request, Mrs. Roosevelt, in mid-1936, studied
campaign organization and reported to him and other key

aids on those areas she saw as critical and possibly

 

24Roosevelt to Garner, 19 July 1936, PPF 1416,

FDRL.

25Roosevelt to Farley, 26 March 1936, PPF 309,

FDRL.

81

problematical in the campaign strategy. In a multiple-
addressed memorandum to FDR and the other key staff members,
Mrs. Roosevelt asked ten detailed questions covering the
spectrum from radio speeches to mechanics of press releases,
specifying those areas she thought might raise problems and
those details she believed lacked organization. Her per-
ceptiveness and attention to detail emerge along with a
display of loyalty to her husband and his goals and an en-
thusiastic desire to help in the campaign.26
Press organization on the campaign trip during
October was meticulous, perhaps partly attributable to Mrs.
Roosevelt's early concern and prodding. Richard L. Strout
of the Washington bureau of Christian Science MOnitor
called the campaign excursion "a cross between a theatrical
trip, a Cook's tour and an old fashioned revival sprigged
out with General Westinghouse trimmings." There were, ac-
cording to Strout, twenty-four men and one woman in the
press corps on the train for the Chicago to Denver leg of
the western trip. No regularly scheduled press conferences
were held while enroute, and news was cleared through
Secretary McIntyre. COpy was given to telegraph boys as
the train whistle-stopped, although Strout indicated that

on occasion a radio transmitter on board could be used by

 

26

Franklin D. Roosevelt, The People Approve 1936,
vol. V of The Public Pa ers and A resses 0 ran n .
1928-1945 wIEfi S I I I

 

Roosevelt a ec a ntrodfiCtion and Ex-
pIanatory Notes 5y PresIaent Roosevelt, comp. SamueI I.
osenman vo s.; ew or : vo . - , Random HOuse,
1928-1936; vol. VI-IX, Macmillan, 1937-1940; vol. X-XIII,
Harper & Brothers, 1941-1945), pp. 598-601.

82

the newsmen. Speeches other than those given at the whistle-
stOps were taken in shorthand and reproduced and given ver-
batim to the correspondents. Strout noted that in his
speeches, Roosevelt provided the "illusion of spontaneity"
by departures from the fixed text but that such departures
rarely provided "important news results."27
Reporters covering Landon found news more difficult
to obtain. A questioner at one of Roosevelt's press con-
ferences mentioned that the Landon campaign had not pro-
vided "a real story in weeks." Roosevelt reminded the re-
porters that "a governor of a state has very little national
news" and that since as the president, he did, "that makes
it easier." Roosevelt then observed the somewhat Obvious
by commenting: "We will sit around here and talk and
usually, somehow, a story develops. Another person will
talk for hours and nothing seems to suggest itself."28
Always the pragmatist, Roosevelt dealt with spe-
cific concerns regarding the press as they developed. Wor-
ried about the neutrality of a wire service, Roosevelt
asked Ambassador Robert Bingham, publisher of the Louisville

Courier-Journal and former president of the Associated

Press, "to undertake the special work of seeing that the

 

27Richard L. Strout, "President's Contact with Re-
porters Is Limited While on Campaign Tours," Editor &
Publisher, Oct. 24, 1936, p. 5.

28News Conference #315, 18 August 1936, pp. 79-80.

83

Associated Press maintains a thoroughly neutral posi-

tion."29

This action was but another demonstration Of
Roosevelt's concern for the transmission of complete and
objective news reports rather than editorial posturing.

On another occasion, Farley had referred to Landon
publicly as being from a "typical prairie state.” Roose-
velt, seeing the possible political repercussions of such
a statement in the hands of hostile publishers, chastised
Farley and recommended that "a somewhat facetious reference
to Frank Knox," the Republican vice-presidential candidate,
by Michelson "might soften the effect of the Landon refer-
ence."30 Later, when Farley referred to Landon as a "syn-
thetic" candidate, Roosevelt again criticized Farley and
Michelson and ordered that his own prior approval be sought
prior to any future attacks on Landon. He also instructed
Farley to confine his remarks and quit giving interviews,
the nature of the occasion in which the snide reference had
been made.31

Although they were few, Roosevelt capitalized on
defections among the Republicans. Publisher Ralph B.

Strassburger of the Nonfistown (Pennsylvania) Times-Herald,

 

29Franklin Delano Roosevelt, F.D.R.: His Personal
Letters 1928-1945, ed. by Elliott RooseveIt, IV {New YorE:
DGeII, SIOan ana Pearce, 1950), 585.

30Roosevelt to Farley, 22 May 1936, ibid., 591-592.

31Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diafiy of Harold L.
Ickes, vol. I: The First T ousan ays ew or : mon

aha Schuster, l9 , pp. .

84

who had been a delegate to the Republican National Conven-
tion in Cleveland, switched his allegiance to Roosevelt in
mid-October. Informed of Strassburger's endorsement in a
telegram from Early, Roosevelt quickly wired the Pennsyl-
vania publisher and applauded Strassburger's non-partisan-
ship in a partisan manner:

It is encouraging and inspiring to have publications

like yours take a non-partisan stand in times like

this. It is a fine thing for the country to have pub-

lishers who without regard for party lines voice their

honest convictions. It is a great thing for journalism

that the profession includes men who believe that their

duty to the public transcends political considerations.32

When a favorable newspaper editorial would come to
Roosevelt's attention, he would Occasionally reply to it.
An editorial in the Brooklyn Eagle that asked for "specifi-
cations" of the issues of lost liberties and government
regulations of business under the New Deal brought an ac-
colade of approval to the Egglgfs editor, Cleveland Rodgers.
In the letter, Roosevelt said that "freedom of the press is
in jeopardy, not from the Government but from certain types
of newspaper owners" and that he was "glad the good old
'Eagle' is still a newspaper in the best sense of the word."33
Roosevelt was not happy about the editorial policy

of the newspaper publishers, but he continued to cautiously
avoid direct confrontation. Only when Hearst aroused his

ire to an apparently unbearable level did he finally ven-

ture a reply and then through Secretary Early. Hearst

 

32Early to McIntyre, 14 October 1936, PPF 4026, FDRL;
Roosevelt to Strassburger, PPF 4026, FDRL.

33Roosevelt to Rodgers, 11 August 1936, PPF 1942,
FDRL.

8S

newspapers had published a story indicating that Roose-
velt had accepted Communist party support in his campaign.
The reply was curt and incisive:

My attention has been called to a planned attempt
led by a certain notorious newspaper owner to make it
appear that the President passively accepts the sup-
port of Alien organizations hostile to the American
form of Government.

Such articles are conceived in malice and born of
political spite. They are deliberately framed to give
a false impression--in other words to "frame" the
American people.

The President does not want and does not welcome
the vote or support of any individual or group taking
orders from alien sources. This simple fact is, of
course, obvious.

The American people will not permit their atten-
tion to be diverted from real issues to fake issues
which no patriotic, honorable decent citizen would
purposely inject into American affairs.34

Although Roosevelt himself did not enter into
battle with the publishers, evidence indicates that he ap-
proved, endorsed, and perhaps encouraged such actions on
the part of his supporters. Perhaps the heaviest-handed
of such "hatchetmen" was the old "curmudgeon" himself,
Harold L. Ickes. A speech prepared for Ickes to deliver
at a Democratic rally in Evanston, Illinois, was submitted
to Early "for . . . suggestion or instruction" perhaps pro-
vides a strong example of the form Of rhetorical acidity

35

receiving Roosevelt's implicit approval. William D.

Hassett, a White House press aide, reading the speech for

 

34Press release from Stephen Early, 19 September
1936, PPF 62, FDRL.

35Michael w. Strauss to Early, 19 October 1936,
OF 6, FDRL.

 

86

review, noted: "I do not think there is anything in the

Speech that runs counter to policy."36

That which did not run "counter to policy" was a
hard-hitting attack on the conservative newspaper publish-
ers of Chicago. Of the press in Chicago as an institution,
Ickes said:

Of all the great cities in the United States,
Chicago seems to be in the most unfortunate situation j
so far as a fair and free press is concerned. With
the exception of the Times, all Of our newspapers of H»
general circulation are in the ranks of the Roosevelt
haters. They seem to vie with each other as to which
can be the most unfair, the most biased in its news
columns and the most bitter in its editorials and car-
toons. Exercising no self-restraint, utterly lacking
in any sense of justice or fair play, they seem to be
in keen competition to excel in misrepresentation and
calumny. Consider these publications and tell me
truly--has President Roosevelt curbed the free press
of America?

 

Aiming directly at Colonel McCormick, Ickes said:

". . . it has been axiomatic that the Opposition of
the Tribune was to be preferred by a candidate. Even
its support often has the effect on the favored one
of arsenic poisoning. The Tribune is really a case
for a psychiatrist. . . . "

Then, Ickes leveled the accusation:

I assert the fact to be that the Chicago Tribune,
in giving expression to the envy and malice that poisons
the mind of its publisher, has slandered the President
of the United States; that it has deliberately made
misstatements of fact with respect to his acts and pur-
poses. Its news columns have been colored and poisoned
by insinuations, innuendos and falsehoods.3

 

35Hassett to Early, 20 October 1936, OF 6, FDRL.

36Harold L. Ickes, “Only Twelve More Days to Save
America," MS copy of third draft of speech given at North-
western University, Evanston, Illinois, 21 October 1936,
OF 6, FDRL.

87

Ickes also spent several pages deprecating the
"vesperal Colonel" Knox, publisher of the Chicago Daily
£213. The Tribune and Colonel McCormick dominated the
subject matter of the speech, however, and Ickes used the
opportunity to hit the Tribune with a forehand and Hearst
with a backhand when he noted that "McCormick is . . . con-
tent to sit at the feet of his rival publisher, William
Randolph Hearst, and eagerly pick up whatever crumbs may
fall from that gentleman's table" but that nonetheless,
the only reason people read the Tribune is that the "only
local alternative is the Hearst morning output."38

Another Roosevelt supporter who took a stand against
the Chicago press was Chicago congressman, Barratt O'Hara.
O'Hara, who had been an editor for Hearst in the early part
of the century, had begun to make radio addresses on WCFL
(Chicago Federation of Labor), a labor-affiliated station,
in defense of the president. In a fifteen-minute radio ad-
dress given in January, 1936, for example, O'Hara exhibited
his disgust for what he called the "Tory press," a term he
shared with Roosevelt. Using the theme of "hitting below
the belt," he struck out against Hearst, and, particularly,
McCormick and the Chicago newspapers with the exception of
the Dailerimes:

There has never been a more contemptible exhibition of
unfair fighting, Of hitting below the belt, in all the
history of journalism and of politics. Instead of

meeting clear cut issues fairly and squarely, of match-
ing the President's arguments with counter arguments,

38

 

Ibid.

 

88

of honestly presenting their side of the picture that
the people might dispassionately and intelligently
choose which side they wished to hang to the wall,
these Tory newspapers, these banker hirelings, and
these bought-and-paid-for character assassins of
Fascist exploiters resort to rough house, to bar room
methods and to downright lying. They deserve the stern
censor of all decent and patriotic Amer$cans without
any regard for political affiliations.3

With colleagues like Ickes and O'Hara handling the ’
hatchet work, Roosevelt confined his campaign speeches to P]

his record, to himself, and to the future. His relations

 

with the working press remained normal and, if his irrita-
tion mounted, it did not appear to show to those outside
the inner circle. Roosevelt remained above the battle.

The question that emerged at the end of the campaign became
one Of evaluating the future of the newspaper as a credible
source Of information for the voter. An "election night
mob" made its Opinion known to McCormick, "burning a truck-
load Of its [Tribune] 'bulldog' edition, egging its build-
ing, smashing plate glass at its Dearborn street branch."40
Later, Erwin Canham said he "felt confident newspapers
would survive but their editorials would have less and less

41

importance." The question remains: Is the freedom of

the press intended only for the protection of publishers

 

39Barratt O'Hara, radio address on station WCFL
Chicago, 7 January 1936, MS copy, PPF 3197, FDRL.

4O"Editor's Afterthoughts," Time, Nov. 16, 1936,
p. 65.

41Canham to author, 19 February 1971.

89

and station owners of broadcast media, or is the protec-
tion of the right to know of readers, listeners, and viewers

implicit?

In a study of this nature, conclusions are, of
necessity, tentative and speculative. The issues examined
cannot be quantifiably analyzed.

A political candidate needs to tell his story to
the electorate. Roosevelt had been telling his story via
radio and on the front pages for the greater part of four
years. More importantly perhaps, he had been telling his
story in legislative and economic reform: in bank ac-
counts that became guaranteed by the federal government,
in jobs regained, and in self-respect re-established.

Perhaps of greater importance than the candidates
telling their stories, however, is the people receiving
fair and accurate information about those candidates in
order that they might make intelligent decisions about
whom they will select to govern them. That right to know,
implicit in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights,
would seem to have been denied many of the American people
in 1936.

Freedom of the press as guaranteed by the framers
of the Constitution would not seem to have been simply
intended for the perpetuation and enrichment of a select

few newspaper barons. The freedom that the Jeffersonians

 

17“] .‘II. E

9O

envisioned would rather seem to have been one designed to
help men govern themselves in a rational manner; and it
was in the rational selection of those that govern, based
on adequate information, that the 1936 election appears in
the most unfavorable light.

It would be gross oversimplification to reduce the
conflict between Franklin Roosevelt and such publishers as
William Randolph Hearst and Robert Rutherford McCormick to
a simple contrast of good and evil. Those who booed the
reporters from the anti-Roosevelt newspapers and egged the
Tribune building on election eve were not crying out
against newspapers for not providing them with fair and
accurate information about the major party candidates;
rather, they were crying out against newspapers who had
desecrated a man who, to many Americans, had become a hero.
The republic was fortunate that that particular "hero" did
not evolve as have other heroes in other nations in which
all who Opposed the popular leader were attacked in a sim-
ilar manner. For, if Roosevelt had done much to reform and
rebuild a nation wracked with economic travail and depres-
sion of the spirit, he had also left much undone. And
what of Landon? His ideas, similar to those Of the incum-
bent in many ways, were not given adequate coverage in the
newspapers examined. The campaign as covered by the
McCormick and Hearst papers was reduced to a meaningless

babble of cheerleading and name-calling.

91

Roosevelt, having gained the respect of the press
corps, chose to ignore the publishers. It was the newsman,
performing his daily tasks, who provided the American
peOple with the information about jobs, about governmental
reform, about relief, and about fearing only "fear itself."
But men did not require newspapers to tell them they were
hungry or to tell them after their stomachs had been
filled. Such considerations were Obvious to many Americans
in 1936. When they went to the polls, they voted their
convictions and repaid a debt.

To be sure, the technique of the president's fire-
side chats provided the people with a tangible, warm, and
close relationship to a national leader that they never
before had experienced, and for which they had never pre-
viously had such a high requirement. But speeches and
newspaper stories were not by themselves adequate. Sub-
stance, or at least the appearance of commitment, is
generally requisite and, in a time Of national discontent
such as during the Great Depression, substance far ex-
ceeded form in relative importance.

George Seldes, a reporter of the period, reflected
after the 1936 presidential election:

Although the New Deal was being attacked, and fre-
quently lied about, by the business interests and by
the majority of the press, times were hard and the

benefits of the Roossvelt program were visible to
millions of people.4

 

42George Seldes, 1000 Americans (New York: Julian
Messner, 1938), p. 204.

92

And, even before the election, Arthur Krock, distinguished
Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, in an opin-
ion column datelined Chicago, asserted his belief that
there was a gulf between the people and their press, that
the people were not to be swayed by the tirades of news-
paper publishers, and analyzed the contemporary mood of

the electorate this way:

Conceding his mistakes, they are grateful for his
achievements and resentful of the newspaper attacks,

which led by the Hearst press and the Chicago Tribune
. . . have reached a crescendo of bitter as.
Roosevelt won in 1936 despite the press and per-
haps, to paraphrase the title of the volume of his public

papers for that year, because the people approved.

 

43New York Times, Oct. 20, 1936, p. 24.

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